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Leaving the EU: Sectoral Impact Assessments
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Mr Speaker
Before I call Sir Keir Starmer to ask his urgent question, I would emphasise to the House that the purpose of my selecting this urgent question today is to give an opportunity to the Minister to explain to the House what action the Government have taken in response to the order of the House and an opportunity for other Members to question him on those matters. It is not an occasion for the House to debate whether or not a contempt of the House may have occurred. There may or may not be later occasions for that matter to be discussed. This is the correct procedure, and I know the House will trust me to know of what I speak.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union if he will make a statement on the release of the impact assessments arising from sectoral analysis carried out by Her Majesty’s Ministers to the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Robin Walker)
This House passed a motion on 1 November asking that impact assessments arising from sectoral analyses be provided to the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union. This Government take very seriously their parliamentary responsibilities, and have been clear that they would be providing information to the Committee.
In the past three weeks, Departments have worked to collate and bring together this information in a way that is accessible and informative. I am glad to be able to confirm that this information has been provided not only to the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union but to the House of Lords EU Select Committee and, indeed, to the devolved Administrations. I can also, Mr Speaker, with your permission, inform the House that we have initiated discussions with the parliamentary authorities to make this information available to all colleagues through a reading room.
We were clear from the start that we would respond to the motion, but also that the documents did not exist in the form requested. Indeed, I made it clear to the House during the debate on the day that
“there has been some misunderstanding about what this sectoral analysis actually is. It is not a series of 58…impact assessments.”—[Official Report, 1 November 2017; Vol. 630, c. 887.]
As I said, the sectoral analysis is a wide mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis contained in a range of documents developed at different times since the referendum. The House of Commons itself has recognised that, although Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament, the Government also have an obligation to consider where it will be in the public interest for material to be published.
Furthermore, it is important to recognise that, in some cases, there is commercially confidential information in the analysis and that, in many cases, the analysis was developed to underpin advice to Ministers on negotiation options in various scenarios. It is well understood, as has been the case under successive Administrations, that such advice to Ministers must remain private.
In the light of all that, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union made a statement on 7 November in which he explained that, given the documents did not exist in the form requested, it would take
“some time to collate and bring together this information in a way that is accessible and informative to the Committee.”—[Official Report, 7 November 2017; Vol. 630, c. 1333.]
He committed that the reports would be provided within three weeks. In providing the information to the Committee yesterday, we have met that commitment. Parliament has endorsed the responsibility of Ministers not to release information that would undermine our negotiating position. Contrary to what has been asserted in some places, the Committee did not give any firm assurances that what was passed to it would not subsequently be published in full. Where there are precedents for Government agreeing to pass information to Select Committees in confidence, these have been on the basis of assurances received before material is shared or a clear set of rules, such as those governing intelligence material.
When he met the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Select Committee did say that he was willing to enter into a dialogue—after the Select Committee had received documents from the Government. But that is not the same as an assurance that, if we provided confidential or sensitive material, it would not be published, and it is not in keeping with the usual practice of Committees on these sensitive issues. As such, the sectoral reports provided do not contain information that would undermine the UK’s hand in negotiations or material that is commercially or market sensitive. But the House should be in no doubt that this has been a very substantial undertaking. We have been as open as possible, subject to the overwhelming national interest of preserving our negotiating position. We have collated more than 800 pages of analysis for the Committees, less than a month from the motion being passed, and this covers all the 58 sectors. We now consider the motion of 1 November 2017 to have been satisfied.
Keir Starmer
“Transparency” and “accountability” are two words this Government do not understand. On 1 November, after a three-hour debate, this House voted in favour of a Humble Address requiring all 58 sectoral analyses to be passed to the Brexit Select Committee—not some of the reports, not redacted copies, but the full reports. The Government did not seek to amend the Humble Address, nor did they vote against the motion. After your advice to us, Mr. Speaker, the Government accepted that the motion was binding. It is simply not open to the Secretary of State to choose to ignore it and to pass to the Select Committee the documents he chooses. Whether he is in contempt of Parliament is a matter we will come to at some later date, but he is certainly treating Parliament with contempt.
The Secretary of State says, and the Minister has reported, that he did not get assurances from the Select Committee about how the documents would be used. The Minister therefore had better answer some pretty blunt questions this afternoon. What assurances were sought that were not given? He had better tread carefully, because there will be an audit trail here and if he cannot answer that question, if he did not pursue the assurances, if he did not suggest a course that was rejected, his cover for not disclosing these documents will be blown.
This is not a game. This is the most important set of decisions this country has taken for decades and they need to be subjected to proper scrutiny. In my experience, the biggest mistakes are made when decisions are not tested.
May I remind the Minister and the Secretary of State that, until this House passed the motion on 1 November, Ministers routinely claimed that these analyses were extensive and authoritative? They say that they have now put the documents together. In September, they answered a freedom of information request. The first question was, “Do you hold the material?” to which the answer was, “Yes.” That calls into serious question the explanation now being put before this House.
Finally, I am deeply concerned that the sum total of documents generated by the Government’s work on the impact on the economy of their approach to Brexit can be squeezed into two lever arch files. That is the volume of paperwork I would have expected for a pretty routine Crown court trial in my old world. If that is the case, we should all be worried. Is that the extent of the analysis? Either way, this a very sorry state of affairs.
Mr Walker
Let me address some of the misconceptions in the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s statement. We have not edited or redacted reports. At the time the motion was passed, and subsequently, we were clear that the documents did not exist in the form requested. We have collated information in a way that does not include some sensitive material, but the documents, which he freely admits he has not seen, do not contain redactions. It is noticeable that the original suggestion of redactions in the debate on 1 November came from him, speaking from the Front Bench for the Opposition. He also said in the debate that he had
“accepted all along that the Government should not put into the public domain any information that would undermine our negotiating position”—[Official Report, 1 November 2017; Vol. 630, c. 881.]
He accepted that there is a level of detail, and confidential issues and tactics, that should not be discussed. Those were statements he made in the debate itself.
Let me tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman the logical consequences of that position. He has suggested that mechanisms are available that allow for the sharing of material in advance for Select Committees, and he is of course right—I addressed that in my opening statement. My Secretary of State met the Chair of the Select Committee and discussed these terms. It was very clear that, as the Chair has himself said in Parliament, he wanted to receive all the documents first before he would give any assurances as to the way in which they would be treated. On that basis, we had to be clear that we had to protect commercially sensitive information.
In the absence of any restrictions on what the Select Committee might do with the documentation, the Government had to be mindful of their obligations not to allow sensitive information to be public, but let me be clear again: we have been as open as possible within those obligations. The material we have provided to the Select Committee is very substantial. It is bizarre for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to dismiss it without having yet seen it. When Committee members have had an opportunity to consider it fully and to reflect on it, I think they will reasonably conclude that the Government have fully discharged the terms of the motion.
We have shared more than 800 pages of analysis with the Select Committee. The analysis describes the activity in each sector and the current regulatory regime for the sector. The report set out existing frameworks from across the globe for how trade is facilitated between countries in the sectors, as well as sector views, which cover a range of representative cross-sector views from businesses and organisations throughout the UK. We have taken care to incorporate up-to-date views from stakeholders, such as views on the proposed implementation period.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked: does this represent the sum of the Government’s analysis? Of course it does not. The motion referred to sectoral analyses and we have responded to that motion by sharing those sectoral analyses. I note the Select Committee’s statement following its meeting this morning and I welcome the fact that arrangements will be made for Committee members to view documents in confidence. When they do, I think they will find that there is a great deal of useful and valuable information here. I assure the House and the Committee that the Secretary of State will also be accepting their request to discuss the content.
I assure the House that my Department takes its responsibilities to Parliament extremely seriously. We have provided a vast amount of factual information to help the Committees and this House in their scrutiny. I am confident that we have met the requirements of the motion, while respecting our overriding duty to the national interest.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
If the Government wished to resist the publication of the papers that they had, they should have voted against the motion, and if they wished to qualify or edit the papers that they had, they should have sought to amend the motion. We cannot allow, post Brexit, the reduction of parliamentary sovereignty to a slightly ridiculous level. Will the Minister at least consider the possibility of sharing, at least with the Chairman of the Exiting the European Union Committee, the papers in the original form they were in when we voted on the motion, before this editing process started? The House would then no doubt be guided by the Chairman of the Select Committee on changes and omissions that are legitimately in the national interest and should be made.
Mr Walker
I share my right hon. and learned Friend’s commitment to ensuring that the House can scrutinise valuable information in this respect, but the problem with the motion that was passed is that it referred to sectoral impact analyses. We were clear from the start that the documents it referred to did not exist in the form that was required. We have therefore pulled together sectoral analysis for the scrutiny of the Select Committee. I think that that will prove valuable to the Committee.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
On a day in June 2016, the people of the United Kingdom were asked one question on one day. As a result of the answer they gave to that one question, there is no going back on Brexit. On 1 November, Parliament was asked one question, but for the intervening 27 days the Government have done everything possible to deny and defy the instruction—it was not a request—that they were given by this Parliament, to which, we are told, sovereignty is being restored by the Brexit process.
I remind the Minister that the question of what the Government will provide to the Select Committee is not for the Government or, indeed, for the Select Committee to decide. This Parliament has decided, and there is no discussion, debate or negotiation as to the extent to which that decision will be complied with. It must be complied with in full; otherwise, as the letter published recently by the Chair of the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union makes clear, the Select Committee will have to consider whether to table a motion on contempt. How is that going to look to our European partners? What will it do to the credibility of the Government, and particularly of the Brexit team, if they end up being held in contempt by the Parliament to which they claim to be returning sovereignty?
Will the Minister confirm that the resolution of the House was about not what was made public but what was provided to the Select Committee? In those circumstances, does he not accept that what must be made available to the Select Committee is everything—absolutely everything? If the Government are not prepared to comply with that instruction, they should not be in government. Will he tell us categorically whether he accepts that a decision on what to publish, within the bounds of parliamentary privilege, is for the Select Committee alone, and will he confirm that he and his Government are prepared to trust the judgment of that Committee to exercise on behalf of the House responsible judgment about what the public are entitled to know?
Mr Walker
The hon. Gentleman asks a number of important questions. I would hope to hear some welcome from him for the fact that we have shared the information in these reports with the devolved Administrations. When I gave evidence to Select Committees recently in Scotland, we were pressed on whether we would do that. We do respect the fact that the Select Committee has the complete choice and discretion over what gets published of the information that is shared with it. That is why the Government have published the information to the Select Committee in the way that they have.
Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
My hon. Friend has every right to ensure—as the EU has given out in its guidance—that not all confidential information is necessarily made available; otherwise, that might restrict our negotiating position. May I also urge him, however, to have that discussion with the Chairman of the Select Committee and ask him specifically what is it he was expecting that he has not got in terms of the documents?
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I welcome the willingness of the Secretary of State to appear before the Select Committee—a decision that we made this morning. May I ask the Minister to convey to him our wish that he should do so very speedily indeed?
Given that it is quite clear that the Select Committee has received edited documents—in other words, they do not contain everything that is in the possession of the Government—may I say to the Minister that that is not in keeping with the motion passed by the House of Commons? I also say to him that I made it very clear to the Secretary of State what procedure the Select Committee would use to consider the reports and, if I may put it like this, I do object to any suggestion that the Select Committee, or I as Chair, cannot be trusted to do our job.
Mr Walker
I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, and I will certainly communicate his message to the Secretary of State. On the point he makes about the information in the analyses, what the motion referred to was not what existed at the time. What we have tried to do is ensure that there is full information available to his Committee. When he has had the chance to scrutinise that and ask questions of Ministers about that, he will find that information very useful to his scrutiny.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
As my hon. Friend has said, there are 850 pages of these documents and so far the Chairman of the Select Committee is the only Member who has actually seen them. I understand that the documents have been sent to two Select Committees of Parliament and to the devolved Administrations. As a former Chairman of a Select Committee, I can say that leaks are not without precedent. I would not want the Government to make available any information that, if it became public, could undermine our negotiating position.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Why, when the Bank of England has published the frankly chilling implications of no deal, do the Government insist on selectively editing the sectoral reports? Is it true, as I was told by a DExEU insider, that what the Government have done is release selective sensitive documentation, while withholding the bulk of that sensitive information?
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I find that I agree with the comments of the Father of the House and the Chairman of the Select Committee, but I do understand that there is a dilemma for the Government. One recent motion clearly says that all documents should be delivered. A previous motion in this House says that the Government should not produce anything that damages our negotiations. Those motions are not clear, so would it not be an idea for the Government to come back with another motion clarifying the situation?
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
In June, the Secretary of State said on “The Andrew Marr Show” that
“We’ve got 50, nearly 60 sector analyses already done.”
In September, that was reiterated in response to my freedom of information request. In October, the Secretary of State confirmed that to our Committee and said that the reports were in “excruciating detail” and that the Prime Minister had seen the summaries. In November, we heard that they never existed. On what basis can completed reports be uncompleted, and on what basis is it right that the Government do anything other than give the reports in full to the Select Committee, in line with the resolution of this House?
Mr Walker
The Government have provided the reports covering the 58 sectors to the Select Committee, and I look forward to the Select Committee being able to scrutinise them in detail. The hon. Lady has been persistent in pressing for as much of this information as possible to be put in the public domain. Her Front-Bench team have also been persistent in recognising that that could not be done with all the information, subject to negotiations, without damaging our national interest.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
The issue now is not whether it is in the Government’s interest to publish these documents. If the Government did not want to publish them, they should have voted down or amended the Humble Address. In all precedent, this is a binding motion, unlike the previous motion passed earlier in the year, which was not a Humble Address and not a binding motion. To meet this motion, it is not at the discretion of the Government to decide what to take out; it is at the discretion of the Select Committee. I therefore urge the Government either to meet the terms of the motion in full, or to seek to put down a new motion.
Mr Walker
I take my hon. Friend’s expertise in parliamentary procedure extremely seriously, and I recognise the point that he is making. We do feel that we have responded to the motion in full by preparing for the Select Committee sectoral analyses. The point that I make to him is that the sectoral analyses did not exist in the form that was requested in the motion at the time.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
This situation is entirely of the Government’s making. The motion passed by this House did not give the Government discretion to take this information and decide for themselves what to give to the Select Committee and what not to give to the Select Committee. The Government have not complied with the motion, which they did not resist. There is another underlying point here—apart from questions of parliamentary privilege and contempt—and it is this: do we believe that the public have a right to know the consequences of the options facing the country on Brexit? I believe that they do. Does the Minister agree?
Mr Walker
The right hon. Gentleman knows that we have responded to the motion. We accepted that it was binding. We have therefore brought forward information for the Select Committee. We have gone further than that by bringing forward information for the Lords Committee and for the devolved Administrations, and we are now in discussions to ensure that that information can be provided in confidential reading rooms for the whole House. Of course, what is not in the interests of the public of this country is to publish information to the other side that could be sensitive to our negotiating position; that is what this House has repeatedly voted for us not to do.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Most people would accept that it is perfectly reasonable to exclude commercial market and negotiation-sensitive information but, unfortunately, that was not expressly excluded in the terms of the Humble Address on 1 November. Will my hon. Friend look carefully at the option of the Government bringing forward a revised motion that expressly excludes that information from the material to be supplied to the Select Committee?
Mr Walker
My hon. Friend, like many of my hon. Friends, raises an interesting point. It is something that we will look into. What we have done is to ensure that the Select Committee has information on the sectoral analyses that the Government have conducted, which is an important step taken in response to a motion of the House.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
In his letter of 2 November, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), the Chair of the Select Committee, wrote:
“once the material has been provided to the committee, I would be very happy to discuss with you any particular concerns you may have about publication of parts of the material so that the committee can take these into account in making its decision on release.”
On 27 November, the Secretary of State wrote:
“we have received no assurances from the committee regarding how any information passed will be used.”
Does the Minister agree that that letter is a blatant misrepresentation of what was agreed and that the Secretary of State should withdraw that remark and apologise for it to my right hon. Friend?
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
It is extremely important that we understand exactly what was voted on and what the Select Committee seeks disclosure of. I am reminding myself of the motion, which was in two parts. It first referred to the list of sectoral analyses, and then went on to make it clear that it was
“the impact assessments arising from those analyses”
that should be provided to the Select Committee.
The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) referred to the evidence provided by the Secretary of State to the Select Committee back in October. I remind myself of his answers to questions 131 and 132 in that session, in which he made it clear that those impact assessments existed “in excruciating detail” and that the Prime Minister had been provided with a summary, which she had read. Will the Minister confirm that what this House now seeks the Government to disclose are the impact assessments?
Mr Walker
My right hon. Friend is, as always, forensic in her questioning. We were very clear when we were debating this motion that exactly what it referred to was not available at that time. Of course, there are various assessments and documents held by the Government that have been worked on over time, addressing the individual sectors. We have actually sought to provide the Select Committee with a great deal more information than existed at the time of the Secretary of State’s evidence to it, and I think that that will be valuable to the Committee in its scrutiny.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
The main issues dividing the House at this stage in the Brexit negotiations are our continued membership of the customs union and of the single market. Ministers say constantly that they do not want to reveal anything that could weaken their negotiating hand, but the Government have made their position clear and the European Union has accepted that the Government want a hard Brexit, so why would it damage the Government’s negotiating position to put that information out? Can the Minister confirm that the information in the edited documents will help Members to reach a view on whether we should stay in the customs union and the single market?
Mr Walker
I can confirm to the right hon. Gentleman that the information in the edited documents will be valuable to the House, but it is wrong to describe them as “edited documents”. I would describe them as comprehensive sectoral analyses that the Government have provided for the Select Committee and will be providing, on a confidential basis, to the House.
In response to the right hon. Gentleman’s question about the customs union and the single market, I remind him that he, like I, stood on a manifesto that said that we will respect the referendum result and confirmed that the UK will be leaving the customs union and the single market.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
The Minister is making a gallant and courteous defence of a situation that is unlikely to satisfy everybody in this House because of the terms of the Humble Address, but there are two aspects of this that need to be separated. The first is the requirement to provide everything to the Select Committee, which the Humble Address did call for. The second is the fact that surely no one in this House would want our country to go into the negotiating chamber in a weaker position as a result of decisions taken here. The shadow Secretary of State himself recognised that there is a way of dealing with these things, which is to redact what would be sensitive. Unfortunately, the Humble Address did not cover that, so I believe that it is now strongly in the Government’s interest to table a motion to amend the Humble Address, which many of us in the House would strongly support.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
The crucial issue is the Government’s failure to be open and transparent with the public and Parliament about the consequences of their approach to Brexit. They are not just doing that with regard to these papers, because they also refuse to give clear examples of the spending reprioritisation that is taking place in Departments as a result of the assessments in the papers and the Government’s policies on Brexit. Will the Government publish a breakdown of the funding that they are giving each Department to cope with their approach to Brexit?
Mr Walker
The hon. Gentleman’s question strays quite a long way beyond the matter that we are discussing at the moment. We will absolutely continue to engage with Parliament and its Select Committees to support their scrutiny. We will provide them with as much information as we can, consistent with the national interest.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Just to rub it in: who was it who first suggested the use of redaction?
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
The Minister has mentioned the devolved Administrations on a number of occasions. I am advised by Scottish Government colleagues that the documents they have received contain nothing substantial at all about Scotland. On 24 and 25 October, the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Secretary of State for Existing the European Union gave evidence—to the Scottish Affairs Committee and the Exiting the European Union Committee respectively—that assessments of Brexit’s impact on the Scottish economy existed and would be shared with the Scottish Government. Will the Minister confirm that those unedited documents will now be shared without further delay?
Mr Walker
I can confirm that the documents that are being shared with the Select Committee are also being shared in the usual way, with permanent secretaries of the devolved Administrations, on the same basis as they have been shared with the Select Committee. The sectoral analyses do, in many cases, contain important analyses of Scottish issues.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
May I gently suggest to my hon. Friend, for whom I have the greatest of respect, that there should be a bit of a rethink on this matter before the Secretary of State appears before the Select Committee in the coming days? I also urge my hon. Friend to recognise that the really important thing at this stage is to get a move on with the negotiations and ensure that companies up and down the country, which are currently in limbo, know what we are going to do. We have to move forward in December; we cannot stand still.
Mr Walker
My hon. Friend makes a hugely important point. I think we all want to ensure that we have the most successful approach to the negotiations, that we move forward in December and that we talk about the implementation period, which is hugely important to companies, and the deep and special partnership that we want to form between the UK and the EU. I will certainly take his points on board.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
The Brexit Committee has made the rightful assertion that it will decide what information is published, but does the Minister accept that there is a real danger that the national interest could be put in jeopardy if more weight were given to transparency than to protecting our negotiating position? Does he therefore agree that the best way forward is to seek clarification from the House that it does not wish for information that could be sensitive to be placed in the Committee’s hands, and therefore to bring forward a motion to the House along those lines?
Mr Walker
The hon. Gentleman reinforces a point that has been made by many of my hon. Friends. As I said, we will give that due consideration. He is right that we need to ensure that we protect the absolute national interest in this process by ensuring that information that is sensitive in the negotiations remains confidential.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
In all my hon. Friend’s dealings with his European Union counterparts, has he ever formed the view that they pay no heed to the proceedings of this House and, indeed, have no interest in the contents of any documents that may be produced for any of its Select Committees?
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Department has handed over some 850 pages, but the Minister has made it clear that some information has been withheld. If that additional material had also been handed over, how many pages would that have been? Would it be another couple of hundred, more or less, or has the information not actually been compiled?
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
It was a mistake not to amend the Opposition’s motion. As a result, the Government are skating on very thin parliamentary ice. The issue could be solved next week if the Government were to come back with a sensible motion, which every Member of this House really ought to support.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
By not releasing the papers in their original form, is the Minister aware that the implication is that I and other members of the Select Committee cannot be trusted to act in the national interest?
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I would be rather more interested in seeing the impact assessments drawn up by the EU of the impact of Britain leaving the EU and how that is affecting the EU’s negotiating position. Does my hon. Friend share my curiosity that Opposition Members are not keen to scrutinise those documents?
Mr Speaker
Order. The trouble with the interest of the hon. Gentleman, which is of great fascination to Members of the House and many spectators beyond its environs, is that it is not even adjacent to the question before us, but I am sure the hon. Gentleman can entertain himself in the long winter evenings that lie ahead.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
This is not my definition of taking back control. This huge mess that the Government have got themselves into shows the limits of their clever-clever tactic of not engaging with Opposition motions by sitting on their hands. Despite what the Minister says, the fact is that a Humble Address, which it is compulsory for the Government to act on, has been carried. It calls not for the documents to be edited and not for them to be changed—that job now goes to the Select Committee. The Government have to get on and publish these documents, and they have to publish them now.
Mr Walker
As I made it very clear on the day we debated this issue, the documents did not exist in the form that was requested. We took the motion of the House extremely seriously, and that is why we have made sure that a great deal of information has been provided to the Select Committee.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Has any formal protocol been put down by the Committee and conveyed to Ministers about how it would handle this information, because that is pertinent in all this?
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
What—[Interruption.] If I could have the Minister’s attention, what guidelines were provided to the officials editing the documents as to what should be excluded?
Mr Walker
I have made it clear to the House that this information was pulled together from a range of documents. As I have also made clear, we have to ensure that commercially sensitive information, and information that would be prejudicial to the national interest, could not be at risk of being published. But this has been a process of ensuring that there is more information for the Committee, not less.
Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)
Does the Minister share my concern about how a letter sent by the Secretary of State to the ExEU Committee managed to reach journalists at the Daily Mirror before it was considered by the Committee? Does that encourage or discourage him when it comes to sharing confidential information?
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
The Minister will understand that it is important that the Executive get on with policy, but there is a fundamental role in our constitution for Parliament to hold the Executive to account and to scrutinise this hugely important decision. The Secretary of State said that the information existed “in excruciating detail” and that the Prime Minister had seen the summaries. For that reason, it is hard to understand why we cannot see the entirety of the information —if so, with redaction. Can the Minister explain why that is not the case?
Mr Walker
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the balance we need to strike. We do need to get on with this role, but we also absolutely respect the role of parliamentary scrutiny in this process, which is why the information that has been provided to the Committee is comprehensive and in great detail. It goes beyond the type of summaries that he refers to and, indeed, that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras suggested might be an answer to this. We have actually provided much more information than just summarising reports could have done.
Several hon. Members rose—
Points of Order
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Further to the debates we have just had, it is clear there is a lot of concern from Members on both sides of the House that the Government have not satisfied the motion passed less than a month ago. You have been very clear in your advice that the motion passed was binding. After the debate on 1 November, you said that
“I would expect the Vice-Chamberlain of the Household to present the Humble Address in the usual way.”—[Official Report, 1 November 2017; Vol. 630, c. 931.]
The expectation of this House was that the papers would be handed over in full, unedited. Anything less than this would be, I believe, a contempt of Parliament. Can I seek your guidance on whether you believe the Government have adequately satisfied the motion and the expectations of the House? If not, would failure to comply be considered a contempt of the House? If so, what would be the best way for Members to proceed?
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
Is it very specifically further to, and therefore on the point raised by, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer)?
Pete Wishart
As you will know, Mr Speaker, I wrote to you on 7 November asking you to consider contempt proceedings against the Government for failing to provide these Brexit analysis papers in full, as mandated, as you said, by the fully binding motion agreed by the House. You very generously gave the Government three weeks to comply, and you said you were awaiting the outcome of the conversations between the Secretary of State and the Chairman of the Exiting the European Union Committee. We have now had those conversations, and we have now heard the response from the Chairman of the Committee, who stated in this very Chamber just a few moments ago that the Government do not meet the motion in full. I therefore ask you to reconsider my letter of 7 November and to consider bringing contempt motions, as detailed on page 273 of “Erskine May”. I am sure you are aware of the significance of this, and I know you will deal with this sensitively. This is contempt, and the Government must be held accountable for their failure to comply.
Mr Speaker
I am very grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer).
Mr Speaker
Order. I will come to the hon. Gentleman in due course, potentially.
Mr Fysh
On page 201 of “Erskine May”, the section on ministerial accountability quotes from a resolution that was passed by both Houses of Parliament in the 1996-97 Session, which makes it clear that Ministers do not have to disclose all information if it is not in the public interest to do so. Does that have any bearing on this?
Mr Speaker
I am extraordinarily grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I say this in no spirit of discourtesy to him, but I am familiar with precedent in relation to these matters, and I did not particularly need to be advised of the presence of that material in “Erskine May”. He will not be surprised to know that I have attended to these matters recently and regularly.
What I would say in response to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) very specifically is that I can, of course, reconsider his letter, but I hope he will not mind my saying that I think it would be more orderly and courteous if he were to write to me again, if he is so minded, in the light of the developments that have ensued since his earlier letter. This is not being pedantic—it really is not. It is a question of procedural propriety. If I receive a letter from the hon. Gentleman, I will consider it and respond in a timely way.
Beyond that, what I want at this point to say is that I think it is well known to Members, and certainly to such legal luminaries as the former Director of Public Prosecutions, that a Member wishing to allege a contempt should, in the first instance, raise it not in a point of order, nor indeed in the media, but by writing to me as soon as practicable after the Member has notice of the alleged contempt or breach of privilege. I then decide whether or not the matter should have precedence. It is certainly also well known to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire that this is the procedure, as he availed himself of it a few weeks ago. I am more than happy to confirm that my doors are always open for such written notices.
Beyond that formal statement, and in the hope that this is helpful to Members in all parts of the House, I would emphasise that we all heard what the Chair of the Brexit Select Committee had to say. He indicated that the Committee had made a public statement and requested an urgent audience with the Secretary of State, and that information from the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) was extremely important. The Minister responded, indicating a willingness on the part of the Secretary of State to meet, and to do so soon. May I very politely say to the Minister, who is always a most courteous fellow, that he was wise to make that statement? When it is suggested that that meeting should be soon, it means soon; it does not mean weeks hence. It means very soon indeed. Nothing—no commitment, no other diarised engagement—is more important than respecting the House, and in this case, the Committee of the House that has ownership of this matter, and to which the papers were to be provided. That is where the matter rests. As and when matters evolve, if a further representation alleging contempt is made to me, I will consider it very promptly and come back to the House. I hope that the House knows me well enough to know that I will do my duty.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On a point of order on a slightly separate issue, Mr Speaker. Some Government Members, and perhaps some Opposition Members, have asked the Government to come forward with a new motion to try to clarify the distinction between the two differing motions that have come before the House. Is there any technical reason why that motion could not be produced, our having just debated the Humble Address?
Mr Speaker
No; it is possible. We shall see what happens. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) should not chunter from a sedentary position in evident disapproval of the thrust of the opinion expressed by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). If the hon. Member for Glenrothes wishes to raise a point of order, I am very happy to entertain it.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In answer to the urgent question, the Minister referred to the binding decision of the House on 1 November. He also referred to a non-binding decision that the House had taken on an earlier day. He appeared to seek to interpret the second decision in terms of the first. Could you advise the House? Where a binding subsequent resolution appears to be incompatible with an earlier non-binding resolution, which should take precedence?
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman can always discuss these matters, if he wishes, over a cup of tea with the Minister, if the Minister can spare the time to do so. I do not want to get into a detailed examination of all past motions. Suffice it to say—this is important—that there is a very recent motion passed by this House. If I may very politely say so to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras, I did not say that it was my advice that the motion was binding or effective; as Speaker, I ruled that it was binding or effective. That, I can say to the hon. Member for Glenrothes, irrespective of other motions, remains the fact.
Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise for pressing you for a further clarification, but I do so simply because it may help the House. If a motion of contempt applies in respect of a motion, and a subsequent motion amends the original motion, does that negate any charge of contempt relating to the requirements made previously of the Secretary of State?
Mr Speaker
That is perfectly reasonable. I have known the right hon. Gentleman long enough to know that he has a fertile mind and likes to explore all possible avenues. I hope that he will forgive me for resorting to my usual response to what I regard as a hypothetical question, which is to pray in aid the wisdom of the late Lord Whitelaw, who was known to observe, on I think more than one occasion, “Personally, I prefer to cross bridges only when I come to them.” That is probably the safest course in virtually every sense.
Mr Sheerman
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. This discussion goes to the very heart of how Select Committees operate. May I say, as someone who chaired a Select Committee for 10 years, that there is long-established precedent for the Chair of a Select Committee being able to receive a highly sensitive document on their own, in private, and deal with it sensibly and in a public-spirited way? There is a long tradition of that, particularly in very sensitive inquiries concerning children and education. Why that cannot apply at some stage in this case, I do not know.
Mr Speaker
That is a very helpful piece of information from an extremely experienced former Select Committee Chair. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman; the House will have heard what he had to say.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You are very generous; you did say “finally”, but I delayed, because this is related to what has gone on but is not on quite the same subject. One Member said, very pertinently, that this all arises from the curious practice, which started in this Parliament, of the Government not voting on Opposition motions, which has never happened in the history of the House, I think. The result is that the proceedings of the House are becoming littered with motions that are extremely critical of the Government and their policies, the vast majority of which motions I do not agree with. That reduces this House to a debating Chamber, and raises the question: what is parliamentary accountability in modern times? Could you perhaps initiate discussions with the usual channels to see how we can get back to the constitutional position that we should undoubtedly have, in which the Government are accountable for all their actions and policies to this House of Commons, and cannot simply ignore motions as though they were the resolutions of some local tea party?
Mr Speaker
I am not sure how grateful I am to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his point of order, but my response is twofold. First, the Address is just that—the Address—whether an attempt was made to amend it or not, and its binding quality is just that. Irrespective of whether that attempt was made or not, it stands anyway. Secondly, how the Government deal with Opposition day debate motions is a matter for the Government. What the Government have done to date is not disorderly. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman has suggested, as I think he has, that at the very least it has not been helpful to the House, I certainly would not dissent from that. It would be helpful if people reflected on the wider implications or ramifications of their conduct on individual occasions. He has served in this House without interruption for 47 years, five months and 10 days, and I think he knows of what he speaks.
If there are no further points of order, I thank colleagues; that will do for now. We come now to the statement by the Secretary of State for Health, for which he has been most patiently waiting.
Maternity Safety Strategy
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
With permission, I will make a statement about the Government’s new strategy to improve safety in NHS maternity services.
Giving birth is the most common reason for admission to hospital in England. Thanks to the dedication and skill of NHS maternity teams, the vast majority of the roughly 700,000 babies born each year are delivered safely, with high levels of satisfaction from parents. However, there is still too much avoidable harm and death. Every child lost is a heart-rending tragedy for families that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. It is also deeply traumatic for the NHS staff involved. Stillbirth rates are falling but still lag behind those in many developed countries in Europe. When it comes to injury, brain damage sustained at birth can often last a lifetime, with about two multi-million pound claims settled against the NHS every single week. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said this year that 76% of the 1,000 cases of birth-related deaths or serious brain injuries that occurred in 2015 might have had a different outcome with different care. So, in 2015, I announced a plan to halve the rate of maternal deaths, neonatal deaths, brain injuries and stillbirths, and last October I set out a detailed strategy to support that ambition.
Since then, local maternity systems have formed across England to work with the users of NHS maternity services to make them safer and more personal; more than 80% of trusts now have a named board-level maternity champion; 136 NHS trusts have received a share of an £8.1 million training fund; we are six months into a year-long training programme and, as of June, more than 12,000 additional staff have been trained; the maternal and neonatal health safety collaborative was launched on 28 February; 44 wave 1 trusts have attended intensive training on quality improvement science and are working on implementing local quality improvement projects with regular visits from a dedicated quality improvement manager; and 25 trusts were successful in their bids for a share of the £250,000 maternity safety innovation fund and have been progressing with their projects to drive improvements in safety.
However, the Government’s ambition is for the health service to give the safest, highest-quality care available anywhere in the world, so there is much more work that needs to be done. Today, I am therefore announcing a series of additional measures. First, we are still not good enough at sharing best practice. When someone flies to New York, their friends do not tell them to make sure that they get a good pilot. But if someone gets cancer, that is exactly what friends say about their doctor. We need to standardise best practice so that every NHS patient can be confident that they are getting the highest standards of care.
When it comes to maternity safety, we are going to try a completely different approach. From next year, every case of a stillbirth, neonatal death, suspected brain injury or maternal death that is notified to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ “Each Baby Counts” programme—that is about 1,000 incidents annually—will be investigated not by the trust at which the incident happened, but independently, with a thorough, learning-focused investigation conducted by the healthcare safety investigation branch. That new body started up this year, drawing on the approach taken to investigations in the airline industry, and it has successfully reduced fatalities with thorough, independent investigations, the lessons of which are rapidly disseminated around the whole system.
The new independent maternity safety investigations will involve families from the outset, and they will have an explicit remit not just to get to the bottom of what happened in an individual instance, but to spread knowledge around the system so that mistakes are not repeated. The first investigations will happen in April next year and they will be rolled out nationally throughout the year, meaning that we will have complied with recommendation 23 of the Kirkup report into Morecambe Bay.
Secondly, following concerns that some neonatal deaths are being wrongly classified as stillbirths, which means that a coroner’s inquest cannot take place, I will work with the Ministry of Justice to look closely into enabling, for the first time, full-term stillbirths to be covered by coronial law, giving due consideration to the impact on the devolved Administration in Wales. I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for his campaigning on this issue.
Next, we will to do more to improve the training of maternity staff in best practice. Today, we are launching the Atain e-learning programme for healthcare professionals involved in the care of newborns to improve care for babies, mothers and families. The Atain programme works to reduce avoidable causes of harm that can lead to infants born at term being admitted to a neonatal unit. We will also increase training for consultants on the care of pregnant women with significant health conditions such as cardiovascular disease.
We know that smoking during pregnancy is closely correlated with neonatal harm. Our tobacco control plan commits the Government to reducing the prevalence of smoking in pregnancy from 10.7% to 6% or less by 2022. Today, we will provide new funding to train health practitioners, such as maternity support workers, to deliver evidence-based smoking cessation according to appropriate national standards.
The 1,000 new investigations into “Each Baby Counts” cases will help us to transform what can be a blame culture into the learning culture that is required, but one of the current barriers to learning is litigation. Earlier this year, I consulted on the rapid resolution and redress scheme, which offers families with brain-damaged children better access to support and compensation as an alternative to the court system. My intention is that in incidents of possibly avoidable serious brain injury at birth, successfully establishing the new independent HSIB investigations will be an important step on the road to introducing a full rapid resolution and redress scheme, to reduce delays in delivering support and compensation for families. Today, I am publishing a summary of responses to the consultation, which reflect strong support for the key aims of the scheme: to improve safety, to improve patients’ experience and to improve cost-effectiveness. I will look to launch the scheme, ideally, from 2019.
Finally, a word about the costs involved. NHS Resolution spent almost £500 million settling obstetric claims in 2016-17. For every £1 the NHS spends on delivering a baby, another 60p is spent by another part of the NHS on settling claims related to previous births. Trusts that improve their maternity safety are also saving the NHS money, allowing more funding to be made available for frontline care. To create a strong financial incentive to improve maternity safety, we will increase by 10% the maternity premium paid by every trust under the clinical negligence scheme for trusts, but we will refund the increase, possibly with an even greater discount, if a trust can demonstrate compliance with 10 criteria identified as best practice on maternity safety.
Taken together, these measures give me confidence that we can bring forward the date by which we achieve a halving of neonatal deaths, maternal deaths, injuries and stillbirths from 2030—the original planned date—to 2025. I am today setting that as the new target date for the “halve it” ambition. Our commitment to reduce the rate by 20% by 2020 remains and, following powerful representations made by voluntary sector organisations, I will also include in that ambition a reduction in the national rate of pre-term births from 8% to 6%. In particular, we need to build on the good evidence that women who have “continuity of carer” throughout their pregnancy are less likely to experience a pre-term delivery, with safer outcomes for themselves and their babies.
I would not be standing here today making this statement were it not for the campaigning of numerous parents who have been through the agony of losing a treasured child. Instead of moving on and trying to draw a line under their tragedy, they have chosen to relive it over and again. I have often mentioned members of the public such as James Titcombe and Carl Hendrickson, to whom I again pay tribute. But I also want to mention members of this House who have bravely spoken out about their own experiences, including my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince), for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), as well as the hon. Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson). Their passionate hope—and ours, as we stand shoulder to shoulder with them—is that drawing attention to what may have gone wrong in their own case will help to ensure that mistakes are not repeated and others are spared the terrible heartache that they and their families endured. We owe it to each and every one of them to make this new strategy work. I commend this statement to the House.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement. At the outset, may I pay tribute, as he has done, to the hon. Members who have spoken out so movingly in recent months about baby loss? They include, as he has said, the hon. Members for Colchester (Will Quince), for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) and for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), and my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). They are all a credit to the House.
Our national health service offers some of the best neonatal care in the world, and the progress set out by the Secretary of State today is a tribute to the extraordinary work of midwives and maternity staff across the country. We welcome his announcement that all notifiable cases of stillbirth and neonatal death in England will now receive an independent investigation by the healthcare safety investigation branch. That is an important step, which will help to bring certainty and closure to hundreds of families every year.
We also welcome the move by the Secretary of State to allow coroners to investigate stillbirths. May I assure him that the Opposition stand ready to work constructively with him to ensure the smooth and timely passage of the relevant legislation, should he and the Government choose to bring any before the House? I also pay tribute to the work carried out by the team at the University of Leicester that leads on the perinatal aspects of the maternal, newborn and infant clinical outcome review programme, which provided the evidence for today’s announcement.
The number of deaths during childbirth has halved since 1993, saving about 220 lives a year, but we welcome the Secretary of State’s ambition to bring forward to 2025 the target date for halving the rate of stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth. If that target is to be delivered, however, it is essential that NHS units providing these services are properly resourced and properly staffed. We welcome the launch of the Atain e-learning programme, as well as the increased training for consultants on the care of pregnant women with significant health conditions. We also welcome the emphasis on smoking cessation programmes, but we should remind the Secretary of State that public health budget cuts mean that many anti-smoking programmes have been cut back across the country.
The Secretary of State will know that the heavy workload in maternity units was among the main issues identified by today’s study, which found that “service capacity” issues in maternity units affected over a fifth of the deaths reviewed. Earlier this year, our research revealed that half of maternity units had closed their doors to mothers at some point in 2016, with staffing and capacity issues being the most common reasons for doing so. The Royal College of Midwives tells us that we are about 3,500 midwives short of the number needed. A survey published by the National Childbirth Trust this year showed that 50% of women having a baby experienced what the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence describes as a red flag event, which is an indicator of dangerously low staffing levels, such as a women not receiving one-to-one care during established labour.
We therefore believe that the NHS remains underfunded and understaffed. I would be grateful to the Secretary of State if he told us what further action he intends to take to ensure that maternity services are properly funded and to address the staffing shortages as part of a full strategy to improve safety across the board. The NHS has excellent psychological and bereavement support services for women affected by baby loss, but we all know that the quality of those services remains variable across the country. Indeed, we are still a long way from full parity of esteem for mental health in neonatal care. What action does the Secretary of State intend to take to plug these gaps?
Overall, this welcome set of announcements from the Secretary of State may help the NHS to provide the best quality of care for all mothers and their babies. The Opposition look forward to working constructively with the Secretary of State and the Government, but I hope he can reassure us that they will provide the resources that NHS midwives and their colleagues need to deliver on these ambitions.
Mr Hunt
I thank the shadow Health Secretary for the constructive tone of his response to the statement. I think he is right to point out both the achievements that have been made over many years, but also the challenges ahead. We have about 1,700 neonatal deaths every year—that has actually fallen by 10% since 2010—but behind that figure, there is variation across the country. For example, our best trust has about three deaths in 1,000, but in other trusts the figure can be 10 in 1,000, which is more than three times as many neonatal deaths. That shows we are not as good as we need to be at spreading best practice. Today’s announcement is really about ensuring that we can confidently look every expecting mum in the eye and say, “You are getting the very highest standards of care that we are able to deliver in the NHS.”
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his offer to co-operate on any legislation needed to expand the scope of inquests to full-term stillbirths, and we will get back to him on that. I also thank him for raising the issue of bereavement services. I spoke to a bereavement midwife this morning, and I think bereavement midwives are among the most extraordinary people working in the whole NHS. We do have a programme to improve the consistency of bereavement services and to roll out the use of bereavement suites across the NHS; our best trusts have such suites, but by no means all of them do.
The hon. Gentleman was absolutely correct to raise the issues of both funding and staffing. We have seen an increase of 1,600 in the number of midwives since 2010, which is a rise of 8%, and an increase of 600 in the number of obstetricians and doctors working in maternity departments, which is a rise of about 13%, but we need more. There are lots of pressures across the NHS, and we also have to fund the extra midwives and doctors that we need. There was a welcome boost for the NHS in the Budget, with an extra £1.6 billion available for the NHS next year. However, looking forward to the next 10 years and all the pressures coming down the track for the NHS—with a growing birth rate, but also with an ageing population—I do not pretend that we will not have to revisit the issue of NHS funding and find a long-term approach. Probably the most appropriate time to do that will be when we come to the end of the five year forward view and start to think about what happens following that. If we are to put more money into the NHS, we need to have the doctors, midwives and nurses to spend that money on, which is why, in the past year, the Government have committed to a 25% increase in the number of nurse training places and a 25% increase in the number of medical school training places.
My final point for the hon. Gentleman is that, although we have lots of debates in this House in which we take different positions in relation to the NHS, one thing we can be united on is our aspiration, which is shared across the House, that the NHS should be the safest healthcare system in the world, and I very much thank him for his support on that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. This is an extremely important and sensitive matter, and we appreciate the statement on it. However, the business to follow—the final day of debate on the Budget—is also extremely important, and no fewer than 67 right hon. and hon. Members have indicated a wish to speak. Exceptionally, therefore, I may not feel able to call everybody on this statement. In any event, there is a premium on brevity from Back Benchers and Front Benchers alike.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcements today, including the move to allow coroners to investigate full-term stillbirths. Will he set out the current waiting time for post-mortems for infants because, as he will be aware, there is a shortage of the very highly specialised pathologists who carry out this vital work?
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
Last month’s debate on baby loss has been mentioned, and I too took part in it, although I have thankfully been spared the pain suffered by some Members of the House. Such a debate really helps to bring out for everyone on both sides of the House how important this issue is, and I do not think there will be anyone who does not welcome this statement and the ambition it shows.
In Scotland, we had a higher stillbirth, neonatal and perinatal death rate in 2012, but our new chief medical officer was actually an obstetrician, and that may have led to the change of focus in 2013, when she established the maternity and children quality improvement collaborative and the national stillbirth group—all as part of the Scottish patient safety initiative—as well as the neonatal managed clinical networks across Scotland. That has enabled us to drop our stillbirth rate by more than a quarter, and to drop our neonatal death rate by 50%.
This has been achieved despite the challenges we face of really difficult geography, including getting people off islands. It is easy to spot the woman who has a history of difficult births or to spot a woman with comorbidities, such as obesity or diabetes, but anyone who has been involved in birth knows that even the healthiest pregnancy can go wrong at the last minute. For us, as in rural parts of the north and west of England, there are transport issues in relation to how women with problems during labour are identified and transported if a higher specialism is required, and those issues must be looked at.
This is very much about the provision of neonatal services, including the movement of patients, and the availability of expertise and of neonatal intensive care units. However, as came out several times during the debate on baby loss, another issue is that of pre-term birth and stillbirth, so this is also about trying to change some of those things. After Scotland’s recent review in February, the focus will be on the consistent monitoring of growth, as a failure to thrive can identify a third of impending stillbirths; the continuity of care, which the Secretary of State has referenced; and especially smoking. Although the Secretary of State mentioned getting smoking rates down—and in Scotland, sadly, they are higher—the rate in the most deprived communities is more than four times that in the least deprived communities. That has an impact on every level of child loss.
Finally, on research, it is important that we learn, for example from the new information about women sleeping on their side in the last trimester. We need to fund the research to learn those things and then share the information—
Mr Speaker
Order. I have the highest regard for the hon. Lady, who is a considerable medical authority. I gave her a little leeway, but I say very gently that not only did she exceed her time by a minute, but she pursued her usual, rather discursive approach. In these situations, what is required is a question or a series of questions with a question mark or a series of question marks, rather than general analysis. We will leave it there for now. I say that in the most good-natured spirit to the hon. Lady.
I call Antoinette Sandbach.
Mr Speaker
I forgot that we had heard from the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), but we had not yet heard from the Secretary of State. Apologies.
Mr Speaker
Order. As I have just been advised by the distinguished Clerk at the Table, who swivelled round so to advise me, there is really no need for a response, because there was no question. However, I will indulge the right hon. Gentleman to the point of a paragraph.
Mr Hunt
Let me simply say that there is an excellent Scottish patient safety programme. Given that one of the main objectives behind the statement is to share best practice, I would be very happy to talk to the chief medical officer in Scotland and to Jason Leitch about how we can exchange information and learn from each other’s systems.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
As every parent who has lost a child knows, what they want most is answers. I therefore congratulate the Secretary of State on bringing forward the healthcare safety investigation branch, because such independence will be crucial in gaining the buy-in of parents and in their knowing what has happened in their particular case. How will the learning from those investigations be shared?
Mr Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for her extraordinary campaigning on this issue. Yes, we want parents to get the answer more quickly, but we also want to be able to answer the question that every parent asks: “Can you guarantee that this won’t happen again?” The investigators will have an explicit dual remit: to get to the bottom of what happened, but also to spread that message around the system so that the same mistake is not repeated. That is the objective of setting up a new team of people to do this.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
My constituents Jack and Sarah Hawkins have spoken bravely about the tragic death of their daughter Harriet due to failures of care. Members may have heard them this morning. I spoke to Jack earlier and am pleased to tell the Secretary of State that they feel listened to and heard. They and I very much welcome his statement and his support for extending the power of coroners. However, Jack and Sarah need to be able to stop fighting and to begin healing, so I ask the Secretary of State to urge his colleagues at the Ministry of Justice to support the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) to bring about that change as soon as possible.
Mr Hunt
Through the hon. Lady, I express my thanks to Jack and Sarah for bravely telling their story this morning in the media, which was incredibly moving and touched a lot of hearts. With respect to allowing inquests into full-term stillbirths, our objective is to move as quickly as any legislative vehicle allows. If I am able to work closely with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) to do that, that is exactly what I want to do.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and congratulate him on it. Does he agree that the vast majority of grieving parents, if not all, not only want to know why, but want to know that their child’s life, however short, will have had meaning by ensuring that we learn lessons from them not as a statistic, but as a baby? That is why the independent investigation unit is so important. We must learn the lessons not just in one trust, but across the whole NHS and spread that learning to ensure that as few people as possible go through this emotional personal tragedy.
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As he knows, because he has spoken so movingly on this subject many times, there is absolutely nothing we can do to make up for the searing loss of losing a loved one—a baby. It is the worst thing any parent can go through. We can at least give them the commitment that we will learn. If we are honest, we do not do so at the moment, because we sometimes wait 10 years for a court case to be settled, and even then it is not always clear to me that the lessons of what happened are properly learned around the system. This statement is an attempt to change that.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I very much welcome the Secretary of State’s approach to more openness and transparency in the NHS around baby deaths. However, he will remember signing a letter in May 2016, along with the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the then Secretary of State for Justice, on an independent inquiry into the baby ashes scandal in Hull. That inquiry has never happened and parents still do not have the answers about what happened in the NHS and Hull City Council in respect of their babies’ ashes. Will the Secretary of State recommit to that independent inquiry going ahead with his permission?
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) pre-empted my question about my Bill and coroners. I make the offer to sit down with the Secretary of State and his draftsman to decide on the wording of my private Member’s Bill, which will be debated on 2 February, as the fastest way to achieve his goals and get the solution that all Members of the House want.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I am sure that the Secretary of State will realise that, even after all these years, when my wife and I hear news like what we heard this morning, it takes us back to our first baby daughter, who died at birth. After that, we had four healthy children and 10 grandchildren, but we still go back to that awful time. Our baby was sickly; it was not about poor care. We care very much about people who lose their children. As a constituency Member of Parliament, I am getting increasingly worried about rationalisations in which maternity units get further and further away from where the main population live. I also get very worried when we do not give our midwives and doctors our full support to give them the morale to do that difficult job.
Mr Hunt
We must give doctors, nurses and midwives our full support, because they do an extraordinary job. Sometimes there are difficult issues and the centralisation of certain maternity services can improve patient safety if it means that there is round-the-clock consultant cover and so on. In my experience, the most important thing is to spot the most risky births early in the process. I am not a doctor, but there is sometimes an assumption that it is all about what happens at the moment of labour when women go into hospital. Actually, a lot of this is about thinking earlier in the process about higher risk mums—mums who smoke and mums from lower socioeconomic backgrounds—and intervening earlier. That will be important for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and for mine.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
Pregnancy and childbirth are a time of joy for most families, but during my professional career, I sadly had to look after a number of babies who died. I therefore welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to halving the number of neonatal deaths by 2025. In my professional experience, many babies who are stillborn were already dead or in serious trouble inside the mother before they arrived at hospital. Will the Secretary of State therefore confirm that the investigations will look at pre-hospital care, as well as hospital care, including things such as the measurement of babies’ growth? Will he also encourage expectant mothers to monitor foetal movements, as we know that a reduction in those can be a sign of distress?
Mr Hunt
I can absolutely confirm that. This follows a very interesting discussion on that topic we both had at lunch. My hon. Friend is right that the key is early intervention. Also, we know that continuity of carer makes a very big difference. If, well ahead of labour, people can meet the midwives who will be delivering their child, that can help reassure people and lead to safer births.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
This is a very welcome statement. The Secretary of State will know of the very disturbing cases over the past few years in the Pennine health trust. Will he make space within the legislation for retrospective investigations where there have been a number of cases, as in the Pennine trust?
Mr Hunt
I will look into that very carefully. I am satisfied that there is strong new leadership at the Pennine trust and that it is being turned around, but it has told me about some of the cases to which the hon. Gentleman refers. They are of very great concern, and we absolutely must do everything we can to give answers to bereaved families.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
As a bereaved parent, but also as a lawyer who has conducted many inquests, I ask the Secretary of State to consider two points. The first is the fact that not many families will need an inquest to determine what went wrong during the birth of their child. Secondly, will he commit to the training of special coroners, just as we have in military inquests, to ensure that those who deal with these very sad cases are the best equipped people to do so? Finally, on behalf of the all-party group on baby loss, may I thank him for today’s announcement and encourage him in his work to make maternity care kinder, safer and closer to home—and may I encourage him to save Horton General Hospital?
Mr Hunt
First, may I apologise to my hon. Friend, because I should have mentioned her in my statement as someone who has spoken very passionately and movingly on this topic in the House? I will take away her point about specialist coroners, because we are now going to have specialist investigators, which we have never had before. I would make one other point. I hope she does not think I am doing down her former profession, but really when people go to the law, we have failed. If we get this right—if we can be more open, honest and transparent with families earlier on—it will, I hope, mean many fewer legal cases, although I am sure that the lawyers will always find work elsewhere.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, like many others in the Chamber. He talked several times about learning lessons. As he knows, a recent report has highlighted that in my own trust, the East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, there were 19 stillbirths last year, which is a far higher percentage than in the rest of the UK. In the spirit of learning lessons, will he agree to someone in the Department of Health examining why that is the case?
Mr Hunt
I absolutely undertake to look into that case and ensure a proper investigation into what is happening. The hon. Gentleman is right; in the end, we need to be much more open about this data, so I commend the trust for sharing the data publicly. Until we access such data, we will not know where the issues are that we need to solve.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
With this vital new focus on safer births, will there be an opportunity to look at group B strep and other issues that if undetected in the later stages of pregnancy can result in baby loss?
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement, but will he reconfirm the advice from NICE that midwife-led birthing centres are safe under the appropriate circumstances? In areas such as Rochdale, where the birth rate has shot up dramatically following the closure of its maternity unit, the provision of something like a midwife-led centre would be the right approach.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State do everything possible to spread across the country the excellent “dads to be” courses that are part of the antenatal provision at Chelsea and Westminster and Kingston Hospitals? We know that they help solidify relationships between parents at a moment of strain and reduce family breakdown.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
May I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) and say that, although safety must be paramount, it would be wrong to see this as a reason to shut midwife-led units and, in particular, discourage home births for women likely to have a safe birth who chose to have the baby at home? Will the Secretary of State say something to make sure that those units are safe?
Mr Hunt
I am very happy to do that. Midwife-led units and home birthing are both part of the NHS maternity offer, but it is wrong to suggest that there is a conflict between patient safety and the choice made by mothers. No mother would ever actively make a choice to do something that was not the safest option for her and her child.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I welcome the statement, and I am glad that the Secretary of State mentioned the role of tobacco. Has he also considered the role of alcohol?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that. The evidence is very clear about the damage done to foetuses and babies if there is too much—or, indeed, any—drinking by a mother. I did not mention it in the statement because we are focusing on smoking cessation training, but he is right to mention the issue.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
The brand new maternity unit at Furness General Hospital will open shortly, thanks to the campaigning of the whole community, but it will be safer thanks to the Secretary of State’s personal commitment, thanks to the staff and thanks to the parents of Elleanor Bennett, Alex Brady, Chester Hendrickson, Joshua Titcombe and others who have campaigned tirelessly for local and national change. Will he join my calls for their struggle to be permanently commemorated within the new unit?
Mr Hunt
I am happy to do that. I think I have met most of those parents. The hon. Gentleman has been incredibly supportive to them locally—they have told me that. When Carl Hendrickson came to see me, he brought his 11-year-old son, and I offered for the son to wait outside, but he said no—he wanted his son to be with him. I think it was because he wanted his son to know that he had been to the top to try to understand why his child and his wife died because of mistakes in that maternity unit. The hospital has done an incredible turnaround job—we are all really proud of what it has done—and we are confident that it would not happen again, but that is not to say that there is not a huge amount more we all need to do.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s remarks and the overall tenor of the comments made so far. Does he agree that the most important thing for families who experience tragedy in childbirth is to receive the straight answers they deserve and to know that lessons will be learned where necessary?
