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Oral Answers to Questions
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
In beginning, may I wish you, Mr Speaker, all Members of the House and its staff, and, of course, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) a very happy new year?
We have announced a new £30 million fund to help end the scandal of excessive waking watch costs. This will fund the installation of alarm systems in buildings with unsafe cladding, reducing or removing the dependence on costly interim measures such as a waking watch. We estimate that that will save residents a combined £3 million each month. Alongside that, we continue to prioritise the removal of unsafe cladding and have committed funds to help make homes safer, faster.
Caroline Nokes [V]
Sleep deprivation is recognised as a form of torture. People living in buildings with unsafe cladding are being tortured: physically, due to a lack of sleep, as they live in fear; financially, as they cannot sell their homes and are forced to pay for waking watches; and mentally, as they live in limbo. When does my right hon. Friend expect that torture to end?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend; she has campaigned long and hard for her constituents, and has raised this issue with me outside the Chamber as well as within it. We all appreciate the terrible challenges and suffering that many people around our country face on this issue. That is why we want the residents of blocks that are enduring a waking watch to get the benefits of our changes as soon as possible. We expect the £30 million fund to be open this month, with the aim of providing funding for the installation of alarms as quickly as possible. I think we all agree that the best way of making buildings safe is to speed up remediation, and that is what our policies intend.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)
We are increasing funding for councils in 2021-22. Through the local government finance settlement, we are making an extra £2.2 billion available to councils, with an average cash increase of 4.5%—a real-terms increase. We have also announced £3 billion of covid-19 support for next year, taking our total direct support for local government in responding to the pandemic to more than £10 billion.
Dr Evans [V]
I am grateful to the Minister for the announcement of the extra cash, particularly the covid cash, in these difficult times. He will know from our many meetings in the year since I was elected about my concern on fairer funding for Leicestershire. If Leicestershire were funded at the same level as London, it would receive an extra £374 per resident. Will he update me on the formula that underpins the structure and whether there will be a review? Is this likely to change? If so, when?
Luke Hall
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and the way in which he has consistently and constructively raised this issue with me and Ministers in our Department. Leicestershire will see an increase of 5.5% in its core spending power next year and receive more than £11.5 million to deal with covid pressures. The Government certainly agree that we need an updated and fairer method for distributing funds within local government. I hope he understands that this year we have had to focus on supporting councils through the pandemic, but once this is over we will revisit our shared priority of funding reform. In the meantime, we have substantially increased the rural services delivery grant to £85 million, its highest level ever, which will support the delivery of services in places such as Leicestershire. I am, of course, happy to continue meeting him in the weeks ahead.
Joy Morrissey [V]
May I thank the Minister for his covid cash for councils? Will he confirm that the Government will ensure that councils have the financial support they need to respond to covid-19 and support their local communities? In places such as Bucks, particularly, our council is doing a fantastic job but there is a lot of concern about whether it will have the financial support to carry on throughout the pandemic and make sure that care is taken of all the residents.
Luke Hall
I thank my hon. Friend for her question. She is right to say that councils have done an incredible job in responding to the pandemic. We have provided an unprecedented package of covid-related support for councils, which is now worth £10 billion over this year and next year. It includes £1 billion of unring-fenced funding, as well as support with lost income from tax, sales, fees and charges. Buckinghamshire will benefit from more than £54 million of covid support this year and £11 million for next year. Councils are the unsung heroes of the response to this pandemic and we are standing squarely behind them.
Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
May I take this opportunity to congratulate Christina McAnea on being elected the general secretary of Unison? It is Britain’s biggest trade union and of course has many members who work in local government.
Let me turn to the Minister. How is it fair to force councils to choose between hiking up council tax for hard-working families during the worst recession in 300 years, or cutting social care for older parents and grandparents during an unprecedented global health pandemic?
Luke Hall
It is hard to take lectures from the Labour party about raising council tax when Labour doubled council tax while in office and has trebled council tax in Wales. If the hon. Gentleman wants to speak about raising council tax, he should start by speaking to the Mayor of London, who is proposing a 9.5% increase in council tax for next year. We are ensuring that local government has the resources it needs to emerge stronger from the pandemic. That is why we are putting in an extra £2.2 billion next year. We are also giving councils the flexibility to defer any increases in council tax next year if they believe that is right for their community. If the Opposition Front-Bench team looked at the detail of what we are proposing, they would see that we have provided £670 million to help councils to support people who are least able to pay council tax. There is of course one council that will definitely be raising council tax next year, and that is Croydon, because of its completely disastrous management of its finances.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
The Government’s priority throughout the pandemic has been to protect lives and livelihoods, with substantial support flowing to high street businesses through business grants, the paying of people’s wages and tax deferrals. Just last week, the Chancellor announced an additional £4.6 billion in new lockdown grants to support businesses and protect jobs. I was pleased that on Boxing day we allocated £830 million from our future high streets fund to 72 areas to transform underused town centres into the vibrant places to live, work and visit that we all want to see after the pandemic.
James Sunderland
Online sellers, global giants and supermarkets have enjoyed a virtual monopoly since the pandemic started, whereas small businesses in Bracknell, Crowthorne, Sandhurst and beyond are often on their knees. What is my hon. Friend going to do to address this growing imbalance?
Robert Jenrick
That idea lies very much behind the comprehensive package of support that the Chancellor has made available, with £200 billion specifically targeted at supporting small businesses on the high street. It is also why we have brought forward the further top-up grants, worth up to £9,000, to help small businesses through this next—and hopefully final—phase of the pandemic. We will of course continue to review the situation. Such concerns lie at the heart of our plans through the towns fund, the high streets fund and now the future levelling-up fund.
Claire Coutinho [V]
Just before Christmas I met businesses on the Oxted high street. Even with the unprecedented Government support that the Secretary of State has laid out, it has been a difficult and anxious year for them, with many going above and beyond for their customers. Surrey County Council and the Surrey economic growth board, on which I serve, are doing important work to revitalise and transform our high streets; will the Secretary of State meet us so that we can share our ideas on how we can best support such hard-working family businesses?
Robert Jenrick
I praise my hon. Friend for her hard work to support Oxted high street in Surrey and the work of her local councils. The truth is that the pandemic has not so much changed things but magnified and accelerated enormous market forces that were evident even before the pandemic. There will now be a very significant role for local councils in bringing forward imaginative plans to bring private and public sector investment back to the high streets over the course of the year, and to make good use of the licensing and planning reforms that we have already brought forward and that we will bring forward more of in future. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to hear her plans for Oxted.
Mrs Drummond [V]
Waterlooville town centre in my constituency was struggling as a shopping centre even before the pandemic, and is now really suffering, with closed shops and a lack of investment. There is a vision for the town centre, but we need money to develop it. Will my right hon. Friend point out a fund of money that I could approach to make this happen?
Robert Jenrick
As I said, I was delighted to announce over the Christmas period the 72 places that have benefited from the future high streets fund, but I appreciate that hundreds of high streets throughout the country will be thinking about their own futures. We will very shortly bring forward the levelling-up fund, from which all parts of the country, including my hon. Friend’s in Hampshire, will have the opportunity to benefit. I also direct my hon. Friend to look at the planning reforms that we have brought forward, because it is not simply about more public investment; we also want to support entrepreneurs, small businesspeople and small builders through the right to regenerate, the changes to the use-class orders and the new licensing arrangements—such as the ability to have markets, keep marquees outside pubs and have more tables and chairs outdoors—that I would like to be put on a permanent footing so that the al fresco dining we saw in the summer can be replicated this year.
Mr Speaker
And hopefully Chorley will be included in the Secretary of State’s high streets fund.
Mr Speaker
And hopefully Chorley will be on the Secretary of State’s high street fund.
Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
As we have been hearing, high streets are struggling like never before. When will the Government level the playing field on business rates between high street retailers and online businesses, so that they can compete on equal terms?
Robert Jenrick
The Chancellor announced earlier in the year an unprecedented business rates holiday, which is benefiting thousands of businesses the length and breadth of the country, and he will be considering what further steps are necessary. I know that he is making a statement later today, and we will bring forward a Budget in March. We all want to support small independent businesses on our high streets, which is precisely why I encourage the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to support the planning reforms that we have already introduced, such as the ability to build upwards, to bring more homes on to the high street and to turn a derelict or empty property in a town centre into something more useful for the future. Those are the ways that we attract private sector investment and enable small builders and entrepreneurs in Croydon, in Newark and in all parts of the country to face the future with confidence.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Kelly Tolhurst)
The Government are committed to enhancing renters’ security by abolishing no-fault evictions. During the covid-19 pandemic, our collective efforts have been focused on protecting people during the outbreak. This has included introducing longer notice periods and preventing evictions at the height of the pandemic on public health grounds. We will introduce a renters’ reform Bill very soon.
Navendu Mishra
I thank the Minister for her response. Hundreds of thousands of people are at risk of being evicted when the ban is lifted. The covid crisis has highlighted underlying problems in the private rented sector, including families being forced into expensive and insecure housing. Local organisations in my constituency, including Stockport Tenants Union and ACORN, have long campaigned to end section 21 evictions, but when will the Minister deliver her manifesto commitment to do the same?
Kelly Tolhurst
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We are committed to abolishing no-fault evictions under section 21. Obviously, we have already taken some action. Last week, for example, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State increased the ban on evictions for a further six weeks. We have also introduced six months’ notice, which means that people who receive an order now will find that it will not go through the courts until July. We are committed to making sure that we protect anybody who is suffering homelessness. That has been borne out by the level of investment that we have put into the sector during the pandemic. We will keep all these measures under review.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) [V]
Millions of hard-working people are excluded from every covid scheme—newly self-employed or employed, small business owners, people with mixed employment, even some on maternity or paternity leave who have lost work because of covid but have little or no Government support. The Government’s own stats show that hundreds of thousands have fallen behind on rent. A loophole in the new evictions rules means that anyone with more than six months in arrears is at risk of eviction. When the Secretary of State said that no one should lose their home because of coronavirus, did he or did he not mean that?
Kelly Tolhurst
I regret that the hon. Lady does not recognise the unprecedented steps that this Government have taken in an unprecedented global pandemic to support renters and people experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping. Our data show that our measures to protect renters are working. We have had a 54% reduction in households owed a homelessness duty to the end of an assured tenancy from April to June compared with January to March. Ministry of Justice stats show no possessions recorded between April and September. We have put a ban on evictions, given a six-month notice period, extended buy-to-let mortgage holidays, provided £700 million to support rough sleepers and those at risk of homelessness, provided 3,300 next steps accommodation, given £6.4 billion to local authorities to deal with the impact of covid, helped 29,000 people with Everyone In, and saw 19,000 move on to settled protection. The list goes on and on. We know that people are experiencing hardship in these times, and this Government will continue to review and take the necessary action to ensure people in this country are protected.
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)
The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)
We are providing councils with comprehensive support for income lost due to the pandemic. We are extending the existing compensation scheme for lost sales, fees and charges income into 2021-22, and we have already paid councils £528 million under this scheme. We have introduced a local tax guarantee scheme for this financial year that provides 75% of irrecoverable losses in business rates and council tax, worth an estimated £800 million. We are also allowing councils to phase recovery of collection fund deficits over three years.
Dr Spencer
I very much welcome the incredible financial support provided to local authorities, particularly through the national leisure recovery fund. Does my hon. Friend agree that supporting council provision of health and leisure centres is vital in helping us to keep healthy and to support our mental wellbeing? Will he look at the situation in my local authorities, Runnymede and Elmbridge borough councils, and their individual leisure operator contracts and according liabilities, where those are in excess of the support provided by the scheme?
Luke Hall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Leisure services play a vital role in helping people to be active, supporting physical and mental health, and bringing a wider range of community and wellbeing benefits. I can confirm that Runnymede and Elmbridge have each lodged an expression of interest as the first necessary step in the application process for the national leisure recovery fund; I believe that they will have submitted their completed applications before the deadline of 15 January. It is also worth noting that councils may be eligible for support from the sales, fees and charges scheme, which was recently extended into the first three months of 2021-22, but I am always more than happy to meet him to discuss this matter in more detail.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
We expect—and we are right to expect—developers, investors and building owners who have the means to pay to cover remediation costs themselves without passing on costs to leaseholders. In cases where this may not be possible and where there may be wider costs related to historical defects, we are keenly aware that leaseholders can face unforeseen costs. That is why we have introduced funding schemes, providing £1.6 billion to accelerate the pace of work and meet the costs of remediating high-risk and the most expensive defects. We are accelerating the work on a long-term solution, and are working to announce the findings of that as soon as possible.
Sir Robert Neill [V]
The Government have always been right to say that leaseholders should not bear the costs of a scandal for which they bore no responsibility. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister confirm that it will be wholly—[Inaudible]—for them to be expected to meet the costs by way of a loan scheme supported by the Government, as is reported in some of the press? That would not be consistent with the Government’s policy or the Government’s word, would it?
Christopher Pincher
I am grateful to my hon. Friend; he was breaking up a little, but I think we got the gist of his question. We have always been clear that it is unacceptable for leaseholders to have to worry about fixing the costs of historical safety defects in their buildings that they did not cause. I fully understand the anxiety that they must all feel, particularly given the compounding challenges of the pandemic. That is why we are determined to remove the barriers to fixing those historical defects and to identify clear financial solutions to help protect those leaseholders while also, of course, protecting the taxpayer. We will update the House with further measures as soon as possible.
Mr Speaker
Let us head to the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, in Yorkshire, Clive Betts.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab) [V]
Thank you, Mr Speaker—happy new year to you. I am sure it would be remiss of me if I did not say that your local constituency football team have made rather a good start to this year.
In saying happy new year to the Minister as well, I am sure he would want it to be a happy new year for all leaseholders, but he did not really answer the question from the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill). Even if a loan scheme were introduced to cover the costs of these defects, and even if it was a very low-interest scheme, that would still be a capital charge on properties—a capital charge that would be a considerable financial burden on leaseholders, would put many of them into negative equity, and would mean that their properties were unsaleable. Will the Minister accept that a loan scheme that puts an additional debt on leaseholders is not a fair way out of this problem and that he should instead look to the industry and to Government to cover the cost of putting these defects right?
Christopher Pincher
The Chair of the Select Committee is absolutely right—we should look to developers and to building owners to remedy the defects in their buildings. We have made available to owners who are not able to remedy those defects quickly and effectively £1.6 billion in order to remedy those defects. As I said in my earlier answer, we do not want and we do not expect hard-pressed leaseholders to bear unfair costs of defects for which they are not responsible. That is why we are working quickly to bring forward a long-term solution to ensure that costs are met, that defects are remedied, and that the position that leaseholders find themselves in is remedied too.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab) [V]
A belated happy new year to you, Mr Speaker.
Clauses 88 and 89 of the Government’s proposed Building Safety Bill will impose a charge on leaseholders, not developers and not the industry. Ministers now refer to “affordable” cost and a 30-year loan on top of current debts, including for waking watch, which we still have no remedy to. Adding insult to injury, Ministers are trying to gag recipients of the building safety fund from speaking to the media. That is just not going to happen. Have Ministers learned nothing about transparency from the Grenfell inquiry? Is it not about time that Ministers stepped in and made sure that the developer community shoulder their responsibility for this mess?
Christopher Pincher
The Government have stepped in: they have spent £1.6 billion of public money on remediating the most difficult and challenging buildings that require help and support. We have made a further £30 million available for waking watch. The Building Safety Bill to which the hon. Gentleman refers—one of the most significant pieces of legislation in this Parliament —will be brought forward to make sure that building defects such as we have seen are things of the past. In the meantime, we will work at pace to find solutions that resolve the question of building defects such that we do not see hard-pressed leaseholders enduring difficult, unforeseen and unfair taxes. If those leaseholders wish to step forward and make comments themselves, who am I to say that they should not? We live in a free country; let them speak.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
We expect that the £30 million fund will be open this month, as I said earlier, with the aim to start providing funding for the installation of alarms as quickly as possible. We will work with local authorities and fire and rescue services on the delivery of the fund, and we expect to publish a prospectus with further information on the additional eligibility criteria and evidence requirements as soon as possible.
Sarah Olney [V]
Residents of Royal Quarter, Kingston in my constituency have contacted me to say that their building has been assessed as having dangerous cladding, but they cannot apply to the waking watch fund, as their building is less than 18 metres tall. Leaving leaseholders to pick up the tab for remediating cladding means that many buildings will not be made safe in the near future. Will the Government commit to funding the remediation of cladding on all buildings as soon as possible, to ensure that they can be made safe, and then claim the money back from those responsible?
Christopher Pincher
I am obliged to the hon. Lady for her question. In our response to this challenge, we have been guided by Dame Judith Hackitt, who advised that we should focus our attention specifically on buildings that are over 18 metres, and that is what we have done. We believe that the £30 million that we have made available will go a long way to helping with the waking watch challenges of many of those buildings. It still remains the responsibility of developers and owners to make safe the buildings that they own or are responsible for and to resolve the defects in them. That is the point I have made from this Dispatch Box before and which I make again today, and it is the point that the building safety Bill will help to remedy.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)
We are committed to levelling up across the United Kingdom by devolving directly to local areas, which understand the needs in their community and are best placed to take decisions over investments to drive economic growth and deliver services for their communities. From May this year, 41% of people in England will be living in areas with directly elected regional mayors, and we intend to bring forward the devolution and local recovery White Paper in due course.
John Lamont
I welcome the answer from the Minister. It is important that local government has the powers to deliver quality services, but unfortunately in Scotland the SNP Scottish Government have been grabbing powers back from local authorities for years. Does the Minister agree that we need to see Governments of all levels working together to ensure that British people get access to the services they deserve?
Luke Hall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that devolution should be about delivering services that work for local people, which is why we are committed to devolution. We will need, at all levels of government across the country, to work together to achieve that and the best possible services for residents. We intend to bring forward the devolution and local recovery White Paper in due course, which will detail how we will partner with places across the UK to build a sustainable recovery. I can absolutely assure him that this Conservative Government will continue to set the pace on devolution.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
The Government care deeply about building more homes and delivered more than 243,000 last year, the highest level for more than 30 years. We have gone to great lengths to keep the whole industry open during the pandemic, sustaining hundreds of thousands of people’s jobs and livelihoods, while continuing to stimulate the market through our stamp duty cut. Covid will impact starts significantly, so we are taking steps to sustain activity, including delivering up to 180,000 homes through our £12 billion investment in affordable homes, the biggest investment of its kind for a decade.
Sir Edward Leigh
There are about 100 small rural villages in my Gainsborough constituency, and I doubt there has been any building of social housing in any of them over the past 40 years. It is virtually impossible for young couples, who often do precisely the jobs we want in rural areas, to buy into villages. We do not want our English villages filled with people like me; we want young people. [Interruption.] That is the truth. Will the Secretary of State do a massive campaign, like the Macmillan campaign at the beginning of the 1950s, to build social housing and rent to buy in our rural villages in England?
Robert Jenrick
Like my right hon. Friend, I want to see more homes of all kinds built in all parts of the country, and I want to deliver as many social and affordable homes as we possibly can. I was delighted that the Chancellor gave us the funding for the £12 billion affordable homes programme, which as I say is the largest for a decade. It has a target to deliver 10% of those homes in rural areas, so it should support his community in Lincolnshire.
To answer the broader question, rural areas need to consider how they can bring forward more land in the plan-making process in their neighbourhood plans for homes of all kinds. The current planning system permits local communities to choose the type of homes that they want, so when they allocate sites, they can say that they should be affordable homes, through which they can support the next generation. I do not think any village in this country should be deemed to be set in aspic. Organic growth has happened throughout the generations and can and should happen in the future.
David Simmonds
My constituents particularly welcome my right hon. Friend’s recent announcements in respect of improving the circumstances of leaseholders and ensuring that overly tall buildings are not permitted to blight local neighbourhoods. When can we expect to see the benefit of those measures being implemented?
Robert Jenrick
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work he has done in this area, along with a number of his colleagues representing London constituencies. I have corresponded with the Mayor of London, directing him that in the forthcoming London plan there now be a tall buildings policy for London, which will ensure that every borough can determine if and where tall buildings should be built. We have no objection to tall buildings. London needs more housing, and that includes good-quality tall buildings, but it is fair for communities to decide where that should be focused. It may be in areas where there are existing clusters of tall buildings, such as Nine Elms or Canary Wharf, or it might be around transport infrastructure in other parts of the city, but we should be able to protect the character and feel of outer London and those parts of the suburbs that my hon. Friend represents, which deserve that added level of protection.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) [V]
Hard-working young people saving up for their own home have been let down by successive Tory Governments, and this Government are missing their own target of increasing to 300,000 the number of homes built per year by the mid-2020s. The stamp duty holiday pushed prices out of reach of first-time buyers, and the first homes scheme built literally no homes. So what does the Secretary of State say to the young people whose dream of home ownership he has so badly let down?
Robert Jenrick
Let us remember that the last Labour Government left house building in this country at its lowest ever level in peacetime—the lowest since the 1920s. The statistics that we published at the end of last year show that this Government are building more homes than any Government has built for almost 40 years, and were it not for covid, we would have built more homes than any Government since that in which Harold Macmillan was Housing Secretary many years ago.
We will keep on building more homes. We will keep on investing in homes through the affordable homes programme and more investment in brownfield land, and we will keep on bringing forward ambitious planning reforms to free up the planning system, to support small builders and entrepreneurs and to create and sustain jobs for the brickies, the plumbers and the self-employed people the length and breadth of the country who need a Conservative Government to be on their side. I would respectfully ask the hon. Lady to back us. She and her colleagues have voted against every single one of those measures since the pandemic. People across this country need those measures to get this country building and support jobs.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
Contributions from housing developers see around £7 billion a year invested back into communities, building more homes and vital infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals, and helping to deliver more than 30,000 affordable homes last year. But, as my hon. Friend has raised with me a number of times, the system is still too long-winded and complex. To fix that, we will introduce a flat rate, non-negotiable single infrastructure levy. As set out in the “Planning for the future” White Paper, that will accelerate house building, aim to raise more revenue than under the current process and deliver at least as many on-site affordable homes. We will publish more details on this soon.
Neil O’Brien [V]
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, as well as raising more for the infrastructure that is needed to support new housing, more of the cost should be borne by developers rather than taxpayers, and that we should give more power, freedom and flexibility to local councils about how they spend those revenues in line with local priorities?
Robert Jenrick
The current system is not successful. It leads to long-winded wrangling. It places the cards in the hands of big developers, rather than local councils, communities and, in particular, small developers, who find it too costly and complex to navigate. The new infrastructure levy will be simpler and more certain and, as my hon. Friend says, it will do two important things. First, it will raise a larger amount of money, capturing more of the uplift in land values, so that more money can be put at the disposal of local communities. Secondly, it will give greater freedom to local councils to decide how they choose to spend that, so that development can benefit communities in flexible ways.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
We regularly engage with the ONS on many issues, including the role of household projections within the local housing need standard method. The hon. Gentleman may also be interested to learn that, alongside the planning reform White Paper, Ministers and officials have hosted and attended a very large number of consultation events. We are always interested in working with stakeholders and experts on proposals, and we welcome the expertise that the ONS brings.
Matt Western
Like communities up and down the country, the people of Warwick and Leamington are extremely concerned about overdevelopment and, in villages such as Bishop’s Tachbrook, urban sprawl. When we look at the numbers from the district plan, we see 932 homes supposed to be built per year and the Government’s figure from their “malgorithm” is 910 homes per year, whereas the ONS estimates 623 properties a year and, likewise, Lichfields 627. There seems to be a huge disparity between the figures from the ONS and Lichfields versus those of the Government. Will the Minister agree to meet me to discuss and explain the reasons for that because, on the face of it, the figures do not stack up?
Christopher Pincher
I am always happy, of course, to meet the hon. Gentleman, although he may be misinformed in so far as I think the local housing need for his own constituency and local authority is 627 a year, not the 910 that was projected in the Lichfields projections in the middle of last year. However, I am always very happy to meet him, and I am sure at that time he will be very keen also to put on record his great pleasure in receiving £10 million in future high streets funding for Leamington, because his Boxing day tweet, in which he seemed to rubbish this spending, did smack a little of “Bah, humbug!” It seems that Ebenezer Scrooge does not live simply in the mind of Charles Dickens; he is alive and well, and living somewhere in Warwick.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
While we look to the future with optimism as our vaccine programme continues to make progress, we know that covid-19 has meant an unprecedented challenge for towns and high streets. That is why, last month, I announced a new urban centre recovery taskforce, bringing together local leaders and industry experts to help our cities and towns to adapt and take advantage of the new opportunities that may follow. This builds on our wider planning reforms, giving shop owners the flexibility to change the use of their property and to rebuild vacant properties as homes. All this comes on top of our £3.6 billion towns fund, the £4 billion levelling up fund and the new brownfield funding, all of which will ensure that towns have the investment they need to prosper.
Jack Brereton
I welcome the recently announced levelling up and brownfield funds. As we did not benefit in Stoke-on-Trent previously from similar funds, will my right hon. Friend do everything possible to ensure that we do not miss out this time on much-needed funding for towns such as Longton and Fenton in my constituency and for our entire city?
Robert Jenrick
We will be publishing very soon the prospectus on the levelling-up fund, and that will give an opportunity for all parts of the country to benefit from this additional funding, including the community that my hon. Friend represents in Stoke-on-Trent. We also, as a result of his assiduous lobbying, have brought forward further funding for the remediation of brownfield land. Stoke-on-Trent has an excellent track record of developing new homes, but it does face significant challenges with the cost of remediation and the viability of those homes, so I hope Stoke-on-Trent will benefit from that funding as well.
Rob Butler [V]
Tremendous strides have been made in Aylesbury over the past year with the council and the town centre management team working incredibly hard, despite coronavirus, to make the town a place in which people want to live, work, shop, visit and invest. Proposals for the regeneration of the Market Square and Kingsbury Square will give a much-needed boost to the street scene, so could my right hon. Friend outline how the Government will assist ambitious local authorities such as Buckinghamshire Council to make plans for regeneration in Aylesbury a reality?
Robert Jenrick
I am very pleased to hear that Aylesbury has made such progress with its regeneration plans, which will complement Buckinghamshire’s ambitious garden town project—to which we have already allocated over £172 million—to unlock 10,000 homes. My hon. Friend is right to say that this year a priority postcode for every single council in the country, including his own, must be how they can help their town centre to thrive, not just today but well into the future. That will include ambitious plans to turn underutilised retail into work spaces and homes, and trying to attract private sector investment by making full use of the planning reforms that we have brought forward, with a more flexible, more certain and more responsive system to make regeneration a reality.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con) [V]
I am delighted that high streets across the north-west will benefit from the future high street fund, including Kirkham in my constituency. However, seaside resorts such as St Anne’s that are already in need of regeneration have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic, so what plans does the Department have to support the regeneration of this Lancashire coastal gem?
Robert Jenrick
I was very pleased to announce last month that Kirkham will benefit from our future high streets fund, receiving over £6 million, which will go a long way to support its ambitious plans. Not only that, but my hon. Friend’s constituents will no doubt benefit, in part at least, from the £39.5 million that we have awarded to nearby Blackpool, which will help to revitalise the town and fund several projects, including modernising the illuminations, so that they can be brighter than ever later this year. He is right that as a seaside town St Anne’s faces some very significant challenges, which he and I have spoken about in the past. We have provided over £230 million of support to other coastal towns in England through the coastal communities fund, and coastal communities will be very much in our thoughts in the £4 billion levelling-up fund and also as part of the UK shared prosperity fund, both of which we will be publishing prospectuses for very soon.
Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
Over Christmas the Government announced the 72 recipients of our £830 million future high streets fund competition, enabling the delivery by councils of ambitious plans for regeneration. Councils are once again critical to the covid-19 pandemic, and our focus in the coming weeks will be on ensuring that they play a full and supportive role in the vaccination programme, especially ensuring that the hardest to reach in each of their communities are protected and vaccinated.
The work that communities have done in protecting some of the most vulnerable in society—rough sleepers—has truly been first-class. Last week, I announced the next phase of our strategy, which has been widely praised as one of the most successful of its kind in the world, and which has already committed over £700 million in the past year to supporting rough sleepers and the homeless.
The Prime Minister and I have been clear that central to this Government’s mission is the Conservative party’s promise of home ownership, helping more people to achieve the dream of owning their own home. Our landmark leasehold reforms are the next step in that great tradition. We are putting an end to practices that for far too long have soured the dream of home ownership for millions, and preparing the way for a better system altogether with the active promotion of commonhold.
Dame Cheryl Gillan [V]
Notwithstanding what the Secretary of State has just said about our councils being at the frontline of this pandemic, in addition to general grants Bucks council has received £200 million across 25 specific grants as at the end of the last year, but they are subject, I am afraid, to myriad conditions. For example, it has been told that the contain outbreak management fund cannot be used to support local businesses. Surely the Secretary of State can see that it would be better to give our councils the freedom and flexibility to deploy those grants in a way that best meets the needs of their communities, as, after all, they are really facing the danger we all fear?
Robert Jenrick
My right hon. Friend raises an important point. Local councils have done a fantastic job, but they have limited capacity and in many cases they are close to the limit of that capacity. We are very aware of that. I am urging my colleagues in Cabinet and across Government to prioritise carefully their asks of local government, to ensure that the schemes they bring forward are as simple as possible to reduce the burden on local councils. My long-standing view is that we should be providing funding in almost every case to local councils on an un-ring-fenced basis. That is certainly the way we have proceeded in general throughout the pandemic. We have provided £54 million of un-ring-fenced funding to her local council on top of, as she said, a whole range of schemes to support local businesses and the care sector.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has taken the extraordinary decision not to challenge the opening of a new deep coal mine in Cumbria. In the year the UK is hosting COP26, we need to show an example to the rest of the world. The application is of national, even global, importance and demands his intervention. Will he now commit to block this disastrous application? If he will not, will he tell the House how he expects anyone to take the Government seriously ever again on tackling climate change?
Robert Jenrick
I cannot comment on an individual application, other than to say that a decision not to call in an application is not a decision on the merits of a particular case. It is a decision on whether it meets the bar to bring in a case and have it heard on a national scale, or whether, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, it is better left to local democratically elected councillors, in this case in Cumbria. It is those councillors who will now make the decision. The national planning policy framework presents a balanced judgment that they will have to make, balancing our national presumption against new coal with any particular benefits that a project might bring to that community in terms of jobs, skills and economic benefit. That is a decision that in this case will be made by the democratically elected members on Cumbria County Council.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
In November, the Secretary of State promised me that more details about the replacement of EU structural funds would be revealed in the spending review. They weren’t. The Scottish Government and councils have been left in the dark about the future of the UK shared prosperity fund. Why did the Secretary of State break his promise in November, and where is the so-called respect agenda for devolved nations?
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Gentleman is mistaken. We said at the spending review that we are bringing forward not just the UK shared prosperity fund but £220 million of additional funding on top of that to support local communities in all parts of the country, including Scotland. We will shortly be publishing the prospectus. I hope he will now take this occasion to welcome the fact that not only will Scottish residents and businesses receive as much funding as they would have received had we stayed in the European Union, but £220 million more than that. We are more than meeting our commitment to his electors in Scotland.
David Linden
I am glad the Secretary of State has touched on that, because Scotland’s share of the measly £220 million of transition funding to replace structural funds will be £18 million. If Scotland was an independent member of the European Union, it could expect to receive over £121 million at the very least. How can he claim that the shared prosperity fund is replacing lost EU funds when Scotland is receiving less than a sixth of what it would if it had stayed in the European Union?
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Gentleman needs to do his sums again, if he is fully abreast of what is happening. The EU structural funds will continue for the coming year at the level they would have been at had we remained a member. The Chancellor has chosen, in addition to that funding, to add £220 million more. The hon. Gentleman does not know the proportion of that going to Scotland, because we will publish that in the prospectus. The figure he quotes is the one set by the European Union, so his objection is to the way in which the European Union chooses to divide up its structural funds to support local communities, not to the way that this Government can. Fortunately, as a result of leaving the European Union we can make our own decisions in the weeks and months ahead.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con) [V]
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend has already secured, as he says, the town deal for Ashfield, and the good news over the Christmas period is that it will also benefit from the high streets fund. We have been supporting Eastwood under this Government. The redevelopment of Mushroom Farm has received £160,000 for new commercial space for small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs in his constituency, but I would be very happy to meet him and see what more we might be able to do, so that all the investment that we have brought to Ashfield is also spread to Eastwood.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP) [V]
Robert Jenrick
We have been very clear that the further work that we are doing now, building on the hugely successful Everyone In scheme, will be available to all individuals. Councils need to apply the law and that means making an individual assessment, but the unique circumstances of winter and the pandemic will mean that councils will use that to support more people off the streets and, importantly, to view this as a moment not just to support them now, but to get them GP-registered so that, in due course, they can be vaccinated, so we lead the world in supporting this vulnerable group and ensuring that they are fully vaccinated.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con) [V]
Robert Jenrick
I do remember that visit to Dinnington when my hon. Friend was a candidate, and I was delighted that he was later elected. He has assiduously made the point that we need to think about smaller towns and larger villages in the preparation of our plans, whether that is the levelling-up fund or the UK shared prosperity fund. I appreciate that in places such as south Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, there are small communities, perhaps ex-steel and ex-coalfield communities, where the need is great and where we need to ensure that investment arrives. That will very much be in our minds as we prepare the prospectus for the levelling-up fund.
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
I am obliged to the hon. Lady for her question. I know that she campaigns hard for her constituents on this issue. On 21 January—in a little under two weeks’ time—we will be able to release the latest figures on the remediation of aluminium composite material cladding. We believe that, by that time, we should show that around 95% of the buildings identified at the start of last year—having such safety defects—will have had their work either completed or it will be under way. We are absolutely committed to resolving this issue for leaseholders. That is why we are accelerating the work to find a package that will ensure that they are not left disadvantaged.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend is one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful Members of the House on this subject, which he and I have discussed many times. Fewer than one in five children from a Gypsy, Roma or Traveller background meets the expected standard for English and maths at GCSE. I am firmly committed to delivering a cross-Government strategy to improve life chances in Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and, as my hon. Friend says, to encourage greater integration, particularly in education. In the depths of the pandemic, my Department has invested £400,000 in education and training programmes for GRT children, so that they can receive extra tuition and catch up on lost learning.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab) [V]
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Lady misrepresents even what the Public Accounts Committee had to say about the towns fund; I urge her to re-read what it said and not to be so liberal with her language. I can assure her that the high streets fund used a 100% competitive process, and Ministers had no say in choosing the places selected.
If fault lies anywhere, I am afraid it lies with the hon. Lady’s local council, because despite our giving it hundreds of thousands of pounds to produce plans, and despite the no doubt great need in the community, it failed to put forward proposals that met the Treasury’s basic benefit-cost ratio value-for-money standard. That is a great pity. The people of her local community have missed out, but if the blame lies anywhere, it lies with her local council.
Mr Speaker
In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I am suspending the House for three minutes.
Speaker’s Statement
Mr Speaker
Before I call the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I have a short statement to make about the events at the Capitol in Washington DC last Wednesday and Thursday. Like many hon. Members, I was shocked and dismayed by the events that took place. I wrote a personal letter to Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, to offer my solidarity—not least at the trashing and occupation of her office. Since I wrote the letter, we have learned of the very sad death of Officer Brian D. Sicknick. Elected representatives in the House and the Senate, and the staff who support them, showed great courage in ensuring that the democratic process was delayed but not stalled. I am sure I speak for all hon. Members in passing on our best wishes to them all and our condolences to the family and colleagues of Officer Sicknick.
Before I bring in the Chancellor, I just mention that Chorley had a great win, by the way.
Economic Update
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)
Before I begin, I am sure the whole House will join me in sending our very best wishes to my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). I have been fortunate in having worked closely with him, and he is one of the nicest and most decent people in politics —a fantastic Minister and a tireless advocate for his constituents. We all look forward to his speedy recovery and to seeing him back in this place as soon as possible.
Last week, the Prime Minister set out the actions that we must take to control the spread of coronavirus. With your permission, Mr Speaker, today I will update the House on the economic situation we currently face, the action we are taking to support the British people and businesses through the crisis, and the factors influencing our outlook.