Mr Hunt
I do agree. I have visited my hon. Friend’s trust in Torbay and have been very impressed with the learning I saw from the Sam Morrish case, which was a very sad story of where that did not happen initially. However, as I say, I think the trust has learned all those lessons extremely impressively.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and personal commitment. It is much appreciated. Will he confirm that part of the safety strategy includes ensuring that midwives on labour wards can take their breaks and rest periods and that midwife staffing levels on labour wards and post-section wards are checked, monitored and increased?
Mr Hunt
I agree that that is extremely important. I also extend through the hon. Gentleman a similar offer to the one I made to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who speaks for the SNP: I am happy to pursue any collaboration possible between the Northern Irish and English healthcare systems to share best practice.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I welcome the measures that the Secretary of State has announced today and commend him and other colleagues for their sympathetic work. Without them, we would not be here today. I also want to mention Musgrove Park Hospital in my constituency, which is already demonstrating how much good work can be done. It has cut the number of stillbirths by a third in 18 months and has won awards for it. It has introduced a special app that people can use when they are on maternity leave, and it has introduced much-improved special sepsis management. It also has a ground-breaking maternity apprenticeship scheme.
Does the Secretary of State agree that sharing such best practice is the best way to ensure that everyone else can do some great work and that we do not have to hear about these terrible examples again?
Mr Hunt
I really enjoyed visiting Musgrove Park hospital on Friday. I thought that what it was doing about stillbirths was incredibly impressive: I had not seen anything like it before. That is, indeed, an example of fantastic practice that I would like to spread everywhere.
Point of Order
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Earlier today, during Treasury questions, the Scottish National party’s transport spokesperson, the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), said that “the rail funding formula has been ignored and Scotland’s rail budget has been cut by £600 million over the next investment period”. That is not true. Investment in Scotland’s railway has risen from £3 billion to £3.6 billion, as confirmed by the Treasury and Her Majesty’s Government. What steps can be taken to rectify the record and ensure that the SNP spokesman gives the correct facts?
Mr Speaker
I hope that the hon. Gentleman notified the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun of his intention to raise the point of order.
Mr Speaker
It is very much the expected practice, and it is normal, for a Member who is going to raise a point of order containing a criticism of another Member to notify that Member of the intention in advance. However, I will treat of what the hon. Gentleman has put to me. The matter concerned is a matter of debate, and the hon. Gentleman has put forward his understanding of the position very clearly. It is on the record, and it may well be the subject of further debate and even, conceivably, of publicity, not least in the Scottish media. We await that prospect with interest and anticipation.
Child Maintenance (Assessment of Parents’ Income)
Tuesday 28th November 2017
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Child Maintenance (Assessment of Parents' Income) Bill 2017-19 View all Child Maintenance (Assessment of Parents' Income) Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to equalise the assessment and enforcement of child maintenance arrangements of children of self-employed parents with those of children of other employed parents; and for connected purposes.
In introducing the Bill, I am following in the steps of David Burrowes, who, until the recent general election, was the Member of Parliament for Enfield Southgate. Let me explain the Bill’s purpose in plain language.
One of the greatest privileges in my role as a Member of Parliament has been meeting and getting to know four brave mums in my constituency. I call Melissa, Sue, Kate and Jo-Anne my super-mums. As well as being fabulous women and wonderful mothers, they all have one thing in common: having split up from the fathers of their children, they have all had to fight, and are still fighting, for fair maintenance payments. The aim of the Bill is to ensure that the parents and children who find it hardest to be awarded a fair child maintenance arrangement are better supported by a system with proper teeth. Whether paying parents have complex finances, are hiding their true incomes to avoid tax or are simply determined not to pay maintenance, this Bill is for them.
When parents split up, the Child Maintenance Service can help them to work out a fair payment schedule for their children. When the split is amicable and sensible, the system works well, but if paying parents want to avoid paying, they can do so all too easily—and all too often—by hiding behind self-employed status. By hiding their income, they are not only denying their children the financial support that they deserve, but defrauding Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and, in many cases, forcing the parents with care on to benefits. That is a double hit to the taxpayer. The country loses out on tax, and instead pays out to support the receiving parents. The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that the statutory child maintenance system works for as many families as possible by closing that loophole.
The Child Maintenance Service, which was introduced recently by the Department for Work and Pensions, replaced the old Child Support Agency. In straightforward cases involving a traditionally employed paying parent, it works well. A standard child maintenance calculation under the CMS is based on HMRC’s “gross taxable income” data. That usually means gross earnings from employment or self-employment, with pension contributions deducted. However, the system does not work when the paying parent takes income in other ways—unearned income from, for instance, trusts, dividends, rental income, individual savings accounts, assets, or capital gains from property sales: essentially, any income that does not show up on HMRC records.
I suspect that you are starting to get my drift, Mr Speaker. If it is not shown on HMRC’s records, it is not seen by the CMS. The current system does not work if paying parents are evading tax and not declaring their income to HMRC. In such cases, the amount of child maintenance that the CMS deems a paying parent to owe may be negligible. Receiving parents may be struggling to make ends meet while seeing their exes buy new cars, take holidays and lead luxurious lives with new families. The mum who brought the issue to David Burrowes’s attention was Elizabeth Green. In her case, her ex had organised his finances in such a way as to pay the minimum statutory sum—just £7 a week—but was found to be a multimillionaire and the owner of multiple properties. My super-mums have had similar experiences.
The old CSA system had a component entitled “lifestyle incompatible with earnings”, which allowed the CSA to challenge income if there was evidence of a more comfortable lifestyle than the declared income suggested. I do not understand why, but that feature has been removed in the new CMS system. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who is one of the Members who have kindly added their names to my Bill, told me recently about a constituent whose application for tax credits had been called into question by HMRC because it believed that her standard of living was too high for her to qualify. That ably demonstrates that HMRC has the capability to question income and allege fraud. It must therefore be able to extend that power to ensure that appropriate child support payments are made.
This simply cannot be right. I do not seek to demonise the self-employed or the wealthy—most parents living apart from their children do pay what they owe—but as the Government rightly turn their attention to the growth in self-employment and the new challenges that that brings in terms of systems, law and taxation, and as they also crack down on tax evasion, now is surely the time for the Child Maintenance Service’s rules of engagement and enforcement powers to change.
The Work and Pensions Committee, of which I am a member, has already looked into this issue. Much of what we found highlighted the challenges associated with the growth of self-employment and the potential that it creates to hide true earnings. As child maintenance evasion often goes hand in hand with tax evasion, it seems inefficient and ineffective not to combine forces with HMRC in a proactive way. The Government must surely consider that—especially given that the CMS’s financial investigations unit has so far conducted only four investigations, just two of which have resulted in action.
This is not a difficult concept to grasp. Parents can see with their own eyes when their exes are living beyond their declared income or assets. For example, a constituent of mine paid just a few pounds to access a public search facility at Companies House that showed as clear as day that the father had drastically under-declared his income through creative company and dividend manoeuvring.
We must act on this exploitable flaw in the system, or instead allow parents to take their cases to the family courts. My super-mums have all trodden that path, only to find that the CMS is not obliged to uphold the courts’ judgments. I know that the Government are serious about tax evasion, so the current loophole in the CMS process makes absolutely no sense. The CMS must either join up with HMRC, or let the courts do their job: it must be one or the other.
In response to our Committee, the Government have said that they will consider how they can include all sources of income in the CMS calculation. That sounds encouraging, but, in the absence of the promised new arrears and compliance strategy, the Bill can be the vehicle to effect the changes that are so desperately needed by introducing measures to help struggling parents and children to secure the maintenance that they deserve. Child maintenance lifts a fifth of single parents on the lowest incomes out of poverty. It provides a lifeline for parents and children, whether that means putting a roof over their heads, covering childcare costs, or enabling children to take part in school trips. It also saves taxpayers’ money.
A child maintenance system with teeth will also offer protection to parents and children when there has been a history of abuse and control. Some cases are high-conflict, involving parents who are determined to avoid their liabilities. That can be a means of continuing to exert control, just as they used to when the parents were still together. Coercion, domestic abuse and ongoing manipulation are the backdrop for the most vulnerable parents who turn to the CMS, and in those cases the state must step in. The fixes are obvious, and dovetail comfortably with the Government’s determination to crack down on tax evasion, while also getting a handle on our rapidly growing self-employed economy.
I urge Members to allow the Bill to be read a second time.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Heidi Allen, Antoinette Sandbach, Mr Ranil Jayawardena, Stephen McPartland, Suella Fernandes, Frank Field, Layla Moran, Neil Gray, Kit Malthouse, Mrs Cheryl Gillan, Kevin Hollinrake and Mr Steve Reed present the Bill.
Heidi Allen accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the first time; to be read a second time on Friday 23 February 2018, and to be printed (Bill 133).
Ways and Means
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Budget Resolutions
Tuesday 28th November 2017
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Finance Act 2018 View all Finance Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
19:01 - The House divided: - Ayes: 316 / Noes: 293 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)
It is a great pleasure to open this final day of the Budget debate. In his Budget statement last week, the Chancellor described the choice before our country, standing as we do on the brink of a technological revolution—a choice between embracing the future, building on our strengths and taking our place as one of the nations at the forefront of the new world of innovation, or rejecting that, assuming a defensive posture and letting other countries seize the initiative. We choose emphatically the former. The Budget and the industrial strategy set out a long-term approach in which we can make our economy one that can prosper during the years ahead.
Not just in Britain but across the world, this is a time of change and opportunity. Artificial intelligence and the analysis of big data will transform the way in which we live and work, from the way in which we diagnose and treat cancer to the security of online transactions. The whole world is moving from being powered principally by fossil fuels towards energy sources that are clean, with enormous impacts not just in the energy sector but in the products and services that make use of it.
One such area is transport, where extraordinary innovation is changing how we move people and goods around our towns, cities and countryside. As a result of medical advances and rising prosperity, people across the world are living longer than ever before. One stunning statistic illustrates that transformation. In the United Kingdom today, 15,000 centenarians are alive, but of the people who are alive in Britain today, 10 million can expect to live to their 100th birthday—a transformation in our generation. An ageing population creates new demands in care to maintain their health so that they can make the most of their longer lives.
In all these areas, Britain is extraordinarily well placed to lead. We are an open, enterprising economy built on invention, innovation and competition. Our universities and research institutions are hotbeds of discovery, among the very best in the world. In a world where many of tomorrow’s businesses have not yet been founded, our powerful reputation for being a dependable and confident place to do business, with high standards, respected institutions and the reliable rule of law, is an enormous asset.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
Given that, will the Secretary of State back our local campaign to find a new buyer for the business manufacturing cephalosporins in Ulverston and Barnard Castle, given the highly unwelcome and damaging decision by GSK to review that landmark investment, which was announced by the Chancellor and Prime Minister after the 2011 Budget?
Greg Clark
I am happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman. He will know that we work closely with the life sciences sector. The industrial strategy published yesterday included an important life sciences sector deal in which all the companies are working closely with each other, local institutions, local leaders and the Government. I am happy in that context to meet him and have those discussions.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
The Secretary of State talks about giving certainty to businesses and investors. Does he agree that the contracts for difference regime can be used to bring in zero-subsidy CfDs to give real certainty to people wanting to invest in our renewable energy? Will he commit to considering the case for zero-subsidy CfDs?
Greg Clark
Contracts for difference have brought down the price of renewable energy substantially. We have commissioned a review from Professor Dieter Helm—I know that the right hon. Gentleman knows him well—which has reported, and we will make our response to it. It would be wrong to pre-empt our consideration of that, but I hope that the right hon. Gentleman and others will give their thoughts on the Helm review. We have launched a consultation on that, as he knows.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
I note the Secretary of State’s comments about the Dieter Helm review, but will the Government commit to moving away from their nuclear obsession, given—as he acknowledged—CfD has brought down the cost of renewable energy?
Greg Clark
It is my view that we need to have a broad base of power supplies for our security in the future. We are now the world leader in offshore wind, which demonstrates that one comes not at the expense of the other, and that is the right and prudent way to proceed.
We have many world-leading industries, from financial services to advanced manufacturing, from the life sciences to the creative industries. In many cases, they are at the forefront of the technological revolution that is sweeping the world.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
What further assistance are the Government planning to give to research and development for small modular reactors as part of the nuclear sector, potentially a very important and useful source of energy? What consideration has the Secretary of State given to the suitability of existing nuclear sites, such as Dungeness in my constituency, as locations for SMRs?
Greg Clark
I know that my hon. Friend takes a great interest in this. We have an energy innovation programme, about which we will make some announcements before long. That will address the question of what types of technologies should be moved along from research to development and implementation. He will have an interest in that and I will make sure that he is given the details.
To capitalise on our strengths, we need to reinforce them and project them into the future. We also need to address our weaknesses. We are proud of the fact that more people are employed in this country than ever before—an extraordinary achievement, with 3 million extra jobs created in a time when the Labour party predicted that millions of jobs would be lost. But compared to some of our competitors, on average, we work harder and longer to produce at the same level as they do. We need to raise our productivity, as the Chancellor made clear in his Budget statement.
As the House knows, to a large extent, it is a problem of disparities, rather than a uniform picture. We have industries, companies, people and places that are among the most highly productive on the planet, but we have what the Bank of England has called an unusually long tail of companies and places whose level of productivity is below that of the top performers. The challenge is clear: to reinforce the performance of the top and build on those strengths, while spreading that excellence throughout the economy and the country. That is exactly what the Budget and our industrial strategy White Paper will do, by reinforcing strengths and addressing weaknesses in areas across the board. We talk about innovation, skills, infrastructure, the business environment and local economies.
Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I wish to put on record my thanks to the Government for finding funding for the initial cost analysis for a station at Addenbrookes. Connecting that science and those brains with the wider country is exactly what we need to do. It is a vital piece of infrastructure and I am very grateful for it.
Greg Clark
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is a good illustration of how a strategy can bring forces together. That £5 million investment means that the infrastructure in and around Cambridge can be improved, and that will make the area even more attractive for companies and researchers to locate there, and it builds on the area’s strengths. The part of the world that she and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay)—one of her close neighbours—represent has enjoyed great success, but I think they would both recognise the opportunity to extend that success to a larger area. That is exactly what we have in mind.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
I agree with the Secretary of State about regional disparities and the way in which the industrial strategy tries to tackle them. The east midlands needs investment in capital to raise productivity, so I ask him to look into that. Will he also speak to the Transport Secretary and others about the Government’s failure to electrify the midland main line? As he knows, many of us have campaigned for that over a number of years, but the Government have now rowed back on it.
Greg Clark
I absolutely recognise that one of the big strengths of the east midlands is that it is connected to the rest of the country, and it is essential that those connections continue to improve. The hon. Gentleman will know that a fund was established in the Budget for cities and city regions to improve the connections in and around those cities. That is important, but it is in addition to the importance of connections to the rest of the country, so I will raise his point with the Transport Secretary.
Let me say something about ideas and the importance of innovation to our economy. We can be the world’s most innovative economy, given the strength of our science base and our researchers. Throughout our industries, we have some of the most creative people in the world.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I just want to probe the Secretary of State about what thinking has been going on in government following Bill Gates’s speech in the spring about taxing robots. We only have to go into a high street shop to see that many jobs have been displaced by machines, which are not taxed. If a person was still working there, they would be paying tax to the Exchequer, and that money could help future innovation. Have the Government given any thought to all these labour-saving devices and to getting some revenue from the way in which robots are doing many of the jobs that people used to do?
Greg Clark
We need to embrace the technologies of the future. If we are in the lead, we can benefit from being the place that develops, applies and manufactures many of these products. Whenever we have taken the lead in this country, we have reaped the benefits. It is in those areas where we have lost our advantage that we have ended up importing goods and services from around the world. We need to lean into the future and ensure that we are the place in the world where the firms of the future locate to develop and manufacture their products.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will probably not agree with this, but I believe that we still have a financial gap in this country, particularly when it comes to science and technology, because venture capitalists simply do not know how to make assessments on such things. Those people are also disproportionately located in this city region rather than other parts of the country. Will the right hon. Gentleman look seriously at the capacity of those industries to see whether we could make some structural changes that would benefit the whole nation?
Greg Clark
I will indeed. I am coming on to precisely that point. The hon. Gentleman has a distinguished record of leading Greater Manchester—with some success—in promoting the vitality and attractiveness of that important part of the economy.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
Surely one of the ways in which we can improve innovation and productivity is by having better broadband and telephony. I heard what the Secretary of State said yesterday, but in my area we have zero G, not 5G. Would he like to encourage my area by saying that the strategy is meant for the whole country, not just towns and cities?
Greg Clark
It certainly is. There are significant opportunities in many of our rural areas, and it is essential that the progress we make in our towns and cities is shared with our rural areas, of which my hon. Friend’s constituency is a particularly attractive and productive example.
Several hon. Members rose—
Greg Clark
Let me make some progress now, because I am about to come on to the points that hon. Members are raising.
Last week’s Budget outlined the biggest increase in public research and development investment for 40 years. It is growing as a share of GDP and contributing to our commitment to invest 2.4% of GDP in research and development by 2027, rising to 3% in the long term. One aspect of this increased funding is a strength in places fund, which will grow our research and innovation strengths in every part of the United Kingdom, recognising that there are strengths in all parts of the country, not just in London and the south-east.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Rebalancing the economy is a key part of the industrial strategy, and one of the reasons why London gets a much better deal on investment is its ability to attract private sector investment, which the north has very little capability to do. Has my right hon. Friend any plans to try to resolve that issue, so that we can attract more private sector funding for infrastructure investment in the north?
Greg Clark
I have indeed, and I will come on to that in a moment, if my hon. Friend will bear with me.
Let me say something about skills. We are creating new job opportunities, but I say to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), who raised a point about robots, that if jobs change, we need to ensure that people have the ability to train and develop the skills they will need for the jobs that are being created. The consultation on the industrial strategy established what every Member knows: job opportunities, especially in companies in the technical sectors, require education and training, particularly in maths, digital skills and other aspects of our technical education. There are skills shortages around the country, and great careers would be available to young people and to those who are changing career if only they had that educational base. The significant investment in maths, digital and technical education that was announced in the Budget is therefore important, as is the national retraining scheme, which will work with employers and trade unions, beginning with digital and construction training.
On infrastructure, I can tell the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) that the Chancellor has announced an £8 billion increase in the national productivity investment fund, taking it to £31 billion, and extended it to 2022-23. That will enable us to invest in our physical infrastructure and also, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) said, in our digital infrastructure as we develop the next generation of full-fibre networks, trial the use of 5G and boost mobile communication on our railways. That, too, is important right across the country. We will also support electric vehicles through the charging infrastructure fund. If we are going to manufacture those new vehicles, we have to be the place in the world in which they can be deployed most effectively.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
Green growth is clearly part of our future as we move forward in the economy. Does my right hon. Friend agree that hydrogen batteries are as important as electric vehicles?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that hydrogen offers big advantages. It is a clean fuel, and this country has great expertise in developing and applying it.
Let me say something about business finance, which has already come up in the debate. In a strategy that connects our areas of strength, it is essential that we allow the businesses that are growing across our country to benefit much more than previously from our financial services sector, which is one of the most significant in the world. The deep pool of capital that we have should be available to growing companies up and down the country. The Budget therefore includes a new £2.5 billion investment fund, incubated in the British Business Bank, to drive forward more investment into growing companies across the country. The British Business Bank will establish a network of regional managers by autumn next year, ensuring that it is not just in London and the south-east that these sources of finance and advice are available, as it is essential that they are in place right across the UK.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
The reality is that the Office for Budget Responsibility downgraded forecasts for business investment, productivity and growth in the economy for the entire forecasting period, so what the Chancellor announced in last week’s Budget clearly does not go far enough.
Greg Clark
I think the hon. Gentleman misunderstands what was said. The OBR recognised that its forecast that the productivity rate would recover after the financial crisis, which it has been making for many years, has not been realised. There has been no new event; it has just recognised what has happened, which has had consequences for the financial forecasts. Faced with that, the right thing to do is to look seriously for the long term—I do not think that this matter divides Members—at how we can act on the foundations of productivity. Talking about investment in research and development, the infrastructure that we depend on and sources of finance for growing businesses in every part of the country is a serious response to the OBR’s revised productivity forecast.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
As 100 new jobs come to Hedge End and 500 to Chandler’s Ford, productivity and accessibility are really important to the Solent area. Will the Secretary of State work with local enterprise partnerships to ensure that infrastructure and the need for local investment feed into the industrial strategy?
Greg Clark
I will indeed. Throughout my time in this House and in this Government, I have promoted the importance of places and local leadership and of ensuring that investment decisions benefit from local knowledge and local decisions. The Budget and the industrial strategy reinforce that. To have a prosperous United Kingdom, every part of it needs to be maximising its potential, so the strategy very much works with cities, towns and regions across the UK. We are inviting areas to promote local industrial strategies that state what needs to be done locally to make a particular town, city or county fit for the future and able to attract new business investment.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Following the Secretary of State’s announcement of the industrial strategy, we had a meeting in Leicester just yesterday to discuss the infrastructure needs of the east midlands. The east midlands has traditionally been at the bottom of the Government funding league for infrastructure, but it is delivering the highest economic growth and the fastest wage growth in the UK outside London and the south-east. Think what we could do if we had our fair share of infrastructure spending.
Greg Clark
I will take that representation. My hon. Friend is right that the performance of the east midlands has been extremely positive. Some of its institutions—I think of universities in Leicester and Loughborough—are having a huge impact on the local economy. I look forward to visiting Leicestershire again soon to have discussions as part of the plan for local industrial strategies. I mentioned the fund for improving transport connections between city centres and the towns around them, and that is essential investment in the future competitiveness of our economy.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The Secretary of State is being generous in giving way. How might the industrial strategy develop if we find ourselves with open borders and no border checks, which was talked about as recently as yesterday? If we are to have an open border with the Republic of Ireland, the UK will need an open border with everywhere else, meaning that the UK will not be running any tariffs at all. How will that affect the industrial strategy? Under most favoured nation status, if we have an open border with Ireland, we will have an open border with everywhere else.
Greg Clark
I am conscious that many Members want to speak and the hon. Gentleman is tempting me into a discussion that would take more time than I have. However, our future as a successful economy is about trading more with Europe and the rest of the world. That should be free of tariffs and free of friction, and that is what we want to achieve through our negotiations.
None of the investment in and improvement to the productive capacity of the economy would be possible without a fundamentally strong economy. The essential foundation of future prosperity is to be a place in which global investors can have confidence. It is sometimes easy to take for granted the progress that was made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and his predecessor in rescuing the economy from the catastrophic situation in which we found it when the Labour party left office. Britain had its largest deficit as a share of GDP since the second world war. So reckless had the Labour Government been with the public finances that in their last year in office—almost unbelievably—for every £5 of Government spending, £1 had to be borrowed. Unemployment rose by nearly half a million, the welfare bill ballooned and the number of households who had never worked had doubled. If we had continued on that course, Britain’s reputation as a dependable place for global investors to entrust their assets would have been lost, and it would have taken many generations to recover.
As a result of the steady and painstaking work of the British people, however, backed by the leadership of Conservative Members, we have cut the deficit by three quarters at the same time as cutting income tax for 30 million people. Britain has been one of the job creation hotspots of the world, with employment up by 3 million in just seven years and unemployment lower than at any point since 1975. However, just when the deficit is being tamed and we can look forward to falling national debt, which has to be repaid by future generations, the Labour party—I hope it will contradict me—has adopted a platform that is even more extreme than the policies that produced the previous situation. Labour’s proposal is to borrow an extra quarter of a trillion pounds. As if that were not enough, it also wants to increase taxation to what the Institute for Fiscal Studies has called the highest peacetime level in the history of this country. That would, as the IFS also said, make the UK a
“less attractive place to invest”.
It is no wonder that the reaction of employers the length and breadth of Britain has been one of alarm. The chief executive of the EEF said that those policies are from a bygone era. Do they have credibility? The answer is clearly no.
Greg Clark
I am about to conclude.
If we want a strong, competitive economy that is fit for the future, we need to live within our means, create good jobs and pay people well. We need to be a beacon of free trade and internationalism. That is what our industrial strategy and this Budget are about. Prosperity for all is the best alternative to the high-tax, anti-enterprise, job-destroying ideology that has taken over the Opposition Front Bench. Our Budget takes us into the future; the Labour party takes us into the past. I commend the Budget to the House.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
I am surprised by the Secretary of State’s comments, which are usually quite measured, and he seems to be struggling with reality today. However, let us talk about the Budget. A substantial section of the Chancellor’s speech on Wednesday focused on the productivity crisis, and rightly so. Labour analysis has shown that we have to go back to 1820, when George IV ascended the throne just after the Napoleonic wars, before we can find a time when productivity increased by less than this over a 10-year period. The result has been catastrophic. People are earning less now than they were 10 years ago and, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies states, average earnings look set to be nearly £1,400 lower by 2021 than was forecast last year. The Chancellor and the Secretary of State have tried to paint that as a phenomenon that is quite separate from the Government—like a sort of freak accident that is nothing to do with them—but that could not be further from the truth. To help the Secretary of State with his recollection of history and reality itself, I will take him on a little trip down memory lane.
By late 2008, it was clear that monetary policy alone was not working in the traditional way—people were not spending and the economy was not recovering. To quote economist Paul Krugman,
“the truth is that mainstream, textbook economics not only justified the initial round of post-crisis stimulus, but said that this stimulus should continue until economies had recovered.”
But what did the Conservatives do? The polar opposite: slashing Government spending and investment, and essentially pulling the rug out from under the UK economy.
Not only that, but the financial crash had shown clearly that our economy was becoming dangerously over-reliant, both regionally and sectorally, on financial services in the south-east of Britain.
Antoinette Sandbach
Does the hon. Lady accept that, in effect, 12 previous years of Labour Government had left the economy in that state?
Rebecca Long Bailey
Frankly, I expect better from the hon. Lady; she usually makes very measured contributions. If she lets me continue, I will explain a little about what happened. Perhaps she will make different comments if she asks another question later.
It made perfect sense to use that economic turning point as an opportunity to invest in the development of our industrial base and to address the deep structural problems that had been emerging in our economy since the early 1980s. However, what happened was the scaling back of investment and funding in the tools that business needs to grow and succeed, such as skills, infrastructure, research and development, and access to long-term patient capital.
Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)
As the hon. Lady is taking a trip down memory lane, does she recall the Labour party’s repeated predictions when we embarked on this necessary course of public spending restraint that it would lead to 1 million jobs being lost? In fact, 3 million jobs have been created.
Rebecca Long Bailey
Again, we have a Conservative Member who struggles with reality. I urge him to speak to workers in his constituency and ask them about the quality of said employment. I speak to workers in my constituency, and they are struggling in an era of casualised, low-paid, insecure work.
Our productivity was certainly impeded, but the picture worsens still when we focus on the recent productivity and investment figures of many British regions and nations. Stark research recently published by the Centre for Cities shows that London and the south-east are up to 44% more productive than many other British regions, and the Institute for Public Policy Research’s commission on economic justice has found that Britain is the most regionally imbalanced country in the whole of Europe.
What have we seen after seven years of this Government’s single-minded obsession with cutting the national debt? Higher debt and unprecedented downward revisions of GDP growth. As every economist knows, the only way substantially to manage the national debt is by growing the economy, but this Government have simply tried to deflect attention away from their miserable performance on GDP.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady assist the House by saying how much extra it would cost in annual interest payments if she led a Government that borrowed an additional £500 billion?
Rebecca Long Bailey
The hon. Gentleman should refer to comments made by the shadow Chancellor. It is not as straightforward as putting a figure on interest repayments. Each investment is dealt with on the basis of the level of return to the Government, so each infrastructure project, for example, needs to be assessed on its own merits. The hon. Gentleman should know that. He is a clever young man, and I would have expected him to know a little more about this subject.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I have been in this House slightly longer than my hon. Friend, so I saw the former Chancellor, George Osborne, having to U-turn on his deficit reduction plan. He failed to meet every one of his debt targets. Labour kept debt at 40% of GDP, and now it is 80% of GDP. Does my hon. Friend agree that the carping from Conservative Members is in total ignorance of the facts?
Rebecca Long Bailey
I could not agree more. That is very articulately put.
It is not as if the Government were not warned of the problems of austerity by my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund warned the Government that
“episodes of fiscal consolidation have been followed, on average, by drops rather than by expansions in output… The increase in inequality engendered by financial openness and austerity might itself undercut growth, the very thing that the neoliberal agenda is intent on boosting.
Refusing to heed that advice was a deeply reckless act.
The current Chancellor may well turn around and lament post-crisis productivity, but let us remember that he was in the Cabinet while this economic mess was being created. He is not absolved of responsibility, but he has the opportunity to admit that that approach was wrong and to change course.
Unfortunately, although the Chancellor admitted in his Budget speech last week that there is a big productivity problem—a big gold star for Phil there—there was very little to give our economy the upgrade it desperately needs, nor was there any attempt meaningfully to level up regional investment spend.
Indeed, despite the Chancellor’s jovial attempts at talking up our ability to harness the fourth industrial revolution, the Office for Budget Responsibility looked at his future investment plans and cut its forecast for growth in productivity, but he still had one last chance—the industrial strategy. I waited with bated breath yesterday, desperately hoping that the action would match the rhetoric. It started well enough with the strategy’s stated goal to create an economy that boosts productivity and earning power throughout the UK. “That’s spot on,” I thought. But sadly, having looked into the strategy in a little more detail, it seems little more than a repackaging of existing policies.
Unfortunately, the Conservatives have form on this. There has been a long line of PR gimmicks that simply do not deliver. Members may recall that, back in 2011, the previous Chancellor announced a march of the makers, but UK manufacturing has since grown at less than half the European average. Similarly, much was made of the northern powerhouse, which sounds great, but only two of the top 20 infrastructure and construction projects in the Government’s pipeline are in the north-east, north-west or Yorkshire and the Humber, leading my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) to call it the “northern poorhouse.”
No one can argue with the core principles outlined in the 255-page document we saw yesterday but, as the Financial Times summarised today,
“the judgment being passed…is that it amounts to a good start—but much still remains to be done to ensure success.”
Although the strategy certainly acknowledges many of the fundamental problems our economy faces, I fear that the level of detail and proposed investment simply do not match the surrounding rhetoric, falling far short of what is needed.
The White Paper gives us a handy one-page summary of the strategy’s key policies to strengthen the “foundations of productivity.” It is perhaps poignant to point out that even the previous Chancellor was trying to fix our foundations and outlined a productivity plan called “Fixing the foundations” two years ago. What happened to that? I digress slightly.
Let us look at the first foundation: ideas. The key policies are raising total R and D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027, increasing the R and D tax credit and allocating some of the increased spend to a second wave of the industrial strategy challenge fund. Although increasing R and D spend is, of course, a step in the right direction, it is an unambitious target.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Given that this is the largest increase in research and development and innovation funding in more than 40 years, what part of it is unambitious?
Rebecca Long Bailey
The hon. Lady misses the point. The UK has been below the OECD average of 2.4% of GDP for years, and we are way behind global leaders such as South Korea, Japan, Finland and Sweden, which all spend at least 3% of GDP on R and D. If we are to be in any way capable of competing on a world stage, we have to up our game. If the Government really want us to be at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution, they should be aiming above the average, rather than just trying to catch up.
Furthermore, not reforming where and how it is spent risks widening regional divides, as almost half of all research funding currently goes to the south-east. To quote a Conservative Member:
“If we just put more money into the same funding streams we will have the same outcomes and continue to spend half the science budget in just three cities.”
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Lady is talking about competing with our international competitors. Where will her industrial strategy be on trade defence? We know the Conservative Government do not seem to have trade defence, but she supports them on the UK being out of the customs union, and I presume she has the same view of not wanting to partition Ireland with a customs union. Therefore she would be running no tariffs on the Irish border and there would be no trade defence. Where would that leave her industrial strategy, given that, we must remember, there was not a hair’s breadth between the Tories and Labour on austerity? Labour was going to do £7 billion-worth of cuts and, with students, it is responsible for £6,000 of the £9,000. Where is Labour different from the Conservatives on trade defence and industrial strategy, particularly with reference to the Irish border?
Rebecca Long Bailey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his extremely long comment. He made some valid and interesting points, and we can all agree that the Government’s shambolic handling of Brexit undermines our industrial strategy going forward. Labour’s industrial strategy, however, is committed to achieving 3% of GDP spent on research and development by 2030 and reviewing Government channels for disbursing public R and D funding, with a view to encouraging greater regional equality.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend and neighbour is making an excellent speech. On research funding, is she aware that more than two thirds of health innovation research money goes to the “golden triangle”, despite the fact that Greater Manchester has a cutting edge in life sciences? Would that not be a good place to start?
Rebecca Long Bailey
I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for her contribution, and she is correct in what she says. I do not think we saw anything in the industrial strategy that goes any way towards rebalancing the regional divides in investment spending in R and D. Critically, a Labour Government would also ensure that the UK maintains our leading research role by seeking to stay part of Horizon 2020 and its successor programmes after we leave the EU. As with so many areas outlined in the White Paper, the UK’s research role is compromised by the Government’s reckless and cliff-edge approach to Brexit.
Let me turn to the second foundation: people. Key policies include establishing a technical education system, investing £406 million in maths, digital and technical education, and creating a national retraining scheme with an investment of £64 million. Again, the intent is good, but let us remember that the Government cut £1.15 billion from the adult skills budget from 2010 to 2015. Similarly, on first analysis the £406 million appears to be the sum of the amounts the Government have already spent on maths, computing and digital skills. The reality is that the Chancellor has overseen the steepest cuts to school funding in a generation, at £2.7 billion since 2015, according to the National Audit Office, and a cap on public sector pay that has seen the average teacher lose £5,000 since 2010. [Interruption.] Unfortunately, the long term results of that are clear, and I do not know why Government Members are protesting. The Government have missed their recruitment targets five years running, and for two years in a row more teachers have left the profession than joined. The policies contained in the White Paper are a start, but they are not even enough to undo the damage since 2010, let alone form part of a decent industrial strategy.
Rebecca Long Bailey
I am going to make some progress.
The strategy identifies infrastructure as the third foundation of productivity and outlines £31 billion of investment through the national productivity investment fund, with some ring-fenced for the necessary infrastructure for electric vehicles and boosting digital infrastructure. As I outlined yesterday, TUC analysis shows that that £31 billion increases investment to just 2.9% of GDP, whereas the average spent on investment by leading industrial nations in the OECD is at least 3.5%. In addition, it is unclear whether the extra £7 billion announced in last week’s Budget is new money at all, rather than a re-allocation from other areas of capital spend which was previously budgeted—it would help if those on the Government Front Bench listened to this question, as it is important. Perhaps the Secretary of State can confirm the meaning of footnote 3 in table 2.1 of the Budget Red Book, because it does not appear to be very clear.
Key policies to improve the business environment are sector deals; a £2.5 billion investment fund incubated in the British Business Bank, as announced in the Budget; and yet another review of encouraging growth in small and medium-sized enterprises. That is, sadly, another case of lacking ambition—
Andrew Bridgen
Can the hon. Lady explain how the Labour party’s declared policy of huge increases in corporation tax is going to encourage companies to invest in R and D, and become more competitive and productive? Is she not part of a party that still believes it can tax the country to prosperity?
Rebecca Long Bailey
I applaud the hon. Gentleman’s attempts at crowbarring that in there. I was talking about access to SME finance, so I will carry on.
Ruth George
As there is tax relief for R and D, the higher the rate of corporation tax, the greater the incentive for companies to invest in R and D, as the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) would do well to learn.
Rebecca Long Bailey
I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. The Government’s proposals on unlocking access to finance for business lack ambition and fail to recognise the impediments many businesses face when attempting to access finance. Indeed, Craig Berry, a member of the Industrial Strategy Commission, has said:
“the plan for unlocking private investment is under-cooked and, frankly, pitiful.”
Furthermore, the proposed sector deals appear very narrow and the strategy as a whole will do nothing to help the millions who work in retail, hospitality, care and other large low-wage, low-productivity sectors. A large proportion of those people are women, but, as we know, the Government do not have the best record when it comes to supporting women in the economy. [Interruption.] If I were a Conservative Member, I would listen to this, because these are the stark statistics: men are expected to receive 46% more of the funding from this Budget than women; and the Budget made no impact on the shocking fact that 86% of tax and benefit changes since 2010 have come at the expense of women, according to Labour and House of Commons Library research. That is scandalous.
Rebecca Long Bailey
I will make some progress. Key to improving productivity and living standards is not just supporting those sectors we know we have strengths in and the ability to generate high returns, but using our endeavours to transform what have been traditionally viewed as low productivity sectors and make sure that they become the leading sectors of the future.
Briefly, while we are on employment, let me say that I am shocked to see the Government lauding the fact that some workers do not have adequate employment or trade union rights as some kind of competitive advantage. Celebrating the flexibility of our labour force when their recent Taylor review clearly highlighted the imbalance of flexibility between employer and employee in many workplaces seemed a little bizarre when I came across it in the White Paper. True two-way flexibility, where employees can indeed choose it to improve their lifestyle, rather than have flexibility imposed upon them because there is no choice, should be celebrated, but we cannot celebrate these rare examples at the expense of providing workplace security and enabling workers to make a valuable contribution to the running of a firm, which in turn helps improve productivity. This is why strengthening trade union rights and the ability of people to join trade unions is an important way to boost productivity, and it should be central to any industrial strategy. The White Paper does not even mention trade unions—why is that?
I turn now to the final foundation: places. The Government will agree local strategies, create a transforming cities fund and pilot a teacher development premium
“for teachers working in areas that have fallen behind”.
I am afraid we have heard all this before. The northern powerhouse, one of the Chancellor’s flagship policies to transform northern cities, is not delivering, as I outlined earlier. Without a substantial increase to level up regional investment, as Labour called on the Chancellor to do in the Budget, the local industrial strategies will simply fail. I am afraid the policies that the Government have identified as key to the industrial strategy are simply not going to deliver the scale of change needed to turn the economy around.
I am coming to the end of my remarks, but I wish briefly to say something about the Government’s grand challenges. I am pleased that they have chosen to talk about grand challenges, as that mirrors the Labour party policy of advocating missions to deal with the big issues of our time. One of the Government’s four grand challenges is to
“maximise the advantages for UK industry of the global shift to clean growth”.
That is simply laughable in the context of their track record on supporting green energy, and especially so given that last week’s Budget essentially closed down support for much low-carbon development in the UK. There will be no new low-carbon electricity levies until 2025, with no alternative funding outlined. Nor was there any support for, or indeed any mention of, specific renewable projects such as the Swansea tidal lagoon. There is a huge contradiction between the Government’s rhetoric on clean growth and the reality of their policies.
There are some moments in history that can have a lasting impact for years and decades to come. What we do at such moments will determine not only our future but the future of our children. The 2008 recession and its aftermath was one of those moments, but the Government’s austerity policies and the reduction of investment have done lasting damage to the UK economy. Today, we are again at one of those critical moments. We are about to leave the European Union—a critical point in this country’s history that will shape our economy long into the future. Although this week’s industrial strategy might have contained the right rhetoric, without the investment and detail to match, prospects for productivity growth are considerably bleak.
A few weeks ago, I opened a food bank in my constituency. I usually love going to ribbon-cutting opportunities, as they are a chance to celebrate the great things that happen in my city, but on that day I felt nothing but shame—shame that in one of the world’s richest economies in the world, one of the world’s leading industrial nations, with the greatest minds and businesses of our time, we have built an economy that has simply squandered that greatness and that forces even those in work to rely on charity just to get by. This is not the Britain of the future and it is not the Britain that I want to create, so it is time the Government woke up and halted the greatest act of recklessness in a generation.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
I am afraid that time will prevent me from following the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) too far in some of her analyses. I shall certainly resist the temptation to go into her rewriting of history, in which she glossed over a Government who carried on borrowing money during an entirely artificial boost in tax revenues, at a time of an artificial credit boom, and then found themselves hopelessly in debt at the time of the crash, leaving the 2010 Government with a colossal deficit and a huge burden of rapidly mounting debt, which they have managed strongly so far. I wish to look at where we are now and to look ahead. I should certainly resist the temptation to start re-fighting the battles on how the Labour party ruined the economy of the 2000s.
Ruth George
In spite of what the right hon. and learned Gentleman just said, I wonder whether he agrees with the organisation Full Fact, which says that for most of Labour’s last term in office public sector national debt was down and that it was 36% in 2008-09. Yes, it then went up to 65% in 2009-10, but that was as a result of the global economic crash and the subsequent recession, which happened globally.
Mr Clarke
In its period of office, the Labour party was so out of control and so wrong in its reaction to events that early on it almost started to repay the national debt at the time of the dotcom boom, which boosted tax revenues to an extraordinary extent. The Labour Government found that their tax revenues had been boosted for reasons that they did not properly analyse, and they just carried on borrowing on top of that. The figures looked quite respectable until suddenly the floor fell away. There was the credit crunch. Down went the tax revenues. They were left exposed, with an accumulation of errors that led to the soaring deficit and the soaring debt that are a burden on us now and will be a burden for our children.
Mr Clarke
No. I said that I am not going to re-fight the politics of the 2000s and I am not.
This was a strong and sober Budget that I am glad to welcome, just as I welcome the industrial strategy of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It was not dramatic. Some Budgets have plenty of glittering prizes and dramatic changes. This was not exactly a non-event, but it contained quiet, small and valuable measures. That was what we needed. Indeed, it was a sign that the Chancellor of the Exchequer resisted some of the ridiculous lobbying he faced from all sides of the public sector and some of the ridiculous advice he was getting from those who wanted him to buy political popularity or to believe that reckless spending can solve all economic problems. This was the Budget of a competent Chancellor of the kind that this country very much needs at this difficult time.
Luckily for the Chancellor, the background to the Budget was made a little more gloomy by the OBR’s choosing this Budget to change the forecasts that it had, unfortunately, got wrong, and most people did not realise it. There were not many people who pointed out at the time that the OBR was going to be wrong, but the OBR took on a more sensible productivity projection, which gives us considerable problems for the years ahead. The Chancellor has also delivered a Budget at a time when growth has slowed because of the initial impact of the Brexit vote: devaluation and the effect of that on consumer demand.
The background is also one in which monetary policy is not of much assistance. Because of the actions the independent Bank of England had to take after the crisis, we are still being sustained by the aftermath of quantitative easing and quite artificially low interest rates, with the Governor having little opportunity to move rapidly to get back to something like normality. Those interest rates are actually having a distorting effect on some aspects of the markets inside this country. Consumer borrowing is rising to worrying levels and we are now beginning to see demand ease because of the effect of inflation on prices and on the ordinary customer, so it was hardly the kind of Budget that one would envy the Chancellor’s being faced with giving. He faces a lot of problems, and he had also to deal with the uncertainty over the next two or three years.
Uncertainty extends beyond our domestic obsessions: there is great uncertainty globally. We could be threatened if oil prices continue to rise—that has had a dramatic effect on our economy in the past. We are currently being helped by rapid growth in some of our most important markets. The US and eurozone economies are growing at strong rates, and they are important markets to us, particularly the second. Both look fragile, though, and I do not think anybody would guarantee that that growth is going to be sustained for the next two or three years.
The Chancellor and the Government must be careful because, quite plainly and indisputably, the reality is that we do not yet know what form our exit from the European Union will take—this is not the day for debating that—and we do not know what kind of trading deal we will have in a couple of years. As the Governor of the Bank of England confirmed yesterday, if, by mistake, we have a hard Brexit, or a deal-free Brexit—I am talking about mistakes on both sides of the channel because no sensible person would want that —it will be quite a serious shock to the economy of the western world and to this country in particular. Therefore, a prudent Budget was what was required.
Nevertheless, the Chancellor was able to relax fiscal discipline a little—it was rather more than one expected, but he did not lose control. He resisted all the lobbies that were piling in from every public service, with some really quite distinguished public servants giving dramatic descriptions, as they quite often do before a Budget, of the effect on their services. Tens, if not hundreds, of billions will be put in. He was able to ease some of the financial pressures on the national health service within a reasonable level. He rightly found some resources for housing, because we have a dysfunctional housing market. However, he would have been extremely reckless and irresponsible had he gone any further than the slight fiscal easing that he carried out.
How the Chancellor must have wished to give the traditional first Budget of a new Parliament. A Chancellor facing a new Parliament with a decent parliamentary majority does not set out to do a popular Budget— they do the tough and difficult things. One judges a Budget not by whether it makes good headlines the next week and whether everybody is getting very excited about it, but by its impact on the performance of the British economy and on the daily lives of its citizens in two or three years. Had we had a reasonable majority, the temptation would have been to take some tough and necessary decisions, which would have made it easier to shift into other areas. One day, we will stop a fuel tax freeze. One day, we will address the anomaly whereby self-employed people—if they can get themselves so categorised—pay far less in taxation than people in employment doing similar jobs. However, the idea that we can have a majority for either of those measures in this particular Parliament is, regrettably, an illusion.
Dare I say it, but one day, someone will address some of the happy gifts that I receive from the Government as a man past the ordinary retirement age still in full-time work, earning rather more than the national average income? I have just received my tax-free, cash present before Christmas, with which Mr Gordon Brown tried to buy my vote, and the winter fuel benefit. I get my free bus pass of course. I am receiving a retirement pension, which is protected by the triple lock, so that part of my income is rising much faster than that of most of the people I know. When it comes to paying taxation on my salary, which we all receive in this House, I pay less taxation than most people sitting in this Chamber because I pay absolutely no national insurance. Now that is very nice. If I could remember which party gave my generation all those bribes, I would probably vote for the one that gave me most of them, but I cannot for the life of me remember who put them in various Budgets over the years. I could go on.
There is a serious point. Before we all start making reckless promises for—dare I say it?—the next election that absolutely nothing of that kind will be touched by a future Government, we should remember that there are younger people who are in a less fortunate position than I am who are paying taxation to pay for all that and that there are constraints on the Government who would like to spend some more money—as we all would—on very important public services when the opportunity arises. The generational injustice—to use a rather corny phrase that is now very fashionable, but it sums up the problem—which exists in these affairs in this country will one day have to be addressed.
We are still able to do some adventurous things. The industrial strategy of the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy shows that, looking ahead, the right things are being addressed and the right priorities are being chosen. We are seeking to advance those changes that have to take place in our economy that will give the next generations the best prospect of making this country, once again, one of the most rapidly growing and prosperous nations in the world.
I applaud the priorities that have been chosen. Plainly, we must invest more in infrastructure. However, I add, as we all agree that we should spend more on infrastructure, that we should avoid believing that all infrastructure spending is automatically a good thing for the environment. Successive Governments of the past have gone in for prestige projects or politically useful ones in marginal seats and so on. All of them need to be appraised sensibly with the help of the private sector and a good business case, so that we prioritise in our infrastructure spending those things that actually boost the real economy and manufacturing and services in this country.
I welcome all that has been said about continuing to address the kind of education required for a modern economy and about dealing with the productivity problem, which has baffled most people. We are not the only country that has found that productivity—for some unforeseen and, actually, not totally understood reason—has failed to rise in the aftermath of the crash. I think that the two things to concentrate on are education and skills training. We have to be sure, and I am not sure myself, that we are going to have the right human capital for the kind of economy that we wish to develop. I represent an east midlands seat, and it has to be conceded that it is particularly in the midlands and in the north of the country that we need to get our schools’ education standards up to the norm in the more prosperous areas. We also need to get skills training of the quality required to provide attractive employees in the kind of sectors of the economy that the Business Secretary described.
Skills training is probably the biggest problem facing the country, except perhaps housing. I have been here for a long time—as I am occasionally reminded by Mr Speaker when he is in the Chair—and we have known for decades that this country has a skills problem. Successive attempts have been made to tackle it, and we are still talking about the same things. It is the quality of the skills training and the relevance of the skills training to the local employment market that we still have to get right.
Finally, a big gap that we still have to address is retraining. Most people will not have one career for their whole life. Even people in work will want to improve their skills or their education to prepare themselves for the next step.
Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr Clarke
I am running out of time; I do apologise.
We are still extremely weak in this country in providing the opportunities for reskilling and midlife training that future workforces will require.
I conclude as I started. This was the right kind of Budget. It shows that we have a competent Government. The Chancellor is the nearest one gets to the strong and stable Government that we promised before we started. He keeps his head, and that is what we require. He has a view to the national interest and a very considerable resilience to the short-term, silly pressures to which he is subjected, particularly by an Opposition who, as never before, go through every problem that is mentioned by saying that the only thing we need to debate is the quantity of money being spent on it. They promise untold billions of unfunded spending in an apparent belief that there is no question in the whole field of government that is not soluble by a little more borrowing and a little more printing of money. That just makes it more important that this side of the House gets it right. The Chancellor and the Business Secretary are getting it right, and I hope that they stay steady on the course they have set for the country.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). I was struck by his discussion of his bus pass, state pension and winter heating allowance. It might be that the right hon. and learned Gentleman does not need these things, but if we begin to erode them and means test them, the problem is that those who do need them will not claim, and—I suppose this is an ideological position from the Scottish National party—we would then begin to erode social cohesion on other important matters.
I welcome much of what the Business Secretary says about the future economy, including on tackling long-term underinvestment in research and development, addressing the long tail of underproductive companies, recognising the importance of innovation, big data, the life sciences and the other sectoral areas he mentioned, and the absolute imperative for UK businesses to export more. However, the future economy cannot simply be about supporting new businesses with new products selling into new markets; it must also be about supporting businesses that are already here delivering for their customers, their shareholders and the economy, and particularly, as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe said, into the EU, which is a substantial market for the UK. So while I certainly welcome many of the specifics in the White Paper and what was said today, I make no apologies at all for talking about the impact of Brexit, which has the very real potential to undermine the good intentions of the plan.
I say that because the uncertainty created by the hard Tory Brexit plans is already harming the economy. The UK Government’s failure so far to secure a transitional deal is pushing many banks, in particular, and other companies to start looking to relocate to other parts of the EU for fear of being unable to trade freely there in April 2019. Indeed, the Bank of England has warned that 75,000 jobs might be at risk in the banking sector alone, and many of those may well move to the EU. It is vital that we remedy that, and do so quickly, as FinTech, which is mentioned in the White Paper, is undoubtedly one of the areas that ought to be able to make a positive contribution to the future economy of the UK. However, if we do not resolve this issue, meaning that banks’ head offices and decision-making functions go, I fear that FinTech and the ability to fund it will be subsequently reduced.
I also make no apology for saying that Brexit has the capacity to undermine the Chancellor’s plans for raising productivity, which we all agree will be vital if our future economy is to deliver success and prosperity for everyone across these islands. The UK is now at the bottom of the G7 for economic growth. The eurozone and other advanced economies are enjoying higher growth, as well as higher levels of consumer and business confidence. These plans and the money to be spent on them—some of the cash is substantial—might barely mitigate the damage of Brexit, rather than kick-starting the economy to power ahead, which we all hope they will do.
Let me put some flesh on the bones of that, because it is important. The OBR has slashed its forecasts for productivity, economic growth and pay growth. The new forecasts show that the economy is expected to grow at below its long-term trend of around 2% until well into the next decade. The downgraded OBR expectations lower significantly the predicted level of growth. Although the OBR previously said that growth would proceed at much the same pace as before the crisis, it has turned out to be much lower.
This goes back to something the Minister said as a throwaway. Borrowing will still be at £26 billion a year in 2022-23, but he said we want to live within our means. We all want to live within our means, but when we see a national debt of 87% on the treaty calculation, and when we see borrowing of £26 billion by 2022-23—the current account was supposed to be in balance or in surplus in 2015—I think we can say with some certainty that the Government have failed to deliver every single one of the targets they have set since they came to power, with a Tory Chancellor, in 2010.
Sir Edward Davey
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the real story behind this Budget was the growth forecast, which will impact not only the borrowing he is talking about, but public spending and, frankly, the whole shape of the British economy and British society in the years ahead? Do we not need an urgent debate on how we really raise that growth rate? The industrial strategy was simply not up to that job, which is so tricky.
Stewart Hosie
I agree with the first part of that intervention entirely. The big story from the Budget was that the growth figures were marked down over the entire forecast period that productivity per head was almost halved for that period and that pay growth was marked down, which has an impact on real people. As for a debate, we have been having debates about the productivity conundrum and growth since before I was an MP, and given that I am now about 110, that was some time ago. I suspect that we need to look at the work that has gone into the White Paper. Let us get behind the things we can support and make suggestions when we can improve things—my goodness, there are some we can most certainly improve—but we do not need to go back to the drawing board again.
I think that each and every one of us, if given a blank piece of paper, would come up with broadly the same plan with regard to fairness about investment, infrastructure, education, and supporting R and D and exports. I do not think that there is anything particularly new there. The question for me is: can we deliver that this time, or will this be to no avail if Brexit undermines the potential of any of these plans?
Angus Brendan MacNeil
Both Labour and the Conservatives recently voted in this House to come out of the customs union. That will increase trade barriers with 27 countries, as well as another 67 countries that rely on 38 to 40 other deals with the European Union, so we stand a very real risk of increasing trade barriers with up to 94 countries. Surely to goodness that is putting an already perilously placed UK in an even more perilous position? That was supported by the Labour and Conservative parties, hand in hand, damaging together.
Stewart Hosie
My hon. Friend is right. Every single assessment that we have seen, starting with the leaked Treasury document of a couple of years ago, says that the worst-case scenario—if there are tariffs, other regulatory barriers and an immediate reversion to World Trade Organisation rules—is a 10% hit on GDP, full stop, before we start. I do not understand why anyone—even Tories, and certainly the bulk of the Labour party—voted to come out of the customs union. That was an idiotic thing to do. If we must leave at all, we should look to have the closest possible formal links, so that we maintain as much trade as possible on current terms.
Stewart Hosie
I will in a little while.
The Resolution Foundation has reported that productivity growth in the 10 years to 2020 will be the lowest for 200 years. As a result, we have the worst economic growth forecasts that the OBR has ever delivered. Equally importantly, the forecast for the UK’s balance of payments current account as a share of GDP has also been downgraded significantly due to a slowdown in business investment and the deterioration of the UK’s net trade balance. That is expected to be a whole 1% deeper in deficit this year and next, and for the following year a 2% fall is predicted compared with the spring forecast.
We know that this is not a new problem. The Tory plans for post-Brexit policy—trade is vital if the future economy plan is to work—are delusional. The Tories aim to leave the single market, but apparently want to keep all the benefits of the club, while creating this preposterous “Empire 2.0” nonsense and signing trade deals across the globe. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) pointed out, the UK already has trade deals with almost 90 non-EU countries, besides the 31 other members of the European economic area, thanks to our membership of the single market and the customs union.
Stewart Hosie
In one second. These existing trade agreements will be vital if our economy is to thrive. I give way one more time.
Sir Edward Davey
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I was trying to tee him up before. Given the growth forecast and the shocking impact that the situation will have on people’s incomes and the public finances, is not now the worst possible time to be leaving the European Union, the customs union and the single market? Is this not the most disastrous economic decision, given the economic forecasts?
Stewart Hosie
Of course, leaving the world’s most successful trade body and access to half a billion customers, tariff-free, would be an idiotic thing to do at any point. The fact that we are doing it now—and, more importantly, unprepared—is key. I will say a little more about that.
The existing trade agreements that are being discussed are vital if our economy is to thrive. The Government have suggested more support for exporters to new markets, but that seems to be at the expense of the trade routes that companies already have. To put some flesh on the bones of the last intervention, the EU accounts for 43% of the UK’s goods and services exports, and 54% of imports. The UK Government have failed in their intention of starting to negotiate the future economic relationship with the EU at the same time as negotiating the divorce settlement. The delays in the first phase of the negotiations are deeply worrying and undermine the plan. We risk approaching a Brexit deadline without having concluded negotiations, and without a transitional arrangement.
In case anyone is in any doubt about how our friends in the EU view this, Federica Mogherini has said:
“It is absolutely clear on the EU side that as long as a country is a member state of the EU, which is something that the UK is at the moment…there are no negotiations bilaterally on any trade agreement with third parties. This is in the treaties and this is valid for all member states as long as they remain member states until the very last day.”
We have heard all the rhetoric from the Trade Secretary, who has conceded that his staff do not have the ability to cut the deals. At the same time, the EU is continuing talks with multiple countries across the globe, including Australia and New Zealand, which many Members point to as post-Brexit allies. That means that we will be playing catch-up with the EU’s trade policy, and it will take years—possibly decades—simply to replicate the arrangements we already have, if we can even do that. Doing so is vital to the trading future of Scotland and the UK and to our future economy.
Another point to make about the EU concerns the free movement of people. Part of the plan is to attract the best and brightest. In my view, we must not just continue to attract them, but keep the ones we have. The 128,500 EU citizens employed in Scotland contribute some £4.2 billion to the Scottish economy. We must not send a signal to people—to those who are here, to those from the EU or around the world who want to come here, or to those who seek the collaborative partnerships in research and development contained in the plan—that the door is now closed. That would be catastrophic, whether it is said officially or that impression is given. It would add to the potential loss of 7% of gross value added to Aberdeen, of 6% to Edinburgh and of 5.5% to Glasgow—a £30 billion loss of GVA to the cities of the UK alone. We will therefore continue to defend Scotland’s economic interests now and in the future, and we will prioritise maintaining membership of the single market and the customs union for Scotland—and, so far as I am concerned, the free movement of people, on which this plan, to a large measure, is predicated.
I do, however, welcome much of what the Secretary of State has said alongside the publication of the industrial strategy, which aims to tackle the productivity slowdown and address the challenges and opportunities brought about by technological advance. We agree with many of the five foundations of productivity that he has laid out and many of the key policy areas that he has suggested, including raising R and D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027 and the increase in R and D tax credits rate to 12%, as well as the £725 million industrial strategy challenge fund.
We also welcome some of the smaller things, because although many of them are England-only or England and Wales-only, they are still good for the Secretary of State to do. They include the introduction of the T-levels, the additional money for maths, technical and digital education, and the £64 million for retraining. We welcome many investment announcements, including for infra- structure, broadband, energy and transport.
We would not disagree with the four main challenges—artificial intelligence and the data revolution; clean growth; mobility; and an ageing society—although I am rather at a loss to see how the Government can trumpet clean growth when they have refused for a decade or more to address the challenge of the imbalance in connectivity to the grid, which damages the potential of offshore wind in the north-west of Scotland. If the Government could finally resolve the imbalance, which means that a charge is paid by the Western Isles whereas central London receives a subsidy, there might be unequivocal support for the policy of clean growth.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
My hon. Friend brings up a fantastic point, on which his view is shared by the SNP and the Scottish Government. The UK Government choose to penalise the place where the wind resource is, but unfortunately the wind just will not blow at the whim of the bureaucratic pen of the UK Government. I would have thought that they would have realised that after all these years.
Stewart Hosie
One would have thought so, given the number of times the Government have been told that this is an ongoing problem. I could almost repeat it verbatim: there is £23 per kWh charge in the north-west of Scotland and a £7 per kWh subsidy down in the south of England. At some point soon, now that the Government have a clean energy strategy as part of the future economy, I hope that even they might think to address that fundamental inequity.
I want some real joined-up thinking. I know that the industrial strategy recognises, as the Secretary of State said in his statement yesterday, the contribution of the Scottish Government and the other devolved institutions. It is worth putting on record that the Scottish Government already have an economic strategy, with strategic plans for trade, investment, manufacturing, innovation and employment. Following the recent enterprise and skills review, they are aligning their agencies and resources behind those plans. The UK Government should have such a joined-up approach.
The Scottish Government are taking action to support the economy and to counter some of the uncertainty brought about by Brexit, despite the real-terms Budget cuts. This includes the £500 million Scottish growth scheme to target high-growth, innovative and export-focused small and medium-sized enterprises. The first tranche of that money was delivered in June, and a further tranche will be made with an expansion of the SME holding fund, along with the leveraging in of private capital. The Scottish Government are also taking forward infrastructure investment plans, with projects valued at more than £6.5 billion either in construction or starting this year.
In addition to the innovation and investment hubs in London and Dublin, the Scottish Government have established hubs in Berlin and Paris. They are maximising the opportunities there while also developing our existing presence in Brussels into a hub. That is important because there is no point in just supporting big businesses that already export. If we are ever to mitigate the potential loss of export trade with the EU, we need to have the people and resources in place to hold the hands of businesses and ensure that more of them start to export. The Scottish Government are establishing a new south of Scotland enterprise agency.
The Scottish Government are implementing a number of other measures, the most important of which is the roll-out of digital connectivity. Had the roll-out of 4G been left to the market and the UK Government, I understand that we would be about 60% of the way there. However, because of the additional hundreds of millions put in by the Scottish Government, we are at 95%, and we are driving forward the “Reaching 100%” project to deliver superfast broadband access to all residential and business premises by 2021.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
My hon. Friend is giving a long list of impressive boasts by the SNP Government, but he may not know that people on the west side of one of the smallest islands in the Outer Hebrides can get 48 megabits per second. I believe that central London and many other places cannot match what the SNP Government have achieved in the west of the highlands and islands of Scotland.
Stewart Hosie
That sounds to me like a pitch for inward investment for Barra, given what my hon. Friend says about 48 megabits per second. The whole point is that it is possible to deliver to some of the most remote communities the kind of access to technology that every business and individual needs.
We welcome the fact that the UK Government have published their industrial strategy, and we are committed to working with them to ensure that the strategy delivers the maximum benefits for Scotland. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) said yesterday, we are disappointed that the Scottish Government were not formally consulted ahead of the publication of the strategy, even though the White Paper recognises the critical role that the Scottish Government have to play. That is a worry in areas such as life sciences, in which Scotland is a world leader, because a sectoral deal seems to have been agreed without any consultation with the Government in Scotland.
We have set out our programme for government in Scotland, which includes a commitment to create a Scottish national investment bank to deliver infrastructure development, finance for high-growth businesses and strategic investments in innovation. That mirrors much of what the UK Government have said—[Interruption.] I am conscious of the time. I have had 20 minutes, but I will finish soon; I am sure there will be plenty of time for Labour Back Benchers. We are also committed to a transition to a low-carbon economy, as this is an important economic opportunity for Scotland.
Finally, let me make a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey also made yesterday. We welcome the plan and the substantial sums that are being invested, but we note that the £7 billion for the extension of the innovation fund will not to be spent until 2022-23. If it is important to spend that money, and it is, and if it is important to mitigate the damage that Brexit might do, and it is, I simply say to the Secretary of State that he should perhaps bring forward that spending.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The House is obviously aware that a great many people wish to speak and there is limited time, so we will begin with a time limit of seven minutes.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
I rise to speak in support of the Budget and, in particular, the key strategic priority it places on the housing market and increasing housing supply. The Chancellor was right to say that we should have a national target for new home completions of 300,000 a year, but that number should not be a mere aspiration; it is an absolute necessity.
For many people in this country, getting on the housing ladder is becoming increasingly difficult. The prices of new homes to buy are rising much faster than people’s earnings. That has been the case for a long time. It is therefore no surprise that the percentage of people who are able to own their own home has declined. We are not looking at investment in the housing market just for homes to purchase. We need to build a lot more units that are affordable to buy and to rent, and we need a much more active strategy to do that. I was pleased that the Government announced that as part of the Budget.
I have supported the proposed development of the Otterpool Park garden town in my constituency, which would create up to 12,000 new homes. Any planning decision involves a degree of difficulty and it is important that we get the local consultation right, but we do need to prioritise building a lot more homes.
Building creates not only new places for people to live, but a considerable number of jobs in the construction sector. Many people who work in construction say that even now, it is difficult to find the people to do the work that is available. Therefore, it was right that a strong priority was placed on training people to work in the construction sector.
I welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of the £3 billion resilience fund to be spent over the next two years on preparations for Britain leaving the European Union. My constituency of Folkestone and Hythe contains the channel tunnel. Investing in preparedness to manage cross-border trade is a necessity. Anything that, for whatever reason, slows the progress of road freight in and out of the country will cause congestion and delay. That is bad for the economy and has a detrimental impact on people’s quality of life and the businesses in my constituency and elsewhere in Kent.
For me, a key priority in building the physical resilience we will need is not only to manage the electronic processing of freight as it passes in and out of the country, but to ensure that we have the physical infrastructure to hold lorries if they have to queue before leaving the country or if there is any requirement for customs checks as they arrive. The delivery of the lorry park on the M20 at Stanford West that was envisaged and proposed two years ago as a relief for Operation Stack is a vital piece of national infrastructure. I was disappointed that the Government had to withdraw their planning application to build it because of a judicial review, but I know that it is being looked at again. I see that the Financial Secretary is in his place. I raised this matter with him last week and welcome the letter he sent me to confirm that the ring-fenced budget of £250 million that the Government allocated for the delivery of that lorry park is still there. It is a vital piece of infrastructure and we need to ensure that it is delivered.
On the other spending commitments in the Budget, I welcome the additional £2 billion this year and into next year for the national health service. It is important that that reaches the places that need it most. The Health Secretary is not here, but I believe that greater consideration needs to be given to GP services and primary care in coastal communities, where the often complex, unique and challenging requirements have led to the average number of patients per GP being much higher than the national average. We are struggling to recruit GPs in such areas. I have spoken to the Health Secretary about that issue on numerous occasions and know that it is a priority for him. However, we need to ensure that the extra money for the health service goes to the parts of the country where it will make the biggest difference.
There has been a lot of talk about increasing investment in research and development and about increasing the research and development credit. That is incredibly important for the future of the economy, and I want to touch on artificial intelligence, which will be an important driver of growth in the future, as the Secretary of State set out in his remarks. Effectively, artificial intelligence is the robotic harvesting of the data footprint that we leave as we increasingly conduct our lives online and the designing of new products and technologies around that to meet people’s needs. That throws up a number of ethical issues.
Algorithms that run programmes are private property—they are copyrighted; they are not shared, and many platforms, such as Google and Facebook, fiercely guard the information—but we need to make sure that, when new services are designed based on our data footprint, companies behave ethically and responsibly and that we are able to check they are safeguarding the interests of the people they seek to serve through that technology. That is why the announcement of the creation of the centre for data ethics and innovation is incredibly important. The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which I chair, will be looking at the distribution of disinformation and how companies’ algorithms either support or could act against it. There is, however, an important ethical question about the right of third-party organisations to check the work being done. Innovation through AI can, then, transform the economy, but it throws up some ethical issues that we have to get right.
The Government have taken an interest in driverless cars, but driverless cars, though an exciting technology, do not work without a signal to allow them to receive the information they need, which is why the creation of the national 5G network is so important. Without a signal, a driverless car would suddenly stop in the middle of the road. The investment in the 5G network requires investment not just in poles and masts but in fibre infrastructure. A key part of the industrial strategy has to be the move to a full fibre economy as quickly as possible. We simply cannot deliver on massively important new technologies such as 5G for the whole nation without that infrastructure to support it.
As an adjunct to that, I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Digital has talked about whether there should be a universal service obligation for 3G mobile signal. In many parts of the country, including Elham valley in my constituency, the 3G signal is weak. Ofcom will shortly be publishing a study on the real level of service delivery by mobile phone operators and whether it falls below the requirement stated in their licences. If it does, there will have to be some further inducement to act to make sure that basic coverage is better than it is. In the longer term, however, we need investment in a 5G network.
Finally, the joint working between the Government, the CBI and the TUC on retraining is crucial. Technology means that people’s jobs will change faster and faster throughout their lives, and people need the ability to retrain throughout their working careers to take advantage of this.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), who made some important remarks about Brexit and the risks we face.
I want to start my remarks about the Budget with the words of the Prime Minister at the Conservative party conference in 2016. She said this about the EU referendum:
“It was about a sense – deep, profound and let’s face it often justified – that many people have today that the world works well for a privileged few, but not for them. It was a vote not just to change Britain’s relationship with the European Union, but to call for a change in the way our country works – and the people for whom it works – forever.”
I agree. The referendum told us that the status quo was not good enough—in fact, was not nearly good enough. Surely, then, the test of the Budget is whether someone listening to it and seeing its contents would conclude that this was a Government determined to live up to her words.
One or two policies in the Budget look somewhat familiar. The energy price cap used to be part of a Marxist universe; now it is Government policy. The “use it or lose it” policy on land banking was described by the Foreign Secretary—an eminent person—as “Mugabe-style” land expropriation; now it is on the way to becoming Government policy under the wise counsel of the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin)—an unlikely authoritarian Marxist.
On the fundamentals, however, on the underlying economic strategy, I am afraid it is not change, but more of the same. I want to highlight two issues: the refusal to address deep inequality in our country and the continuation of austerity. We all know about the cost-of-living crisis—it is not contested any more, although the Secretary of State did not really talk about it. I will give people just one fact: on the path suggested by the OBR, the average worker will not get back to 2008 earnings until 2025. That is the scale of the challenge we face. Are the Government making things better or worse when it comes to this and the gulf in living standards between the top and bottom? I am afraid they are making it worse. According to the Resolution Foundation, tax and benefit changes since 2015, including those in the pipeline, mean:
“The poorest third of households will lose an average of £715 a year compared to average gains among the richest third of households of £185 a year.”
The Prime Minister apparently believes that the message from the Brexit result was that people felt that the country worked for a privileged few but not for most. The Budget, however, makes the position worse rather than better.
I should love to hear from whoever winds up the debate what Ministers’ defence of these distributional figures is, because this is discretionary Government policy. It is a political choice, not an economic necessity. We need only look at what is happening to corporation tax to understand that. Corporation tax has been cut by more than £10 billion since 2010—and, by the way, businesses have not even been asking for those cuts. The Chancellor could have pointed out that the current rate of 19% was the lowest in the G7 by some distance, and that there were other priorities, but no: he is going to spend billions more pounds on cutting corporation tax to 17%. It seems that he can afford to spend those billions, but he cannot afford to keep benefits at the same level and has to cut them. That is the political choice of this Budget.
Let me turn from the issue of distribution to the issue of debt and the deficit, which the Secretary of State talked about. I am old enough to remember when the Government said that they would balance the budget by 2015. In fact, that was not so long ago: it was in 2010. I am also old enough to remember the 2015 election campaign, when I was told that if we did not balance the budget by 2018, catastrophe would follow. What does Robert Chote, the director of the Office for Budget Responsibility, say? He says:
“If the deficit is to continue falling at the average rate expected beyond the end of this spending review, then it won’t reach balance until 2030-31.”
What an extraordinary failure! A deficit promise is to be kept not five years late, not 10 years late, but 16 years late, and the Government have the cheek to go on about the deficit. They have failed to deliver on the promises that they made, but they are pulling off a remarkable feat: they are both failing on those deficit promises and cutting spending. The Secretary of State did not mention that. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, there will be day-to-day departmental cuts of £10 billion per capita by 2022, with welfare cuts on top. If ever we needed proof that austerity had failed, that would be it. The Government are not meeting their deficit promises, and they are carrying on with the cuts.
There is a deeper point, however. The Prime Minister’s words were right. People were not just voting on immigration in Europe, although of course they were doing that; they were also voting for a big change of direction. Continued austerity, continued spending cuts and worsening inequality constitute not a change in direction, but more of the same. We know what the Government should have done. They should have realised that cutting taxes for the richest, and the largest corporations, is not the way to ensure that a country succeeds. They should have put an end to austerity and cuts in public spending, and they should have recognised, more than they did, the cruelty and pain caused by welfare cuts that we all see, as constituency Members—including what is happening with universal credit.
I do not know what the precise Brexit settlement will be, but it is already clear from last year’s autumn statement that the impact on the economy and public finances will make it harder—let us be frank about this—to deliver the fairer society that was one important part of the mandate of the referendum, which makes it all the more important for us to have a Government who are committed to action to bring that about. On that score, and by the standards that the Prime Minister set herself, the Budget fails. It proves to me, yet again, that this Government cannot bring the change for which the people voted in the referendum.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I must now reduce the speaking limit to four minutes.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). I may not agree with his message, but I admire the passion with which he delivers it.
Let me, in the time available to me, welcome the Budget and, in particular, the proposals for infrastructure, business and the housing market. In my constituency, we are certainly doing our bit for the housing market. We have completed more than 600 new homes in each of the last three years, and this year we expect to complete more than 700. It is worth bearing in mind that if every constituency were building new homes at the same rate as mine, well over 400,000 new homes would be available this year.
I welcome what the Chancellor said about supporting the building industry, SME builders and releasing public land for building, but I hope that Ministers will bear in mind the need to ensure that the bidding process for the purchase of public sector land as it comes available—regulated by the Homes and Communities Agency—is not so onerous that it deters SMEs from taking part. Otherwise we will miss out on a valuable aspect of that policy.
My constituency is home to some of the UK’s major house builders, and the major brick and aggregate producers. In recent years, one of the biggest deterrents to investing in building materials and energy-intensive industries is uncertainty about climate change-related policy costs, with potential threats including EU emissions trading reforms that would put many firms out of business, even state of the art brick factories. The last two brick factories built in the UK are in my constituency. One was built in 2008, at the end of the economic crash, and one will come on stream in the next few months. They involve considerable investment—about £55 million—and each plant can produce 100 million bricks a year, but even with a target of 200,000 new houses a year, we import 300 million bricks. If we want to build 300,000 houses, we need to build new brick factories or we will have to import bricks from all over the world, and that is not efficient. The uncertainty for energy-intensive users needs to be removed as soon as possible, so that investment can go in and we can be self-sufficient in bricks and tiles.
I welcome the national productivity investment fund of £30 billion. Some of that money is already supporting the 6 million square feet SEGRO warehousing development in the north of my constituency. That will create 11,000 jobs. Unemployment in my constituency has fallen since 2010 by 70%, youth unemployment is down by 80% and only 470 people are on the unemployment register. Those jobs need to go out to the cities of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester, and we need better public transport to give people access to the jobs that we are creating. The continued cuts in corporation tax will ensure that businesses in my constituency and across the country continue to create the jobs and the wealth we need in the future.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
When the British people voted to leave the European Union, they did not vote to damage the Good Friday agreement, they did not vote to undermine the public finances, they did not vote to run the risk of falling off the edge of a cliff without a deal, and they certainly did not vote to end the benefits to Britain of the customs union and the single market. None of those things are inevitable consequences of the vote in June 2016: they are the result of political choices, made by the Government, that will have profound consequences for the future of our economy, our public services and the people we represent. Those choices and consequences dwarf this Budget and will determine the shape of just about every Budget in the years ahead.
The truth is that the Government have been far from transparent and open about those consequences. The simple question for the House is “Why not?” Why have the Government been so unwilling to acknowledge that the decisions that they have made will produce that result, and why have they been so reluctant to share that analysis? We know what the benefits of the customs union are: it gives us frictionless trade. The Government say they want frictionless trade, but we have it now through the customs union. We know it gives us access to a load of agreements with other countries in the world negotiated by the EU. We know—referring to the point made by the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins)—that it enables the lorries that come off the ferries at Dover to move out seamlessly to help to turn the wheels of industry and stock our supermarket shelves.
Some 60% of our exports go to Europe and those markets we access through the trade deals. Is it possible to imagine any business saying to its biggest customers, “Well, we’ll try and keep on doing what we are doing with you at the moment, but actually we’re more interested in trying to sell stuff to other people around the rest of the world.”?
The place where this falls into the starkest relief is in Northern Ireland. The Government say that they do not want a border, yet they also say that they want to leave the customs union and the single market. When it is pointed out to Ministers that that could be a bit of a problem, they say that technology will come to their rescue, even though their ideas are untested. One organisation has even suggested that airships and drones could hover above a non-existent border. I hate to say this, but I do not think that tethered Zeppelins or other airships are going to deal with the problem in Northern Ireland. The truth is that, whatever the weather and no matter how radical the technology is or how much the Government spend, it is hard, if not impossible, to see how this problem can be reconciled if we are to avoid a return to a hard border. That is why there is a crisis in the negotiations with the EU, and why the Irish Government are pushing so hard.
This is what lies behind the argument we are having about the impact assessments that apparently never existed. That is what this debate is about. It is not about process, or about what has been released to the Select Committee. We know that what we have been given has been edited, filleted and sanitised. What this is really about is the process by which the Government took the decision to leave the single market and the customs union. Did they consider the fiscal, economic and employment consequences of the two most important decisions that have been taken since the vote in June 2016? If they did not consider them, why not? And if they did, when are we going to see them? None of us knows how this is going to turn out, but frankly, the Government owe it to the House and to the people of Britain to come clean about how they reached that decision.
Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the eloquent remarks of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). I am conscious that we are on a tight time limit, so I shall confine my remarks to the question of productivity and its implications for public spending. By the OBR’s own recognition, many of the numbers that it has produced are speculative, but it is clear that we have a long-term productivity challenge, as the Chancellor has rightly recognised in his Budget. This challenge has been disguised in recent years by our membership of the European Union, in that we have had large-scale migration of highly skilled migrants from eastern Europe, and we have principally had to compete only with European markets. Both of those factors are rightly going to change as a result of the vote, and we consequently need to raise our sights and think about the public spending choices made by this country relative to those of other countries, such as South Korea, which are likely to be our competitors in the years to come. When we look at that, we see that we have some difficult questions to answer.
The amount that this country spends on welfare includes almost £100 billion on in-work welfare and more than £100 billion on retirement welfare. In comparison, South Korea spends but 2% of its national income on welfare, so we have some choices to make, and we must be clear about those choices. Every £1 that we choose to spend on welfare is £1 that we cannot spend on our education system, on our research and development or on our infrastructure. All that money could be used to increase the long-term productive capacity of our economy, and a failure to spend in those areas reduces that capacity and reduces our potential output. We therefore have to look at each of those areas and ask what more we can do.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend on his speech. In relation to the more productive ways in which he thinks Government funds could be spent, will he elucidate further on what aspects of the Budget he feels could be upgraded or extended?
Oliver Dowden
We should consider whether we are able to release further resources for infrastructure spending. For example, the materials used for digging Crossrail 1 could be released straight into Crossrail 2, and we could look at HS2 and see whether we can release resources into HS3. It is those sort of long-term decisions that countries such as South Korea, China and India are making and that we are constrained from making due to excessive spending on current priorities.
I therefore urge the Government to continue with their agenda for in-work benefits, whereby we are increasing the personal allowance, so that people on the lowest incomes pay less tax, and increasing their income through the national living wage, so that they are less reliant on the state. We are also reforming welfare through universal credit to ensure that people keep more of what they earn and that they are constantly incentivised to move further away from reliance upon the state and towards self-reliance, and the case for doing so is both economic and moral. I urge the Government to ignore the Opposition Members who constantly harp on about universal credit. If they actually go to their local jobcentre, as I had the privilege of doing just last week, they will hear countless stories of how universal credit actually incentivises people to take on more hours of work and creates a smooth path out of welfare and into work.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) eloquently made the case for looking at retirement benefits. It cannot be right that people who are perfectly capable of looking after themselves have access to universal benefits that they simply do not need. Equally, we need to look at the balance between the younger generation and the older generation. The previous Government rightly committed to a deal whereby we increased retirement benefits, so that people had dignity and security in retirement, but we need to consider the rate of increase and ask ourselves whether it is fair that the older generation’s benefits are increasing at a faster rate than those of people who are in work. Surely equality demands that such benefits should be increased only with increases in working-age benefits. If we do not embrace and make such choices, we will surely have them forced upon us as we fall poorer and experience lower living standards than those of our competitor nations.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is always interesting to follow the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden), who makes a wonderful case for why this country needs not just an Opposition, but an alternative. Let us give him that alternative today. It was a privilege to attend this morning’s commendation service for my local police. I heard extraordinary stories of police constables and their bravery, but those PCs are facing an uncertain future. That is the test for this Budget. How did we get to a place where people who have tackled rapists, run into burning buildings and taken countless criminals off our streets face potential redundancy, while the Government are throwing billions of pounds into the mess that Brexit is creating?
This Budget speaks volumes not only about this Government’s priorities, but their performance. After seven years, the Chancellor boasted of “peaking” the debt, when they said that they would balance the books. Another year or more has been added to the austerity timetable. Our constituents yet again face wage stagnation. Our public services have been cut to the bone. Universal credit has been made more complicated to administer and more difficult for people to understand. The stamp duty exemption will push up prices and do nothing for the millions of people with no deposit who are renting. Personal debt is at record levels. Home ownership is at a 30-year low, yet one in 10 people now have a second home—it is all right for some, but not enough. Growth has slowed. Inflation is rising. Our teachers are buying basic supplies for their schools. Our nurses cannot afford to feed themselves.
The most terrible travesty of this Budget is that there is money to be raised. Buried away is the Government’s agreement to close the tax loophole on commercial property sales for foreign companies. I welcome that U-turn. Britain desperately needs that magic money tree. However, it is indicative of this Government’s capability that they cannot even get that right. They think that they will raise only half a billion pounds a year, when they should be raising £6 billion a year.
This debate is about productivity. I am worried about the productivity of our Ministers. I was deeply disappointed by the Government’s response to my parliamentary questions and their belief that double taxation treaties mean that the tax would be paid. They do not seem to understand that the Luxembourg treaties will override that and that many real estate companies are based in Luxembourg, so will be exempt from this very tax and from our magic money tree, as will anybody who acquires new real estate and puts it in a Luxembourg holding company before the rule comes into force.
Those are not new problems, but I put them on the record because, clearly, the Ministers with responsibility for HMRC have not even bothered to read the Paradise papers, which set out such deals in great detail. It is little wonder that this Government do not really care about evidence or data and do not want to know the real impact of their policies on the people they represent.
There is clear and explicit evidence of the link between gender equality and global competitiveness. Productivity is a massive challenge in our economy, yet this Government have absolutely no interest in understanding the impact of their policies on addressing inequality.
In the time left to me, I put the Government on notice. As a country, we cannot afford for them to ignore these matters any more, just as they have failed to get to grips with Brexit, failed to deal properly with tax loopholes and failed to pay our public sector workers properly. The Opposition refuse to let the Government’s poor performance, poor priorities and, indeed, poor people skills condemn the future of this country. They say this Budget is about being fit for the future, but they are not fit for office and it is time they left.
Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), even though I disagree with almost everything she said.
There is much to welcome in the Budget, and I am grateful to the Chancellor for listening to concerns about tax increases and for accepting a request from me, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and others to freeze fuel duty. I represent a large rural community where almost everyone has to drive, and the freeze will help us to keep down the cost of living.
Fuel duty is not the only duty that was frozen. The freeze on air passenger duty was warmly received by many of my constituents and local businesses, especially Stansted airport. Aviation is a key growth industry for us, and the freeze will help to ensure that Britain’s skies remain open post Brexit and will promote the global Britain programme.
Every day I receive letters from residents who want to know what the Government are doing to ensure a smooth transition as we leave the EU. Businesses in my constituency are pioneering new types of British exports worldwide—the English Cream Tea Company in Dunmow has managed the phenomenal feat of selling tea to China, and the exceptional craftsmanship of luxury products by Geoffrey Parker games in Wimbish village is recognised as some of the very best British manufacturing. They will be reassured to hear of the further £3 billion of investment, on top of the £700 million already committed, to prepare effectively for EU exit.
As the Government continue to push to increase the supply of much-needed housing, I stress the need for accompanying transport infrastructure in our industrial strategy. A new station at Cambridge South will help my constituents with their daily commute, will make it easier to get to Addenbrooke’s Hospital and will improve tech corridor research and development links with Chesterfield research park and with companies around Stansted. However, we also want to see further improvements to the West Anglia main line soon, ideally four-tracking to keep up with increased demand.
We have heard a lot over the past few days about the need for improved productivity. The announcement of an additional £8 billion through the national productivity investment fund, taking the total to £30 billion, is by far the most exciting measure, not just because of the investment in rail, broadband, science and innovation but because of the investment in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and driverless cars.
I know that many in this House consider driving a recreational activity and see driverless cars as a threat to their hobby, but spare a thought for people like me who hate driving, a chore that eats into time better spent on other things. The productivity improvements from driverless cars will be immense. The average car is used just 10% of the time, and autonomous vehicles could increase that to 90%. Imagine a world that needs fewer cars. We could say goodbye to road rage, drink driving, texting at the wheel and unfit drivers ruining lives, and say hello to more free time, less congestion and cleaner air. It is a game changer for tackling rural isolation and geographical exclusion and, pardon the pun, will ensure that Britain remains in the driving seat in a competitive global market. The future is coming and I cannot wait, which is why I commend this Budget to the House.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
This is a Budget from a Government who have run out of ideas and are lacking in imagination. They heralded it as a Budget that will help everyone, but nothing in this Budget will help ordinary working people. In seven years under this Government, we have seen wages fall, and they are now lower than they were in 2010. Personal debt levels are rising, and with interest rates starting to rise we are heading for a massive problem. There has not been nearly enough progress in closing the gender, race and disability pay gaps—that is simply unacceptable. Britain is meant to be the sixth largest economy, yet public and business investment is among some of the lowest in advanced countries. We are also seeing low productivity.
On Brexit, there is uncertainty in all sections of society because of the shambolic negotiations that we have seen so far. The OBR’s downgrading of economic growth and productivity make for bleak reading, and we seem to have a Government who have refused to learn from their mistakes. They cannot even hit targets they set for themselves; they promised to eradicate the deficit by 2015, 2016 and 2017, and now they have pushed it back to 2020 and probably beyond.
Coventry and the west midlands stand to lose out hundreds of millions of pounds in EU structural funding after Brexit. This Government’s policies and, in particular, this Budget do not do enough to stimulate investment and growth and to help replace the funding that will be lost. The Government are not building a strong economy and they certainly are not leading the way for Britain to remain a major world player.
The Budget does nothing to help ordinary people who are struggling up and down the country. The national living wage has been revised down, so it will not reach £9 by 2020, as previously promised, and the Government are persisting with the horrendous roll-out of universal credit, instead of pausing the roll-out to allow the system to be improved. The Chancellor’s offer of help will not help people enough, as it is only a fraction of the £3 billion a year cuts they have made to this scheme. Only £1 of every £10 cut has been put back, and that just is not enough to help vulnerable people. More than 100,000 people in Coventry have used a food bank in the past few years—that is unacceptable in 2017. These changes are made worse because they are being implemented alongside jobcentre closures, and the services on offer are also being privatised. The Government are removing jobs and services from parts of the country that need them the most, including Coventry. That will have long-lasting repercussions
The housing crisis has not been addressed either. Last year, fewer than 6,000 social houses were built, and that is simply unsustainably low. The Government pledged to build 300,000 homes by the mid-2020s, but houses are needed now—not just any houses, but affordable houses that help first-time buyers. The OBR said that the stamp duty cut would actually end up raising house prices, so this is yet another policy that has not been thought out.
Despite being a key issue during the recent general election, and despite it being a sector in desperate need of investment, there was, shockingly, absolutely no mention of social care in the Budget. Local government services in Coventry continue to have funding slashed, and there is no additional money for the police or fire services, making provision of vital services more and more impossible.
The NHS has again—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I was going to let the hon. Gentleman finish his sentence.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
It is a privilege to rise on behalf of my constituents to welcome this Budget and the industrial strategy announced by the Business Secretary yesterday. In the past week, the Chancellor and the Business Secretary have sent a strong signal that this economy and this country are in the hands of safe grown-ups in the Treasury—[Laughter.] I would not laugh yet. This country knows that what we need is a sensible, one nation Conservative Administration, not a Marxist shadow Chancellor committed to the overthrow of capitalism. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) thinks that is funny; I do not. We do not need Labour’s £500 billion spending spree, which would put more debt on to the backs of our young, and we do not need dangerous talk of requisitioning private property and exploiting the crisis we face to fulfil Labour’s Marxist fantasies.
I wish to highlight three particularly encouraging aspects of the Budget. First, on public sector pay, I welcome the fact that the Government have shown they are listening carefully to the concerns of those in the public sector who feel that, after seven years of the pay cap, we need a different model to inspire our best. I welcome the easing of the pay cap, so that those on the frontline of our public services—the heroes who run into burning buildings and take bullets for us—can get the pay rise that they deserve that is appropriate and affordable. I also welcome the signal that those in the public services who are responsible for management and delivering productivity are rewarded for, and on the basis of, that productivity.
I particularly welcome the announcement of a public sector leadership academy, which my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and others have been instrumental in pushing forward. In the next few years, we need to go further and signal an ambition for our public services to work in partnership with the private sector to drive a recovery. We want an innovation economy in which the public sector embraces innovation, and is a partner for innovation, to modernise our public services. I call that public sector enterprise. Let us be bold and unleash the power of the NHS to work with our life sciences sector to pull innovation through for modern healthcare. Let us be bold in procurement, so that the public sector drives innovation in our economy, and let us incentivise our best public sector leaders to be part of that.
Secondly, I warmly welcome the industrial strategy. I am proud to have done my bit over the past few years, working with the former Chancellor and Member for Tatton; Lord Willetts, who was in the Gallery earlier; Lord Heseltine; and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Do not take it from me that a Conservative generation has led the way on industrial strategy; take it from Lord Mandelson, who said at Davos a few years ago that it was a new generation of Conservatives who were setting the pace on 21st-century industrial policy. Do not take it from me; take it from the life science sector, which yesterday announced £1 billion of inward investment to create new jobs in the economy. That is the vote that I care about—the vote of business and of the wealth and job creators, not the vote of the wealth and job destroyers on the Opposition Benches.
Thirdly, on skills and infrastructure, I strongly welcome the east-west rail announcement. For too long we have seen investment in our commuter lines, but not enough in the east-west lines. I relish the prospect of an innovation express from Norwich to Cambridge to Oxford to Reading to Southampton—an arc that links our east and west clusters. I also relish the announcement of a new Victorian-model rail company that undertakes development to fund rail infrastructure, allowing garden towns and villages to be built by a modern railway company—the first to be created in such a way for more than 150 years.
On skills, we need a response to the industrial strategy from each locality. That is why I have been working with Cambridge, Norwich and Ipswich to put together the “accelerate east” skills gateway. I would like us to offer every school and college leaver a skills passport into the 21st-century economy.
This was a Budget for business and for Britain, but the big B is Brexit. We need to make sure that in the next 18 months we negotiate and deliver a Brexit deal that supports our modern economy.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman). Perhaps he could take the Prime Minister to the public sector leadership academy now that he has a bit of time on his hands.
The key issue of the Budget is productivity, but that is nothing new at all. The productivity gap is now widening. An average worker in Germany produces the same output in four days as we produce in five. The issue is not how we can stretch those who are operating at the high end, although that is a good thing, but that we have an extremely long tail of low skills, with too many people working below their potential and, often, their skill set. That is set to get even worse with automation, with many more millions of low-skilled workers chasing fewer and fewer jobs. There is very little in the Budget to address this issue, which really does need to be the key driver of Government policy.
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Lady says that there is nothing in the Budget about that, but what about T-levels, maths and computer science training, and adult learning? There is a whole raft of measures to upskill our workers.
Lucy Powell
I will come back to those issues later in my speech. There are some advances, but they are not backed by resources. We have seen huge cuts in post-16 education over the past seven years, which has meant that the gap has widened further and further.
As the Social Mobility Commission again stated today, we do know how to pull up this long tail because we are doing so in London. It requires a pool of talented teachers, resources, and a clear local and national strategy. There was nothing in the Budget on the key issue of teacher retention and recruitment, which is now reaching a crisis point, and nothing on teacher pay or teacher workload. I could not believe it, but nothing was said on school budgets.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Everybody wishes to speak and that is not a problem, but the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) must understand that this would be her second intervention. I will keep moving her down the list, because that is the way that we will move forward.
Lucy Powell
I will not take any more interventions, Mr Deputy Speaker.
There was nothing at all about school budgets, which was one of the key issues in the general election, and they are still falling in real terms. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that, after the Secretary of State’s announcement in the summer, there was still a 5% cut in real terms, because the number of pupils is going up. We need a much bigger conversation about what education and skills are for in this country. They need to be about delivering for the economy and the society of the future.
Nearly 60% of graduates are working in non-graduate jobs. That is the third highest level among OECD countries, exceeded only by Greece and Estonia. I know that we have many debates in this place about tuition fees, but it is no wonder that they are not being repaid when so many people are not working at the level at which they are qualified to work.
We are in the bottom four of the OECD countries for literacy and numeracy to 18. T-levels are welcome, but with the huge cuts to further education, they will be difficult to deliver. Given that the maths GCSE contains more A-level content, we must ask about the desirability of prioritising compulsory and ongoing GCSE resits over looking at the curriculum and functional skills.
The Government are right to identify maths as the future. The future is about algorithms, matrices, digitisation and automation. Even for the most able, however, our curriculum is going in the wrong direction, which is why the OECD has said that it is
“a mile wide and an inch deep”.
By going down a route of rote learning rather than conceptual understanding, we are moving in the opposite direction to all our competitor countries.
There was absolutely nothing about social mobility in the Budget—in fact, the Chancellor did not even mention that in his statement. Social mobility is especially crucial in the early years if we are looking to close the productivity gap. Development at the age of five is still the biggest indicator of how a person will do in their GCSEs and beyond, yet we are also going in the wrong direction there. As others have said, these are political choices. Of the £9 billion the Government are spending over this Parliament on the early years, 75% will be for the top half of earners, with less than 3% going to the lowest. That is just wrong. This ticking time bomb entrenches social advantage.
Childcare is, yes, about increasing productivity, but the design of the current system under this Government means that we will fail to deliver some of the productivity gains that can come with childcare. We really need a social mobility strategy right across Government to tackle these issues.
Finally, let me talk about regional inequalities and disparities within regions, which are all connected to the points that I have raised. It is even more urgent that we get our fairer share of spending on infrastructure outside London and the south-east, and that we develop even stronger place-based solutions to deal with local job markets and skills. For example, if the Government wanted to be ambitious—this is not a difficult thing to do—they could devolve post-16 further education to places such as Greater Manchester. They could do a lot more to devolve early years solutions for transforming school readiness, as we are attempting to do in Greater Manchester. It is high time that places outside London got their fair share of transport infrastructure expenditure. We absolutely need to see the northern powerhouse rail connecting Liverpool to Hull via Leeds and Manchester. Critical to that is ensuring that we have a future-proofed Manchester Piccadilly station.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) when she speaks so passionately about education. I must confess that her remarks about the Prime Minister have encouraged me to focus my speech on house building, which the Prime Minister and her Chancellor quite rightly view as the most important issue facing us.
For my constituency, the biggest excitement from the Budget is, of course, the funding to support Oxfordshire’s statutory spatial plan, which commits to 100,000 new homes by 2031. Cherwell District Council is the national leader in house building—an achievement only made possible by strong local leadership and the sheer hard work of the many volunteers who got our local plan adopted. I see a new finished house almost every day when I return home from Bicester North station, and three houses a day are currently finished locally. I built my own house; it is what we do in our area.
I hope that £30 million a year for five years will help to alleviate the pressure on our infrastructure by enabling us to move forward with larger projects such as the London Road crossing. When we talk about infrastructure, we so often mean roads and railways, but locally we are learning on the job that infrastructure means so much more than that. Those on the Treasury Bench will be pleased to learn that vast products and expenditure are not the only way forward when we look to build new communities. It is noticeable that the residents of well-built houses are happy, and more effort needs to be put into ensuring high standards in building across the board. This is a no-cost measure that the Government are working on.
Where we do need to invest for growth, it does not need to be in enormous, prestige products, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) outlined. House builders need to deliver on time. Even when they do, councils must be prepared to spend relatively small sums to alleviate the difficulties caused by enormous growth—for example, for around five years of stretched budgets while new schools are created. Children do not arrive in neatly packaged classes of 30 four or 11-year-olds, and existing schools also suffer while numbers are in flux.
I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) that GP services in high-growth areas need small amounts of additional funding to tide them over in times of enormous growth. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who is on the Front Bench, will appreciate that people seem to need their GP more when they move to a new area, to sort out their existing medication and to deal with difficulties in changing specialists. We need to ensure that the infrastructure spending on such issues is readily available.
Mapping needs to be done before the build. Post boxes and street lamps should be provided without the intervention of an MP. Development can only be a positive experience if we bring hearts and minds along with us. I am afraid that closing maternity services at our local Horton General hospital at the same time as building 23,000 new houses does not sit well with us locally. Many new houses in our area have three or more bedrooms, and it would not come as a surprise to learn that some couples want to have babies to fill those new rooms.
Finally, and quite separately, a high point of the Budget for me was the announcement of a consultation into the horror of single use plastics. I encourage everybody in the Chamber to get out their phone, look at the App Store and add the Refill app; it tells users what to do and helps to get rid of single use plastics.
Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)
We were told that this Budget was going to be a game-changer. We were informed that it would lead to a bright future. I would just like to know, for who? This Budget should have been about tackling the emergency crisis in our public services such as the NHS, where dissatisfaction is up, waiting lists are up and waiting times are up. In fact, the only thing that is down is staff morale, which is at rock bottom.
When we look at what is going in areas like mine, we find that, since 2010, we have had closures of successful NHS walk-in centres used by 26,000-plus people a year and closures of wards, with more to come, under an NHS plan called the “The Path to Excellence”. Local people, having come through cuts and closures throughout the years, call this NHS plan, which was brought up by local NHS management, “the road to ruin” because they have experienced the bogus consultation exercises, only for the result at the end to be that their valued local service was closed.
On pay, there might be a pay increase in the future if NHS staff increase productivity. What a disgrace! It is NHS staff who have kept the NHS going—whether the porters, the nurses or the ambulance drivers—during all the years since 2010 and during these Tory party cuts.
Let me go on to employment issues and social issues. The Chancellor said at the weekend that unemployment did not exist. Well, he wants to come to Jarrow, where unemployment is nearly 2,000—real people and individuals. Everybody on the Government Benches is talking about the jobs boost, but two out of three of those jobs in the north-east are on temporary contracts and that sort of thing. They are insecure jobs—they are not proper jobs.
Somebody should have tackled the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) when he criticised Labour for creating the crash. In the 1970s, the crash was caused by the tripling of the oil price by OPEC in the middle east. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that Labour caused the crash in the 2000s, but it was an American crash, which George Osborne now acknowledges, caused by the banks.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman talked about the decades of skills we have lost, but that predominantly started in the ’80s, when he was a member of the Government and Thatcher was closing the shipyards, the pits and the steelworks. They were privatising all the utilities and taking out of Britain the skills that we need now. People would not have to be employing Polish plumbers now—they would have a plumber trained in England—if we had the services we had in the past.
As for what we have heard about housing, I laugh—I mean no disrespect—because the 2,000 people on the waiting list in my area cannot afford that sort of thing. They need council housing; they want housing that they can afford—that is what they need. They cannot afford stamp duty and these gimmicks such as Help to Buy, which are absolute rubbish. If that is an example for the northern powerhouse, heaven help us with where we are going.
To sum up, there is lots I would like to say on universal credit, the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign, social care and education, all of which are so important to the productivity of this country. All I will say is that the Budget was a whitewash, and we cannot wait for a Labour Government to bring in our programme.
Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr Hepburn).
There is no doubt that we are living through a period of profound change created by the digital revolution. We should all, therefore, welcome the Chancellor’s announcements in the Budget about investing in the skills and technologies to equip our country and to give us the confidence to rise to this challenge. And we should feel confident: throughout our history, the UK has pioneered change that has rippled out across the world. From the advent of the steam engine to the invention of the internet, we are good at embracing change.
In the mid-1990s, at the start of the dotcom boom, I spent a few years working in Tokyo to develop chips with enough memory to enable digital cash on a bank card or in a phone. The new technology we were developing was a million times smaller than the chip in an iPhone today. The rate of progress in the digital age is phenomenal and will continue to be.
The UK is a global leader in tech, supported and driven by the finest academic institutions in the world and by bold businesses that challenge the norm. In Chichester, we are home to Rolls-Royce, which uses state-of-the-art technology to manufacture its engineering masterpieces, which even include an electric Rolls-Royce. My constituency is also home to a £1 billion fresh food industry, where I have seen at first-hand how robots ensure the perfect growing conditions for herbs and salads, as they move from potting, to germination, all the way through to packaging. Technology is already having a big impact on the way we do business in Chichester.
To achieve our full potential, we need an integrated plan that embraces education from primary, where eight-year-olds now learn basic coding, through to secondary and tertiary, and that includes maths and digital skills at all stages. To anybody sat in a local comprehensive school in Liverpool, as I was, I say: these are the keys to your social mobility. It is not just tech; Chichester University has a new STEAM—science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics—centre, adding art, design and creativity to technology, which is a winning combination.
The Government’s ambition is clear, with a further £2.3 billion being invested in science and innovation—the highest level in 30 years. The Chancellor is also investing in infrastructure to develop fast fibre broadband and 5G networks. That is important, as all this talk of advanced technology must be baffling to some of my constituents as they struggle to stream music or even download a film.
As we leave the EU, we must be more flexible and innovative. On our side are centuries of competitive advantage, thanks to our geography, language, time zone, common law and institutions, including the one that I am standing in. Having worked in tech for more than 20 years, I know that this makes us an attractive hub for business, trade and technology, and we have a head start. The UK is host to 18% of the world’s data flows, so we already have a well developed platform from which to grow—in all parts of the country, as we expand tech cities into a tech nation.
I welcome the Budget and the industrial strategy, and I am optimistic about the future of this country and the economy. The Government are investing for the long-term success of our nation, in industry, technology, houses, including council houses, construction, our NHS and, most importantly, people and the skills that they need to secure their future prosperity.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan). We began the debate talking about industrial strategy. I approve of the Government’s industrial strategy. The reason I like it so much is that I launched it eight years ago, and it is nice to see the Government picking up on some of our ideas. However, the big story in this Budget is the downgrade in our growth prospects—the biggest downgrade since the financial crisis and in the history of the OBR. It was described by the Resolution Foundation as
“the mother of all downgrades”.
The prediction is that the economy will, in a few years’ time, be 2%—or in financial terms, £42 billion—smaller than was thought only last year. That means borrowing £13 billion more in a few years, and £17 billion a year after that. It means austerity going on into the mid-2020s. For our constituents, it means lower than expected pay. Average income is expected to fall by £1,400 to £1,500 a year. Those are the real effects of the mother of all downgrades.
There is one area where the Government are setting aside huge sums of money, and that of course is Brexit—there is £3 billion for it in the Budget, on top of the £700 million already announced—and we are told that the Cabinet has agreed to pay a £40 billion divorce bill. In a few short weeks, we have gone from “go whistle”, to £20 billion in the Florence speech, to £40 billion now. There is a lot that we could do with £40 billion. We could build more than 70 new hospitals, or over 1,100 new schools. It is more than the total housing and environment budget. It is more than the total public order and safety budget.
In my constituency, the West Midlands police have lost 2,000 officers and £145 million from their budget in the last seven years. They could do with some of the £40 billion that will be spent on Brexit. We have almost 10,000 people on the local housing waiting list. I see these people in my constituency surgery, desperate for a home. They could do with some of the £40 billion set aside to pay for Brexit. The social mobility study out today describes the midlands as a coldspot where social mobility suffers. Nursery schools in my constituency facing cuts could do with some of the £40 billion set aside for Brexit.
There might be an argument for some of that expenditure if it was going to buy us a better deal, but the Government have said that they want to secure exactly the same benefits for goods and services as the ones we have now, not by staying in the single market and the customs union but by leaving them. Countries normally pay for access to the single market, but we have chosen to pay to leave it. The Government are not investing £40 billion in getting us a better deal than the one we currently enjoy; they are prepared to spend £40 billion, which could go towards public services in our constituencies, on a worse deal. That was not an inevitable result of the referendum. The Government could have chosen to stay in the single market and the customs union, but they did not, and that is a bad deal for Britain.
Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden).
The Red Book tells us:
“The Budget sets out a long term vision for an economy that is fit for the future—one that gives the next generation more opportunities.”
I speak in this Budget debate in support of the Chancellor and the industrial strategy, because I particularly welcome their emphases on upskilling our workforce and helping Britain to lead the fourth industrial revolution, as technology transforms the way we work and live.
Looking at the Budget more generally, I am pleased to see the Government devoting more funds to science and innovation and helping this country to meet the OECD average spend of 2.4% of GDP on R and D. I welcome our funding for upgraded broadband and 5G, putting digital connectivity at the heart of our productivity plan. Economic success is not built just on steel, concrete and fibre optic cables, however, and I welcome the investment in human capital most of all. The British people will help us to make a success of Brexit, and our engineers, scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will help us to lead the fourth industrial revolution. It is right that the Budget invests in their skills, education and future.
Getting our workforce prepared for the challenges and opportunities of the new technological revolution is vital to boosting productivity, increasing economic growth and making sure that the whole country is prepared for the challenges ahead. As the Budget rightly notes, employers sometimes report that they struggle to recruit enough people with science, technology, engineering and maths skills to grow their business, and we know that STEM skills correlate to higher average earnings and greater productivity in our economy. That is why I am particularly pleased to see the measures in the Budget that focus on skills and education. From the significant package of support for maths in schools to further support for T-levels and computer science, the Government are equipping our young people—in Havant and across the whole United Kingdom—to succeed in the new economy.
I also welcome the measures on lifelong learning, including the commitment to establishing a national retraining partnership with the TUC and the CBI, the £30 million to help people to retrain in digital skills and the £8.5 million to support unionlearn. Those are all valuable initiatives. As the fourth industrial revolution gathers pace and technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics become more widespread across all sectors of the economy, we will undoubtedly see an unprecedented level of restructuring in our labour market, including in many white-collar professions that have traditionally been resistant to such challenges. That is why I particularly welcome the Government’s laying of the groundwork for a modern skills system that will help us to tackle those challenges head-on.
In conclusion, I strongly support the Budget and the related industrial strategy, which came out yesterday. They help our country not only to get fit for the future, but to get ahead. They will allow us to reach the future first, ahead of our competitors, and secure our prosperity in the years ahead.
James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)
An assessment of this Budget is as easy as a, b, c—austerity, Brexit and calamity. We have had seven years of bad luck for Britain from austerity, the Tories’ self-inflicted Brexit wounds and a calamitous Government with no distinction or record of leadership. There has been reboot after reboot for the Prime Minister, who has no control of her Cabinet. This is a Budget for the driverless car from a driverless Government. Our economy is staring, and yet stalling, at a crossroads. Forecasts have been revised down for five more years. Productivity is down, and real wages are down. Employment is strong, but in-work poverty is the child of this Government’s failed economic approach. The Budget sees the deficit revised up, with no easing of austerity, and inflation picks the pockets of hard-working families. Seven years in, all the pain is for nothing, and into a second scorned decade we go.
There is nothing in the Budget for business concerned by the Government’s no-deal Brexit rhetoric; nothing for students plunged into debt; nothing for schools in the next two years, while they await the jam-tomorrow national funding formula; nothing for local authorities, such as mine in Bury, which has faced 70% cuts since 2010; nothing for social care or carers; nothing for the rise in crime or to cover for police pay rises; and nothing for mental health. Nothing has changed—nothing!
The bits the Chancellor did get right were the result of learned behaviour, although they were all nicked from the Labour party in a desperate attempt to pick the pieces out of their arrogant early election. To give some perspective, London’s Elizabeth line will cost £15 billion, but this Budget allocates just £1.7 billion to the English regions, including Greater Manchester.
We needed a Budget for Brexit, but this does not come close. The Chancellor shows no appreciation of the fact that the prism through which Brexit and this Budget play out for the rest of the country is increasing daily uncertainty, a thirst for vision and a practical guide to the future. We have a country mixed with impatience from leavers and anxiety from remainers, and the country is in need of unity. The Chancellor is not even out of first gear in demonstrating the threat that Brexit poses, and this Budget is insufficient in dealing with that task. On the referendum, this Government took a public result and shrouded their work to deliver it in secrecy, wasting all the time they have had since the result. We needed a Brexit Budget; instead, the Government published a UK industrial strategy yesterday, but they still refuse to publish in full their assessment of the UK sectors facing Brexit.
There is a promise to build infrastructure and to build 5G networks, but in some areas of Bury it is more Bee Gee than 3G. [Laughter.] I promised I would get that in.
The future of our economy relies not on Tory rhetoric from those on the Government Benches, but on brilliant businesses such as mine in Bury—for example, Milliken, which makes 80% of the airbags fitted to all cars in production; or Dream Agility, which is making possible Silicon Rammy in Ramsbottom. We have a Government who say little about what they want to achieve and who have a tin ear about life away from Westminster. At its heart, Brexit for many of those who voted for it was, from the start, about kicking the status quo and giving a voice to the people left behind. For too many, this Budget still says nothing of their experiences of life, work and business in Bury or across Britain.
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)
Frankly, before last Wednesday, I expected to be a bit grumpy about the Budget. I was concerned that there would be no offer for younger people and that my constituents would lose out again, as they have so many times in previous Budgets. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I was greeted by the Chancellor’s fair, inclusive and progressive Budget last week.
As I have repeatedly said in this Chamber, the people of Mansfield have in the past felt ignored and neglected by Westminster, and successive Governments have not addressed the needs of that area in their Budgets, but I am optimistic that this Budget covers many of the challenges my constituents face, and there are a number of small steps in the right direction. Although the increase in the national living wage is welcome everywhere, nowhere is that more true than in Mansfield, where 38% of workers are in low-paid employment. That, coupled with the increase in the personal allowance announced by the Chancellor, means that more of my constituents can keep more of their hard-earned cash.
These changes are overwhelmingly welcome in my constituency, but the predominance of low-paid and low-skilled work is a cause for concern. That is why I am delighted to hear that the Government will be offering support for skills in maths and computing, as well as introducing T-levels. My belief is that it is only by diversifying education and offering more technical and vocational options to young people, as is being done with great success in Vision West Nottinghamshire College in my constituency, that we can generate the skilled workforce this country needs to thrive.
There is of course more to be done in creating quality qualifications that lead to long-term employment. I would like to see direct business involvement in education. For example, the University of Lincoln currently offers an engineering programme delivered directly by Siemens. Such involvement allows companies to shape their own highly skilled workforces and provides young people with an open door to quality, long-term employment.
Apprenticeships are also a challenge, particularly for smaller businesses, to manage and I look forward to continuing conversations with the Secretary of State for Education on that front. As MPs with small teams of staff, we know how challenging it can be to organise work experience for even one person, never mind an apprenticeship. We need to offer more support to SMEs.
In recent months, I have been working to highlight the challenge of engaging and inspiring young people—it is no secret that my party has struggled on that front—and I have been talking to younger colleagues in this place about the steps we can take to tip the balance back in favour of those who feel they are worse off than their parents. Housing was one of our primary asks when we visited the Chancellor before the Budget, and I am delighted to hear his announcement on stamp duty and the unprecedented spending on house building. The commitment to a council tax levy on empty homes, which are a huge problem in Mansfield, is welcome news. I hope that it will free up more homes for the private rented sector and for social housing.
That is a big step in the right direction, but I would like the Government to take a lead on the issue and invest in their own house building programme. If we want homes built, let us build the kind of houses we need and make sure that we meet the 300,000 a year target. I am sure that that discussion will continue to be at the top of the agenda.