As the House knows well, coronavirus has already caused significant harm to our economy. The scale of the impact bears repeating. GDP fell by 18.8% in the second quarter of 2020. While the economy grew as the country opened up over the summer, it remained 6.7% smaller than it was before the crisis. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s November forecast showed GDP falling again in the final quarter of last year and it forecast the largest fall in annual output for over 300 years. Even with the significant economic support we have provided, more than 800,000 people have lost their jobs since February. While the new national restrictions are necessary to control the spread of the virus, they will have a further significant economic impact. We should expect the economy to get worse before it gets better.
In response, the Government have put in place a comprehensive economic plan. We have provided a fiscal stimulus of over £280 billion to fund our plan for jobs, to support public services like the NHS, and to provide financial support for millions of people and businesses. Some 1.2 million employers have furloughed almost 10 million employees. Almost 3 million people have benefited from our self-employment grants, taking the total support for the self-employed to nearly £20 billion. Over 1.4 million small and medium-sized companies have received Government-backed loans worth over £68 billion. Tens of billions of pounds of tax cuts, tax deferrals and cash grants have been delivered to businesses, and the United Kingdom Government have guaranteed at least £16.8 billion of additional funding for the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In response to the new national lockdown, we are extending and increasing our financial support. We are providing a bridge for people and businesses until the economy reopens, to give them the chance to rebuild productive capacity. To do that, we have extended the furlough scheme to April, we are supporting self-employed people with a fourth income grant, and we have announced, alongside the introduction of new restrictions, an extra £4.6 billion to protect UK jobs and businesses. All business premises in England that are legally required to close, including in retail, hospitality and leisure, can now claim one-off grants of up to £9,000 for each of their business premises, benefiting more than 600,000 businesses and coming on top of the existing grants worth up to £3,000 paid each month. We have also made discretionary funds of £500 million available for local authorities in England to support local businesses in those areas, on top of the £1.1 billion of discretionary funds that we have already provided to local councils.
Sadly, we have not been and will not be able to save every job and every business, but I am confident that our economic plan is supporting the finances of millions of people and businesses. Across almost all areas of economic policy, we are providing comparable or greater support than all our international peers. As the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund have all recognised, our economic response is making a difference by saving jobs, keeping businesses afloat and supporting people’s incomes.
Looking forward, there are signs of hope. First, with the vaccine, we can start to see a path out of coronavirus. Vaccine roll-out is our most important economic lever and we have made available over £6 billion. We have now administered over 2.4 million vaccine doses across the United Kingdom, and by 15 February we aim to have offered a first vaccine dose to everyone in the top four priority groups identified by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
Also, the data shows that there are potential sources of underlying resilience in our economy. In aggregate, we have seen the household savings ratio reach record levels and, taken as a whole, corporate sector cash buffers have improved. And of course, we have now agreed a new trading partnership with the European Union. We have removed that uncertainty from businesses and can now start to do things differently and better—not least in financial services, where in November I outlined for the House our plan to reinforce the UK’s position as a globally pre-eminent financial centre.
While the vaccine provides hope, the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. Many people are losing their jobs, businesses are struggling, and our public finances have been badly damaged and will need repair. The road ahead will be tough. Now it is time for responsible management of our economy, taking the difficult but right long-term decisions for our country, but I am confident that, with this comprehensive support that the Government are providing and, above all, the determination, enterprise and resilience of the British people, we will get through this. I commend this statement to the House.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
I start by joining the Chancellor in sending my very best wishes to the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). I know I speak for everyone on the Opposition side of the House in wishing him a speedy recovery.
Six weeks have passed since the Chancellor last addressed this House. In that time, the Prime Minister scrapped his proposed relaxation of public health rules, introduced a new tier 4 level of restrictions for London and large parts of the south-east, and then superseded all of that with the imposition of a third national lockdown. After the Prime Minister’s most recent announcement, Parliament was, of course, recalled, and Members were given the opportunity to ask questions of the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary and the Education Secretary—but the Chancellor was nowhere to be seen. His sole contribution to a set of announcements that had profound implications for our economy was a 90-second video on Twitter, which begged as many questions as it answered.
There was no indication of how long the new grants are expected to cover and no clarity on how the discretionary funding for local councils has been calculated, nor of how it will be allocated. Funds being provided to the devolved nations were badged as new money, before the Treasury hastily amended its website to reflect that that money had already been committed to in December. We heard nothing about what would happen to those people who had started a new job since the beginning of November and are now ineligible for furlough. We heard nothing about what level the fourth grant for self-employed people would be set at, nor when that grant would be made available. We heard nothing for those people who have been excluded from Government schemes right from the very start, and we heard nothing about what the Chancellor would do to fix the broken system of support for self-isolation.
I was relieved to hear this morning that the Chancellor had undertaken to address the House today, but I deeply regret that, having last year blocked measures that would have helped to protect the NHS and secure our economy, today he appears to be out of ideas, urging us to look towards the sunny uplands but providing nothing new. The purpose of an update is to provide us with new information, not to repeat what we already know.
In addition, the Chancellor just now gave a highly partial picture of the state of our economy, talking of a rise in savings but not mentioning that over 5 million people are estimated to have taken on over £10 billion in debt just to get through the last year. He talked of corporate cash buffers, but did not mention that City experts have predicted that there will be over £100 billion in unsustainable corporate debt by the end of March.
The Chancellor needs to acknowledge the reality of the crisis we face—a crisis made worse by his Government’s irresponsibility, with our economy having suffered the worst recession of any major economy. He needs to act accordingly. I therefore ask him to respond to the questions that businesses and workers desperately need answered. Will he update the furlough scheme to reflect the dates of the current lockdown? When will he set out the new incentive scheme he promised to provide for businesses that will now not receive the job retention bonus? When will he provide details on the next self-employment income support scheme? What does he say to people who have been excluded from Government support schemes from the very beginning and who still are not helped by today’s announcement? How long will businesses have to make the new one-off grants last for? When will councils find out how the new discretionary funding will be allocated and on what basis it has been calculated?
Does the Chancellor believe that those who are classified as clinically extremely vulnerable should be automatically eligible for furlough if they cannot work from home? When will he fix support for those self-isolating, when the evidence for change is overwhelming? When will his much vaunted Project Birch actually start to deliver for struggling manufacturers? Will we have to wait until the Budget for recognition of all these problems and solutions to them, as was suggested by his social media account?
We had all hoped for a more optimistic start to 2021 than a new national lockdown and yet more uncertainty about the future, but the people of Britain understand that they have to make sacrifices. They are doing their bit for the national effort while the vaccine is rolled out. They are fulfilling their side of the bargain. The Chancellor must fulfil his.
Rishi Sunak
I thank the hon. Member for her response, and in particular for her comments about my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), which I appreciate.
I think that it is right, where possible in this House, that we acknowledge those areas—many areas, in fact—where there is agreement on both sides of the House: for example, on wage support, on business support, on loan guarantees, on funding for critical public services, on tax deferrals and tax cuts, on support for renters and homeowners, on support for job creation, retraining and skills, on support for children learning at home, on support for the self-employed, on support for the NHS, on support for the vaccination roll-out, and on testing. I could go on. The truth is that, politics aside, there is in fact significant unity of purpose in this place: to protect the most vulnerable; to vaccinate our people as quickly as possible; to reopen our country; and, finally, to rebuild and begin the process of recovery. Given this agreement, while it is right to acknowledge the difference in degrees and emphasis that the hon. Member poses, it is clear that on the fundamentals there is, in fact, little disagreement.
Let me turn to the shadow Chancellor’s specific areas of concern. With regard to the formula for the local authority grants, I can tell her—as was, I think, published—that the formula for the additional half a billion pounds will be the same as that for the £1.1 billion that was issued shortly before the end of last year. With regard to the furlough dates, she will be pleased to know that the change in date from the original spring date through to the new date at the end of October, before the announcement of the new scheme and the extension, will bring an additional 3 million people into coverage for the furlough scheme. I am sure that she will join me in welcoming that the scheme has protected more than 9 million jobs over the past several months. It is, of course, already possible for people to be furloughed if they are clinically extremely vulnerable or have childcare difficulties, but those decisions are, of course, to be made by individual employers and their employees. It would not be right for the Government to put a blanket mandate in place. The hon. Member is right that the Budget is the appropriate place to consider her various other questions, given the scale of the response and the fact that all our major avenues of support have been extended through to the spring.
The hon. Member made a comment about this country having experienced the worst recession out of anyone. It is important in this place that people have the right facts, particularly when those facts impact people’s confidence and understanding of what is happening. I must gently point out some facts, which I am sure the hon. Member knows, because she will have studied this carefully. She will know that, when making international comparisons between the performance of our economy and others, it is important that we are careful because everybody calculates things in very different ways. Indeed, as the Office for Budget Responsibility mentioned in its latest report—which I am sure she will be able to read—and as the Office for National Statistics has highlighted, in this country we calculate public sector output very differently from almost any other country. It is very clear that the way in which we calculate that output flatters other countries and disadvantages us when it comes to making such comparisons. As those independent forecasters have pointed out, when corrected for that difference, we find that our economic performance is actually very much in line with comparable countries. It is not the worst, and I do not think that it is good for confidence or for people’s understanding of the situation for that to be propagated.
Throughout this crisis the Government have always been pragmatic. When changes must be made, we have made them, and when help has been justified, we have always provided it. We are now so close to the end of this difficult period for so many people that I would ask the hon. Member at this time to recognise that the national interest is best served by our co-operation, not partisanship. The vaccine roll-out is the most important priority of this Government and provides us with the path to getting out of this situation, protecting people’s health and releasing the restrictions that are hampering our economic recovery. That should be our focus—I know she will agree with me on that—and it is in that spirit, in the best traditions of this House, that I hope we will be able to see out this crisis in the coming months.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con) [V]
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. I welcome the continuation of the vital measures to support British business through this further period, while keeping an eye on the hospitality sector and small businesses, which continue to have a very hard time and may need extra help.
May I invite my right hon. Friend to recall how we had to put VAT on to energy-saving products before we left the European Union, because of European Union rules? Having struck VAT off sanitary products, can we look at other opportunities to use our freedoms now that we have left the EU to strike VAT off energy-saving products such as solar panels and home insulation, in order to promote the greener recovery that we want to see emerging from this crisis?
Rishi Sunak
I thank my hon. Friend for his advice and for the helpful information about the hospitality industry that he provided me with over the winter period. It has been helpful in formulating our response and I thank him for it. I also appreciate his thoughts on future tax policy, which he will know remains for the Budget. He is right to emphasise the importance of our green recovery, which was why I was pleased to make sure that we can fully fund, with £12 billion, the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan for a green recovery, of which ensuring that we upgrade the efficiency of our buildings with regard to heat and energy is a key part, with more than £1 billion put aside for that. I will bear my hon. Friend’s further thoughts in mind.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP) [V]
I thank the Chancellor for finally gracing us with his presence and for not redacting his statement for once—I suspect that was because there is so little in it that is actually new. What is also missing is the additional £375 million that he promised to Scotland on 6 January. It was lauded by the Tories in Scotland, before the Treasury back-tracked, edited the press release and decided that Scotland’s businesses were not entitled to the £9,000 that English businesses will receive. Why?
Businesses are still struggling with debt and loss of income, so will the Chancellor extend the English business-rate holiday to allow Scotland to do the same? Will he continue the reduction in VAT to assist those in the struggling hospitality sector?
The Chancellor acknowledges the 800,000 jobs lost, but not his role in their loss and the uncertainty that his stop-start furlough has caused. Will he commit to extend the furlough and the self-employment support scheme for as long as necessary, with no more arbitrary stop-start?
Still, the gaps remain—for freelancers, directors of limited companies, those refused furlough and pregnant women who have lost out, as well as those on annual pay-as-you-earn and the newly self-employed. Will those who are now submitting tax returns be included in the self-employment support scheme from 31 January? Hundreds of thousands of people are counting on being able to do that.
Will the Chancellor extend the £20 increase to universal credit, and will he finally expand it to include those on legacy benefits who have seen no increase over these past months? Will he increase the pitiful level of statutory sick pay?
I have said for months now that we will not be out of this crisis quickly, and I am sad to have been proven right. On top of this crisis, Brexit is causing chaos for Scottish exporters trying to get their goods across the border. It is no wonder that Scotland is looking on at this shambolic Westminster Government and deciding in poll after poll that independence offers a brighter prospect for our future than more of the same old Tory austerity.
Rishi Sunak
I am happy to address directly the point about funding for Scotland and perhaps clear it up. In recognition of the very difficult circumstances that the devolved Administrations were grappling with—as we all are during this crisis—the UK Government made an unprecedented decision to provide an up-front funding guarantee to provide certainty and clarity for the Scottish Government so that they could make plans in advance of individual announcements being made and the appropriate Barnett sums being made available at that time. That was something that the Scottish Government had asked for, and it was welcomed. It is now clear that the hon. Lady seems to think that that is not a good thing. The point of doing that is to provide up-front certainty, but it is still also right to keep a tally of the various announcements, as they are made, about the additional sums that they trigger for Barnett, which will net against that guarantee, and then over time the guarantee will be adjusted. If I am hearing from the hon. Lady that she would prefer not to have up-front funding guarantees and would prefer the system of knowing Barnett consequentials only on an announcement- by-announcement basis, she should please write to me and let me know. But in aggregate this year £8.6 billion in up-front funding guarantees has been made available for the Scottish Government; the most recent announcement did trigger Barnett consequentials, which will net off against that guarantee. Over time, as we have done, that guarantee will be increased over the year as new announcements are made. I am not sure I could tell from the hon. Lady’s response whether businesses in Scotland have been offered an additional grant of up to £9,000 to help them get through the next few months. Perhaps she can clear that up for Scottish businesses, because that is what the UK Government are providing for businesses here in England. That money has been made available to the Scottish Government through the guarantee, and, of course, we look forward to seeing how they use it.
It is also important that this is not just about Barnett consequentials; we have always adopted a UK-wide approach to our support. Whether we are talking about the furlough scheme, all the things we have done on VAT, supporting people into employment or indeed our loans, many businesses and people in Scotland have been supported, because this is one United Kingdom Government and we will make sure that we provide support for our citizens in every single part of it.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
The hospitality sector in Ipswich certainly welcomes the grant support the Chancellor announced last week—that is very welcome—but about a month ago I held a virtual roundtable event for the sector in Ipswich and it was probably one of the most sobering virtual meetings I have taken part in since this pandemic started. It was very sad to hear about the extreme anxiety those in the sector have; they have poured their whole lives into the businesses where they are working and there is still concern even now. So will my right hon. Friend confirm that he will be reflecting on what further support might be provided ahead of the Budget? I am talking specifically about a potential extension of the business rates holiday throughout 2021 and also the support on VAT, because there is light at the end of the tunnel but when we go into that much better place I want to make sure that The Brickmakers Arms, The Kingfisher, the Belstead Arms, Pauls Social Club and the California Social Club, which I am now a member and stakeholder of—I own part of it now that I have become a member—are there with us.
Mr Speaker
Order. It has to be a shorter question. We have put you on early to make sure you can get things mentioned, but you cannot make a speech in a question. I think we more or less have the drift of it.
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for his local hospitality industry, and I very much hope I have a chance to visit the California Social Club in Ipswich at some point in the future. I will bear in mind his suggestions for how we can look at providing further support. This is a vital industry for our local communities and nationally it employs more than 2 million people, and he rightly says that they have borne the brunt of these restrictions and deserve our support as we emerge on the other side.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [V]
First, may I associate myself and my Liberal Democrat colleagues with the remarks made about the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), whom I have come to respect greatly during my time here? I wish him the speediest of recoveries.
What we have from the Chancellor today is just another series of patches, whereas we need a long-term strategy. We still have nothing for the many millions who have been excluded from all financial packages, and our independent retailers need support against the online behemoths. Today, we learned that already a quarter of a million businesses are facing collapse. So when will he tell us what his long-term strategy for recovery is? Will he extend the furlough through the summer? Can he tell businesses what help there will be for them now that they face an enormous burden of debt?
Rishi Sunak
All our economic support now extends all the way through the spring. We will of course have a Budget on 3 March, where we will provide an update on the next stage of our economic response to coronavirus and the economic outlook for the rest of the country as well. On the specific question regarding support for businesses as against those online, the hon. Lady will be aware that this year we implemented the digital services tax for the first time, which collects a levy on online marketplaces. That will collect significant revenue this year. It is a right step and we are working with other countries to put in place a multilateral solution, which is the best long-term way to solve the problem she highlighted.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I thank the Chancellor for his latest announcement on grants, which has been warmly welcomed by the hospitality sector. Can he confirm that the up to £9,000 he has made available is in addition to the up to £3,000 a month that has been made available to businesses that have had to close? He will be aware that businesses in the hospitality sector will continue to face real challenges in the coming months in order to play a part in our recovery. Will he reflect carefully on what further support we might be able to make available to this vital sector in the Budget?
Rishi Sunak
I can confirm that the £9,000 is in addition to the monthly grants of up to £3,000, which means that over the next three months, businesses could receive up to £18,000 of total cash support. I will bear in mind other avenues for future support. As we come out of this, it will be important that the hospitality industry is given every possible chance to succeed and flourish.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP) [V]
The Chancellor has said that we are now seeing signs of hope, especially because a deal has been struck with the European Union. It does not look like that in Northern Ireland, where supermarket shelves are empty and thousands of people are being sent letters from suppliers in England saying that neither they personally nor their businesses will any longer be supplied with goods. The steel industry today has received a letter from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs saying that engineering firms will have a 25% tariff imposed on steel that they bring here, and companies that sell goods to GB have been told that they will not get a refund on the taxes they have to pay, even though their goods are not going into the EU. All this has been brought about as a result of either a lack of knowledge by officials in HMRC or a reneging on the promises the Government made that there would be unfettered trade and access for UK firms selling in Northern Ireland and vice versa. What is the Chancellor doing about the impact that his Department is having on businesses in Northern Ireland?
Rishi Sunak
I am sorry to hear about some of the examples that the right hon. Gentleman raised. I know that goods in aggregate continue to move smoothly between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and I am not aware of any significant queuing. Individual issues are being addressed by UK authorities. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is talking with colleagues across the House to make sure that we are kept abreast of any particular issues, so that we can look to resolve them as we can.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]
The Chancellor will know that I have worked hard and lobbied for financial support for Harlow’s small businesses, and I really welcome the financial package for our town, worth well over £160 million so far. However, I have been contacted by many businesses in my constituency that have yet to receive much of the grant funding they have been allocated, such as Carol Bush, the wonderful landlord of the Golden Swift pub, because Harlow Council is yet to distribute it. What steps can he take to ensure that councils across the country distribute these grants from the Government immediately, as they should have already done, to help our hard-pressed businesses?
Rishi Sunak
My right hon. Friend is right that this cash should get to businesses as quickly as possible. I can confirm that the guidance will be published this week, and cash from central Government should be with local authorities by the end of this week, at which point it will be up to them to distribute it as quickly as possible. I know that they have been focused on this in the past several months, so hopefully this process can be as quick as we all need it to be.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab) [V]
Infection rates in Sefton have more than doubled in the last week, and hospital admissions are up by 50%. Those people who have been excluded from financial support so far want to reduce infection levels and hospital admissions by staying at home, protecting the NHS and saving lives—they want to play their part too, but they need the Chancellor’s help to do so. What is his objection to using the £2 billion that the large retailers have returned in unused business rate relief to enable the many freelancers, self-employed people, people who run small firms and people who changed jobs at the wrong time to play their part in the national interest while we wait for the vaccine to be rolled out?
Rishi Sunak
I think that the Opposition had called for that money—the £2 billion—to be used to support small businesses, particularly retail and hospitality businesses, which we have now supported to the tune of £4.5 billion; I know it would be nice to spend the same money twice. With regard to those who need supporting for self-isolation purposes, we have made available £500, on a means-tested basis, to those who need that help, and that money is being worked through with local councils and the Department of Health.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
Given the state of public finances, and as we look to the post-covid recovery, will my right hon. Friend resist any calls, in his forthcoming Budget, for increases in public expenditure? This needs to be a private-sector-driven recovery, most importantly by small businesses who will provide the employment and prosperity that we will need going forward if we are to fund our public services in future.
Rishi Sunak
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right and has spoken passionately about this throughout his entire career. I firmly agree with him: this must be a private-sector-led recovery. Government cannot and should not do everything. We can support free enterprise by investing in skills, innovation and infrastructure, but ultimately it will be those small and medium-sized businesses that create the jobs that we desperately want to see.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab) [V]
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), I am very disappointed that the Chancellor has not given support for the many self-employed people who are not getting help, but my question is on another issue. The Chancellor appears to have little appreciation of how low-paid people manage to survive from week to week. Given the huge coverage today pleading with people to stay at home and follow the rules, I would have expected him to have announced better support for those who need to isolate. The fact remains that some people who should be isolating will go into work because they are struggling to put food on the table or pay their heating bills, and cannot afford to lose any income. I ask the Chancellor again: will he go away and look at what extra support can be given to ensure that people who are isolating do not lose any income and that gives them the incentive to stay at home?
Rishi Sunak
We have in fact put in place payments to financially support those who need help when they are asked to stay at home, and they are available up to £500. As we have now reduced over time the period of self-isolation, the real value of those payments has actually increased, in some cases by 20%, 30% or 40%, depending on when people were contacted. More generally, throughout this crisis the Government have always made sure that we look after the most vulnerable. That is clear in the measures that we have taken and clear in the data that was published over the summer showing that those on the lowest incomes have had their situation protected the most by this compassionate Conservative Government.
Sir Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)
In normal times, a successful British aviation sector supports 1 million jobs in this country. Will the Chancellor look urgently at what can be done best to ensure a rapid recovery for the sector heading into the summer? In particular, as he prepares his Budget, will he look at whether it makes sense for us to have one of the highest levels of air passenger duty anywhere in the world?
Rishi Sunak
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He is right to passionately champion both our aviation and aerospace sectors, which are critical to our economy. I am grateful for the help that he gave in helping to design a test-to-release policy for quarantining arrivals, but also in campaigning for business rates relief for airports—up to £8 million per airport, which is benefiting dozens of our regional airports up and down the country. I will bear in mind his suggested measures for forthcoming Budgets, but, like him, I want to see our industry return to its strength.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP) [V]
Just for the record, the Chancellor said that he was unsure of what the Scottish Government were going to do with regard to the business top-up grants. It has just been announced that larger hospitality businesses will receive up to £25,000 in Scotland. Due to his intransigence, it looks like the 3 million excluded will be going a full calendar year without support. That is absolutely shameful. The fact that the £20 per week uplift to universal credit does not apply to legacy benefits is equally shameful. Can the Chancellor tell my constituents about to lose that £20, when Minister after Minister admits that they could not survive on universal credit rates, why and how he expects so many of our constituents to do just that?
Rishi Sunak
The Scottish Government obviously have control over their tax-raising powers and indeed have the ability to top up and design benefits, so if that is something that they are keen to do, they have the ability to raise the tax to fund a permanent uplift in the welfare system. I am sure that that is an opportunity that the Scottish Government can take up if they want to and see fit to do so.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con) [V]
As well as the 18,000 people in my constituency who benefited from the furlough, businesses here have benefited from more than £50 million-worth of loans. As we move into the recovery, we need to make sure that they are creating jobs and are not held back by excessive debt repayments. What will the Chancellor do through pay as you grow or other schemes to make sure that they can get on with the business of creating wealth and creating new jobs?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of cash flow, and he is right to highlight pay as you grow, which means that the 1.3 million businesses that have benefited from bounce back loans will have the opportunity significantly to reduce and extend their repayments for those loans. By extending the repayment term to 10 years from five, we have cut the average monthly payment by almost half from just over £500 to just over £300. Businesses also have the option to move to interest only, which further reduces the payment to around £60 or £70 on a typical loan. That extra cushion will ensure that businesses can save their cash for driving their businesses forward as they reopen after these restrictions.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance) [V]
I acknowledge the scale of the financial support that has been provided by the Chancellor, but almost a year on there is a stubborn refusal to address the needs of those who are excluded often by what are seen as very arbitrary rules. Will the Chancellor confirm that the Treasury has indeed received a number of constructive proposals on how existing schemes can be modified without the risk of fraud? Will he commit to giving those proposals a fair consideration and, where appropriate, to making back payments?
Rishi Sunak
I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has met various groups and has received various proposals, and of course we will give those proposals fair and due consideration.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con) [V]
Stroud and the south-west is packed with creative people and industries that need innovative support right now. Specifically, many UK film and TV productions have struggled to get insurance for costs related to covid-19. Can my right hon. Friend outline for the House what the Government are doing to support this £4 billion UK industry?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the importance of the creative industries to the UK economy and, indeed, to our social or cultural capital. That is why the Government have created a £500 million film insurance scheme, to which she rightly alluded. More than 100 different film productions have taken advantage of the scheme so far and it is currently safeguarding over 14,000 jobs. It is that kind of thinking that we hope can help drive our recovery and support the industry that she rightly champions.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
In line with advice from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives, the TUC and Maternity Action, will the Chancellor of the Exchequer today commit to amending the furlough scheme to cover the cost of maternity suspensions on full pay for women who are 28 weeks or more pregnant or otherwise medically advised to shield?
Rishi Sunak
There are specific provisions in place in guidance for employers for calculating pay with respect to periods of maternity. Hopefully, those are clear, but I am very happy to look into the hon. Lady’s specific point.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con) [V]
My right hon. Friend is aware how good Bridgwater and Taunton College is and how many apprentices it is training for Hinkley Point and many other organisations. One of the unforeseen consequences of the pandemic is that £8 million of the college’s funding goes into training those people but, unfortunately, a lot of employers are not taking on apprentices, or are making them redundant, so those young people are not getting the chance to finish their training in the skills they need to get jobs. Can we urgently examine ways to ensure that they and the colleges are empowered to train those young people and get them into the workplace as soon as possible?
Rishi Sunak
I am fairly certain we have already put in place a new matching services for apprentices who, sadly, are unable to complete their apprenticeship with their current employer, but I am happy to get the details and write to my hon. Friend about that. More broadly, like him, I support passionately further apprenticeships, which is why we have given companies a £2,000 bonus to take on a new apprentice and provided additional funding to both businesses and colleges to pay for the associated training.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab) [V]
Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker, and well done Chorley FC!
If the only economic message is quibbling about how statistics have been used, there is no message. Now that the Chancellor is with us, can I ask him, if he thinks there is so much unity of purpose, does he really stand by the plan to cut £20 a week from universal credit and to maintain the cruel two-child policy? I give him the opportunity to make an announcement and do something today to make sure that his appearance before us in the House today is not a total waste of time.
Rishi Sunak
At the beginning of the pandemic, we put in place a temporary uplift in universal credit, which lasts all the way through to the end of this year. Of course, future tax and welfare decisions will rightly be made at the Budget.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con) [V]
Labour-run Rotherham Council took a long time to devise a discretionary scheme for businesses and individuals excluded from support during the first lockdown, and ended up handing back millions of pounds to the Government because it had not distributed the money. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that the Government have given councils the flexibility and support necessary to ensure that local businesses and the self-employed receive the full help they deserve, and that councils have a duty to distribute funds speedily and effectively, so that that mistake is never repeated?
Rishi Sunak
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. The funding is indeed discretionary. Obviously, I and the Government do not know the exact economic circumstances in every local area and it is right that local authorities are best placed to make those discretionary decisions. They know their areas and how best to support their businesses, and our guidance gives them the discretion to do so.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab) [V]
The Chancellor says he is supporting 95% of the self-employed—a claim he knows is disputed—but even if we accept his figures, does that not mean that 250,000 people lose out? Surely writing off a quarter of a million people and their families is not what he means by “whatever it takes”?
Rishi Sunak
Those figures are not disputed; they are fact, based on the returns we have. Of the returns we have from people who are majority self-employed, 95% qualify and are eligible for support. The 5% who are not, to whom the hon. Gentleman alludes, are excluded because their income is greater than £50,000. He will have heard me say before that the average income of those people is £200,000, and I think it is right that we target support on those who most need our help.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con) [V]
I thank the Chancellor for the further one-off grants for closed businesses of up to £9,000. Businesses in Crewe and Nantwich are very ready for the cash, but can he assure them that they do not need to choose between those one-off grants and the monthly grants—that both are available to affected businesses?
Rishi Sunak
I am happy to confirm that that is absolutely the case. Businesses do not have to choose: they will continue to benefit from the monthly grant of up to £3,000 a month, and on top of that, to help them to get through this difficult period till the spring, they can additionally receive a one-off grant of up to £9,000. That means that cumulatively over the next three months, businesses could receive up to £18,000 of support. I know that my hon. Friend’s businesses will warmly welcome that. He has spoken to me at great length about supporting his local hospitality industry, and I hope that this helps.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]
The Chancellor’s assertion that the Prime Minister’s trade deal means that businesses can now start to do things differently and better will have been heard with total incredulity by anyone whose business involves the export of seafood. The new procedures for export are a bureaucratic mess that has brought export trade to a grinding halt. One local fish trader told me this morning that a single consignment now has to go with no fewer than 17 different attachments, and another told me on Friday that he had lost £50,000 on a single consignment that he had been unable to export. What is the Chancellor going to do to offer help to fish exporters to get them through this very difficult time—difficult because of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ own rules and procedures?
Rishi Sunak
What this deal ensures is that all those businesses that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned have tariff-free access to European markets. Otherwise, there would have been significant tariffs on those exports. He is right that there are changes to our trading relationship. That has always been the case, and the Prime Minister and the Government have been clear about that. I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster is working through individual issues as we look over time to streamline and improve all our processes. The right hon. Gentleman will also know that we have invested a huge amount of resource in the IT systems at DEFRA and in providing support for those businesses that need help to fill out various customs forms and meet new procedures.
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con) [V]
I welcome the £4.6 billion in grants announced last week for the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors. As my right hon. Friend will be aware, businesses in the hospitality industry have been subject to restrictions since the beginning of the pandemic, leaving the sector as one of the hardest hit financially. I have spoken to many affected business owners and workers in Stoke-on-Trent Central. As we approach the end of this financial year, with the possibility of restrictions now extending beyond it, will my right hon. Friend reassure me and businesses in my constituency that the Government will extend the existing package of measures, including the current business rates relief and VAT reduction, which act as an important lifeline for many in the sector?
Rishi Sunak
I know from visiting my hon. Friend’s local area how important hospitality businesses are to her. While I obviously cannot comment on future Budget decisions, I can give her the assurance that I remain very committed to supporting our fantastic hospitality businesses through this crisis, so that they can recover strongly on the other side.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I thank the Chancellor for his statement. Northern Ireland is facing a double whammy. First, we are coping with the economic consequences of covid, and we thank the Chancellor for the help with that, but at the same time we are also trying to deal with a protocol that is crippling businesses in Northern Ireland. South of the border, the Irish revenue authorities have said that all companies can circumvent customs to deal with this problem, but on our side of the border, HMRC is increasing the red tape. This protocol is an unmitigated disaster. Personal protective equipment can no longer get into Northern Ireland. Foodstuffs cannot get into Northern Ireland. Marks & Spencer has produced a list of 400 goods it will not bring into Northern Ireland. We now must invoke article 16, and I encourage the Chancellor to do that. I am sure that the Scots Nats are delighted they do not have a protocol now.
Rishi Sunak
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for registering some of those issues with me. I know that he and other colleagues are speaking to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster about individual issues, and I will be sure to follow up with him later today. The hon. Gentleman will know, and I hope it is helpful, that we funded with £200 million a trader support service, which is helping businesses in Northern Ireland to adjust to the new arrangements. I think 25,000 at the last count had signed up, and I know that the response has been pretty good, but there is always more we can do, and I look forward to talking to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster later.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con) [V]
The Treasury has done really well supporting businesses and jobs in this crisis, but directors of small limited companies are many of the people who will ultimately be paying for the Treasury’s support. What can be done, perhaps using a version of the Federation of Small Businesses’ suggestion of a directors income support scheme, to help prevent hard-working linchpins of our economy—on modest incomes taken as dividends—from falling through the cracks?
Rishi Sunak
We always will give fair and due consideration to any proposals that we receive. Indeed, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) has met the FSB and received the proposal, and we will go through it in detail.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Musicians and performers in Glasgow North have already very often been excluded from the Chancellor’s support packages, and they will find it difficult to look towards a brighter future when they then hear that the Government have failed to negotiate visa-free touring for them across the European Union. Many of us have been warning that Brexit would simply compound the economic crisis caused by a pandemic, and that kind of decision seems to prove the point, does it not?
Rishi Sunak
We have provided significant support to our cultural industries. I think it is right that we highlight the contribution they make both to our society and to our economy. I struggle to find any other countries that have matched the £1.5 billion of support we have provided, which has now gone out, I believe, to over 3,000 different cultural institutions, supporting the livelihoods and local institutions that cover performing arts, such as musicians, and we know that they will play an important part in our recovery.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
There are businesses in my constituency in Pembrokeshire that only made it through to the end of 2020 because of the outstanding support and intervention by this UK Government, and the funding support that the Treasury has provided for the devolved Administrations has been a key part of that. However, does my right hon. Friend share my concern that, at the same time as businesses in my constituency tell me they feel shut out of the Welsh Government’s business support grant scheme, it appears that the Welsh Government are sitting on about £1 billion of unallocated funding support? Does he agree that this is not a moment for holding back support and that we need to be getting it to the frontline, especially for small businesses?
Rishi Sunak
I thank my right hon. Friend for the question, and he is absolutely right. We must try to get our cash support out to businesses as quickly as possible; they are suffering as we speak. The Welsh Government have been provided with over £5 billion in an up-front funding guarantee, and he is right to highlight the importance of that money getting out to support the local businesses that he knows are so important to driving the future prosperity of the Welsh economy.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab) [V]
Analysis by the Resolution Foundation, based on the number of households claiming universal credit or working tax credit in April last year, found that 34% of working-age households across the north-east stood to lose out on over £1,000 a year if the uplift is cut, as currently planned, in April 2021. Unless I am mistaken that is still the case, although the Chancellor said it was at the end of the year in answer to an earlier question, so maybe he can clarify that. Can I ask the Chancellor if he agrees with me that it would now be unthinkable to cut this lifeline given the ongoing significant impact the pandemic has had on low-income families?
Rishi Sunak
It is important to recognise some of the other things that we have put in place for next year already, notably support for over 3.5 million vulnerable households with their council tax bills—£150 each, worth £670 million in aggregate—but also increasing the national living wage above inflation, at 2.2%, providing about £350 of benefit to those on low wages. Those are the kinds of things that this Government will continue to champion.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con) [V]
Can I first welcome the furlough extension, as announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, which will give many Carshalton and Wallington residents a great sense of peace of mind? However, some businesses have been in touch with me with concerns about the October cut-off date to be eligible to start furloughing staff, so can my right hon. Friend outline whether this decision could be reviewed or what other support businesses can access to help mitigate this?
Rishi Sunak
The change in the date from the original spring date to October will bring an additional 3 million people into the scope of benefiting from the furlough scheme, and I know that is something my hon. Friend will welcome. With regard to additional support, he will know our comprehensive plan, whether it is discounted or Government-backed loans, tax cuts, tax deferrals, VAT deferrals, business grants, business rates holidays or discretionary funding from local councils. All of that is available depending on a business’s circumstances, and I would urge his businesses to look online and see what they might be eligible for.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]
The Chancellor said earlier that there is “unity of purpose” across this House. One area where it is clear there is unity with everybody except for him is that more support is needed for the excluded. It frankly beggars belief that he has yet again come to this House with nothing to announce for them, so I urge him to urgently look at the directors income support scheme for directors of small limited companies, which has been on his desk since November. There are also the recently self-employed still left out in the cold, and freelancers, those who combine PAYE and self-employment, and women who have taken time out because of pregnancy all still utterly abandoned. I want to know how he has the gall to continue pretending that he is doing enough for my constituents and the millions like them who are still left in poverty and despair.
Rishi Sunak
With regard to our support for the self-employed, it is worth noting—not that you would know it from what the hon. Lady said— that almost 3 million people have benefited to the tune of around £20 billion. I do believe that that is comprehensive. It is certainly more comprehensive and generous support than has been provided by almost any other country I can find. Of course, we always look at other suggestions we receive, and I will continue to do that.
Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con) [V]
As the pandemic continues, it is only right that the Government provide further financial assistance to support jobs and businesses. That is why I welcome the £4.6 billion of funding for grants that was announced last week, which will benefit people and businesses across Barrow and Furness. However, does my right hon. Friend agree that in the long term we have to return to sustainable public finances in order to build resilience to similar shocks in the future, whatever they may be?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend makes an excellent and insightful point. This is about resilience in the public finances—he used the word well. We have faced two supposedly once-in-a-generation shocks in the space of 10 years and we do not know what the future holds. What we do know is that we want to encounter the next shock that comes along in as strong a position as possible, because ultimately that will enable us to respond in as comprehensive and generous a way as we have here. That is why, over time, we must rebuild our public finances to that position of, as he said, resilience and strength.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I wonder if hon. Members really do believe in being fair to everyone. If they do, I implore them to ask short questions—do not make statements and do not make speeches. This is a statement by the Chancellor. It is an occasion for a quick question. I have 36 people to get in and 25 minutes in which to do it. Shall we see whether Members really do want to be fair to everybody else?
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab) [V]
Behavioural scientists are clear that to get people to self-isolate requires that they have the capacity, motivation and opportunity to do so. So far, frankly, the £500 on offer is not achieving that. What assessment has the Chancellor made of that scheme, and what is he planning to do to improve it?
Rishi Sunak
I am not aware of any science or feedback showing that that scheme is not doing what it needs to do. The £500 is means-tested, it provides support and it has increased in real value as the number of days people are required to isolate has reduced.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con) [V]
A constituent approached me to say that many supply teachers working through agencies are not being furloughed because schools are open to key worker children, yet those supply teachers are not being called into schools because most year groups are learning remotely. Will my right hon. Friend look at flexibility within the furlough scheme in this area, similar to last time, to assist agency workers?
Rishi Sunak
I would be very happy to look at the specific point my right hon. Friend raises.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab) [V]
I shadowed the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), and I wish him successful treatment and a speedy recovery.
About 130,000 individuals across Greater Manchester are ineligible for any support—that number is second only to London. Many of them have been shut out of support since day one, which is almost a year ago now. Will the Chancellor confirm today that he is actually looking at this important issue, and confirm whether more support for this group is actually coming their way?
Rishi Sunak
As part of the announcement made last week, half a billion pounds of discretionary funding is being made available to local councils. That comes on top of the £1.1 billion that was made available at the end of autumn last year. If local councils want, some of that funding can go to support the very people the hon. Gentleman is talking about.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Financial services are very important to my constituency and to the country as a whole. I welcome the free trade agreement, but clearly there is more to be negotiated on financial services. Will my right hon. Friend outline how we can retain the strong relationship with Europe on financial services, while retaining autonomy to adapt the industry to our needs?
Rishi Sunak
I praise my hon. Friend for being a fantastic representative of her constituents when it comes to financial services. I have enjoyed my conversations with her, and I look forward to working with her and the industry to ensure that we maintain a close relationship with the EU, but also that we look to capitalise on the new opportunities, making sure that London remains a pre-eminent global centre and that the UK does its bit. Whether it is on greening the financial system or taking advantage of new digital technologies, we must lead the world, and I know that she will help me to do that.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
The Welsh Government have not hoarded money meant for Welsh businesses, and it is dangerous to hear the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) saying such things in the Chamber. They are getting help to those businesses while the UK Government make a big fanfare over new help that turns out not to be new help at all. Will the Chancellor tell me and my constituents how much new money for Wales he has announced today?
Rishi Sunak
I am happy for the hon. Lady to refer to the answer I gave earlier, but if she would prefer that, rather than give up-front funding guarantees and certainty to the devolved Administrations in a pandemic, we returned to piecemeal funding by announcement, she should please write to me and let me know. The Welsh Government have received over £5 billion in up-front funding guarantees, and as we make announcements it is right that we highlight the amount of additional Barnett funding that flows from those announcements, so that that can be netted off against the guarantee.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]
I am delighted to learn that local authorities will be receiving additional cash at the end of this week. Could I please ask the Chancellor to do everything possible to help local authorities to get that money out of the door as quickly as possible, to help businesses’ cash flow?
Rishi Sunak
I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of speed. We try to keep the guidance the same, and that helps local authorities. Indeed, the guidance for the £500 million discretionary funding will be the same as for the £1.1 billion, and that will help local authorities. They should have the cash by the end of this week at the latest, and I too urge them to get it out as quickly as possible.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD) [V]
As in many places, local pubs and bars in Oxford, West and Abingdon on their knees. One of my constituents, a bar owner, has told me that her business is slowly going under and that she stands to lose everything. The £9,000 is of course welcome, but the concern is that this will delay rather than stop them going under, so will the Chancellor step in and save our locals by scrapping the rateable value cap for pubs, allowing them to access the retail, hospitality and leisure grant fund, offering rent holidays during times of enforced closure and guaranteeing now to extend the furlough scheme for as long as it is needed?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady makes a good point about the importance of our local pubs. There is no rateable value cap on the grant. That was the case in the earlier iteration in the spring, but the latest grants are done by rateable value, and they are available for businesses with a rateable value in excess of £51,000. The businesses also benefit from the business rates holiday, so I hope that helps, but I share her sympathy for the industry. I know it is difficult, and we must do what we can to help them.
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
The Chancellor will know that the furlough scheme and the self-employed scheme have helped to protect many millions of jobs across the UK and many livelihoods across the Birmingham, Northfield constituency, but as he said, unfortunately not every job is going to be able to be protected during the pandemic, so can he outline the measures he is taking across Government to help to support those who find themselves unemployed?
Rishi Sunak
I can give my hon. Friend my assurance that the Government’s No. 1 economic priority remains jobs and trying to help people into employment. To that end, we have created various schemes and put billions of pounds towards them, whether through doubling the number of work coaches, the restart scheme for the long-term unemployed or, indeed, our kickstart scheme to help 250,000 young people at risk of becoming unemployed to find new work in Government-funded jobs. I look forward to working with him and delivering all those vital initiatives.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP) [V]
A number of people are still in childcare voucher schemes rather than having moved to tax-free childcare. A number of them did not realise, at the start of the pandemic, how long the impact would last, and they have now racked up large balances that they will not be able to spend before their child no longer needs wraparound childcare. Will the Chancellor please look at the people who have these large balances and consider putting in place some flexibility, or asking employers to put in place some flexibility, because they have ended up in this situation through no fault of their own?
Rishi Sunak
I am not familiar with the specific details that the hon. Lady raises, but I can see the logic of what she is saying, if I followed it correctly. I will happily have a look at that and write back to her.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con) [V]
I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of an extra £500 million of discretionary funding for local authorities in England. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that councils have absolute discretion in the use of those moneys, including, if they so choose, the provision of grants to self-employed workers or sole traders whose businesses are based at their home address?
Rishi Sunak
I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that the grants are meant to be discretionary. It is for local authorities to make the decisions at their discretion as to how best support their local economies. The guidance should remain the same as it was before. I believe it gives local authorities the discretion they need.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab) [V]
A supply teacher in my constituency contacted me last week after being told she would not be furloughed despite being unable to work while schools are closed. Last summer, less than half of supply teachers were furloughed. In some cases, they were furloughed at just 80% of the national minimum wage. What steps will the Chancellor now take to ensure all supply staff are able to access the furlough scheme during the lockdown and prevent them falling through the gaps?
Rishi Sunak
If I follow the question correctly, I think the guidance has already been clarified. It was already in place that childcare was a reason people could be furloughed. With regard to supply teachers, I will have a look at what the guidance says.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con) [V]
I welcome the continuation of the unprecedented support provided by the Chancellor throughout this crisis. While looking forward to economic bounce back, may I call on my right hon. Friend to extend the business rate holiday and VAT reduction, which have been absolutely critical to the tourism and hospitality sector in Fylde?
Rishi Sunak
I know how important the tourism and hospitality sector is to my hon. Friend’s constituency and what a fantastic champion he is for it. I know how important those initiatives have been. Of course, future decisions of that magnitude will be for the Budget, but I will take what he says into consideration.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab) [V]
Community union self-employed members have raised serious concerns about discrimination in the self-employment income support scheme for those who have taken maternity or parental leave. They point out that eligibility conditions and calculation methods chosen by the Chancellor discriminate against women because they do not exempt periods of maternity leave. What steps has the Chancellor taken to ensure that all parents, and women in particular, are not penalised in their income support payments for having children?
Rishi Sunak
The guidance on eligibility for the particular circumstances the hon. Gentleman mentions has been published. It is designed to be fair to everyone and to take into account, as best we can, everyone’s varying and different circumstances.
Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con) [V]
My constituency contains an award-winning nature reserve at Kenfig and some of the best surfing beaches in the world. The town of Porthcawl is a popular tourist town and Bridgend itself is an historic market town. It is no surprise, therefore, that the impact of covid-19 on the hospitality sector has really hit my constituents hard. Many have written to me recently to ask me to support UKHospitality’s recommendations on how the Government can help, in particular with an extension of VAT and business rates support. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that every step possible should be taken to support this vital sector?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right about the importance of this vital sector to our local communities and our economy, with hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of people employed. Like him, I am keen to see it spring back to its former glory. I look forward to hearing from him about how best he thinks we can support that industry into the future.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) [V]
Contrary to the Government’s briefings, the problem with lockdown is not support bubbles or exercising with a friend. The key problem is that people are still being forced into work, with too many non-essential workplaces open and statutory sick pay so low many cannot afford to self-isolate when they need to. Will the Chancellor provide the economic support necessary for people to stay at home by ensuring that all non-key workers who cannot work from home are furloughed on full pay, and by raising sick pay to the real living wage at £330 a week?
Rishi Sunak
With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, I think it is best that we listen to the scientists with regard to the appropriate health restrictions. She will have heard the chief medical officer this morning giving his view on the right approach to other restrictions. With regard to support, the furlough scheme remains one of the most generous and comprehensive anywhere in the world. It is something that I am proud of and which I know is providing security to many millions of people at this very difficult time.
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con) [V]
The Chancellor will know that the Blue Collar Conservatism group was instrumental in persuading the supermarkets to return the business rates relief that they did not need; we asked them to do so on the basis that there were many who had gone without support, and they agreed to do so on that basis. Will the Chancellor therefore ensure that that £2 billion returned by the supermarkets goes to those who have so far been excluded from support? They cannot go another three months without any income.
Rishi Sunak
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend’s tireless campaigning on this issue. She is a great advocate for the cause. She will know that we have just provided over £4.5 billion of support to many small businesses up and down the country, which I know she will warmly welcome and has called for. Indeed, part of that is half a billion pounds of discretionary funding for local authorities to support local businesses, many of which may include the people she has talked about who will be eligible for that support.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) [V]
For 10 months, 3 million people have been forgotten or excluded by this Government, including several of my own constituents, such as Graeme Park, and Karen and Matthew Cox. The Prime Minister said last week that these people will be listened to and that support packages are there to protect people, so can the Chancellor tell us clearly today what package of support is actually available for these groups, how much is available and when will people be able to access them?
Rishi Sunak
Rather than me recapping every single thing that we have done, let me say that it is worth bearing it in mind when the hon. Lady talks about 3 million people that for over half of those people self-employment is not the primary source of income; they are not majority self-employed. From memory, the average income from self-employment of those individuals is around £2,000. It is actually the case that many of the other things that we have done will be of more significant support to them. Indeed, the majority of them are actually employed and can benefit from our furlough scheme, so it is not right to say that they have received no support. We have put in place a range of different things, and many people are benefiting from them.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con) [V]
The hospitality supply chain is crucial to the sector: food and drink producers, dairies, breweries, wholesalers and many more. Will the Chancellor look at extra support for hospitality supply chains, such as with VAT and business rates, so that when the vaccine allows hospitality to reopen again, there is a supply chain there to support them?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right about the supply chain. He will know that much of the supply chain also supplies the on-premises trade as well as the off-premises, so those businesses will have some trade during this period, but he is right that we must ensure that it is there for the recovery. The supply chain will, of course, benefit from our furlough scheme, which is very comprehensive in its eligibility and very generous. I thank him for his points and will of course bear them in mind.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Let us see if we can go a bit faster to try to get everybody in.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP) [V]
The Young Women’s Trust found that because of covid 1.5 million women are losing income; 69% are claiming benefits to the first time; half of young mums are unable to keep or find employment because of childcare costs; and a third of women will not report sexual harassment for fear of being fired. Can the Chancellor therefore tell me how his Government can possibly continue to justify the five-week wait, have statutory sick pay at a disgracefully low £94 a week, and exclude many female business owners from help? Will he take proper action for women, who are bearing the brunt of this pandemic?
Rishi Sunak
All the support that we have put in place is blind to gender; no one is excluded on the basis of gender and I do not think it is fair to suggest otherwise. One of the reasons that I have been so keen to try to support the hospitality industry throughout this period, and to encourage people to be able to go back to it when it was open, was because of the social justice aspect. It is an industry that disproportionately employs women and other groups that we want to try to see protected. That is why it is a very important industry to me, and we must get it back to its former glory.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]
While politics is played with narratives around council tax increases, will the Chancellor confirm that the most important thing right now is support for local authorities to deliver public services in constituencies like mine? Will he please outline the steps that the Treasury is taking to deliver that support?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right. We have provided over £3 billion of additional funding for local authorities next year to help them get through coronavirus in different ways and, within their day-to-day budgets, an additional £300 million of adult social care grant. They are seeing one of the highest core spending power increases in a decade. With regard to the political points that he knows others are trying to make, it is probably worth bearing it in mind that under the last Labour Government council tax rose on average by about 6% every year; under this Conservative Government since 2010, it has risen so far by just over 2%.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP) [V]
The Chancellor of the Exchequer will share my desire to see economic recovery right across the United Kingdom. I thank him for the support provided to sustain businesses in this difficult time. However, in addition to covid-related challenges, businesses in my constituency are being hampered in trading by the chaos created by the Northern Ireland protocol. A local haulage company reports that protocol-related difficulties cost it an additional £48,000 last week. Another business in my constituency is being hit by 20% VAT on bicycle parts. Our second-hand car industry faces wipe-out because of the VAT margin scheme. The protocol spells economic harm for business and consumers in Northern Ireland. What will the Chancellor and his Government do to remove the barrier to economic recovery and free and unfettered trade within the United Kingdom?
Rishi Sunak
I am sorry to hear the various examples that the hon. Lady gave. I hope that the Trader Support Service can be of some assistance to her small and medium-sized businesses. We have funded it to the tune of about £200 million to provide support for the change of circumstances, and I know that 25,000 companies have already signed up and are benefiting from quite speedy support. I will of course keep that under review and ensure that it is doing what it needs to do.
Kate Griffiths (Burton) (Con) [V]
I thank my right hon. Friend for providing grants of up to £9,000 to businesses forced to close due to the new national restrictions. I know those businesses in retail, hospitality and, in particular, the pub industry in my constituency of Burton and Uttoxeter are grateful for that safety net. Will he continue to review the support available to them to ensure their long-term survival and growth as we come out of the pandemic?
Rishi Sunak
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Hospitality is such an important sector for our local communities and indeed our national economy. I cannot comment on future Budgets, but I will bear what she says in mind. She can rest assured that I will do what I can to support the hospitality industry and ensure that it can drive our recovery.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) [V]
Last week, the Chancellor graced Members of this House with a 90-second video on Twitter announcing support for the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors. While I look forward to him delivering the Budget on TikTok, those gimmicks leave businesses in the dark through a lack of scrutiny. Now that he has been freed from Twitter’s time limits, will he tell struggling businesses in my constituency just how long they need to make those grants last?
Rishi Sunak
The grants we have put in place are one-off but can help businesses through to the spring. Additionally, they will, of course, continue to receive the monthly grants of up to £3,000, which will be paid throughout. That means that, for example, over the next three months, a business could receive up to £18,000 in cash support. We will, as the hon. Lady said, have a Budget on 3 March, before that time elapses, at which point we will set out the next stage in our economic response to coronavirus.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor knows—not least from the conversations he had last November with businesses in my constituency—how heavily our local economy depends on the hospitality sector and how hard hit it has been. Will he give me and the sector an assurance that he will look sympathetically at its calls to extend the lower rate of VAT and the business rate holiday? What message has he got for the sector about its importance to the UK economy and to the wellbeing and quality of life of our citizens?
Rishi Sunak
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with my right hon. Friend’s local businesses. He mentioned exactly the right point: quality of life. This is not just about our economy and jobs; this industry is so vital for our wellbeing, and it brings spirit, life and vitality to our local communities. He can rest assured that I will want to continue supporting the industry, as I have done in the past, and I will bear what he says in mind for future Budgets.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
A failure to make the £20 uplift to universal credit permanent would have a disproportionate impact on families across the north-east, which has the highest rate of unemployment and the second highest rate of child poverty. Will the Chancellor now commit to make that £20 uplift permanent?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady, for whom I have a lot of respect, mentioned two things: unemployment and child poverty. We know that the best way to ensure that children do not grow up in poverty is for them not to grow up in a workless household; indeed, the rate of poverty among children who are not in workless households is five times lower. Work—removing unemployment—is the best, surest and most sustainable way out of poverty, which is why this Government have backed with billions of pounds our various initiatives to support people into work, which I know she will support, whether that is the restart scheme, the kickstart scheme, doubling the amount of work coaches or increasing the incentive for people to take on new apprentices. Those are all the surest ways to help people out of poverty, and that is why we are committing billions of pounds to that end.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We are officially out of time, but I will keep this running for a few minutes longer if Members will be decent and be quick. There are two more items of business, and it is simply not fair on other Members later in the day if this item of business takes too long.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con) [V]
Retraining opportunities will be a crucial part of our economic recovery. I have been really impressed by companies such as Openreach, which has set a promising target for more women in its employment programmes. Will my right hon. Friend the Chancellor look at making sure that women are not excluded from the economic recovery?
Rishi Sunak
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I have enjoyed my conversations with her on this topic. We want to make sure that people can find new opportunities, which is why we have funded companies with bonuses to take on new apprentices, as well as providing a universal entitlement to a level 3 qualification for the 37% of our adult population that sadly does not have one, and traineeships also provide young people with a start into work experience and then a job interview. Those are the kinds of thing that help people find economic opportunity, and we will make sure that women benefit equally from all of them.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab) [V]
Amy Pierce, the director of a small company in my constituency, was doing well until the pandemic. Since then, her turnover has dropped by 40%, but her costs have not. She has now had to lay off her staff, which is massively regrettable. What can the Chancellor say to small businesses like that to assure them that the employment base and the economic base will be there in towns such as Rochdale when the pandemic ends?
Rishi Sunak
I am incredibly sorry to hear about the example of the hon. Gentleman’s constituent, which will be mirrored by many others up and down the country. As I said in my statement, the restrictions we have had to put in place have taken a significant economic toll on the country. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs, and businesses are suffering. We have tried to protect as many as possible. It is not possible to protect all of them, but with the support that we have put in place, I am confident that we are helping many businesses, protecting many people’s incomes and saving many people’s jobs. I hope that his constituent’s business and many others can bounce back strongly once we are through this.
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con) [V]
I very much welcome the Chancellor’s substantial grant support to smaller hospitality businesses in my constituency, which will at least give them a chance of seeing through this difficult period. I also represent a constituency with a large number of small travel businesses that depend on the revival of the travel industry and, in particular, the aviation sector. As he prepares for the Budget, will he look at any way he can to help that industry and that sector get back on their feet as restrictions are lifted, hopefully in the spring?
Rishi Sunak
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the importance of the travel sector to our economy. I was pleased to work with him to help to put in place a test and release policy for international travel, which was helping, and to provide business rates support to our many airports—I know that up to £8 million per airport has been of value. I will continue to listen to him and others to see what we can do to support the economy as we recover out of this crisis.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab) [V]
We are nearly a year on since the Chancellor rightly introduced the self-employed income support scheme, but despite his having had months to fix the gaps that have wrongly excluded millions, he is refusing to do so. The right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) asked the Chancellor whether the £2 billion in business rates relief that is being returned to the Treasury from supermarkets and other large shops could be used immediately to support those who have been excluded and received nothing; will he now answer that question?
Rishi Sunak
The hon. Lady’s party called specifically for that money to be used to support small businesses and high streets; indeed, not only have we just done that but we have done it to the tune of £4.5 billion, not the £2 billion that her party was calling for.
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con) [V]
Green finance has a crucial role to play if we want to build back better and transition to a net zero economy by 2050. The UK has a critical role in the development of the sector internationally, not just as a global leader in finance but with this year’s presidency of COP26 and chairmanship of the G7. Will the Chancellor outline for the House what he is doing to develop the vital green finance sector?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point: not only are we leading in the world in reaching our net zero targets but we are a global financial centre, and we have combined the two to lead the greening of the financial system, which is an opportunity for us. We are going to issue a sovereign green bond this year and will be the first major economy to make mandatory the climate-related financial disclosures recommended by the international taskforce, which will help to cement our global leadership. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the other things that we can do in this vital year for our journey to net zero.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) [V]
A Castleford constituent—a single mum who works at a major company’s distribution warehouse—has been told that her employer will not furlough her while schools are closed and that she has to take six weeks’ unpaid leave that she cannot afford. The school has said that she cannot have a place as it is overwhelmed with key worker applications. Does the Chancellor agree that the employer’s response is completely unfair? What should my constituent do now?
Rishi Sunak
I am more than happy to receive a letter from the right hon. Lady about the particular situation that she describes, but I hope she will understand—she will know this, having been in a similar position—that it is hard for me to comment on the specific circumstances between an employee and employer. The furlough scheme can be used for the circumstances that she described. Obviously, the school will be better placed than I am to determine whether the constituent in question is a key worker, but if the right hon. Lady writes to me, I will be more than happy to follow up on her questions.
John Howell (Henley) (Con) [V]
I add my support to the cause of directors who take income as dividends. As a former inspector of taxes, I have heard what Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has said and do not entirely agree with it. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet me to discuss the options available to deal with directors who take income as dividends?
Rishi Sunak
My right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has met several groups and heard representations on different proposals. I am not aware of another country that has found a way to support people’s dividend income, but if my hon. Friend knows of one, I would be delighted to look into it if he sends it in.
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab) [V]
Does the Chancellor believe that the £22 billion cost of Serco test and trace has been spent in a way that represents the best value for money?
Rishi Sunak
The testing capacity that we have in this country has considerably increased from where it was. The House will remember that at the start of this crisis it was 10,000, and now we are doing several hundred thousand a day, so that is a substantial increase, and testing can play a part in reducing the spread of transmission. Obviously, given the new strain of the virus, we have had to put in place new restrictions, which is disappointing, but I still believe that test and trace can play a role in suppressing the spread of the virus, especially as we come out of this crisis. The hon. Lady is right to hold me and others accountable for every pound of taxpayers’ money that we spend and I am sure will continue to do so.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con) [V]
I have exciting, innovative companies of tomorrow located in Guildford, and they will be crucial to our economic recovery. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that these companies remain at the centre of his future plans?
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right: our innovative companies are a great strength of the UK economy compared with others and they will help drive our recovery. That is why we put in place the future fund, which was an unprecedented intervention to help 1,000 of our fastest-growing start-up companies with match funding. Innovate UK also made available £500 million of additional grants and loans through its innovation schemes, and most recently, we have committed extra funding for our start-up loans scheme next year. Taken together, it is a significant vote of confidence in those innovative companies, and I look forward to hearing from her other ways that we can support them to help drive our recovery.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]
Last week, when I challenged the Prime Minister over the lack of support for the 3 million excluded, he claimed that they had “not been excluded”, so can the Chancellor spell out what is being done to make the PM’s word a reality, as I did not hear anything today that will give meaningful support to my constituents who have had 10 months of zero income or Government help?
Rishi Sunak
It is just not right to say that people have not been able to receive any support. Obviously, I cannot comment on the individual circumstances of every single person, but we have put in place £280 billion of direct support in a multitude of different ways, and then there is additional support that is not even fiscal—for example, mortgage holidays, which now one in six, or one in seven mortgage holders have taken advantage of. So yes, it may be the case that people have not been helped in the exact way they wanted, but with £280 billion of support in literally 20 different ways, this Government are doing what they can to provide reassurance and security to millions of people and businesses through this difficult crisis.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC) [V]
The Welsh hospitality sector employs over 8.5% of the Welsh workforce and is even more important in rural areas, such as Dwyfor Meirionnydd, where hospitality provides 27.3% of employment. Today’s statement provided no new money and no clarity for struggling hospitality businesses that need to be able to make informed decisions in the coming months. Will the Chancellor therefore confirm that there will be no further announcements of extra funding prior to the March Budget?
Rishi Sunak
The Welsh Government have received over £5 billion of up-front funding guarantees to support their local economy. I hope they will use it to do exactly that, but also, Welsh businesses will benefit from UK-wide interventions—for example, our furlough scheme, our loan programme or, indeed, some of the VAT reductions—and I have said that all our support now extends through to the spring. We will have a Budget on 3 March, where we will set out the next stage of that economic response to coronavirus.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Between this item of business and the next statement, I will briefly suspend the House for three minutes.
Covid-19: Vaccinations
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Nadhim Zahawi)
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the covid-19 vaccine delivery plan. The plan, published today, sets out the strategies that underpin the development, manufacture and deployment of our vaccines against covid-19. It represents a staging post in our national mission to vaccinate against the coronavirus, and a culmination of many months of hard work from the NHS, our armed forces, Public Health England, and every level of local government in our Union. There are many miles to go on this journey, but, armed with this plan, our direction of travel is clear.
We should be buoyed by the progress that we are already making. As of today, in England, 2.33 million vaccinations have been given, with 1.96 million receiving their first dose and 374,613 having already received both doses. We are on track to deliver our commitment of offering a first vaccine to everyone in the most vulnerable groups by the middle of next month. These are groups, it is worth reminding ourselves, that account for more than four out of every five fatalities from the covid virus, or some 88% of deaths. But of course this is a delivery plan for everyone—a plan that will see us vaccinate all adults by the autumn in what is the largest programme of vaccination of its kind in British history.
The UK vaccines delivery plan sets out how we can achieve that noble, necessary and urgent goal. The plan rests on four key pillars: supply, prioritisation, places and people. On supply, our approach to vaccines has been to move fast and to move early. We had already been heavily investing in the development of new vaccines since 2016, including funding a vaccine against another coronavirus: middle east respiratory syndrome. At the start of this year, this technology was rapidly repurposed to develop a vaccine for covid-19, and in April we provided £20 million of further funding so that the Oxford clinical trials could commence immediately. Today, we are the first country to buy, authorise and use that vaccine.
Also in April, we established the UK Government’s Vaccine Task Force, or VTF for short, and since then it has worked relentlessly to build a wide portfolio of different types of vaccine, signing early deals with the most promising prospects. It is a strategy that has really paid off. As of today, we have secured access to 367 million doses from seven vaccine developers with four different vaccine types, including the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which we were also the first in the world to buy, authorise and use. The VTF has also worked on our homegrown manufacturing capability, including what is referred to as the “fill and finish” process, in collaboration with Wockhardt in Wrexham. Anticipating a potential global shortage early on, we reserved manufacturing capacity to allow for the supply of multiple vaccines to the United Kingdom. Like many capabilities in this pandemic, it is one that we have never had before, but one that we can draw on today. So much of that critical work undertaken early has placed us in a strong position for the weeks and months ahead.
The second pillar of our plan is prioritisation. As I set out earlier, essential work to protect those at the greatest clinical risk is already well under way. The basic principle that sits behind all of this is to save as many lives as possible as quickly as possible. In addition, we are working at speed to protect staff in our health and social care system. All four UK chief medical officers agree with the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to prioritise the first doses for as many people on the priority list as possible and administer second doses towards the end of the recommended vaccine dosing schedule of 12 weeks. That step will ensure the protection of the greatest number of at-risk people in the shortest possible time.
The third pillar of our plan is places. As of yesterday, across the United Kingdom, we have more than 2,700 vaccination sites up and running. There are three types of site. First, we have large vaccination centres that use big venues such as football stadiums; we saw many of those launched today. At these, people will be able to get appointments using our national booking service. The second type is our hospital hubs, working with NHS trusts across the country. The third is our local vaccination services, which are made up of sites led by GPs working in partnership with primary care trusts and, importantly, with community pharmacists.
This mix of different types of site offers the flexibility that we need to reach many different and diverse groups and, importantly, to be able to target as accurately as we can. By the end of January, everyone will be within 10 miles of a vaccination site. In a small number of highly rural areas, the vaccination centre will be a mobile unit. It bears repeating that, when it is their turn, we want as many people as possible to take up the offer of a vaccine against covid-19.
The fourth and final pillar is, of course, our people. I am grateful to the many thousands who have joined this mission—this national mission. We now have a workforce of some 80,000 people ready to be deployed across the country. This includes staff currently working within the NHS of course, but also volunteers through the NHS Bring Back Staff scheme, such as St John Ambulance personnel, independent nurses and occupational health service providers. There are similar schemes across the devolved Administrations.
Trained vaccinators, non-clinical support staff such as stewards, first aiders, administrators and logistics support will also play their part. We are also drawing on the expertise of our UK armed forces, whose operational techniques—brought to life by Brigadier Phil Prosser at the press conference with the Prime Minister a few days ago—have been tried and tested in some of the toughest conditions imaginable. I am sure the whole House will join me in thanking everyone who has played their part in getting us to this point, and all those who will play an important role in the weeks and months ahead.
We recognise that transparency about our vaccine plan will be central to maintaining public trust, and we are committed to publishing clear and simple updates. Since 24 December, we have published weekly UK-wide data on the total number of vaccinations and the breakdown of over and under-80s for England. From today, we are publishing daily data for England showing the total number vaccinated to date. The first daily publication was this afternoon. From Thursday, and then weekly, NHS England will publish a more detailed breakdown of vaccinations in England, including by region.
This continues to be a difficult time for our country, for our NHS and for everyone as we continue to live under tough restrictions, but we have always known that a vaccine would be our best way out of this evil pandemic, and that is the road we are now taking. We are under no illusion as to the scale of the challenge ahead and the distance we still have to travel. In more normal times, the largest vaccination programme in British history would be an epic feat, but against the backdrop of a global pandemic and a new, more transmissible variant, it is a huge challenge. With this House and indeed the whole nation behind this national mission, I have every confidence that it will be a national success. I commend this statement to the House.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Minister for advance sight of his statement.
We meet today at a challenging moment in the handling of the pandemic. We have growing infection rates, we are in lockdown, businesses are shut and schools are closed, and tragically more than 80,000 people have already lost their lives to this awful virus. The vaccine provides us with a light, a glimmer of hope, and a way to beat the virus, saving lives and getting us back to normal.
The Government succeeded in the development of a vaccine—investing in multiple candidates has paid off handsomely—but a vaccine alone does not make a vaccination programme. Given the Government’s failures with the test and trace system and the procurement of personal protective equipment, it is right that we scrutinise the plans carefully.
The plan is quite conventional: aside from the new big vaccination centres, it uses traditional delivery mechanisms operating within traditional opening and access times. The Opposition have some concerns about that, as we believe that exceptional circumstances call for an exceptional response. At the No. 10 briefing earlier today, 24/7 access was said to be something that people would not be interested in, which surprised me; I would like to hear from the Minister the basis for that view.
Similarly, there is the mass deployment of community spaces and volunteer mobilisation unprecedented in peacetime. It is the Government’s prerogative to choose their approach, but I am keen to hear from the Minister assurance that the plan as written and set out today will deliver on what has been promised: the top four priority categories covered by the middle of next month. On a recent call, the Minister said that the only limiting factor on the immunisation programme would be the speed of supply. Will he publicly reaffirm that and confirm that this plan will make maximum use of the supply as he expects to get it?
I think we would all agree that our frontline NHS and social care heroes deserve to be protected. At the beginning of the pandemic, our staff were left for too long without adequate personal protective equipment, and we must not repeat that with the vaccine. Protecting them is the right thing to do, reflecting the risks that they face, but it is also pragmatically a point of emphasis for us, because we need them to be well in order to keep doing the incredible job that they are doing.
We are currently missing about 46,000 NHS staff for covid reasons. The health and social care workforce are in category 2 in the plan, but there does not seem to be a national-level emphasis on inoculating them immediately. There seems to be significant variation between trust areas. Will the Minister commit today to meeting our demand that they all get their vaccines within the next fortnight? We very much welcome the clear and simple metrics that he is going to publish each day so that we can follow the successes of the programme, but as part of that, will he commit to publicising the daily total of health and care staff vaccinated, so that we can see the progress being made against that vital metric, too?
It was reassuring to see pharmacies included in the plan. They are at the heart of all the communities in our country, they are trusted and they already deliver mass vaccinations. It was disappointing and surprising to see them having to take to the front pages of national newspapers last week to get the Government’s attention, but now, with them in the plan, will the Minister reassure the House that he is fully engaged with their representative bodies and that they are satisfied that they are being used properly? The number that has been trailed publicly is of 200 participating pharmacies, but given that there are 11,500 community pharmacies in England, can that really be right? Why are there not more involved, or is that number wrong? If so, could the Minister share with us what the number is? On social care, 23% of elderly care home residents have been vaccinated, compared with 40% of the over-80s more generally. Given their top prioritisation, is there a reason for this lag? What plans are there to close the gap? Is the Minister confident that all care home residents will be vaccinated by the end of the month, as promised?
Finally, there has been a high level of consensus across this place, and certainly between the Minister and me, on misinformation, and we will support the Government in whatever they think they need to do to tackle it. We will have a real sense of the impacts of misinformation as the programme rolls along, particularly as we look at who is and is not declining the vaccine. Will the Minister tell us what he will be monitoring in that regard, and what the early feedback is, perhaps from our own care staff, on who has been saying yes and who has been saying no and what that might mean for the future?
We welcome the fact that the Government have published this plan. We will back them when we think they are right but we will continue to offer constructive ways to improve the process, as I hope I have just done. I hope that the Minister can address the points that I have raised.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for the hon. Member’s backing and support. He asks a number of important questions, and I will attempt to answer them now. Suffice it to say that it would be sensible for us to recognise that test and trace now delivers 85% of those who are tested positive in terms of identifying their direct contacts and the indirect contacts at between 92% and 96%. Over 5 million people have been tested and isolated and are therefore not transmitting or spreading this virus, and 55 million people have been tested. That is a pretty major undertaking, with capacity now touching 770,000 and tests running at about 600,000 a day. From a standing start of about 2,000 a day back in March, that is a pretty remarkable achievement for NHS test and trace.
The hon. Gentleman asked about 24-hour provision. There are two priorities for the NHS, and we have looked really long and hard at this. Priority No. 1 is obviously to target very closely those four most vulnerable categories. Priority No. 2 is to try to get a vaccination to them as quickly as possible, which is about throughput. This is linked because if we were to go to a 24-hour regime, it would be much harder to target the vaccine at those four cohorts. Obviously, when we have limited vaccine volume, we do not want staff standing around waiting for people in centres that are open 24 hours. Also, many of those people are over 80, and we are going into care homes to vaccinate the residents of those homes. The decision to go from 8 to 8 was made because we want to ensure that there is an even spread and very close targeting.
That is linked to throughput—how many vaccinations can we get into people’s arms as quickly as possible? We do not want vaccines sitting in fridges or on shelves. That goes to the hon. Gentleman’s question on the 24 hours, but also the pharmacy question. All the 200 pharmacies that we are operationalising can do 1,000-plus vaccinations a week, so the focus in phase 1, certainly with the first four categories—and, I think, with the total nine categories—is very much on targeting and throughput. The 2,700 sites are the best way that we can target that. Obviously, primary care is very good at identifying those who are most vulnerable or over 80 and, of course, getting into care homes, hence why the NHS plan and the plan we have published today are very much based around those priorities.
As we enter phase 2, where we begin to want to vaccinate as many adults as quickly as possible, we want convenience of course. We want to be able to go into many more pharmacies, so people can walk to their local pharmacy, or GP, and get their jab, when we have limitless volumes of vaccines. We have clearly now got that optioned and it will come through in the weeks and months ahead. That is the reason for that. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: the limiting factor continues at this stage to be vaccine volumes. The NHS has built an infrastructure that can deploy the vaccine as quickly as possible, but it is vaccine volumes that will change. With any new manufacturing process, especially one where we are dealing with quite a complex process—it is a biological compound that we are producing—it tends to be lumpy at the start, but it very quickly stabilises and becomes much more even. We are beginning to see that, which is good news.
We are absolutely committed to making sure the health and social care workforce are vaccinated as quickly as possible, and of course we are committed to making sure the residents of care homes are vaccinated by the end of this month—January. I reaffirm that commitment to the hon. Gentleman.