Yesterday, we heard the announcements on our industrial strategy. I welcome the commitment to spread growth and wealth across the whole UK. In a modern, digital world, it is no longer the case that every business has to be based in a city centre or in London. There are huge opportunities for Mansfield and the east midlands more broadly. The investment in our digital infrastructure is welcome, as is the support for retraining in STEM subjects and the technical education commitments I have mentioned. I hope that those measures are rolled out not just in cities, but across the whole UK. Mansfield has a high proportion of SMEs. Supporting them to grow and employ more people in rewarding jobs is vital for the future and for raising aspiration in an area that is among the lowest in the UK for social mobility.
Although many of the announcements are not earth-shattering in isolation, they show that the Government have a vision. These small steps in the right direction, while limited by the clear economic and political realities, show a commitment to advances in housing, health reform and education that are incredibly positive. It is a vision that I am very happy to support.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
After the next speech, the time limit will go down to three minutes.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Apart from failing to address the inequality for the WASPI women, last week’s Budget failed the central test; it should have taken this on. Our economy faces the incredible challenge of Brexit and last week, the Chancellor should have come to the Dispatch Box, been honest with the country and said, “This isn’t working. Let’s stay in the single market. Let’s stay in the customs union. Let’s build up our economy from there, and then we will be able to afford truly to invest in our economy.” I will come back to that point, but first I want to turn to housing, which is what the Chancellor said his Budget was all about. He will say that his stamp duty cut is a headline winning move that shows his commitment to a homeowning democracy. Actually, the policy is a failure. It took my two excellent members of staff here, Tom Railton and Ella Crine, precisely 14 minutes from receiving the Budget Book at the Vote Office to send a message alerting me to the OBR’s judgment on the central policy in the Budget. The OBR states that
“the main gainers from the policy are people who already own property, not the FTBs”—
first-time buyers—
“themselves.”
I cannot imagine that it took the Treasury’s fine team of talented economists any longer to tell the Chancellor, than it took Tom and Ella to tell me, what the OBR would make of his policy. The question, therefore, must be: was he told? Did he ignore advice? What estimate was made of the impact of the policy before the Budget was completed?
This is no small measure. It will cost £125 million this year, £560 million next year and £600 million in every other year of the Budget period. That is money forgone that could have been used to secure the future of our health service or to get us one step closer to ending child poverty in our generation.
While I am on the subject of child poverty, this Budget does precisely nothing to address the growing number of kids in poverty in our country. The Tories on the Front Bench should realise that if they do nothing, they will see 400,000 extra children in poverty by the end of the Budget forecast period. If they think that this subject will go away, they can think again. It is not just people on this side of the House who will not forgive them; every single one of their constituents will be asking them about child poverty at the time of the next election. Either they do something about it or we will.
Finally, I come to Brexit. This may be my final point, but it is the most important of all. As a country, we now know that we have lost one decade of growth and that we face another. We are at a fork in the road and face the biggest choice in our generation. The referendum may have been won for Brexit, but we in this House have to decide what that means. We have to make a deal. We have to find a deal that suits us and our partners in Europe. The answer is not to kowtow to those who would dog whistle on immigration. Our borders must be secure, yes, but that does not mean that freedom of movement has no place. We have to accept the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be. We need to make a deal, stay in the single market and protect our country’s future.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
Dudley South has one of the biggest shopping centres in the country, a new enterprise zone and one of the largest secure industrial parks in Europe, but it has no railway station and on a good day it is probably half an hour from the nearest motorway junction. Infrastructure is absolutely vital, therefore, if the potential of local people and businesses is to be realised, which is why, before I was elected, one of my first campaigns was for a new tram extension to join my constituency with the midland metro network and the main line rail network.
The extension has been on and off the agenda since the days of the old West Midlands County Council in the early 1980s. Understandably, when I knocked on doors, the most common response I got was, “Yes, we’ve been told this for 30 years. It’s never going to happen.” Along with West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, we have continued to make the argument, however, which is why we were absolutely delighted when the Chancellor and the Prime Minister announced at the start of last week £250 million for transport infrastructure in the west midlands, of which £200 million will be used to fund the tram extension out to my constituency, with a tramline to Brierley Hill.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Budget has been great for the west midlands? As he says, it is about transport infrastructure, which is so important for investment and business growth in our area.
Mike Wood
My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. This has been a great Budget for the west midlands, but not only for the west midlands; it also builds on the Government’s commitment to rebalance the economy and deliver for every part of the country and every sector of the economy.
The £200 million being invested in the tramline to my constituency will have the transformative effect we need in the Black country in supporting our local economy. Independent analysis by Lichfields found that it would have a multiplier effect, increasing the benefits from other economic initiatives in the region. For example, it will increase the annual delivery of new homes by nearly 1,500—an increase of 250% against the baseline if the tramline were not going ahead; increase the number of direct and indirect permanent jobs by nearly 8,500; and almost double economic output from the 2 km corridor around the tramline from £14.4 billion to £28.6 billion, vastly increasing both council tax and business rates receipts by nearly £400 million.
This is only a snapshot of the economic activity that the metro will bring to my constituency and neighbouring constituencies. It will enable the Black country to capture more effectively the numerous growth opportunities presented by both HS2 and the DY5 enterprise zone in my constituency. It will increase the ability of businesses to attract investment, while the enhanced transport between the towns and cities of the west midlands will bring greater access to work and reduced journey times and offer better access to a wider labour market, to the benefit of both businesses and employees. With better transport comes better access to local shops and services, including a wide range of social and community networks. That is why the Budget delivers for my constituency and why I wholeheartedly support it this evening.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
Although expectations had been managed, many of us thought that the Chancellor’s Budget would mark a change in direction, given the overwhelming evidence that seven years of austerity have damaged our economy, lost a decade of growth and caused unnecessary harm and hardship to so many people. Instead, the Government have decided to tinker here and there, producing a Budget that lacks the vision and investment that are necessary to breathe new life into our economy. Productivity and growth have been downgraded, which means that people whose wages have stagnated for a decade are now set to lose out and to be £900 a year worse off. We have some of the lowest wages in Europe, along with higher levels of debt. We have a Government who use the deficit, rather than productivity, growth and living standards, as a marker for economic success.
It is remarkable that on so many of the key issues that my constituents raise with me, the Chancellor misses the mark, or simply does not even give them a mention. For instance, he had a real opportunity to tackle the seriousness of the housing crisis, yet the Government’s flagship policy is designed to increase demand. As the OBR says, the main gainers from the ending of stamp duty will be people who already own properties, not first-time buyers. The policy will also increase house prices. All that shows is just how ideologically driven the Government are.
Another glaring omission is social care, which is one of the biggest economic and social challenges that we face in the UK. The OBR has made it clear that local authorities are on their last legs, and that those with social care responsibilities have dwindling reserves. This “head in the sand” position has implications for the Government’s broader fiscal objectives. It is time for them to address the social care crisis and to build a social care system that is fit for disabled and older people—a system that is fit for purpose.
The Government also need to address the public sector pay cap. On Tuesday 10 October, I asked the Secretary of State for Health when he would scrap the pay cap. His response was
“the pay cap has been scrapped.”—[Official Report, 10 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 154.]
I ask again: when will the Government take action and lift the public sector pay cap?
I could not complete my speech without touching on universal credit. While the package that was announced last week is welcome, it by no means goes far enough. The removal of the seven-day wait can be deemed nothing more than a gesture. On its current form, universal credit will push thousands of disabled people further into poverty and hardship owing to the Government’s decision to abolish the severe and enhanced disability premiums. There was no mention of disabled people in the Budget. There were no proposals to reduce the disability employment gap, or to increase the employability of disabled people. The country deserves better.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Nearly 36% of my constituents work in the financial and professional services sector, and most of them commute to London. This was a good and sensible Budget for them, because it was a good and sensible Budget for economic confidence in the City and financial services, in which Britain is a world leader. It is critical that we maintain that position, and that we do so during the process of leaving the European Union. Investing in and supporting financial services, like investing in and supporting London, is actually an investment for the whole country.
It is worth bearing in mind data released in a report published by the City of London corporation, according to which the total tax contribution from the financial services sector reached £72.1 billion in the year to 31 March 2017, which amounts to 11% of all Government tax revenues. The bulk comes from employment taxes and corporation tax, and also a bank levy—the banks are now paying a significant sum to support our public services. Maintaining London’s position in that regard will be critical as we leave the European Union. For banks, some 35% of the total tax take comes from employment taxes, but the proportion depends on where they are based. If we shed jobs as we leave the EU, the tax base will be diminished.
I do not believe that that is necessary. I believe that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister want a good deal that will protect our financial services sector, and I support them very much in that. What would damage the financial services sector would be a poor deal—I do not believe that that outcome is necessary or desirable, and I am sure that we can avoid it—and an anti-business, left-wing Labour Government who would scare away those jobs and that tax revenue and undermine that great driver of income for our public services. It is self-defeating for those who believe in public services to damage our tax revenue. It is worth bearing in mind that the amount of tax paid by that sector in one year comes to half the value of the NHS. I suggest to Labour Members that they should not put that at risk.
It is also worth bearing in mind that, because of our access to the European markets, the sector processes transactions worth £880 billion every day. That is 100 times our net annual contributions to the EU—
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
The financial sector is crucial to our constituencies, and I very much applaud what my hon. Friend says.
Robert Neill
I am grateful to my hon. Friend.
That sum is also 15 times the highest amount that has been spoken of as a potential financial settlement. It therefore makes sense in terms of Brexit to support the financial sector and get a good deal, and it also makes sense in terms of the Budget to make sure that we have a favourable tax and regulatory regime in the UK that is attractive to financial services.
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
The King’s Fund, the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation estimate that the annual funding gap for social care will now reach £2.5 billion by 2019-20. That will have a crippling effect on the provision of social care, a sector that is already under severe strain and in desperate need of relief, but the Budget offered it nothing whatever.
The condemnation from social care professionals has been as universal as it has been damning. Margaret Wilcox, the president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said she was “extremely disappointed” by the lack of extra funding and:
“Adult social care needs to be tackled as urgently and at least as equally as the needs of the NHS, in a way which recognises the inter-dependency of these services and encourages a collaborative approach.”
After the Government’s calamitous manifesto U-turn on the dementia tax, the country needed strong leadership and an appreciation of the seriousness of the situation facing social care. That same manifesto described the social care system as not working and promised to fix it, but there was no mention of social care in the Budget, let alone any new funds to address the chronic shortfall—another Tory manifesto commitment broken.
Nearly 1.2 million older people are estimated to have unmet care needs. The figure is up 48% since 2010 and up 18% from last year alone. The Budget offers no solutions to address the forecasted 150,000 additional deaths associated with constraints on health and social care. This is an issue of not just numbers but the Government’s failure to get a grip on the social care crisis.
Having worked in the sector, I have seen at first hand the amazing and vital work dedicated staff carry out on a daily basis. Now those staff who are employed by local authorities will have to carry on with their jobs knowing that their hard work, the squeeze on their living standards and years of wage stagnation still do not qualify them for a pay rise. When will the Government accept that these people are already going above and beyond, and deserve to have their service recognised?
Labour committed in our manifesto that, as we moved towards a new national care service, we would invest £8 billion over the course of the Parliament to stabilise the care sector. It is Labour that recognises that the sector is in crisis; it is Labour that appreciates the hard work of those who work in social care and would treat them with the respect they deserve; and it is Labour that would commit to taking active measures to solve this crisis, not merely offering false platitudes. The Budget, like the Government, is failing those in the social care sector.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
I have been listening to the debate for some time, and it is worth reminding the House of the Treasury document published as a result of a report done by a senior civil servant, Sir Michael Barber, on the public value framework. It indicated that the way in which we get value in our public services is not simply the input of money, but what is delivered. As we talk about all these millions and billions of pounds that we will spend on this, that and the other, I urge the House to consider that output and delivery are more important that what we put in.
Owing to time constraints, I will not say all the wonderful things that I could say about the Budget. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) talked about certain areas of the public sector, and Conservative Members always need to remember the public sector as well as the private sector. In particular, however, I want to talk about my constituents in Hitchin and Harpenden, who are very dear to me. In their professional lives, they are overwhelmingly focused on financial services and small businesses, and there was one particular measure in the Budget that will really help them: the expansion of the enterprise investment scheme. I have done my homework on this, so I know that the EIS is critical and that the Government have doubled the annual allowance for investment in early-stage businesses and innovative growth capital.
Mrs Badenoch
I wanted to mention the enterprise investment scheme earlier, but I did not have time. Saffron Walden is right next to the Oxford-Cambridge corridor and houses many knowledge-intensive industries. Does my hon. Friend agree that increasing the allowance for the EIS will provide a boost to the small and medium-sized companies that are the backbone of this country—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Lady had a good go when she spoke earlier, and a lot of Members have been waiting a long time to speak. Interventions must be very short. I also ask Members to be restrained in giving way; otherwise, it is not fair to all those who are waiting.
Bim Afolami
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I would add to her point by saying that the EIS funnels private capital that might otherwise be sitting in housing assets or on a bank balance sheet into our most early-stage, innovative and risky creative businesses. That is the magic of the EIS. Such tax reliefs and allowances are beneficial to the country because they effectively mitigate the risk for private investors in risky, early-stage businesses. We need to recognise that fact and welcome the doubling of this investment allowance, alongside the addition of a new test to ensure that the money is going not into lazy, low-risk ventures, but into high-risk, creative businesses.
A point I often make about tax schemes such as the EIS and entrepreneurs relief, which this Government introduced to ensure that we remain one of the best places in the world to develop early-stage businesses, is that they ensure that we do not have to ask our banks to make risky investments. One of the reasons why we found ourselves in the financial crisis was that the banks were making very risky investments, as we discovered from their balance sheets. The EIS allows private capital to be used in productive ways. Many of my hon. Friends have already described the Budget as balanced and reasonable, and I hope that it is also the beginning of a long-term process of a radical entrepreneurial vision for the British economy.
Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab)
I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith), who talked about this being an ABC Budget. I also want to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), because my constituency has also seen a huge increase in demand for services. In particular, there has been a rise in the number of people who find themselves homeless and in the number of adults and elderly people who require care.
Apart from a small announcement on mathematics, there was no extra money in the Budget for the education system. This is not as simple as saying, “2 plus 2 is 4, minus 3 that’s 1—quick maths.” These announcements mean real-terms cuts and the potential continuation of the recruitment and retention crisis in our education system.
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who is unfortunately not in his place, said that he could not understand why the Opposition were saying that the Budget does not do all that it needs to do, but it fails to recognise the scale of the emergency in our public services. There is no point in burying our heads in the sand saying, “Things are absolutely fine,” because we know that they are absolutely not. While both sides of the House have acknowledged that universal credit needs amending, there was a real opportunity to pause and fix it, but it was not taken.
Austerity is hurting and not working, but instead of pausing and reflecting on that, we are continuing with business as usual. We are acting as though everything that is happening is par for the course and absolutely fine. People say, “Why do Opposition Members seem to think there is a problem?” There is a problem because our constituents come to us with their problems. There is a problem because we seem to be avoiding paying attention to their real needs. Instead of taking the opportunity provided by the Budget to assist them, we have decided just to carry on with things as they are. It is fantastic that we will have driverless cars, but we will have all the gear and no idea when people in our constituencies are suffering.
Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I have been disappointed by Opposition Members, who have failed to recognise a number of facts. They have criticised the gender pay gap when it has actually narrowed. They have criticised school funding without recognising that the fairer funding deal puts an extra £1.3 billion into our schools. They have suggested more spending without being able to respond to an intervention asking what the interest payment bill would be on increased borrowing of a trillion pounds. The Opposition look only at spending; they do not see the optimistic opportunities presented by our future.
Our great country has been a leader on the world stage for decades. We have been the choice of location for foreign investment. We are a global economic power at the same time as being in the top 20 happiest places to live in the world. We are now at a crossroads, forging new relationships with the EU and the rest of the world while, as the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy pointed out, an industrial revolution sweeps across our globe, and we start from a good place. Out of 137 countries, we are ranked second for the quality of scientific research institutions, third for the capacity to attract talent, fourth for technological readiness and 12th for overall innovation. The measures set out in the Budget will ensure that we continue to be at the cutting edge of technology, innovation and business growth, with £31 billion for the national productivity investment fund, £2.3 billion for investing in R and D and £500 million for a range of initiatives from artificial intelligence to 5G and full-fibre broadband.
However, as we progress through the technological revolution, we must remember that it is equally as important to recognise and value the skills of those who serve us in our communities: those who teach us, nurse us and protect us. The Secretary of State rightly pointed out that we have an ageing population that we need to care for, and the answer is not just technological; we need more people in the caring professions. I therefore welcome the Chancellor’s announcement that he will put more money into the NHS and his offer to fund increased pay awards. We also need to ensure that we improve our skills base, and the Budget includes £40 million to train maths teachers across the country, tripling the number of trained computer science teachers. I welcome the Budget and the industrial strategy, but we must also remember to embrace the new world.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
This Budget leaves many with little to celebrate. There is nothing for the WASPI women, who kept their contract with the Government, and nothing for my sixth-form colleges, which work so hard to improve the life chances of children in my constituency. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said that a Budget’s purpose is to improve people’s future lives, but the Chancellor chose to freeze working-age benefits until 2020, most affecting those struggling with basic living costs now and doing nothing to provide a family with a Christmas dinner, the cost of which has risen 20% this year. The freeze, and the rise in food inflation, means that huge chunks of the population are unable to afford the weekly food shop or to pay the rent. People are making hard choices, like the mum I saw who regularly goes without her lunch three times a week to feed her family. Those are the people going to payday lenders; those are the people going to BrightHouse; those are the people who cannot afford to save every month—it is about time there were saving schemes designed around people’s lives, rather than expecting people’s lives to be designed around Government saving schemes—and those are the people who are likely to fall into debt.
Some 2.9 million individuals and households are currently struggling with severe problem debt. How many more will there be after this Budget? Demand for debt advice is at record levels. People helped by the debt charities are increasingly struggling to meet the bills. Addressing personal debt has to become a priority for this Government.
The basic cause of debt is lack of money. There has been a freeze on working-age benefits and a 1% cap on public sector pay rises while inflation, particularly food inflation, has risen. Low-income households spend more money on food and basic necessities than those on higher incomes. Household debt is already rising, and it is set to rise further. With more debt, more mental health issues, more strain on GPs, more strain on local services, less disposable income and less spending power—less spending power is bad for businesses as well as for individuals—this is a Budget that does not deliver for individuals or for businesses.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who amply illustrates why we need a responsible and balanced Budget. When she describes her constituents’ debt, she needs to consider the situation in the country. We are spending £42 billion a year on interest payments. If Labour borrowed its £250 billion, those interest payments would be dramatically higher and would ultimately lead to a reduction in public services.
I welcome this balanced and responsible Budget that invests for the future. My constituency of Eddisbury has the Winsford industrial estate, which is the UK’s first green business park and first industrial business improvement district. Some 4,000 people work there in industries from food manufacturing to chemical supplies, packaging and engineering. I welcome the measures in the Budget, particularly those on R and D investment and on investment in artificial intelligence.
Technology is fundamentally changing the way that businesses operate, and it is changing the future landscape of the business world. By investing in this way, we can equip our companies to steal a march on international competitors and to ensure that British and Cheshire-based businesses are at the forefront of new global markets. PwC estimates that global GDP could be up to 14% higher in 2030 as a result of artificial intelligence, and it is therefore welcome to see artificial intelligence being backed in the Budget.
I welcome the Budget’s skills provision, particularly in STEM. Winsford—population, 30,000—currently has no sixth-form provision in the town. That will change in September 2018, with Mid Cheshire College planning to open a new STEM centre there. The measures on maths teaching will benefit my constituents. The fuel duty measures will help those in rural areas who have to drive long distances because they cannot access fuel locally.
This is a responsible and appropriate Budget for straitened circumstances. When Labour talks about austerity, let us remember it is really talking about spending within our means. This Budget is a good Budget, both for investing for our future and for spending within our means.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The latest lame defence from this Government, as we stand up for the people of Britain, is that somehow we are talking Britain down—that is nonsense. This failing Government are letting the people of Britain down, driving it down the international league table. We have the worst record in the G7 on wages, productivity, skills and growth, and we are bottom bar one—Lithuania—in the EU on worker participation, and all this from a Prime Minister who promised workers on the board. Today’s Social Mobility Commission report has shown that the heart of England, the midlands, is the worst region for social mobility for those from poor backgrounds. The historical comparisons are staggering. This is the worst decade for productivity growth since Napoleon was retreating from Moscow, then to be defeated at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. The last time wages were stagnant for so long a royal prince was about to get married—Prince Arthur, Victoria’s son—Disraeli and Gladstone were in Downing Street, and trade unions were illegal. That was 150 years ago.
Over the past seven days, I have seen the consequences of this Budget. I have seen the consequences for schools and headteachers, with one in tears at the fact that there was not one penny more and at now being faced with having to lay off teachers and teaching assistants. I have seen the police despairing at 2,000 police officers having gone and at rapidly rising crime, with violent crime up 6%, gun crime up 15% and knife crime up 17%. At a packed meeting last Friday, local people were pouring out their hearts, with a woman who had been 60 years in Slade Road saying that she no longer goes out at night because she is afraid so to do. I have heard the concern expressed by carers on Carers Rights Day, when 200 of them gathered together. There are none so noble as those who care, but they are finding it increasingly difficult because of the lack of support for them directly and because of the crisis in social care. All that is allied to the disastrous mishandling of Brexit, the impact of which is increasingly being felt where I was on Friday, at the Jaguar factory in my constituency. This jewel in the crown of manufacturing excellence has transformed the lives of thousands, but it now faces an uncertain future.
The Chancellor cracked all sorts of jokes in his Budget—he has a new found sense of humour. As our Amy used to say, “Dad, you should be on the stage. There’s one leaving in half an hour.” There was a new found sense of humour, but the reality is that this was a bad joke Budget, because in terms of facing up to the challenges facing the people of Britain, it let the people of Britain down. It was the same old Tories; in the words of the Prime Minister herself, “Nothing has changed.”
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to listen to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). I do not agree with 99.9% of what he said but there was an element there with which I may have agreed. Steady as she goes is what the Government and the Budget have portrayed to the country, and in the circumstances that is eminently sensible. Sadly, we simply do not have the money, for the reasons many Conservative Members have explained, to splash out, as the Leader of the Opposition claims that he does.
Nobody has said that leaving the EU is going to be easy, but the people of this country voted to do so and that is what we must do. I have been longing to hear some cohesion in the House, with the majority of MPs, who voted to initiate article 50, getting behind the Prime Minister and our country to do all we can to get the best deal we can. Divided, we are not going to get the best deal because they see a divided country. The future for us when we leave the EU, particularly in business and other opportunities, is enormous.
I shall tell the House a little story. Lord Digby Jones came down to my constituency to attend the apprenticeship fair, which is now in its fifth year. I set it up with the help of the local college, for which I give many thanks. He gave a speech. For those who do not know, let me say that he was a trade ambassador—I think he still is, actually—and he had been to India to meet up-and- coming businesses over there, as that country is going to be a huge powerhouse in the years ahead. He sat in the back of a taxi and he noticed the taxi driver’s eyes staring at him in the mirror. The taxi driver asked who he was and he said, “I’m Lord Jones. I’m a trade ambassador. Who are you?” The taxi driver gave his name and said that he had two sons, and Lord Jones said, “And what are your two sons doing?” He said, “They are at university. And I’m spending every waking minute in my car earning every penny I can to support them in their futures.” Lord Jones, with the eyes still fixed on him—of course, the car was still going straight down the road, we hope—said, “Where do you see your children in the years to come?” Without pausing, the taxi driver said, “Where you’re sitting.” The point of my story is that there are tens of thousands of young people in the rising Asian economies who are so hungry, lean and mean—in the business sense—and they want a share of what we have had and of what we need to engender in this country. We have to get hungry, mean and lean again. Government Ministers can help enormously with that by following Conservative philosophy.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
This was not a serious Budget—and I am not referring to the bad jokes that littered the Chancellor’s speech and which were as weak as the Tory Government of the man who delivered them. Last Wednesday, my Opposition colleagues and I waited desperately for an hour to hear something that would help the people we represent to live a decent life. Instead, we got a Budget that includes more spending on an ultra-hard Brexit to appease the Conservative party, which will harm the country, than there was spending on the NHS. The improvements to universal credit were welcome, but they are too little, too late. The relief from the reduction in the six-week wait is only minimal when compared with the thousands of pounds that many of the families dependent on benefits are set to lose.
The Government’s worst legacy by far must be the public sector pay cap. Cardiff North has 19,000 public sector workers—the highest proportion in Wales—and they really hoped that the Budget would end the disgraceful pay freeze that has seen nurses using food banks and care workers struggling to make ends meet. One thing we have learned to appreciate since the spring Budget is how desperately dependent we are on public services. The Chancellor’s Budget leaves public sector workers worse off than they were seven years ago. Austerity is not a policy choice: it is political.
Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy launched his industrial strategy to address weaknesses in the economy. The UK’s economy has been systematically underperforming on almost every key measure. Our productivity is down and we have the most geographically unbalanced economy in Europe. Part of the boost to productivity should be investment in renewables, which are set to be the backbone of our modern energy system. The plummeting cost of wind power means that onshore and offshore wind can help to improve the UK’s competitiveness and productivity. It is therefore hugely disappointing that the strategy does not set out how we can continue to support onshore wind, which is the cheapest of the new generation of energy production. We have yet to see an announcement on the Swansea tidal lagoon. That was a missed opportunity to invest in infrastructure for the future. With a cap on funding for renewables until 2025, the Government have shown they have a long way to go before they can deliver on clean growth.
Finally, I am frustrated about and fearful of the prospect of the financial impact of a shambolic Tory Brexit on the British and Welsh economy. The Budget includes £1 billion of additional capital funding for Wales, but more than half that must be repaid. The Budget is a missed opportunity. We needed to see one that truly transformed the economy, not more of the same.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) and to speak briefly about the Budget and its focus on the future successful economy that we need. The Budget is one of fair taxes, improving productivity, tackling our housing issues, supporting public services and making sure that we build the homes the country needs.
It is this Government who are tackling the gender pay gap. They are bringing forward T-levels and maths training, and Barton Peveril College and Eastleigh College in my constituency will be helping with that. They are increasing the personal tax allowance to nearly £12,000. They are freezing fuel duty and duty on beer, wine and spirits. They are embracing technology and establishing a new national creative industries policy, while also focusing on improving our environment. What is not to like about that?
Let us move on to house prices. One of the concerns most regularly voiced by my constituents is not only that they cannot afford a house, but that their children and even their grandchildren cannot afford a house or imagine a future that their parents had. Work done by this Government has saved nearly £2,000 on stamp duty for first-time buyers in my constituency. That will help to get people on to the housing ladder, which, a couple of years ago, would have been deemed simply unachievable, so my message to the Chancellor is: thank you.
My other message to the Chancellor is: please can we have the Botley bypass and the Chickenhall link road? As long as we work with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the new industrial strategy, those projects, dear Ministers, will not only help our productivity, but tackle local air pollution and the low productivity issue in the Solent. Those are real benefits for real people of all ages.
I must also thank the Chancellor for not raising air passenger duty, as that really matters to our regional airports. It is a testament to this Government that hard-working people are being supported to get on in life. My local paper highlights the fact that nearly 600 new jobs have been created in Hedge End and Chandlers Ford. This is a good Budget, which should be applauded and supported in this House. I look forward to walking through the Lobby in support of it and making sure that we deliver the technology, the productivity and the opportunities for Britain.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
On a positive note, I welcome the proposed tax on single use plastic packaging. We know the huge environmental damage that is being done and, at the moment, there is little pressure on producers to reduce resource use and to make their packaging recyclable. It is left to local councils to clear up the mess and to local taxpayers to foot the bill.
I am afraid that that is about the only thing in the Budget that I feel inclined to welcome. Figures show that the public sector pay cap has reduced the disposable income of workers in my constituency by more than £45 million since 2010. Last week, I met representatives from the Royal College of Nursing to hear how low pay is causing a recruitment crisis: applications to study nursing have fallen by almost a quarter this year, at a time of acute staff shortages in the NHS. For nurses, who have seen a real-terms drop in their earnings of 14% since 2010, this Budget offered nothing.
What I am hearing from those charged with delivering essential public services in Bristol is that we simply cannot go on like this any longer. Bristol City Council is having to find more so-called savings worth £100 million over the next five years. Non-statutory services are being cut to the bone. What was particularly shameful was the complete failure by the Chancellor to mention social care, which accounts for close to a quarter of the council’s budget.
Avon and Somerset’s police and crime commissioner and chief constable were in Parliament last week. They did all they could when faced with Government demands for savings worth £66 million: modernising the way they conduct policing and streamlining their operations. They have been widely commended for the way in which they went about making those savings. Despite the loss of more than 600 officers since 2010, because of the cuts, neighbourhood policing was protected. The police and crime commissioner and chief constable said that the reward for all their work was to be told by the Government that they needed to come up with another £17 million of savings. They were here to tell Ministers that it simply cannot be done. They will not be able to provide the police service that the public expect and deserve if these cuts go ahead, but the Government are not listening to them, and there was not one mention of policing in England and Wales in the Chancellor’s speech.
Another example is St Brendan’s, a sixth-form college in my constituency, which was commended for its financial management by Ofsted in February. The principal is now telling me that he cannot go on like this. Sixth-form funding has been frozen at £4,000 per pupil since 2015—a real-term cut of more than £200. He is determined not to cut the curriculum, as many school sixth forms have been forced to do. This Government pay lip service to social mobility, but in truth they are squeezing young people’s life chances and denying them educational opportunities and the extra-curricular support they need.
The economic picture revealed by the Chancellor in his Budget shows us that austerity is not working. A braver Chancellor would have acknowledged that, put up his hand and admitted that he had got it wrong and chosen to invest in our councils, in our schools, in our colleges and in our nurses and police. The Budget was a failure.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I will focus my remarks on chapter 4 of the Budget, which is on productivity, because as it says in the Red Book, that is how we boost wages, improve living standards and improve overall prosperity across the nation. Incredibly, if we could close the productivity gap with Germany, we would increase our GDP by 33%. Competition is the key to improving productivity, and the Red Book states that boosting productivity makes businesses “more efficient”. I began my own experience in business at a time when most of my competitors were closing down. It was a few years later, when new competition came into the market, that we really raised our game and became more competitive, efficient and effective. The key to more competition is ensuring that we have a level playing field.
The first thing we need to deal with is access to finance, and the Budget deals with a number of different issues for people who cannot borrow from the high street lenders. Increasing productivity is about unlocking £20 billion of patient capital; doubling the enterprise investment scheme allowance, which certainly provides more capital for those early-stage and higher-risk businesses; and providing more support for challenger banks. Those measures tackle the issues of people who cannot borrow, but the reality is that many people in business will not borrow because they do not trust the high street banks.
We have seen some issues over the past few years, with scandals at the Royal Bank of Scotland Global Restructuring Group and other banks meaning that assets were often taken away from small businesses totally inappropriately, and those businesses have no recourse. We need an independent financial services tribunal, along the lines of employment tribunals. It is not just about the money; it is about the human cost of a life’s work being taken away. A tribunal would provide an independent means of redress for such businesses.
The Chancellor also mentioned the VAT threshold in his speech. He has not tackled that yet, but we do need to tackle it. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this is a barrier to productivity and expansion, and that has been supported by a report from the Office for Tax Simplification, which says that there is a bunching effect around the VAT threshold.
Finally, rebalancing the economy means more investment across the nation. There is too much focus on London. It is not just the Treasury doing this—in fact, it is not the Treasury. It is about access to private sector capital, and we need to find ways for the north also to access that private sector investment.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
This Budget had one redeeming feature: it was honest. It was honest about the weak growth prospects and how weak our economy is. I hope that the whole House will reflect on these dismal forecasts, because they have dramatic implications for our economy, people’s livelihoods, public finances and services, and the way in which we debate the issue of the day—namely, Brexit.
Look at what the Office for Budget Responsibility’s growth figures really mean for ordinary people and their incomes. Compared to the Budget just a year ago, it means that people will be earning £687 less by 2021. Wages in 2021 will still be lower—still buying less—than they did in 2008. The IFS talks about the danger of losing two decades of earnings growth in the longest squeeze on living standards in more than 60 years. This is dramatic stuff. Guess who is going to have the worst of it? The poorest households—the Resolution Foundation says that the poorest 20% will be hit the hardest. That is just unacceptable.
Let us look at the implications for our public services. The details of the Budget show that public service spending will be 3.6% lower in 2022-23 than today. If we exclude the NHS, it will be more than 6% lower. What does that mean? It means that our schools, police services, councils and care services will face cuts not just this year, but next year and into the future. This is not about jam tomorrow. It is about maybe jam in six or seven years’ time.
That is something I am incredibly worried about in my constituency. Already our schools are under huge pressure. We are dealing with an £11 million deficit in our special needs budget alone, and when we see that this Budget had nothing for our schools, tackling that will be really difficult. In my constituency, and across London, we are also seeing crime up and police officer numbers down. The Budget will do nothing to tackle the criminals and to fight back against the big increase in crime.
What does the Budget mean for Brexit politics? It means that the Conservative Brexit is failing our economy and failing our country. People who voted leave thought they were voting for better wages because there would be less competition from immigrants. Their wages are going to be lower. They thought they were voting for more money for our public services, such as the NHS. They are going to get less. They thought they were voting for an economy that will be better than before. They were not—it will be worse.
I say to the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench that it is time they thought again about Brexit. The OBR has told people the truth.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
This is my first time taking part in a Budget debate, and I would like to say some thank yous.
Thank you to my Conservative colleagues for the work they have already done on controlling the deficit, restoring the public finances and rebuilding a strong economy, so that we can afford the many measures we take today.
Thank you on behalf of young people. I remember that, under Labour, nearly 1 million young people were not in employment, not in education and not in training. Today, youth unemployment is at all-time lows.
Thank you for investing in skills and especially in maths. When I went to university, I was a very rare breed: a girl who did maths. Today, that breed is still too small. So, girls, listen: if you do maths and a science at A-level, you will earn 30% more than your peers. The £600 per pupil taking A-level maths that will go to each school can be transformational for this country.
Thank you for removing stamp duty for first-time buyers. It is hard to get on the property ladder in my constituency, and that will make a difference.
Thank you for listening on universal credit. We must help those most in need. Thank you especially for making it easier for the housing element of the benefit to go straight to the landlord. That is an idea I pitched to the Chancellor, and he had no tin ear.
Thank you for funding the NHS, and especially for underwriting the pay increases for our nurses and for investing in the capital budgets. I am glad that south and mid-Essex will be among the first to benefit.
But most of all, thank you for the support for innovation. I am proud to live in a country where there are 40 start- up businesses every hour—that is three a day in my constituency. I am proud that there are 28 great British start-ups that are now billion-dollar businesses. I am proud that this Government are investing more money in science and research than any other Government for the past 40 years, because scientists are the people who find real solutions to real problems, and they will build us a better future.
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way? [Hon. Members: “ Oh.”] I will be very quick. Is my hon. Friend also thankful for the £21 million—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Two people cannot be stood at the same time.
Come on, Nusrat!
Vicky Ford
Absolutely, because we need to make sure that we invest in not only the ideas and the innovators but the skills, the people and the places.
Brexit is coming, and it does bring huge risks. Now, more than ever, is the time to back ideas, back the innovators, invest in our infrastructure and inspire our industry. I am very proud to be supporting this Budget.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my near neighbour, the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), although I have to say that I do not find many people on the streets who echo her thanks to her colleagues quite so effusively.
Reading the comments of the OBR, it is hard to come to the conclusion that they are anything other than somewhat gloomy. I would suggest to Conservative Members that just one of the factors may have been the lack of an industrial strategy over the last seven years, so there is some welcome for the fact that we do now have an industrial strategy.
The city I represent has been mentioned many times, and I just want to make a couple of comments, particularly on life sciences. Cambridge has been tremendously successful. I am grateful to Savills for pointing out that, in terms of one measure—global bioscience venture capital funding per capita—Cambridge is streets ahead of all our international competitors and anywhere else in this country. But alongside the success stories that the Government trumpeted when they launched the strategy yesterday, I urge colleagues to look—I do not normally do this—at The Daily Telegraph; a couple of days ago it had a report that Johnson & Johnson, the major American healthcare giant, had pulled out of plans to build a new research and development facility in the UK, just outside Cambridge. It said those plans
“have been put on hold over concerns that the UK is both politically and economically weak while negotiations to leave the European Union are ongoing”,
so there is a mixed picture.
The missing element in all this is the people. The reason why these industries are successful in Cambridge is that people can come and go freely. In the context of Brexit, that will be a real challenge. In every lab I go to, I find people from other parts of the world, but they are leaving, and the next generation is not coming. The industrial strategy has to be seen in that context. What makes people come here? Good schools, but there is nothing in the Budget, as hon. Friends have pointed out, to improve schools, and most of all, there is nothing on housing.
Housing is complicated in Cambridge. The city council is doing a fantastic job; it is trying to build council housing, but it is dogged by Government policy changes. The council bravely bought itself out of the housing revenue account, only for the Government to change the strategy entirely a year later, completely undermining its policies. Yes, lifting the HRA cap would be good, but can we have any faith that that will continue over the next few months and years?
On the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge arc, it would be good to have more housing there, but look at the details in the Budget Book. There is talk about shifts from section 106 and the community infrastructure levy to a strategic infrastructure tariff. That is very complicated, detailed stuff, mirroring what happens in London. However, the governance arrangements on that arc are not one mayoralty; there is not one, unified structure there. This is complicated stuff, and it will not happen soon. The industrial strategy may be a very glossy, colourful document, but for most people, life is being lived in gritty black and white.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner).
The Budget is a prime example of the contempt that this Government continue to show towards the devolved nations. By holding the purse strings on infrastructure investment, the Government are sucking the hopes and dreams out of future Welsh generations. The announcement that electrification to Swansea was cancelled followed months of weasel words from the Tories. They professed that that was a crucial project and that it would happen, and it did not.
I now have the privilege of sitting on the Welsh Affairs Committee, which, only last week, listened to evidence from two experts. It was a revelation to hear evidence of fake news on electrification from those on the Government Benches. The Secretaries of State for Wales and for Transport have frequently told us that we would be welcoming bi-modal trains to Swansea. I do not share their enthusiasm for bi-modal trains in Swansea; I would prefer electric trains. If the Government’s target is to lower carbon emissions, here is an interesting fact for them: these wonderful bi-modal trains use the same dirty old diesel engines that are found in diesel high-speed trains. People welcome bi-modal trains because they are, allegedly, lighter and therefore more efficient than the current diesel high-speed trains. That claim too can be blown out of the water: whereas a nine-carriage diesel high-speed train weighs 408 tonnes, a bi-modal train weighs 432 tonnes, as it has 9 tonnes of diesel fuel under every coach—an interesting fact.
If only the Government would further devolve transport and give that power to Wales, so that we were in the same position as Scotland, we could successfully move ahead with electrification and increase the productivity of the Welsh economy. The whole of Wales has been let down by the refusal to electrify from Cardiff, let down by the refusal to sign off on the Swansea bay tidal lagoon and let down by the refusal further to devolve rail transport to Wales. Those constant refusals highlight that the Government are not interested in Wales, its future or, more importantly, the economy that is to provide the opportunities for young people in Wales to prosper.
Gerard Killen (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
This is a “nothing has changed” Budget from an out-of-touch Government enabled by Conservative Members who have no idea of the reality of people’s lives. In the midst of it all has been a battle between the SNP and the Scottish Conservatives to claim credit for the Chancellor’s climbdown on the VAT charges imposed on Scotland’s emergency services. As ever, the reality has been lost in the performance that has played out between them. I thought for a moment earlier that the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) might break into song in his praise of the Scottish Government, but of course he failed to mention that growth in Scotland is even lower than it is in the UK.
The whole VAT situation could have been avoided if the SNP had listened to Unison’s advice at the time, although that is not to let the UK Government off the hook on the matter. It was wrong to impose charges on Scotland’s emergency services, and the Chancellor has admitted that with the Budget. It says very little for the persuasive powers of the Secretary of State for Scotland that the election of 12 new Scottish Tory MPs was seemingly required to convince the Chancellor to introduce the exemption.
Perhaps the new intake will bend the Chancellor’s ear once more and use their new-found influence to get back the £140 million that Scotland’s police and fire services have already paid in VAT. Surely, if it is wrong to pay it in 2018, it has been wrong to pay it all along. If that money is refunded to the Scottish Government, I hope that it will be ring-fenced. I know that my constituents do not want to have to repeat the successful local campaigns that they had to launch to save police stations in Rutherglen, Cambuslang and Blantyre from the threat of closure. That additional funding for the emergency services is much needed.
The Budget also failed to address the misery that is being caused by the Government’s social security programme. The move from an initial six-week wait to a five-week wait for universal credit payment will be cold comfort to the people who contact my office in desperate need of help. Some of them tell my staff that they feel suicidal, because the Government are driving them into debt and they have nowhere else to turn. What must it be like for them to spend Christmas worrying about whether they will have a roof over their head or food to put on the table? Here is an opportunity for the Government to get two things right amid this woeful Budget: backdate the VAT refund for the Scottish emergency services and pause the roll-out, to fix universal credit.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
I declare an interest as an elected member of Gateshead Council.
I want to speak about what is not in this Budget, because those things are important to my constituents in Blaydon, many of whom are struggling to cope with daily life and supporting their families. First, I want to mention the absence of any reference to social care. We all know that the demand for social care is growing, and we know from experience that it is essential that people have access to high-quality social care when they need it, but the Government continue to cut the local authority budgets that go towards providing that support.
In my council of Gateshead, we spend more than half our budget on the most vulnerable adults and children. Our funding has been cut by 52% since 2010, and the number of people who use and need our services is rising. I checked the Tory manifesto earlier and found this on long-term care:
“Where others have failed to lead, we will act.”
But there is no action on social care in this Budget.
There is nothing in this Budget for education, other than for maths teaching. Maths teaching is, of course, hugely important, but many of our schools are struggling to balance their budget so that they can provide the best education possible for our young people, and despite changes to the schools funding formula over the summer, 91% of schools still face a real-terms reduction in their budgets as per pupil funding has reduced. We may have a commitment to maths funding, but increasing pupil numbers and increasing demands versus decreasing funding means that the sums do not add up for schools.
On housing, we had a raft of measures that the Chancellor says will increase house building, but the announcements fall far short of a proper plan to help to fix the housing crisis. We need all councils to build again to create the houses we need.
I heard the Chancellor repeat this morning that the public sector pay cap has gone. But NHS workers, who were specially mentioned by the Chancellor, will receive an increase only on condition that they increase productivity by renegotiating their terms and conditions under “Agenda for Change”. This does not just affect the NHS; for staff right across the public sector, work has increased and pay has fallen in real terms. The Government need not only to lift the cap that they imposed, but to fund the NHS, local government, fire and rescue services, the police, education, the delivery of universal credit and many other areas, to give those staff the rise that they need, without further reducing services.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
This Budget has failed to deliver for our vital public services and our families, and it has failed to step up to the very serious challenge posed by climate change.
Pupils and teachers in our schools are feeling the squeeze of Tory austerity, with increased class sizes, a crisis in teacher retention and a reduced curriculum offer. Education is the key to our future, yet the Budget had nothing for school budgets. The Government announced extra funding for maths teaching, which is fine, but we will not be able to draw on all the talents of our young people unless we address the neglect of arts education under this Government. Arts subjects are important for the development of the individual, as well as for our cultural offer of film, television, theatre, music, art and dance, which are all significant for the economy. Labour would abolish university tuition fees, but there was no money in this Budget to do that. Individuals are leaving university with an average of £57,000 of debt, but there is no sense in leaving people to carry such a burden.
Our communities are feeling the impact of seven years of Tory austerity, with huge cuts to our police services. Merseyside police has lost 1,000 officers since 2010. My constituents are concerned about antisocial behaviour in areas where there have never previously been any problems. The first duty of any Government is to keep their people safe, yet under the Conservatives, we have lost 20,000 police officers from our streets. When we consider the fire service it is the same story. Funding for fire services up to 2019-20 was set in a four-year settlement announced in February 2016. It meant cuts each year for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, putting firefighters and the communities they serve at risk. It is very disappointing that the Government have failed to revisit the funding for those services. Both fire stations in my constituency are closing as a direct result of central Government cuts, which will mean longer waits at fires and road traffic accidents, and the loss of precious minutes in life and death situations.
There is also the Government’s failure to deliver on the NHS. The extra £1.6 billion of funding does not meet the £4 billion that the chief executive of NHS England has called for. The Health Foundation and the Nuffield Trust agree that that amount is needed to prevent patient care from deteriorating. It also does not match the £6 billion that Labour would commit. Providing more money for the NHS is only part of the answer to the problems in services. It was notable that the Chancellor failed to give any money to tackle the crisis in social care funding, despite the fact that Members on both sides of the House recognise that there is such a crisis, with 1 million people not having their needs met.
There was also precious little to address the very serious threat of climate change, so this Government are delivering a Budget that is a huge disappointment. They are in denial about the seriousness of the problems caused by austerity. The Government do not have the vision to understand the value of a broad educational offer, and they are failing to be ambitious in taking the action we need to address climate change.
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)
The huge gulf across the Chamber between Government Members’ world of disbelief and Opposition Members’ world of reality mirrors how modern Britain is divided. Ministers are looking astonished, but Britain is a very divided society. The rich are doing extraordinarily well, but many other people are struggling. Public sector workers will once again have another year of pay cuts, and there is no money to fund any realistic investment in our public services. The police in Greater Manchester have been cut by 2,000 officers. There is less money for our local authorities, and in Rochdale, where social care and children’s services have been decimated by this Government, there has been no relief whatsoever.
I want to concentrate on productivity, which this Government claim they intend to make the keynote of this Budget. Let us look at the reality of what is taking place for those with intermediate skills. Rochdale, like many other towns across the north of England, needs investment in education and training, but what have we seen? Let me take Meanwood Primary School. It is a great school with great teachers, but this Government are putting the “Mean” into Meanwood because the school, despite the rhetoric of Conservative Members, has faced cuts this year. It has lost a teacher and teaching assistant hours. In effect, the school has been made worse for children from some of the most deprived parts of my constituency, which cannot be right. The further education college has been damaged by cuts. The figure of £4,000 per pupil has been consistent over the years but, de facto, that means cut after cut, and the real number of hours per student is far less than in almost any other OECD country. Intermediate skills are simply not being invested in as they should be.
I challenge this Government. Rochdale needs a Rochdale education challenge, just as there was a London challenge under the previous Labour Government. It is now up to this Government to get real and to have the ambition to change this nation. Quite frankly, given the complacency of Conservative Members, it is hard to believe that this Government can have the ambition that the people of this country deserve, so it is about time that they went and we had a Labour Government to show such ambition.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
No party has a monopoly on damaging people’s faith in politics and in government, but I genuinely believe that the Budget could do significant further damage to people’s faith in the ability of the political process to deliver for them. That is not so much because of what is in the Budget, as because of the huge mismatch between the scale of the economic challenge facing the country and the behemoth of Brexit coming down the track, and the sense of a lack of grip and lack of ambition in the Budget to deal with any of those things. That is combined with some truly extraordinary contributions from Government Members, who talk about the Budget as if it is a genuinely transformative experience for the country. That is simply not the lived experience of many of our constituents. It does the Conservative party no favours to pretend that we are in that situation.
Briefly, given the time I have left, I will look at how my constituents will feel let down by the Budget. Once again, WASPI women get nothing and Cumbria’s infrastructure needs are ignored. For people in Furness and across the country, wage growth has not kept up with increases in living costs for years, and that will potentially be true for another decade. The public are sick to the back teeth of austerity measures being imposed with no end in sight.
The rest of my remarks will focus on the most ominous omission from the Budget speech and almost entirely from the Budget documents: defence. On the face of it, there are continuing increases in the defence budget, but it is no accident that the Chancellor—a former Secretary of State for Defence—chose to ignore defence completely. He knows and the Government know about the terrible crunch in the defence equipment programme and the amount of damage that may be done in the coming months, let alone years, by the way in which our nation’s resources are being starved. There may be no way back from that and the Government must pay heed.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
This Budget was guided by the political considerations of the Tory party, rather than the day-to-day reality faced by my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn. It was well briefed before the Budget that the Chancellor’s hands would be tied, but I refuse to accept that Brexit allows for a total cop-out and a Budget that is so utterly feeble in confronting London’s problems.
In the short time I have, I will focus on education and policing. The Red Book reveals worrying cuts for school buildings and says next to nothing about concerning signs over the Government’s childcare promises. I want answers on why the Budget statement did not include a single mention of counter-terrorism in a year when we have seen five terrorist attacks, four of them in the capital. I want answers on the total failure to acknowledge the immense financial strain that our police are under. The omission of police funding is simply scandalous. Today, I want to provide a voice for those in my corner of north-west London who are concerned by rising crime on our streets, the continued terror threat and the Government’s utter failure to compromise with the Met commissioner and the Mayor of London.
Capital investment in schools is crucial, yet the small print of the Budget reveals that over the next four years, there will be £1 billion less in the Department for Education’s capital budget than was outlined in the Chancellor’s spring Budget. The Chancellor failed to announce that at the Dispatch Box, but local parents and pupils will lose out as a result. The verdict of headteachers in my constituency could not be clearer. My local paper, the Camden New Journal, published an open letter to the Chancellor signed by 41 school heads saying:
“We cannot see how we will be able to continue to provide our current level of provision in the future with such drastic cuts to our funding.”
The absence of early years funding from the Budget is similarly concerning. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on childcare and early education, it has been a privilege to hear from colleagues from across the House about their experiences of the roll-out of the 30 hours of childcare policy. In principle, getting parents back to work and ensuring that every child has the best start in life is something that unites us. However, as I wrote in my letter to the Minister for Children and Families last week, the policy is underfunded. As was revealed in the latest Ofsted figures, more than 1,000 nurseries and childminders have gone out of business since 2010.
On police funding, I will echo the Mayor of London’s response to the Budget last week in the short time I have left. Given the cuts of £600 million since 2010 and the fact that we are set to lose another £400 million before 2020, I wonder at what point the Government will stop compromising the safety of Londoners.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
This is my first Budget, so I was geared up for tweeting furiously, poring over Budget papers and analysing it in the local media, but it is striking how little of any of those things I have had to do, because the Budget represents an incredible lack of anything at all for my city of Nottingham and my constituency.
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who is no longer in the Chamber, termed the Budget as “not exactly a non-event”, and he meant that as a compliment: there was just above nothing in the Budget, and that for him was a good thing. For my constituency, only a grade above a non-event is not good enough. On the issues that really matter to us, such as decent wages, a fair benefits system, healthcare, schools, transport, community safety and so on; on the things that are making people’s everyday lives more difficult than they ought to be; and on the issues leaving children in working families in poverty with no way out —on all these things—we feel let down by the Government, and the Budget is emblematic of that failure.
Another incredible omission was the fact that the east midlands was not referenced at all. Treasury stats show that, whether it is transport investment or infrastructure investment in general, the east midlands will always come last, and once again the Budget and the industrial strategy do nothing to fix that. After the cancellation of the midland main line electrification, we are in desperate need of more money for our transport links, but that has not come. It is not just for getting to and from the capital that we need midland main line electrification; this is also about east-west connectivity. Both those things have excellent business cases and are crying out for a bit of vision to support them.
It is not a coincidence that today’s Social Mobility Commission report has the east midlands as the region with the worst outcomes for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, but we know that that is not inevitable. The poverty profile of my constituency is similar to a number in London, but while 17 out of 20 mobility hotspots are in London, none is in the east midlands. My area is one of the coldspots, and that is because of the level of investment into the community. I say that not because I want London’s investment for Nottingham; I want investment levelled up, because it works. It is good for society and for the Exchequer. That shows what we should expect from the Budget, but instead we have something that is not quite a non-event which, frankly, is not quite good enough. In fact, it is not good enough at all.
Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate on the Chancellor’s autumn Budget, which has truly exposed the appalling reality of the Tory party’s failed austerity experiment. The UK economy is now forecast to be £72 billion smaller than under the spring 2016 forecast, and average earnings are not expected to recover to pre-crisis levels until 2025.
In a major shift in their assessment of the UK’s growth outlook, the OBR has forecast that growth will remain below trend until 2022. This is the first time in recorded economic history that growth projections have been so low. That in turn significantly weakens the UK’s fiscal position, because it reduces revenue forecasts, household incomes and therefore the ability to reduce the deficit, which let us not forget was the Tory party’s primary test of economic success on coming into government in 2010. That now will not happen until 2031.
The reality could not be more stark now: austerity is a vicious cycle of self-defeating decline. Real wages are lower than they were in 2010, and the Budget confirmed a further hit to living standards, with disposable income set to fall in 2017. Working age benefits have been frozen since 2015. Meanwhile, prices measured by CPI have risen by 6.9%. Under this Government, it is clear that the poor are getting ever poorer, while an increasing share of national wealth flows to the richest in our society. That is a betrayal of my generation, which is the first in recorded history in which people are seeing their living standards falling below those of their parents.
The key reason for this downward revision in growth was the major shift in the OBR’s outlook for productivity. In the past, its prediction was that productivity growth would return to pre-crisis rates, but it now believes that the slowdown is evidence of structural weakness. That structural weakness is a result of the Government’s self-defeating policies, which have created a cycle of weak earnings and cheap labour, with firms using low-cost labour rather than investing in more efficient processes and plant that would drive productivity growth.
The industrial strategy White Paper that was published yesterday demonstrates that the Conservatives have once again missed the opportunity to take the radical action that is needed to meet the UK’s productivity challenge. Raising research and development investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027 will only bring the UK in line with the OECD average, after years of lagging behind, but we need to be above the average, not below it. World leaders such as South Korea and Japan spend over 3% of their GDP. That is why Labour is committed to that target.
There is the key question of ensuring that UK firms are leading this effort and that it is balanced across all UK regions. In Scotland, for example, 70% of R and D activity is undertaken by overseas-owned companies, but there is nothing in the industrial strategy to address that. The country stands on the cusp of a great disruptive opportunity as the fourth industrial revolution emerges, but this lacklustre Budget and industrial strategy prove beyond doubt that the Government are simply not up to the huge economic challenges facing the country. Only the Labour party has the true ambition and vision to harness our nation’s industrial potential.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
As we have just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney), we are on the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution, but if we are to be ready for it, we must do more than this industrial strategy does. The Britain of five to 20 years from now will look very different from the country in which we live and work today. If we are to ensure that new technology does not lead to higher levels of underemployment and a workforce whose skills have become obsolete, we must first ensure that automation leads to innovation. If Britain is to be a world leader in new technology, as the Government contend, we must think bigger and be bolder.
Our economy has drifted from manufacturing to the financial and service sectors. Between 1978 and 2017, the number of service sector jobs rose by more than 20%. That shift was highlighted by representatives of a civil engineering firm in my constituency who told me that, although demand for their services was increasing, recruiting staff with relevant skills was becoming increasingly difficult. I welcome the £64 million investment in retraining that is mentioned in the White Paper, but, in the context of £1.5 billion worth of cuts in the adult skills budget, it hardly scratches the surface of the investment that is needed to end a skills shortage that will hamper any serious industrial strategy.
We should aim to create an energy revolution by taking steps such as reforming ownership of the grid, including common, state and mutual forms of ownership. That will open the energy market to smaller companies, and will create a more competitive market. We need look no further than Leeds, where we created White Rose Energy. We also need an insulation revolution that gives not just homeowners but landlords and housing associations incentives to insulate their houses, so that we can save energy, create jobs and provide warmer, safer houses.