I think the hon. Gentleman’s final question was on data. I am glad that he agrees that it is important, because the Prime Minister’s absolute instruction to us as a team is that we have to make sure we publish as much data as possible as quickly as possible, hence why we have moved to a rhythm of daily data and on the Thursday more detailed publication, which will have regional breakdowns. The NHS is committed as it builds up more data to publish more and more. The nation expects, and rightly wants to see, the speed and the targeting that we are delivering, but I am confident that the NHS has a solid plan. We have the volunteers and the Army—two great institutions of this country—delivering this campaign and with the support of Her Majesty’s Opposition I am sure we will do this.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We now go to the Chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee, Jeremy Hunt.
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con) [V]
I congratulate the Minister on getting this programme off to a flying start: to vaccinate 2 million people, including a third of over-80s, six weeks after the first dose was approved is an extraordinary achievement unmatched by any similar country. May I ask him about the speed of the roll-out? Many people want teachers to be jabbed as quickly as possible, but is it the case that all those in groups 1 to 4 will need their second jabs before we can make real inroads into other key groups? And will he publish the breakdown of numbers vaccinated not just by region but by local authority area, because a lot of people would like to know just how many people have been vaccinated in their local area?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s compliment and this is only the start. I hope that, as we progress in the weeks and months to come, the focus and the rate of output will continue to rise.
My right hon. Friend raises an important point around the critical workforce for the economy, like teachers. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation looked at all these issues and has come out very clearly in favour of us vaccinating the nine cohorts that are most vulnerable to dying from covid-19, hence why that is absolutely our focus.
We are absolutely committed to making sure that people get two doses, so if they have received their Pfizer first dose, they will get their Pfizer second dose within 12 weeks of the first dose. Similarly, if they have had their AstraZeneca first dose, they will get their AstraZeneca second dose within 12 weeks. So those people whom we will begin to reach in March, where we have to deliver their second dose, will absolutely get their second dose. But to my right hon. Friend’s point, the more vaccine volumes that will come, and we have tens of millions that will come through beyond February and into March, the faster we can begin to protect those nine categories in phase 1. The moment we have done that, then it is absolutely right that we should begin to look at categories like teachers and police officers—those who may be exposed in their workplace to the risks of this virus.
Of course, it is worth reminding the House that it is two weeks after the first dose, and three weeks after the first dose with AstraZeneca, that people begin to get that protection, not the moment they are jabbed, so there is that lag time as well. But my right hon. Friend’s point is well made: we need to make sure, as we protect greater and greater numbers of people in those nine categories, that we then move very quickly to the next dose.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP) [V]
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation was very clear that those who live in care homes were the top priority for vaccination against covid-19. Due to integration of health and social care, Scottish health boards were able to deliver the Pfizer vaccine into care homes in December, and well over 70% of such residents have already been vaccinated across Scotland. In my own health board, the phase is almost complete. So can the Minister explain why in England care home residents were not the first cohort to receive the Pfizer vaccine in December, and as only a quarter have received their first dose, when does he expect all such residents to have been vaccinated?
People over 80 years are now being offered vaccination, but there are only 1,200 sites to cover the whole of England—a similar number to Scotland, which has less than 10% of the population. This means elderly people are being asked to travel long distances, despite their age and the fact that many will be also shielding. As the letter does not offer the option to wait and have their vaccine at a local GP surgery, does the Minister recognise that many are now feeling pressurised into travelling, despite the current dangers? So will he take this opportunity to clarify that the vaccines will gradually be made available through all GP surgeries and that elderly patients who cannot travel long distances will be offered a further opportunity closer to home?
The Minister will be well aware of the public concern about the decision to delay the second dose of each vaccine so as to ensure more people receive the first dose more quickly. With the current surge in covid cases, I totally understand the rationale for this approach. So can he explain why there have been more than 300,000 additional second doses given over the last week, despite the JCVI announcement on 31 December, and can he guarantee that sufficient quantities of the Pfizer vaccine will be available by the end of February to ensure those given their first dose in early December will receive their booster on time?
Nadhim Zahawi
There is a lot to unpack there; let me try to take the points in reverse. We can guarantee that those who have had their Pfizer vaccine will get their booster within the prescribed period of up to 12 weeks. The hon. Lady asked about those who have had a second jab already. Information went out to primary care networks and hospital hubs, saying that those who have an appointment up to 4 January should be able to have their appointment honoured. Beyond that, they have been working very closely with the NHS England team centrally, which we have been supporting with resources and actually phoning to postpone those appointments further; hence why we have protected many more people.
It is worth reminding the House that for every 250 people from the most vulnerable cohorts that we protect, we save a life. For every 20 people in care homes that we vaccinate, we save a life. The focus is therefore now very much on care homes. We began with the Pfizer vaccine into care homes. Of course, last week—on 4 January—we started to roll out the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is much easier to administer into care homes, especially for the roving teams. It had to spend two days in hospitals before it was released to primary care networks, but the moment it was released, it went into care homes and now some areas in England. We have about 10,000 care homes where we have to vaccinate residents and, of course, those who look after them. Some have done their care homes already; others are beginning to do the same thing. All will be done by the end of the month.
The hon. Lady talked about people having to travel long distances. I mentioned in my opening statement about the strategy that there will be 2,700 vaccination sites. I think she may have been confused about the figure of 1,200, which is the number of primary care networks, hospital hubs and large vaccination centres, but there will be 2,700 vaccination sites. By the end of the month, no one will be more than 10 miles away from a vaccination site.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the Minister for being so assiduous in giving very thorough answers to the long and complicated series of questions that have already been put to him, but I must say to the House that we now have half an hour more for the rest of this statement, so I insist on having questions, not statements, from everyone. I specifically mention this to people who are coming in virtually, because they seem to lose a sense of timing when they are not here in the Chamber. A question means a question—just one question. I say to the Minister, who has been most assiduous, that where he has already given an answer to the question, I will not insist that he has to give the answer again because the person who is now asking it has not listened to his first answer.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I will be as quick as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Some of my Beckenham constituents have contacted me to say that they think they should have had the vaccination already; two of them are in their 90s, so I am slightly alarmed. I am told that GPs are not necessarily the people to go to in order to ask what is happening, so I wonder who my constituents and I should go to when the system—inadvertently, perhaps—does not actually give out an appointment that it might have done.
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend’s constituents will be contacted, either by their primary care network or by letter from the national booking service. They do not have to go to the national vaccination centre if that is inconvenient; they will be able to get their vaccination through their primary care network or the hospital hubs. I am very happy to take those particular two cases offline, look into them and give him some more details.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I would like to dig a bit deeper into the supply question. I had the privilege of visiting a GP surgery in my constituency on Friday, where I was told by the doctor in charge that they cannot book the next set of appointments because they do not know when they will get the next delivery of the vaccine. I have heard from other centres that they are not allowed to move on to the next cohort when they finish the under-80s, in order to ensure that there is equity across the country. The Minister has said that we cannot have 24/7 vaccinations because of supply. Is the supply issue the rate at which the product is being manufactured, the rate at which it is being packaged, the rate at which it is being batch tested, or the rate at which it is being distributed around the country?
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady asks an important question. In any manufacturing process—especially a new one—it is always lumpier at the beginning, and there are more challenges. There are a number of tests done by both the manufacturer and the regulator; the batch testing at the end of the process is done by the regulator, to make sure that the batches meet the very high standards that we have in the United Kingdom. That will begin to become much smoother and stabilise, and we have a clear line of sight through to the end of February, hence why we are confident that we can meet the target of offering a vaccine to the top four most vulnerable cohorts on the list of nine from the JCVI by the middle of February.
We thank the hon. Lady’s local GPs, but it is important for them to remember that the central team that is doing the distribution is running at about 98.5% accuracy at the moment, which means that 1.5% of deliveries are not as we would like them to be. We will get better at that. As Brigadier Prosser said, this is like standing up a supermarket chain in a month and then growing it by 20% every couple of weeks. It will get better. The focus of the central team is to try to give primary care networks —GPs like hers—as much time and notice as possible, so that they can plan ahead and get the four cohorts in for their jabs. It is always difficult at the outset, but it gets better by the day and will do in the weeks ahead.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
Would the Minister like to join me in thanking NHS staff in Telford and Wrekin and Shropshire for having vaccinated more than 15,000 people already? Could he also reassure my constituents who have received a letter from NHS England inviting them to have a vaccination in Birmingham or even Manchester—an hour and 45 minutes away—that if they wait just a few more days, they can choose, if they wish, to have a vaccination very locally?
Nadhim Zahawi
I absolutely join my hon. Friend in congratulating and thanking the heroes of the NHS and the volunteers in Telford and Wrekin and Shropshire for vaccinating 15,000 people—15,000 of the most vulnerable people to covid who, in a couple of weeks’ time, will have that protection. He is right, I can confirm, that anyone receiving a letter where it is inappropriate or not possible for them to travel that distance to a national vaccination centre does not have to do so. They will be able to be vaccinated in their primary care network at a time and place that is convenient to them. With the national vaccination centres—seven went live today, and there will be more next week, more the week after and 50 in total by the end of the month—we are trying to effectively add to the throughput that I described earlier.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I have some good news: my mother, who is 89 years young, had her vaccine at 9.40 this morning, so it is a happy day—I was going to sing it, but then it would start to rain, so it is not a good idea. What system is in place to ensure that if someone does not turn up for their vaccine, not one slot or vaccine goes to waste, and that a secondary list is immediately available with staff to substitute? At Dundonald hospital in Northern Ireland over the weekend, some people did not turn up, but they were able to call upon the midwives team to come forward. What policy is in place to make sure that the vaccine is not lost for use?
Nadhim Zahawi
The people of Strangford will be pleased to hear that the hon. Member’s mother has got her first a dose of the vaccine. This is an important message to send to the whole country: if you are called up and have an appointment to get the vaccine, please turn up. This vaccine can protect your life. It can protect somebody else’s life. It is a shame to not turn up if you have booked an appointment. The NHS in England has made sure that the hospital hubs and primary care networks that have been vaccinating, and now the national vaccination centres, have on speed dial the care home workers and those on the frontline of the battle against covid who are in the JCVI’s top four cohorts, so that they can get them in as quickly as possible and not a single dose is wasted.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con) [V]
I thank my hon. Friend for his incredible tenacity on such an important project. Our local vaccine centre in Basingstoke serves six primary care networks across Hampshire, and under his plan, 20,000 over-75s should receive their first vaccination at this hub from our army of volunteers and local NHS staff in the next 35 days. Can my hon. Friend say how the large difference in patient numbers at each hub is factored in when vaccine supplies are dispatched? I reiterate the need for clinical commissioning group-level data to monitor progress. Can he more urgently reconsider the priority given to teachers, please?
Nadhim Zahawi
I think I dealt with the question of teachers earlier, which is incredibly important. Phase one is to focus on those who are most vulnerable to dying from this disease. As soon as we get through that to phase two, teachers and other frontline services, including police officers and others, will be absolutely uppermost in our minds and those of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which helps us with that prioritisation.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the issue of vaccine supply, and I know that her local vaccination service has done a tremendous job. There was a slight hiccup, if I can describe it as that, in making sure that they were recognised as six primary networks in the system. We rectified that, and I assure her that the volumes, certainly those of which I have line of sight, will mean that the service will receive plenty of vaccines to hit that target by mid-February of offering the top four cohorts the opportunity of the vaccine.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
As of Friday, the staff in care homes in Walthamstow that serve a smaller community—those with fewer than 20 beds—tell me that not a single patient has had the vaccine or an invitation to get the vaccine. The Minister will be aware that the residents are very aware that they were promised the vaccine originally would come to them by the end of December. They feel like they are sitting ducks. With less than three weeks of January left, will the Minister pledge that all the residents in smaller care homes will at least get an invitation within the next week, so that they know when they will get the vaccine?
Nadhim Zahawi
I think I shared the statistic with the House earlier that for every 20 residents of care homes that we vaccinate, we save a life. They are absolutely our priority. I give the hon. Lady this pledge: we will vaccinate or offer to vaccinate all residents of care homes by the end of the month. There are 10,000 care homes in England. Some areas of the country have already vaccinated all their care home residents. Others are beginning to. We will make sure that residents of care homes will by the end of this month be offered the opportunity of a vaccine.
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con) [V]
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the start to the vaccination programme. Local health leaders in Oxfordshire have made a great start, too, but they report a worrying trend of those from ethnic minorities not taking up the vaccine at the same rate as other groups. Can my hon. Friend set out his strategy to make sure that all our constituents take up this vital vaccine?
Nadhim Zahawi
Information, information, information. I am working across Government to make sure that we communicate the benefits, both in terms of protecting the individual, but also in protecting the communities people come from. Working with black, Asian and minority ethnic communities is incredibly important as part of the overall strategy to focus our attention to make sure all those communities come forward, especially those who work in our care homes and care for residents. Many of those workers are from BAME communities. The more that they see people like themselves taking the vaccine and getting protected, the more effective our strategy is to deliver that protection to those communities.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab) [V]
Following on very closely from the previous question, does the Minister agree that one of the key ways in which we can counter some of the very virulent anti-vax and covid denial messages on social media, which are impacting particularly in some communities, needs to be through not just a myth-busting approach, but through peer-to-peer positive example messaging within local communities—within faith groups, between neighbours and in local social media networks? Can he make sure that he advises local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and others to promote examples of where people have had the vaccine, so that they can be shared to counter some of those more damaging messages?
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady makes a really important point. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who reached out to me with his concerns for his community. Sadly, I see among the community that my wife and I come from that there is a lot of disinformation, and not only on social media. There is the very clever and, I should say, evil use of platforms such as WhatsApp to share videos that scare people into not having the vaccine.
The hon. Lady is right that local government and local public health leaders have a central role to play. We are engaging with them and, of course, making sure that local leaders throughout the United Kingdom are telling the story. She is right that the most effective way is for people to see someone like them taking the vaccine and being protected. We are doing that as well.
Mrs Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con) [V]
I thank my hon. Friend for all his work in making sure that the vaccine gets to all parts of the UK. I ask him to look in particular at how the roll-out is being managed by the health services in South Derbyshire. Sadly, compared to our neighbours in Erewash and Burton, so far only a very limited number of people have been called to a local site run by our GPs in conjunction with the clinical commissioning group.
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend raises an important point. I commit to looking specifically at the point she raises. The NHS in England has done an incredible job, but of course some teams have outperformed others. We have to learn from the best and make sure we share that knowledge. If some teams need additional resource and help, we will do that. That is why we have the additional 80,000 people in the programme who are ready to help and ready to make sure we get the jabs into the arms of the most vulnerable people.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab) [V]
For parts of Lancashire, the closest mass vaccination centre is more than 60 miles away in Manchester. The Minister has said that there will be more mass vaccination centres, so can he reassure my constituents that we will get a centre on the Fylde coast and in north Lancashire?
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady is right to highlight the issue of distance. No one in her constituency or anywhere else in England will be more than 10 miles away from a vaccination site.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con) [V]
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), I am starting to get queries about vaccinations from elderly residents. I am sure that this will expand as the roll-out progresses and people could be missed. What facilities is his Department putting in place to answer questions quickly from very worried constituents?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend will know that I have engaged with colleagues to dig deep into the issues their constituents may have with the vaccination programme. I am very happy to look at any cases she has. Through the combination of standing up hospitals, the primary care networks supported by community pharmacies and now the national vaccination centres, all residents within the four cohorts should be captured by the primary care services that know their communities really well. In case they are not, we are also engaging heavily with local government. One of the lessons of test and trace is to ensure that we engage with local government, because it knows its residents really well.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP) [V]
Before the recent spending review, the SNP called for an uplift in the NHS in England to bring per capita spending in line with Scotland, and thus provide billions to support the roll-out of the vaccine and build up capacity. The Treasury announced less than a third of what we had asked for. Does the Minister expect NHS England to be able to keep up with the vaccination demand, despite this lack of investment?
Nadhim Zahawi
The head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, was before the Public Accounts Committee today and I am sure that the hon. Lady will look at his answers. Suffice it to say that the Chancellor has made £6 billion available for the NHS family to make sure we deliver and deploy as fast as we can to the most vulnerable cohorts in our country.
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con) [V]
The national roll-out is undoubtedly extremely impressive, but unfortunately the benefits are not yet being felt in Aylesbury. Residents are increasingly concerned that they have been left behind, and it has been extraordinarily difficult for Buckinghamshire’s MPs and council to get definite information about where and when vaccines will be available. Can my hon. Friend therefore confirm that vaccines will start to be available in Aylesbury in days rather than weeks?
Nadhim Zahawi
Absolutely. We must ensure that his residents are within 10 miles of a vaccination site at the end of this month and as early as possible to get vaccinating. He is a great champion of his constituents, and I am happy to look at any specifics he may have, take those offline and come back to him.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab) [V]
The vaccination centre in Chesterfield—the largest town in Derbyshire—is opening only on Wednesday. It is clear from recent conversations with Derby and Derbyshire clinical commissioning group that we are not on target to have all vulnerable groups done by 15 February, and there is no centre at all in Staveley. What will happen between now and 15 February to get us from the current position to achieving the target the Minister has set, which we all so desperately want him to achieve? Will he also ensure that there is a centre in Staveley?
Nadhim Zahawi
It is great to see the hon. Member looking fit and well; I wish him all the very best. He is right to say that we must ensure that every part of the country meets that target, offering those four cohorts the opportunity of a vaccine. We are looking to ensure that we publish more granular data—regional data—so that we can see which areas are not keeping up the pace and therefore direct resources to them, so that by mid-February they have made that offer.
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con) [V]
I thank my hon. Friend for his statement and for his hard work on vaccine deployment. Many of my constituents have raised their concerns over the speed of vaccination roll-out in north Wales. Will he confirm the quantity of vaccine delivered to Wales so far? Will he also undertake to publish regular updates on the delivery of future batches so that it can be clear where bottlenecks in the roll-out are occurring?
Nadhim Zahawi
We work closely with the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Governments on the programme and ensure that we deliver the vaccine volumes to them. Although we do not publish the exact quantities of vaccine for a variety of reasons—including that the whole world is looking to get more volume of vaccines and we do not want to disadvantage ourselves in any way commercially—I reassure my hon. Friend that all the devolved Administrations will have enough to be able to offer those four JCVI cohorts the opportunity to be vaccinated and protected by mid-February, at least with a first dose.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
Teachers in Vauxhall are working tirelessly to manage the delivery of classrooms online as well as teaching the most vulnerable key worker children in our schools. The Minister highlighted earlier that he will prioritise those most likely to die and that he will keep teachers at the forefront of his mind. Can I please ask him why teachers and school staff on the frontline of the pandemic are not being protected? What is the timeline for getting them vaccinated?
Nadhim Zahawi
I thank all the teachers in Vauxhall and the rest of the country for the work they are doing on online education as well as teaching children from the most vulnerable families and the children of our NHS and social care staff on the frontline. The hon. Member is right to highlight the issue. Some teachers—those who are clinically vulnerable, for example—will be captured in the nine cohorts set out for us by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, as will those in the right age groups in categories one to nine. I give her the commitment that as soon as we are through phase one, the priority absolutely will be to ensure that those who are critical to the functioning of the future of our country—the future generations to come—are prioritised.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con) [V]
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his excellent start. In Newbury, we are due to receive our first doses later this week. The issue is one of information. All my constituents want to know is when the doses will be received and when their loved ones can expect to be contacted. May I invite my hon. Friend to work with NHS England to ensure that timely local information is made readily available going forward?
Nadhim Zahawi
I absolutely share my hon. Friend’s concern. I give her that commitment. The team at NHS England is working and focusing on giving as much time and notice as possible to primary care and hospitals on when they get deliveries, so they can make those appointments and keep vaccinating those who are most vulnerable. That is exactly its priority at the moment.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) [V]
Throughout the pandemic, community pharmacies have never closed—they really have been some of our unsung heroes. The Shields Gazette, my local paper, has launched its “Shot in the Arm” campaign. We want to know why the Minister will not allow all those experienced and dedicated community pharmacies to deliver the vaccine.
Nadhim Zahawi
First of all, with respect, that is inaccurate. Community pharmacies are already part of the primary care networks that are delivering the vaccines. I have also made very clear in the strategy that there will be 200 community and independent pharmacies as part of the vaccination programme in phase one, where we need that volume and throughput. The community pharmacies that can do 1,000 vaccinations a week are very much part of the programme and we thank them for that. As we get to the next stage, where we have vaccines in limitless volumes, it is about convenience and ramping up the number of community pharmacies that can also join in the fight against covid.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con) [V]
I congratulate my hon. Friend on a remarkable start. I can confirm that in Calderdale we have already vaccinated more than 50% of the over-80s. Can I just press him on communication channels with patients and the vaccination process? We see GP surgeries giving out very little information. We have already heard about letters going out for the larger hubs, but people just do not understand what the process is. Could he work with GP surgeries and others, so that the general population can understand the process?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who always asks very important practical questions. He is absolutely right to say that it has been challenging. Part of the challenge, which I think we have addressed today, is the amount of notice primary care networks and GPs have of a delivery. That will only get better as we stabilise deliveries to the warehouses and are then able to take them out into the primary care networks and hospitals. I will of course work with primary care networks and the whole of the NHS family to make sure our communications get better and better.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) [V]
In Salford, we receive little or no notice that a delivery of the vaccine from the Government is due. Some batches have not turned up at all. When they do arrive, we act quickly. It was therefore staggering when, late last night, our clinical commissioning group was instructed to cancel 924 pre-existing second dose Pfizer appointments, with little time to book new appointments before the batch expires at midday on Wednesday. Will the Minister now allow local CCGs to plan and order their own vaccine batches? Can he assure those whose time before their second Pfizer dose has been elongated that they will be 70% to 90% protected for up to 12 weeks?
Nadhim Zahawi
I shall take the hon. Lady’s questions in reverse. The four chief medical officers have looked at the issue of the up-to-12-week dosing and all agree that it is the right thing to do. I apologise to the people Salford for that cancellation, if that is what happened yesterday. We have touched on this, but part of the issue has been the lumpiness in the deliveries in the early days, which will begin to become much smoother. The NHS central team, with Brigadier Prosser and the 101 Logistic Brigade, are absolutely focused on making sure that we give as much notice as possible to primary care networks so that they can plan ahead, and that will only get better and better as we smooth out the delivery process from manufacturer into warehouse.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
The local NHS is doing a fantastic job of rolling out the vaccine to priority groups in Burney and Padiham, but some residents have contacted me because they are confused about what process they need to follow, so will my hon. Friend set out whether residents need to contact the national booking centre or are better to wait for their GP to contact them?
Nadhim Zahawi
If people receive a letter from the national booking centre and it is more convenient for them to take up that appointment than to call and make an appointment, they should get their vaccination done through the national booking centre. If that is inconvenient, they can absolutely wait and the primary care network will contact them and give them an appointment to make sure that they are vaccinated. Our absolute pledge is to make sure that the four categories that are most vulnerable to coronavirus are offered a vaccine by mid-February.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP) [V]
In Scotland, care home residents have been tackled quicker than those in England, overall coverage in Scotland is similar to that in England, and pro rata Scotland has way more vaccination sites, yet the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has caused concern by stating that the Scottish Government are somehow sitting on supplies, and he did that by comparing coverage to actual allocation. As we tackle fake news, does the Minister agree that it is irresponsible to play politics with fudged figures on such an important subject?
Nadhim Zahawi
Scottish care homes tend to be much larger in profile than the 10,000 homes in England. We are very much focused on making sure that we vaccinate all care home residents by the end of January. We are working with the four CMOs, who are working very closely together, to make sure that that particular cohort is protected. As I mentioned earlier, if we protect 20 residents, we save a life, and that is what we do.
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)
We should rightfully be proud of the huge national effort that is taking place to vaccinate the British people against covid. We have seen the incredible speed and efficiency of Israel’s vaccination drive, which is on track to vaccinate all over-16s by the end of March, so what discussions has my hon. Friend had with his Israeli counterpart about replicating Israel’s success, particularly in the areas of digitisation and accessibility?
Nadhim Zahawi
I commend the Israeli Government and health service for a stellar job in vaccinating their most vulnerable communities. We have a lot to learn from other countries, including the throughput—the speed at which they manage to vaccinate—which is something from which we can all learn so that we can improve our output. NHS England and the teams on the frontline have been doing a tremendous job and is worth us all thinking about that: we stand on the shoulders of real heroes.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We are way over time, so I am going to take only four more questions and I would be grateful if they could be swift.
Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con) [V]
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress made so far, but ask him for some reassurance about those whose appointments have been cancelled due to the vaccine unexpectedly not being available. Will he confirm that they will not be forgotten about, that they will not lose their place in the queue and that they will be reached swiftly?
Nadhim Zahawi
My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. I can give him the reassurance that anyone who has had their appointment cancelled will get that appointment reinstated and will get their vaccine. Our absolute commitment is to make sure that those four most vulnerable cohorts have the offer of a vaccine by the middle of February.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab) [V]
I heard the Minister’s earlier comments about vaccinations for teachers and school support staff, but what about the position of special schools? Should their staff, who work with profoundly disabled young people, including those with serious neuro-disabilities, and who provide personal and intimate care, not be treated in the same way as frontline social care workers?
Nadhim Zahawi
The Lady is absolutely right to highlight that cohort, some of whom will be picked up in category 4 and some of whom will be picked up in category 6—this will include the people who look after them.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con) [V]
Vaccinating those in care homes will ensure that some of society’s most vulnerable are protected against this awful virus. However, many people receive care at home, so does my hon. Friend agree that they should be treated in the same way as those in care homes, as they have no option but to interact with many different people?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the primary care networks are best suited to focusing on that and delivering that vaccination, which will protect those who are most vulnerable from dying from covid-19.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
All credit and our great thanks to the vaccine taskforce and to our scientists, who have been brilliant in developing the vaccine. In our history, it has often been production engineering that has let us down, so may we have some figures? How many doses are produced each day? What is our manufacturing capacity? Are there any hold-ups or capacity problems in testing the batches? How many doses are being filled in the vials each day? Again, what is the maximum capacity?
Nadhim Zahawi
It is not our capacity, but the manufacturers’; AstraZeneca produces the Oxford vaccine, and Pfizer-BioNTech produce their vaccine, and Moderna’s is now also approved and in process. There are a number of processes throughout the manufacturing process. When we go from the bulk vaccine into fill and finish, there is a period of time and a sterility test the vaccines have to go through. Then there is batch testing by both the manufacturer and the regulator. All of that gets better and better every single day. It is a new manufacturing process. Oxford-AstraZeneca are delivering 100 million vaccines, which is what we have bought from them, and we have bought 40 million from Pfizer. We will have millions of vaccines in the weeks and months to come. We will meet our target of mid February for delivering the opportunity of a vaccine to the four cohorts most vulnerable to covid.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the Minister. I am sorry to the nine colleagues who have not been called to ask their questions. I hope they will encourage their colleagues to ask shorter questions in future, because that is how we will manage to be fairer in getting more people in.
Points of Order
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster indicated in a television interview at the weekend that the problems at our ports are going to get worse before they get better. The protocol, which my party warned about repeatedly and consistently since its inception, has caused problems, with food supplies not reaching supermarket shelves in Northern Ireland from Great Britain. If the problems are going to get worse, as hauliers have indicated that they are in the next few days, has the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster indicated his intention to come before the House to spell out what he intends to do either to invoke article 16 or to take decisive action that will ensure the seamless and unfettered distribution of food from GB to the shelves of supermarkets in Northern Ireland?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for having given me notice of his intention to raise this matter. The direct answer to his question, as far as the Chair is concerned, is that Mr Speaker has not been given any notice of any intention of the Minister to make a statement tomorrow, although there are of course other ways in which the hon. Gentleman can try to require the presence of the Minister here in the Chamber to answer his point.
Under these unusual arrangements, I will take a point of order from Hilary Benn.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab) [V]
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union will cease to exist in five days’ time. On 10 December I wrote to the Leader of the House to ask for more time to allow us to complete our work so that we could scrutinise the trade and co-operation agreement that was eventually reached with the EU on Christmas eve. The Leader of the House replied on 6 January to decline the request. I then wrote to him the following day to ask him to reconsider in the light of the fact that we have asked Lord Frost and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to give evidence to the Select Committee on the agreement, but neither of them is available this week.
This means that the Committee that was set up specifically to examine matters relating to the negotiations on the future relationship with the European Union will now be prevented from taking evidence from the person who negotiated the agreement and from reporting fully to the House on its implications. As this is, to put it mildly, highly unsatisfactory, has the Leader of the House given any indication to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that he intends to change his mind and move a Standing Order accordingly so that we can take evidence from Lord Frost and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. In answer to his specific question, I can confirm, he will be disappointed to know, that Mr Speaker has not had any representations such as he describes from the Leader of the House on that matter. I can understand the right hon. Gentleman’s consternation at the situation as regards the Committee that he chaired. The fact is that the order establishing the Committee on 16 January last year had effect for 12 months, and therefore, in the absence of any further decision of the House, the Committee’s activities will indeed cease this week. I am sure that hon. Members will want to join me in thanking the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues on the Committee for their work as it, clearly sadly in his eyes, draws to an end.
Of course, as the right hon. Gentleman points out, it is important for the effective functioning of Select Committees that Ministers and officials respond constructively to reasonable requests for them to give evidence. I am sure that Ministers will have heard the points made by the right hon. Gentleman and that they will respond appropriately to future requests from any Select Committee examining the implications of the UK’s trade and co-operation agreement with the EU and other aspects of the ongoing relationship between the UK and the EU. But I do appreciate that what I have been able to say is of no comfort whatsoever to the right hon. Gentleman.
I would normally have a short suspension of the House at this point, but having taken points of order, I observe that the personnel in the Chamber have already changed, and therefore we will waste no further time, as we are certainly up against the clock in the next important debate.
Global Britain
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Trade (Elizabeth Truss)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Global Britain.
I am delighted to open this debate on global Britain when, for the first time in 48 years, we now have full control of our trade policy. Back in 1846, Richard Cobden inspired people in Manchester with his belief that free trade would be
“the greatest revolution that ever happened in the world’s history…drawing men together, thrusting aside…antagonism…and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace.”
That revolution continues today, as for the first time in nearly half a century we are a sovereign trading nation free to pursue British interests while promoting British values. Our newly independent trade policy will create jobs, grow our slice of the global pie, and unlock great swathes of the world to the best of Britain.
As we recover from covid-19, we need to think radically about how we generate economic growth and how we are going to use our new global platform in 2021 to promote free and fair trade—how we are going to take on those countries that try to cheat and to undermine free enterprise. In 2020, we negotiated trade agreements covering 63 nations and the European Union, and in 2021 we will use this year, including our presidency of the G7, to champion free and fair trade in an era rife with pernicious practices. We will promote modern rules that are relevant to people’s lives for digital and data trade. We will champion high environmental and animal welfare standards in a science-led approach, and we will push for modernisation of the World Trade Organisation and trade agreements to reflect our values of free enterprise and fair play. We will also build an advanced network of trade deals, from the Americas to the Indo-Pacific, with the UK at its heart as a global services and technology hub. We have already reached deals covering 63% of UK trade, well on our way to our manifesto target of 80% in three years. We want to hit that target and to deepen our existing relationships in areas such as services and technology.
Exports are equivalent to nearly a third of our national income. Trade equals jobs. A job means independence and security, the realisation of our dreams, funding public services and the future prospects of our country. The deals we have done with the EU and our partners across the world, from South Africa to South Korea, mean that our traders continue to enjoy preferential access to world markets.
We have secured arrangements with Turkey that mean that Ford in Dagenham can continue to export its engines tariff-free. We have secured access to the Canadian market for our beef producers, such as the Foyle Food Group in Northern Ireland. We have secured tariff-free access into Mexico for our car exporters such as Jaguar Land Rover, while Scotch whisky—one of our biggest exports—continues to enter markets such as Singapore tariff-free and stays recognised.
All in all, this adds up to £885 billion of trade that we have secured. In addition, we have been able to go further and faster in our deal with Japan, protecting the free flow of data, which benefits industries such as FinTech and computer gaming, regulatory dialogue on financial services and improved mobility provisions, including allowing spouses to travel with businesspeople. We have secured additional protections for our fantastic creative industries, from music to TV, and recognition for geographical indications across the UK, from Welsh lamb to Scotch beef, from Armagh Bramley apples to English sparkling wine, subject to Japanese domestic processes.
This platform allows us to step up this year to show our full potential as president of the G7 and as an independent trading nation. At the G7, we will work to reform the World Trade Organisation, make progress on data and digital trade and promote greener trade. Our new UK global tariff will see around 57% of our imports entering our market tariff-free—more than the 44% that we had under the EU.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful start to promoting global Britain. She speaks of the G7 and the opportunity for us to make our mark in the world. Does she believe that now is the right time to move from the G7 to the G10, and to include Korea, India, and Australia? That would represent over half the world’s GDP in order for us to start looking at the challenges that we face of updating the United Nations, NATO and the WTO, and to make sure that we are in a position to offer a counterweight to China.
Elizabeth Truss
My right hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. Allies such as Australia, South Korea and India will be key to forging that group of democratic nations who can stand up for democracy, human rights and fair and free trade, and, of course, we are very committed to working with them this year.
Our new global tariff, as I said, will eliminate tariffs on more than 57% of imports. In particular, it will eliminate tariffs on 100 environmental goods. In short, our new tariff regime is lower, simpler and greener.
Furthermore, we will be working with our friends and family across the world to drive forward free and fair trade, setting the global standard for trade in the 21st century. We are already in deep negotiations with the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and, this year, we will apply to one of the most dynamic trading areas on earth—the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Joining is part of our plan to grow our economy by making it far easier for British goods to reach our friends in Asia and the Americas. This high standards agreement would align the UK with some of the world’s fastest growing economies in a free trade area covering nearly £9 trillion of GDP. We will also deepen our relationships with countries such as Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Israel. As well as this, we are working closely with India, the world’s largest democracy, on an enhanced trade partnership, reflecting our mutual interest in technology and innovation. We are also in talks with Brazil and our allies in the Gulf.
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)
While we are talking about the real opportunities for growing Britain’s trade power across the globe and while my right hon. Friend has touched on the aspect of Israel and the Gulf, let me say that we have rightfully been world leaders in soft power and aid during many generations and this should continue, but that we also need to lead in terms of diplomacy. Will she look at taking this back to the Cabinet to consider what we can be doing to expand the Abraham accords to bring not only peace to the middle east, but further trade and aid to that location as well?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is right that trade is the key not just to prosperity, but to peace and co-operation between nations. I want to reassure the House that we will ensure that no country is left behind without the benefits of free and fair trade with the United Kingdom. Later this year, we will be launching an emerging markets trade scheme, which will offer the lowest-income countries a better deal when they are trading with the UK. It will be more generous than the EU scheme and it will help those countries on to the ladder towards prosperity through the enterprise and ingenuity of their people.
We want to encourage British businesses to take advantage of all the opportunities that we have either negotiated or are negotiating. Therefore, we will be loudly and proudly championing exports in key industries from food and drink to services in technology trade. We have a network of trade advisers across the country ready to help our businesses go global and they can be proud to put the Union Jack on their pack, which is one of the most recognised symbols in the world. With our great campaign, we are showing partners worldwide that Britain is ready to trade. In December, the Prime Minister launched our new Office for Investment under the leadership of Lord Grimstone. It will work tirelessly to secure investment in every nation and region across Britain, backing jobs and livelihoods. More than 56,000 new jobs were created last year through foreign investment in the UK, with a further 9,000 others secured. We will also be founding our first new free ports, which will drive enterprising growth in port cities and towns across the country as we turbo-charge trade across the world.
Of course, many are sceptical about globalisation and the benefits of trade. One reason why they are sceptical is that too many unfair practices and cheating have been allowed to undermine real free trade. That is why we are establishing the Trade Remedies Authority, headed by Oliver Griffiths, to protect UK industries from unfair practices. It is not right, for example, that ceramics manufacturers in Stoke-on-Trent can be undercut by goods subsidised by state-owned enterprises, that our innovators can have the fruits of their work taken under forced technology transfer, and that goods can come into this country that have been produced through forced labour in abhorrent conditions. That is why we are pushing the World Trade Organisation for greater transparency and reform of the rules, and by joining CPTPP, with its ambitious digital and data provisions and clear rules, we will pile further pressure on the WTO to reform.