I am pleased that there is to be some investment in infrastructure for electric vehicles, but the Government need to listen to the Industrial Strategy Commission’s recommendation that infrastructure investment should be universal. My constituency does not have a single public charge point. How shameful is that? We also need to take more urgent action to tackle climate change. I urge the Government to listen to Labour Members and to commit to themselves to ensuring that 60% of the UK’s energy comes from low-carbon or renewable sources by 2030.
We need a Government who will think bigger. We need a Government who show a commitment to our planet and the health of future generations. We need a Government who are not afraid to be bold and invest in this country and its people. As Britain looks to a future outside the European Union, it has never been more crucial to embrace change and lead the world, not only in producing and welcoming new technology, but in shaping our society to ensure that change works for the many, not the few.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
This is the Budget that was trailed as the “Ruth” Budget for Scotland, and it is the Budget that the Scottish Tories have apparently stepped up to the plate and delivered for Scotland, so let us look at what they have delivered. They claim credit for the VAT exemption for the police and fire services. The SNP raised that in the Chamber 63 times and forced a vote on it, so we have clearly led the way. The Scottish Tories do not even seem to care about the need for a refund of the £140 million that has already been stolen.
What else have the Scottish Tories delivered? Nothing. Not one original idea in the Budget can be credited to them. We are still left with a rail budget that has been cut by £600 million in real terms, and with no Ayrshire growth deal. There was nothing about the £200 million CAP convergence uplift that was meant for Scotland and nothing about renewable energy, and we are faced with a real-terms revenue budget cut of half a billion pounds over the next two years. The 10 Democratic Unionist Members who still sit on the Opposition Benches managed to get a £1.5 billion package for a couple of key votes, and we are meant to believe that they are a solid voting lobby.
There was one welcome measure for the oil and gas industry in relation to the transferable tax history, but, as is pointed out in paragraph 3.54 of the Red Book, the idea was first mooted in a Government paper in 2014, so it is certainly nothing to do with Scottish Tories. The fact that it is predicted to bring in £70 million makes it an easy decision for the Treasury anyway.
Today’s theme may be the future economy, but that future economy has already been curtailed by the £30 billion of tax giveaways in the last Budget—£30 billion that could have been spent more wisely. The incoherent policies continue with the flagship announcement of a £3.2 billion stamp duty giveaway that is now predicted to do no more than increase house prices and bring in nothing for the Treasury bung. While increasing the pay gap for the young, the Government think that they can woo young voters back with the promise of a railcard, but paragraph 4.46 suggests that it will be funded by other rail users rather than the Treasury. Tuition is free in Scotland, but the Tories think that freezing fees at £9,250 per annum will bring young voters flocking back to them. I say to them that they are aff their heids.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
Three minutes to speak is not long, but it is about the same time as it normally takes a Tory Budget to unravel. I wish to focus first on the automotive sector. Ellesmere Port is home to Vauxhall Motors, and we had several requests for the Budget to improve the competitiveness of the plant, but I am sorry to say that none of them appears to have made it into the Budget. We have heard a lot of talk about how we are lagging behind in terms of productivity, and one of the asks I had was about changing the way that business rates operate and currently act as a disincentive to invest in certain types of plant and machinery.
On the housing announcements, expanding the ability of local authorities to borrow against housing revenue accounts is welcome, but it is far from clear who will be able to bid for that extra borrowing capacity, with it being apparently only available to areas with what are termed as “high affordability pressures”. I do not know of any local authority that does not have a significant waiting list, so rather than make councils jump through hoops, should not this facility be available to any council that thinks it can take on the extra borrowing?
The stamp duty offer for first-time buyers attracted a lot of attention on the day of the Budget, but its coverage was inversely proportionate to the impact it will actually have. As we know from the OBR, the concern is that it will do nothing more than increase upward pressure on house prices. Indeed, five years ago a stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers was abandoned by the coalition Government because it had been “ineffective”. We are already seeing developers take advantage—“You and Yours” reported yesterday that developers have pocketed the stamp duty savings where they had an agreement with purchasers to stand the cost of stamp duty.
Surely the best use of taxpayers’ money in housing is to increase supply. One way to increase supply would be to help all those people who have ended up with an unsellable house because they were duped into buying a leasehold property. Coming up with a scheme to release people from that trap might do much to increase housing supply, and it would also be the right thing to do.
Laura Pidcock (North West Durham) (Lab)
As a nation, we have been socialised to think of the economy in abstract terms. It is analysed as a distant entity that needs to be served, slavishly, to keep the big, scary beast from collapse. When we hear the Chancellor tell us that inequality has narrowed, that there are more people in work and that our public services are protected, we could almost believe him. That is, if we did not actually speak to any real people outside the Westminster bubble. We could suspend disbelief if we never spoke to any workers or reflected on what is happening in our communities.
Every time Government Members cheer about the new jobs on the Government’s watch without any critical analysis of the nature of those jobs —short-term, insecure and low-wage—they lose credibility. On behalf of my community in North West Durham, I must convey extreme disappointment and anger at the Budget. Aside from the pantomime proceedings, it offered nothing to my community.
I shall give one example in illustration—the stamp duty giveaway. In the north-east, average house prices for first-time buyers are £125,591. That would mean a tiny giveaway of £11.82. Please forgive those people who have endured seven years of pay freezes—a typical prison officer, for example, who is now only £30 better off now than seven years ago—if they do not jump with joy at those announcements.
We need something completely different. We must be brave enough to say that borrowing is necessary for investment and that people must have a wage that they can live on—it is not fine to pay them a minimum wage that keeps them in starvation. I have met people who have been broken by this system and it is not their fault. The global banking crisis was not their fault. The recession was not their fault. The rules and traps of the system were not of their making.
To see the tears of grown working women and men flow directly as a result of Government policy tells me that we need a complete overhaul of our economic system. If the Government are not brave enough to do that, they must move over. If the economy does not work for everyone, it is not worthy.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The measure of the Budget must surely be the promises that the Conservatives made to the British people over and again during the election campaign in June. They promised the British people a strong economy that would deliver investment in our public services. The Budget reveals just how badly the Government are letting down the British people and just how high the costs of the Government’s botched and divided process are proving to be. Instead of the strong economy that was promised, we see a forecast of poor productivity leading to exceptionally weak economic growth, wage stagnation and rising inflation. We were promised a strong economy, but instead, families up and down the country are facing an unprecedented further five years of falling living standards. They are running to stand still, but the best that the Chancellor can offer is that by 2025 average wages will have reached the same levels as in 2008. And instead of committing to the £350 million a week for the NHS promised by his colleagues in the Vote Leave campaign, the Chancellor is committing more taxpayers’ money to fund the cost of Brexit than he is to our NHS.
It is on the NHS that I wish to focus the remainder of my remarks today, as the scale of the financial challenges facing it makes the Budget look like a sticking plaster on a gaping wound. We are approaching the most pressured time of year for the NHS, and its hard-working staff are approaching the winter in fear and trepidation because the pressures under which they are already working absorb all the resilience and reserves they can muster. The local hospital in my constituency is King’s College Hospital. Prior to 2010, King’s was performing well and was financially stable, but when I contacted it recently on behalf of a constituent who had spent five days waiting on a trolley to be allocated a bed on a ward, I was told that the hospital was more than 100% full. King’s is an exceptional place full of exceptional people, but it is being asked by this Government to deliver the impossible.
The performance of our NHS is inextricably linked to the performance of social care services, yet the Budget made no mention at all of social care. Funding sufficient high-quality social care would be the single most transformative measure that the Government could introduce for our NHS. The failure of this Budget on social care is just one of the many ways in which the Government continue to disadvantage women, who make up the overwhelming majority of hard-pressed carers, both paid and unpaid. It is one of the many ways in which the Budget is failing people up and down the country.
Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
After seven years of Conservative-led Government and seven years of austerity, my constituents in rural Derbyshire will tell this House that austerity is not working. Both our hospitals are facing closure. Three nurseries have already closed, and more are saying that they cannot continue. Schools are being squeezed by 5% cuts and saying that they cannot continue and are having to lose teachers. We have lost more than 400 police officers in Derbyshire. There are not enough to respond to serious incidents; there are not even enough to police Buxton carnival. And our firefighters have been reduced to a retained service.
Austerity is hitting us hard—it is hitting every community hard—but it is not working. After seven years of telling us that we must not borrow to invest in public services, the Conservatives are borrowing up to the hilt. The national debt clock, which they were so keen to talk about at the time of the 2010 election, now stands at £1.95 trillion. They have almost doubled the national debt, and what have we got to show for it? We have public services that are on their knees. We have public servants who cannot afford a house. We have millions of people on benefits visiting food banks. That is an absolute disgrace.
We in the Labour party believe that we should borrow, but that we should borrow to invest. We should borrow to invest in our economy, in our public services, in our workers, in our jobs and in our communities. Then we would see an economy that could grow. People would be able to spend in their local businesses, and businesses would be able to thrive. Communities would be able to prosper once again. Instead, all that this Budget has offered us is more of the same—more of the same cuts and more of the same poverty—and we ain’t seen nothing yet. The little Red Book has shown that we are just at the start of those cuts. We have another four years of freezes to benefits and school budgets, and cuts to our police, to our hospitals and to the NHS communities. That is what is happening. This Budget was a chance for the Government to come up with big new ideas, but they did not. This Government need to make way for one that can.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
As the Chancellor gave his Budget speech last week, there was a collective groan across the country not just at the bad jokes, but at the content of the most uneventful Budget speech of recent times. There was no game-changing investment announcement and no lasting solutions for the growing difficulties facing our country. The Chancellor’s speech personified this Government: out of touch, inconsistent and directionless.
The Cabinet is morbidly and irrevocably split on Brexit and, rather than focusing on their individual briefs, Ministers now spend their days attempting to steal each others’. The International Trade Secretary wants to run Britain’s foreign policy. The Environment Secretary is learning all about hypothecation, apparently fancying himself as Chancellor, and The Times reported that he is busy researching the difference between a J curve and a J-cloth. Meanwhile, the Foreign Secretary continues to scheme for the top job. He is the first to praise the Prime Minister, while constantly plotting to undermine her—Iago on steroids. Ironically, the only person who does not want to be in No. 10 is its current occupant. She remains, as in the Monty Python parrot sketch, nailed to the perch and “off the twig”. The Prime Minister’s metabolic processes are, politically speaking, history.
The most important announcements made last week were not the Chancellor’s recycled policies, but those from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The OBR lowered UK growth forecasts, business investment, productivity rates and wage growth for the next five years, blowing a hole in the Government’s economic credibility. As for balancing the books, under the Government’s current projection, the UK budget will not be in surplus until 2030 at the earliest—a full 15 years after the former Chancellor said that the deficit would be eradicated. Workers who have already endured a decade of stagnant wages and lost earnings will not see their pay return to pre-crisis levels until 2025. And there is more. UK households face the biggest squeeze in disposable income since records began. The message from the OBR is clear: Britain under the Tories is now facing a record 17-year downturn in pay.
The Budget did nothing to eradicate the impact of austerity on women, who have disproportionately borne the brunt of it. The abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers is of course welcome, but the OBR rightly points out that the move will increase house prices. Many Government Back-Benchers called for action to help the next generation, but the best the Chancellor could muster was a millennial railcard that young people cannot even use to commute to work and that will not even cover the cost of the 3.6% rail fare increase next year.
On universal credit, the Government finally listened to Labour and scrapped the seven-day waiting time, but they have done nothing about the roll-out.
The Government once again ensured that the NHS and its staff will remain underfunded and underpaid, and the extra money announced in the Budget does not even meet NHS England’s call for extra funding. Far from being dead and buried, the public sector pay cap remains alive and well. Public sector pay is now set to fall to its lowest level by comparison with the private sector, and the Chancellor is trying to divide public sector workers.
As I have said so many times at this Dispatch Box, the UK’s economic growth wholly depends on our ability to raise productivity rates, and there was nothing of any substance whatsoever in the Budget to help that. The Government continue to fail in delivering the infrastructure and investment that the regions so desperately need. Like so many of this Government’s policies, their industrial strategy White Paper released yesterday is thin on details and thinner on ideas—another damp squib. It is about time that this Government went. They should pack their bags, get the Prime Minister out of No. 10 and hand things over to the Labour party to do the job properly and get growth back for this country.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Elizabeth Truss)
We have had an excellent debate this afternoon. We heard my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy lay out an optimistic vision for our industrial strategy. We heard my hon. Friends the Members for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), for Dudley South (Mike Wood) and for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) talking about the positive measures in the Budget on skills, housing and tax. We also heard the usual fiction and portents of doom from the Opposition.
I repudiate the Opposition’s predictions. Our destiny is not preordained. We have the power to shape the future and to boost our growth and productivity. If we want to know what high productivity looks like, we need look no further than our high-growth companies. When it comes to start-ups, we are world leading, with more than 650,000 companies founded in 2016 alone. We have more than twice the number of $1 billion tech companies than anywhere else in Europe. By enabling companies to grow and, even more, to start, we can make sure all people in this country benefit from our world leadership in areas such as driverless cars and artificial intelligence.
The real revolutionaries in this country are not sitting on the Opposition Front Bench clutching their iPads and looking up debt numbers, while denouncing enterprise; the real revolutionaries are the businesses across Britain that take risks, create jobs and improve our lives. They are the people who are delivering day out, day in for our country. This Budget is about liberating those businesses to achieve their ambitions and to deliver for our future, and it is about making sure that they have the people, the capital and the space to succeed.
Of course we want to attract the brightest and best to our country, which is why we are doubling the number of high-skilled visas that can be granted each year, but we also need to unleash the talents of our own people, both to help power the economy and to make sure they can share in the opportunities that enterprise brings. The fact is that the previous Labour Government let down our children and young people. They left Britain short of skills; they dumbed down the curriculum; they created rampant grade inflation; they failed on technical education; and they left office with rising youth unemployment.
When Labour left office, youth unemployment was at 20%, which is why we brought in higher standards for English and maths, new academies and free schools, and new T-levels. Under this Government, we have seen more apprenticeships and the lowest level of youth unemployment for 13 years. I suggest the Opposition engage with the facts.
We are announcing even more in this Budget. We are tripling the number of computer science teachers and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) pointed out, we are giving schools £600 for every additional student studying maths A-level or core maths, the most valuable qualifications in the jobs market. We are learning from the best in the world, and I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards is here today because he championed the Shanghai and Singapore maths mastery programme that we are rolling out to a further 3,000 schools. We are also making sure that adults already in jobs have the opportunity to improve their skills through the national retraining scheme.
The Government know that private investment in high-growth businesses benefits us all through new technology, higher living standards and more jobs. This year, a record £2 billion was invested in FinTech alone. This Budget builds on that success by unlocking more than £20 billion of investment to finance growth in innovative firms. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) said, £1 billion is also being invested in the life sciences sector.
We also want to make it easier for brilliant women founders to access capital. Research shows that, when making identical pitches, women are half as likely to secure early-stage investment, despite investors who invest in female-led businesses being, on average, more successful. We have asked the British Business Bank to look at that so we can see more brilliant women founders and start-ups getting that investment.
Finally, these high-potential businesses need space to grow and high-quality infrastructure. We are making it easier for businesses to expand their operations through new planning freedom and manufacturing zones. We are also investing a huge amount in infrastructure. As my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mrs Badenoch) pointed out, this Budget includes the highest amount any Government have spent as a proportion of GDP on economic infrastructure for 40 years. How can the Opposition talk about a lack of investment in infrastructure, given that this is the highest for 40 years? It is much higher than anything that happened under the previous Labour Government. This spending includes plans for the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge corridor and for the northern powerhouse. [Interruption.] Let me say to the Opposition that we are investing £337 million in a new fleet of trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro, and £300 million to ensure HS2 can accommodate future northern and midlands rail services. We are also creating a £1.7 billion transforming cities fund, which will give our great cities the investment they need, and they will be able to invest in local trams or light rail systems as they see fit.
Sir Edward Davey
Does the right hon. Lady agree that British companies—our new entrepreneurial companies —would like a nice big market to sell their goods to, on our doorstep?
Elizabeth Truss
Absolutely, which is why our focus is on getting the best possible deal in the Brexit negotiations. Maintaining a tight grip on Government finances is, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) pointed out, vital for any Government, and Opposition Front Benchers would do well to look at that when they are considering—[Interruption.] I see that the shadow Chancellor is on his iPad looking up what the—[Interruption.] I can help him out without an iPad. His plans would mean an additional half a trillion pounds-worth of debt. If hon. Members want to know how much extra interest the British public would have to pay every year, I can tell them that it is £7 billion. I do not need an iPad to know that.
This Government are prioritising our country’s long-term growth prospects. We are investing in the infrastructure and in the skills that our country needs to succeed. Whatever the Opposition say, it is not politicians or Whitehall that will turbo-charge our economy and bring the growth and improved living standards we all want; it is the enterprises up and down the country that are going to deliver that. The Opposition want to tax new industry to the hilt or, even worse, to run it themselves. I cannot think of a more scary prospect for businesses across Britain. We take the opposite view; we want to unleash enterprise and to make sure that businesses have the people, space and the conditions to succeed. This is a Budget that recognises where the true value of our economy is created. It is not through issuing blank cheques that we cannot afford, but by making sure that our enterprises have the skills, talent and space that they need to grow and to ensure that all our citizens benefit from our powerhouse future. That is why the House should support the Budget in the Lobby tonight.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That income tax is charged for the tax year 2018-19.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
Mr Speaker
I am now required under Standing Order No. 51(3) to put successively, without further debate, the Question on each of the Ways and Means motions numbered 2 to 44, on which the Bill is to be brought in. These motions are set out in a separate paper distributed with today’s Order Paper.
I must inform the House that, for the purposes of Standing Order No. 83U, with which I feel sure all colleagues are personally and closely familiar, and on the basis of material put before me, I have certified that in my opinion the following founding motions published on 22 November 2017 and to be moved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer relate exclusively to England, Wales and Northern Ireland and are within devolved legislative competence: motion 3, on income tax (main rates); motion 35, on stamp duty land tax (higher rates for additional dwellings); and motion 36, on stamp duty land tax (relief for first-time buyers). Should the House divide on any of these motions it will be subject to double-majority voting.
The Speaker put forthwith the Questions necessary to dispose of the motions made in the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Standing Order No. 51(3)).
2. CORPORATION TAX (charge for financial year 2019)
Resolved,
That (notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the practice of the House relating to the matters that may be included in Finance Bills) provision may be made taking effect in a future year charging corporation tax for the financial year 2019.
3. Income tax (MAIN RATES)
Resolved,
That for the tax year 2018-19 the main rates of income tax are as follows—
(a) the basic rate is 20%,
(b) the higher rate is 40%;
(c) the additional rate is 45%.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
4. Income tax (Default and savings rates)
Resolved,
(1) That for the tax year 2018-19 the default rates of income tax are as follows—
(a) the basic rate is 20%,
(b) the higher rate is 40%;
(c) the additional rate is 45%.
(2) That for the tax year 2018-19 the savings rates of income tax are as follows—
(a) the basic rate is 20%,
(b) the higher rate is 40%;
(c) the additional rate is 45%.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
5. Income tax (starting rate limit for savings)
Resolved,
That section 21 of the Income Tax Act 2007 (indexation) does not apply in relation to the starting rate limit for savings for the tax year 2018-19 (so that, under section 12(3) of the Income Tax Act 2007 as amended by section 4 of the Finance Act 2017, that limit remains at £5000 for that tax year).
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
6. Transferable tax allowance
Resolved,
That—
(1) Chapter 3A of Part 3 of the Income Tax Act 2007 (transferable tax allowance) is amended as follows.
(2) Section 55B (tax reduction: entitlement) is amended in accordance with paragraphs (3) to (5).
(3) In subsection (2) (conditions for entitlement to tax reduction)—
(a) for paragraph (a) (individual is spouse or civil partner of maker of election in force under section 55C) substitute—
“(a) the individual is the gaining party (see section 55C(l)(a)) in the case of an election under section 55C which is in force for the tax year,”, and
(b) in paragraph (d), for “individual’s” substitute “relinquishing”.
(4) After subsection (5) insert—
“(5A) In this section “the relinquishing spouse or civil partner”, in relation to an election under section 55C, means the individual mentioned in section 55C(l)(a) by whom, or by whose personal representatives, the election is made.”
(5) In subsection (6) (reduced personal allowance for transferor)—
(a) after “under subsection (1)” insert “by reference to an election under section 55C”, and
(b) for “individual's” substitute “relinquishing”.
(6) Section 55C (elections to reduce personal allowance) is amended in accordance with paragraphs (7) and (8).
(7) In subsection (l)(a) (individual may make election if married or in civil partnership)—
(a) after “the same person” insert “(“the gaining party”)”, and
(b) in sub-paragraph (ii), after “when the election is made” insert “or, where the election is made after the death of one or each of them, when they were last both living”.
(8) After subsection (4) insert—
“(5) The personal representatives of an individual may make any election for the purposes of section 55B that the individual (if living) might make in relation to—
(a) the tax year in which the individual dies, or
(b) an earlier tax year.”
(9) Section 55D (procedure for elections under section 55C) is amended in accordance with paragraphs (10) and (11).
(10) In subsection (3) (elections which are not automatically continued in force for subsequent years), after “is made after the end of the tax year to which it relates” insert “or is made after the death of either of the spouses or civil partners”.
(11) In subsection (4) (election may be withdrawn only by individual who made it), after “by whom the election was made” insert an election made by an individual's personal representatives may not be withdrawn”.
(12) The amendments made by this Resolution—
(a) come into force on 29 November 2017,
(b) have effect in relation to elections made on or after that day, and
(c) so have effect even where a relevant death occurred before that day.
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
7. Deduction for seafarers’ earnings for duties performed outside UK
Resolved,
That provision may be made in connection with the application of Chapter 6 of Part 5 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 in relation to employment in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service.
8. Exemption for armed forces’ accommodation allowances
Resolved,
That provision may be made exempting, from income tax, amounts paid as accommodation allowances to, or in respect of, members of the armed forces of the Crown.
9. Benefits in kind: cars
Resolved,
That provision (including provision having retrospective effect) may be made amending Chapter 6 of Part 3 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003.
10. Foreign-service relief for benefits on termination of employment
Resolved,
That provision may be made amending Chapter 3 of Part 6 of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 in connection with restricting, in relation to payments and other benefits received in connection with the termination of a person's employment, relief given by that Chapter by reference to service within the definition of “foreign service” given by section 413(2) of that Act.
11. Employment income provided through third parties
Resolved,
That provision may be made in connection with—
(a) the application and operation of Chapter 2 of Part 7 A of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, and
(b) the operation of Part 11 of that Act in connection with Schedule 11 to the Finance (No. 2) Act 2017
12. Disguised remuneration schemes (earnings charged to tax)
Resolved,
That—
(1) In section 554A of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 (employment income provided through third parties: application of Chapter 2 of Part 7A), after subsection (5) insert—
“(5A) Subsections (5B) and (5C) apply where—
(a) a payment to a person other than A, or to A as a trustee, is of earnings from A's employment with B, and
(b) the earnings are, in whole or part, charged to tax under the employment income Parts otherwise than by virtue of this Part,
and for this purpose it does not matter whether all or some only or none of the tax is paid (but see sections 554Z5 and 554Z11B).
(5B) For the purposes of subsection (5C), an arrangement is a “redirected- earnings arrangement” if it (wholly or partly) covers or relates to redirected earnings; and for the purposes of this subsection and subsection (5C) “redirected earnings” means—
(a) the payment mentioned in subsection (5A)(a), or
(b) any sum or other property which (directly or indirectly)—
(i) represents, or
(ii) is derived from,
that payment.
(5C) The circumstances mentioned in subsection (5A)—
(a) do not prevent a redirected-earnings arrangement being within subsection (l)(b), and
(b) do not prevent rewards or recognition or loans being in connection with A's employment with B for the purposes of subsection (l)(c) where there is use of redirected earnings for the provision of the whole, or part, of the rewards or recognition or loans.”
(2) The amendment made by paragraph (1)—
(a) come into force on 29 November 2017,
(b) has effect for the purposes of the operation of Part 7 A of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003 in relation to relevant steps taken on or after 22 November 2017, and
(c) so has effect in the case of payments within the new subsection (5A)(a) whenever made (including ones made before 6 April 2011).
And it is declared that it is expedient in the public interest that this Resolution should have statutory effect under the provisions of the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.
13. Trading income provided through third parties
Resolved,
That provision may be made about information for the purposes of the operation of Schedule 12 to the Finance (No. 2) Act 2017.
14. Pensions
Resolved,
That provision (including provision having retrospective effect) may be made about the application of Part 4 of the Finance Act 2004 in relation to—
(a) pension schemes that are Master Trust schemes,
(b) pension schemes established under section 67 of the Pensions Act 2008,
(c) pension schemes that have a dormant sponsoring employer, and
(d) pension schemes treated as registered by virtue of paragraph 1(1) of Schedule 36 to the Finance Act 2004.
15. EIS, SEIS, SI and VCT reliefs
Resolved,
That provision may be made about reliefs under Parts 5, 5A, 5B and 6 of the Income Tax Act 2007, including—
(a) provision having retrospective effect, and
(b) (notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the practice of the House relating to the matters that may be included in Finance Bills) provision taking effect in a future year.
16. PARTNERSHIPS
Resolved,
That the following provision relating to partnerships may be made—
(a) provision as to how tax legislation applies where a partner is a bare trustee;
(b) provision for determining the income tax liability of indirect partners;
(c) provision about income tax returns for partnerships.
17. Research and development expenditure credits
Resolved,
That provision may be made amending section 104M(3) of the Corporation Tax Act 2009.
18. INTANGIBLE FIXED ASSETS
Resolved,
That provision may be made amending Part 8 of the Corporation Tax Act 2009.
19. Corporation tax treatment of oil activities: tariff receipts etc
Resolved,
That provision may be made about the meaning of “tariff receipt” for the purposes of Part 8 of the Corporation Tax Act 2010.
20. Hybrid and other mismatches
Resolved,
That provision (including provision having retrospective effect) may be made amending Part 6A of the Taxation (International and Other Provisions) Act 2010.
21. Corporate interest restriction
Resolved,
That provision (including provision having retrospective effect) may be made relating to Part 10 of the Taxation (International and Other Provisions) Act 2010.
22. Corporation tax: Education Authority of Northern Ireland
Resolved,
That provision (including provision having retrospective effect) may be made relieving the Education Authority of Northern Ireland of liability to corporation tax.
23. Chargeable gains (indexation allowance)
Resolved,
That provision may be made restricting indexation allowance for gains chargeable to corporation tax.
24. Chargeable gains (transfer of assets to non-resident company)
Resolved,
That provision may be made amending section 140 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992.
25. Chargeable gains (depreciatory transactions)
Resolved,
That provision may be made amending section 176 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992.
26. First-year tax credits
Resolved,
That (notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the practice of the House relating to the matters that may be included in Finance Bills) provision may be made about first-year tax credits paid in connection with relevant first-year expenditure under the Capital Allowances Act 2001.
27. DOUBLE TAXATION RELIEF
Resolved,
That the following provision relating to double taxation relief may be made——
(a) provision in relation to counteraction notices given under Part 2 of the Taxation (International and Other Provisions) Act 2010;
(b) provision restricting credit relief under that Part, or deductions for foreign tax paid, by reference to amounts attributable to an overseas permanent establishment of a company that are used to reduce a foreign tax;
(c) provision (including provision having retrospective effect) to secure that the double taxation arrangements to which effect may be given by Order in Council include arrangements modifying the effect of earlier such arrangements and arrangements conferring functions on public authorities within or outside the United Kingdom.
28. bANK LEVY
Question put,
That provision may be made amending Schedule 19 to the Finance Act 2011, including (notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the practice of the House relating to the matters that may be included in Finance Bills) provision taking effect in a future year.
Relevant consideration | Percentage |
So much as does not exceed £300,000 Any remainder (so far as not exceeding £500,000) | 0% 5%” |
1. Cigarettes | An amount equal to the higher of— (a) 16.5% of the retail price plus £217.23 per thousand cigarettes, or (b) £280.15 per thousand cigarettes. |
2. Cigars | £270.96 per kilogram |
3. Hand-rolling tobacco | £221.18 per kilogram |
4. Other smoking tobacco and chewing tobacco | £119.13 per kilogram”. |
Business without Debate
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Speaker
With the leave of the House, I propose taking motions 3 to 9 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Defence
That the draft International Headquarters and Defence Organisations (Designation and Privileges) Order 2017, which was laid before this House on 21 June, be approved.
Electricity
That the draft Renewables Obligation (Amendment) (Energy Intensive Industries) Order 2017, which was laid before this House on 19 July, be approved.
Banks and Banking
That the draft Banking Act 2009 (Service Providers to Payment Systems) Order 2017, which was laid before this House on 19 July, be approved.
Local Government
That the draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Public Health Functions) Order 2017, which was laid before this House on 20 July, be approved.
Charities
That the draft Charitable Incorporated Organisations (Consequential Amendments) Order 2017, which was laid before this House on 7 September, be approved.
Telecommunications
That the draft Drug Dealing Telecommunications Restriction Orders Regulations 2017, which were laid before this House on 12 October, be approved.
Enterprise
That the draft Small Business Commissioner (Scope and Scheme) Regulations 2017, which were laid before this House on 19 July, be approved.—(Mike Freer.)
Question agreed to.
Petitions
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Speaker
I find it surprising, not to say shocking, that there should be a sudden exodus of right hon. and hon. Members from the Chamber at the point at which the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) is due to present her petition, in which I had hoped there would be a keen interest in all parts of the House. If Members unaccountably insist on departing the Chamber, I trust that they will do so quickly, quietly and without fuss, so that the rest of us, keenly interested in said petition, can listen to its eloquent presentation by the right hon. Lady.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker; that is very kind of you. I rise to present two petitions relating to High Speed 2. The first has more than 1,200 signatures from residents of the village of Trowell, and it declares that they
“are opposed to the HS2 project in its entirety.”
They believe that HS2
“will provide no benefits to Trowell”,
and that the money would be better spent on
“existing railway routes and other transport networks.”
The second petition has been signed by 125 Trowell residents. They are opposed to a 60-foot viaduct through the village that would cause disruption during its construction and adversely impact the village.
Following is the full text of the petitions:
[The petition of residents of Trowell,
Declares that they are opposed to the HS2 project in its entirety. They believe that HS2 Phase Two will provide no benefits to Trowell and the financial cost of the project would be better spent elsewhere, including improving existing railway routes and other transport networks.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons ask HS2 Ltd. to stop plans to build HS2 Phase Two and look at more reasonable alternatives.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P002085]
[The petition of residents of Trowell,
Declares that they are opposed to the proposed viaduct through Trowell which is part of the HS2 Phase 2 project and will be 60 feet high in some places to cross over the M1 motorway, the A609 and an existing railway viaduct. The proposals will cause significant disruption to Trowell's residents during construction and the resulting viaduct would dominate over homes in the village, as well as being taller than the church spire.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges HS2 Ltd. to dispense with proposals to build a viaduct in Trowell and come up with alternative solutions that will have less impact on residents.
And the petitioners remain, etc.]
[P002084]
Lower Thames Crossing
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for selecting this matter for debate. I am very sorry that the Chamber has just cleared, because if Members had stayed, they would have heard how a historic opportunity to fix the M25 at Dartford—as we know, it is broken there—has been missed, therefore condemning our constituents to another two or three decades of gridlock at Dartford.
I guess that the Minister knows my views on this subject, so I will try to keep this short and sweet. Later, I will discuss our concerns about the new crossing, but before that, I think that I need again to go through the uncomfortable truths about what is behind this.
It is a fact that any crossing to the east of the existing crossing will do nothing to ease the long-standing congestion and pollution at Dartford. For many years, all of us have spent hours sitting in traffic there. The people of Dartford have experienced years of gridlock, pollution, lung disease and everything else. The crossing has been stretched beyond capacity for years, leading to an absolute nightmare for the people of Dartford. In my view, they have been let down by their elected representatives, who should have been begging for the crossing to be fixed.
What is the cause of the situation at Dartford? All of us have been on this road, most of us sat in traffic. Only at Dartford do a little local road, regional roads and the busiest motorway in Europe—the M25, which goes around London—collide. We have three types of traffic—local, regional and long-range national—and the gridlock is caused not by the crossing itself, but by the fact that one of the tunnels is unsuitable for vehicles such as fuel tankers. If a fuel tanker tries to go into the tunnel without an escort, all the traffic has to be stopped, so it builds up. Going from north to south, the M25 is just as good or bad as the rest of it, but that is the cause.
For the last 12 years or so, I have thought that because the M25 will always run through Dartford, the only answer to fixing the broken traffic at Dartford is to fix the M25 at Dartford, not seven miles down the road. I thought that the only solution would be a new bridge or, better, a very long seven-mile tunnel from north of the A13 to south of the A2. The fact that that is not going to happen is inexplicable, and all the more so because Highways England estimates that the new crossing will remove only 14% of the traffic from Dartford.
What needs to happen now? The new crossing to the east of Gravesend is being built, but, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) will agree, mitigation is urgently needed around the tunnel approaches. About 50 million journeys are made through the tunnel annually, and it is closed briefly more than 300 times a year. When that happens, it results in the gridlock that we have all experienced.
This decision has condemned millions to spending decades more in traffic jams. A project that was initially designed to fix the problem at Dartford has bizarrely morphed into an economic development project that will undoubtedly benefit the people of Kent and Essex, but will condemn the people of Dartford to decades of further ill health, pollution and gridlock. The constituents of everyone in this House, including hon. Members from north of the border, will, from time to time, spend huge amounts of time in that traffic. I once spent an hour and a half in it, but I have been visited by people who have been in it for two hours. A couple of years ago, there was a complete blockage and people waited there for 12 hours. Closer to home, thousands of my constituents’ homes will effectively be blighted over the years that it takes to build the crossing.
The decision comes at a time when we are thinking about the future. Autonomous vehicles are no longer the realm of science fiction, and some car manufacturers say that they will have autonomous cars on the road within the next decade. There will be an awful lot of growth in the movement of goods by autonomous vehicles. What does that mean? The big thing about autonomous vehicles is that they can travel much closer together and optimise the road system. If there is gridlock, all the other cars can be switched off and a road train can clear a whole area of traffic very quickly before another road train is released across it. That technology will, if anything, make our roads considerably easier to use.
It is possible to argue the other way. Autonomous vehicles will allow us to get in our car and trundle up to Scotland or travel to work without the stress of driving, allowing us to go to sleep, read a book or whatever. I accept that there is an argument that such vehicles may make more journeys likely, but I do not think that that is the case, given the internet and moves towards home working. I believe that autonomous vehicles will greatly optimise our existing road infrastructure.
If we look at the skyline of Dartford from the traffic jam, we see houses that have chimneys and plenty that do not. The reason why those houses do not have chimneys is that we no longer all heat our homes by burning coal or wood. As with many other areas of public spending, we must therefore look at the effects that a new disruptive technology will have on massive infrastructure projects such as this one, which will cost at least £6 billion. In mitigation of the terrible traffic, it really would not be rocket science to look at channel tunnel freight trains. Why do all the trucks have to unload at Folkestone? If they went on up north, it would make the south of England a rather better place to be.
Even if we accept that Highways England will ignore the irrational aspects of building a crossing east of Gravesend, which will not help Dartford, there are many problems with its latest plans for the lower Thames crossing that I and my constituents want addressed. The main purpose of this debate—I will end quite soon—is to outline my concerns and those of the Lower Thames Crossing Association. I and Mr Bob Lane from the association had an excellent meeting today with Tim Jones, the project director from Highways England, and we are very grateful to him for the intelligent and constructive way in which he is approaching this project. I hope that the Minister has a map of the crossing in front of him, but if not, I can provide one—[Interruption.] He does; excellent.
I will return to the crossing, but before I do so, let me quickly outline the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe). He apologises for not being in the Chamber—it is my fault, because I did not inform him about this debate until yesterday—but he has four points, which I will read verbatim for the benefit of the Minister. The first is:
“Will not fix problem at existing crossing. Remain convinced that the current plans will do little or nothing to alleviate actual problem at existing crossing.”
Secondly, he wants more “Cut and cover” and says that
“wherever possible the route should be ‘cut in’ and below existing road, not above ground on stilts.”
Thirdly, he wants:
“Minimize footprint of”—
ugly—
“junctions wherever possible and put in place full mitigation.”
Finally, on “Air Quality”, he says:
“Demonstrate BEFORE construction how new LTC WILL improve already poor air quality experienced in Thurrock.”
I have three main requests. First, I want Highways England to remove the proposed junction on to the A226. On a positive note, I see that it has now removed that junction, which is extremely important for us if we are to avoid people using the rat runs through Gravesend and local villages when the Dartford crossing is gridlocked, as it will continue to be because building this crossing will not solve the problem at Dartford.
Secondly, given that there will not now be an exit at the A226—I apologise to people who do not have a map—I want Highways England to move the southern portal to the south of the A226. This would make a great difference to people living in the village of Chalk. It would also get my friend the rector of Chalk, Rev. Nigel Bourne, off my back, as the current proposals separates the village from his beautiful medieval church, so doing this would be a personal help to me.
Thirdly, I want to maximise the use of what Highways England calls green corridors. As much as possible should be done to reduce noise, pollution and environmental impact where the road will cross Thong Lane for the community at Thong and the community up at Riverview Park. This development will be 100 metres from those residents, and doing that, which we should consider in relation to the massive overall cost of the scheme, would generate enormous good will, which, frankly, is in short supply. I also hope that as much as possible of the spoil from the great big boring machine can be dumped so that people do not have to look at this eyesore.
What started as a roads project has, in my view, bizarrely morphed into an economic one. Of course it will bring wider economic benefits to Kent and Essex, but we are again at risk of having another big disconnect between the people who make decisions and those who suffer from them. I am not just concerned about several thousands of my local residents who will be very badly affected over the next 10 years or so while the crossing is being built, and some of them once it has been built, although they are obviously my main concern. This is a disaster for the people of Dartford, for every one of us in this Chamber and for every one of our constituents, because the traffic jams will go on and on, and we will be paying over £6 billion for that.
Even staff at Highways England admits that however many new crossings are put to the east of the existing crossing, at some stage they will have to come back to Dartford to fix the problem there. There is no getting away from the simple fact that the M25 runs through Dartford. We will fix the problem at Dartford only by separating the long-range national traffic from the local and regional traffic. To be frank, I fear that in 20 years’ time, when people wake up to this missed historic opportunity to fix Dartford, some of us will be seen as the guilty men and women.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on the lower Thames crossing. He raised his constituents’ concerns diligently, and I would expect no less from such an assiduous constituency MP. Before I respond to the detailed points he raised, I reassure all those who are impacted by congestion at Dartford that tackling congestion on the strategic road network has to be a priority for the Government and Highways England.
I beg my hon. Friend’s forgiveness for reflecting briefly on how we got to where we are. The idea of a tunnel crossing at Dartford was first proposed in the 1920s. Initially, a crossing between Tilbury and Gravesend was suggested to replace the ferry service, but that was rejected in favour of a route further upstream, nearer Dartford. Of course, the Tilbury to Gravesend ferry is still in operation today, providing a half-hourly service.
Meanwhile, the Dartford crossing has provided the only road crossing of the Thames east of London for over 50 years. It is now one of the busiest roads in the country, used 50 million times a year by commuters, business travellers, haulage companies, emergency services and holidaymakers alike, connecting communities and businesses; providing a vital link between the channel ports, London and the rest of the UK; enabling local businesses to operate effectively; and providing access for local residents to housing, jobs, leisure and retail facilities on both sides of the river. In summary, it is a critical part of our strategic road network.
The crossing opened in stages as traffic demand grew. The west tunnel opened in 1963, the east tunnel in 1980 and the bridge in 1991. The existing crossing, as my hon. Friend pointed out, is at capacity for much of the time and is one of the least reliable sections of our strategic road network of motorways and major trunk roads. As he well knows, congestion on and the closure of the existing crossing occur frequently. That creates significant disruption and pollution, which impacts on communities and visitors locally, regionally and, indeed, up and down the UK.
The Government recognise that a lower Thames crossing is needed to reduce congestion at the existing Dartford crossing and to support economic growth across the region. The objectives of the scheme include affordability for both the Government and users, value for money, improved resilience of the Thames crossings and the major road network, and minimising adverse impacts on health and the environment by improving safety.
In 2009, the Department examined five locations where an additional crossing could be built. The most easterly of those were found to be too far from the existing crossing to ease the problems at Dartford and were eliminated from further consideration. In 2012, the Department began to appraise the remaining three locations, leading to a public consultation the following year. Location A was at the existing crossing, location B would have connected the A2 and the Swanscombe peninsula with the A1089, and location C was to the east of Gravesend. Later that year, the Government announced a decision not to proceed with location B because of the impact on local development plans and the limited transport benefits.
The Government published their response to the consultation in July 2014, confirming the need for an additional crossing between Essex and Kent. It commissioned Highways England to carry out a more detailed assessment of the remaining two locations, A and C.
More than 47,000 people took part in the consultation, making it the largest-ever public consultation for a UK road project. Highways England analysed the consultation findings and reported back to the Department for Transport, and in April 2017 we announced that our preferred route for the crossing was at location C. The route comprises a bored tunnel under the Thames, a new road north of the river, joining the M25 between junctions 29 and 30, and a new road south of the river, joining the A2 east of Gravesend. The preferred route announcement allows for detailed design and assessment to be carried out on the route. Highways England has written to everyone within the development boundary and has contacted the 22,000 people who have registered for updates.
Having responded to the feedback received during the preferred route consultation, Highways England is now undertaking further work to understand the extent to which it might be appropriate to increase the tunnelled section of the route to reduce noise and other environmental impacts. Furthermore, in relation to some of the concerns my hon. Friend has just raised, Highways England is now putting forward some important changes to the project design in response to the feedback it received in the consultation.
The changes include a new design for the junction with the M25 to help it blend better with the local landscape; a new junction and link road at Tilbury to reduce the impact of HGVs on local roads; the removal of the proposed A226 junction at Gravesend Road to reduce the impact on local villages, as my hon. Friend mentioned; a new design for the junction with the A2 and a widening of the A2 through to junction 1 of the M2 to help improve traffic flow; and a proposal for three lanes in each direction between the A2 and A13, rather than just two, as this could provide greater benefits. In addition, Highways England will be assessing carefully the air quality and other environmental impacts of three lanes as it continues its design work. All the updates to the route design will be consulted on in 2018. This will allow all interested parties, including my hon. Friend, a further opportunity to give feedback on the latest version of the route.
An option to create a new crossing at Dartford was thoroughly assessed but rejected as it would not provide sufficient additional free-flowing capacity to the network. A new route at the existing crossing would not improve traffic resilience and would still cause severe congestion. The route would take at least six years to build and cause severe disruption affecting hundreds of millions of journeys while under construction. It would also worsen air quality and noise pollution in the immediate Dartford area.
The lower Thames crossing should not be seen as an isolated proposal. We have listened to concerns about the existing Dartford crossing.
Adam Holloway
I appreciate the constructive way in which my hon. Friend and the other Ministers have approached this since the decision was made, and, as I said, Highways England is being very decent, but I must return to my earlier point. How is a road that will reduce congestion at Dartford by only 14% still about traffic mitigation? It is not about sorting out Dartford; it has morphed into an issue of economic development, and we are kidding the public if we suggest otherwise.
Paul Maynard
I recognise the point my hon. Friend is trying to make. I have tried to make it clear that I am focusing on the traffic management aspects of the project, rather than the issue of wider economic benefits to which he refers.
I want to explain some of what we are seeking to do to improve matters at the Dartford crossing. Like many people, I recognise the concerns about the crossing. Anyone who has to drive through it will always bear in mind the possibility of severe delays. Highways England keeps the safety and performance of the crossing constantly under review to identify areas that can improve the crossing for all road users. The traffic safety system, introduced as part of the Dart charge, continues to be improved, together with the management of dangerous goods and abnormal loads.
Actions are being taken to improve the management of traffic during incidents and ensure the reopening of lanes as soon as possible afterwards. The road signing on the northbound Dartford crossing approaches is being reviewed, as is the movement of different types of vehicle as they approach the crossing, to see what improvements can be made.
Work continues with local authorities on both sides of the crossing to improve traffic flows between the local and strategic road networks, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) is closely involved in those very discussions. That includes joint working by Highways England and Kent County Council on a number of improvement measures for the junctions used by traffic approaching the crossing directly from Dartford. Highways England will continue to monitor the conditions at the crossing to understand how various factors are contributing to its underlying performance. It will also evaluate the impact of the measures implemented, and the public will be kept informed of the findings.
Last but not least, as was announced alongside the preferred route for the lower Thames crossing, we are committed to delivering a £10 million package of measures over the next four years to improve traffic flow at and around the existing Dartford crossing. The roads Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), meets the chief executive of Highways England monthly, and I can assure my hon. Friend that the performance of the existing crossing is kept under regular review.
I heard very clearly my hon. Friend’s suggestions about connected and autonomous vehicles, and I assure him that they are a frequent topic of debate in the Department. We want to ensure that all road projects take account of the future use of technology, and of how that might change road use in particular.
We recognise that there is more to be done at the existing Dartford crossing, and I am sure that Highways England will keep my hon. Friend and neighbouring Members updated on its plans and future actions. I was pleased to hear that representatives of Highways England were able to meet my hon. Friend today, so that they could go through the plans in more detail, and I hope that that engagement will continue and deepen.
I trust that I have reassured my hon. Friend about some key facts. The Government understand the critical role played by the Dartford crossing and the M25 in our strategic road network, but we also understand its local significance for residents on both sides of the estuary, including those in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We take congestion at the Dartford crossing, and in the wider Dartford area, very seriously, which is why we are taking action to improve matters in both the wider strategy network and the Dartford area.
Adam Holloway
I greatly appreciate it.
Honestly, I love my constituents, but if I thought it was right to put the crossing there, I would man up, look them in the eye and say, “I am really sorry, but this is the correct decision.” Under any Government, including a Labour Government, I would say, “This is the right thing to do.” However, it is not about that. It is blindingly obvious to anyone that if we do not fix the M25 at Dartford, we will not fix the problem. What is the Department’s response to the fact that its own figures say that this new crossing will reduce congestion by only 14% at today’s rates, let alone by the time the thing is built? There is a desperate need for a new crossing at Dartford, and the Government will have to come back to it at some point.
Paul Maynard
I recognise the principal point that my hon. Friend is trying to make. The message that I am trying to communicate in return is that there are more ways than one of tackling the problem. I believe that substantial improvements can be made at the Dartford crossing in terms of ensuring its reliability and its stability, to ensure that when incidents do occur the road can be cleared as quickly as possible. I also think, however, that there is a wider strategic justification for the lower Thames crossing, which is why the Government made their announcement back in April.
We have to plan not just for the short term, but for the medium and the long term as well. We must develop the proposals for the lower Thames crossing as part of one of the biggest programmes of investment in the strategic road network in a generation. It supports motorists by investing in our motorways and our major A roads, which will boost economic growth, locally, regionally and nationally. That is why I think that we have made the right decision for the people of Kent, and for the people of Britain as a whole.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Selection of the President of Welsh Tribunals Regulations 2017
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Dominic Raab)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Selection of the President of Welsh Tribunals Regulations 2017.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. Perhaps it will help the Committee if I set out the background to the draft regulations. There are currently seven devolved tribunals under the responsibility of the Welsh Government: the mental health review tribunal for Wales, the special educational needs tribunal for Wales, the agricultural land tribunal for Wales, the adjudication panel for Wales, the residential property tribunal for Wales, the Welsh language tribunal, and a tribunal covering the registered school inspectors appeals panels and the registered nursery education inspectors appeals panels. Forty-one judges are currently appointed to those tribunals, and each tribunal has its own judicial lead, but those judges have limited access to senior judicial leadership within Wales. That is not consistent with the system for other judicial office holders in England and Wales. Sir Wyn Williams, a retired High Court judge, has been undertaking a leadership role on an informal basis but does not have any statutory powers.
To address this inconsistency, part 3 of the Wales Act 2017 created the new post of President of Welsh Tribunals. The president has responsibility for making arrangements for the training, guidance and welfare of Welsh tribunal members and for representing their views to Welsh Ministers and other Members of the National Assembly for Wales. He or she will be able to give practice directions and will be responsible for deploying tribunal members between the Welsh tribunals and between the UK-wide and Welsh tribunals.
The president will also be responsible for establishing and communicating the judicial strategic direction of the Welsh tribunals. In that role, he or she will be able to provide leadership and build effective relationships with the judicial leads of the Welsh tribunals and the Welsh Government’s tribunal unit, the Lord Chief Justice, the Judicial College and Ministers and officials of the Welsh Government on the whole range of policy issues that affect the Welsh tribunals.
Paragraph 2 of schedule 5 to the 2017 Act provides two routes to the appointment of the President of Welsh Tribunals. The first is by agreement between the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chancellor and the Welsh Ministers on the appointment of a person who is, or has been, a judge of the Court of Appeal or the High Court. The second route applies if such agreement cannot be reached. We do not foresee such a situation, but in any event it is catered for by paragraph 2(5), which requires the Lord Chief Justice to make a request to the Judicial Appointments Commission for a person to be selected for appointment to the office of President of Welsh Tribunals.
The procedure for appointment by the Judicial Appointments Commission is set out in the 2017 Act and is similar to the existing arrangements for the appointment of other judicial office holders. It includes a provision that the commission must appoint a selection panel. The members of the panel must include at least two who are non-legally-qualified, at least two judicial members and at least two members of the commission. The Lord Chancellor is also required to make further provision about the process to be applied. The draft regulations make such provision. In particular, they specify that the selection panel should consist of five members, and they make further provision about appointment to it, including the requirement that the chairperson of the panel is a person designated by the Lord Chief Justice who holds, or has held, office as a judge of the Supreme Court, a Lord Justice of Appeal or a High Court judge.
The draft regulations contain detailed provisions about how the other panel members are to be appointed and the necessary qualifications. They also make provision about the consultation during the process, the reporting of the panel’s selection to the Lord Chief Justice, and the Lord Chief Justice’s options when deciding on the selection. For consistency with the relevant primary legislation and the nature of the new office, the appointment process closely reflects that which applies to the selection of the Senior President of Tribunals.
The 2017 Act established the need for the President of Welsh Tribunals and what was required to appoint a judicial office holder. The regulations allow that appointment to be made, and I commend them to the Committee.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I draw the Committee’s attention to my relevant entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—stating that I am a door tenant at Civitas Law in Cardiff—and indicate that I practised law from chambers based in Cardiff as a barrister prior to my election to Parliament.
As the Minister set out, the regulations provide for the process of appointing the President of Welsh Tribunals. In the first instance, there is the procedure by which the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Chancellor and Welsh Ministers agree on a candidate, and although one would ordinarily expect that to be the case, the regulations provide for the appointment of the president when agreement is not reached in those circumstances. The post is created by section 60 of the 2017 Act, part 3 of which sets out the duties that the post holder will have to carry out. Appropriate arrangements are to be made for the training, guidance and welfare of members of tribunals and, importantly, for reporting their views to Welsh Ministers and other Assembly Members.
The Opposition will not oppose the regulations, but we will be holding this Government and Governments across the UK to account on openness and transparency. The appointment of the post holder will further the goal, which I am sure is shared across the House, of creating a more diverse judiciary based on merit in appointment.
The Minister set out the various tribunals that exist in Wales—the Welsh Government inherited some of them in 1999; responsibility for some has since been acquired; and some of them have been newly established. Although there is a growing body of tribunals and members who sit on tribunals in Wales, it is important that the post holder not only enhances judicial independence in Wales, but provides strong judicial leadership for the sector and ensures that its views are heard, all of which should enhance the dispensation of justice for the people of Wales. We will not oppose the regulations.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Scotland Act 2016 (Onshore Petroleum) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2017
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for Climate Change and Industry (Claire Perry)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Scotland Act 2016 (Onshore Petroleum) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2017.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. You and I have heard the term “handbagging” over the years. I apologise for my inadvertent use of the act before our proceedings commenced.
Christmas is coming and it is nice to put on the Santa hat. In opening the debate on the Scotland Act 2016 (Onshore Petroleum) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2017, I hope to deliver something that has been called for by Ministers in the Government north of the border and put in place the powers that will lead to further devolution. This process was recommended by the Smith commission. It was agreed that powers relating to onshore oil and gas licensing, apart from those relating to royalties, would be devolved to Scotland. The Scotland Act 2016 implements the Smith commission agreement by devolving a range of powers to the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government. The Act transfers legislative competence for onshore petroleum to the Scottish Government, with the exception of matters relating to setting and collecting licence rentals. It also includes provisions for Scottish Ministers to exercise powers currently held by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State or the Oil and Gas Authority in relation to onshore licensing in Scotland.
The consequential amendments before us deliver on a recommendation of the Smith commission agreement by complementing the provisions of the Scotland Act, and assist in giving the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Ministers greater control over their onshore oil and gas resources.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree with me, in the Christmas spirit in which she has commenced her speech, that these regulations, along with the many other regulations that have passed through the House, mean that the Scotland Act 2016 results in delivering the vow that was put together as part of the independence referendum?
Claire Perry
The hon. Gentleman makes a very fine point, and of course, in the spirit of Christmas coming early, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was in the Christmas spirit last week, when he brought forward innovative fiscal measures to support UK oil and gas companies, such as the introduction of a transferable tax history. Let no one say that this Government do not believe in the spirit of Christmas.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
My hon. Friend mentions taxation. Has she had a chance to discuss this legislation with the Scottish National party, given that there has been very little legislation on tax under already devolved powers in the Scottish Parliament? Will this be merely gesture politics, or does she believe that the SNP will actually do anything with it?
Claire Perry
My hon. Friend invites me to stray outside the narrow remit of the regulations. Perhaps he would like to consider this as a smoothing amendment that gives the Government north of the border powers, should they wish to exercise them and use them wisely, to take some steps relating to the licensing regime.
The objective is to transfer the existing UK onshore licensing regime as it applies in Scotland to Scottish Ministers. The measure enables them in effect to bring forward the existing licensing regime, but to create a bespoke licensing regime should they wish to do so and should they think that that would benefit people north of the border. Two statutory instruments are needed to implement the relevant powers in the Scotland Act. First, these affirmative regulations make consequential amendments to taxation legislation, as my hon. Friend so astutely anticipated. Secondly, negative regulations will make consequential amendments to the licensing regime.
I am pleased to report, in the spirit of consensus, that my officials have been working closely with the Scottish Government, the Scotland Office, the Oil and Gas Authority and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to prepare the regulations. Once the Scotland Act 2016 provisions are fully in force, the responsibility will be the full responsibility of Scottish Ministers, and they will be responsible for granting the relevant licences.
I come now to the detail of the affirmative regulations. These make minor consequential amendments to taxation legislation to reflect the role of Scottish Ministers as the licensing authority in Scotland, to allow the tax legislation to work as intended in relation to onshore areas in Scotland. As we all know, tax is other people’s money, and we have a fiduciary responsibility to spend it wisely—that was my insertion; it was not in my prepared speech. The regulations provide for the position both before and after the commencement of the Wales Act 2017, which makes equivalent provision for devolution of onshore oil and gas licensing to Wales.
The Smith commission agreed that powers related to the consideration payable for licences, and related matters, such as the keeping of accounts, the measurement of petroleum, and access rights for the purposes of measuring petroleum, will not be devolved to Scotland. That was set out and, I believe, agreed in sections 47 to 49 of the 2016 Act. Taken together with the forthcoming negative regulations, the provisions transfer responsibility from the UK Government to Scottish Ministers, and give them the powers to administer the existing onshore oil and gas licensing regime and, as I said, to create a bespoke one should they wish. With the devolution of onshore petroleum licensing, mineral access rights will also be devolved.