As an independent trading nation, we are setting our own path and rejecting the twin errors of values-free globalisation and protectionism.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
One thing that incentivises and encourages younger people in our country is their determination to help third world countries that are not as well off as we are. The spending of the Department for International Development has historically been very important, but I very much hope that the Minister will start to explain to the electorate the huge advantages that third world countries will now have as a result of our lowering tariffs on the sort of products that we cannot produce here in the United Kingdom.
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is right that, of course, the UK global tariff has lower import tariffs than the common external tariff of the EU, but we are going to go even further than that with our new emerging markets trade scheme, which will offer more preferential rates for the lowest-income countries in the world to help their populations trade their way out of poverty, and I agree with him that that is a really important way in which we can bring more prosperity to the world.
As I was saying, we now have the opportunity to set our own path by rejecting the twin errors of values-free globalisation and protectionism. Instead, as the United Kingdom, we are rooting our approach in the fundamental values of sovereignty, democracy, the rule of law and a fierce commitment to high standards. That is why we are bringing together a coalition of like-minded nations to advance high standards worldwide—from food and animal welfare to the environment and data. With fellow democracies such as Japan and Canada, we are championing innovation, a cleaner planet, women’s economic empowerment and much more. We have demonstrated this through the fantastic deal we have struck with the EU to ensure we can keep trading freely with zero tariffs and zero quotas, alongside deals covering 63 countries. No other nation has ever negotiated so many trade deals simultaneously, and I am proud of the results we have achieved.
At this tough time, we need to embrace our future as a confident, optimistic and outward-looking global Britain, delivering jobs and prosperity at home while helping lead the fight for free and fair trade abroad. My hope is that all sides of this House can join me in celebrating how far we have come and the huge opportunity we have in 2021, striking deal after deal with our friends and family worldwide to support our values and full economic potential. This is global Britain in action.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Before I call Emily Thornberry, I would like to indicate that all Back-Bench contributions will have a time limit of three minutes.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Let me thank the Secretary of State for holding this debate, albeit in the very strange circumstances we find ourselves in today. I said many months ago, when I came into this role, how important it was that we should have an open debate in Parliament and with the public about the challenges and opportunities that we will face after Brexit as an independent trading nation. Now, as 2020 is finally skulking away, those challenges and opportunities are upon us, and today’s debate is, if anything, long overdue, but no less welcome for that.
However, I think it would be remiss of me, as I think it was remiss of the Secretary of State, not to start by acknowledging the severe and rising problems affecting businesses engaged in trade across the channel and the Irish sea today. Trade that flowed freely just a few weeks ago is now grinding to a halt because of the barriers and bureaucracy that the realities of Brexit require. Let me be clear: those problems are always to some extent inevitable—they could only have been mitigated, not avoided entirely, by the adoption of a different approach to our deal with the EU—but three things that were not inevitable, and indeed were totally avoidable, are the lack of time that businesses had to prepare, the lack of support that they have been given to prepare and the lack of help available to them now. I recognise that not all of that is down to the Department for International Trade, but I do have three questions that I hope the Minister of State will be able to address later.
First, I asked the Secretary of State seven weeks ago if she would establish a dedicated helpline for companies facing problems with their exports after 1 January, and I was told in response that the Department already had a dedicated helpline for trade-related queries, which is the one it shares with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. That is all very welcome, except that if any businesses had called that number this weekend to ask for help with their problems at Dover or Holyhead, the automated response would have told them that the office was closed and that they should ring back at 9 o’clock on Monday. I hate to break this to DIT Ministers, but the import-export trade does not operate on office hours. That is why round-the-clock support was needed, especially during the period of transition, adaptation and confusion. I could see the clear need for that seven weeks ago; it is extraordinary that the Government still cannot see it now.
That lack of foresight could be related to my second question, which falls squarely on the shoulders of the Secretary of State. Given all the problems that were inevitable on 1 January and the consultation and preparation that were required to mitigate those problems, does she regret her decision last July, which I warned her against at the time, to scrap the advisory groups her predecessor set up to deal with customs issues and continuity of trade post Brexit? Does she also regret her inexplicable decision to remove from the advisory group on transport issues the representatives of the Freight Transport Association, the Road Haulage Association and the British Ports Association? At exactly the time she should have been listening to the experts, she was shutting them out of the room.
Thirdly, and finally, on the current issues affecting EU trade, will the Minister of State tell us at the end of the debate who in the Government is now in charge of that brief? Is it still the Minister for the Cabinet Office, his colleague the Secretary of State, the new Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, or the Chancellor, given his responsibility for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs? Looking at the chaos our exporters are facing today. I think we can all agree that someone in government has to get a grip and it would help if we all knew who is supposed to be doing the gripping.
Speaking of getting a grip, I come to the flurry of continuity agreements secured by the Secretary of State in December. Welcome though they were, there is something strange about the process followed for those agreements in the past year. Whenever I asked why no progress was being made, why the agreements were taking so long and why no deals were signed in the first nine months of the year, I was repeatedly told that they were very difficult and detailed negotiations which we could not expect to be done quickly. But when we look at the final text that emerged in December of one agreement after another, we see that they are clause for clause, word for word, identical to the EU treaties that went before them, apart from the words “European Union” being replaced with “United Kingdom”. The question is, therefore, exactly what were they discussing all that time?
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
The right hon. Lady will remember from our discussions about this that they were continuity agreements, and although, understandably, many of the partners with which we were seeking agreements had the ambition to do more at that time, we were seeking continuity. We explained to them that we would do more in due course, but we needed continuity to protect the terms of trade as we left the European Union. As for why it took so long, many of our partners did not think that we were actually going to leave and realised only late in the day that they needed to sign the agreements with us to protect our mutual trading arrangements.
Emily Thornberry
I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, but it looks to me a bit like two people meeting to play chess and the two of them sitting there looking at the board, not moving the pieces, and eventually deciding to shake hands and declare a draw. The Secretary of State might say that that is what continuity agreements are and the Government just kept things as they were, but if that is her argument I do not understand why the deals were left until the last minute and why a number were not done at all. Most fundamentally, what is the point of being an independent trading nation, what is the point of choosing to negotiate our own trade agreements, if we are happy to just replicate every deal that was done years ago by the European Commission, rather than include any new provisions of our own?
Emily Thornberry
Let me make a little progress, then I will.
In many areas, the failure to make these deals is particularly stark, including the total lack of progress on any of the aspects of future job growth the Secretary of State highlighted in her speech, on just two of which I shall focus now. First, it is amazing and deeply disappointing that in the 30-plus continuity agreements secured by the Government over the past two years there is not one single new provision that strengthens the global fight against climate change—not even in the enhanced agreement with Japan. Secondly, it is not just a missed opportunity but a failed responsibility that there is no sign in any of the 30-plus agreements of the Government giving even the slightest consideration to human rights.
Egypt and Cameroon are by any standards among the most brutal regimes in the world today, yet the Government signed deals with both countries in December, with no apparent hesitation over their human rights records at all, and no apparent effort to strengthen human rights provisions in those agreements to gain some leverage over their behaviour. With Singapore, Vietnam and Turkey, the Government went one step further, signing new trade agreements which contain no substantive clauses on human rights at all, and not as much as a side-letter to address the issue. Is it any wonder that Members in the other place, with an increasing number in all parts of this House, believe that the only way to get Ministers to take human rights seriously when it comes to future trade deals is by obliging them to do so by law?
Emily Thornberry
I will take one more intervention and then I need to make some more progress.
Henry Smith
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. What is her view of the recent agreement struck between the EU and China when it comes to human rights?
Emily Thornberry
Given the time that I have available, although I would be happy to sit and—[Interruption.] No, no, I would seriously be very happy to sit and talk to the hon. Gentleman about this issue and about the issue of China, because it is a challenge for all of us to work out exactly what the right way of proceeding is, and we need to ensure that we listen carefully to the variety of views, and we need to ensure that we make progress together on this.
On the subject of amendments to the Trade Bill, we will also soon be considering proposals to ensure that Parliament is properly able to scrutinise, debate and approve new trade agreements before they become law, and if it was not already clear why those agreements are required then the absolute farce of the last few weeks surely makes that case. We saw 11 new trade agreements or memorandums of understanding take effect on 1 January: none of them have been debated or approved by this House; none of them have completed the ratification process; four of them were not even published until new year’s eve; and one of them, that with Cameroon, is still to be published. The whole process makes an absolute mockery of the current procedures for the scrutiny of trade deals, and when the Trade Bill comes back to this House, Ministers surely cannot tell their Back Benchers with a straight face that those procedures should stay as they are.
As I said earlier, if any of this was a case of incredibly detailed treaty negotiations coming down to the wire in an effort to get the final text right, we might all accept it. But then we might have come back with something more than this—the agreement with Mexico, just five pages long with an eight-page annexe; then they really would have no excuse. But then there is the unfortunate reality of the 30-plus continuity agreements signed by the Government these last two years: no ambition, no improvements, no action on the environment, no progress on workers’ rights, no consideration of human rights, no time for parliamentary scrutiny, and not a single benefit in terms of trade that we did not already have. So I am grateful to hear all the talk from the Secretary of State regarding the new trade deals which she aims to sign this year and next, and I am sure that this is the first of many debates that we will have on those prospective deals.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
Yet again the right hon. Lady is raising the issue of continuity agreements, but may I just gently say to her, echoing the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, that many countries were not willing to go beyond the continuity agreement until we had actually left the European Union? What was important for business was that word “continuity”—signing those agreements, so that at the point at which we left they could carry on trading on the basis on which they had been. Excellent work was done, not just in the past year but in the year or two beforehand by the previous Secretary of State for International Trade as well.
Emily Thornberry
I understand entirely what the right hon. Lady is saying. It is interesting, is it not, that half of the agreements were done in six months by the previous Secretary of State for International Trade, and the other half have been done over an extended period of time under the current Secretary of State? Indeed, many of these agreements, as the right hon. Lady has said, were done on the basis that the European Union deal was likely to be quite different from the one that we actually have now. That is one reason that we had this condition, yet we end up with cut-and-paste agreements coming down to the absolute wire at the end of last year, without our being able to do any scrutiny. As the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) has said, there are many issues that Members would want to raise and would want to have considered before we make any trade agreements, but as things stand, there is very little time for us to debate these matters.
Emily Thornberry
In the limited amount of time that I have left, I will not be taking any more interventions; let me just get to the end of my speech, because we already have only three minutes for each Back Bencher to make a speech in any event.
I would like to talk about the Secretary of State’s plan—as she has called it—on CPTPP, and to make a plea to her with regard to it. She has spoken many times about this matter. She talks as if the only issue to consider is whether we can persuade Japan, Australia and Canada to get on board, but I respectfully say to her that before she can win the argument for accession with them, she needs to start by making the case in Britain first. We have been through five years of division and debate in this country over leaving a trade bloc with our closest neighbours. Are we going to do that just in order to go and join another trade bloc on the other side of the world, simply because Tony Abbott thinks that it is a good idea? He might well be right—it may offer tremendous benefits for our country—but we cannot even start to judge until we know the terms on which we would join, and whether those terms are right for us.
There is a danger that the Government might even persuade themselves that this debate has already been had, thanks to the 14-week public consultation that was carried out back in 2018, but let me remind the Secretary of State of three things. First, only 81 business groups, non-governmental organisations and members of the public sat down and wrote formal responses to that consultation; in my book, that does not amount to proper engagement with stakeholders. Secondly, according to her Department’s own national survey conducted after that consultation, only 10% of the people of this country said that they knew what CPTPP was and supported joining it. That does not amount to a proper mandate in my book either. Thirdly, if she goes back to the consultation process responses, she will see that it is clear that many were based on very different assumptions about the outcome of our EU trade negotiations from the outcome that we have actually got. What is this about? In my view, it does not amount to a proper and reliable base of opinions.
For all those reasons, my plea to the Secretary of State today is for her to open up the consultation process again and to give business, unions, civil society and the public a chance to voice their opinions about whether joining CPTPP is the right next step based on where we are now and what we want to achieve as a country. The reason why that is crucial brings me back to what I said at the outset, about the chaos that is building at our ports and the crisis that is growing for our exporters. This is not a partisan statement; it is a simple statement of fact. We are going through all this pain because of a fervent belief on the Government Benches that the gains to be had from doing our own free trade deals with the rest of the world will eventually outweigh the losses from damaging our trading relationship with our nearest neighbours in Europe. That is the Government’s leap of faith. Even if I and many of my colleagues have fervently disagreed with that argument in recent years, we are now in a position where, for the good of our country and the communities we serve, we have to hope that we are proved wrong and that the Government are proved right—but, as things stand, that is not the case.
With every hour of delay that passes at Dover, every consignment that is turned away, and every product that is, after all, having to face tariffs because of rules of origin, British businesses are losing money. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, we have not gained one single penny in extra trade from the Government’s leap of faith: not one single agreement that we did not have before, and not one single export facing lower tariffs than it did in December. Indeed, as we heard the last time we were here, according to the Government’s own figures, our country is forecast to be worse off and to make lower exports thanks to the Secretary of State’s enhanced deal with Japan compared with the deal that we had before. So it is understandable—perhaps inevitable —that when the Government resume their talks with Australia, New Zealand and America; when they start their talks with India, Brazil and the Gulf states; when they try to turn 14 pages of cut and paste into proper treaties with Mexico, Turkey or Canada; and most of all, when they make their formal bid for accession to CPTPP, they will be desperate to do these new trade deals at any price, to make up for our losses with Europe.
But no matter how desperate the Government get, they should not be allowed to do these deals at any price. These deals must not come at the cost of domestic British jobs and business. They must not come at the cost of our farmers and our food standards. They must not come at the cost of our ability to protect the NHS from marketisation or put environmental protection before corporate profits. They must not come at the cost of our principles when it comes to human rights, democratic freedoms and the future of the planet. To guard against all those things, every one of us should make clear that they will not be allowed to come at the cost of proper scrutiny and debate by this House.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
I refer Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is absolutely right that trade brings prosperity and jobs, but global Britain is about much, much more than trade. It is about our shared values—our respect for human dignity, human rights, equality, the rule of law, freedom and democracy. It is about how we work with others who share those values to establish and maintain a rules-based international order that protects those values.
Sadly, what we saw last week in the United States shows us how fragile the value of democracy can be when it is under pressure from populism and nationalism, fuelled by messages disseminated on social media. At the current point for the United Kingdom, post Brexit, dealing with covid and yet to deal with the societal and economic impacts of that, it is absolutely imperative that we reject any push towards nationalism and isolationism and that we recognise the importance of global Britain. Indeed, it is more important today than it ever has been.
If we are going to lead, as we can this year, in G7 and the COP26, we also need to see a change in world politics, where absolutism—“You are either 100% for me or 100% against me, and no compromise is allowed”—has taken hold. We need to move away from the world of strong men facing up to each other. We need to find more ways in which we can work with those who share our values, because those values are under threat, and we need to work together to protect them.
Global Britain has the position this year to enable us to do that, but in order to do it, we need to live our values ourselves. I have to say to the Government that threatening to break an international treaty shortly after signing it, threatening to break international law and cutting our international aid does not enhance the impact of global Britain. In fact, it makes it harder for us as global Britain to get our message around the world. We have been respected because of our 0.7% and respected because of what we do, not just because we are British.
In the few seconds available to me, I want to mention one issue that is a clear and present danger to global Britain: the break-up of the United Kingdom. We often talk in this Chamber about Scotland and how important being part of the UK is to the Scottish economy. The reality is that England needs the rest of the UK as well. The United Kingdom has a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations; I doubt that England would have a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations. We need to think about the impact of this, and I particularly want to mention my concern about Northern Ireland at the moment. We have seen the issue of empty supermarket shelves—not all due to the protocol, but certainly the protocol is playing its part, and the Government need to deal with that issue. Global Britain has a role to play on the world stage, but in order to do that, the Government need to ensure that we maintain the integrity of the United Kingdom.
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP) [V]
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). We do not quite agree on the future of the United Kingdom, but we on these islands will always be friends, colleagues and, I hope, allies.
It was David Hume who said that the truth emerges from an honest disagreement among friends. I am a friend to all Members of the House, but we should be in no doubt that this is a very honest disagreement. Global Britain is not my party’s project; that will surprise nobody. I do not wish it any harm, but frankly, I wish it was not being inflicted upon my country against our democratic wishes.
I listened carefully, as I always do, to the Secretary of State. As ever, she got 10 out of 10 for enthusiasm, but one out of 10 for detail and zero out of 10 for recognition of the difficulties in the real world right now. If I were Trade Secretary of the United Kingdom—a moment of fantasy—and there were shelves empty in a part of the United Kingdom, I would have mentioned that before global aspirations that are hypothetical at best, in contrast to those real-world consequences.
I am struck, as ever, by the ability of Government Members to be giddy with excitement at the potential up sides of global Britain. I do, for the record, wish global Britain well—I want to see it succeed—because the battles of the past are the battles of the past, but the hypothetical, aspirational advantages are as nothing when set against the real-world consequences that people are suffering right now. No amount of red, white and blue breathless excitement will distract from the fact that global Britain is an answer to a question that nobody in Scotland or Northern Ireland was asking. Frankly, nobody in Northern Ireland or Scotland is interested in it right now, when we have far more pressing concerns.
Regardless of the international links that global Britain and the UK will have, the primary relationship in all forms of trade, human contact and cultural exchange is always going to be with the continent that we are part of and will remain part of. Despite the deal, such as it was, done at the last minute in Brussels at the tail-end of the year, far too much of the detail of that relationship remains utterly unclear, again causing real problems right now. The fact that the House’s scrutiny of that agreement and the future relationship has been shut down, with the Committee that should be doing it and is best placed to do it being closed by this Administration, should concern us all.
There are a number of things that we are losing. These are not aspirational, hypothetical things; these are things in the real world right now. The loss of the Erasmus exchange is an act of economic vandalism against our universities and higher education sector. It came at the last minute in the talks, when previously we had been told, “We will keep it,” “We will try to keep it,” or, “We will manage to somehow fix it.” At the last minute we were told, “No, we won’t.”
It is an act of economic vandalism against our universities, but it is also an act of vandalism and vindictiveness against future generations of students, who will be shut off from those advantages. I did Erasmus myself in 1992—a long time ago, but the advantages I gained then have stayed with me ever since. It breaks my heart that future generations will not be able to take advantage of it.
The Turing scheme that has been suddenly created on the back of an envelope to replace Erasmus is a pale shadow of those real rights. Presumably it was named after Alan Turing, as he was someone who was treated abominably by the British Government. It is an act of vindictiveness against future generations of students, and those who are responsible for that deception should hang their heads in shame.
In Scotland, all of our universities want to remain part of the Erasmus programme. We are, as a Scottish Government, trying to find ways to do that. I urge the UK Government, if it wants this to be a global Britain, to respect the internal democracy of the United Kingdom and allow Scotland to maintain those international links. There are ways that we could do it and we are working on the proposal.
Just as Scotland wants to stay in Erasmus, we want also to help our creative sector. Another thing we are losing is musicians’ visas. According to the Musicians’ Union, 78% of musicians and creatives have travelled to the EU or the European economic area over the last year to trade, to do their business and to do the cultural exchange—that soft diplomacy—that global Britain surely relies upon. There was an offer from the EU side to maintain a 90-day visa that would deal with the EEA as a bloc for all our creatives travelling abroad. The UK Government rejected it in an act of vindictiveness against our creatives, because they did not want inward travel to come to us. Again, I really hope that can be reversed, because it was a poor decision.
These are the real-world consequences of the loss of freedom of movement. The debate in the UK—and much of the debate in this House—seems to be predicated on the idea that inward movement happens only in one direction. There are millions of UK nationals enjoying freedom of movement rights across the European Union, which has been a huge boost to our society and to the soft power that global Britain surely depends upon. The SNP wants those rights back.
As the loss of those rights becomes clear, the people of Scotland will have a choice. As I say, I wish global Britain well—although not with much enthusiasm, I have to say—and I hope it works, but I will put forward a different proposition to the people of Scotland: independence in Europe. Nothing in EU membership was holding the UK back in what it wants to do. I echo the concerns mentioned by the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) about the lack of ambition on human rights, climate change and environmental standards—all the things on which we think the UK Government have engaged in a race to the bottom, rather than maintaining high EU standards.
The SNP will be putting forward independence in Europe, which will regain rights for our exporters, for our universities, for our students and for our people with freedom of movement—a huge societal and economic boost. Unlike in 2014, at the time of the first independence referendum, those real world rights have just been taken away from us, and the consequences are clear. We will be able to set that against the aspirational advantages of global Britain. I look forward to that discussion and to holding the Government to account for their promises. I wish them well in fulfilling them, but I am confident that they will be nothing compared with the losses that we have all suffered by leaving the European Union in the worst way possible, and the lack of clarity that emerges from the continuing talks that will need to be maintained to take the future relationship with the European Union forward.
Whatever global Britain becomes, geography will not be altered. Britain is a medium-ranking state within the European continent. Scotland is comfortable with that, and independence in Europe is our political answer to the best aspirations of the people of Scotland. I think it is the best aspiration and the best answer to global Britain as well.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Although I sympathise with the sadness of the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) about our now having a trade border about 30 miles south of here, I see no reason why it would be improved if there was a trade border 20 miles south of Edinburgh. That strikes me as a very odd argument for free trade and for improving the lot of people in Scotland—or, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, the people of England. It would be a loss to us all.
In fact, free trade has enriched us all. I was delighted to hear my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State refer to Cobden, who spoke of the opportunities for us all. She also rightly spoke about the opportunities in Asia and CPTPP, and I look forward to seeing her bring back that agreement, which is important not just to us but to the Governments of Japan, Australia, New Zealand and, indeed, many others. She also spoke powerfully about the opportunities to reach into different markets in places such as India—I am sorry that the Prime Minister could not make his trip, but I welcome the opportunity to develop that market—but she did not speak about the challenge we have in trade with China. I look forward to her mentioning what she will do about the unfair labour practices we see in parts of China and the implication of that for free trade around the world, and particularly here in the UK.
Trade, of course, is not just good for the people of the UK; it is good for everyone. It is the best form of aid. While I welcome the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead about the 0.7%, it is certainly true that actually investing in countries around the world would make a transformative difference. I look forward to British businesses investing heavily in Nigeria, Somalia, Somaliland, Kenya and many other places to transform lives by transforming economies.
We can have fair trade and we can have free trade, but that also depends on the rules. That great Scotsman Adam Smith spoke about the rules when he spoke about the market, because the market is nothing without the rules; it is not fair unless there are principles that underpin it. I therefore look forward to the Government taking the opportunity at G7, and indeed when they get to COP, to look at the rules that apply to us when it comes to not just the goods we speak about in the WTO but the data that we see flowing around us.
A company in the United States has just made a decision on who can and cannot communicate on its platform —most famously involving the sitting President of that country. What does that mean for the data exchanges we will have around the world? We need to be shaping those rules and setting them again. There is a huge opportunity for the UK to retake that position at the heart of the international law-based system, restate the importance of the rules in our world and be the leading light in it.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) [V]
In three minutes, it is quite difficult to cover all the issues one wants to cover in a debate like this, but I want to make a few points. First, I do not think anyone so far has mentioned the covid crisis that we are in the midst of, the inadequacy of the British response to it, the unfairness in the distribution of vaccines in the richest countries and, perhaps equally seriously, the lack of availability of vaccines to many of the poorest and most vulnerable people all around this planet. Surely, if we are to play a part on the global stage, we have to play a part that ensures that we eradicate the dangers of contagious illnesses all around the world; otherwise, we will ultimately all be vulnerable to the effects of them.
This debate takes place in the aftermath of Britain finally leaving the EU only a couple of weeks ago, after the Government cobbled together at the last minute a trade deal with the EU that many of us felt unable to support because we did not believe it gave the protections necessary on environmental and working conditions and a number of other issues. But the issues are already piling up, with the loss of trade, the difficulties of getting exports and the problems of vast amounts of bureaucracy and paperwork, all of which could have been avoided if the Prime Minister had seriously wanted to negotiate a proper trade deal with the European Union, which he had plenty of time to do. But he was always looking over his shoulder, preferring to do a deal with his former friend, Donald Trump, the outgoing—an unlamented loss—President of the United States.
We live in a global world, as the title of this debate—global Britain—indicates, and that means that we have to recognise the huge power of global corporations. Rolls-Royce is losing jobs at Barnoldswick in order to outsource those jobs to other parts of the world, including Spain and Singapore. The abuse of human rights around the world, which others have drawn attention to, has to be considered in our trade deals. Those human rights abuses lead to the loss of life and to refugee flows. There are now 65 million refugees around the world. Also, in all these trade deals that are being done, let us be absolutely clear. Let us make sure that everything we say at COP26 about net zero being achieved by 2030, or a bit later in the case of some Governments, is actually going to be met. Let us ensure that we have a trade deal that meets those targets by insisting on environmental and labour standards all around the world, and that trade deals do not become a race to the bottom, leading to damage to working conditions in this country and all around the world. It is in our hands to do this, and it is in the hands of this Parliament to scrutinise and hold to account what this Government do at the same time.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
Looking back in our timeline of history, we see that it is punctuated by years where dramatic events and their consequences have altered the course of history. I believe that 2021 will be such a year, when we repair and rebuild our post-covid world. We will also better appreciate the frailty of our global order, with authoritarianism on the rise, the disunity of the west and a fast-changing relationship with an ever more assertive China. If 2020 was the year in which we calibrated our view on China and saw that it was not going to mature into the responsible global citizen we had hoped for, in 2021 we are likely to see Beijing unashamedly advance its own competing strategic agenda, exploiting battered economies across the globe and ensnaring ever more states into debt through its infrastructure and digital programmes. We face an inflection point this year. Either we support global democracy and repair it, or we allow the world to splinter into two dangerously competing spheres of influence.
Of course, 2021 brings a change in guard at the White House, with President-elect Biden promising to commit to rebuild alliances, to stand up against geopolitical threats and to return a sense of purpose to what the west believes in, stands for and is willing to defend. So this is a pivotal year and a time for Britain to step forward. Let us recall the last time there was a global reset. It involved the United States and Britain. It was Roosevelt and Churchill, through the Atlantic charter, who set the tone for the new international architecture, which now needs to be revisited.
The opportunity for Britain cannot be overstated, but our hard work is cut out in front of us. We talk up global Britain and the special relationship, but our international stock is not what it was. We have become too risk-averse and too distracted. Mention has been made of cuts to our soft power because of our aid budget. Indeed, the integrated review has yet to be completed. We need these answers in order to understand what our defence posture should be.
I encourage No. 10 to expand its bandwidth so that we can reassess and confirm our place in the world. The international to-do list is huge: reviving international organisations, for example, the United Nations and the World Trade Organisation; updating the Geneva conventions; securing a viable climate change agreement; and, of course, coming up with a unified strategy on China. None of those issues can be addressed without the appropriate alliance. I have said this before, but my single recommendation to the Government today is to advance and empower the G7 group of nations, widening it to include Australia, India and Korea, and advancing it from a talking shop to a new coalition with genuine clout. This is half the world’s GDP around one table. This formidable partnership, committed to collective security, democracy and the international rule of law, can be the vehicle that offers the leadership and designs the fresh international architecture our world now desperately requires. I encourage the Government to work with President-elect Biden and make this happen.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) [V]
2021 is a pivotal year for the UK on the global stage: we will host the COP26 climate change summit; assume presidency of the G7; co-lead the action coalition on gender-based violence; and undertake a new chapter, having exited the EU. Against that backdrop, I await the findings of the Government’s integrated review of international policy, which provides an opportunity to clarify what the UK stands for internationally, and how we will hope to lead and achieve on the global stage not just through trade.
First and foremost, our development policy should be underpinned by a core commitment to tackling poverty among the poorest communities. The pandemic has meant that that commitment is needed now much more than ever. The World Bank estimates that covid-19 will push about another 100 million people into poverty, reversing hard-won gains. I am therefore concerned by the absence of an explicit commitment to tackling poverty in the Government’s new strategic framework.
Our aid policy should enable communities in developing countries to lead and shape their own development, using their own knowledge of what works best at local level to create long-lasting change. For example, local women’s rights organisations are grounded in their communities, with long-standing and trusted relationships. Their work is strategic, lasting and cost-effective. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that the pandemic will lead to an additional 2 million female genital mutilation cases and 13 million child marriages, so their work is needed more now than ever. To ensure that the Government meet their own commitments on girls’ education, global Britain must mean leadership on addressing violence against women and girls, which is a key barrier to girls globally accessing education in the first place. I was saddened when Baroness Sugg stepped down, but I admire her reasons for doing so. Can the Government confirm when her important role on gender equality will be filled?
In 2018, just 0.3% of UK aid was spent on ending violence against women and girls globally. We can and must do more. Alongside greater funding, there needs to be a robust framework to guide the Government’s work on gender equality. I urge the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to adopt and use the Department for International Development’s strategic vision for gender equality.
The UK needs to advocate for a world that respects internationally agreed rules and practices, including respecting human rights and the rule of law. We must call out the actions of those who break these rules, whether the Ugandan Government’s treatment of opposition politician Bobi Wine, or threats to human rights defenders in Colombia. Perhaps one of the greatest tests of this is our relationship with China. In Hong Kong, the rights and freedoms of citizens continue to be eroded following the introduction of the national security law. We need to work with like-minded international partners to stand up to these abuses and support pro-democracy campaigners.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is right that we should be debating global Britain this week, the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, and the House of Commons will want to mark with sadness the passing of Sir Brian Urquhart, one of the principal architects of the UN and a fine British civil servant. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, the power of a passionate, compelling vision for global Britain has the ability to unite the United Kingdom, all four parts of it, in one vision, at a time when that Union is under great pressure.
I want to make two specific comments about global Britain. The first is about the what. As my right hon. Friend said, we await the report, because we have had the money but not yet the report of what global Britain is going to stand for, but it seems to me very important that global Britain should represent values, rather than geographers. This enables us from time to time to agree with China but to disagree with Donald Trump. The UK has been a very bright light in many difficult parts of the world, standing up for the rule of law and human rights against Islamic terror, standing against meddling Russians and Chinese human rights abuse, and standing in favour of women’s rights and the fight against starvation.
When it comes to the how, I think that the international rules-based system is the key. The UK has real leverage on this: our seat in the United Nations; as a leading member of the Commonwealth, that important north-south organisation, which embraces so much of the world; our principled position in NATO; the fact that we are a European power, in or out of the European Union; our relationship with the United States; and, of course, the British language, which, in terms of commerce, trade and law, gives Britain such a pre-eminent position, quite apart from the City of London as an international centre. And as others have mentioned, we have development. Over the past two decades, Britain has become a development superpower—the ideas of British universities, the actions on the ground of Britain’s international non-governmental organisations and the policy formation of the thinktanks—which is why I ask the Government to think again on breaking the 0.7% promise, on which every single Member of this House of Commons was elected just one year ago. Remember that the 0.7% has already been reduced.
Daniel Kawczynski
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. He is a champion for DFID spending, but does he agree that, now we are outside the European Union, our intention to lower tariffs for third world countries will, in the long term, result in much more support for them than just the DFID money?
Mr Mitchell
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. Of course, he is right that trade is the key, but in order to get to a point where countries can trade, you need many of the very important services that DFID has been providing in some of the poorest parts of the world. Remember that the 0.7% has already been reduced, because it is connected with our gross national income, by nearly £3 billion. If this cut goes ahead, the development budget will be reduced by nearly 50%. That is the worst thing we could do in a pandemic, which we know will never be defeated here until it is defeated everywhere. It is the most terrible timing—when we approach the chair of the G7, when this year we will chair the United Nations Security Council and when we have the most important COP in Glasgow in November. It would be a terrible mistake. I urge the Treasury Bench to think again about this £4 billion reduction—just 1% of the borrowing this year. It should not be carried out in this way and it should not be carried out at this time.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC) [V]
Global Britain reimagines the past, ignores the present and, in its naivety, diminishes the future. It is a product of the exceptionalism that diminished the UK’s relationship with the EU. Global Britain captures the arrogance of the Westminster Government towards the non-England UK.
The Foreign Secretary said that global Britain will be
“the best possible allies, partners and friends with our European neighbours”.
Those neighbours are bound together by a European vision of peace, protected by political, economic and social interaction. This was rejected by this Government. Delusion and nostalgia trump political reality, trump global interdependence and even trump geography itself. The delusion is obvious to all, save for the deluded. My party advocates a policy for Wales of proximity to Europe. We recognise our shared values, our diversity, our political and economic interests and the sheer fact of geography that draws us to our mainland.
The Foreign Secretary said the UK will be an
“energetic champion of free and open trade”—[Official Report, 3 February 2020; Vol. 671, c. 26.]
having just struck the first trade deal ever that put up barriers to trade. Most distasteful is the claim that the UK will be a “stronger force for good”—this coming from a Government who have cut international aid, have supplied arms to autocrats and have lavished praise on demagogues like Donald Trump, and that is going well, is it not?
This year, the Republic of Ireland has again taken its seat on the United Nations Security Council. This achievement for a small nation is an emphatic rebuttal of the Unionist contention that nations like Wales and Scotland are too small and too poor to be independent and successful. These past four years of failure have proved that one London-shaped national interest does not serve our four unique and diverging sets of interests. We have our own international priorities. For now, we must have equal powers to approve future trade deals. That is imperative.
Global Britain’s withdrawal from Erasmus is a disgrace: curtailing the life opportunities of our best, and with no reciprocal arrangements for students from our neighbours. But not to worry, we will have, I am sure, a “world-beating” alternative, no doubt destined to join all the other world-beating triumphs of this Government. Finally, there is the Government’s stupidest self-damaging spasm: the little England denial of visas for performers, rejecting a reasonable and mutually beneficial EU offer of 90-day visas both ways.
Wales can achieve great things as an independent sovereign nation, free to make a positive and honest contribution to address the global challenges of our times. Global Britain comes nowhere near that aspiration.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
Naturally, I am glad that we have finally left the European Union in all its manifestations, which I always believed was an unnatural berth for a United Kingdom that was outward-looking and sovereign. However, Brexit is not a panacea in itself. What Brexit does is bring choices and options and freedoms that would not otherwise be there. To make it succeed we have to have vision for our future, we have to have courage in policy and we have to have boldness in execution. Government structures must be re-oriented towards the task, funding not only those institutions we need inside the United Kingdom to make it succeed, but our elements abroad as well, something the Treasury will need to come to terms with.
If I may, I would like to say two things about trade. First, Brexit allows us to have an independent trade policy, but that comes with one major drawback: we actually have to have more exporters to make it worthwhile. Unless we have more goods and services to sell—unless we have more trade—a free trade agreement is little more than another piece of paper. That is why I welcomed the push for an updated and extended transport strategy.
Secondly, it allows us to deal with some global trade issues. Global trade was shrinking before we got to the covid crisis, not least because of the number of non-tariff barriers being loaded into the global economy by the world’s richest countries. We are making it more and more difficult for some of the world’s poorest countries to access our markets. If we continue that trend, our aid budget will become little more than conscience money while we stop people being able to trade their way sustainably out of poverty. We need to take a strong look at our own behaviour and what we are doing in terms of putting up barriers to some of the world’s poorest nations. It is wonderful that we are talking about reducing tariffs for some of the world’s poorest countries, but we need to take a good look at the non-tariff barriers that are making it so difficult for them to enter our markets. That problem is being made worse at the present time by the export restrictions on medicines and medical products. They will need to be reduced, otherwise they will accentuate the problems we are facing with covid.
We have a World Trade Organisation that is, frankly, on the edge of collapse. That brings me to the final point I want to make about the institutions where Britain can play a bigger role. Multilateral institutions such as the UN, the Security Council, the OECD, IMF and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development were all designed for the second half of the 20th century. They need to be brought up to date for the challenges of the 21st century. Those who have shown the way in the United Kingdom, both in politics and the civil service, can give a lead. There are our other partnerships, too. In NATO, our European partners must learn to step up to the plate on spending. The Five Eyes community has far more than just security potential for us. The Commonwealth—a third of the global population, most of whom are under the age of 30—shares many of our political institutions and our legal system.