With regard to timing, the affirmative statutory instrument could be laid in Parliament only after the Wales Bill received Royal Assent earlier this year, as it makes amendments that anticipate amendments made by the Wales Act 2017. If the Committee approves these consequential amendments, a negative statutory instrument will follow the affirmative regulations to make consequential amendments to the licensing regime. The transfer of powers that we are discussing today does not constitute a regulatory provision, so we are not required to do a regulatory impact assessment. There has been no specific consultation on these technical amendments, since they are necessary to the effective operation of the provision set out in the Scotland Act 2016, which was of course consulted on separately.
To conclude, the regulations assist the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Ministers in achieving what they would like, which is greater control over their onshore oil and gas resources, complementing the provisions of the Scotland Act 2016. They make minor amendments to the legislation governing taxation to ensure a smooth devolution of powers for onshore oil and gas licensing to Scottish Ministers. They are an important step towards delivering the recommendations of the Smith commission agreement. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I thank the Minister for introducing the draft order. She, and your, Mrs Moon, have set out the title of the statutory instrument so clearly that I do not feel the need to repeat it. For the benefit of the Whips, and those Members with pressing engagements, I shall start by saying that the Labour party does not oppose the statutory instrument.
As set out, the Scotland Act 2016 provides for a range of devolved powers to Scotland. As recommended by the Smith commission, it was agreed that powers related to onshore oil and gas licensing would be devolved to Scotland. That was set out in sections 47 to 49 of the 2016 Act. At the same time, as the Minister has already set out, all aspects of taxation of oil and gas receipts remain reserved. The statutory instrument makes minor amendments to existing tax legislation, such that the wording reflects the new powers over licensing granted to Scottish Ministers through the 2016 Act. I will not go into those amendments now; suffice it to say, they are minor, technical and uncontroversial changes.
The statutory instrument, once it becomes law, will devolve licensing power for petroleum exploration and development to Scottish Ministers. Will the Minister confirm that that includes fracking, in addition to other more conventional forms of drilling? If, as I believe, it does, the statutory instrument means that there will be no fracking in future in Scotland—at least as long as the present devolved SNP Administration remains in place—because the First Minister has said that her Government are opposed to it. Does the Minister agree and appreciate that there will be no fracking in Scotland as a result of the legislation, and does she have any views on the implications for England as a consequence? Specifically, has she had any discussions with companies that are looking to frack in England and Wales and that may have wished to expand their operations to Scotland? That would change the size of the fracking market in the United Kingdom. Those questions aside, I have no opposition to the statutory instrument.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I will be mercifully brief. The Minister mentioned the Christmas spirit in her opening remarks and I think that it has broken out, as people seem to be in the holiday mood when making their contributions.
We welcome the statutory instrument, although its introduction has taken a bit longer than we thought it would. However, I appreciate that the Minister said it was tied in with the progress of the Wales Bill. Clearly, it relates to the Smith commission and that is good. It does not actually marry up with the spirit of Gordon Brown’s vow, because it does not take us as close to federalism as can possibly be within the United Kingdom; that is quite clear. Obviously, tax receipts remain reserved anyway, although perhaps tax receipts are a moot point because, as was stated by the shadow Minister, the current intention is that there will be no fracking in Scotland while the SNP is in Parliament. It is only right that the Scottish Parliament makes that decision, because although it is an SNP Government, obviously Parliament should make the decision. It is right that the Scottish Parliament has these powers and I simply welcome them coming to Scotland.
Claire Perry
I welcome the comments from the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central. In response to her question, yes the statutory instrument does cover the fracking regime. She asked an interesting question about whether the measure changes the size of the market for companies engaged in the fracking industry. I have not had conversations with them, but because there has been a temporary moratorium on the exploration and production of shale gas north of the border, my sense is that this will be expected and will be baked into business plans for companies that are looking to obtain fracking licences.
It is good to hear the support from the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun as well. I suspect that the after-lunch Christmas spirit may not last through the late-night votes in the Lobby tonight, but it was good to start the afternoon in a spirit of consensus. I have no further comments and I commend the draft regulations to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Petition
South Western Railway
Smart Meters Bill (Fifth sitting)
Tuesday 28th November 2017
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Smart Meters Act 2018 View all Smart Meters Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 28 November 2017 - (28 Nov 2017)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Before we continue line-by-line consideration, I have a few preliminary announcements. Please switch your electronic devices to silent. If you wish to take your jacket off, Mr Freer, you may do so. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings. I remind Members that today’s selection list is available in the room and on the Bill’s webpage. It shows how the selected amendments have been grouped together for debate. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same or similar issues. A Member may speak more than once in a single debate. If any Member wishes to press any other amendment or new clause in a group to a vote, they need to let me know. I shall work on the assumption that the Minister wishes the Committee to reach a decision on all Government amendments when we reach them.
Please note that decisions on amendments take place not in the order they are debated, but in the order they appear on the amendment paper. In other words, debate occurs according to the selection list, but decisions are taken when we come to the clause that an amendment affects. Decisions on adding new clauses or making changes to the long title are taken towards the end of proceedings but may be discussed earlier if grouped with other amendments. Finally, I shall use my discretion to decide whether to allow a separate stand part debate on individual clauses and schedules following debate on the relevant amendments. I hope that explanation is helpful.
Clause 1
Smart meters: extension of time for exercise of powers
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 13, in clause 1, page 1, line 21, at end insert—
“(4A) The provisions set out in subsections (2) and (3) do not allow the Secretary of State to remove any licensable activities presently enabled in respect of smart meter communications or other activities.”
This amendment prevents the Secretary of State from using the extension of these powers to remove currently licensable activities.
The amendment is fairly straightforward and relates to a memorandum that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy submitted to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee concerning the arrangements that the Department wishes to make through the Bill. Among other things, it justifies—or attempts to justify—a number of the provisions. I will refer to that memorandum on a number of occasions today.
The memorandum sets out what the Bill is expected to do, what the delegated powers taken in the Bill do, the justification for those delegated powers, whether they should be undertaken by the affirmative or negative procedure, and the effect of those powers on the wider considerations about smart meter roll-out. The amendment addresses the passage of concern in the memorandum relating to clause 1, which is about what powers the Secretary of State will have as a result of the smart meter roll-out extension to 2023. The memorandum states that the power taken in clause 1 also enables the Secretary of State to “remove any licensable activities” added by virtue of the power. It goes on to state that this Government have no intention of using the power in that way, and that at the moment the only licensable activity that could be removed is a revision of a smart meter communication service—the DCC’s service.
I appreciate the Government’s honest intention when they state that they do not intend to “remove any licensable activities”, but although the memorandum suggests that there is only one such activity, that could change over time. Paragraph 19 of the memorandum states that the Secretary of State could remove other existing licensable activities that have licences already agreed, given that they have the power elsewhere to modify licences over and above the DCC’s service. As the Committee has already discussed, that seems a power too far for the Secretary of State.
As Labour members of Committee have already indicated, we do not think for a moment that the present Minister or Secretary of State—both of whom are extremely honourable—would seek to do anything that would go beyond the proper exercise of power regarding the extension of time. However, as the Committee has discussed, we are supposed to be legislating for all circumstances. We are not legislating on the basis of our judgment about the goodness and honourability of present company; we are legislating for all time and all purposes. What we put into law must stand up against all intentions of future Governments of whatever colour.
I suggest that although the memorandum contains a statement about the Government’s intentions on the use of the power to remove licensable activities, the use of such a power is not actually prevented by anything in the Bill. It is therefore prudent to include in the Bill—this is what the amendment would do—a statement that the Secretary of State should not remove any licensable activities, which in theory they could do by virtue of the power. The amendment would clarify what the Secretary of State should not do, as well as what they can do.
Given our duties and responsibilities as legislators, that prudent course of action would ensure that the Bill is as clear as it can be, and that it gives the Government of the day the right powers on the extension of time, but does not enable them to overreach themselves with those powers and undertake activities that the Committee would not want them to do. I would think that everyone in the Committee could agree to putting this provision in the Bill, because it would in no way fetter the Government’s aims for the roll-out; it would simply clarify the framework within which the power can be operated. I think that would help rather than hinder the process, and therefore I commend the amendment to the Committee.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Richard Harrington)
Thank you, Mr Gapes. I wondered whether you were looking for someone else to stand. I thought that perhaps there had been a reshuffle without my being told, or something like that.
Richard Harrington
It is beyond most of our powers, but I am delighted still to be in position to try to resist the amendment—in a civilised way, I hope—and to reassure the hon. Member for Southampton, Test. As ever, I accept fully the nature and tone of his amendment, because he means exactly what he says. I take a similar approach in reading his amendment and trying my best to consider whether it is practical to agree with what he says or whether there is a way I can accept what he says so that he accepts what I am trying to say. I am conscious that hon. Members are itching to make a lot of progress on the Bill, but I will try to answer his points.
I think that the hon. Gentleman would accept, despite the fact that we are trying to do this in different ways, that the Government are trying to protect the interests of energy consumers in this whole programme. The only current licensable activity is the provision of a smart meter roll-out communication service, so the situation is comparatively simple. Like a lot of things in legislation, it is really more complicated than that, but that is what it boils down to. We have done this to ensure that we have a communications and data system that supports secure, reliable and interoperable services for smart meters. The Government would not remove this service without putting in place an alternative. We currently consider that doing so would not be in line with the Secretary of State’s principal objective, for which he or she must use their discretion.
Let me explain the concern from the Government’s point of view. In future, the whole smart meter system will expand and become, we hope, exponentially greater than it is now—not just because everyone will have one, but because it will be able to do so many other things that we all want. I am thinking of operations with apps. Perhaps water meters or other devices in people’s homes could be applied to it. The current licensable activity may then be redundant, because things will have developed beyond that. In such circumstances, it would not be appropriate, or indeed in line with better regulation principles, to leave in place a licensable activity that is not required in the future.
I hope that everyone accepts that the DCC has a fundamental role in driving the smart meter benefits. I do not currently consider that we would exercise the power to remove licensable activities, but I feel that it is necessary for the Secretary of State to keep that, given that principal objective. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will consider our concerns, just as I have tried to consider his, and agree to withdraw the amendment.
Dr Whitehead
I am not quite sure what that meant. I understand that at present, as the memorandum indicates, there is only one licensable activity that could be removed, and that is indeed the DCC service. The Minister rightly puts it to us that it is difficult to conceive of circumstances in which the Government would decide to remove that licensable activity, but that is not what legislation is about. Legislation is not about whether, on the balance of probability and taking all things into account, including the bona fides of the Government, something that one might legislate on should not be legislated on because it is unlikely to happen; legislation is supposed to ensure that, in all circumstances we can think of, those things that we do not want to happen should not happen.
Although I take on board what the Minister has said—I do not doubt for one moment his bona fides—I do not think that he has added anything to the debate this morning, other than to repeat what was in the Department’s memorandum.
Richard Harrington
The hon. Gentleman has been gracious in his comments about me personally, about the Secretary of State and, I hope, about most people who would do the job, but should there one day be an evil Secretary of State who, in the middle of the night, while plotting the destruction of society, realised that they could use this power, which in the scale of things is pretty tiny, how would they use it in so destructive a way that a future Parliament might think, “Oh, I wish we had been stronger in this Bill and that we had the power suggested by the then hon. Gentleman”? I hasten to add that I am not hoping that he will have gone to the great energy supplier in the sky, as we all will at some stage. The serious point is this: were that to happen, what is the bad way in which this power could be used?
Dr Whitehead
A future Secretary of State does not necessarily have to have quite the intents suggested by the Members making non-verbal interventions. I can easily envisage such circumstances. For example, bearing in mind that the present DCC is set up as the subsidiary of a private company—
Dr Whitehead
Indeed. The DCC was established in a deliberate way. In effect, there was an auction to decide who would run the DCC after it was set up and it was put into the realm of Capita, so the established DCC is a subsidiary of that company. However, if a future Government thought that it was a particularly bad idea for the DCC to be a subsidiary of Capita, or any other company, they might decide that it was worth enduring the hiatus in the roll-out in order to recast how the DCC operates. It is not beyond consideration that such a Government might think, “The easiest way to do this is by taking the licensable activities away from the DCC as it stands”—in its present arrangement—“and introducing new licensing arrangements.” Having done that under clause 1, to establish a DCC that would not be a subsidiary of Capita, there might be a different arrangement.
Some Members might think that that Government would be pretty misguided, and possibly fairly reckless, in putting the roll-out in jeopardy. But the fact that I have set out a scenario in which a Government, acting on a reasonable and rational consideration, might do that—whether or not one thinks it is a reasonable thing to do—indicates that one could easily envisage circumstances, contrary to what the Minister says, in which the power accorded by clause 1 could be implemented for purposes that we might not think would be helpful to the roll-out of smart meters but could easily be undertaken. Therefore, although that scenario is not very likely, having a line in the legislation to prevent it from happening seems to me a prudent way to proceed.
Richard Harrington
I do not know whether to thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way or not.
The Chair
I think you are responding to the amendment. It makes it a bit more procedural. You are allowed to speak more than once, and we have not yet got to the summing-up speech from Dr Whitehead.
Richard Harrington
I was going to thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but I will not now. I am grateful that I am not abusing the system, which I was going to.
I think we have to agree to disagree on this point, because I believe that, given the restrictions in the Bill and everything else, it is a minor point. I accept that the hon. Gentleman is not doing it to bring down the Government or anything like that, because opposition is opposition. I respect him not just for his position but, much more than that, for the person he is. If he wishes to press the amendment to a vote, then I understand that I have not persuaded him. If he wishes me to ponder the matter further, or even to meet him and talk about it, I am perfectly prepared to do so. I think it is making a mountain out of a molehill.
He thinks changing the licensable activity is quite an important thing that needs to be brought before Parliament. Any decision to remove a licensable activity would still be subject to parliamentary scrutiny through the affirmative procedure, but it is ultimately a question of what discretion a Secretary of State should have in the consumer’s interest. We could politely agree to disagree on that, but if the hon. Gentleman would like to discuss this further and withdraw his amendment for that purpose, I would respect both things. At the moment, I disagree with him not because we are the Government and he is the Opposition but because I do not see the significance of the points he is making.
Dr Whitehead
This is not a cosmically important thing, and I agree with the Minister that it is unlikely to change the course of the roll-out, but I say gently that that is not necessarily what we are supposed to do in Committee. We are not supposed just to grade the importance of the things in the Bill and then decide to act on them according to their relative importance; we are supposed to examine the Bill line by line and, between us, suggest ways that it can be strengthened so that it is as good as we can make it when it returns on Report and Third Reading. That means that things may be added to the Bill that are not in themselves important but could be regarded, in the context of the work we are supposed to do in Committee, as a result of our discharging our responsibilities properly.
I am in a bit of a dilemma. I agree with the Minister that this is not a really important thing, but I cannot see for the life of me why it cannot be placed in the Bill so that at the end of its passage it is as good as we, between us, can make it and that it contains things that, although they may not be that important, add to its overall strength. I simply have not heard any reason why that cannot be done. I have heard reasons why the amendment is not that important. The Minister might suggest—and he might be right—that if we put it to a vote we would over-emphasise its importance. However, I am—“annoyed” is not quite the right word—a little concerned that something that can be seen as reasonably obvious, if not as significantly strengthening the Bill, regardless of our party positions or of the position we take on the Bill overall, is rejected in this way. For that reason, I seek to divide the Committee.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 4—Conditions of extension of time for exercise of powers—
‘(1) Prior to making any directions during the extended time period provided for in section 1, the Secretary of State shall commission a review which shall consider—
(a) data access and privacy issues arising from the smart meter rollout,
(b) the benefits realised during the smart meter rollout and the scope for greater benefits to be realised,
(c) the effectiveness of the policy framework for future smart metering operations.
(2) The Secretary shall lay the report of the review in subsection (1) before each House of Parliament.’
This new clause requires the Secretary of State to carry out a review of matters relating to the current status of the smart meter rollout.
Richard Harrington
The new clause would make it a condition of primary powers being extended that the Secretary of State carry out a review of smart meter roll-out, and that the review cover the data access and privacy issues, the benefits realised during the roll-out and the scope for greater benefits to be realised, and the effectiveness of the policy framework for future smart metering operations. I will now turn to each area that it is suggested be covered in the review in turn.
In 2012, the Government established a data access and privacy framework to ensure consumers’ interests are protected. This framework applies to domestic consumers and micro-businesses. It seeks to strike a balance so that consumer privacy is protected while enabling the proportionate access to data necessary to deliver energy system-wide benefits. For example, the framework determines the level of access that energy suppliers, networks and authorised third parties can have to energy consumption data. It also establishes the purpose for which data can be collected and the choices that consumers have about that. The central principle is that consumers have control over who can access their detailed energy consumption information, except when it is required for regulated purposes, a good example of which is billing.
The framework was welcomed when it was established, and the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the data protection regulator, commented that it felt the framework offered a good level of control and protection for consumers. We publicly committed to carrying out a review of the framework, and intend to do that in 2018. Subject to the extension of the relevant powers, we will then be able to act quickly if there is any evidence that the framework is not delivering against its objectives.
On the second area, the Government are focused on the delivery of benefits and have regularly updated the cost-benefit analysis for the smart metering programme to reflect the latest available evidence. We are also very keen to ensure that even greater benefits can be achieved than forecast. For example, that is why we published our clean growth strategy and made a commitment in it to undertake further research and to trial approaches to using the data from smart meters to provide tailored post-installation energy efficiency advice on heating—the largest part of domestic energy bills—so that consumers will be able to make further changes to reduce consumption while maintaining comfort levels. That will further increase benefits.
We are looking at innovations that build on the smart metering infrastructure more widely, for example through the use of consumer access devices, which will enable greater home automation. I think that that is critical for the future and know that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will agree—the nirvana is everybody having an app on their phones, knowing exactly what is going on in their house or flat and being able to adjust accordingly their patterns of usage, not just of heating but when they want to put on a washing machine or any other device, to save electricity. In fact, that may be done automatically in the future through algorithms and things. I could not possibly understand how they work, but I know they will transform people’s lives. As we know, the whole smart meter system is to provide the building blocks for that to happen.
In terms of policy framework—the third area that was suggested for review—we have made a public commitment to undertake a post-implementation review of the smart metering programme, drawing on evidence from the roll-out itself and a period after its completion during which smart metering systems will have been operating in steady state. The review will evaluate the overall programme, the realisation of the benefits and the overall effectiveness of the policy and regulatory framework.
Dr Whitehead
There is not too much more to say on clause 1 stand part, inasmuch as we have undertaken a good examination of the clause. We have made a number of suggestions to strengthen it. Although we had a little fall-out just recently, in general the discussion has proceeded in such a way that we are satisfied that the points we have raised have either been taken into account, explained properly, or given rise to some undertakings about how matters might proceed not within the context of the clause, but perhaps administratively in backing up the clause. Therefore we would not want to oppose clause 1 stand part.
New clause 4 has been grouped with the clause 1 stand part debate. That is sort of the wrong way around, because the Minister has given his assurances about new clause 4 before I had the opportunity to say what I wished to have assurances about, but we will let that one pass and proceed as if it was the other way around. Just to explain to the Committee, new clause 4 is drafted very specifically, again, in the context of the memorandum in which the Department set out the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, where the Department states its justification for taking powers in clause 1. It says:
“We consider this extension was necessary so that the Government can remove any barriers to the roll-out of smart meters which emerged and ensure that benefits for consumers are maximised in the continuing operating of smart meters following completion of the roll-out”.
It then states:
“The Government has made public commitments to undertake reviews in the following areas of the smart meter roll-out…data access and privacy to ensure the regulatory framework remains fit for purpose in 2018…benefits realised during the roll-out to assess whether we can do anything to encourage greater benefits in 2019…overall effectiveness of the policy framework post-implementation for future smart metering operations in 2021”.
As hon. Members will observe, that is exactly what has been set out in subsection (1)(a), (b) and (c) of our new clause. The commitments to reviews that the Department has already undertaken in principle for the extended period of the roll-out are transferred to the Bill. The Minister has already mentioned this morning his commitment to undertake an annual review that, I assume, would incorporate these particular concerns and considerations.
Richard Harrington
That is a perfectly fair assumption —that is our intention.
Dr Whitehead
I thank the Minister for that clarification. A commitment to an annual report to be laid before both Houses goes a long way towards satisfying our concerns about whether these particular wider commitments should be placed in the Bill. I thank the Minister for his commitment and will not press new clause 4 to a vote.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
I want briefly to add my voice and that of my party on new clause 4. I know that the Minister will agree that we need continually to reassure consumers that their data are securely and robustly protected in the course of this roll-out. I know that he will agree how important it is to ensure that meters currently installed are always to the highest specification of function and data security.
The Minister will also be concerned—like, I am sure, everybody else in the room—about the evidence that was taken that the smart meter network is being installed before its requirements as an internet-connected energy system have been fully determined. We would expect—I know that the Minister will feel this—that the Minister would do everything in his power to ensure that consumers are best protected amid this roll-out.
I impress on the Minister and remind him of the concerns raised in March 2016 in the Financial Times that GCHQ had intervened in smart meter security, claiming that the agency had discovered glaring loopholes in meter design. As we move forward with these considerations, I want to impress those concerns on the Minister.
Richard Harrington
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments and am very pleased that GCHQ did that, because it shows how it was included in the process of getting to the security stage that we are at today.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Smart meter communication licensee administration orders
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dr Whitehead
We have talked about the extension period; the second part of the Bill is about administration orders. These might be made in the context of the DCC’s failure to operate either because it has gone bankrupt or because its supply of funds dries up or is diluted for any reason and it can no longer continue—it is entirely dependent on the resources it receives from suppliers to operate. A number of clauses in the Bill relate to setting up a procedure to enable the roll-out to continue by recovering the DCC’s procedures, if and when in administration, in such a way that the flow of the roll-out is not interrupted. At this stage of the legislation, therefore, we need to concentrate on whether the things put forward—what can and should be done by Government to make that change while at the same time continuing with the roll-out in the unlikely event of administration—are good enough to ensure the roll-out continues and we achieve the purpose of ensuring a smooth passage.
I want to make two brief points, to which the Minister may want to respond. The first is about provisions in the Bill relating to what are unlikely events that probably will not happen, but conceivably could. It might be prudent to legislate to ensure that we are in a position to do something in the unlikely event of that happening. We had a debate about that recently in this Committee. What we are doing in considering the second part of the legislation is roughly what we were doing in the first part to try and strengthen the Bill. We did not succeed in doing that, but we will not be churlish or childish about that. We will go along with the idea that this is an unlikely event, for which we have to make prudent legislation to ensure that catastrophe does not take place as far as the roll-out is concerned.
The second point is that we are legislating this morning for an event that could occur to an organisation that has been in operation for several years already without this legislation being on the statute book. One might ask, therefore, what was happening in the meantime. Were we operating over a period of time where there was no protection for the smart meter roll-out programme from the possible bankruptcy or administration of the organisation that was essential to the running of the whole operation? That seems to me to be a considerable omission on the Government’s part.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
We seem to have heard a lot in this Bill about these unlikely events that are never going to happen, but for which we have got to take precautions. I remember being told that banks were too big to fail as well. I wonder whether the point my hon. Friend is making is that we have got to a situation where we have a multibillion pound investment in the DCC—all of it coming out of customers’ pockets—and yet there is no protection at this moment if things were to go pear-shaped?
Dr Whitehead
My hon. Friend is right. That is the situation at the moment, and that is what the Bill, very late in the day, seeks to rectify. I am not saying that one should not take part in the rectification of that problem. Clearly it should be rectified, and we need legislation that protects us in those circumstances.
I wonder if, as a gateway into this part of the Bill, the Minister might share some thoughts with the Committee on why this has not happened before and why we have had these circumstances for several years. I appreciate that it was before the DCC went live, which was only relatively recently, but the DCC was set up and a lot of money was put into it. All the various arrangements went through, and it was by no means impossible for that problem to arise to date. I am pleased that we are taking this step, but slightly alarmed that we have not done it previously. Can the Minister shed any light on why that was the case? Did the Government simply forget? Was the legislation so difficult to undertake that it has not been drafted until now, or was it not thought necessary to have this protection prior to the DCC being in its present position? It would be useful to have some guidance on what thinking went on before the legislation appeared.
Richard Harrington
Before making a few brief comments, I will try to answer the two very reasonable questions raised by the hon. Members for Southampton, Test and for Birmingham, Selly Oak.
I will deal with the unlikely event point first. The Government have to try to gauge how unlikely an unlikely event is. I hope the hon. Member for Southampton, Test accepts that it is a question of judgment. We have to draw the line somewhere on the level of unlikeliness, and we drew it on the wrong side of what he thinks is unlikely.
Richard Harrington
Yes, that is very good. I wondered what the hon. Gentleman did his doctoral thesis on, and now I have discovered it.
It is a judgment call. I hope I made it clear in my previous comments that I do not think his amendment is unreasonable, mad or anything like that; it is just that we have to try to make a judgment, and it is on a different side of the line to his.
The question of why we have not done this before is, like many of the hon. Gentleman’s points, very valid. It is one of the first questions I asked officials when considering this. I have been given a note, which I have not read; I will answer from what I think, rather than what I have been told. I asked that very question. I understand that this was consulted on in 2011 by the Department. The official reason—genuinely—is that there is a lot of competition for parliamentary time, and this is the first opportunity we have had to deal with something that is reasonable, but at the highest level of unlikeliness on the unlikely-o-meter, if there were such a thing. There must be an unlikeliness app to gauge the level of unlikeliness.
I personally think this should have been done before. It was probably less important than it is now and going forward, simply because of the scale of use and the containability of unlikeliness. This was the first opportunity I had to introduce the clause on what to do in the event of these unlikely circumstances, and it is important. It is to stop other interested parties putting in administrators. There are always commercial administrators—for example, companies that have not been paid. There is a normal system to do this that still exists, but it does not have the level of control that the Department or Ofgem would have.
This is important. I could spend 10, 15 or 20 minutes of the Committee’s time going through the reasons why it is important, but those reasons will be debated later on in the Bill’s passage. I hope I have answered the points raised to the best of my ability.
Steve McCabe
I do not want to dwell on this, but I am genuinely curious. When the Minister says that the Department consulted on this and decided that there was no need for this sort of protection or safeguard because of parliamentary time, or whatever reason, who did they consult? Presumably not the customers, who would have been the first to say, “Hang on, we don’t like the sound of this.”
Richard Harrington
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment. Those consulted were stakeholders and so on. I would remind the hon. Gentleman and the shadow Minister that the DCC only went live in 2016. I accept that there would have been a point between 2016 and now that would have been ideal. It is not uncommon to have special administrative regimes in this kind of world—this is the first one for this particular administrator—and it seems obvious for Government or the regulator to have powers basically to override the normal administration system. Given the millions of smart meters around, and given in particular the system whereby they are all electronically talking to each other—which we all want—it would have been negligent for the Government to leave this for another four or five years. It is quite reasonable for this to be the first legislative slot since it went live.
Having said that, I accept that there has been no unreasonable comment in the points made by the hon. Gentleman. There is plenty to discuss in this Bill, and everyone would agree that a special administration regime guards against a risk that the licensee might go into normal insolvency proceedings, which is a standard process within the Companies Act 2006 and something that companies do. The reason that this is a level of unlikeliness that makes it really unlikely is that the income side is more or less guaranteed, as we heard in the evidence from the experts. It is prudent, given that these risks could be there, to have safeguards in place. That is what the clause does. These measures all have precedents in other special administration regimes for energy networks and suppliers. The clause is a sensible measure and I commend that this clause stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Objectives of a smart meter communication licensee administration
Steve McCabe
I beg to move amendment 8, in clause 3, page 2, line 34, after “efficiently”, insert “, transparently”.
This amendment would make it an objective of the smart meter communication licensee administration to operate in a way which would allow the general public to be aware of his functions.
It is probably quite fortunate that this debate follows the discussion that just took place, because the purpose of amendment 8 is to make it an objective of the smart meter communication licensee administration to operate in a way that would allow the general public to be aware of its functions.
We are talking about a situation that is clearly about accountability, albeit one that people think is unlikely. This is a situation in which a massive investment goes wrong and the Minister is forced to set up a special administration regime. In those circumstances, it makes sense for people to know what is going on. It is a matter of accountability for the public, who, as I have said a number of times, are paying for this programme through their bills. It is therefore right that if ever a situation arises in which a smart meter communication licensee administration is in place as a result of a failure of the DCC, that administration should operate in a way that is transparent, open and obvious to Members in all parts of the House and, most importantly, obvious and transparent to members of the public.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
How does the hon. Gentleman envisage there being such an event without it being transparent to Members of Parliament and to the public? In what scenario would that be possible?
Steve McCabe
That is a good question, but unless I have misunderstood its wording, the Bill gives the Minister the power to set up this regime but does not impose any requirement to disclose to the wider public, or indeed to someone like the hon. Gentleman, exactly what the Minister is about. That is the very essence of this amendment. Maybe it will help the hon. Gentleman if I give the wider context to why the public needs, at this stage, a transparently operated smart meter communication licensee administration.
The thing we cannot escape, and should not try to, is the huge cost of this programme. It is enormous. In recent correspondence, the Government are on record as saying that the average household is expected to save £11 a year on its energy bills in 2020, rising to £47 by 2030. If I have the figures right, that equates to £300 million off domestic energy bills in 2020, rising to about £1.2 billion by 2030.
The Minister told us earlier that the cost-benefit analysis is regularly updated. I am not sure that is strictly true. It is probably fair to say that the cost-benefit analysis is modified, but to the best of my knowledge there have been two to date. The figures that I am quoting are based on the cost-benefit analysis conducted in 2016, which some of the expert witnesses called into question, as Members will remember. It is possible that the figures were accurate at the time of publication, and the benefits quoted would be welcome, were it not for the fact that the increasing cost of the roll-out falls to the consumer.
If Members recall, Mr Bullen told us that the cost of the smart meter roll-out per household was £13 a year, up from £5 only the year before, when the cost-benefit analysis was conducted. On that basis, the net benefit to the average household lucky enough to have a functioning smart meter that is not in dumb mode is actually minus £2, while those who have not even had a smart meter installed at this stage are paying £13 for the roll-out without deriving any benefit at all. Centrica—the people who own the gas—claimed last week that the costs of subsidising the £11 billion smart meter roll-out programme are just included in their customer bills. They said that, presently, large suppliers see these rising costs as among the main reasons for customer bills going up.
Stephen Kerr
I appreciate the points that the hon. Gentleman is making, but I am not entirely clear how this pertains to his amendment, which concerns an administrative arrangement, should we get into that scenario, which we can hardly envisage, where power companies are failing and so forth. I am not sure I understand the relevance of his comments about those costs to the amendment.
The Chair
Order. I ask for interventions to be brief if possible. Secondly, before the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak responds to that intervention, I am not sure whether this is the appropriate place to have this debate. We will be discussing the cost-benefit analysis issue in later clauses, and this amendment is about the objective of the smart meter communication licensee administration. Please can we try to have a narrowly focused debate about the amendment before us, not a general debate that we can have later?
Steve McCabe
I am grateful for your guidance, Mr Gapes, but I was stressing the point that we would not need to know were it not for the fact that this is going to cost so much. If something that costs so much goes wrong—especially when that cost is borne by the consumer—we should fear a situation in which those who were instrumental in making all the decisions up to that point can be absolved of all responsibility, because the Minister steps in to offer a new regime to protect and safeguard the failed organisation without you, Mr Gapes, or me, or anyone in this room having any idea what happened, what will happen, who will pay for it, and what it will cost. That is the object of the exercise.
I am grateful to you, Mr Gapes, for your guidance about not dwelling too much on the figures, but those figures are considerable and I will certainly seek an opportunity to share some of them with you later in our proceedings, if at all possible. I believe that the public have every right to know those figures, but I am grateful for your guidance on that point.
For the purposes of the amendment, I simply stress that it would be wrong to have a situation where the Minister was forced to take such an action, especially if there is any suggestion that that action could be taken behind closed doors and would not be visible, transparent and available to everyone. It should be open to the kind of scrutiny that I think all members of the Committee would believe essential were an operation of this size to go wrong, land the consumer with an enormous bill and require a special administration intervention.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I rise in support of what I think is a simple and honest amendment that seeks only to underline the need for transparency—that is something we should be stressing throughout the Bill. We could ask whether the words “efficiently” and “economically” really need to be included in the Bill, and of course they do, but likewise we also need the word “transparently”.
If I understood correctly, this process started some years ago and we are now legislating for it. A moment ago it was asked why we are doing this only now. That seems a little incredible to someone who walked into this place a few months ago, but be that as it may, we are where we are. What we are picking up from consumers is not necessarily distrust, but there is some confusion out there. Any means by which we can improve the transparency of the programme and provide clarity for consumer and suppliers is surely vital. I support the amendment.
Dr Whitehead
In supporting this amendment, will hon. Members cast their eyes across clauses 2 and 3 that set up the smart meter communication licensee administration, and the special administrative regime—the SAR? We must emphasise what a special circumstance this is. This would be where the body that had been charged with the whole roll-out of smart meters, which had millions of pounds under its guidance, had gone into administration—for whatever reason. As the Minister points out, traditional methods are available for dealing with a company that has gone into administration.
A special administration regime would, among other things, ensure that the special nature of the DCC and its complete centrality to the roll-out was not subsumed under that traditional method of administration, which might cause damage given what the administrator might decide to do with the company if there were not a regime that was carefully worded and sorted out. The administrator might decide that a number of functions that otherwise would have been carried out by the DCC would not be—indeed, we may debate some of those additional functions later. There would be the whole question of the administration of that company being brushed under the carpet, being put in the hands of the administrator and set aside from the public gaze.
A lot of company administrations take place in circumstances of some opacity—that is, it is difficult to ascertain exactly why the company went into administration, the intentions of the administrator or even where the appointment of the administrator came from. It is difficult to find out what the administrator thinks they are going to do with the company concerned. There are whole series of things that, in terms of general company law, ought to be a little more transparent but generally are not; that is how it works as far as company law is concerned.
However, this is a very different circumstance: the entity is an essential public function as well as a company, which might be placed into administration. It is therefore right that, in clauses 2 and 3, we do more than say that we want to make sure that the administration is in the right hands and that nothing happens with the administration that will cause damage to the passage of the DCC as the organiser of the smart meter roll-out. That is what all the paragraphs in clause 3, and some of those in clause 2, are about. They are concerned with the smooth transfer and running of the system. There is not one word about any light that should be shone on what would have happened to that company previously, and what is the public good of the company subsequently, once it comes out of administration.
Steve McCabe
The Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office and the Energy and Climate Change Committee have all expressed doubts about the operation of the programme, its transparency and the escalating cost. In such circumstances, if the Minister was forced to use the additional powers because of failure, surely it would be a complete dereliction of duty not to make what had happened obvious.
The Chair
Order. Before the shadow Minister responds, I ask Members again to focus their remarks, if possible, specifically on the amendment.
Dr Whitehead
My hon. Friend underlines the importance of putting the word “transparently” somewhere in clause 3. An event may happen that the public would properly be interested in; they may be concerned about what might happen to them as far as administrative processes are concerned or about the effect on their bills of an event that caused substantial additional money to be spent over and above what had already been set aside. We must emphasise that all the costs that have been set out for the smart meter roll-out—be that the cost of the smart meter, the cost of the advertising campaign or the cost of the DCC itself—will, one way or another, be recovered from customers’ bills.
With that in mind, putting in the Bill a requirement for processes to be fully transparent would serve the consumer positively. I support the addition of that single word—“transparently”—to the Bill. I cannot see any downsides to that. It would not in any way impede the process of administration. All the objectives and procedures in clause 3 to ensure that the DCC runs as effectively as possible and protects the roll-out are sound. Inserting the word “transparently” would add to that protection and do nothing to undermine it, so I hope that the Minister will seriously consider doing so.
Richard Harrington
I understand the purpose of the amendment well. On the surface, it seems to be a good thing. Transparency is good anyway, and I will argue that the provision would lead to transparency. It is reasonable to argue that this is an important matter and that we want everyone to know what is going on. We are all here because we are part of a democratic process; I do not think anyone could disagree with that principle.
However, I cannot agree with the hon. Members for Southampton, Test and for Birmingham, Selly Oak because of what the amendment would mean in practice for the administration. Thankfully, none of us have experience of this kind of public, as opposed to commercial, administration—I know that is not quite the technical word—and I accept that. By the way, there will be plenty of legal requirements on the administration, which I will come to in a minute. It is just totally unrealistic for an administrator, given those requirements and all the complexities that it will have to deal with, unlikely though it might be, to spend hours ensuring that the public—I think this is what the amendment would mean—are kept informed of all the administrator’s moves, given that administrators have to meet plenty of requirements. I ask the Committee to bear that in mind; I cannot accept what the hon. Gentlemen said. That is not because we are secretly against transparency or anything like that.
Clive Lewis
It is not so much that the administrator would need to keep the public informed of every step they were taking, but that if the public, MPs or parliamentarians or others were interested, they would have access to the information to ensure that lessons could be learned in the future, if they felt that that was a requirement. Rather than the administrator giving out the information, it would be for the public or others to access the information; they would be able to access it.
Richard Harrington
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I can see that afterwards, but not in the course of an administration, when there are very complex duties for the administrator to learn, be instructed to learn, and so on. I find this proposal quite difficult in practice; I am quite concerned about the effects of it. I am not concerned about the purposes of it, which I think are very noble. Perhaps I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s question in my remarks in a way that is more satisfactory to him; I hope so, anyway. Perhaps it is a victory of hope over logic; I do not know, but we will see.
I confirm for the record that the object in clause 3 is to ensure that the DCC’s functions under its relevant licences are performed efficiently and economically, pending the rescue of the company or transfer of its business. However unlikely that might be, as we know its revenues are guaranteed, we are on the Government’s side, rather than the shadow Minister’s side, of the line on unlikeliness. The intention behind the clause is to ensure the continuity of the smart metering service while minimising the costs incurred. In providing for continuity of services, the benefits of smart meter services are maintained and the costs—financial costs, but also the huge inconvenience that would come from any interruption to smart meter services—are avoided. I do not mean an interruption to the supply of electricity; I am talking about the gauging of how much people are using and, I hope, in the future, more fancy tricks, to allow them to control their costs, supply and everything that we have mentioned before.
Under the Insolvency Act 1986, as modified by this Bill, there is already an obligation for the name of the smart meter communication administrator to be stated on the DCC website; it should also be stated that the affairs, business and property of the company are being managed by that administrator. There are clear provisions setting out the functions of a smart meter communication administrator, including its powers.
As with the energy network operator and energy supplier special administration regimes—the nearest comparable regimes—we would expect the smart meter communication licensee SAR rules to require the smart meter communication administrator to file various documents at Companies House. That would include, for example, a copy of the administrator’s proposals for achieving the objective of the smart meter communication licensee administration, which would contain information about the administration. The administrator has to submit regular progress reports. Once filed at Companies House, those documents would be available to the public and would keep them informed about the administration and its progress in the way that I hope the hon. Member for Norwich South meant in his question.
I hope that hon. Members will recognise that information would already be available to the public and other interested parties through the existing procedures to ensure transparency about the administration. I hope that they will consider the points that I have made, because they are important. This proposal implies that the administration process could be helped dramatically by the public’s having access to information and knowing what is going on all the way through. I think that it is very important that the public experience no interruption whatever and that the administration is carried out quickly and efficiently. We must not forget that the whole reason for the SAR is to reassure consumers and other stakeholders that their smart meter services and the benefits that arise will be protected, and not interrupted in any way.
I state again that the administrator would be under a duty to manage the company efficiently and economically. When companies such as KPMG, PwC and other big companies act as insolvency practitioners, they do so as part of a regulated profession. All normal insolvencies, and not just special administration regimes, are covered by that. I therefore ask the shadow Minister and the hon. Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak and for Warwick and Leamington to consider what I have said and to withdraw this very reasonable amendment. I fully commend the purpose behind the amendment, but I think we are already fulfilling that purpose in this provision and with the existing rules on administration.
Steve McCabe
It is a devastating blow to hear that the Minister cannot bring himself to accept the word “transparent”, but in the circumstances I do not think that we would gain very much by pressing this to a vote. I hope that the Minister will seriously reflect on what has been said, because the circumstances in which he would have to exercise this power would be a massive failure and, almost certainly, a massive loss to the public, and I do not think anyone would be comfortable thinking that there had been any attempt to hush that up or push it to one side. I hope that he will reflect very seriously on why it has been raised. I do not wish such a failure to occur at all, but I am very clear that if it did, I would be one of the first at the front of the queue saying, “What on earth went on here?” I do not think there would be any gain in pushing it, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Dr Whitehead
I beg to move amendment 14, in clause 3, page 3, line 32, at end insert “within the context of the full services offered by the DCC”.
This amendment requires that any regulations about prioritisation of activities following the DCC going into administration would have to take into account the context of the full services offered by the DCC.
The amendment refers to clause 3(6), which enables the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying the activities to be undertaken in a smart meter communication licence under administration, subsequent to the DCC having been placed in that administration. The circumstances set out in subsection (6) are essentially about the extent to which the Secretary of State may say to the administrator, “You are now in the position of administrating this failed company. Because of the arrangements necessary for the roll-out of smart meters, you should make sure that, at the very least, the minimum amount of activities are carried out to enable a smooth roll-out of smart meter services.”
As far as I understand it, the reason for the subsection is that as the DCC evolves it will undertake the initial core services provided in respect of the roll-out, but it may also undertake a number of additional elective services to facilitate the roll-out. It is those additional elective services that the Department mentions in the memorandum it placed in front of the regulatory Committee, stating:
“In the unlikely event that the DCC becomes insolvent, it may be necessary to prioritise certain activities of the DCC…We are not yet in a position to set out the prioritisation of the DCC’s services, so soon after the start of live services…and in advance of the development of elective services. We believe that this will be possible ahead of the completion of the rollout when demand from suppliers for DCC to provide other services could be expected to have materialised.”
The Department then states:
“Once we have determined the prioritisation and how it should be done, we would prepare a statutory instrument that would be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”
I will come to that particular point in a moment.
The point of those particular passages, concerning clause 3(6), is that the Department is not clear what the prioritisation of the DCC services might be under administration, because the Department is not yet clear, so close to the start of live services, what range of services it would face under administration—because those services have not yet fully emerged. The Department would therefore want to determine how the prioritisation should be done, and to prepare a further statutory instrument, which would give form to that prioritisation once that is clear.
That is all very reasonable, except that something does not appear in 3(6) as it stands, or within the policy intent section that the Department has put forward as far as the regulatory Committee is concerned: any provision requiring that the services that the administrated DCC carries out at that point be as close as possible to the full range of services that were there before. It is distinctly possible for the Secretary of State to make regulations that would, for example, remove all elective services that had been developed by the DCC and concentrate just on the core services—the minimum that would enable the roll-out to limp home under the terms of administration.
The amendment seeks to give a context for what the Secretary of State may do by regulation, as far as administration is concerned, and it states that that context should be the full services offered by the DCC. Obviously, those would be the full services offered by the DCC at the point it went into administration, including those elective services which we do not fully know about at the moment. Clearly, if the DCC, prior to its administration, had developed a wider palette of services than the very minimum, it would have done so for particular reasons. I imagine that those reasons would be to assist the roll-out. Therefore, as a desideratum, under the terms of the administration, the DCC should operate post-administration as closely as possible to how it operated prior to administration.
The Secretary of State should consider, under those circumstances, what might be impossible or very difficult to achieve under a process of administration, not a wish for various services to be discontinued or downgraded. Obviously, I imagine that the Secretary of State would want to make sure that the future regulation was indeed as close as possible to what the DCC was doing before it went into administration, but I would suggest that is not entirely the point. It is necessary to put in the Bill a framework for what the Secretary of State may do under regulation, and that should be to have serious regard to the services in place prior to administration and not to be tempted, as it were, to put forward regulations or give instructions subject to regulation that did not produce an outcome post-administration that was as good as it had been pre-administration.
Richard Harrington
As with the last amendment, I perfectly understand this amendment’s purpose: to require that any regulations that the Secretary of State lays down about prioritisation of DCC activities following administration
“would have to take into account the context of the full services offered by the DCC.”
I understand the purpose, but I will do my best in the next few minutes to argue that there would be no effect on the policy. The precise intention of the proposed regulations is to specify the activities carried out by the DCC to which the smart meter communication administrator must give priority, and how that should be done, taking account of the full range of activities that the DCC is carrying out under its licences at that time. That is exactly what we are trying to do; we are just trying to ensure that the functions of the DCC under its licences are performed efficiently and economically, as I said before.
The administrator may face a judgment on which DCC services to prioritise; it is quite normal for an administrator to do that. The most appropriate judgment will depend on the circumstances, but that may not be clear to the administrator on the day that they take over the administration, and there may be a trade-off, as there are in administrations, between prioritising different services.
The clause to which the amendment relates gives the Secretary of State the power to make the regulations specifying which activities carried out by the DCC under its licences must be prioritised by the administrator, and how that should be done. As the smart metering programme develops beyond the foundation stage—the stage we are fundamentally preoccupied with as the purpose of the roll-out—we expect the number of services provided by the licensee to increase. The licensee can, for example, offer bespoke services for suppliers and others, building on the smart metering programme. I know that is what we all want. As part of that, consumers may be able to choose to give third parties permission to access their data, allowing a much wider range of energy-related services to be developed: products, advice, switching suppliers, tariff choices and all that sort of thing.
Smart metering data may also be used, where the consumer so chooses, as part of taking that service—for example, in supporting home energy management services and even for non-energy-related services, such as smart washing machines that do the laundry at different times so it costs less. That is not directly to do with the supply of energy but with the consequences that matter to most people: “How much will it cost and how can I save money?” I suppose it could be used to identify faulty or inefficient appliances, or to support carers, through a service that allows family members to be updated about changes in routine. That sounds futuristic, but there are many interesting things that could come from the programme if we take the big picture for the future.
It might be in the interests of consumers and the wider energy market for the administrator, if that day comes—I do not think it will—to prioritise core services. If we keep smart metering working, the other stuff is all very nice, but for a time it could not be a priority, in order to keep the core system going. I believe it must be the role of Government to guide the administrator in that respect, because of the speed that must be taken into consideration within an administration. The precise aim of the regulations is to provide future flexibility to ensure the full range of activities carried out by the DCC at that point can be taken into account. That prioritisation will support the continuation of services in the overall interests of the public.
I believe the Bill delivers the noble aims of the hon. Gentleman’s amendment. I hope he will consider what I have said and the explanations I have given, and will agree to withdraw the amendment.
Dr Whitehead
In the context of the fact that what is set out in Hansard has some legal bearing, the Minister has this morning set out in terms fairly similar to the amendment the scope of clause 3 and the Government’s intention in regulations made under subsection (6). I do not want to press the amendment. I think it is agreed that we aim to ensure that the DCC’s circumstances prior to administration should be repeated as closely as possible post-administration for the general good of the roll-out. That is what I understood the Minister to say, and I hope he will confirm that.
Richard Harrington
I confirm that what the hon. Gentleman just said is precisely the case. I tried to be as clear as possible, and I am glad that he, like me, respects that things in Hansard are meant to be as they are said. I can clear that one up.
Dr Whitehead
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Dr Whitehead
I beg to move amendment 20, in clause 3, page 3, line 33, leave out subsection (7) and insert—
‘(7) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”
This amendment would apply the affirmative procedure to regulations under Clause 3.
This is the bad bit of clause 3. As stated before, the clause envisages the Minister making regulations to determine which of the DCC’s services should be prioritised to continue after administration. We have already agreed that those services should, in principle, be as close as possible to what they were prior to administration.
The Minister has responsibility under subsections (6) and (7) not only to make provision about how the smart meter communication administrator gives priority to specified activities but to produce a statutory instrument to that effect. It is envisaged that the negative procedure would apply to the statutory instrument. Subsection (7) states that the instrument is
“subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”
That means that the statutory instrument could be prayed against and annulled if a negative resolution is placed before the House. If no one objects to the instrument, it goes through.
I set out in a previous Bill Committee why, in general terms, adopting important regulations by negative means is a bad idea. It is important that the House has proper sight of regulations and a proper opportunity to debate them and decide on them. As I am sure hon. Members know, the negative resolution procedure is a source of considerable dissatisfaction in the House. Under the negative resolution procedure, if we wish to proceed subject to annulment, as the legislation suggests, we have to enter a prayer against the instrument, which is in the form of an early-day motion which suggests that it should be annulled; that it has been noticed, and we do not like it—or at least want to have it debated.
The prayer itself does not stop the passage of the negative resolution in the House. Indeed, there have been occasions when a negative resolution has gone into law and a number of months later it turns out that it is debated in Committee. The time lapse is sometimes because—not to put too fine a point on it—the Whips on the Government side have not conceded that there should be a time-slot available for a debate on that resolution. A prayer is essentially asking, “Please can we have a debate to annul this resolution?”
It is essentially in the gift, in this instance, of the Government Whips, to make time available for that to take place. It is not necessarily going to take place within the period of objection or even within a reasonable period after the objection has been made. So there are circumstances in which, before any light is shed on the negative resolution in the House, that resolution has been in force for quite a period of time. The debate that then takes place in the House is merely an observation on that negative resolution. It is not clear in House procedure whether even a vote for annulment at that point actually annuls that resolution, because it has already been enforced and is in operation.
Negative procedure should be used to place an instrument on the statute book only where the subject is purely technical in content and has no policy implications or wider concerns. In this instance, from the debate we have already had this morning, I suggest that regulations would do rather more than operate in only a very technical set of circumstances. There would be possible policy implications. As the Minister said this morning, Members would want to see that the Government’s intentions for the operation of the DCC had been carried out in regulations and would probably want to have a say on those regulations. An affirmative procedure seems to be absolutely the right way to do that.
I remain generally concerned about the extent to which legislation going through the House seems to allow for such negative resolutions. I am afraid that this looks like another instance of that. It is not necessary for the proper passage of a regulation through the House. What the Government want to do to make sure that the regulations work could be perfectly well achieved by a positive procedure; it would not hold it up, it would simply mean that it had to have some light shone on it and would be properly debated in Committee before it proceeded. For that reason, I suggest that it should be subject to the affirmative procedure, and that is what the amendment seeks to do.
The Chair
I remind Members that we have to finish at exactly 11.25 am this morning, so, if there is to be a Division, it might be preferable to have it before then. However, I am, of course, in your hands.
Richard Harrington
Thank you, Mr Gapes. I am sure Opposition and Government alike will take your warning on a Division. I hope it is not necessary because I hope to explain in the time allowed, as I have done with other amendments—some successfully and some less than successfully.
I can see clearly that this amendment would mean that in the unlikely event of insolvency—we all agree it is unlikely—any regulations that we will need to bring forward about the administrator’s priorities, which we have discussed before, would need to be approved by a resolution of both Houses. I can see the principle behind that, and it is a noble one, but I would argue that because of the speed required and the technical nature of these regulations, it is appropriate to use the negative procedure, which the hon. Member for Southampton, Test does not like.
I made points in the debates on the previous amendments about the choices that the administrator has to make and the speed with which they have to make them. It is considered reasonable—and I know the hon. Gentleman would agree—that the Government should guide the administrator in respect of this. That is why we are asking for these powers, so that the Secretary of State can make regulations specifying which activities carried out by DCC must be prioritised by the administrator and how this should be done. The question boils down to the nature of these provisions, which I argue are technical and therefore suitable for this kind of procedure.
The DCC has core services that provide energy suppliers and others with around 110 service requests. Again, I would ask both Mr Gapes and the Committee to consider the practicality of the affirmative system. This covers a range of areas, for example the provision of pre-payment services, the management of security credentials, changes of supplier events, the technical configuration of devices, access to network—I could go on, there are 110 of them. It would be necessary to review these services and prioritise them against new services, which I have mentioned before and which may be offered.
I argue that the regulations made under clause 2 would be largely administrative and technical in nature, focused on the specifics of implementation and acting to narrow rather than add to policy scope, entirely to protect consumers’ interests. We need to act promptly to achieve this, so that the administrator has appropriate direction. I believe that the procedure proposed will provide Parliament with sufficient oversight for supporting this ambition. I hope, not just because of time constraints but because I think it is the right thing, that the hon. Gentleman will understand our concerns and agree to withdraw his amendment.
Patricia Gibson
I want to speak to this amendment in relation to parliamentary scrutiny. In my party, we would welcome any enhancement of parliamentary scrutiny, but I need to draw the Minister’s attention to a number of concerns, and I am worried about time.
I am speaking about the need for enhanced scrutiny because I do not believe that the amendments allow for sufficient scrutiny, for reasons I will go on to discuss. Energy UK and Ofcom both state that aggressive selling is wrong. I am sure we would all concur with that, but that is little comfort until aggressive selling is properly addressed. That is going on and that is why more and enhanced scrutiny is so important.
It is my understanding that Ofgem has the power to fine energy companies up to 10% of their annual turnover if they fail to meet their licence conditions.
Stephen Kerr
I am a little confused about the hon. Lady’s line of approach because I cannot see the relevance of what she is saying. It no doubt has lots of merit—I do not dispute that—but I cannot see its relevance to the amendment.
Patricia Gibson
I draw attention to these points because the amendment is about enhanced parliamentary scrutiny. I am simply pointing out the need for further enhancement of such scrutiny, and I wonder what the Minister thinks about that—he is looking at me bewildered.
The Chair
Order. I do not want us to go too far from the amendment. The hon. Lady is focusing on the specific amendment, but I hope we do not go too far in interventions.
Patricia Gibson
I am simply pointing out that Ofgem has the power to fine energy companies up to 10% of their annual turnover if they fail to meet their licence conditions. One relevant licence condition is for each energy company to install smart meters in consumers’ homes by the end of 2020, and failure to do so incurs a financial penalty for those energy companies. In respect of parliamentary scrutiny, perhaps that is what gives rise to the aggressive selling about which I and many others are concerned. What does the Minister think about that?
Patricia Gibson
I simply say that there are a number of concerns about how smart meters are being rolled out.
The Chair
Order. Those concerns can be addressed later in the debate. I wish to focus specifically on amendment 20.
Richard Harrington
I am happy to talk to the hon. Lady about her consumer concerns, but I agree with your ruling, Mr Gapes, that what she has said is not relevant to this amendment, which is about technical considerations, and parliamentary scrutiny of those, in the event of the demise of the DCC and a special administration regime being put in. The point is not relevant to the amendment, but it is a valid concern. I am happy to discuss it with her informally, if not formally now.
Dr Whitehead
The Minister has alluded to a particular point about regulations under this clause, which relates to the speed that would be necessary to act under the circumstances of administration. That is a defence of the idea that there should be a negative resolution; presumably, the fact that Parliament at that time did not want to proceed to an annulment would allow things to be done speedily. I understand that, so on that narrow point we will not press the amendment to a vote this afternoon.
I draw the Minister’s attention to our next debate about a similar set of circumstances that concern a negative resolution, and to which that defence cannot be mounted. I hope that he will take his own words from this morning into account when we return this afternoon to debate the relevant clause. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Mike Freer.)
Smart Meters Bill (Sixth sitting)
Tuesday 28th November 2017
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Smart Meters Act 2018 View all Smart Meters Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 28 November 2017 - (28 Nov 2017)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 16, in clause 4, page 4, line 9, at end insert—
“(ba) in paragraph 33(3), for “negative” substitute “affirmative”
This amendment would apply the affirmative procedure to the use of provisions of Schedule 20 of the Energy Act 2004 under this Act.
The amendment, which I alluded to this morning, relates to a further clause in the Bill to allow regulations to be made by the negative procedure, not the affirmative procedure that I think hon. Members would prefer in most circumstances. Clause 4(1) deals with the possibility that, as smart metering develops, the licence holder of the Data Communications Company could be a non-GB company. The clause sets out what would be the conditions of administration of the future DCC in the event that the company that was the ultimate owner was not a UK company; separate arrangements might have to be made for it. In the memorandum from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which I have mentioned previously, the procedure that is set out in the clause is described thus:
“We consider that the negative resolution procedure is justified for providing for what would be detailed modifications narrowly focused on particular provisions of insolvency legislation and their specific application to a non-GB company. Affirmative resolution procedure or new primary legislation is not considered to be appropriate given the nature of the changes.”
No particular reason is given for the fact that affirmative legislation is not considered to be appropriate. A further consideration that is new in this clause—it was not the case with the previous clause that we discussed in relation to affirmative resolution procedures—is that, as the memorandum states at the beginning of the paragraph, legislation on what would happen if the owner was a non-GB company would be undertaken using a Henry VIII power. We have not yet discussed Henry VIII powers in this Committee, although we discussed them in a previous Committee in which the Minister and I were involved. On that occasion it was generally concluded that the use of Henry VIII powers in legislation was a bad idea. As I am sure hon. Members will know, Henry VIII powers essentially allow primary legislation that is on the statute books to be amended by secondary means. As a general principle in this House, one would have thought that enabling the Government to do that—depending on what bounds have been placed on the procedure—is potentially a worrying development. Without recourse to the Floor of the House and a full debate on the legislation, a Government can, if that legislation contains Henry VIII clauses, use secondary legislation to alter what Parliament had previously discussed during the full process of Second Reading, Committee, Report and so on, through both Houses of Parliament. The Government can amend that legislation through a regulation that substitutes for a piece of the primary legislation that was discussed previously by the House. That seems a bad principle of legislation, and if it is to be used, it should be used extremely sparingly and only in emergency circumstances.
This Bill is generally quite benign and innocuous, but surprisingly it contains a Henry VIII power to amend the Insolvency Act 1986 and the Energy Act 2004 and its schedule by secondary legislation. In this instance, the proposal to allow that is not only suggested in terms of providing detailed modifications on particular aspects of the insolvency rate legislation by secondary legislation, but it enables a Henry VIII power to be put through Parliament on the basis of a negative resolution which, as I said this morning, would give Parliament very little scrutiny of the whole process.
This morning we discussed the difficult conditions that might apply if the DCC became insolvent, and the need for speed and urgency might conceivably justify passing such a measure through the House by negative resolution. We cannot, however, really apply those arguments to this clause because this is not something that will need to be done as a matter of urgency. As the memorandum states:
“The earliest the licence is expected to be re-tendered and could potentially be transferred to a non-GB company would be 23 September 2025.”
What we are considering is not exactly an urgent process, and neither is it in parallel with the ideas put forward when we discussed the previous clause. This is a Henry VIII power that proposes to amend primary legislation by means of a negative procedure where no urgency is envisaged—it is as simple as that. In those circumstances, it seems to me, and even given the Minister’s own words, that there can be little justification for taking through these legislative procedures with a negative resolution. That is why the amendment substitutes the word “affirmative” for “negative”. Bad though we think Henry VIII powers are generally, if there is to be such a power, it should at least be passed by affirmative, rather than negative procedure, and I hope that the Committee will accept the amendment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Richard Harrington)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. Henrys were discussed in the Committee that considered the Nuclear Safeguards Bill, including under the illustrious chairmanship of the then Mr McCabe, whom we must now refer to as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. It was interesting to hear contributions from the hon. Gentleman not just about Henry VIII, but about Henry VII, the French king, I seem to recall, who I looked up on Wikipedia that very evening.
Dr Whitehead
I need to put a correction on the record in that case, Mrs Gillan, because I did mention Henry IX, the French king. It was, in fact, Henry IX of Bavaria. I was mistaken at that point, but there was indeed a Henry IX and he lived in Bavaria.
Richard Harrington
I must formally apologise and hope that the Hansard writers are able to expunge the fact that I got the wrong Henry in the wrong country at the wrong time. In no way was it meant as any form of insinuation, implication or anything improper about the historical knowledge, or indeed, any knowledge, that the hon. Gentleman has. I must apologise for any offence caused. If this were outside in the world where one gets sued, I would have to make a donation to the charity of his choice, but I do not think the difference in Henrys is quite the point he was making.
It is a true and interesting point, which is relevant to so much legislation in this place—many things far more politically contentious than what we are discussing here today. Where it is appropriate for Government to have powers that are delegated is a big issue. I know that in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill that is going through at the moment this has become quite a big cause célèbre, and it is one with which I have a lot of sympathy. I will try before you rule me completely out of order, Mrs Gillan, to talk about the specifics of this particular Bill, which, by powers of the Henrys, is quite limited in the powers it asks for.
The powers we need are of two types: first, as the hon. Gentleman gracefully and properly conceded, in some cases there is the need for urgency; a Secretary of State of whichever political complexion may need to be able to act quickly. Secondly, there is the question of the general type of statutory instruments, which are dealt with in the affirmative or negative way.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
Is there any precedent for using negative resolutions in relation to non-UK companies that have been awarded licences in any facet of our economy?
Richard Harrington
I cannot tell him about companies generally, but I know within energy, which is my field, that there are precedents within the Energy Act 2004. My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green next to me has told me the actual point—in fact he has not, he has told me exactly what I have just said. I was trying to be clever and remember the clauses, but I know it was the Energy Act 2011, which set up other special administrative regimes. This is a common system for SARs. There is ample precedent for that and it would seem very strange, for no particular reason, to give this special administrative regime a different rule to others. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take that point into consideration.
The SAR has largely been formulated with GB-registered companies in mind, since a GB company is the current Smart Meter Communications Licence holder; that is true. However, there is a possibility that at some point in the future the licence holder could be a non-British company. He is right to say that the earliest the licence is expected to be re-tendered is September 2025. I know that delegated legislation moves slowly, but I accept his point that this is not a speed matter. I could not even try to argue in front of him or yourself, Mrs Gillan, that this was the case.
Although a number of adaptations to the special administration regime catering for non-GB companies have already been made by the Energy Act 2004 applied by this Bill, we may find that further modifications are needed to account for a non-British company becoming active in the provision of smart meter communications services.
Dr Whitehead
The Minister tried quite hard, but did not actually say anything new, other than what is already on the delegated legislation memorandum that I myself read out to the Committee. That was essentially the Minister’s defence of the procedure he is seeking to introduce.
I might have anticipated some other, particular reason—in addition to it not being urgent—for putting this forward as a negative resolution. There apparently is not one, other than that it is fairly narrowly drawn and relates to the Insolvency Act 1986, but nevertheless it amends the Insolvency Act 1986 by secondary legislation and negative procedure. That is the point that I was making: it is not the narrowness of it but the procedure by which the legislation is amended. This is an important principle for legislation in general, and I am therefore afraid that I do not think we can withdraw the amendment this afternoon. We would like to see this an affirmative procedure. In the absence of any good ideas that might arise in the next few minutes—a bit like the EU negotiations on the border—we may have to divide the Committee on this.
Richard Harrington
I hope the hon. Gentleman knows that I do try to accommodate wherever I can. To disagree with the argument I have put forward—which is “the other ones are like that”—would be basically to say that the other ones are wrong. I cannot see any rationale—perhaps the hon. Gentleman will enlighten me—why one should be different from the other energy one. To me that is the important point; to him, I do not think that it is.
I would ask him to reconsider. If it is really important to him, rather than put it to a vote—which he is welcome to—he could sit down and discuss it with me before Report, when he would still have the option to do what he wanted. I am very happy to do that, but it seems to me to be an administrative matter and, to him, it does seem to be a point of principle. It if is a point of principle, I cannot really accommodate him because I have to show the precedents, but there may be other things we could explore. If that were a suitable option, I would be very happy to do it.
Dr Whitehead
I am afraid that we must press the point.
The fact that there is some bad legislation on the statute book does not mean there should automatically be more. I am afraid that that does not take us much further forward.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Richard Harrington
I have discussed the clause extensively and will not repeat my points other than to say that the powers are absolutely necessary. Hundreds of pages of things, such as quorums of meetings, have to be dealt with in this way. We propose to extend the application of the existing power, for which there is plenty of precedent, in relation to the energy supply company special administration regime.
Dr Whitehead
There is a new clause that refers effectively to what we are considering here, but I am happy for it to be discussed separately, even though it has a substantial bearing on whether a non-GB company might be a successor to the DCC. As far as this stand part debate is concerned, I have no further comments other than that I will save my fire for later when we discuss the new clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Modifications of particular or standard conditions
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 10, in clause 6, page 5, line 20, at end insert—
“(aa) the public; and”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult the public before making a modification to particular or standard conditions of gas or electricity licences when these powers are being used in connection with the smart meter communication licensee administration provisions.
No doubt you have observed, Mrs Gillan, as will have members of the Committee, that there are some similarities between this amendment and amendment 8 to clause 3, which we discussed earlier. They are part of the effort I have been making to ensure that the public have a slightly bigger voice in what happens in the programme, particularly in the event of something going wrong with it. I mentioned earlier the number of groups and organisations that have expressed anxiety, and these include the Public Accounts Committee, the National Audit Office and the Energy and Climate Change Committee. I was particularly struck to see that Centrica itself had reached the stage where it thought the cost of the programme should be met from general taxation, rather than a charge on the customer. That led me to wonder.
As I hope I have indicated throughout, I do not hold the Minister responsible because I appreciate that he was bequeathed the current state of affairs by his predecessor—but I wonder if the Minister believes that, if this were a Treasury programme, it would have been allowed to continue in its present form for this length of time, with the escalating cost. I would be very curious to hear his response —if possible; I am not trying to put him in a difficult position. The Minister did tell us earlier about one of the first questions he asked when he arrived in the Department and he went on to explain that he had some doubts about the information he was being given. I am really curious to know what he felt when he first encountered the programme and whether he was confident that all was well with it, because it seems to me that there are grounds for some doubt. I want to refer to the cost-benefit analysis, on the basis that the 2016 analysis was significantly revised downwards. We have never had an explanation for exactly why that was the case. It is probably reasonable to guess that it is partly about the delay in the roll-out, but the way things are going at the moment, with delays in the roll-out and escalating costs, we could end up in a situation where the benefit for the customer turns into a big fat negative. It seems to me that it would be a bit remiss of us not to pay some attention to that.
I do not know if I have got this wrong, but it looks to me as if, every way we turn, there is only one person footing the bill for any aspect of the programme. The Minister tells us that the energy suppliers can be fined if they do not achieve the roll-out, but presumably that means another cost that gets passed on to the customer. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether he envisages any protections to ensure that, were he to use his powers to fine the supplier for failing to comply with the roll-out deadline, that would simply not be, in effect, yet another charge imposed on the customer. Certainly, as a customer and as someone who represents lots of constituents who are customers, I would like to know if that is the case and if that is what I am being asked to support today. It would be reasonable to know. As far as I understand it, the power to fine is up to 10% of turnover. Perhaps the Minister can give us some clue as to what that works out at per customer—funnily enough, I would expect that it is quite a tidy sum of money.
In the past, the Government have said that they would intervene to make sure the benefits of the roll-out were realised, if they believed the costs were being passed on to the customers to an unacceptable extent. In the context of the amendment, is the Minister happy that the current escalation in the costs is acceptable? At what point does he think his Department might be moved to intervene?
We are repeatedly asked to recognise that the DCC is unlikely to fail and that everything we are being asked to undertake here is simply on the basis of extra protection in the event of failure, but what I am saying is—
The Chair
Mr McCabe, I am loth to interrupt you when you are in full flow, but the cost-benefit analysis is in new clause 11, which is going to be debated later. The focus of your speech should be on the text of this amendment. I do not mean to cut you off in full flow, but I think you understand what I mean.
Steve McCabe
Perish the thought that you would cut me off in full flow, Mrs Gillan. I was about to conclude by saying that the reason why I have laboured the point about the cost is that that seems to be the essential public interest. The programme has been designed so that the last people to have any say in what happens are the public, who are picking up the tab. The point of the amendment is to give the Minister an opportunity to redress what I assume was an oversight; I cannot think of any other reasonable explanation why the very people who are supposed to be at the centre of the programme have absolutely no say, and are not consulted—or considered, it would appear—in any way at any stage of the process.
The Chair
Just to reassure you, Mr McCabe, you will have the opportunity to visit this point briefly when we discuss new clause 11. I think you will find that a good place for it.
Richard Harrington
Many of the points made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak had to do with the general costs passed on to customers in the electricity market, a small part of which involve the smart meters that we are discussing. The justification for smart meters, as far as I am concerned, is ultimately to give customers a control over their electricity bills that they do not have now. Now they have one choice, which is to move. It is a good choice, and one that I have exercised myself, but compared with what they will get out of smart meters, it is crude.
I am not making light of the costs charged—this amendment is not about the general costs—but I hope that they will be small fry compared with the huge savings that they will create over the years, although the costs of installation have unquestionably gone up; I will not pretend that they have not.
I will try to deal with the amendment generally. I made a note of the hon. Gentleman’s questions while he was speaking, as you would expect me to do, Mrs Gillan. He asked about the fines that can be levied. I point out that the fines are levied by Ofgem rather than by the Department via the Secretary of State. By the way, I was most impressed and surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman quote Centrica and its complaints as an example to all of us. Apparently, it did not want to bear the costs of smart meters or charge its customers for them; it wanted to pass them on to the general taxpayer.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
The Minister’s defence is that lots of the powers rest with the regulator, Ofgem. However, the explanatory notes say that the Energy Act 2008 and later Acts have given the Secretary of State powers to veto any proposals by Ofgem to consent to a number of things, including the transfer of the DCC licence, which we discussed earlier. He already has extensive reserved powers.
Richard Harrington
To continue with the comments of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak: if British Gas was fined 10% of its turnover, in theory that would be passed on to its consumers. In practice, of course, that would make it so uncompetitive that all its consumers would move somewhere else. The purpose of these measures is not the fines; it is all the things that happen before the fines to make suppliers comply.
Technically, the hon. Gentleman’s point is correct: in theory, all costs go on to consumers, just as in general Government finances all Government expenditure goes on to the taxpayer. I do not think the point is that relevant, but I cannot disagree with what he said other than to say that the fines are not a tool for compliance; they are the ultimate response.
It is true that Ofgem administers the programme and the legal requirements are on it to take all reasonable steps to ensure that households and small businesses have smart meters. The fine is for Ofgem to decide. I remind the hon. Gentleman, before I move to the substance of the amendment, that we have to consider the net benefits as well as the costs. Every single consumer who has a smart meter is making savings on their bill from day one, so experience shows. The real prizes are for the future: the information the meter gives and the change in behavioural habits that happens surely make this worthwhile.
It is not appropriate or feasible to change the policy to move the cost on to the general taxpayer, but it is for us to monitor the situation carefully. With volume, the cost will go down. Compared with many other costs in the generation and supply of gas and electricity, the smart meter bill is quite small given the price of the physical SMETS 2 meter, which, as we have discussed in previous sessions of the Committee, is lower than the SMETS 1 meter’s, and given the cost of the installation and administration that goes with it, which is the same for SMETS 1 and SMETS 2.
I return to the specifics of the amendment. The Bill allows us to reclaim the administration costs that effectively come from the end user via the companies—that is true. It allows the Secretary of State to make such modifications to the licence conditions, where he considers it appropriate to do so, in connection with the special administration regime. The key point is that the clause requires the Secretary of State to consult affected licensees and such other persons as he considers appropriate prior to making modifications to licences. The licence modifications envisaged under this power have been drafted and a version has already been made available along with the explanatory notes to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and to the public via the parliament.uk website.
The licence conditions try to allow the administration costs to be recouped from the industry insofar as there is a shortfall in the property available for meeting the costs. I accept that, in any business, recouping something from the industry involves recouping it from the customer in the end, which is the point I conceded to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. In the crudest sense, that is true of purchasing anything: the cost of the manufacturer, importer or distributor in any form of good or service is met in the end price. That is bad unless consumers have the choice and the ability to easily switch to a supplier that does not have that incumbence, as is the case here.
I have always envisaged that when we formally consult on those modifications in due course, the consultation will be published. If it is helpful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, I am happy to provide him and everyone else with an undertaking that the consultation will be publicly available and addressed to the public, as well as to the other consultees involved. On the basis of that undertaking, I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.
Steve McCabe
The Minister made a very helpful offer at the end. He says that every single consumer is making a saving, but I repeat that that is not true if the smart meter is in dumb mode. People are not making a saving in those circumstances.
Stephen Kerr
The consumer with a dumb meter may very possibly make a saving; I give myself as an exhibit. I changed suppliers. My meter is no longer smart—I grant the hon. Gentleman that—but I have made a saving, because I had a smart meter in the first place.
Steve McCabe
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his wisdom and semantics. Clearly, in those circumstances, the saving he is making is not to do with the smart meter, but with his judgment in switching supplier—that is the saving he has made.
Stephen Kerr
It is because I had a smart meter that I was able to make the saving in the first place.
Steve McCabe
As I do not live anywhere near Stirling, I concede that up there, the canny wisdom of the inhabitants is such that they almost certainly have found a way of screwing the best possible deal out of the system. Unfortunately, as somebody who represents the humble folk of Selly Oak, I encounter the people who do not do quite as well out of the programme—hence my desire to represent their interests.
The essence of the amendment is to try to shed light and ensure that the public have a greater understanding of what is going on. I feel that that is absent. If the Minister says that he is going to share the information, that is good enough for me. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Steve McCabe
I beg to move amendment 11, in clause 6, page 6, line 22, at end insert—
‘(15) Prior to making modifications under this section the Secretary of State shall commission an independent evaluation on the potential impact the modifications available to the Secretary of State to secure funding of smcl administration could have on consumer energy prices and shall lay the report of the evaluation before each House of Parliament.”
This amendment would require that, before considering modifications to ensure funding of smcl administration, the Secretary of State must seek independent evaluation of the impact such modifications would have on consumer energy prices.
Steve McCabe
Thank you, Mrs Gillan. [Interruption.] If I could find my notes, I would be doing absolutely fine; I will have to call on the assistance of the hon. Member for Stirling at any second now.
The Chair
I am sure that the Committee will be perfectly happy to allow you to hunt for the correct notes. I think we have all been there, but there is only so much time.
Steve McCabe
The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that any potential modifications are subject to an independent valuation. The reason why I ask the Committee to consider this is relatively simple. The Committee will recall that the Minister told us earlier in the proceedings that he thought some people—may be even some Members—were a little cynical about the DCC. I am not sure that people are necessarily cynical, but I think it is important for a programme in which there are already seven or eight world-first technological developments, including device level interoperability and a separate communication system, to highlight some of the substantial commercial and operational costs in play.
I am sure that the Minister has been doing his homework and I hope that he can provide a bit of insight to the Committee into what he foresees as the risks and difficulties in the months ahead. When I was pursuing the issue of meter asset providers in an earlier sitting, I think the Minister said—I wrote it down at the time—that he regarded the role that these people were playing as “a failure”, but he thought it was a technical failure that he hoped would be changed within months by the technical interoperability changes that he was planning.
I am not sure that I believe that is absolutely accurate. It seems to me that MAPs are an issue affecting not only SMETS 1 meters but the roll-out of SMETS 2. The danger relates to the deemed rental—the charge that the MAP people make to the supplier for the first arrangement. When someone makes the smart move, like the hon. Member for Stirling, to somewhere else, the owner—the MAP—may then say, “We are going to change the basis of rental,” and the deemed rental costs will go up.
Dr Whitehead
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak made a very good case for this amendment, to which I want to add only the question of what is happening throughout the roll-out process. My point relates to the cost of the process and the cost-benefit analysis. There will be a better opportunity in discussing a later clause to go into that in greater depth. For the purposes of this particular amendment, the act of funding an administration without knowing the amount involved, which will inevitably go on to customers’ bills, could result in a further deterioration of the cost-benefit arrangements in the context of the process as a whole.
We see already a number of areas in the August 2016 cost-benefit analysis. Page 15 of that analysis sets out how a whole series of areas reduced their net present value by substantial amounts, sliding away from the previously positive cost-benefit finding, with an overall reduction in net present value of some £500 million.
We may well be in for further considerations as more cost-benefit issues arise, and as the programme unfolds we could be in the position of considering the statements made about the benefits to the public of smart meters overall. Let us not forget that the initial cost-benefit analyses looked very rosy compared with the programme’s predicted cost. One could argue that although there may be higher consumer bills to cover the programme’s implementation, the benefits to the customer, consumers and the country as a whole would be considerable.
I will quote from an academic paper entitled “Vulnerability and resistance in the United Kingdom smart meter transition”: the authors describe the expected combined total cost of the programme as being “at least £11 billion”, or more than £200 per household. It adds:
“Even the marketing campaign inspires awe, with £100 million committed over a five-year duration of the program, convincing Barnett”—
an academic authority—
“to estimate that it is the biggest advertising campaign in the world in the ‘next five years.’”
All these costs will go on customers’ bills, one way or another, and will be subject to that cost-benefit analysis as it comes through. In the event that administration is required of the DCC, it seems essential for us to know the impact of that administration on total bills to the public, and the impact on the net benefit. There might be circumstances in which the DCC goes into administration, is rescued in the manner suggested in the Bill, is put forward on a different basis and ends up being a net cost benefit to the public. But, apparently, we do not know the likely cost in such circumstances or what the benefit might be, and we do not have any mechanism for appraising that against what else is in the cost-benefit analysis.
The purpose of the amendment, admirably crafted by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, is to do just that. It would not stop the Minister from doing anything in particular; it is simply saying, “Have a good mind to that overall cost-benefit situation. Make sure you are clear about the costs and benefits of that process. Make sure that that gets reported and sees the light of day as far as the public are concerned.” That seems to me to be a sensible coda to put in the process that does not in any way put a brake on it. I think the whole Committee could support the amendment.
Richard Harrington
I thank the hon. Members for Southampton, Test and for Birmingham, Selly Oak for their contributions. Clause 6 grants the Secretary of State the power to make modifications to licensing conditions when he or she considers it appropriate to do so in connection with the special administration regime for the smart meter communication licensee.
The licence modifications envisaged under the power are already drafted and publicly available. They allow the costs of administration—however unlikely we agree such an event to be—to be recouped from the industry where there is a shortfall in the assets it gets back to meet the costs. As the hon. Members for Southampton, Test and for Birmingham, Selly Oak have said, it is hard—indeed, almost impossible—to estimate the cost of administration up front, and I fully accept their point that there cannot be a blind process or an open cheque; a firm of accountants should not be able to do what they want, when they want, and then charge for it.
One reads about insolvency operations in the press and sometimes one gets the impression that the costs of the administration are more than the insolvency achieves. However, I think that is very unlikely in this case, simply because of the guaranteed revenue stream and all the things we have been through before. The point made in moving the amendment is right: we should try to understand what the costs would be.
It has been estimated that the DCC has cost billions, and that is basically everything aggregated over the period. To put the issue in perspective, it projects its annual costs to be £67 million in 2019-20. Obviously, a significant part of the administration costs would pay the ongoing costs while the business is kept going to get more revenue and find a buyer. Those are already planned for; they are not new costs. In layman’s terms, new costs would be the fees for accountants and lawyers to deal with the actual physical administration itself. Those new costs are not to do with the actual running of the business, and I believe them to be limited. On the issue of scale, I cannot see the administration costs being disproportionate to the annual costs or the huge amount of set-ups.
The key point of the amendment is that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak and the shadow Minister feel that we should try to estimate the costs and that a lot more knowledge is needed and should be made available to the public. When the Government come to formally consult on the modifications, which they will in due course, the consultation document will provide an assessment of the potential scale of the cost that might need to be recouped from the industry. That can only be an estimate, because no one knows the exact figures, but there must be comparables. I suspect that the accountancy firms and other relevant parties, such as a regulator, will put in their estimates. I am very happy to provide that assessment in the consultation document. The responses that come in should be very helpful.
On the scale of cost, the assessment will need to take a variety of factors into account. Part of that is the running costs of the licensee and an estimate of the special administration cost. We will take advice from relevant parties—including the independent regulator, Ofgem—when providing the estimate of the potential cost. I undertake that the consultation on the licence modifications will be published and that we will invite comments from energy consumers as well as other representative bodies. One of the questions that we will expressly ask is whether the consultees agree with the assessment that we are laying out in the consultation. I undertake that, prior to the licence modifications being made, I am happy to make available to both Houses of Parliament the Government’s response to the consultation, which will report on the conclusions on the estimated potential scale of costs.
Having considered those points, I hope that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak will withdraw the amendment.
Steve McCabe
Again, the Minister has been quite helpful. We need to remember that we are talking about a circumstance where there has been a catastrophic economic failure of the DCC. That is why the Minister would be in that position. It would inevitably be—in part, at least—because of doubts about the system, resulting in escalating costs. It would be against a background of an ongoing dispute about SMETS 1 and SMETS 2 meters and the whole question of interoperability, and it would of course then feed into the question whether the meter asset providers were also adding to the cost because of the new role in which they found themselves. That is why we would be in that situation.
In such a situation, I certainly would not want to be the Minister putting my name to something without having some reasonable evaluation of what exactly had happened; how much the cost was likely to escalate; and whether or not this thing was turning into a white elephant. It seems to me that it would be pretty necessary to do that.
If the Minister is confident that the information he will glean from the consultation and that he will make public will be enough to provide him and his colleagues with the cover they might require if they ever find themselves in that situation, I am happy to accept his judgment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Modifications under the Enterprise Act 2002
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Dr Whitehead
We are overrun with Henrys again this afternoon: there are more Henrys in clause 8. I have not tabled an amendment because the question of amendments to Henry VIII clauses has been tested, but the Committee should be aware that clauses 8 and 9 are substantial Henry VIII clauses. Both seek to make regulations by negative procedure. The clause to which I drew attention earlier is therefore not an accident; it is part of a theme that runs right through this Bill and that theme ought to be looked at.
We could have a debate about the justification for the procedure in clauses 8 and 9. Frankly, I think they have been written to make the Government’s life easier. That is not a sufficient reason to justify the enactment of legislation. I hope that I can recruit the Minister on future occasions for what I might call a crusade—
Dr Whitehead
Different Henrys. I hope to recruit the Minister to drive such arrangements as far as possible out of our legislative procedure. I appreciate that there are circumstances in which they are necessary, but they do not apply to clauses 8 and 9. I want to register my concern about what is in the Bill, but I will not take the matter further at this stage.
Richard Harrington
I have carefully noted the shadow Minister’s comments. I would call this a minor piece of Henrying—not a Henrietta but a Henryette. I think we disagree on the scale. The powers are very limited and very necessary. I accept the good spirit in which the shadow Minister made his comments, but the powers are necessary for the reasons I have already given. We disagree, but I thank him for his good grace and his acceptance that I have made the arguments before, albeit unsuccessfully as far as he is concerned.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 9 and 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11
Short title, commencement and extent
Richard Harrington
I beg to move amendment 17, in clause 11, page 9, line 19, at end insert—
“(2A) Sections (Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information) to (Date from which modifications of electricity licence conditions may have effect) come into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by regulations appoint.
(2B) Regulations under subsection (2A) are to be made by statutory instrument.”
This amendment gives the Secretary of State power to bring NC8 to NC10 into force by regulations.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government new clause 8—Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information.
Government new clause 9—Modification under section (Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information).
Government new clause 10—Date from which modifications of electricity licence conditions may have effect.
Government amendments 18 and 19.
Richard Harrington
I find myself in the rare position, in any Committee, of moving an amendment. I usually spend my time responding to amendments, but I shall do my best because these amendments and new clauses are important. They refer to half-hourly settlement.
Before I set out the detail of each new clause, I will, if I may, set out the broader context in which the proposals apply. Smart meters, as we have explained throughout the Committee stage, are a critical foundation for the development of a smart energy system, and provision of the relevant functionality is a core part of our programme. I explained on Second Reading, and have done so again since, my and the Government’s vision, which I think is commonly held: in time to come, when we consider history, the current roll-out of smart meters will be seen as a small part of that programme, providing individuals in their homes and small businesses with more flexibility and information. Everyone will accept that, in the modern age, the old-fashioned system of meters, which were predominantly read by estimation, with the gas or electricity man—they were men in those days—coming occasionally with their brown overalls and torch to do a reading, is totally unacceptable. Most people I speak to still have that system at home, despite the fact that everything else they have—their televisions and computers and so on—is of a completely different era.
Half-hourly billing will provide the platform for that kind of flexibility. I would not argue that people will suddenly wake up and think, “I’m going to change my electricity and gas all the time by pressing a button”, but I do foresee situations in which people will have that kind of flexibility, through their phones, and where they will subscribe to sophisticated services continually whizzing around the whole of the UK and beyond to find the cheapest point of any particular time of supply. That will allow people to choose when their appliances are switched on or off, when they are used, and whether they are necessary.
Under previous clauses we have talked a lot about the costs of smart meters and the administration—the DCC—which is basically the big software interface, but let us not forget that the idea is to reduce system costs by what I hope will be tens of billions of pounds by 2050. The Government’s smart systems and flexibility plan, published in July 2017, set out a number of actions that will build on the smart meter roll-out and deliver a smarter energy system for consumers. That includes the half-hourly settlement, which will help deliver benefits to both consumers and the energy system, by providing commercial incentives on the suppliers to develop and offer time-of-use tariffs, which they have not really had to face before.
As I have explained, such tariffs enable customers to choose, when energy is cheaper, to reduce their bills and the costs of the future energy system. That will help make the energy system more resilient, because as we move towards an increasingly low-carbon generation mix, people will want to make more of those kinds of choices. Smaller suppliers—I should not mention my supplier by name, but I am sure many of them do this—already enable people to tick a box electronically in order to choose to receive energy from a particular renewable source. That is a tiny part of the total array of options available to people, as is half-hourly billing.
Ofgem has already delivered changes to provide more cost-effective settlement arrangements for suppliers that want to offer those tariffs, but that is only the first step. We believe that moving to market-wide half-hourly settlements will help deliver the full benefits of the smart meter roll-out. A market-wide approach will also ensure that any necessary consumer protection can be implemented effectively.
Steve McCabe
This is a genuine inquiry born out of curiosity. The Minister is making a perfectly reasonable case. Why has the amendment been tabled at this stage, and why on earth did we not hear anything about the issue on Second Reading? The Minister is making a very good case—I am not disputing that—but it sounds like an afterthought. Could he explain how we have got into this position?
The Chair
Before the Minister responds to the intervention, I have had a request from members of the Committee to allow the gentlemen to remove their jackets if they so wish, and I am minded to allow that. If you wish to remove your jackets, please feel free to do so.
Richard Harrington
Although it is in your power to decide on the jacket rule, Mrs Gillan, I personally think that people should keep their jackets on. That is probably why I will never be Chairman of a Committee.
The Chair
I am sure you would not want to make any Member who wishes to remove their jacket uncomfortable.
Richard Harrington
Certainly, the next time I appear before Mr McCabe in his capacity as Chairman, I hope that he will not be as liberal as you on the dress codes.
Richard Harrington
The hon. Gentleman asked a valid and important question, and I thank him for his preliminary support. He asked why this Government amendment was not included in the first place. I take full responsibility for that. The original intention was that it should be a separate piece of legislation, but I took my chance with this Bill. As those who were involved on Second Reading will know—I think that most members of the Committee were present—it came very quickly. I took my chance in that slot and I thank everybody for voting in support of Second Reading, which is why we are here today, and I also took my chance to table this amendment.
The issue went through pre-legislative scrutiny in 2016, I think—the exact date is in my notes—and I hope that it is non-contentious. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that the clumsiness of its being a Government amendment—I think that is what he was referring to—is not because of any tricks or because we are trying to hide anything. I took my chance. It seemed like the right thing to do and it seemed non-contentious. Given what is going on in both Houses of Parliament at the moment—there is a lot of legislation to do with Brexit—I thought, rather than hope to get another slot, it would be better to take my chances.
I apologise that the process has not been as seamless as it should have been, but the hon. Gentleman asked me a straight question and I have tried my best to give him a straight answer. I will probably be told off by quite a lot of people for putting it like that, but that is exactly how it is. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will accept that explanation in good faith, because this is a really good thing to do.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
The Minister has given some accounts of why these clauses are being introduced at this stage. Has he consulted the energy companies, Ofgem and the other bodies that are referred to, to ensure that they are aware of the amendments to this Bill?
Richard Harrington
Yes, I can confirm to my hon. Friend that there has been widespread consultation. The amendments are very well spoken about in the industry and they will not come as a surprise at all. In fact, the general reaction is that the industry is very pleased that we have managed to introduce them with an act of pure opportunism of getting them through parliamentary scrutiny—assuming that we do—not as a standalone piece of legislation but as an important amendment.
Dr Whitehead
I am in some difficulty here, inasmuch as what the Minister said about the content of the Government amendments is sound and clear. Indeed, they make an addition to the Bill and take us forward on getting ready for some of the benefits of smart meters, such as half-hourly settlements. However, as he indicated, this is effectively a separate Bill that has been lowered into the Smart Meters Bill and attached to it as Government amendments. He quite candidly stated that he took his chance—fair enough—to put it in the Bill, but it creates problems, some of which are at the very least technical, and some of which are possibly of a far wider nature.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak pointed out, none of this was mentioned on Second Reading. We went into Second Reading on the basis of the long title of the Bill, which was very restrictive. Indeed, I counselled a number of my colleagues who wanted to table wider amendments to the Bill that the long title prevented that. I said that it is a closely drawn long title, and we are required to stick to what it says. We have done that in this Committee. We have had a good debate about a number of issues within the terms of the long title, but there is a range of issues that hon. Members would very much have liked to discuss, and for perfectly proper reasons relating to the long title it has not been possible to discuss them in this Committee.
Once we got through Second Reading, we found that a procedure had been used that I am not aware has been used regularly—if at all in recent years—for a piece of legislation: changing the long title of a Bill during its passage. That is a very rare procedure in this House. I refer to the authority of Wikipedia—I say that for what it is worth. The Wikipedia people say:
“In the United Kingdom, the long title is important since, under the procedures of Parliament, a Bill cannot be amended to go outside the scope of its long title. For that reason, modern long titles tend to be rather vague”.
This one was not vague, but amendments have clearly been introduced that are outside the scope of the long title.
There are some precedents, albeit not from this Parliament but from associated Parliaments whose precedents nevertheless have some relevance to this Parliament through the processes of the Privy Council. In Australia, a Department wished to amend a Bill whose title was “A Bill to amend the XX Act, and for related purposes”. My note, which is a drafting direction from Parliamentary Counsel, states that:
“The proposed amendments were not related to the subject matter of the Bill, but would have amended an Act administered by the relevant Minister. The Deputy Clerk advised that if proposed amendments fall a long way outside the subject matter of the Bill, it could be considered a misuse of the House’s powers for a motion to be moved to suspend the standing orders. Accordingly, the amendments were not able to be included in the Bill.”
A version of suspending the Standing Orders has been undertaken in this House. Amendments 18 and 19 actually add some new words to the long title of the Bill, so apparently, by magic, things that were outside the scope of the Bill are now inside the scope of the Bill.
The Chair
Order. Dr Whitehead, may I just help you with your peroration? If any of these amendments were outside the scope of the Bill, they would not have been selected for debate. I hope that comes as some comfort to you.
Steve McCabe
I do not have any argument with what the Minister is trying to do, but I am intrigued by whether or not a precedent is being set. Is it my hon. Friend’s understanding that if this can occur in this situation, there is no reason why in the future, on any Bill—Private Member’s Bill, or anything else—a Member could not seek to change the long title of the Bill and therefore introduce additional components to the Bill that were not part of the original intention of the legislation?
The Chair
Order. Before Dr Whitehead answers that intervention, I have taken advice and I understand that it is all in order to proceed in this fashion.
Dr Whitehead
Thank you for that clarification, Mrs Gillan. Indeed, in order or not, the conclusion we seem to have to reached is that my hon. Friend is right: this does appear to suggest ways in which Bills that have not been considered on Second Reading in a certain light can simply have their direction changed at a later date by the long title being widened by particular amendments that are forthcoming after Second Reading.
Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)
I am sorry, but I am a new Member and slightly confused. I am hearing positive comments about what the Minister has proposed, but also concerns raised through Wikipedia, with mention of magic and all sorts. Is there not a worry—one that I would have—that this opposition from Labour Members might stop reasonable measures, such as those that the Minister has put forward, coming in the future because the precedent seems to be that Labour will oppose something even though there are good reasons for these proposals and they will enhance the Bill, as I think Members agree?
Dr Whitehead
It is not a precedent that Labour will oppose it; it is a precedent that this particular arrangement has been put before us. We are saying that we ought to be clear that this is a precedent. Whatever we may think of the merits of the amendments as they are described, the way of doing legislation in this House may have been significantly altered by what is effectively some form of precedent.
Douglas Ross
But it may have been significantly altered for the good of the Bill.
Dr Whitehead
The hon. Gentleman could argue that we can dispense with procedure and just get good things through this House. Clearly, that would not be a terribly good idea because of how we need to structure our legislation.
I can see that the hon. Gentleman is a little concerned about the relationship between what everyone in this Committee can agree in terms of the wording of the amendment—
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
I believe the expression is, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
Dr Whitehead
Indeed, my hon. Friend puts it more succinctly.
It is important not only that we do good things in this House, but that we do good things in the right way so that, in those circumstances where there might not be such good things coming forward, we are protected from doing those less good things in the wrong way. Whether or not it is technically in order, my contention is that it appears to be a very strange way of taking a piece of legislation through the House.
Stephen Kerr
I am also a new Member and a bit confused. The hon. Gentleman’s objection seems to be not about the substance of what the Minister has brought forward, but that he does not like the way in which it has been done. On that basis, surely the shadow Minister is not prepared to sacrifice the substance of what is being proposed, on the basis of a procedural question of how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin.
Dr Whitehead
Forgive me, Mrs Gillan. It is not about angels dancing on the head of a pin; it is an important issue about the procedures of the House. I can see that the hon. Gentleman is puzzling over whether we would “sacrifice the good” of what is before us because of concern about a procedure. That is not a position that the Opposition have put ourselves in; it is a position that we are all in because these amendments have all been grouped together when they refer to two different things, one of which is a procedure and the other of which is substance.
As far as the substance is concerned, the hon. Gentleman may rest assured that we think the substance is good and we do not wish the Bill to be sabotaged because we have concerns about how those good things came to be, but I think the hon. Gentleman will clearly understand that if that procedure is taken as a usual state of affairs in this House, without anybody drawing attention to it for the future, there may in future be circumstances in which someone wishes to introduce a much worse series of amendments than the one that we have today. We know, because the Minister was clear about it, that another Bill was effectively grafted on to this Bill. I can understand the reasons why the Minister wanted to do that.
Steve McCabe
Is it fair to say that my hon. Friend is seeking to guarantee that there is an accurate Hansard record that describes the doubt about the process, because it may well be a process that will be challenged in the future? This is not about the detail of the changes that the Minister is seeking to make, which I think there is broad agreement on and support for, but rather my hon. Friend has the parliamentary opportunity to get a Hansard record of what the anxiety is about the process.
The Chair
Order. Before I call you to resume, Dr Whitehead, may I try to be of assistance to you? The selection in this grouping was chosen by the Chair; it was made available to the Committee for comment and was capable of having amendments tabled to it. The reason why it is grouped in this fashion is that it was chosen by the Chair and notified as such to all members of the Committee. I do hope that is helpful to you.
Dr Whitehead
Indeed, that is helpful, Mrs Gillan, but particularly in relation to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak I would further draw attention to the fact that the amendments that are grouped together are essentially of two different types. One set of amendments is, in essence, amendable because it is to do with the substance—and as hon. Members have seen, no amendments to those amendments have been forthcoming from the Opposition because, essentially, we agree with the substance of what has been put before us—but two other amendments, which effectively seek to pave the way for those amendments to exist, are not amendable inasmuch as if the Opposition were to seek to table an amendment to those amendments, the Opposition in turn would be trying to amend the long title of the Bill. That is something we do not want to do, and we do not think it is a terribly good way of proceeding with legislation in the first place, whatever we may think about the final constitutionality—one might say—in terms of the overall order and the scheme of things.
I think it is legitimate, regardless of whether these amendments are regarded as being in order, to draw attention to the fact that one would think, logically, that the procedure could, and perhaps should have been as I have mentioned: anyone seeking to change the long title of a Bill—this is important for possible future legislation—should first make a case for changing that long title, get the Committee’s agreement that the long title should be changed and then introduce amendments, or amendments that themselves are amendable, subsequent to that agreement having been achieved. The position that we are in at the moment, as hon. Members are spotting, is that if Opposition Members say that we do not like that procedure very much and we think it causes precedents, the only way in which we can express our concern is to chuck those amendments out, and that is not really a very good way to proceed as far as discussions in Committee are concerned.
I want to express my strong concern about the procedural implications of this particular way of doing things. My concern, in terms of how the Committee is proceeding with its business, is that we will not be able to carry out our business in the way that we would like to—
The Chair
Order. Dr Whitehead, may I again interrupt you in full flow? I have taken further advice on this. I think I made it very clear that the selection is a matter for the Chair. However, the decision on each of the Government amendments and new clauses happens separately. In fact, we will not be taking a decision on the long title of the Bill until the end, as you will see from the way in which the amendments are placed on the amendment paper. I hope that is of comfort and is good information for you at this stage.
Dr Whitehead
Thank you for that, Mrs Gillan, but I think you will appreciate that even in those circumstances—where we get to a position where we can conceivably vote in favour of the amendments this afternoon because we think they are good amendments—and then we get to the end of the process, whereby we vote against the extension of the long title of the Bill, that automatically, if it succeeds, invalidates the existence of those amendments in the first place, because the long title of the Bill will not have been changed at that point, and therefore those amendments will not have existed. That also seems to me to be a potential concern about procedure for the future.
The Chair
Order. Again, I hate to interrupt you, but I have taken further advice on this because it is unusual; I think you are right in saying that and I think the Minister acknowledged that earlier on. The amendments are in scope and the change to the title does not change that. We decide on the long title at the end of proceedings.
Dr Whitehead
I must confess that I am a little bit confused by that ruling. I take your point, Mrs Gillan, but my understanding is that we did have a long title of the Bill and that was the long title that we have been speaking to until this moment, and that was the long title that we spoke to on Second Reading. That was the basis on which all amendments to date, except these amendments, have been drafted into the Bill. So it does create a different series of circumstances, and one that I believe merits at least some kind of review for the future. Although I take your concerns very strongly on board, Mrs Gillan, I think it would be remiss of me not to express those points on the position we find ourselves in as far as the Bill is concerned. [Interruption.] I can see that I am not necessarily gaining the full acclaim of all members of the Committee in pursuing this particular point, but it is important procedurally to put it on the record. I hope we can have some further thoughts on that at a future date.
I turn to the substance of the amendments. What they do is a good idea and, had the Minister been able to bring the amendments on board by slightly different means, we would have had no concerns at all about what they say, what they add to the Bill, and why they are important in taking us to the next stage in terms of some of the benefits that smart meters may bring in the future. We would be happy to give those amendments, therefore, our wholehearted support. We are not going to press any of the amendments to a vote this afternoon, but I am pleased that our concerns are now on the record, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak suggested. It may well be the case that we have not heard the last of the matter.
Richard Harrington
I thank the shadow Minister for his comments. I am quite a simple person. When I was looking at this bit of the legislation, I asked a very simple question of the experts in the Department—the parliamentary advisers and lawyers: is it acceptable, is it within the rules and within the scope of the Bill, to include the half-hourly settlement? The answer was, “It is the decision—many things are—of the House authorities and the Chair, but it seems to us that it is very much within scope.”
I would like to make it clear that the scope of the Bill has not changed with this Government amendment. It remains about smart metering and data from smart meters. As Mrs Gillan has confirmed, the House authorities have said that. As such, the amendments in scope would have been in scope then. Half-hourly settlements are not possible without smart metering.
I promise I am not making light of the comments of the hon. Member for Southampton, Test. He means to get them on the record and he has explained that very reasonably. I thank him for his general support for the amendments, but at the same time I hope that he gives me the credit that this was not some charlatan move to slip something round the corner that was marginal in nature.
Dr Whitehead
Forgive me, but the Minister cannot proceed in this manner. The long title makes it evident to all those sitting here. It is to
“Extend the period for the Secretary of State to exercise powers relating to smart metering and to provide for a special administration regime for a smart meter communication licensee.”
It clearly and narrowly states two things. It does not even say “for related purposes.” It refers to extending the period for smart meter licensing arrangements, and to a special administration regime. That is it. As the Minister himself acknowledges, it has been necessary to move two amendments to change the scope of the Bill, essentially in order to omit those elements. So that is the basis on which we should discuss this, whatever the rights and wrongs of the amendments otherwise are.
Richard Harrington
I fully accept the hon. Gentleman’s right to discuss the matter, and I did not suggest for a moment that he was doing wrong in bringing this forward, or placing it on the record—far from it. I am just saying that, from my point of view, this was acting upon advice, that it was perfectly proper to get something that I felt was very important. I believe that it has the support of—I hope—most Members in the House generally, because we all think that it is a very good thing. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman feels as he does, but I thank him for accepting that it was done for the right reason. I believe, as he does, that parliamentary procedure is important.
These rules have evolved over centuries for reasons, and—quite rightly—neither I nor anyone else on behalf of the Government can get things in round the side, or bring in things that should never be. When we decided to introduce the amendment, I did have a meeting with the hon. Gentleman to explain it to him, I suppose in an official capacity but obviously not within a Bill Committee capacity, and he did explain his support generally for it. His points have been noted on the record. I hope that my response—which I do not think he found satisfactory—is also on the record.
The amendments support the move to a smarter, more flexible energy system. Half-hourly settlement billed directly on a smart metering platform is a central aspect of the smart systems and flexibility plan that was published in July. The proposals will allow Ofgem to take forward the reforms in a more streamlined way, and I thank the shadow Minister for his support for the substance of the amendments.
Amendment 17 agreed to.
Clause 11, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 8
MODIFICATION OF ELECTRICITY CODES ETC: SETTLEMENT USING SMART METER INFORMATION
“‘(1) The Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (“the Authority”) may—
(a) modify a document maintained in accordance with an electricity licence, and
(b) modify an agreement that gives effect to such a document,
if the condition in subsection (2) is satisfied.
(2) The condition is that the Authority considers the modification necessary or desirable for the purposes of enabling or requiring half-hourly electricity imbalances to be calculated using information about customers’ actual consumption of electricity on a half-hourly basis.
(3) The power to make modifications under this section includes—
(a) power to make provision about the determination of amounts payable in connection with half-hourly electricity imbalances;
(b) power to remove or replace all of the provisions of a document or agreement;
(c) power to make different provision for different purposes;
(d) power to make incidental, supplementary, consequential or transitional modifications.
(4) A modification may not be made under this section after the end of the period of 5 years beginning with the day on which this section comes into force.
(5) In this section—
“balancing arrangements” means arrangements made by the transmission system operator for the purposes of balancing the national transmission system for Great Britain;
“electricity licence” means a licence under section 6(1) of the Electricity Act 1989;
“half-hourly electricity imbalance” means the difference between the amount of electricity consumed by an electricity supplier’s customers during a half-hour period and the amount of electricity purchased by the electricity supplier for delivery during that period, after taking into account any adjustments in connection with the supplier’s participation in balancing arrangements;
“supply”, in relation to electricity, has the same meaning as in Part 1 of the Electricity Act 1989 (see section 4(4) of that Act);
“transmission system” has the same meaning as in Part 1 of the Electricity Act 1989 (see section 4(4) of that Act);
“transmission system operator” means the person operating the national transmission system for Great Britain.”—(Richard Harrington.)
This new clause gives Ofgem power to modify documents maintained in accordance with an electricity licence, or agreements giving effect to such documents, so as to enable half-hourly electricity imbalances to be calculated using information obtained from smart meters.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 9
Modification under section(Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information)
“(1) Before making a modification under section(Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information), the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (“the Authority”) must—
(a) publish a notice about the proposed modification,
(b) send a copy of the notice to the persons listed in subsection (2), and
(c) consider any representations made within the period specified in the notice about the proposed modification or the date from which it would take effect.
(2) The persons mentioned in subsection (1)(b) are—
(a) each relevant licence holder,
(b) the Secretary of State,
(c) Citizens Advice,
(d) Citizens Advice Scotland, and
(e) such other persons as the Authority considers appropriate.
(3) The period specified under subsection (1)(c) must be a period of not less than 28 days beginning with the day on which the notice is published.
(4) A notice under subsection (1) must—
(a) state that the Authority proposes to make a modification,
(b) set out the proposed modification and its effect,
(c) specify the date from which the Authority proposes that the modification will have effect, and
(d) state the reasons why the Authority proposes to make the modification.
(5) If, after complying with subsections (1) to (4) in relation to a modification, the Authority decides to make a modification, it must publish a notice about the decision.
(6) A notice under subsection (5) must—
(a) state that the Authority has decided to make the modification,
(b) set out the modification and its effect,
(c) specify the date from which the modification has effect,
(d) state how the Authority has taken account of any representations made in the period specified in the notice under subsection (1), and
(e) state the reason for any differences between the modification set out in the notice and the proposed modification.
(7) A notice under this section about a modification or decision must be published in such manner as the Authority considers appropriate for bringing it to the attention of those likely to be affected by the making of the modification or decision.
(8) Sections 3A to 3D of the Electricity Act 1989 (principal objective and general duties) apply in relation to the functions of the Authority under section (Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information) and this section with respect to modifications of documents maintained in accordance with electricity licences, and agreements giving effect to such documents, as they apply in relation to functions of the Authority under Part 1 of that Act.
(9) For the purposes of subsections (1) to (10) of section 5A of the Utilities Act 2000 (duty of Authority to carry out impact assessment), a function exercisable by the Authority under section (Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information) is to be treated as if it were a function exercisable by it under or by virtue of Part 1 of the Electricity Act 1989.
(10) The reference in subsection (8) to the functions of the Authority under section(Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information) includes a reference to the Authority’s functions under subsections (1) to (10) of section 5A of the Utilities Act 2000 as applied by subsection (9).
(11) In this section—
“electricity licence” has the meaning given in section (Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information);
“relevant licence holder” means, in relation to the modification of a document maintained under an electricity licence or an agreement that gives effect to such a document, the holder of a licence under which the document is maintained.”—(Richard Harrington.)
This new clause sets out the procedural requirements that apply to the exercise of the power under NC8.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 10
Date from which modifications of electricity licence conditions may have effect
“(1) The Electricity Act 1989 is amended in accordance with this section.
(2) In section 11A(9) (modifications of electricity licence conditions not to have effect less than 56 days from publication of decision to modify), at the end insert “, except as provided in section 11AA”.
(3) After that section insert—
“11AA Modification of conditions under section 11A: early effective date
(1) The date specified by virtue of section 11A(8) in relation to a modification under that section may be less than 56 days from the publication of the decision to proceed with the making of the modification if—
(a) the Authority considers it necessary or expedient for the modification to have effect before the 56 days expire,
(b) the purpose condition is satisfied,
(c) the consultation condition is satisfied, and
(d) the time limit condition is satisfied.
(2) The purpose condition is that the Authority considers the modification necessary or desirable for purposes described in section (Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information)(2) of the Smart Meters Act 2017 (enabling or requiring half-hourly electricity imbalances to be calculated using information about customers’ actual consumption of electricity on a half-hourly basis).
(3) The consultation condition is that the notice under section 11A(2) relating to the modification—
(a) stated the date from which the Authority proposed that the modification should have effect,
(b) stated the Authority’s reasons for proposing that the modification should have effect from a date less than 56 days from the publication of the decision to modify, and
(c) explained why, in the Authority’s view, that would not have a material adverse effect on any licence holder.
(4) The time limit condition is that the specified date mentioned in subsection (1) falls within the period of 5 years beginning on the day on which section (Modification of electricity codes etc: settlement using smart meter information) of the Smart Meters Act 2017 comes into force.”
(4) In paragraph 2 of Schedule 5A (procedure for appeals under section 11C: suspension of decision), after sub-paragraph (1) insert—
‘(1A) In the case of an appeal against a decision of the Authority which already has effect by virtue of section 11AA, the CMA may direct that the modification that is the subject of the decision—
(a) ceases to have effect entirely or to such extent as may be specified in the direction, and
(b) does not have effect, or does not have effect to the specified extent, pending the determination of the appeal.’”—(Richard Harrington.)
This new clause allows licence modifications under NC8 to become effective before 56 days have elapsed.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 1
Review of smart meter rollout targets
“(1) Within 3 months of this Act coming in to force, the Secretary of State must prepare and publish a report on the progress of the smart meter rollout and lay a copy of the report before Parliament.
(2) The report under subsection (1) shall consider—
(a) progress towards the 2020 completion target;
(b) smart meter installation cost;
(c) the number of meters operating in dummy mode;
(d) the overall cost to date of the DCC;
(e) the projected cost of the DCC; and
(f) such other matters as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.” —(Steve McCabe.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to publish details about the cost and progress of the smart meter roll out, with reference to the 2020 deadline.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 7—Review: smart meter installation rates—
“(1) The Secretary of State shall commission an annual review of attainment rates of smart meter installation, this review must include—
(a) information on the total number of functioning smart meters at the end of each attainment period,
(b) analysis of any discrepancy between attainment numbers and total functioning numbers.
(2) The Secretary of State shall lay the report of the review in subsection (1) before each House of Parliament.”
This new clause requires the Secretary of State to review attainment rates annually.
New clause 11—Smart meter roll out cost benefit analysis—
“(1) Within one year of this Act coming into force, the Secretary of State shall lay a report on the costs and benefits of the smart meter rollout before each House of Parliament.
(2) The report under subsection (1) must include an independent cost benefit analysis of the smart meter rollout programme.”
Steve McCabe
I am not sure this need necessarily take long. As we have heard, it is a legal obligation on the energy suppliers to take all reasonable steps to meet the 2020 target of every household being offered a smart meter. Both new clause 1 and new clause 11 outline some steps that the Secretary of State could take to ensure timely completion of the roll-out while protecting consumers and ensuring the benefits of the roll-out are fully realised.
New clause 1 is fairly specific in the information it asks the Secretary of State to publish, and includes the progress toward the 2020 target as well as information on the costs and projected costs of DCC and the installation of meters more generally. I listened to the Minister earlier making a commitment to publish an annual report on the progress of the roll-out. Most people, certainly on this side, thought that was a helpful and reasonable offer.
It is important to point out to the Committee that the Government’s commitment to annual progress reports has fallen by the wayside. What we actually heard today was an offer from the Minister to reinstate them, as far as I can see. In December 2012 the Government published their first annual progress report on the roll-out, which gave an overview of the programme and the progress to date. They subsequently published two further progress reports in 2013 and 2014, but since then there have been none. Obviously, we know that from 2014 the progress was not quite so good to report on; I do not know whether that is the reason, but my point is that we stopped getting the reports.
That is why I thought it would be helpful to have on the face of the Bill a commitment for a regular progress report. I was pleased to hear the Minister say earlier that it is his intention to provide it anyway, and that is good enough for me, but I cannot guarantee that the Minister will be in his post even for the duration of the Bill, can I? I have no way of knowing what a successor might do. Goodness, I wish the Minister well and I hope he is in post much longer than the duration of the Bill, but I am simply recognising that, if I look around the present Government, quite a few people who were in post a few weeks ago are no longer there. These things happen, and they happen quickly in politics. We can never tell what is around the corner.
I am simply observing that the Minister’s word in itself is not sufficient for the purpose, because what the Government have previously done was publish reports and then stop publishing them when the information became less convenient. I thought it would make sense to make a request to have it on the face of the Bill, and that is what new clause 1 seeks to do.