There are tremendous opportunities for the UK. We can choose to shape the global system around us or be shaped by it. I know what I want for my country.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
I speak tonight as the trade rapporteur of the Council of Europe, and as such I want to see democracy, the rule of law, human rights and environmental sustainability embedded in all our trade deals. We stand here tonight semi-detached from our closest and biggest marketplace—the single market—and our closest friends. Over there, when they are looking at deals, they are scrutinising and approving the negotiating mandate, looking at the negotiations, and approving individual deals before they are ratified, but here we have not seen and agreed the mandate, and we have not looked at the negotiations. These deals are already binding in international law because they have already been passed and ratified. The EU deal was dumped on us on Christmas eve in a half-filled sack marked, “Take it or leave it”, and we found that it did not even include any services, which are 80% of our economy. The Japan deal, worth £1.5 billion, would have been worth £2.6 billion via the EU. As regards the US, it is good to see the back of Trump and his isolationism and climate scepticism. We should now embrace President Biden in COP26 to ensure that environmental sustainability is central to all future trade agreements.
As regards the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the US and India are standing back, and it is dominated by China, which has 18% of global GDP. China grew by 4.9% even last year through the pandemic. China is no friend of democracy, as we have seen in Hong Kong. It is no friend of human rights, as we have seen with the Uyghur Muslims. We have ended up moving from being a rule-maker in the EU, be it on the environment or financial rules, to a rule-taker from someone who does not share our values. That is why, if we do embrace the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we need to ensure that the UN human rights agreements are included and that, like New Zealand, we are one step removed and we do not agree investor-state dispute settlements. Otherwise those people from China who are building the nuclear power stations of the future, involved in HS2 and providing for 5G will end up being able to hit us, as we have seen in other examples like the nuclear provider Vattenfall in Germany. In a nutshell, with China we need to confront human rights, compete on trade, and co-operate on climate change and health. It is important that our COP26, G7 and Security Council chairpersonships embrace our fundamental values of democracy, the rule of law, human rights, fair trade and our environment.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
To anyone in this House or beyond this House who thinks that global Britain is somehow an aspiration, not a reality, I would commend to them the excellent report by Robin Niblett of Chatham House entitled “Global Britain, Global Broker” where he points out that the United Kingdom already has a seat at all the key multinational organisations—the IMF, the G7 and the G20—and is a permanent veto-owning member of the UN Security Council, and that is before we even look at the Commonwealth or NATO. We are fourth-equal place with Germany and Japan in the number of full-time embassies and high commissions, and sixth in terms of defence spending.
I think we have an obligation to define what global Britain means. I would say, before I incur the wrath of my friends on the Northern Ireland Benches and the noble Baroness Hoey, that global Britain also includes Northern Ireland—it is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Of course, it goes to much more than trade—it is also about foreign policy, security, intelligence, development and defence, which are all part of the complex infrastructure that represents the UK overseas. The challenge is for us to distil that into a coherent offer that the world will understand.
I have not spoken on the subject of trade since I left the Treasury Bench. I could say that I resigned or I could say that I did a job swap with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade Policy. As I went around the world as Minister of State for trade, I was struck by the interest there was in the United Kingdom and what Brexit meant in terms of our ability to re-engage. People were interested in green technology, fintech, the City of London, financial services regulation, and what the UK could do in terms of infrastructure. When I was in Vietnam, Morocco, Algeria, Brazil, Chile and even the United States, there was huge interest. One could almost say that if global Britain were a Tinder profile, we would crash with the numbers seeking to swipe right. I beg the indulgence of the House briefly to place on record my thanks to those who worked with me at the Department for International Trade in my private office: my senior private secretary, Marcus; and St John, Alessandro and Emily. They were a delight to work with; I am not sure they would always say the same about me.
We have talked about values; trade delivers prosperity, jobs and the emergence of a middle class in poorer countries, and it is the emergence of a middle class that leads to the demand and drive for rights such as female emancipation, the education of girls, LGBT rights, freedom of speech and the rule of law—as distinct, of course, from rule by lawyers. We saw the same thing ourselves in the industrial revolution. As we look at doing joint economic and trade committees, trade agreements and all the rest, we should never forget that, fundamentally, this is about prosperity and dignity for individuals around the world. That aspect of what we call global Britain is not just economic or even political but is, in the most real of senses, a moral mission.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I am all for global Britain, but I am more for global UK. I want to make sure that Northern Ireland gets its fair share of the action. I know that the Minister is doing his best to ensure that Northern Ireland is kept at the top of the agenda, and that is essential.
I welcome the comments earlier from the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). There is absolutely no doubt that in the first 11 days of this year, the protocol that has been inflicted on Northern Ireland’s trade has been a complete and unmitigated disaster. That is not the fault of Brexit, but it is the fault of those who tried to frustrate Brexit. I hope the Government will urgently invoke article 16 and remove the pernicious clauses of the protocol that are damaging trade.
Let me give an example. At the weekend, I had to field a call from my constituent who was moving home from Essex to Broughshane in my constituency. When she got her white van to Cairnryan, she was told that she required an export and customs declaration form—to move home from one part of the United Kingdom to the other! I was furious. That van had to turn and go back to Essex and she had to enter the boat at Cairnryan as a foot passenger to get to her home. It is utterly and totally disgraceful. If that is how we are treating citizens of global Britain, I am outraged and appalled that that is how citizens are being treated. Let us fix that, which we can do by invoking article 16, and let us fix it now, because the longer we delay, the more we will damage trade.
I had another constituent on the phone today who imports personal protective equipment that is made in Britain—in Yorkshire—and when it got to the Cairnryan ferry terminal it was turned back. It was coming in to help frontline workers in Northern Ireland but it was turned back. That is another disgrace. It has to cease, and the quicker that happens, the better.
I can tell the House one thing: I do not hear any Scots nationalists tonight demanding that they have this special protocol. The protocol has been a disaster for Northern Ireland and we are only on day 11. I hope that the Government fix it very quickly. Let us sort out our internal UK trade—sort out the friction that exists—and then we can get on with ensuring that we really can be a world player in the future of our market.
I wish to put one other item on the agenda: it is essential that we seize the opportunity to be the world leader in hydrogen technology. This country is right at the cusp of that. We missed the battery opportunity; we can be the leaders in hydrogen technology. Let us use every opportunity to make sure we have hydrogen cities, hydrogen power, hydrogen opportunities and hydrogen jobs in the United Kingdom.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
Our new national security adviser, Lord Frost, who comes into the post on the back of a considerable success as our chief negotiator with the EU, said that leaving the European Union should be seen as an opportunity for what he called “national renewal”; I completely agree.
Although the EU will always be an important partner, we should lift our horizons to a more global outlook, but what exactly should this new concept of global Britain mean in practice? To my mind, there should be three core elements, or pillars, to the concept of global Britain, and the first is economics. Just as we rely on a successful economy to fund key public services such as the NHS and schools, we need a dynamic, growing economy to fund our defences and our international presence. In economic terms, we cannot simply tax our way out of the pandemic; we need to grow our way out, too. The absolutely sterling work of the Secretary of State for International Trade in signing more than 60 new deals is a fundamental example of how we can do just that.
Secondly, diplomatically, we are and must remain a key player in international fora. We are already an established member of the P5, the G7, the G20, Five Eyes, NATO, the Commonwealth, the OECD, the WTO and a plethora of other international organisations, and we will now host the COP26 conference as well. In some ways, our soft power outweighs our hard power, at least at the moment, and we remain a respected voice in favour of the international rules-based order. We must always maintain that leadership role in the world community.
Thirdly, militarily, we are, and are likely to remain, a nuclear power for the foreseeable future, and our nuclear deterrent remains the ultimate guarantee of our national security. However, in terms of conventional forces, we are still one of the major military powers in NATO. The Prime Minister has declared his intent that we should become the pre-eminent naval power among European NATO nations. Later this year, HMS Queen Elizabeth should achieve initial operating capability with her F-35 aircraft, the carrier strike. When the Prince of Wales follows her by 2024, we will be one of only three nations on earth to have two new fully functioning aircraft carriers. As the son of Stoker First Class Reginald Francois, who fought at D-day, I am proud to assert that the white ensign has always been a potent symbol of freedom, and it must remain so.
We must now think and act like global Britain economically, diplomatically and militarily. As we bring the integrated review to a conclusion, we should be a strong ally to many, but beholden to none. We should also bear in mind the words of the PM’s other hero, Pericles, who reminds us, “Freedom remains the sole possession of those who have the courage to defend it”. We always did, we always have, and, most assuredly, we always will.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Global Britain—a lofty ideal, but with recent months witnessing a dramatic reduction of the UK’s international aid and a hard Brexit, I want to strike a note of realism into the Government’s one-way triumphalism.
Less than two weeks ago, we saw our relationship with our biggest and closest trading partner, five decades after a Tory Government took us into the European Economic Community in a 12-year process, fizzle out in another of these constrained debates—so much for the sovereignty of Parliament. The Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union then began examining the detail of the 1,256 pages of trade and co-operation reduction downgrades. That Committee, too, is now having the plug pulled, when there is so much to scrutinise.
Erasmus—gone, with its replacement set to foster British uniglotism. Touring musicians, facing ruinously costly obstacles for themselves and gear to get in the van and go—gone. Eighty per cent. of our economy is services, the biggest chunk being financial services. It got 90 mentions while fishing, 1% of the economy, featured 368 times. Too much of this is left “TBC”, and other horrors are only now coming to light. There is no end to red tape, as previously promised, for export/import firms that are reporting untold VAT complications and costs.
The access to criminal databases enjoyed the week before last through the EU arrest warrant—gone. There is no more EU co-operation on defence, the environment, international aid—it is the opposite of global Britain as we shrink on the world stage socially, culturally, and in security and prosperity terms. It is better than no deal, yes, but it is a downgrade none the less, and with no guarantee of keeping up on employment protections and the environment. That is the opposite of levelling up.
On international aid, Cameron, Brown, Blair, Major and even the last Prime Minister—every living Prime Minister —have condemned the cutting of the 0.7% contribution to the world’s poorest as morally unjustifiable and practically short-sighted, particularly at a time when the world faces the common enemy of coronavirus. It seems that we are going it alone when collective action would be wise. On having the courage to condemn old friends and allies when necessary, the past PM was the first to hold Trump’s hand, but now it is time to hold him to account.
This Government have made a habit of U-turns—they occur daily nowadays. The next one must be to start off with reinstating the International Development and Brexit Committees and then go further, because otherwise, global Britain just becomes a mere Bozza buzzword.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
I speak as the sole Polish-born British Member of Parliament in this Chamber. Obviously, for me, the three seas initiative is becoming increasingly important as we have left the European Union. The three seas initiative includes 12 countries in central and eastern Europe, bordering on the Black sea, the Baltic sea and the Adriatic sea. They are coming together; all are members of the European Union, and all apart from Austria are members of NATO. It is an increasingly important regional bloc on our continent. The three seas initiative is coming up with a different narrative from the Franco-German axis, which has perhaps for too long controlled the destiny of our continent.
The United States of America has been a very good example in its effective engagement with the three seas initiative, treating those 12 countries as a specific entity, investing in them and supporting them strategically from a defence perspective. In the post-Brexit era, we can show real leadership on our continent by supporting the three seas initiative and putting sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Now no longer constrained by our membership of the European Union, we ought to follow our American friends in imposing sanctions on any company involved in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is a real issue for many politicians who represent countries in the three seas initiative.
This undersea gas pipeline that the Germans are building directly to Russia, bypassing all the gas and oil networks that run through our NATO partners, is extremely dangerous because it puts our NATO partners at great additional pressure from Moscow and makes them susceptible to additional energy blackmail, which the Russians have used so successfully in the past. The United States of America has managed to halt temporarily the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline through sanctions on companies involved. I urge the Minister now, in a post-Brexit context, to show the same courage and resolve that his American counterparts are doing in standing up from a moral, strategic and security perspective, challenging the Germans not to endanger our NATO partners in this way, and imposing sanctions on any company involved in this highly risky project for the future security of our continent.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind) [V]
Blwyddyn newydd dda to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate.
After the political rancour of the last four years, it is important that policy makers face the reality of where we are and start mapping a vision for the future. That challenge belongs to those on both sides of the European debate. False hope that the question of Europe can be parked by the next Westminster election seems naive, considering that the agreement contains provisions for periodic full-scale reviews, with the first expected right after the likely date of the next election.
The UK’s trade relationship with the EU will always—by far—be the most important one for Welsh businesses. I am glad that the agreement maintained tariff and quota-free access to the European economic area. However, any divergence in standards will in all probability lead to justified punitive action by the European Union. It is disconcerting, to say the least, that Brexiteers are already demanding a bonfire of environmental, consumer and workers’ protections. Those hoping that the Brexit culture war is over are living in the bizarre hope that the Tories are going to give up their main political weapon, and that the European Research Group obsessives are all of a sudden going to find a new political project to entertain themselves. This sets the scene for years of further Euro-bashing to make the case for the Singapore-on-Thames group or the “Britannia Unchained” gang.
I remain convinced that the Brexit that was chosen by the British Government will be politically, economically and culturally damaging to Wales. Of course, I hope that my concerns are misplaced. Looking for evidence of this, I find myself echoing the question asked by so many commentators: what will the British state do with this mythical sovereignty that was worth the price of a hard exit? After hearing the Secretary of State’s opening remarks, I am not entirely clear about what can be achieved now post Brexit that could not be accomplished before. Reminiscing about past imperial glory is not a vision for the future in a highly complex world. If we are to have any chance of making the best of the post-Brexit world, the Westminster elites need to be urgently inoculated with a reality vaccine. A renegade state in the north Atlantic with a reputation for undermining international law and the international rules-based order is likely to find itself located firmly on the inconsequential periphery.
I echo the comments of many speakers in this debate about the regrettable decision of the British Government to cut the international aid budget. My vision for Wales is for my country to be an international force for good in the world, placing itself at the centre of global issues such as climate change, economic justice, human rights, international aid and conflict resolution. I would like to think this would be a mantle taken up by the British state, but the aforementioned priorities are anathema to a Westminster elite intoxicated on its own propaganda, preferring to live in a fantasy of hubris.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Blwyddyn newydd dda i chi hefyd, Jonathan.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con) [V]
We have heard from most Members about the national benefits of leaving the EU and the prospects for global trade, and in the limited time I have I want to highlight the positive effects this deal will have on my constituency.
In trade and business, along with the majority of my constituents, we overwhelmingly embraced exiting the EU and the prospects of trading on different global terms. The new link road in my constituency from Heysham port to the M6 is the quickest route in the country from a major transport artery to a major port. Heysham port has had over £10 million in recent years for upgrades from Government and the private sector, gearing up for increased volumes of trade through Ireland and Northern Ireland. It is only a matter of time before Heysham port is awarded freeport status, which I and the Morecambe business improvement district, among many others, would like to see. Indeed, I am in discussions about making this application in the very near future.
Morecambe and the surrounding area have many international energy interests. After the referendum result had been declared I was given assurances by EDF that the vote to leave the EU would not affect jobs and investment; it was true to its word, and the Hydrogen to Heysham project, which along with EDF includes the European Institute for Energy Research and Lancaster University, has successfully demonstrated the technical feasibility of producing clean hydrogen by co-locating electrolysis facilities at our nuclear site in Lancashire. EDF Energy has confirmed that the project remains on its corporate agenda. EDF is now considering options for building on the learnings of the project to focus on low-carbon hydrogen applications and demonstrate them in the Morecambe bay area. This is clear proof that the EU ought to continue being a partner in the great successes of the energy and academic sectors in my constituency to ensure clean energy for the future.
The Eden Project is coming to Morecambe, paving the way for Morecambe to move forward to a new golden era of regeneration and prosperity. We welcome Eden North, and in particular the future prospects for our young people, who have recently formed North West Youth for Eden. Lancaster and Morecambe College has, under the leadership of Wes Johnson, reached an agreement to train future generations to work in Eden, a prestigious brand with sites across the world. Likewise, the vice-chancellor of Lancaster University, Dame Sue Black, is already championing the benefits of Eden Project North and partnering for the future prosperity of my district in the next generations.
On the space industry, the UK will remain a member of the European Space Agency and will continue to participate in the Copernicus project. This will enable intellectual property to be maximised by high-tech industries in my district. Along with other communication platforms, the UK is now a major stakeholder in OneWeb, the Earth-orbiting communication system.
Finally, I pay homage to the Prime Minister and the previous Prime Minister in getting us to this point. Leaving the EU has not been an easy job, but we will have many options in the future.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
As we reset our foreign and development policies, they will no doubt reflect our country’s long-standing respect for human rights. Sadly, one of the human rights most at risk globally today is that addressed by article 18 of the universal declaration of human rights. Protecting and promoting the right to freedom of religion or belief must be one of the UK’s human rights priorities, not least because of the extent of violations of FORB in so many parts of the world today, affecting Buddhists in Tibet, Rohingyas in Myanmar, Yazidis in Iraq, Uyghurs in China, Hindus and Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Eritrea, Christians in North Korea and atheists in Bangladesh. That is by no means an exhaustive list.
Tackling religious intolerance needs to be at the heart of our policies, not least because of the wider implications of the risks of not doing so. Those were summed up by the Prime Minister recently when, in replying to my PMQ, he said:
“We all know that wherever freedom of belief is under attack, other human rights are under attack as well.”—[Official Report, 11 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 898.]
The right to education, jobs, homes, family life, access to justice, liberty and even life itself all can be at risk when FORB is under attack. This is not only a human rights priority. As the Bishop of Truro said in his report, FORB is
“perhaps the most fundamental human right because so many others depend upon it.”
It is a privilege to take up my appointment as the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, but that is not the point, nor is the title. The point for me is this: can this role in some modest way make a positive difference—yes, to our projection of global Britain, but more fundamentally, can it make a difference to what Eleanor Roosevelt, one of the architects of the universal declaration of human rights, called the “world of the individual person”? Working alongside the Foreign Secretary and Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the Minister for human rights, I recognise that this envoy role can and will only make such a difference when the envoy works with others—working cross-party here in Parliament, co-ordinating well with international counterparts and liaising with faith leaders and civil society.
For me, the heart of FORB is based on respecting the unique worth of every created human being. It is about the importance of treating every individual with dignity. It is about saying, “You matter. You have purpose. You are significant. Wherever you are in the world, whatever your faith or none, you are not forgotten. You are not disregarded. You are not overlooked.” Having travelled to many countries across the world and heard at first hand of FORB abuses, I want to state my heartfelt compassion and respect for all those who bravely make a stand and suffer for their beliefs.
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con) [V]
For centuries, Britain has led the world as a global industrial centre, importing and exporting goods, services and skills around the world. We now have an opportunity to strengthen old friendships and forge new ones. It is an opportunity for businesses large and small, those that have never exported and those that already do. Here in Rushcliffe, we are home to the world-famous Stilton cheese at Colston Bassett and Cropwell Bishop dairies. We make award-winning wines; a taste of Eglantine vineyard’s North Star wine will leave you in no doubt as to why. We develop state-of-the-art fitness equipment such as Wattbike and world-leading nutrition apps such as Nutracheck; I should say that they have kindly given me a year’s complimentary subscription, which is perhaps just as well after all that cheese and wine. The east midlands is also the beating heart of manufacturing, with the highest proportion of manufacturing jobs in England based here. We make planes, trains and automobiles and everything in between.
The Government’s plan for a network of free ports is a great way to grow our economy, create jobs and encourage investment. Here in the east midlands, there is a fantastic, unique proposal for a free port that would cover East Midlands airport in North Leicestershire, a new advanced manufacturing cluster focused on green jobs in Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Rushcliffe and the east midlands automotive intermodal park in South Derbyshire—all situated at the heart of the country, with access to 90% of the population within four hours, on the site of the UK’s largest dedicated freight airport, connected by rail to our main deep sea ports and located at the centre of our national motorway network. What better place could there be to launch global Britain from?
East Midlands airport is one of the largest air freight handlers in the UK, with capacity to treble the value of freight handled and create many more jobs on site. A successful bid will act as a catalyst to galvanise redevelopment of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station site into a hub for green businesses. What a legacy that would be on the site of one of the last coal-fired power stations left in Britain. It would improve the competitiveness of our region, helping to attract key investment from employers, and it would create jobs and training opportunities for local people. I am excited about the opportunities that lie in store for us as global Britain, and I hope that my right hon. Friends across Government will see the many ways in which a free port in the east midlands will help to deliver these.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD) [V]
Global Britain—what does that mean? Here is what I hope it means: a United Kingdom that leads on the world stage, defending and strengthening the international rules-based order; a United Kingdom that puts human rights, social justice and ending global inequality at the heart of its work and lives those values in its trade agreements; and a United Kingdom that recognises there is no planet B and that it is about deeds, not words.
What do this Government’s deeds tell us about their definition of global Britain? It seems to me it means isolation from our closest allies, cosying up to presidents who incite violence and sedition and reneging on manifesto promises to the world’s poorest by cutting the aid budget. If that is global Britain, we must change direction now.
Coronavirus knows no borders and to truly defeat it we have to protect those in lower-income countries who are going to struggle to access the vaccine. Credit where credit is due, the UK has helped to put $1 billion into the COVAX facility, but I remain deeply concerned by global vaccine inequity. COVAX is committed to vaccinating up to 20% of the populations of the countries covered by it, but the other 80% must be provided for from elsewhere, and the vaccine companies are overwhelmed. How do we know that they are not prioritising the highest bidders and the biggest orders? In effect, are we creating a higher income, lower income divide? I fear we are, and it is not right. The UK must show global leadership and do more.
Take the example of Palestine. The situation there is dire. Many have rightly applauded Israel’s incredible effort to vaccinate its population, but we should note the programme excludes the 5 million Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The vaccine has been coming into illegal settlements. Israeli settlers are being vaccinated, but their Palestinian labourers living only a few hundred metres away are not. It is heartbreaking, and if we can help them in Palestine or elsewhere, then we should. We have ordered 350 million doses of vaccine for a population of 66.5 million. Even with wastage and the need for two doses, what are the plans for the rest? Can the Minister confirm what we will do to support lower-income countries further?
Finally, on aid, I want to put a marker in the sand. The Government do not need to legislate for the temporary cut. The law itself is designed to allow Governments not to meet 0.7% in an emergency, as unwise and cruel as such a cut may be. The only reason to bring legislation would be to cement the cut, using the current economic crisis as a smokescreen. I hope I can count on the support of other colleagues who have spoken against the aid cut in the House to fight this move should it come. It is not necessary and it needs to be resisted.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab) [V]
I refer Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The Foreign Secretary set out the Government’s vision for a truly global Britain that would act as an even stronger force for good in the world, yet for many persecuted peoples around the world, his vision does not match the reality, and nowhere is that more true than for Kashmiris still living under an ongoing Indian military occupation. Under this occupation, thousands of civilians have been killed and many more injured, and there is a vast litany of other abuses that the India Government must answer for, which have been well documented by numerous human rights organisations, from illegal and arbitrary detention to rape.
Far from improving, after 70 years the situation has dramatically deteriorated since August 2019, following the decision to revoke articles 370 and 35A and impose a brutal blockade of Kashmiri towns and villages, with civilians cut off from power, food, water and medical supplies and their access to communications dramatically curtailed. These actions are tantamount to the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiris.
Despite those grave human rights abuses, our global Foreign Office is nowhere to be seen. At every opportunity, it has refused to condemn the abuses. It will not even engage with the issue, telling us that it is an internal issue for Pakistan and India to resolve between themselves. We also hear that the UK Government are close to signing a trade deal with the Indian Government and, just as I warned during the passage of the Trade Bill last year in relation to the rights and high standards ahead, of trading with no concessions obtained from the Indian Government to uphold human rights in Kashmir and no conditions to prevent the grave abuses that have been taking place.
The policy of this Government towards Kashmir is not one of a global Britain, but that of an isolationist, self-interested Britain happy to shirk our moral, historic and diplomatic responsibilities and give in to a far-right, nationalist Modi-led Government in India. So if the Government really did want to prove that we are a truly global Britain that lives up to our global role and global responsibilities, they would put resolving the decades-old dispute over Kashmir at the top of their agenda. They would get our Indian and Pakistani allies around the table to find a resolution in Kashmir, ensure that we do not sign any trade deal with India that does not address human rights abuses in Indian-occupied Kashmir, use our responsibility as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to uphold UN resolutions for the free and fair plebiscite asked for over 70 years ago and ensure that the sons and daughters of Kashmir are given their birth right of self-determination.
Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con) [V]
This is an important debate. Like many here, I was elected on a promise to move past the stagnation of the last Parliament and finally enact the will of the people as expressed in the referendum. More than that, however, I believe we are here to heal the wounds of that battle and start to speak for a global Britain that is confident of itself and of its place in the world as we strike out with a new sense of purpose. That striking out is not just about trade deals, although let us not hide our light under a bushel in that regard, with the incredible achievements of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the team in making more than 60 of these in quick order. Trade in British goods delivers jobs and secures British interests. Striking out is also about confidence and projection, reigniting ties with old allies and forging new ones, too.
We do not have to look far beyond the current pandemic to understand exactly what a roused Britain can do. We have developed our very own vaccine here in the UK. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is from a partnership between many, but that vaccine is a bold statement of what global Britain can achieve. At low cost and able to be stored in a regular fridge, it will provide hope to so many in the developing world. A global Britain does not stop with production. We have committed over £500 million to ensuring that developing countries get equitable access to vaccines. This pandemic has been a great leveller, and it is absolutely right that a global Britain ensures that our own recovery is not balanced on the backs of those who can least afford the economic cost. I hope we will go further, as we continue development of monoclonal antibodies in UK, offering hope to those who have suppressed immune systems and for whom the vaccine will not work. I hope we will look at making such landmark biopharmaceuticals available to them when they need them globally too.
While our actions around the pandemic will tell a tale of their own about Britain’s new role in the world, so will our actions in other fields. Just as the pandemic is a global challenge, so we must show leadership in other areas that are global challenges. I am delighted the Prime Minister has announced today that the UK will commit at least £3 billion to climate change solutions that protect and restore nature and biodiversity. Climate change is the great challenge of our age, and our treatment of it is the legacy that will pass to our children and our children’s children. We now have the opportunity to shape how and with whom we trade to advance high standards, champion democracy and the rule of law, and reflect and project British values across the world. We have the opportunity to show global Britain in action —confident, optimistic, and out and into the world.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I was unsuccessful, unfortunately, in being called on 30 December last year to speak on the UK-EU agreement legislation, so I am very grateful for the three minutes afforded to me on this occasion.
Decades ago, it was almost unthinkable that the United Kingdom should leave the European Union, but I always had a conviction that the best future prosperity for this country was as an independent nation using, and being a conduit between, our unique global links—through the Commonwealth and our strong alliance with the United States of America—and our proximity to the continent of Europe. In the UK-EU trade agreement, that is what we have achieved. We have continuing trade with our European friends and allies, and the ability, as we heard from the Secretary of State for International Trade in her opening remarks, to forge global trade deals with countries as far afield as Canada, Japan, Singapore, Turkey, Mexico and elsewhere. I know that in the coming months and years, more trade deals will be achieved.
Global Britain is not just about trade; it is about using our other strengths, which we have had historically as an island nation that is outward looking—whether they be in defence, intelligence, our soft and cultural power or our international aid commitments. I welcome the refocusing of those development commitments on tackling global crises such as climate change, pandemics—both the one we are facing and those we want to militate against in future—and that in education.
Just as we should not only be focused on trade, vital though it is, we must not be afraid to challenge those in the world who do us and the global community harm. With China, there is its abuse of liberties in Hong Kong, its abuse against the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and the fact that it was, at best, guilty of neglect in seeking to cover up the initial impacts of the covid-19 epidemic, which grew into a global pandemic. As an international nation, we need to build a global alliance on such things to militate against them in future.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
In my maiden speech in this House almost a year ago today as the newly elected MP for Vauxhall, which is located in the heart of London—one of the most international, diverse and recognised cities in the world—I highlighted with pride the global nature of Vauxhall. Our schools are home to over 50 languages, spoken by the children of migrants from across the world who, like me, are proud to call Vauxhall their home. The global nature of the communities in Vauxhall brings richness and vibrancy. Just walking down Kennington Road, Clapham High Street, Stockwell or just about any street in Vauxhall, we can feel like we have visited several countries in under 10 minutes; we are likely to hear my constituents speak in Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, Tamil, Yoruba—my late mother’s native tongue—and so many more.
For me, global Britain is not just about trade deals, regulations and borders, as important as they are. It is not just about Britain projecting our hard power abroad or always trying to be the biggest, the first or the best. Global Britain is about the lived reality of every Vauxhall resident, characterised by the social and cultural ties that bind us together—generations of co-operation and the exchange of values. Throughout this awful pandemic, I have seen the true nature of global Britain shining through. I have seen it in our diverse communities in Vauxhall coming together to help their neighbours and to keep our public services running.
I fear that the hard Brexit path that the Government are taking us down and the isolationist vision for a newly independent Britain on the global stage are not something that I support. I urge the Government to give due consideration to the ties that bind us—our shared values, our histories, our values and experiences—as we work out who we want to be in the coming years and months.
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
It is a shame that we are doing this in the middle of a lockdown, but for the sake of the debate let us not dwell on that; let us look forward to the bright future that will soon be upon us. We are on a new path, having delivered the Brexit that people voted for in 2016 and reaffirmed in 2017 and again in 2019, now with a fabulous trade deal with our continental partners delivered in 2021—an achievement that many thought was not possible. As the Secretary of State said: zero tariffs, zero quotas. I am comfortable with that change of direction, having voted at every opportunity to ensure that the demands of my constituents —a significant majority of whom voted for Brexit—were finally listened to and acted on.
Now it is time to put all the division aside and to come together behind a common vision for our future. I would argue that the concept of global Britain should form the foundation of that vision, but what does it mean in practice? I offer some thoughts based on my discussions with my constituents in recent years. To my mind, it means that we return to a leading role in responding to global challenges and in making the most of opportunities for our country. We are indeed standing on our own two feet, but we do so surrounded by friends and allies both in Europe and across the world. That means reinvesting in those relationships, championing the rules-based international order and demonstrating that the UK is open, outward looking and confident on the world stage. It is about rediscovering the powers that we pooled through our membership of the EU and using them in a way that most benefits this country, as we have for many years with the powers that we reserved.
Global Britain must not seek to undermine EU standards, nor accept any diminution in food hygiene, environmental or animal welfare standards. We are better than the EU in this.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman share my view of the opportunities that come from Brexit, for example, in mid-sized democracies such as Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea? The opportunities are there; we just have to play the game and work in tandem and in partnership with those countries.
Giles Watling
I could not agree more. We can step back to where we were before we joined the common market and reach out to those countries. There is no positive outcome from a race to the bottom in any standards. We can reach out to those countries and seek to lift our standards.
Our NHS must never be on the table in any future trade negotiations. I would not support any trade deal that threatens our institutions and rights. I know that that is what my constituents expect. They also expect that global Britain will continue to lead the way outside the EU. They anticipate, as I do, that we will take this opportunity to re-emerge and become a pre-eminent campaigner for global free trade. I want to go further domestically and truly level up this country. Global Britain cannot begin to speak of successful standards, rights and institutions to others if we have not yet got our own house in order. That means dealing with the deprivation we see in isolated pockets, including in my own constituency of Clacton.
When we speak of levelling up, of course we must deal with the north-south divide, but we must not forget coastal areas, many of which are located in the so-called prosperous south-east, which, ironically, contains the most deprived ward in the UK. Where is it? It is in my constituency, in Clacton. The local council is doing sterling work there, but Essex Country Council and Tendring District Council need help to finally lift the area out of deprivation.
I was so proud when, at a moment of crisis and maximum danger in this country, an army of volunteers stepped forward in Clacton and across the country. In fact, we had too many volunteers. When this is all over, we must bottle that community spirit for the future and continue to work together across political lines for a relentless improvement to our way of life: global Britain.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP) [V]
I note that in her introduction the Secretary of State declined to mention fish exports in her list of “jam tomorrow”—and a good job, too. The fishing community has cried betrayal over the post-Brexit trade deal, with the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation saying that after all the promises given to their industry, it is hugely disappointing.
Taking back control of UK waters for fishing has resulted in a marginal repatriation of access, spread over five years, that fails to recognise the complex dynamics of the industry and which will almost certainly leave businesses worse off, but the immediate crisis is the near inability of Scottish fish exporters to get their product into the EU now, amid a dysfunctional system and an incoherent Government bureaucracy, leaving boats tied up, lorries idle and cold stores full. If that were not bad enough, we now know that the situation trends to get worse, as the authorities in the Netherlands and France bring to an end their two-week grace period for document errors. That could create even higher losses for hauliers and exporters.
It is not just fishing: Scotland’s renowned seed potato sector, worth more than £100 million annually, selling 20,000 tonnes of its product into the EU, will no longer have access to EU markets. Of course, that includes the significant Northern Ireland market. Not tariffs, quotas or paperwork—just banned. That is a Brexit disaster for Scottish seed potato growers, who are a needless casualty of a badly negotiated deal by the UK Government. I look at exporters in Angus and more widely across Scotland and I see sweeping new non-tariff barriers to trade, additional costs and pressures on the movement of goods—all completely avoidable.
On Erasmus, I was at university as a mature student with a young family, but I keenly remember the enriching fraternity of European students on campus and in classes. It saddens me greatly to know that my kids—one at university, one on the way—will not share in that richness of European diversity as I did.
Nothing could underline the marginal nature of Scotland to the Union more than the ambivalence of the UK Government to Scotland’s distinct ambition in retaining our EU membership. That was on the back of the hollow vow before the 2014 referendum and the paper promise that Scotland should lead rather than leave the UK and that voting for independence would see us lose our EU membership—the irony of it all! Those dark arts scared just enough people into voting for the Union in 2014.
I sincerely hope and believe that we have seen the last of those betrayals from the UK state and that the people of Scotland will put an end to this failing relationship in the interests of everybody involved. The UK Government are demonstrably not governing in the interests of Scotland. If global Britain is about to leave the station, I wish it well on its journey, but I hope and believe that Scotland will get off before the doors close.
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con) [V]
Cornwall is known around the world as a top-rate holiday destination, and it absolutely is. However, a truly global Cornwall means year-round jobs for Cornish people, and that is vital for Truro and Falmouth.
It was once said that a Cornishman could be found in every mine in the world, and as the world has changed so have the fortunes of the Cornish. However, I would argue that a global Cornwall absolutely still exists. Penryn-based Allen & Heath has been at the forefront of audio technology for over 50 years. It started life building mixers for the likes of The Who, Pink Floyd and Genesis, and today Allen & Heath mixers are used across the world by top DJs, clubs, broadcasters and studios. Its digital and analogue mixers are made overseas but still designed in Penryn, from which the company is still run.
In recent years, Cornish luxury tea grower and producer Tregothnan brokered a deal that will see it exporting its range to the US and to Kazakhstan. This first-ever English tea company created a range of teas home grown in British soil and secured the contracts at a Government networking event at No. 10. Tregothnan has an export rate of nearly 50%, with its largest fanbase in the far east. New stockists include Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore— and, yes, this home-grown Cornish company also sells tea to China: a tribute to the capabilities and creativity of British talent.
Pendennis Shipyard, based in Falmouth and founded over 30 years ago, is a leading superyacht custom new build and refit facility. The company is still privately owned and employs 390 people locally. It has also acquired a marina and service centre in Barcelona, where it employs a further 30 people. Its pre-covid turnover was in the region of £50 million to £55 million and 80% of that turnover was exported annually. Crucially to Cornwall, Pendennis also runs a successful apprentice scheme, training more than 290 apprentices, and a third of the current Falmouth workforce are existing or former apprentices.
That is just the tip of the iceberg. We should all be optimistic for the future of global Cornwall, from the lithium under our feet to the daffodils we see in the fields. We look forward to the UK’s presidency of the G7 and, of course, to COP26 and all the opportunities that lie ahead. Cornwall is packed full of home-grown talent, goods and services, and I look forward to working with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to promote them all.
When we welcome the world back to Cornwall after covid, with the tall ships at Falmouth in August and the Tour of Britain racing through Truro in September, I hope that visitors will look at Cornwall differently and agree that global investment in Cornish companies creates fantastic prospects for the future of the UK as a whole.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)
Much of this debate will quite rightly focus on the Government’s baffling approach to trade deals, which has seen them take months to renegotiate agreements, only for them to end up as copy-and-paste jobs. However, I want to use my time to focus on a separate but no less important element of global Britain. It may be a long way from Durham, but there is no doubt that Heathrow airport has been a key symbol of global Britain for many decades. Now more than ever, it serves as a major physical gateway to the rest of the world and its vital importance, which the crisis in Dover before Christmas exposed so clearly, will only increase as the Government distance themselves from the EU.
However, this most critical piece of the country’s infrastructure is right now being consumed by industrial strife, which threatens its smooth operation, and that is all down to the cavalier and reckless attitude being shown by greedy Heathrow bosses towards their loyal and hard-working staff. The shameful fire-and-rehire threats from both airport management and British Airways have triggered strike action, which escalated throughout last month and into the new year. Cargo handlers, security guards, engineers, firefighters and now, potentially, Border Force staff who are seeing their rights stripped away under the cover of covid are all standing up to exploitative employers and withdrawing their labour as a last resort. Strike action is never taken lightly by any group of workers, least of all those in critical occupations such as those at Heathrow, but these cowboy management practices have broken the trust between the workers and their bosses, and Heathrow staff have been forced into a position not of their choosing.
The Government frequently state that they wish the UK to act as good global citizens abroad, but at home they turn a blind eye to exploitative fire-and-rehire practices. When will they get a grip on this situation, rein in these rogue bosses—British Airways, Heathrow Airport Ltd and now even the Home Office—and protect this critical infrastructure while defending the frontline key workers who are keeping our country moving throughout this pandemic?
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
I would like to focus my brief remarks on the economic opportunities that await a global trading Britain in the years ahead. Once the world has overcome the enormous challenge of covid-19, which we surely will, I believe that the 2020s can be a decade of expansion that will improve the lives of all our constituents. That is the defining purpose of any economic policy: to improve the lives of the people we represent, to increase the number of good jobs in every community and to give economic security to families. Rightly, the UK Government have put the fire power of the world’s fifth largest economy at the service of individuals and businesses affected by covid, and that in turn has hit our public finances. The only way to bounce back from covid, to save jobs and to fix our public finances is to trade our way to an export-led recovery. That must be our objective.
We all have examples of great local firms that can take on the world and help to enhance global Britain. In my own Scottish Borders constituency, we have a proud heritage of textile manufacture, and the products produced by Borders textile mills such as Hawico in Hawick and Lochcarron in Selkirk are, without exaggeration, the best of their kind in the world. These global success stories are testament to a skilled local workforce expanding the global markets for those firms that have a direct impact in the small rural border towns that I represent, and creating more skilled jobs, more opportunities for young people and more reasons to stay and build a life in the area.
Businesses in the Borders are ready to take on the world, and there are three things I would ask the Government to do to help them. The first is to make the most of the greater freedom and flexibility that an independent trade policy gives us. Instead of the one-size-fits-all trade deals designed for 28 highly diverse nations with very different climates and landscapes, we can now to tailor our trade relationships more closely to our needs. It is extraordinary that the SNP opposed the recent EU trade deal, effectively voting for a no-deal Brexit that would have created uncertainty and disruption for Scottish businesses.
My second request is that we do more to encourage businesses that have not yet exported their goods to seize the opportunity to expand their market. My third request to my colleagues in Government is to remember that their responsibilities are for the whole of the United Kingdom. I know that Ministers are well seized of that point. Scottish businesses are served best when their two Governments, UK and Scottish, are working together.
As we emerge from the shadow of covid, there will be no time to lose in the race to rebuild our economy and to make a success of the 2020s. There is a world of opportunity out there. It is time to put past divisions aside and all pull together as one United Kingdom to make a success of global Britain for the benefit of all our constituents.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab) [V]
This evening, we have heard a great deal about global Britain. I think of the 60 million people who call this country home. They each have a unique story, history and background. Many of those 60 million people were born on foreign shores, or are the children, grandchildren or great grandchildren of those who came to the United Kingdom in search of a job, prosperity, hope and peace. Now we have left the European Union, it is vital that we do things in the right way.
In 2009, the UK signed up to the principle that all new trade treaties signed by the EU should contain commitments on the protection of human rights as an essential element of each agreement, giving the EU the power to suspend or revoke those treaties if the other party was engaging in serious abuses of human rights. Nowhere in the entire of the four-and-a-half years of the Brexit process did this Government state that leaving the EU would mean departing from that principle for our own future trade agreements, yet last month we signed new treaties with Singapore, Vietnam and Turkey, none of which have clauses relating to human rights as an essential element of the agreement.
While we welcome the continuity agreements with 10 countries that were signed in December, some 11 other countries were sadly left out in the cold. Members of this House have received no formal or appropriate explanation for the failure with those 11 countries, so I hope the Minister will explain in detail the reason why deals could not be done in time with Albania, Algeria, Bosnia, Ghana, Montenegro and Serbia. Will he tell the House the exact status of those negotiations now? Could he also tell us the status of negotiations with the other five members of the East African Community besides Kenya—Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan and Burundi—which have been left to rely on a generalised preferences scheme, rather than the formal trade deal with the UK that they previously enjoyed and hoped to build on?
The treatment of our Commonwealth cousins in Ghana is a shame on all of us. The Republic of Ghana has been treated disgracefully by Ministers in recent weeks and months. We know now from the Ghanaian Government that the UK negotiators turned up late for meetings and were badly briefed. They left early with nothing resolved. We also know that the Ghanaians expected to meet the Secretary of State, only to be faced with one of her junior Ministers.
I say to those on the Treasury Bench, and I do so objectively, that we must proceed with caution. We need the help, co-operation, good will and respect of nations across the world if we are to make this work. That means we need to be professional, respectful and act like adults. We need to ensure that we take our place as a global advocate of good governance, human rights, decency, respect and co-operation, and the sooner the better.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con) [V]
The importance of this subject, if not this abbreviated debate, with its précis-ed contributions, can be hardly overstated, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) noted, it goes much, much beyond trade. It remains somewhat vaguely defined by Her Majesty’s Government, so I hope this debate is part of a consultation process before the Prime Minister, supported by his Foreign and Development Secretary and his Defence Secretary, reinforces the Trade Secretary in defining what global Britain will mean under his Administration and how the United Kingdom will pursue those objectives. But this is not just about defining Britain to the world; it is about addressing our own electorate in the wake of the divisions that have riven our politics over the past five years around Brexit.
What global Britain says about our values has a vital audience, both domestically and internationally. We need to address the anxieties of those who voted to remain, who thought that the vision and values of Brexit were some kind of backward step to a nostalgia for an imperial Britain long gone. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns), I much commend today’s paper “Global Britain, Global Broker” by Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House. I highly commend his 68 pages of analysis, which in many ways just pose the questions that we have to answer.
I believe that we have a golden opportunity to live and define our values in policies shorn of previous attachments to the interests of a great power, or being a leading member of a bloc aspiring to great power status. In previous times, those great power interests were often contradicted by the values that we wanted to express. Needing to protect our great power status meant that we could not express our values properly. British understatement was often the way in which we chose to express those values, but we can now be much more full-throated about what is right: the golden thread that is the British sense of justice, our standing up for the underdog—and that means standing up for minorities and individual liberty.
We can no longer afford to be careless about the signals that we send, and those signals are currently contradictory. The International Trade Secretary, in her role as Minister for Women and Equalities, knows the position that I hold on the Government’s response to the consultation on the Gender Recognition Act 2004. She knows that I believe that it was deeply unfortunate and that it will continue to take a toll on how we are perceived. The appointment of my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) as the Prime Minister’s global envoy for freedom of religion has its own contradictions, but I much welcome her speech in this debate, in which she quoted Eleanor Roosevelt and the values to which she is attached. I hope that that sense of representing all the minorities will continue.
Development expenditure being cut is another sign that has caused concern for our allies around the world and for the presentation of the United Kingdom’s position, but I really hope that it can be made up for by how we develop the strategic defence and development review that will enable our diplomacy and values to reinforce it. There is a great opportunity, and I trust that we will take it, to address concerns both at home and abroad and make a very positive statement about the United Kingdom and its future.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]
I have to disagree with the Secretary of State: this is not global Britain in action. Plans by the Government to cut UK aid commitments from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income—a real-terms loss of £4.6 billion—are unprincipled, unjustified and completely immoral. The World Food Programme has warned of “famines of biblical proportions” in 2021, and the UN now predicts that as many as 207 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty by 2030 because of the severe long-term impacts of the pandemic.
Cutting our aid budget means cutting a direct lifeline to millions across the world. Women and girls in the poorest countries will be hardest hit. How can the UK continue to claim a leading role in advancing gender equality if it pushes forward with cuts to the UK aid budget? It is crucial that we commit our resources carefully and strategically to ensure that funds directly reach the communities and individuals most in need. This is the worst time for us to be turning our back on those in greatest need.
In my own constituency of Liverpool, Riverside, we have a proud history of internationalism and a strong tradition of helping those in need. Fantastic campaigners from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Liverpool Friends of Yemen have worked tirelessly to fundraise for the al-Sabeen baby and children’s hospital in Yemen, throughout the war and more recently, to aid its fight against coronavirus while simultaneously battling the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.
In Yemen, 80% of the population—more than 24 million people—need some form of humanitarian assistance and protection. We have a moral responsibility to step up and do everything in our power to help and support these people. I am so proud of the way that our community has pulled together to help others in dire need and I wish that we could say the same of this Government. Oxfam has reported that, during the past half-decade, Britain has earned eight times more from arms sales to members of the coalition fighting in Yemen than it has spent on aid to help civilians caught up in the conflict.
The world is currently facing a common enemy like never before yet the response across the board has been to leave the poorest and the most vulnerable to fend for themselves. It would be entirely indefensible and inhumane for our leaders to cut one of the few resources to support the most marginalised at this time. I call on this Government to do the right thing: to commit now to maintain our aid commitments to the poorest and most in need across the world.
Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
In 2016, the Government began using the phrase “global Britain” in the aftermath of the referendum. We received clarity last year from the Foreign Secretary who let it be known that the Government’s vision for a truly global Britain included showing our allies that we would remain great partners and friends, that we would be an energetic champion of free and open trade, and, finally, that we would be an even stronger force for the world. So far, I have seen action that would only diminish our standing and reputation on the global stage, such as the scrapping of international programmes for students in the United Kingdom to meet and network with their counterparts across Europe, which are their closest peers.
As the chair of the all-party group on Erasmus, I was devastated to learn that the Government had chosen not to participate in the programme post-Brexit. The Erasmus+ scheme allowed students to broaden their horizons, learn new languages, and forge international networks and relationships. As it stood, it could have contributed heavily to the Government’s vision of a truly global Britain. Scrapping the programme and announcing the new Turing programme, with limited details on what the scheme will entail, I am concerned that the Government have scrapped a brilliant programme for another that falls short. It is very underfunded and does not share the many benefits of the Erasmus+ programme. If we are truly aiming for global Britain, we must also consider how international students fit into the new Turing scheme. At present, the idea of reciprocity seen in the Erasmus+ programme does not seem to be present in the new scheme.
While we speak of a truly global exchange programme, we should be celebrating the good that British education can offer international students as well as celebrating the cultural benefits of learning from them, too. International students give us our local communities and we must do more to encourage and support them to choose Britain in their own exchange programmes.
Something woefully lacking in the Government’s vision of a global Britain is our own world renowned manufacturing industry. This is an industry that has been ravaged by the pandemic and overlooked by the Government during the Brexit negotiations. I want to see the Government finally prioritise this sector, save our businesses and employers and give them better assurances. Members will know that manufacturing has a deep root in my city of Coventry and in the west midlands. The west midlands can boast of the Rolls-Royce site at Ansty, which is the only site that can weld the veins of plane propellers. It is one of only a handful sites around the world that can produce fans with their plane engines. We risk losing our proud heritage of world-class expertise in the aeronautic industry. We need to capitalise on British talents, support our homegrown industry and ensure that jobs are not exported out of this country.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am keen for the Government to let us know where those two important tenets of our British society can fit into their global vision.
Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con) [V]
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to contribute to this important debate. Global Britain means a lot more than just a couple of words now that we have left the EU. This is about reassessing Britain’s place in the world and championing the good that this nation has done and will continue to do in an ever changing global market. I am proud that the UK has been at the heart of the international effort to tackle covid-19, which just shows the good that this country can do through our international engagement. The development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, for example, which is a game changer in our global fight against covid-19, has demonstrated that this country is one of the world’s best when it comes to science and research. In my opinion, the argument is also sound and compelling that Britain must do its bit to help vaccinate populations across the world.
2021 is going to be an excellent year for the UK’s global leadership, with our presidencies of the G7 and COP26 giving us a fantastic opportunity to highlight to the international community what a strong force for good global Britain can and will be. Our values are shared by so many across the world—a liberal democracy and a capitalist society, looking out for our most vulnerable. That is why I am glad that at the G7 summit this year, which is to be hosted by the UK, we are welcoming India, South Korea and Australia—the D10, or the 10 democracies. My hope is that this band of liberal democracies will help the world to stand up to autocratic regimes across the world. The D10 band of countries can be a force for good. While we as a nation have always been a leader, we cannot do it alone. The pandemic has shown the benefits of all countries working together to defeat this virus. This new band of countries is the key to unlocking that change and is the compassionate case for our future as a free trading, independent nation contributing towards humanitarian issues across the world.
We have already made 63 trade agreements with countries around the world. When combined with the trade and co-operation agreement reached with the EU, this covers £885 billion of UK trade. Mutual recognition agreements on conformity assessments have also been separately reached with the US, Australia and New Zealand. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Trade for all her work and thank her Department for setting the agenda of global Britain as a free trading nation. There has never been a more important time for the UK to be out in the world, delivering on our commitments, helping the most vulnerable and showcasing what the UK has to offer.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance) [V]
“Global Britain” may be catchy, but it is not an inclusive phrase. Britain or Great Britain is not the same thing as the United Kingdom. In terms of substance, there is a danger that global Britain is just a front for little England. The UK is retreating on the international stage. Its influence and, indeed, its sovereignty were amplified by working through the European Union alongside other multilateral institutions. With the incoming Biden Administration, a likely return to alliance co-operation and a greater focus on global institutions, there should be some reflection on the course now being taken. In the context of the support for and reliance upon a rules-based international order, it is worth reflecting on and recalling the damage that has been done by the games that were played around the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill.
I am a supporter of free and fair trade in the liberal tradition. It is often overlooked that the UK was able to open new trade markets through the European Union. The test of any independent trade policy is whether it is capable of improving what the EU could have achieved for the UK through its much greater negotiating strength. At best, the jury is out on that. There is a danger that, in an effort to push the boundaries in reaching agreements, standards on labour rights, the environment, climate change and human rights are compromised. In the modern world, those are all intrinsic aspects of trade agreements.
Reference has been made to the current problems with the movement of goods into Northern Ireland. These problems relate to Brexit itself and the nature of the UK-EU trade deal. They are manifesting across the UK, so Northern Ireland is not alone in these problems. The subset of challenges arising from the protocol relate in large part to very tight timescales for implementation, poor information and a lack of engagement from companies based in Great Britain. Where there are structural problems, they can only be addressed by fresh flexibilities and derogations being agreed by the UK Government and the European Commission through the joint partnership council and the specialised committee. Those pushing article 16 of the protocol as a remedy are offering a populist, ineffective and false solution. Please note that no major business organisation in Northern Ireland or beyond is calling for article16 to be invoked.
Looking ahead, the promotion of democracy, human rights and good governance must be central. The UK must be a leader in the United Nations on peacebuilding and human security. It must be a leader on climate change, both at home and abroad. I am concerned that these concepts have been given very little space and attention in the integrated review to date. That needs to be addressed if we are going to talk about a genuine global UK.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
After nearly 50 years of being shackled to the European Union, today we can say with confidence that Britain is back—back as a sovereign, independent and truly global nation. Let us, however, reflect that instead of being a nation with its sovereignty restored, trading on equal terms with Europe, we could so easily have been legally trapped in a backstop, which would have left the UK locked into the EU rules with no escape. Had some of us caved in to the pressure that we were under to vote for the withdrawal agreement, I fear that today the integrity and sovereignty of the United Kingdom would have been compromised. With the fresh start that this gave our then new Prime Minister, he was able to free the United Kingdom from the entanglement of the European Union and restore Britain’s sovereignty, which my constituents in Romford, and the British people, voted for.
Of course, our British family of overseas territories and Crown dependencies must always be included as part of global Britain. I cautiously welcome the agreement reached with Spain over Gibraltar, which I am assured by my friends on the Rock does not compromise the integrity of Gibraltar, which is and remains wholly British, as it always must. The Prime Minister reassured the people of the Falkland Islands in his Christmas message that the Government will do everything they can to support the islands, but that support must also be extended to all Crown dependencies and overseas territories; their needs and interests must be secured in future negotiations. Her Majesty’s Government have a duty to represent their interests too.
We also have an opportunity to build a stronger alliance with Canada, Australia and New Zealand. We share so much in common with the CANZUK nations through family ties, history, culture, language, and, of course, with the Queen as our common Head of State, so let us work to make this alliance a reality too. Indeed, there are also all 54 nations of the Commonwealth—young and diverse—which make up almost 2.4 billion of the world’s population. The Commonwealth must also be at the heart of Britain’s global strategy.
Finally, we must never forget our special relationship with our companion nation on these islands, Ireland. We must work to strengthen areas of mutual understanding with our Irish friends, building ever closer and stronger bilateral relations between our two uniquely intertwined nations. As co-chair of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, I look forward to bringing members of both the British and Irish Parliaments together to discuss opportunities to collaborate closely as true friends and allies.
The United Kingdom must be bold in using our rediscovered freedom to go out into the world and reclaim our global leadership on free trade, enterprise and liberal democracy, spreading those values, which have given this nation a history of which we can all be rightly proud.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
The measure of success for global Britain comes not just in rhetoric, but in the actions that we take on the international stage, particularly in the face of international injustices. I will therefore use my time today to draw the Minister’s attention to the situation in Sri Lanka, and particularly to the vital upcoming UN Human Rights Council meeting.
The challenges in Sri Lanka are well documented. Its President and his brother, the Prime Minister, face accusations of crimes against humanity for their role in killing thousands of their own people—Tamil civilians, at the end of the civil war. They have placed their closest allies in senior Government positions, including military commanders accused of war crimes and politicians accused of corruption, violence and common criminality. Just this weekend, I received thousands of emails from shocked and frightened members of the Tamil community following the destruction of the Mullivaikkal Tamil genocide memorial monument at the University of Jaffna —an act that completely undermines the process of truth, justice and accountability that would set Sri Lanka on a path to lasting peace.
How the UK responds to the ongoing injustice in Sri Lanka and in support of democracy, human rights and the rule of law will speak volumes for our leadership role on the international stage. The 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council will take place in March; what preparations are the Government making to ensure that a new resolution on the issue is agreed? Such a resolution should maintain human rights monitoring by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; mandate a mechanism to gather, preserve and analyse evidence for future investigations and prosecutions that build on the work of previous UN investigators; and call on the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a report on options for international action for the promotion and protection of human rights, justice and accountability in Sri Lanka. I urge the Minister, in the strongest terms, to ensure that we use the unique opportunity that March provides to continue the global leadership that we have previously demonstrated on this issue and show on the international stage that we are truly global Britain.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my colleague from the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh).
When politicians break manifesto pledges, they normally pay a price at the ballot box at the subsequent election. Think of George H. W. Bush and his “Read my lips: no new taxes”; he then raised taxes and did not get a second term. Think of Nick Clegg and his pledge on cutting tuition fees to zero; tuition fees were then tripled and the Liberal Democrats lost 85% of their parliamentary seats at the next election. However, the breaking of a manifesto pledge to spend 0.7% of national income on helping the world’s extreme poor will probably be seen as a good thing by quite a few UK voters, yet the victims are unable to speak up in today’s debate. That is why it is so important for those of us who have had the privilege of seeing the good that UK aid does around the world to speak up on behalf of those who will lose out from the decision at the spending review to cut the aid budget to 0.5%.
Obviously it is not a good idea to break any manifesto pledge, but it is deeply shameful for the only manifesto pledge broken to be the commitment we made to the world’s poorest. If Members have seen the way in which nutrition is given to babies in Ethiopia or Somalia, they will realise that more babies will die if we cut the UK aid budget. If Members have witnessed the invention of the cold-chain deployment of the Ebola vaccine to the furthest reaches of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, paid for by UK aid, they will know that it has helped us to develop the cold-chain deployment of the current Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. In fact, deploying vaccines saves lives—including lives here in the UK. Anyone who has seen the enthusiasm with which girls in Sierra Leone study their lessons will know that the best chance that poor countries have to move beyond aid is through universal access to quality education. Fewer children will finish school if we give less in aid.
We have heard today how global Britain will be presiding over the G7 and COP26, and there are going to be excellent uses for UK aid at those events. We will also be giving a generous amount to GAVI, but would it not be wonderful if it were the UK vaccine that was being deployed around the world? This is a year in which we should be increasing our aid budget, not cutting it.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con) [V]
This debate is led by the Department for International Trade, but in truth, if global Britain is to move from good intentions to successful strategy, it will need to involve all of Government, every constituency and many people—every immigrant nurse, every exporter, every person in our diverse communities who may have come from anywhere in the world but is contributing to our cities and our nation. In many ways, the pandemic is a metaphor for what can be achieved, for the key ingredients of our huge progress on vaccination have come from academics, scientists, the Government-created vaccine taskforce, taxpayer and corporate investment, pharmaceutical and regulatory leadership, and now primary care networks working closely with the NHS and the Army. That combination, involving so many skills, translates into a huge international commitment through GAVI, which was led at its recent summit by the UK. This involved a huge commitment of £330 million for each of the next five years by our own nation, as well as a huge number of other countries, with Oxford-AstraZeneca becoming the first manufacturer to guarantee huge numbers of doses of vaccine for global distribution.
So the idea that the UK has become little England, cut off from the world, does not match the reality of global Britain and the way in which we are facing the greatest global challenge of 2020-21. In our chairmanship of the G7 and the climate change summit COP26 this year, we have other opportunities to try to help the world resolve some of our greatest challenges. This means not only leading by example, which the Prime Minister’s 10-point green plan and his financial commitments bring alive, but working with the crucial partners to achieve common goals, and that includes both the United States of America and China. Global Britain therefore needs calm diplomacy focused on delivery; strong values; and a pragmatic recognition that this House accepts that there is little social justice without a strong economy and that exports bring huge mutual benefits to both our partners abroad and here.
There is so much I would like to say, including about the valiant work of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, supporting open societies, recognising the great efforts we are making for the trans-Pacific partnership in Asia and, above all, the opportunity to show that we can, as President Reagan put it, achieve anything we want to so long as we do not mind who takes the credit.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab) [V]
I want this country to be outward looking and multilateralist, and that includes confronting difficulties. We should not retreat from the middle east because of past conflicts, and we must be prepared to toughen our response towards the regime in Iran. How much effort should we expend trying to appease a corrupt theocracy that has no regard for human rights or international conventions? We should give more support to those who challenge that regime. We should not tolerate Iran’s warmongering or support for terrorism. But a multilateralist Britain also needs to build peace in the middle east, which is why Labour Friends of Israel has been so prominent in making the case for an international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Legislation passed by the US Congress provides an opportunity; it creates a $250 million peace fund and includes two seats for international partners. The fund aims to underpin a future peace, in much the same way as the International Fund for Ireland has done. We of all people should recognise the value of such a fund. It is through peace building and co-existence initiatives that we lay the foundations for a lasting peace. It is through strengthened civic institutions that we ensure it endures, even in times of difficulty. This fund has been pioneered by the Alliance for Middle East Peace, and will provide support for non-governmental organisations and people-to-people projects. We became the first country to endorse such a concept when then Minister Alistair Burt launched the people for peaceful change initiative in 2018. That project has now ended and future intentions remain unclear. By building on developments in the US Congress, we have an opportunity to demonstrate to our new friends in the White House that a post-EU Britain is indeed a global and multilateralist Britain.
In a debate last November, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), pledged to ask officials to look specifically at whether this country should seek to take up one of those seats. It would be good to hear in this debate that real progress has been made and we are now poised to play our full role.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con) [V]
We debate this this evening at a time when the values we stand for as a country, when the values of all liberal democracies of the world, seem more under threat than at any time in living memory. The western world, once confident and convinced of the powers of capitalism, democracy and free trade, has been shaken by two decades of terrorism, ill-managed overseas conflicts, a devastating financial crisis, the European migrant crisis and a lurch towards nationalism and populism. Now, economies are ravaged by covid-19, and last week we saw the bastion of American democracy—the Capitol, the literal shining city on the hill—overrun by a mob demanding that the results of a free and fair election be overturned because their leader refused to accept the result; actions we would normally associate with a tinpot dictator, not the leader of the free world. And so in front of us is the greatest challenge since we rebuilt our world after the second world war. We must take on the democracy deniers; we must re-establish and defend the rules-based order; and we must champion free trade. The challenge we have is great. We see Russia and China. We see threats to democracy and trade all around the globe.
Britain is already a global power: a world leader on foreign aid spending; the second highest defence spender in NATO, with that set to increase; a permanent member of the UN Security Council; a leading member of the Commonwealth; and a country that has shown by its action that it respects and enacts the results of democratic referendums and elections. We are a believer in free trade between free nations because it enriches our people and spurs economic growth and prosperity around the globe. That is why we have signed 64 trade deals since leaving the EU, worth over £885 billion. We are among the leading nations on earth in fighting climate change. Over the past decade, the UK has cut carbon emissions by more than any similar developed country, and it was the first major economy to legislate for net zero emissions by 2050.
This year, we have a great opportunity at this crucial juncture for our world—at this epoch-defining moment when we, the liberal democracies, can choose either to simply watch as those who care not for liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly or democracy overturn the rules-based international order, or to stand up for the values of the enlightenment, for democracy, for globalisation. The United Kingdom has been handed the opportunity to lead—to guide the world forward into the next decade of the 21st century. With our presidency of COP26, hosted here in Scotland this year, and with our presidency of the G7 coming at this most critical and crucial of years, we have the opportunity to be bold and to signal to the world that, though bruised, the values we hold dear are enduring and that, working together, with confidence in who we are and what we stand for, we can take action to combat the greatest threats to our planet and our people. A global Britain, with Scotland at its heart, will lead the fight in the struggles of this century, and I think, with conviction, that we will win.
Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind) [V]
It pains me to say that under this Government, Britain is world-beating for all the wrong reasons. We are facing the highest number of excess deaths in Europe—one of the worst covid-19 death rates in the world—and our worst ever recession. We chose not to implement a zero-covid strategy to save UK lives. It is alarming that this is the global Britain that is promised by the Prime Minister and his allies—a Britain that has alienated itself on the world stage by cosying up to Donald Trump, and which is forming a reputation across the world for rhetoric, incompetence and mismanagement.
This Government act as though someone can only love this country if they wrap themselves in the Union Jack, refuse to recognise the horrors of our colonial past and ignore everything that does not make Britain great, yet I believe that, as a former empire, Britain has a unique responsibility to redefine its role on the global stage. It is vital for us to consider the impact of Britain’s colonial legacy on modern-day global insecurity. For instance, it is crucial that countries in the global south are not denied access to vaccines due to financial constraints. It is also shameful that the Government are cutting development funding at a time of global crisis. Turning our backs on the world’s poorest is a political choice, not an economic necessity. It is especially crucial for the UK Government to be ambitious about changing the unjust dynamics of trade and global debt, forged through centuries of violent extractive colonialism and imperialism. The Jubilee Debt Campaign found that more than 60 countries are spending more on paying their creditors than they are on their population’s health. That is a direct consequence of the uneven power dynamics of empire, and it must end.
Despite what the Government may believe, it is possible to love Britain because of the NHS, because of our proud trade union history and because your parents were able to arrive from Nevis, settle in Leicester and build a life for themselves and their family. I want our country to ensure that none of our citizens goes hungry, that it is a welcoming place for everyone and that we are a force for human rights, climate justice and equality at home and abroad. That is the patriotism that I wish the Government would subscribe to and which must guide Britain towards a new path on the global stage.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con) [V]
I start by paying tribute to the Secretary of State for International Trade and her Ministers, because securing agreements for £885 billion in trade in one year is no mean feat.
I turn first to our EU trade deal. It is a good and pragmatic deal—a deal of which the British people can be proud as we chart our own future. For Rutland and Melton, our 63 trade deals and the EU agreement mean that thousands of businesses can better trade worldwide, our incredible food producers such as Long Clawson Dairy and Samworth Brothers are boosted by increasing recognition worldwide with geographical indicators, and our farmers get a better deal free from the bureaucratic tentacles of Brussels. With our new-found freedoms, I hope that locally, if the Chancellor heeds my cries, we will benefit from an east midlands freeport at East Midlands Airport.
Moving forward, we must seize the negotiations with New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the US to further our longstanding alliances. Through these deals, we also have the opportunity to join the CPTPP. As much as Britain is a trading nation, global Britain means more than boosting exports. We should build stronger economic and security partnerships with our Five Eyes and NATO allies to better tackle the rising threat of China and other nations to our security, economy and health, and to combat corruption in international institutions.
Trade deals with like-minded allies will enable us to establish coalitions for free trade and human rights worldwide and to diminish and isolate those who seek to undermine our values and nations. As global Britain, we should step forward to become the world leader in the prevention of atrocities. We need a stand-alone unit at the Foreign Office to do that and to stop genocides, such as that in Xinjiang. More than any time since the second world war, the UK has a chance to define for itself its place in the world. This place will be a great one that lifts other nations with us.
I go back to my maiden speech, where I said that for 1,000 years, Rutland’s motto has been “multum in parvo”, or, “much in little”. The same is true of this great country, for it is not through our vastness that we have become a beacon in the world, but rather through the commercial talent of our citizens, the power of our ideas and the strength of our democracy and laws, which by unapologetic defence have stood the test of time.
In my maiden speech, I also raised a Greek aphorism, “gnōthi seauton”, meaning “know thyself”. That is a sound basis for British foreign policy, because our great nation must be temperate where possible and decisive where necessary. We must ruthlessly defend our values, progress every opportunity for our people, stand by our allies, promote liberal, free market economies and protect the most vulnerable, because a global Britain is one that unapologetically stands tall on the world stage, certain in the knowledge that those who seek to dim the light of our great nation and our values will surely fail.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
The British Government’s cut to the aid budget is a clear example that global Britain is about looking after the UK’s own priorities while reducing support for the world’s poorest. Abandoning the commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid, but simultaneously finding millions of pounds for a festival to celebrate Brexit has left many questioning global Britain’s priorities. This cut to the aid budget will have a catastrophic impact, leading to increased poverty and instability around the world, further exacerbating the covid-19 crisis. Surely if UK Ministers wanted global Britain to lead the charge, this pandemic would be the perfect time to exemplify that leadership. I argue that cutting the aid budget is not global Britain; it is the actions of little Britain.
Last month, it was announced that the UK would no longer partake in Erasmus, even after the Prime Minister’s commitment to remain part of the scheme. In this debate, it is important to remember who will miss out from the UK no longer partaking in Erasmus; there will be so many missed opportunities for young people. I am proud to serve as honorary president of the British Youth Council. The BYC has serious concerns that, although the Turing scheme may replace the formal education aspect of Erasmus-plus, the Government have taken no action to replace the non-formal strand of the scheme. Withdrawing from the Erasmus programme is not global Britain; it is the actions of little Britain.
The UK Government claim that, as global Britain, they can establish a great trade deal with the United States, but they seem to forget that, since 2019, a 25% tariff has existed on single malt whisky imported to the US.
Jim Shannon
The news today indicated that online sales of whiskey—I think of the Echlinville distillery in Kircubbin—have exceeded expectations. I know that the hon. Gentleman and I have different opinions on the constitution, but does he not agree that the opportunities for whiskey sales across the world are growing?
David Linden
The hon. Gentleman will certainly find an ally in me in hoping that we sell more whisky, not least because it is one of the most important industries in Scotland, employing 11,000 people. Scotch itself is worth £5.5 billion to the UK economy, so I heartily endorse that.
While the UK is negotiating a free trade deal with the States, the tariffs remain in place and exports to the US have fallen by 30% since they came into force. That means that jobs in the supply chain are very much at risk. Time is of the essence for the whisky sector, and it is imperative that the UK Government work with the Biden Administration to ensure that the issue of whisky tariffs is a priority in any future trade deal. I certainly hope that that will be the case, given the so-called special relationship.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) said, global Britain is not the SNP’s project. We wish it well, but we certainly do not want to be a part of it. Instead, we seek an independent Scotland rejoining the European Union as an equal member alongside our EU partners. We see the power of smaller nations and what they can achieve: the Republic of Ireland now sits on the UN Security Council and New Zealand leads the world in covid-19 elimination. That is the prize we in the SNP firmly have our eyes on, and we will not be distracted by hollow slogans like global Britain.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]
Three minutes is not a great deal of time to talk about a subject as big as Britain’s place in the world as global Britain, so this evening I want to challenge the House to think a little about the signals we are sending.
I mean it as absolutely no disrespect to the Secretary of State for International Trade, but I rather wish somebody else had opened the debate. I wish the Secretary of State for international development had come to the Dispatch Box to boast that Britain was one of the handful of countries that had a commitment to spend 0.7% of its GNI on overseas aid. Of course, we could not have had that, because the Government have abolished the Department for International Development and now seek to walk away from the commitment to spend 0.7% of our GNI on aid. As others have said in this debate, that commitment put us at the top of the world’s nations, rather than in the rather backward and downward-looking position we are now left in.
If the Government want the focus of today’s debate to be on trade, let us take them at their word. As the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) said, let us focus on the tariffs currently being imposed on Scotch whisky, which have cost us something in the region of £450 million in lost exports already. It is a pretty open secret that we were close to having a bilateral deal with the US last week but we did not get it over the line. That is because it was just too difficult for Government Departments within Whitehall to agree on a common position that would have delivered that deal. Rather than having Ministers come and crow at the Dispatch Box about the great achievements of cut-and-paste trade deals, they would do better to focus on the real challenges that face us as we now try to create these trade deals across the world, because that one issue of tariffs in one sector shows just how challenging this is going to be.
The challenge to the House tonight is what the narrative is going to be as we create this global Britain. Is it going to be one that is merely transactional—all about trade? Are we going to create a global Britain that is actually rooted in values—rooted in support for human rights, wherever they are found, and the rule of law—or are we going to be looking at this just as a question of pounds, shillings and pence?
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con) [V]
Having listened to some of the nay-sayers today, I would refer them to a quote from Theodore Roosevelt:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man…in the arena”.
Well, global Britain is now in the arena, and this is about us engaging globally in our new, less constrained world. We need more trade and investment to propel our economic growth and create jobs as we recover from coronavirus. The UK, in reaching out to the world, needs to build its own platforms to support this.
I want progress in our levelling-up agenda for all parts of the UK to participate through agendas like putting the first freeport in the north-east of England at Tees port and Teesside airport; investing in proper rail capacity through connections like Ferryhill station on the Leamside line, affording efficient links for our businesses; and creating specialisms in the space and hydrogen sectors in places like the north-east. This will allow the north-east to fully participate in these opportunities.
With the Brexit deal now properly done, and having secured deals with 63 countries around the world covering £885 billion of trade, we need to grasp these opportunities for all our regions. We can develop as a scientific superpower. NETPark in Sedgefield is positioned to develop global expertise, creating more high-value local manufacturing and generating more export power. We need to commercialise our innovation expertise. This can be the platform for investing in training and skills. The Turing scheme excites me by creating a broader opportunity for students. With our overseas placements no longer limited by language, skills or money, all students now have equal access to what the world of education can offer. With the dedicated appointment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) to focus on COP26, the UK can lead on climate change and a green recovery.
I have every confidence that we have the desire and capability to develop a fully global Britain, and I look forward to supporting our Government in these endeavours.
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con) [V]
Today Britain is forging a new path as a sovereign nation state. We will stand by our long-held values of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights. We will work hard to support our European friends and neighbours and our allies around the world and will continue to stand by the world’s poorest. But we must also seize the opportunity of our new freedoms—the opportunity to cast Britain as an icon of an outward-looking modern state. To do that, we have to recognise the changing factors disrupting the world as we know it today. First, the world’s economic centre of gravity has shifted east, and the Indo-Pacific region is now the fastest-growing region in the world. Secondly, the rise of technology is profoundly changing how we live and work. Those who cannot keep up will lose out.
We need to prepare ourselves for the century ahead. We should be proud of the talents born across these islands of our shared achievements to date. We are the world’s fifth largest economy, with more Nobel prizes and world-leading universities than any European country. We are a diplomatic superpower and a nuclear power, and we benefit from our leadership roles in the UN Security Council and the G7. We have a leading global financial centre and we consistently attract the highest foreign direct investment in Europe. Along with China, the US and India, we are one of the top four breeding grounds for tech unicorns—those rare new companies that achieve billion-dollar valuations. However, the world does not stand still and nor can we. We must now use our hard-won freedoms to keep up with a changing world—the freedom to revise our regulations at speed to meet the pace set by the world’s brightest innovators, to strike new trading relationships that suit our distinct economic strengths and to spur on our specialist sectors.
Britain’s record on covid-19 vaccinations—vaccinating more people than the rest of Europe combined—has reminded us all of the importance of an ambitious and agile state that controls its own regulation. We can use progressive regulation to push new boundaries, from AI to fintech to life sciences to gene editing, and we can also be ambitious with our new global partnerships, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. Our new trading freedom means Britain can join the CPTPP. Already the largest trade agreement by population, if the US joins, it will be the largest economic free trade agreement in the world. We can do more to collaborate with our Indo-Pacific partners, from space development alliances to green finance to protecting our shared values. We are also the biggest funder of COVAX, the global vaccine alliance, which will ensure we can get at least 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccines to more than 90 developing countries.
Through innovation and partnership, we are helping to get the vaccine to those who need it most, proving that an independent Britain is not only good for us, but good for our friends across the world. Indeed, that is a fitting first step for a new truly global Britain.
Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con) [V]
Across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, over 125,000 people have already received the coronavirus vaccine. This is a truly staggering feat, given that this time last year many of us had never even heard of covid-19. Just last week, I spoke with the chief executive of Staffordshire County Council and the leaders of our NHS team locally who are rolling out this vaccine in Stafford. I thank all of our healthcare workers, members of the armed forces and volunteers who have helped to make this vaccination programme possible. I know there are still millions of people across the UK eagerly waiting for the vaccine, but if the operation at county showground in Stafford is anything to go by, I have every hope that the vaccine will help us to defeat the virus. Our experience of coronavirus over the last few months has, sadly, taught us that some people will have to seek hospital treatment and some will also need intensive care, so I thank everyone for the enormous personal sacrifices they have made over the past few months to follow the guidance, and I say thank you for all they have done to literally save people’s lives.
Unfortunately, in many less developed countries, responding to this need through existing health systems will be near on impossible. For example, Tanzania has just one doctor for every 30,000 patients, while most African countries have fewer than 20 ICU beds for their entire populations. So not only will the virus be more difficult to contain, but the ability to care for those severely infected will be limited. Therefore, today, I call for every country to strengthen their preventive measures to fight this immediate crisis. It is absolutely essential that we have strong, resilient health systems to fight this global pandemic. Investing in healthcare workers, as well as providing adequate protective equipment and other essential medicines, helps to prepare low and middle-income countries to deal with the immediate threat of covid-19 and helps to avoid thousands of preventable deaths. Of course, there is no one single model for handling this outbreak and no virus is the same, but I believe that this worldwide sharing of experience has helped us to slow down the spread of coronavirus and is helping to protect the lives of my constituents in Stafford and around the world.
Vaccines are an area in which Britain has a long-standing history in leading the world. We are a founding member of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and we are continuing to champion access to vaccines. So while this pandemic has devastatingly demonstrated that we are all only as strong as our weakest healthcare system, I think the UK has shown tremendous leadership and co-operation, which is what is needed to fight this disease and to ensure that covid-19 is ended in Stafford and abroad.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con) [V]
I welcome today’s debate. I am hugely optimistic about our future as a sovereign free-trading nation, although I appreciate that not all share that view—indeed, we have witnessed this evening how Labour and SNP Members wish to talk down Britain. Unlike them, I am confident about our place in the world. For evidence of this, we need look no further than the remarkable achievement of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Trade and her team, who have successfully negotiated over 60 continuity agreements since we formally left the EU almost a year ago.
The Government have set out their welcome ambition to join the CPTPP. Perhaps we should also consider in greater detail CANZUK, which could bring Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK together as an international powerhouse. Far from being the little Englanders the remainers have always made Brexiteers out to be, we are pursuing a vision of a truly global Britain. I am pleased to play my small part in this through my role as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to the western Balkans. Although I have been in office for only three months, I have seen the huge potential for expanding the relationship between the UK and each of the six countries in the region. There are considerable opportunities across a range of sectors, most notably in renewables and infrastructure projects. Furthermore, there are opportunities throughout the supply chains, offering infinite possibilities for SMEs in the UK to get involved.
The forthcoming COP26 world conference will focus attention on the green agenda and create a massive opportunity for the UK to showcase what our industries offer in the global markets that are open to them. In contrast to what the doomsayers claim, post Brexit we retain the status of a respected partner, which is able to continue to punch above its weigh thanks to a dynamic economy. We are one of the greatest military powers in the world and have a reputation as one of the most effective exercisers of soft power. Few can match our diplomatic footprint, as I have seen in my role as a trade envoy. Our ambassadors in the western Balkans have shown themselves to be people of great ability. They recognise that the UK brand is a powerful one and maintain Britain’s reputation as a country that offers fantastic opportunities.
I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State refer to free ports. She knows that I have long advocated such a policy. I am of course eager to ensure that the Humber ports receive free port status. It is clear that the UK’s best times are ahead of us, and I very much welcome the efforts of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for International Trade to refocus our policy so that it is fit for the 21st century.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the chance to wind up this first debate of 2021 for the official Opposition. We have heard powerful speeches from the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), and from my hon. Friends the Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), for Newport West (Ruth Jones), for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). Also notable were the speeches from the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe). It was difficult to disagree with the right hon. Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) that cutting our aid and abolishing the Department for International Development is hardly going to build confidence in the global Britain brand.
The International Trade Secretary’s speech was, sadly, not quite so encouraging. She and the rest of the Cabinet spent 2020 putting up barriers to trade. She unsuccessfully chased Donald Trump for a trade deal—indeed, it was striking that not once in her speech did she mention President-elect Biden. Vital markets in Asia and important allies in Africa were neglected or treated poorly last year. The one advantage that Ministers in the Department for International Trade start the year with is that expectations of them are not high.
The deal with the European Union that the Prime Minister negotiated, while better than no deal, is proving already to be very thin gruel. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton noted, 80% of our economic output depends on services. We might reasonably have expected Ministers to fight harder to maintain our access to EU services markets, but there is nothing on, for example, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, and the Prime Minister’s claim that his deal means certainty for financial services—one of the industries where Britain leads the world in jobs and skills—will surprise many who work in that industry.
Never has any party embraced with such enthusiasm a trade deal that is set to generate unprecedented levels of red tape and form filling—new red tape for farmers, new plant and animal health checks, new red tape for manufacturers, new rules of origin checks, and new safety and security checks. Businesses will have to get used to an estimated 400 million new forms. Not surprisingly, one of the fastest growing areas of employment in global Britain is in handling all the new red tape.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend recall the Prime Minister saying that, if businesses were presented with new forms, they should just rip them up, apparently?
Gareth Thomas
My right hon. Friend makes a good point, but, sadly, we are seeing lots of new jobs being created in this very area: customs clearance agents, import customs agents, international customs agents, import customs brokerage agents and customs clearance clerks—all these new jobs being created because Ministers appear to want dynamic export-oriented British firms to fill in more forms.
Since the Government’s new trade agreement with the EU came into effect, we have also seen rising numbers of export consignments from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and the EU turned away because they do not have the right customs documentation, we have seen EU businesses stop selling their products to the UK by mail because of new VAT rules, and we have seen thousands of companies grappling with the new rules of origin to determine whether their exports to the EU now face tariffs. So businesses—never mind the House—might have expected to hear a little more from the Secretary of State on what she was going to do about those problems.
As the shadow Secretary of State made clear, on rollover agreements, the truth is that the process has been a bit of a mess. Only 31 of the 63 countries listed on the Department for International Trade’s website have fully ratified agreements with the UK. Twenty-one have provisional agreements pending ratification, eight have bridging mechanisms pending the signing of deals, and in three cases deals have been signed but are not yet in effect. Clearly, not all of it is the Government’s fault, but leaving it so late to secure these agreements has caused completely unnecessary headaches and costs for many businesses trading with those countries. Prime Minister Trudeau’s suggestion that Britain did not have the “bandwidth” for a deal with his country hinted at a rather different reality from the one that the Secretary of State and her cheerleaders have implied today.
Indeed, the total inadequacy of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act process as a means to guarantee proper parliamentary scrutiny of new trade deals signed by the Government has been exposed. Look at the eight continuity agreements that took effect on 1 January before they had been formally ratified: not a single one with a word of debate in Parliament. Continuity agreements with Canada and Mexico have not yet taken effect because ratification is taken more seriously in those countries than it is here, and one more agreement, with Cameroon, came into effect on 1 January without even being laid before Parliament. Think about that—it became law before any of us even saw it. If ever a process merited amendments from the other place being accepted to improve scrutiny of trade agreements, it is surely the events of the past month.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West pointed out, the House has received no formal explanation as to why 11 continuity agreements could not be concluded in time. So it certainly would be helpful if the Minister of State took a bit of time in his winding-up speech to go through the reasons why deals could not be done with, for example, Algeria, Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia. The Government’s dismal treatment of Ghana—a key Commonwealth ally—is particularly surprising. We know that UK negotiators turned up for meetings late and badly briefed and then left early with nothing resolved. What hung over all those negotiations was the threat of very heavy tariffs on cocoa, tuna and bananas if a deal could not be completed in time. That, sadly, is what has happened—twice already now, including today. I hope that a deal with Ghana can be completed soon and, when the Secretary of State finally signs that long overdue and much needed deal, it should come with a much needed apology.
It is also striking that, in the year when the UK will be hosting the world’s climate change summit, not one of the trade agreements that the Secretary of State signed last year saw any progress on the environment and climate change. Also, as other hon. Friends have mentioned, many of the deals that the Secretary of State signed did not include even the most basic provisions on human rights. It was good to hear the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) briefly require the Secretary of State to mention India. The Secretary of State has been astonishingly quiet on trade with the Indian subcontinent. India’s market is set to be the world’s fifth largest within five years, and given that Britain is bottom of the G7 for growth in our trade with India, a little more effort to open those markets would, I say gently, be timely.
Trade deals involve give as well as take, so it would be good to hear a little more openness from the Minister of State tonight and ultimately from the Secretary of State about what we will have to give in the trade deals she wants to sign this year. Australia and New Zealand, for example, are both great allies, but with a considerable interest in our agricultural markets. Japan, too, is a great ally, but we must remember that the Japan trade deal signed with great fanfare appears, according to the Government’s own analysis, set to benefit Japanese exporters five times as much as British exporters.
When it comes to future negotiations, the Secretary of State has once again spoken in this debate as if the UK’s membership of the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership—the CPTPP—should be seen as a no-brainer and a done deal. Membership of the CPTPP may indeed be a very welcome and positive step for our country to take, but I think the Government owe it to the House—we certainly owe it to our constituents—at least to ask some basic questions about that membership and what it will really mean. Will it, for example, mean signing up to secretive investor-state dispute settlement processes, with all the risks that that poses for our ability to protect public services, consumers and the environment from corporate profiteers? Will it mean having to accept the CPTPP’s “list it or lose it” approach to private competition in the public sector? Will it mean being obliged to accept palm oil from Malaysia and other producers, regardless of the public pressure in this country for a ban? Will we really be able to renegotiate the provisions of the CPTPP in our own interests before we sign up to it, or will we just have to accept the provisions that are already there? Of course, that might ultimately be the right thing to do. The benefits may well outweigh the costs, but the Government have not yet made that case. They have not yet answered the most basic questions. It is not just the other members of the CPTPP that they need to convince, but Parliament and the British public as well.
After almost 50 years, we have left a trade alliance with our closest geographical and economic partners—a decision that was not taken lightly. It certainly was not taken without debate, so before the Government plunge us into another trade grouping, perhaps a little more discussion might be worthwhile: maybe an impact assessment, and certainly serious and meaningful consultation.
The Minister for Trade Policy (Greg Hands)
I thank the 52 Members across the House for their informed contributions to the debate. Following our exit from the European Union, on 31 December the United Kingdom left the EU customs union and single market, taking back control of our trade policy and becoming an independent trading nation once again. We have reached an ambitious agreement with the European Union, changing the basis of that relationship from EU law to free trade and friendly co-operation.
After four and a half long years of debate—including, most notably, in this Chamber—we have followed the instruction of the British people as expressed in the 2016 referendum. I am sure that I speak for many in this House when I express a sense of relief that this matter is now settled and that vote honoured. It was a vote for Britain’s relationship with Europe and with the rest of the world to change—to recognise some of the challenges of leaving the EU, but also to embrace a great number of new opportunities. In other words, it was a vote to forge the global Britain that this country can be.
Among the 52 speakers we have heard from, the longest speech—I thought I ought to reply to it—was from the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). In fact, we heard from both Islingtons tonight. The right hon. Lady’s speech was mainly complaints about the trade and co-operation agreement. I will pass her questions on to the Cabinet Office. Now, it was rumoured that she was close to quitting the Front Bench rather than voting for the new UK-EU trade and co-operation agreement, and tonight we heard some of the details of her opposition to that agreement. At times it sounded like she wanted to rejoin the EU. She misunderstood some of the complexities of trade agreements—yes, there is the continuity of the effect, but we still have to negotiate the terms and details. That means things such as rules of origin, tariff-rate quotas and so on. There are quite complex negotiations involved, but we have been very successful: 63 countries with which we have trade agreements have been rolled over so far, covering 97% of that trade.
The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury repeated her complaint about the provisional application of some of these trade agreements—deals which have not yet been fully ratified but which take effect. One might think that that does sound a little bit alarming, but it is entirely normal for trade agreements. Indeed, many of the original EU deals at the time were provisionally applied. I checked back on the details of some of these agreements and found one, the CARIFORUM agreement—a very good agreement, by the way—which is still provisionally applied today, despite having been signed in the year 2008, so the Opposition complaint that these deals have been provisionally applied for perhaps a few weeks bears nothing compared with the 13 years for which the trade agreements signed under the last Labour Government have been provisionally applied.
I thought, “Well, presumably somebody in the Labour Government at the time might have done something about this,” so I checked back and found out. Who was the Trade Minister at the time? It turns out that it was the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas); he might have been able to stop it at the time. Then I thought, “Well, if the Trade Minister did not stop it, who was the Minister for International Development who covered the Caribbean? Maybe he or she might have stopped it.” But it was him as well—the hon. Member for Harrow West. He was perfectly happy in 2008 for a deal to be provisionally applied still 13 years later, but now he is complaining about the provisional application of some of these important details.
The hon. Member for Harrow West was also complaining about the CRaG process, so I checked back again. I wanted to know who was the Minister for international agreements at the time that CRaG was passed by the last Labour Government. I thought, “Who could that have been? Who would this person be today to be complaining about the CRaG process?” It turns out that it was none other than the hon. Member for Harrow West, in his role as an International Development Minister. Tonight we heard all those complaints, but sometimes such practices went on 13 years after the last Labour Government.
Anyway, we have heard from a high profile array of speakers, each frustratingly restricted to three minutes. We could have sold tickets for this debate. Instead of taking out a Netflix subscription, the people locked down at home could have been watching the House of Commons. We have had a former Prime Minister, two former members of the Cabinet, three current Select Committee Chairs, a former Leader of the Opposition and two former Trade Ministers. It has been a star-studded debate.
The former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), made a speech that will definitely get some attention; I agree with her calls to reject isolationism. We have heard from former Cabinet members. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) spoke passionately about the Commonwealth and NATO, and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) spoke about vision and boldness in trade, which he never lacked—nor, indeed, does his successor as Secretary State for International Trade. The former Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), was listed on the call list as Labour, but I am not sure; I think he is still an independent. He took the title of the debate, “Global Britain”, and forgot the Britain bit. He did talk a bit about global, but it was mainly a speech against global corporations and his complaints about their role in the world today.
The Chairs of the Select Committees on Foreign Affairs, on Defence and on International Development—my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), and the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion)—all made very good points. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling spoke about how trade can transform lives in Africa; the Defence Committee Chair set out a huge to-do list on how we should work with President-elect Biden, which we very much look forward to doing; and the hon. Member for Rotherham spoke about development and women’s rights. Nobody is more passionate about girls’ education than our current Prime Minister, and I think we have been delivering on our important role there.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns), who is at once my successor and my predecessor in this role, gave thanks to the DIT team; we thank him for his important work in the Department from 2019 to 2020. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) expressed his genuine concern about the Northern Ireland protocol and made some important points about hydrogen technology and other things.
Let me zip through the other speeches. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) quoted the words of Pericles; we were all expecting to hear Churchill, but instead he quoted another of the Prime Minister’s great heroes and we thank him for that. My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) talked about Nord Stream 2, my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) about the importance of Heysham as a port, my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) about the importance of human rights, my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) about both manufacturing and Stilton, and my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) about international development and vaccine development.
My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) skewered the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury on China—she had no answer. He was passionate about that very important subject. We will hear from the Foreign Secretary tomorrow about China.
From the Opposition, I liked the speech that the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) gave about the living reality of her global diverse community in Vauxhall. I disagree with her on isolationism: I do not think that that is the direction that the UK is taking under this Government.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) praised his own community. He is quite right that the NHS will never be on the table in future trade deals.
The hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) attacked the Government on fishing. How extraordinary to hear a speech attacking the Government on fishing from the SNP—a party that is committed to rejoining the EU common fisheries policy! It was an absolutely extraordinary speech.
Greg Hands
I will not, because I am going to go through Members’ contributions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) talked about global Cornwall, which I thought was a fantastic thing, and about Cornish exports to the US, Kazakhstan and Taiwan.
The hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) raised something that we have to clear up. On Ghana, the Secretary of State—this is on the Government’s website and we have announced it—has agreed the main elements of consensus on a new agreement with Ghana. That is a great relief to all of us, and I know that it will be and has been welcomed by many in Ghana. There is also no diminution of human rights in our trade agreements, as hon. Members will have seen.
My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) made a thoughtful contribution; he also cited Robin Niblett of Chatham House. My hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) spoke about the importance of local exporters in his borders constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Dr Wallis) spoke about showcasing what the UK has to offer. My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) said that Britain is back, and he is absolutely right. He also spoke about the importance of the Crown dependencies, which will play an important role. I have regular dialogue with the Crown dependencies—Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man—on their role in future trade agreements.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) was passionate about her time as Africa Minister. I read her piece on “ConservativeHome”; the Government position is that we will return to 0.7% as soon as the fiscal position allows it. There were also good speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Gloucester (Richard Graham), for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), for Sedgefield (Paul Howell), for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), for Stafford (Theo Clarke) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who all made excellent contributions in support of the Government’s free trade agenda. Unfortunately, I do not have time to reflect on every single one of those speeches, but this has been a successful, very well subscribed and star-studded debate and it has been a great pleasure to wind it up for the Government.
This year marks the beginning of a new chapter in our national story, going into the world as a sovereign, independent trading nation. The responsibility now falls on all our shoulders, both in the Government and in this Parliament, to take full advantage of the freedom of action that our country has regained. 2021 will be our opportunity to show what global Britain can be, striking trade deals with new markets and reasserting ourselves as a liberal, outward-looking, free-trading nation and, most of all, a force for good in the world.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Global Britain.
Business without Debate
Committees
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 2 and 3 together.
Ordered,
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
That Caroline Ansell be discharged from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and Fay Jones be added.
Procedure Committee
That Andrew Griffith be discharged from the Procedure Committee and Mr William Wragg be added.—(Bill Wiggin [V], on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)
Supporting the UK’s Social Fabric
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)
I rise to speak about tomorrow’s publication from the think-tank Onward entitled “The Policies of Belonging”, which is part of its “Repairing our social fabric” programme. To avoid any confusion, I am well aware that Onward seeks to develop new ideas for the next generation of centre-right thinkers and leaders. Clearly, that does not include me—at least I hope it does not—and I might therefore be expected to use my time to attack the report and suggest it is part of a right-wing plot to dismantle the social fabric and ensure there is no such thing as society. On the contrary, I am here to welcome this piece of work and to congratulate the project’s supporting partners, which include the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Power to Change and Shelter. This work could well provide the basis for a new cross-party conversation about how we rebuild the social character of the country as we emerge from the pandemic.
It is in that spirit of across-the-aisle co-operation that I have given half my time in this short debate to the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger). The paper he produced last September proposing a new social covenant and tomorrow’s report are thoughtful contributions on how we rebuild our country in the tough years that lie ahead. They both deserve a wide audience across all parties. However, the danger is that we relegate such thinking in preference to economic policy. This remains an historic tendency in both of our political traditions, despite what we know about how people wish to live and what they value, which stretches beyond questions of GDP, utility and economic calculus.
Last year, Onward introduced its UK social fabric index, which measures the relative social strength of every community in Britain, a significant new metric for politicians and public policy makers alike. Its covid-19 community report highlighted resilient local responses to the pandemic over the past 10 months, yet also detailed the limited opportunities for communities to genuinely take back control. The overall argument is quite simple but telling: the social divides that bedevil our country are just as strong as the economic divides. Talk of levelling up, therefore, needs to encompass social as well as economic policy.
A desire to level up communities is not new. It has informed, among others, the community development projects of Harold Wilson, the single regeneration budgets of John Major, and Tony Blair’s new deal for communities. Yet none of those has unlocked the way we level up communities, not least, arguably, because of an overreliance on economic issues. In truth, politicians tend to gravitate towards grant funding issues, job creation schemes and physical infrastructure to foster community. We are most comfortable with that agenda. A more sustainable proposal would be to empower communities to respond themselves and endow them with the resources to do so.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and congratulate him on securing the debate. I very much agree with what he says. Doe he agree that the charitable sector is a foundational partner in the make-up of the UK and that churches and community groups need help at this time to set up online and effective ways of carrying on their sterling work? While it is great to see some churches running online youth quizzes, for example, for others the technology is simply out of their reach, and they need help to purchase and use it. Does he agree that we should be encouraging churches and community groups to be more involved? Perhaps the Minister can ensure that that happens.
Jon Cruddas
I very much agree, and that is the tenor of much of the report being published tomorrow morning, so I urge the hon. Member to read it. The charitable sector and faith groups have been on the frontline of confronting the pandemic in my community, and I will comment on that in a minute.
All the evidence suggests that citizens want the power and responsibility to revive their communities, so how can that be achieved? The report suggests, first, giving individuals the power to repair their social fabric through civic sabbaticals, youth-serving years, character education and new permanent volunteer schemes; secondly, giving individuals the capital to do so through new tax changes to support individual activities, reform of precarious housing, funds to support new civic leadership and adapting the apprenticeship levy; thirdly, giving communities the power to repair their social fabric with community improvement districts, new community councils, business rate exemptions and the reuse of empty buildings and shops; and fourthly, giving communities the capital to do so, controlled by the community themselves, with new social infrastructure funds, higher education reforms, community land trusts and charitable enterprise zones. The 17 specific policy recommendations are well worth a read tomorrow.
This year could well shape a new cross-party dialogue about rebuilding our communities. As the MP for Dagenham, I feel that 2021 is an important year to have such a debate, as it marks our centenary. Modern Dagenham was literally built or born on 7 November 1921, when the first house on the Becontree estate was completed. Some 27,000 homes containing over 100,000 residents would follow, spread over 2,700 acres or 4 square miles, building the largest council estate in the world—a unique experiment: a state-led cottage community built from nothing. It was Lloyd George making good on his promise made immediately after the armistice to build
“habitations for the heroes who have won the war”.
The first migrants felt like pioneers, moving from east end slums into a muddy and empty wilderness, but a resilient community was created. Indeed, by the 1950s and ’60s, analysts from the Institute of Community Studies—now the Young Foundation—regularly used the estate to extol the virtues of settled extended working-class families, yet the twin effects of deindustrialisation and the right to buy dismantled a once stable community. We became, and still are, the fastest-changing community in the country, driven by the cheapest housing in London.
Today, in our centenary year, we are seeking to forge new partnerships to re-establish that sense of community, and we are having some success. Traditionally, the community sector has been weak, but the council has recently worked to change its structures and culture and to work with and support the community in new ways that are more participatory and less paternalistic. Local services have been made less siloed and more friendly and integrated through an initiative labelled “community solutions”. We have invested in London’s first youth zone. BD_Collective has been formed, which is an independent platform for local civil society that now provides the borough’s infrastructure support in terms of civic and social support. We have Participatory City, a £7 million five-year experiment launched in 2017 to foster new forms of community activity. With four shop fronts and a large warehouse, it delivers scores of new community projects among a growing network of over 5,000 local people. We also have Collaborate, supported by Lankelly Chase, which helps to guide the local community on place-based change.
When the pandemic struck, all this came together in an alliance of council, voluntary and faith organisations organised through nine local community hubs, labelled the Barking and Dagenham Citizens Alliance Network, to help the most vulnerable. Approaching 6,000 families have been helped with food, medicines, prescriptions, referrals and advice. Just days ago, it was announced that borough community organisations are set to benefit from a new endowment fund transferred by the council to a place-based charity called Barking and Dagenham Giving—the first authority in London to permanently endow such a fund in support of local community groups—with an additional investment of over £800,000, to be topped up annually.
In Dagenham’s centenary year, major new initiatives are helping to rebuild our social fabric, but the Government need to do more to help us. The social fabric of Britain frayed after years of neglect. The ties that bind us together are in urgent need of repair. The best way to honour our collective sacrifice over the past 10 months would be to endow communities with the resources to foster a more civic culture. The agenda published tomorrow by Onward to repair our social fabric is a major step in that regard. As we enter—hopefully—our final lockdown, we should resolve to repair the social fabric on which we all rely. There would be no better monument to the hardship and heartache of the past year. I now give some time for the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger).
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con) [V]
I am pleased to be able contribute to this important debate and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) for securing it. I am a great admirer of him, his work and his world view, which I find I largely share. I think of him as a great conservative, despite what he just said, and am pleased to be working with him on the Onward panel. I join him in endorsing the report that is to be published tomorrow and congratulate the team who have put it together.
This is a topical and important debate, and not just because what we call social fabric is a “nice to have” that everybody agrees with—we all like village halls, Girl Guides and so on. This agenda is profoundly important to the future of our country, partly for the obvious reason that what people want above all else is strong communities—we derive huge value personally from the strength of our neighbourhoods—but, more profoundly, this debate matters because what we call social fabric is in fact the foundation of our prosperity.
The House has just spent the afternoon debating global Britain; I am not sure that this topic was discussed, but the source of our prosperity as a country and, indeed, our offer to the world is in our local communities. We became the world’s first industrial power because we had a culture that enables co-operation, shared values and the moral sentiments that underpin free markets. These are possible only because people trust each other. The country is made up of the communities within it, and our responsibility as politicians is to strengthen our communities and strengthen the foundations of our national prosperity.
The hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham spoke about his constituency in east London, which is obviously a place quite different from Devizes—he said that it began in 1921; we trace our origins to 4,000 BC, when the first prehistoric Neolithic structures were erected in my bit of Wiltshire—but actually there are many similarities. We, too, have entrenched social challenges: rural poverty and social isolation are particularly vicious because they are often hidden. Also like Dagenham, however, we have tremendous organisations and there is a very strong community that is responding to the challenges. I pay particular tribute to Community First and the Wiltshire Community Foundation, which I am privileged to work with.
Devizes is a place where people take responsibility for themselves and for their neighbours, as we are seeing now in the rush to get people vaccinated. On Friday, I spoke to three long-established family businesses in the constituency: T. H. White agricultural engineers, Gaiger Brothers builders and the brewers Wadworth. All three are suffering—naturally, as businesses are during this crisis—but all volunteered to help to put out the word among their workers, and in some cases paid their employees to help drive people to vaccination centres in the weeks and months ahead.
We need to trust in the spontaneous energies of communities, as I have described, but we also need to recognise that activity of that sort does not just happen. If we want more of it, especially in more disadvantaged places, we need to take action and the Government have a responsibility. Let us recognise what has happened over recent decades. As the Onward research demonstrates, our social fabric has grown threadbare over recent decades. Since 2000, a quarter of all pubs throughout the country have closed, and a quarter of all post offices and a fifth of all libraries have shut their doors. Partly that is because of how we all now work, shop and socialise—the changes in our economy and our society—and partly it is because of funding cuts, especially since 2010. I want to acknowledge that: I recognise that austerity fell most harshly on local government, which then cut non-statutory services the most. Youth services, which I worked in during those years, fell away particularly sharply—some estimates suggest that 70% of funding for youth services was cut in the 2010s. So what do we do? Well, we do need more public funding. I particularly welcome the investments that the Government have made. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been committed to youth services. During the pandemic, in the first lockdown last year, there was £750 million of emergency funding for civil society and for charities.
I pay tribute to the work that the Minister for Civil Society, Baroness Barran, and the Ministers in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport are doing to support the charity sector. I would, of course, welcome more funding. I have called very specifically for a new endowment funded from dormant assets, which are potentially worth many billions of pounds, to finance social infrastructure and community projects. I also hope that the new levelling-up fund, announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor at the spending review in November, will live up to its billing and help support the infrastructure of everyday life, which means, in my view, not just trains and broadband, vital as those things are, but also the libraries, the youth clubs and the social enterprises that bind places together. In fact, broadband is a big part of the social fabric. I hope that we can do a deal with tech firms to get our communities properly connected. I see a major role for libraries in particular as the hubs of digitally connected local communities.
Finally, on money, I welcome the kickstart scheme that the Government have announced. Along with Onward and other colleagues, I hope that we can adapt that scheme, perhaps combining it with the National Citizen Service, to create a more ambitious project that funds young people, especially those who have suffered with all the disruption to education during this crisis, and those who will suffer from the downturn in the labour market in the months ahead. We need to fund those young people to work on social and environmental projects in their communities.
To finish, whatever we do with public money, there is something more important that we need to get right: the question of power—who is making the decisions about how money is spent and how services are organised locally. We are one of the most centralised countries in the developed world. To my mind, taking back control was not just about Brussels. If all we do now is bring power back to Westminster, as we have done, we will have failed the people of this country. That, Madam Deputy Speaker, is why I think the social fabric agenda is so significant: we need to put the power to determine what happens locally in the hands of local people. The Onward report makes a number of recommendations along those lines and I made some in my report last year. We are in the midst of a great constitutional change: the restoration of power to the UK. We need to restore power to the communities, too.
I welcome this debate. I thank my friend, the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham for what he called this cross-party conversation. I hope that we can go beyond that. The battle for politics should be over this agenda. We should be fighting in this place about who owns the community agenda, and I think that my party has a very good claim to that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)
May I start by thanking the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) for securing this important debate and for getting such great cross-party consensus on the importance of this topic? It might not be of any help to his election leaflets if I say that he is a great champion of the centre right, as is Onward, but I think that we can all agree that, whether it is centre right or centre left, this is a vital topic for us all to be discussing.
The hon. Gentleman also talked about a participatory rather than a paternalistic way of having this conversation. That is an absolutely key focus for this Government, and I know that it is an absolutely key focus for my noble Friend, Baroness Barran, whose ministerial brief this is; it is an honour to speak on it in the Commons. That strong social fabric is absolutely vital to the health and well-being of our society and of our economy. That is why it is not only this cross-party commitment that is important; it has also been an extraordinary spectacle over the past year to see the importance of that fabric as communities have come together as they have been tested like never before. It is more important than ever that we pay close attention to those ties that bind us, that we pay close attention to the way that they have been, as the hon. Gentleman described, stretched, and that we pay close attention to the fundamental infrastructure that makes those links possible. Whether it is little platoons or whether it is the big society—whatever we want to call it—they are essential to our response both to the pandemic and to our future.
We know that many people across the whole country are concerned about a growing lack of belonging, about that sense that things ain’t what they used to be—whatever that might be. This report from Onward on the state of our social fabric does make for stark reading, as the hon. Gentleman said. It provides evidence of a long-term decline in the social fabric and it adds to a growing base of evidence for a link between weak social fabric and higher levels of deprivation.
I see in my own constituency—in Boston, in particular—levels of deprivation but intense levels of social pride. That sense is something that we can all build on. It has been highlighted by the Onward report and by the one nation report on “Connecting Communities” from my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell), and we need to do more on that. Deprived areas are not lacking in pride or community spirit; they are often the places with the most community spirit. We need greater investment in the community infrastructure and the institutions that may help those places to address the economic challenges they face, because the two go together.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) said, the Government have committed to levelling up all regions of the United Kingdom. A major part of that commitment must be creating jobs and investment in infrastructure as it is commonly understood, but we must also invest in the kind of social infrastructure that sits beneath it. Social fabric is about more than levelling up, and we will not level up if we simply address the economic challenges the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham mentioned. We must also recognise—and the Government do recognise—that exploring and recognising the role that building strong communities plays is an essential part of that agenda.
The £4 billion levelling-up fund will help. It will invest in
“the infrastructure of everyday life”,
as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has put it. It is not just transport and jobs, but community infrastructure, local arts, culture and libraries that make a real difference to people and that Members across the House are passionate about. That is why the Government are seeking, through this course of action, to use all the levers available, rather than simply building infrastructure, be it broadband, roads or rail. That will ensure that people can access the network and institutions that let them connect in every possible sense, rather than simply improving infrastructure connectivity. Those two things together will address the economic inequalities we all want to see tackled.
Supporting change within those communities has not traditionally been seen as the space for Government to act, nor has it traditionally been seen as the space for a Conservative Government to act, but my Department has long focused on enriching lives, whether through sport, the arts or participation in the community at local and national level. We all want to create the conditions for civil society to thrive in order to support volunteering and local giving.
My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes mentioned the role of tech firms in that. As we move to an increasingly digital world, the role of technology is hugely important. I have worked to encourage the Googles and Facebooks of this world to work more with charities and local businesses. Just as they have done some successful work with schools, there is more that they could do in this area, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said.
It is important to say that the Government’s response to the pandemic provides an example of how we have worked to enable civil society and communities to take a lead. The Government have worked hard to enable civil society to identify those challenges, to use its experience and, crucially, to fill the gaps. For instance, the £750 million support package that focused on enabling smaller and local charities and social enterprises to maintain and enhance services for those affected by the crisis saw large numbers of people working within their communities. It facilitated that sort of work to achieve more than would otherwise have been possible. It is important to recognise where the Government have done the right things. I hope that that is easier to do in the environment of cross-party consensus that we have seen this evening.
It is essential that we work to ensure that this potential is realised for the long term in every part of the country. Last summer, when my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes developed the proposals to sustain the community response to covid-19, one area he looked at was volunteering. We hear that many people want to volunteer but they face challenges in getting involved, and Government can help to address those barriers. They can enable us to sustain the community spirit. His recommendation of a volunteer passport, for instance, is one of the things that we are looking at closely. It represents one of a range of possible measures that will contribute to the strengthening of social fabric.
The hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham also mentioned place-based charities. It is important to pay tribute to the role of community foundations up and down the country—my own in Lincolnshire does remarkable work—and to note the recent announcements that we have made about the future use of dormant assets, which can make a real difference, building on what is already there.
As I said, we have seen huge progress in the use of digital technology to enable volunteering as a result of the pandemic. The NHS volunteer responders is just one example; they have supported 130,000 vulnerable people since they were mobilised last April, so we know that it can be done. We have heard great examples in Devizes, and up and down the country, of people seeing in the vaccination drive yet another way in which volunteers can be harnessed, in the various “cabs for jabs” schemes that have already been established. My Department will continue to aid this effort and others, updating the public guidance to make sure that people can volunteer safely, because, of course, that is now more important than ever. Sustaining that strong, resilient volunteering system must be a legacy of this challenging period. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes for his report to the Prime Minister, and we will carefully consider the recommendations as we respond in due course.
This is a subject that, as the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham knows, we could talk about at great length, but the reason why we should have cause to be optimistic in these extraordinary times is that we have seen the possibilities that can be achieved, and we have seen, not just through those NHS responders, what more can be done. It has been a pleasure to have the opportunity to respond to this debate. Strengthening the social fabric will continue to be a vital task for the Government. Responding to the Onward report will be an interesting and long-term project as well.
It is slightly too early to say happy birthday to Dagenham as we approach the centenary in November, but I will do so none the less. I do not know whether we can say happy sixth millennium to Devizes, but we should throw that in. Either way, whether a place is 100 years old or 6,000 years old, it is vital now that as a community we use the opportunities, be they technology or community, to level up and work from the bottom up, as I think the hon. Gentleman said. As we recover from the present crisis, it is vital that we build the stronger, fairer country that, across the House, we have seen a clear consensus for this evening.
Question put and agreed to.