New clause 11 requires the Secretary of State to commission an updated, independent cost-benefit analysis of the roll-out. Mrs Gillan, you will not want me to go over all this again, but we know that the cost-benefit analysis from 2016 showed a downward trend. Although I hear the Minister and I know his intentions are good, my concern throughout has been that we could reach a stage where those benefits turn negative. That is why I raise this matter.
We heard from Audrey Gallacher of Energy UK. She said that she thought it was time for a new impact assessment to ensure that the benefits case is still alive. The value of the assessment that I am calling for—an independently led assessment, as mentioned in new clause 11—is that it would bring confidence to all stakeholders. They would have a chance to consider independent information, so it would be good for the suppliers. It would be good for the Department and for the DCC and customers. If it were to show that the benefits case is no longer as strong as it was, it would give us the opportunity to look at other approaches that the Government might choose to pursue. It would take us back to the question of whether there is a different model—with the SMETS 1 and the mini DCC we heard the evidence about—as opposed to the elaborate DCC model that has taken up so much of the consideration of this Committee.
In the situation of uncertainty surrounding the roll-out, an updated cost-benefit analysis would be a sensible commitment to include on the face of the Bill. It would provide stakeholders with certainty and transparency and improve the credibility of the smart meter roll-out. For those reasons I suggest that the Committee considers adopting both new clauses 1 and 11.
Dr Whitehead
I want to speak in favour of new clause 7 and to support what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak says about the merits of new clauses 1 and 11, and taking into account the fact that the Minister has already indicated that he is prepared to produce publicly available annual reviews on aspects of the smart meter roll-out. [Interruption.]
The Chair
Order. Will the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich turn her phone off, or leave the Committee and deal with it outside?
Dr Whitehead
I thought I was throwing my voice for a moment. I have other talents, but not that.
The content of new clauses 1, 7 and 11 can essentially be tucked into what the Minister has said about an annual report. The desired outcome of this debate might be to obtain an indication from the Minister on whether the concerns raised are the sort of thing he thinks might be in the annual report he has mentioned. New clause 7 draws particular attention to the relationship between the total number of smart meters that have been installed at the end of particular attainment periods and what is happening to the functionality of those meters in those periods. That relates to some extent to a concern about what companies are required to do, so far as their agreements with Ofgem are concerned, about each period that they have to report on for the purpose of the roll-out and what attainment they are expected to achieve as part of their legal requirements to roll out smart meters in that period.
Steve McCabe
My hon. Friend says he is offering protection for the public, which is true, but is he not actually offering a bit of protection for the Minister? As I said before, if this goes wrong, only one person will carry the can. My hon. Friend proposes a way of guaranteeing that the information provided—or filtered through BEIS—to the Minister is actually real information about what is happening, in terms of functional meters, as opposed to this fantasy information about cold calls or visits that have not resulted in any activity.
Dr Whitehead
Indeed; my hon. Friend makes an important point. As we have discussed, there remains a little bit of a discrepancy, one might say, between the ambition of those responsible for it for what the roll-out looks like and the Government’s claim that the target really is that everyone will have been offered a smart meter by 2020. It seems important to me that we reconcile those two positions as the roll-out progresses. In a way, Ofgem is actually reconciling those positions in terms of getting a picture of what is actually happening so far as the roll-out is concerned on the actual number of meters installed in homes after the end of the visits, but it is not quite yet getting to the position of whether the meters are operating as they should.
My hon. Friend is also right that I am anxious to make sure the Minister is as well protected as possible; I always am. It is a personal ambition of mine that the Minister should be properly protected under all circumstances, and the new clause will help him in that respect. It will give us, I hope—among other things in the Minister’s annual reports—an accurate depiction of the real picture, so that the defence of that picture can be undertaken by the Minister on the basis of accurate information that will not come back to whack him around the head.
I can think of no better protection for the Minister than being assured that he will not be whacked around the head by statistics at a later date. I am therefore sure that he will take the substance of the new clause on board in his response, if not the whole new clause, particularly in terms of what may well be in the report he has promised us for the future.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
I am keen to say a few words on new clauses 1 and 7, because I feel they concern matters that have to be put in front of the Minister at this juncture in the consideration of the Bill to remind him about the progress of the roll-out and the review of the installation of these meters.
The point I was trying to make this morning—I accept that it was perhaps an inopportune time—was that there is a difficulty because Energy UK and Ofgem agree that aggressive selling is not appropriate, but that will not give us comfort until it is properly and comprehensively addressed. I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but it is my understanding that Ofgem has the power to fine energy companies up to 10% of their annual turnover if they fail to meet their licence conditions. One of the licence conditions is for each energy company to install smart meters in consumer homes by the end of 2020. Failure to do so can result in a massive penalty for the energy company. I think the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak has already alluded to this.
The use of aggressive selling starts to make sense if the energy companies are under pressure to deliver these things into people’s homes. Will the Minister consider the balance between customer choice and meeting this target? I certainly have questions about that. I know from speaking to my own constituents that there is some suspicion of smart meters. Whether it is real or misplaced is not the point. The people into whose homes they go are not 100% on board. When we are talking about the roll-out and monitoring the progress of the installation, there is a job of work to do with consumers and energy companies. I am not making accusations, but there are allegations that energy companies go after customers quite aggressively to get meters put into their homes.
The Minister may be interested to know about work called “deemed appointments”. Energy companies tell their customers that they are going to be in their area on a particular day. They give a specified time and date; there is no consultation with the customer. The customer is merely informed. The customer is able to cancel or rearrange the appointment, but if the customer does not respond to the notification, the company will turn up prepared and ready to install a smart meter. We have evidence from Audrey Gallacher of Energy UK, who said:
“We have also had some feedback from Ofgem, the regulator, that companies should be taking a much more assertive approach,”—[Official Report, Smart Meters Committee Public Bill Committee, 21 November 2017; c. 10, Q14.]
That is quite worrying because already we are hearing of companies taking what many would consider an over-assertive approach. When we are talking about the progress of the roll-out, we have to be mindful of the need to put the customer at the heart of the process, and Ofgem should perhaps monitor how the smart meters are sold to the public and what the response might be. The Minister might already be aware that the Trading Standards Institute believes it has some grounds for believing that the energy companies may be committing offences under the Consumer Protection Act 2015. I think that should give us real cause for concern; we surely hope to roll out smart meters with the public fully on board. This does not breed trust between the energy companies and the consumers into whose homes we expect the meters to go.
We need to be very careful when talking about the roll-out and installation. Nobody in this room would not want that to go smoothly, but there are already difficulties. Citizens Advice has already reported difficulties in a report released in September. It said that it was not happy and had real concerns about the way in which consumers were being treated. Citizens Advice also believes that offences may be taking place in the way that this is being rolled out. I know that that will give the Minister some cause for concern.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak has set out new clause 11 very clearly and I do not want to add too much to what he has said. However, we have to remember that the cost is £11 billion and rising. That cost is borne by every single household. Smart Energy GB has previously referred to a Government cost-benefit analysis; of course there are cost benefits, but the figure of £11 billion is one to watch, because we really do not want that figure to rise. It is about consumer confidence; we do not want the consumer to feel that they have been financially imposed upon. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak set that out so well that I will not say any more.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Clearly, the scheme is an incredibly ambitious one; the scale of it as a consumer programme is virtually unprecedented. That is why the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, and others have said that we have to ensure that what we do is in the public eye, the public interest and the consumer interest.
The intention behind the reporting is clearly a good one, not just for us in terms of monitoring but also for raising the visibility and the importance of the programme. A public relations exercise almost needs to be done because there seems to be so much confusion out there, particularly among consumers. The points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak in terms of those metrics are critical, but it is also critical that we begin to understand the sort of behavioural change among consumers, in terms of that cost-benefit analysis for the whole programme and for individual households.
I do not want to spin the wheels and repeat what has been said. The only thing that I would urge is a little more ambition in the reporting. The annual report is not bad—it is a good idea—but like most businesses, which give quarterly updates, given those really important metrics and given that the ambition was set for 2020, arguably there are not many annual reports left between now and then. Perhaps a quarterly summary report would be valuable to see the progress that has been made and, critically, how the scheme has been adopted or accepted and how it is working with the consumer.
Richard Harrington
I thank hon. Members for their contributions, particularly the shadow Minister—or should I now call him my protection officer? I have never had one of those before and thought that I was not likely to, but I am very pleased that he has taken it upon himself to appoint himself to that position, which I warmly endorse, I thank him for that.
The new clauses give me the chance to set out the Government’s commitments for reporting on the smart meter roll-out, which is very important and something that I have given a lot of thought to. Before I do, I want to mention a couple of points that the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran made, because they are quite different. She said that consumers were being misled by their energy companies and bullied into getting a smart meter—which is really what she was saying. I reiterate that it is not compulsory for anyone to have a smart meter installed. Consumers have a right to decline them.
Patricia Gibson
The Minister knows, as do I and everyone in this room, that smart meters are not compulsory, but my concern is that consumers are not always told that.
Richard Harrington
They should be, and I will do everything to make sure that they are. Suppliers have to treat their customers fairly, and that means being transparent and accurate in their communications. Ofgem has been in touch with energy suppliers to remind them of their obligations. It has written to all suppliers about deemed appointments—one of the points she made—to make clear that they have to consider whether deemed appointments are appropriate. Ofgem have marked their card on that because they have to take into account the consumers’ circumstances, for example ability to communicate, whether they may have not got the letter, and more. While I know that the hon. Lady is speaking entirely in good faith and that there have been examples of that, Ofgem is on it, and I shall monitor it carefully, as well as the other points she raised.
There is a conflict between us all wanting smart meters to be installed, because we think it is of long-term benefit to everyone, and protecting people’s right not to have one if they do not want one, for whatever reason, and to be informed of that right. We are putting pressure on the energy companies to install more, in keeping with the targets; the hon. Lady is right about that. However, we do not want any of the mis-selling cases that were well publicised some years ago, of people knocking on doors and getting householders to change supplier on false pretences. While the intentions are much more noble in this case, and however much we might think it is a good thing to have smart meters, we certainly do not want any form of pressure or inappropriate behaviour to mislead people. I tell everyone that it is brilliant to have a smart meter, and hopefully most of us will, but it is not for everybody. People should not feel under any pressure, and they should only want to have one for the best reasons.
I can be accused of many things, but lack of enthusiasm is not one of them. This is a really important element of the modernisation of the country’s energy infrastructure. Supplier switching is good, and I have done it myself, but it is not the answer. It is a right and a good thing to do, but the answer lies in what the smart meters will produce. I keep coming back to that in my head. I will not go through the reasons for it again, because hon. Members have been patient all day and on other days.
I understand and welcome the appetite for information on progress. It is right for us, as parliamentarians, to want that, and it is right for the Government and the Department to want to give that. It is right that customers generally should know, from the general public to what one paper calls the chattering classes—in other words, people who write on it, comment on it and study it. The more knowledge they have, the more it is part of the smart meter revolution, and the more people who have smart meters do not think they are alone and do not listen to the stories I have been sent by constituents—scare stories from the United States, conspiracy theories that MI5 is listening through smart meters and that sort of thing.
Richard Harrington
I have my own protection officer, so I am not bothered about that kind of thing, but other people are.
The new clauses would require the Government to publish information on programme costs and benefits, as well as details of installation activity and whether meters are operating in smart mode. I would like to address those in turn, to the satisfaction of all hon. Members, and particularly the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak and the shadow Minister—I always refer to him by his official title, but he is the hon. Member for Southampton, Test.
The programme costs and benefits are dealt with in new clauses 1 and 11. The Government published their initial assessment in 2008. Since then, the Government have updated and published their cost-benefit analysis a number of times, including in 2014 and 2016. Those publications included quite detailed breakdowns of the costs and benefits of the programme, including the DCC cost, which has been discussed before, and the installation of smart meters.
While there have been changes in the estimated costs and benefits over the years as our evidence base has developed, the business case for smart meters has remained good value for money. The benefit-to-cost ratio has remained stable since 2011, at around £1.50 of benefit for every £1 invested. Our latest cost-benefit analysis, published in November 2016, outlines net benefits of the smart meter roll-out of £5.7 billion. It is easy to talk in billions, but that is quite a lot of money, whichever way we look at it.
Our approach on the smart metering programme has been to update the cost-benefit analysis when substantive new evidence on costs and benefits for the programme comes to light through our monitoring and tracking. For example, the most recent update in November 2016 replaced estimates in a number of areas, including meter asset costs and financing and installation costs, with actuals based on information obtained from industry. It is right that estimates are replaced with actuals as soon as we have the information for it.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak asked why costs increased between the 2014 and 2016 assessments. The difference was about 0.5%, which is £500 million. Again, lots of zeroes; not a number to make light of. The increase is roughly equivalent to changes in the cost of fossil fuels, which impacts the value of the energy savings in our assessment. That was really his point; he asked that question before and I found out the answer for him. It is a reasonable question to ask.
It is important to know that it is not common practice for Government policies and programmes to update their cost-benefit analysis regularly in this way, and certainly not beyond the assessment made to inform the panel’s policy decision. With smart meters, we have done so in order to provide the additional public information and transparency. This is such a major upgrade of our energy infrastructure and will be transformational for people when the programme evolves further.
We have no immediate plans to publish an upgraded cost-benefit analysis, but we are regularly monitoring costs and benefits and would certainly update our analysis if there were new or substantive evidence or changes in policy design. I would like to make it clear that if there were substantive changes in the evidence, of course we would. I hope we have a track record that demonstrates that, if and when such evidence emerges, we will update our assessment. We would be negligent if we did not, and I am sure we would be held to account. In addition, the Data Communications Company regularly publishes budgets and cost projections on its website.
In relation to the installation activity mentioned in new clauses 1 and 7, the Government regularly publish statistics on the progress of the smart metering roll-out. Independent official quarterly statistics on the progress of the smart meter roll-out by the large energy suppliers are published every quarter and have been since September 2013. They are a report on the number of smart and advanced meters installed, as well as the number of meters in operation at the end of a reporting quarter. In addition, a summary of annual roll-out progress for the calendar year of the roll-out is published every March. This captures performance of both small and large suppliers for the preceding calendar year. The number of smart meters operating in traditional mode can be determined from these reports, but I am happy to look at ways to express that more clearly, because I think, as my protection officer has requested, clear and accurate information is important for people. There is no reason to provide clouds of vagueness on this. It is in everybody’s interest to be clear.
Steve McCabe
The Minister is giving the Committee helpful information. Why, after 2014, did the Department abandon the progress reports that he is now proposing to reinstate? Was there an obvious explanation for that?
Richard Harrington
I do not have an obvious explanation for the hon. Gentleman, but I am perfectly prepared to find out and write to him. As far as I am concerned, when I took over, annual reports seemed an obvious thing to do. I would like them to be as comprehensive as possible. I think that that is in everybody’s interest. I hope that they get press coverage and that people read them and say “I want one of these.” That is what we want.
In his erudite speech, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington made a point about changing behavioural patterns. In my previous job in pensions, they called it nudging people. Publicity about the annual report or anything else to do with it is going to nudge people’s behaviour. Instead of people reacting to nonsense offers that pretend that it is compulsory, as mentioned by the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran, I hope that they will think, “I want to find out about those. I’ll go online or call. I want one.” That is what the advertising campaign on buses, the tube and so on is doing: it is nudging people and trying to change their behavioural pattern. The reporting side of it, which should be as comprehensive as possible, is very much part of that.
The smart metering programme is being delivered with a high degree of transparency through our existing reporting regime, and I am certainly going to reflect on how reporting can be made clearer. In particular, I undertake to deliver further information via the annual update of the smart meter implementation programme, and I will make copies available to both Houses. If there are changes in the interim, I do not think it would be right to undertake to produce quarterly reports. That would be a very bureaucratic process. There would probably not be enough information to change, and they would quickly become outdated. I do not think that would be reasonable. However, if there are fundamental changes, or even good incremental changes—or, indeed, bad incremental changes—it is in our interests to publicise them and to deal with them. I am going to look at ways to make this as sharp and clear as possible. In the light of that explanation and commitment, I hope that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak will withdraw the motion.
Steve McCabe
In view of the Minister’s words, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 2
Review of public awareness levels and satisfaction with smart meter rollout
“(1) Within 3 months of this Act coming into force, the Secretary of State shall commission an independent review of current public awareness of smart meter rollout and public satisfaction with the rollout.
(2) The report under subsection (1) shall consider—
(a) the effectiveness of consultation between industry and the public about the rollout process;
(b) the awareness among vulnerable groups of smart meter rollout;
(c) the satisfaction of the public, in particular vulnerable groups and people living in rural areas, with the information available on smart meter rollout.
(3) The Secretary of State must lay a copy of the report before Parliament and arrange for an opportunity for the report to be debated within 6 weeks of the report being laid.”—(Steve McCabe.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to commission an independent review of public awareness and satisfaction of smart meter rollout and for the review to be debated in the House of Commons.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Steve McCabe
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I shall be brief. This is almost where my interest in this subject started. When I first came across smart meters, I thought “Hey, that is a really clever idea”. Then, like the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran, I started to attend to stories of people saying that they were being pressed to have these meters and that they were being treated in a fairly cavalier fashion. As I have said at various stages, I felt that public certainty, public satisfaction and, indeed, basic public knowledge was a problem.
New clause 2 is self-explanatory: it calls for a review of public awareness levels and satisfaction with the roll-out. I want to know in particular about the effectiveness of the consultation between the industry and the public. I know that this was not particularly about satisfaction levels—it was more about roll-out procedures—but I found the funnel evidence pretty bamboozling. It did not do anything for my confidence as I listened to that. We need to know how effective that consultation is.
I am particularly concerned that awareness is raised among those people whom we might call vulnerable groups or vulnerable users. It should be a central concern of the Minister that they benefit.
We heard from the hon. Member for Moray during the evidence session that he was particularly concerned, and rightly so, about satisfaction and roll-out in rural areas. It would do no good at all were we to embark on a multi-billion pound project and then discover that consumers in certain parts of the country were getting a poorer deal.
Douglas Ross
Does the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that my concerns are about the availability of smart-meter installation—rural constituencies such as my own in Moray seem to be at the back end—rather than about the overall perception of smart meters and their success or otherwise?
Steve McCabe
I accept that, although I interpret “satisfaction” to also mean satisfaction with the delivery and benefit of the meter.
What I am asking for is self-explanatory. It will not do us any good if I keep going on about it. I have made the point to the Minister, so he knows why I think it is important.
Patricia Gibson
I shall be brief. I agree with everything that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak said—I fear that this is turning into a bit of a mutual admiration society. I will say no more, except that, alongside the public awareness for which the new clause calls, we would expect public confidence and transparency. The Minister has talked a great deal today about transparency. What I would like, but suspect I will not get, is an assurance from the Minister on public awareness and the confidence we would expect to come with it. Customers have raised the issue with me, and I know that it has also been raised in other arenas. They fear that when their energy usage is known in such detail, it will be used, at some point in the future, as a lever to smooth out demand by having different price bands.
Peak times such as 4 o’clock to 7 o’clock are a real worry for families who are already struggling with energy bills—indeed, with all their bills. We have talked about nudging, and people are concerned that this might be used as a way of nudging their behaviour and when they use their energy, and about what they should do during peak times to avoid using energy as much as they possibly can—that is not entirely possible for everybody. The fear is that this measure may be used to raise charges.
Stephen Kerr
I wonder whether that is entirely a bad thing, given that there will potentially be quite rich savings for people who are prepared to change their behaviour and their use of appliances—especially energy-heavy ones—during peak times.
Patricia Gibson
It may not be a bad thing for certain people who are in a position to do that, but when kids come in from school and they need to have their dinner—people cannot really work around that and say “You need to wait until 8 o’clock to get your dinner because energy is cheaper then.” There are people for whom that might yield great benefits, but some are trapped in that peak period and cannot work around it. That is a real concern for a lot of consumers, as I am sure the Minister will understand.
Richard Harrington
As per the practice that I started in discussing the previous group of amendments, before addressing the substantive point perhaps I could try to answer the hon. Lady’s questions. The sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling are right—this issue is a double-edged sword. The very people that the hon. Lady described, who have children coming home and need to get the tea on, might also have a choice about when to do their washing and such things. The smart meter and the information that comes from it, can help as well as hinder people in those circumstances.
The choice of which tariffs to accept, even with the smartest of smart meters, will remain entirely with the customer. Smart meters facilitate time-of-use tariffs, which can influence demand and help to shift consumption away from peak times—that is a good thing—but they will also give people a choice that they do not have now. At the moment, if someone does not have the meter to give them the information, they cannot take an informed decision. Based on conversations I have had, I expect that suppliers will develop and offer new, smart, time-of-use tariffs that will be attractive to most consumers and help them to realise their benefits.
I accept the hon. Lady’s core point—people must be aware of the choices available, and they must be the type of customer that can take advantage of that choice. If their only function, apart from basic lighting and heating, is to hugely increase their use of electricity at a certain time because of cooking and children coming home, I accept that such a tariff would not be suitable for them. People must have the information to take that decision. I think I have laboured the point, but the hon. Lady raises an interesting issue that is not at all unreasonable —that is what I would expect, given her other consumer-based questions.
I shall try to deal briefly with the new clause in the spirit in which it was meant. Should the Secretary of State commission an independent review of public awareness and satisfaction of the roll-out? That is what is being asked. In answering, perhaps I should outline our approach to smart meter and consumer engagement in our programme up until now. It is set out formally in the programme’s consumer engagement strategy, which was published in December 2012, and it was based on extensive consultation and evidence gathering, as well as polling and market research. Although energy suppliers are at the forefront of installing smart meters, it was recognised that their consumer engagement would benefit from support by a central body that was independent of them and Government. We heard evidence from a representative of that body—Smart Energy GB—which enables consumers throughout the country to get consistent messages from a single simple campaign, rather than from multiple suppliers who are jumping over one another to get customers.
Both Smart Energy GB and the energy suppliers therefore have a role. The energy suppliers have the primary consumer engagement role, because they have the main contact with customers—they are who customers get their bills from and have their contracts with. Smart Energy GB, which is an independent, not-for-profit organisation, leads a national awareness and advertising programme to drive the behavioural change that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak mentioned and to help consumers to benefit from smart metering.
The energy supply licence conditions require that Smart Energy GB assists consumers on low incomes or with prepayment meters. Bill Bullen explained in our evidence session that that is his main market. That is really good—it is to those consumers’ advantage and I hope it is to his commercial advantage, too. From what he said, he seems to have done a good job of it.
That two-pronged approach has increased awareness of smart metering from 40% to 80% of consumers in three years, and it has driven a lot of demand. A recent survey of 10,000 people from all demographics and all parts of Great Britain showed that 49% of people would like to get a smart meter in six months. The campaign is resonating with people all over the country. Independent audits of Smart Energy GB show that two in three people recall its campaign. That is actually quite a lot in advertising. Findings from the latest “Smart energy outlook”, the independent barometer of national public opinion, show that detailed knowledge of smart metering is high—in some cases higher than in the general population—among groups that we might consider to have vulnerabilities, such as elderly people.
But nobody underestimates the challenge—I absolutely do not. We get a lot of information from Smart Energy GB. Suppliers share their information with it and with us, because it is in everyone’s interests to do so. They are transparent about their activities, both because it is in their interests and because they are required by law to publish an annual report outlining their performance against targets, alongside an updated consumer engagement plan. All that is available to the public via the internet and the usual channels.
As recently as August, the Government published the findings of external research that we commissioned on consumer experience of smart metering. We will produce further findings from ongoing fieldwork in the next few months. Our evidence to date shows that consumer satisfaction with smart meters is high. Some 80% of consumers are satisfied with them and 7% are dissatisfied. That information is all publicly available. Interestingly—I know that vulnerability is of interest to every Committee member, but particularly to the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran—there was higher satisfaction among prepayment respondents, who are much more likely to be vulnerable consumers.
I support the positive intention behind the new clause. The Government really have to consider how consumer engagement can be better reflected in annual reports, which have to be consumer-facing as well as Parliament-facing. I am not quite sure about the answer, but that needs to be considered in detail. On balance, though, I consider that the requirements of the new clause are well met by existing arrangements. I promise that I do not say that through complacency. I have explained about external research agencies, and Smart Energy GB, which is independent, continually reviews consumer engagement. A review is therefore not needed at this stage—not because we do not intend to do that or because it does not need to be done, but because it would duplicate existing activities and would not represent good value for money. I hope that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak will withdraw the motion.
Steve McCabe
The Minister has persuaded me. I am happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 3
Ownership restrictions to successor licensees
“(1) The Secretary of State may impose conditions on to the future DCC successor licensee as appropriate.
(2) Conditions in subsection (1) may include restrictions to British owned companies subject to the expiry of any contrary obligations under EU or retained EU law, as defined in the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018.”—(Dr Whitehead.)
This new clause allows the Secretary of State to restrict future DCC successor licensees to British owned companies.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Whitehead
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause, as I flagged up to the Committee earlier, relates to clause 4(1) and to the circumstances in which a successor to a company that has gone into administration might be brought about, and the safeguards concerning the identity of that successor company should it take over the reins. My understanding of those circumstances is that, should there be a period of administration, a successor company would take over prior to 2025 when administration is determined. There could then be a retendering, as it were, of the process by which a company runs the DCC in 2025. At both of those points, there would potentially be a question about the identity of that company. We know the identity of the company at present: Capita is running the DCC, and the DCC as an organisation is a fully owned subsidiary of Capita.
I must say for the record that my ideal way of running the DCC would be for it to be a public body and not responsible to a company. The formation of the DCC, maybe at a future date should the circumstances be different, as a not-for-profit public interest body concerned with the proper administration of the whole smart meter arrangement, in the public interest and for the public good, would be the best way to organise things. That is not the position now, however, and it may not be for some while.
The amendment would look at how one might align the public interest and public good with circumstances under which a successor company might be called on, in the event of administration procedures. On this occasion it would give a power to the Secretary of State, since it would give the Secretary of State discretion to look at the circumstances of a tender or a post-administration arrangement—presumably also by tender—in circumstances where a non-GB company were to become the successor or putative successor company running the DCC.
Without entering into any great conspiracy theories, we have to have some regard for the ownership and running of an organisation that holds a huge amount of information about what we do, who we are and how we work. That is vital information concerning not just our activities but our aggregate activities. Ensuring that the company running the DCC is working appropriately in the national interest with that information and that crucial role seems to me quite an important thing, which we ought to consider.
As things appear to stand at the moment—I do not wish to name any companies for fear that, outside the privilege of the House, they decide to deal with me appropriately—
Dr Whitehead
Indeed. I was going to say to the Minister, who has gone on the record as having nudged people in his previous post, that I cannot offer him full protection if he carries on nudging people, particularly in pubs. My protection is conditional.
We ought to consider the issue seriously. I appreciate that under the present circumstances of our membership of the EU it would be difficult for the Secretary of State to exercise the sort of powers I am suggesting he might have. However, by the time 2025 comes around, one way or another we will not be a member of the EU. The Secretary of State could therefore exercise that power in the public and the national interest, unfettered by other considerations.
It would be prudent for the Secretary of State to have that power available to him or her so that we can put our affairs in order concerning what I agree continues to be an unlikely sequence of events. We ought to have it on our minds, however, in case those events occur. In that way, we can rescue not only the position of the administrator but what the company subsequently does in the national interest as far as keeping control of all this data and running a smart meter programme are concerned.
Richard Harrington
I thank the shadow Minister for his comments. The important part of the amendment is valid. Again, it is “what if”, and we have to consider that. I have tried to assess those points. The new clause would give the Secretary of State a non-time-limited power to impose conditions on future smart meter communication licences as appropriate, which could include restricting future licensees to being British-owned companies.
The licences that are valid at the moment were granted to Smart DCC Ltd in 2013 for a period of 12 years, which is why 2025 has been mentioned quite a few times. That would be the earliest time at which they could be re-tendered. It is the intention that any competition to grant a new smart meter communication licence carried out after November 2018 would be conducted by Ofgem, the first one being appointed by the Secretary of State. That reflects our policy of transferring responsibility from the Government to the smart metering programme, from the Government to the regulator, and recognising that smart metering will eventually become business as usual for the energy industry after this period.
Grahame Morris
I know that the Minister is the soul of reasonableness, but is the issue not so much about the regulator? The regulator’s principal task is the interest of the consumer. Are there not political considerations if a foreign-owned company becomes the regulator? There is an elephant in the room that no one is mentioning, but that is at the back of everyone’s mind. It would surely be prudent to take steps to ensure that the Secretary of State or the Minister has reserve powers to prevent that from happening, given the sensitive and pervasive nature of the data involved.
Richard Harrington
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. If he will be patient with me for a few minutes, his good constituents in Easington will, I hope, be reassured by what I am about to say about foreign ownership.
The shadow Minister’s point was not directly about nationalising the DCC but about whether this kind of organisation would be better off as a not-for-profit publicly owned organisation. That, obviously, was not the Government’s policy. The Government’s policy is to favour competition while protecting the interests of the consumer.
For those less familiar with the details of the licence than I am and the shadow Minister is—he knows it intimately—I should say that the licence’s clear objective is to foster the competitive supply of energy. As a natural monopoly, which is what it is—that is what it would be, whether state owned or privately owned—the price is regulated by Ofgem, so that the costs flowing to consumers are controlled. I felt it worth while to make that point.
The new clause seeks to ensure that the process for awarding the next licence is future-proofed and that the interests of consumers, industry and the country as a whole are protected, irrespective of who is responsible for running the future licensing competition, be it Capita, another company or a not-for-profit organisation.
I would like to highlight two areas. This, I hope, is the answer to the question of the hon. Member for Easington. On the critical national infrastructure point, which this is part of, the shadow Minister mentioned the strategic value—not in money terms but foreign power terms—of this database on all the millions of people who will hopefully have these meters. The Government take the issue seriously.
Under the Enterprise Act 2002, Ministers have the ability to intervene in mergers and takeovers that give rise to public interest concerns, including those relating to national security. That means the Government can ensure that any national security issue arising from mergers or takeovers is correctly investigated and that mitigating measures are put in place.
Our review of the existing regime has highlighted that it needs to be updated to take into account the changing structure and size of companies and the sophistication of this kind of corporate movement, which is why the Government are looking again at how best to scrutinise the ownership of our important infrastructure and have committed to a White Paper next year as the next step in our strategic reforms. That cuts across the new clause.
We recently published a Green Paper review in this area. The proposed reforms have a particular focus on ensuring adequate scrutiny of whether significant foreign investment in our most critical business, which this would be, raises any national security concerns. Those businesses are, by definition, essential to our country and society, and clearly a company or entity carrying out this DCC operation would be, because of the significant data points mentioned.
The aim of the proposed reforms in this area will be to provide Government with the ability to act in circumstances where security concerns are raised. In that context, the Government seek to strike the right balance between protecting national security, having general competition and investment, and being an open and liberal international trading partner, which has worked very well. It is a balance, and the security side is very important.
As far as the EU exit point is concerned, notwithstanding the proposal outlined in the Green Paper, the UK takes its international obligations seriously. We need to ensure that any ownership restrictions are lawful, under not only retained EU law but future trade agreements with countries across the world. We all know that this precise form of agreement between the UK and the EU will be subject to negotiations. It is stating the obvious, but the Government are looking at all possible options. It would therefore not be appropriate at this stage to introduce provisions that may contradict or conflict with the Government’s approach to foreign investment. I hope the hon. Gentleman finds my explanation reassuring and will withdraw the amendment.
Dr Whitehead
I thank the Minister for his explanation. Perhaps I could seek a slight amount of further clarification on his confidence that, in these particular circumstances, he would be able, in principle, to intervene using the powers he has set out that exist elsewhere in Government. He appears to be saying that powers already exist that would allow him to address the issue, and that new clause 3 is therefore not necessary. Is he confident that in the specialised circumstances pertaining to administration and subsequent events, those powers would be fully applicable in terms of the concerns that I have raised?
Richard Harrington
Yes, I am satisfied, but subject to the fact that the legislation on the security aspect of it is evolving and currently under consultation. From what I have read in the Green Paper and all the work that has gone into it, it is precisely the security aspects of the circumstances the hon. Gentleman is describing that would be covered.
Dr Whitehead
I thank the Minister for that clarification. In those circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 5
Review: Use of powers to support technical development
‘(1) Within 12 months of this Act coming into force, the Secretary of State shall commission a review which shall consider how the extended use of powers provided for in section 1 will support the technical development of smart meters, with reference to—
(a) alternative solutions for Home Area Network connections where premises are not able to access the HAN using existing connection arrangements,
(b) hard to reach premises.
(2) The Secretary shall lay the report of the review in subsection (1) before each House of Parliament.”
This new clause requires the Secretary of State to review how the extension of powers support technical development of smart meters.—(Dr Whitehead.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Whitehead
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I am afraid, Mrs Gillan, that you have got me for the rest of the running. New clause 5 relates back to clause 1 and deals with the extent to which, as a result of the extension of time for the exercise of powers, the Minister may consider what licensing may be necessary over the period in respect of particular aspects of the roll-out: in this instance, the use of the home area network and wider area network. Hon. Members will know the distinction: the home area network is the communications that happen between the meter, the house and the immediate external data receiver. The second, the wide area network, relates to the extent to which data receivers can operate in certain areas where population is sparse, there are geophysical difficulties in getting coverage and so on.
In those circumstances, the Government reported in the documents that went before the regulatory committee:
“Smart meters make use of a home area network to link the smart meter to consumer devices such as the in-home display or smart appliances. The technical solutions already being delivered currently apply to approximately 96.5% of premises. In some premises such as apartments in high-rise buildings where there is a long distance between the smart meter and the premises, these solutions are not viable.”
Essentially, the Government are saying that they know that under the present comms arrangements, all but 3.5% of properties can reasonably reliably be considered as covered, but there are certain circumstances, such as some basement buildings or high-rise flats, in which the home area network cannot easily communicate its data properly and safely back to the external devices. The Government state:
“It is necessary to provide a technical solution to ensure that all devices in these premises are linked to the smart meter using the home area network. This work is currently being progressed through the Alternative HAN Forum”.
I am not sure whether anybody would get very far at parties by saying they were a member of the Alternative HAN Forum, but such a body exists and it brings together suppliers to develop and procure new solutions for those premises.
The Department then states:
“It might be considered appropriate to separately license these activities to provide a greater degree of regulatory control over them.”
It is considering whether there is a need for a separate licence arrangement, so far as those activities are concerned, to ensure that, when solutions for that 3.5% of premises come about, they should be properly controlled by licensing within the terms of the roll-out. Similarly, the Department considers that a little over
“99% of premises in Great Britain are capable of connecting to the DCC through the wide area network”.
That is the WAN. I do not know if there is an alternative WAN forum as well as an Alternative HAN Forum, but under those circumstances it would clearly be thinking about that 1% of premises that look unlikely to be able to connect through that wide area network. The Department states:
“A different solution may be necessary to provide coverage to smart meters in the remaining hard to reach premises which the wide area network does not cover. It might be considered appropriate to create a licensable activity that relates to arranging the establishment of communications to these properties.”
The Department has in mind two licensable activities that may arise when those solutions are under way. I certainly understand, so far as the wide area network is concerned, that technical solutions such as patching—essentially patching in areas that are not available to the wide area network to what is available—are in a reasonably advanced state.
The new clause essentially asks the Minister to consider these two particular issues relating to the licensing of those activities and asks the Secretary of State to commission a specific review to look at how the extended use of powers provided for in proposed new section 1 will support those two areas of development—alternative solutions to the home area network and hard-to-reach premises that the wide area network cannot reach. Rather than there being a feeling that it might be appropriate to create a licensable activity, the new clause will make it rather more formalised by requiring the Secretary of State to actually produce a report on those particular issues and how they can be sorted out as the roll-out progresses.
Clearly, the extension of time for the roll-out gives the Secretary of State the ability to consider the issue in more detail and get, at a reasonably early stage, licensable arrangements, or would-be licensing arrangements, in such a report that would cover those activities in those particular areas. That would also be a sensible addition to the Bill—either securely in the Bill or, alternatively, through an acknowledgement and understanding that this is an issue for the future that needs to be considered and which should come under licensing arrangements, and that work will be undertaken to ensure that that happens.
Richard Harrington
The new clause has two points, as I see it. First, the smart meter system establishes a wireless home area network—HAN—in a consumer’s home that links the gas and electricity meters’ in-home display and the communications hub; and the communications hub establishes the network and manages the data across it. As with any wireless technology, various physical factors affect the performance of the HAN, such as what the building is made of or the thickness of the walls, as indeed we find with mobile phones in parts of the Palace of Westminster—in some places it works and in some it does not.
Richard Harrington
The hon. Lady has been to my office. She is welcome again any time.
Those things do affect the signal strength in exactly the way that we are joking about—it is actually true. The distance between the various pieces of smart meter equipment will also affect the performance of the HAN—for example, where a meter is located away from the main residence or in the basement of a block of flats—but it is important that the HAN works, to deliver the benefits for consumers, such as the in-home display.
For the vast majority of premises the communications hub provides the necessary home network. In the small number of premises that it does not, some form of alternative will be needed to ensure there is a working HAN. If there is not, how can we ask people to take on smart meters? We have already used our section 88 powers to place obligations on energy suppliers to develop and deliver an alternative to this, which—to continue the use of expressions and abbreviations by the shadow Minister—I would call “Alt HAN.” The Alt HAN Forum, the Alternative Home Area Network Forum—believe me, there is one—has been established along with the Alt HAN Company and its board. This gives suppliers the framework to get on and develop the solutions they will need. The forum has developed a commercial strategy, which is being implemented, and a procurement exercise is currently under way, and we expect the pace of delivery to pick up next year. It is an important part of the roll-out and the Department has worked closely with the forum throughout the early stage of its setup, and we are continuing to do so. We are tracking progress through the smart metering implementation programme’s governance, and we will monitor on an ongoing basis and determine whether further regulation is needed—so it is ongoing work.
The second point mentioned in the new clause was the arrangement for the so-called “hard-to-reach” premises. Here we are talking about communication of data to and from the premises through the Wide Area Network—referred to so gracefully by the shadow Minster as the WAN—to energy suppliers via the DCC. There are some premises that it may be difficult for WAN communications to reach, due to the location’s surroundings, for example in built-up areas with tall buildings, but also in remote and mountainous areas. By the end of 2020, on the basis of existing solutions, we expect that 0.75% of premises will be without DCC WAN and reaching these will be disproportionately expensive, with costs likely to exceed benefits, but it is not a static solution. Through its licence we placed obligations on the DCC to take steps to explore other solutions, which could be used to fill any coverage gap. We have to look for ways to ensure that these premises are serviced, because otherwise they will never get full access to smart services, and we are pushing suppliers to innovate to find solutions that work for them and their customers. We have facilitated an industry-led group for this purpose, to consider possible solutions. Finally, customers without DCC WAN can still benefit from some smart services, such as consumption data shown on the in-home display.
Those are important areas, and I know they are quite technical and not of interest to many people, but I felt it was necessary to take the opportunity to explore them. As I have outlined, we are closely monitoring activity and development—we really are. That is very important and is part of the whole development. I do not consider it necessary to add a separate review process on top of the existing working arrangements, which are all very comprehensive. I hope the shadow Minister finds my explanation reassuring and on that basis will agree to withdraw the amendment.
Dr Whitehead
I do find that reassuring and it is good to know that these processes are under way, albeit under circumstances where we are a little way from where we want to go. I hope that those processes can lead to a good result for what I appreciate are fairly small proportions of the population that one way or another cannot access the HAN or the WAN. Hopefully, we will be able to provide that reassurance that the roll-out really will be the roll-out that we want it to be in terms of the full connectivity of everyone who is being offered a smart meter for the future. That is an important consideration that we have on the table in the latter stages of the roll-out, and I hope that the current developments can reach that happy conclusion. Under those circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 6
Review: Use of powers to support rollout of smart meters
“(1) Within 12 months of this Act coming into force, the Secretary of State shall commission a review which shall consider how the extended use of powers provided for in section 1 will support the rollout of smart meters, with reference to—
(a) providing for efficient removal and disposal of old meters,
(b) reviewing the exemptions for smaller suppliers from a legally binding requirement to roll out smart meters.
(2) The Secretary of State shall lay the report of the review in subsection (1) before each House of Parliament.”
This new clause requires the Secretary of State to review how the extension of powers supports the rollout of smart meters.—(Dr Whitehead.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Whitehead
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I think that the Minister’s defence may be that the new clause is not properly drafted and therefore he cannot accept it. It is not the case that it is not properly drafted in terms of being in order or making sense, but it states something about smaller suppliers that is not quite right. Nevertheless, I want to set out the sentiment of the paragraph that refers to smaller suppliers and seek the Minister’s view on what might be done. We have already had a substantial debate on the subject of paragraph (a)—the efficient removal and disposal of old meters—so I want to concentrate my thoughts and remarks on the second part of the clause.
Although it is the case that smaller suppliers—non-obligated suppliers that have fewer than 250,000 customers, including dual-fuel customers—are not as obligated as companies that have more than 250,000 customers in the smart meter roll-out, it is true that all suppliers eventually are obligated to get meters into homes by the end of the roll-out period. Smaller suppliers are not legally obligated in the way that larger suppliers are to reach the milestones and the attainment agreements in place, which I mentioned earlier and which are undertaken through a legal directive from Ofgem. Therefore, it would be quite possible for those suppliers not to install smart meters until the last quarter of the last year of the roll-out, and then rush and install them all, while still meeting their final obligations, because they are not subject to milestones in the way larger suppliers are.
It can be suggested that that non-obligation means that smaller suppliers, by and large, are not very advanced in smart meter installation programmes. Obviously, there is a question about arrangements that smaller suppliers have to make when dealing with their often dispersed group of customers—if, for example, they are responsible for installing five smart meters in Congleton, three smart meters in Biggleswade and six smart meters in Clacton, depending on the distribution of their customers. In those circumstances, they will clearly factor out the installation of those smart meters to a third party. We have already discussed what happens with third-party meter installation arrangements on occasions in this Committee.
Overall, there are a number of not exactly worrying incidents but incidents in which it appears that smaller suppliers are slow off the mark in getting smart meters installed. Clearly, as we approach the point at which we have to get those smart meters in—towards the end of the 2020 period—that could become a significant factor, even though small suppliers of fewer than 250,000 represent about 6.5% of the total market. That is not an insignificant amount, particularly towards the end of the smart meter roll-out period.
The new clause, or certainly its sentiment, indicates that the particular circumstances might be reviewed as the roll-out progresses. The smaller suppliers should be more closely bound into the milestones than is the case at the moment so that we can have reasonable certainty that we are progressing across the board so that, by the time we get towards the end of 2020, we will not have a bit of the roll-out jigsaw that is not in place, possibly to the detriment of the roll-out as a whole. Will the Minister assure me that he is actively considering how that particular problem might be resolved? That would in turn be very helpful in my considerations about the new clause.
Richard Harrington
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. His new clause would require the Secretary of State to review how the extended use of powers will support the efficient removal and disposal of the old meters that are replaced by smart meters, as well as to review the roll-out obligations applicable to smaller energy suppliers.
As the shadow Minister said, we have discussed the first one at some length. A meeting is being convened with officials from BEIS and DEFRA and, I believe, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. I hope that the shadow Minister will also be available—I hope both Members will be because the purpose is to discuss fully the valid points that they made.
On the exemptions for small energy suppliers, it is true that the pressure is not on them as it is on the larger suppliers, for reasons that have been explained formally and informally. At the moment, the smaller suppliers are growing but they have a very fragmented customer base, as the shadow Minister explained well. That does not mean that they are being let off. In fact, Ofgem asked smaller suppliers for annual reports on progress and, ultimately, will take a view on it and whether it needs to be speeded up, noting that the progress has still to be consistent with taking all reasonable steps to comply with the 2020 regulations. They are not exempt; practically, however, the regulator has gone for the suppliers with the larger consumer bases first, to give the smaller ones a chance to get a mass of membership. In my area, I keep speaking to people who have basically followed the same thought process as me and gone for my smaller supplier, just on the internet. I can see that happening in practice.
In developing the regulations, the Government have been cognisant of the fact that the resources of smaller suppliers and big ones are different. That is a question—a point I have made—not only of the bulk of customers being concentrated but of the necessary IT systems and completion of the requisite security assessment to become a DCC user, which they can do six months later than large suppliers, for good reason.
We have also taken steps to manage the financial burden on small energy suppliers. The policy is to get as many smaller companies into the market as possible, for reasons of competition. The charges—the costs of the DCC data and communications services—are proportionate to an energy supplier’s market share. The larger suppliers pay the most and the smallest the least; it is not a flat rate at all. The Government have also made explicit provisions to facilitate an active market for a number of IT service businesses to provide the connection between the DCC and small energy suppliers, rather than allowing large companies to have a monopoly of it.
In conclusion, the design of the smart metering infrastructure means that, regardless of size, an energy supplier can access any smart meter enrolled on the DCC system and can therefore operate on a level playing field with all other energy suppliers. That is constantly under review by Ofgem. I repeat that their progress and their obligations are exactly the same, it is just a question of when and how. I hope the hon. Member for Southampton, Test finds my explanation reassuring and will agree to withdraw the new clause on that basis.
Dr Whitehead
I do find the Minister’s explanation reassuring. I hope, however, that what those smaller suppliers are doing is kept closely under review as the roll-out progresses. They are an integral part of the roll-out process, and they should not be able easily to evade their responsibilities to ensure that the roll-out is a success due to their circumstances. The Minister has reassured me that light that will be shone on that progress so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the new clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Title
Amendments made: 18, title, line 2, leave out “and”.
See the note to amendment 19.
19, title, line 3, at end insert “and to make provision enabling half-hourly electricity imbalances to be calculated using information obtained from smart meters”.—(Richard Harrington.)
This amends the Bill’s long title so that it covers the provision about smart meters made by NC8 to NC10.
The Chair
Before I put the final question, on behalf of the Committee I would like to thank everybody who has looked after us, particularly the members of the Committee, but also the Clerks, Hansard, the doorkeeper and the officials who have supported the Government Front Bench team.
Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill, as amended, to the House.
Richard Harrington
I would like to thank you, Mrs Gillan, and Mr Gapes for chairing so well and for having such patience with the shadow Minister, me and others. I reinforce what you said about the Clerks and the House authorities who have equally behaved in an exemplary manner. I also take this chance to thank my Bill team, who have lived and breathed this Bill. I commend them for everything that they have done. I thank members of the Committee on both sides for their patience and for all their good intentions to try to make something of the Bill and to improve it.
Dr Whitehead
I add my thanks to the members of the Committee for the positive way in which our debate has been conducted and for the conclusions that we have reached at the end of the Bill, and to you, Mrs Gillan, for your superb chairing of our proceedings and for your patience with me when I no doubt tested you to some considerable extent on matters of arcane constitutional interest. You conducted proceedings with complete impartiality, fairness and concern for the welfare of all members of the Committee. I pay specific thanks to our outstanding Committee Clerks, who have been of tremendous assistance to Opposition Members in getting our material together for the Committee, and who went way beyond the call of duty in ensuring that that happened. I thank them for that considerably.
The Chair
After that joyful moment of consensus, I echo all those remarks.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill, as amended, accordingly to be reported.
Westminster Hall
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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backbench business
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Elsie Inglis and Women’s Contribution to World War One
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Dr Elsie Inglis and the contribution of women to World War One.
As always, it is a great pleasure to be in a debate with you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocated time for this important debate in this important week for remembering Dr Elsie Inglis. She was a truly historic and remarkable woman—an Edinburgh woman, no less, and very proud of her roots. This week is the centenary of her death and of the state funeral that she was afforded, which will be re-enacted tomorrow.
Who was Dr Elsie Inglis? Born in India in 1864, she was the daughter of John Inglis, a chief commissioner in the Indian civil service. She studied medicine at Dr Sophia Jex-Blake’s then newly opened Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women and was one of the first women in Scotland to finish higher education, although she was not allowed to graduate. She went on to complete her training under Sir William Macewen at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.
The now famous exhortation,
“My good lady, go home and sit still”,
was the response that Dr Elsie Inglis received when she asked the War Office whether female doctors and surgeons could serve in frontline hospitals in world war one. At that time and for many years to come, that was the attitude that women faced in making vital contributions to society.
Despite attempts to repress her efforts—and those of many other women—to contribute, Elsie did not, in the words of the exhortation, “sit still”. Instead, she persevered, setting up the Scottish women’s hospitals, which were all-female units that played a vital role with Britain’s allies, including the French, the Belgians and, particularly, the Serbs.
Elsie was 50 when war broke out and she defied British Government advice by setting up female-staffed field hospitals close to the frontlines. She travelled to France within three months of the outbreak of war, and the Abbaye de Royaumont hospital, containing some 200 beds, was in place by the end of 1914. That was followed by a second hospital, at Villers Cotterets, in 1917. Tens of thousands were helped by the hospitals she set up in France, Serbia, Ukraine and Romania, acting with the support of the French and Serbian Governments.
Prior to that, Elsie was a strong advocate of women’s rights and a leading member of the suffragette movement in Scotland, playing a notable role in the establishment of the Scottish women’s suffragette federation in 1906. She fought energetically against prejudice and for the social and political emancipation of women, and had already made a huge impact in Edinburgh by working in some of the poorest parts of the city with women and babies who were in desperate need of help. Selflessly, she often waived the fees of patients who could not afford to pay.
Politically, Elsie was a staunch campaigner for votes for women, and her involvement in the suffragette movement prompted her to raise money to send out to female doctors, nurses, orderlies and drivers on the frontline. She recorded many great achievements, including setting up 14 hospitals during the war—staffed by 1,500 Scottish women, all volunteers. Most notably, Elsie raised the equivalent of £53 million in today’s money to fund greatly needed medical care for those on the frontline. Her efforts reached across the waters on another level, attracting volunteers from New Zealand, Australia and Canada. As I am sure everyone would agree, that showed fierce independence and capability from women who were well ahead of their time.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this timely debate and on ensuring that it coincides with the anniversary. This type of discussion, debate and acknowledgement is significant, given the issues that he mentioned. For example, we must not only pay tribute to the many voluntary detachments of women in the first world war from all across the UK, including Scotland and Northern Ireland, but ensure that future generations never forget the contributions that they made.
Ian Murray
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Commemorating the centenary is easy, but we need to ensure not only that the education and commemorations run right through society, in schools and workplaces, but that all four corners of the United Kingdom commemorate the contribution of women—and indeed, of everyone, including those who made the ultimate sacrifice in giving their lives.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Does he agree that we need to learn lessons not necessarily only from the extraordinary contribution that women made during the great war and the social strides that they made in that time, but from what happened during the peace? It is certainly the case that many of the advances retreated in the immediate post-war era and into the 1920s, and in many ways women were set back to where they were in 1914. As we approach the centenary of the end of the great war, perhaps we need to give thought to what happened shortly thereafter.
Ian Murray
Absolutely. As the hon. Gentleman said, we should commemorate not just the contribution that women made during the wars, but the contribution that they made subsequently. Indeed, in this very building, Emily Davison is commemorated downstairs for her contribution to the suffragette movement. I am very much of the view that if more women had been running the world, perhaps the great wars would never have happened.
Dr Murrison
I think the hon. Gentleman might have misunderstood my point. In the years following the great war, many advances that women had made and the position that they had established for themselves in society sadly took a step back. People such as Dr Inglis, who had become very prominent, were in fact told to take a back seat, particularly when the men came back from the war.
Ian Murray
Absolutely. Women are still fighting the same battles today. The advancement that they made during the great war was almost forgotten, until the second world war, of course, when women again played a significant role. We need to remember their contribution not just during the war efforts, but in between. That is part of the story of the commemorations and the story we should tell of our recent history.
The women’s dedication to help thousands of badly injured men in dire conditions is commendable. In Serbia in particular, the typhus epidemic had gripped the country, and without those women many tens of thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of lives would not have been saved. Serbia was home to the first Scottish women’s hospitals field unit in 1914. Despite the life-threatening conditions of the typhus epidemic, to which four staff from the Scottish women’s hospitals had lost their lives, Elsie went to serve in the hospital on the frontline. Sent out to look after 300 beds, Elsie and her team were in fact faced with 550 beds filled with injured and ill soldiers. With a dreadful lack of sanitation in the overcrowded hospitals, Elsie faced the Serbian officials and firmly refused to let the overcrowding endanger the lives of patients and nurses. A true heroine, she went from negotiating with Serbian officials to finding innovative ways to deal with the overflow patients at the hospital, without a second thought for her own safety. Her colleagues took the same approach.
Even after the beginning of the great retreat, in which Serbia was invaded by the Austrian army, Elsie and many of her volunteers refused to give up. Again, she defied demands from the British Government to return home. Despite finding out that she had cancer—I stress that she had cancer as well—she set up two more field hospitals. In 1915, she was captured and repatriated, but still did not rest until Serbian soldiers were guaranteed safe passage out of Serbia. Once this safe passage had been granted and the soldiers arrived in Newcastle, Elsie battled through the pain of her own illness to greet them. Sadly, she passed away on 26 November 1917.
It has been said that Dr Elsie Inglis
“made Florence Nightingale look like a part-time care assistant”.
Her fierce dedication to helping others leading up to the great war shows that Elsie really was a role model in her own right. I am pleased that my constituents in Edinburgh and people in the rest of Scotland have such an outstanding figure to look up to and aspire to. Elsie broke down barriers and proved time and again that women will always be an integral part of society. She continually praised the work carried out by her many volunteers, refusing to think of her effort as any greater than theirs. Elsie never asked them to do something that she would not be willing to do herself. She took part in the most menial tasks and always worked as part of the unit.
Elsie’s humbleness about the great things that she achieved is why I feel so strongly about remembering her legacy and giving her and other women who contributed to world war one the recognition and commendation they deserve. We should commemorate and celebrate her life and work.
On 29 November, 1917, Elsie Inglis was buried in Edinburgh following a state funeral at St Giles’ Cathedral, with the flags of Great Britain and Serbia placed on her coffin, the lilies of France around her, and the torn banners of Scotland’s history hanging over her head. She was later awarded high honours by France, Russia and Serbia. Indeed, in Serbia, Dr Inglis and her colleagues are regarded as heroes and saints, with 17 statues to her in Serbia alone.
The UK should properly recognise Dr Inglis and the other unacknowledged British heroines who set up the Scottish women’s hospitals during the first world war. To mark the centenary of her death, I am pleased that this year the City of Edinburgh Council has decided to name a street after her and that the Edinburgh Evening News is running a fundraising campaign to have a statue of Elsie erected in her beloved Edinburgh.
The Scottish Women’s Hospitals Trust, led by my constituent Ian McFarlane and his trustees, aims to work with the Serbian Government and the Edinburgh Evening News to get the funds to build this well-deserved and much-overdue monument. A private ceremony was held at her grave on Sunday to mark the centenary of her death. As a mark of her growing reputation, a commemoration will also take place at St Giles’ cathedral tomorrow, on the same day as her state funeral 100 years ago.
But what about the countless other women who poured compassion and dedication into saving lives during the great war? November 2017 also marks the centenary of the foundation of the Women’s Royal Naval Service. The Royal Navy became the first of the three services officially to recruit women. Expansion of the wartime Navy led the Wrens to take on tasks that the Royal Navy had previously considered beyond women’s capabilities. Women’s contributions to the war effort went from strength to strength, and many Wrens were involved in planning naval operations, including the D-day landings in June 1944.
In December 1941, the Government passed the National Service Act 1941, which allowed the conscription of women into war work or the armed forces. In 1944, some 74,000 women were doing more than 200 different jobs. Of the courageous Wrens, 303 were killed on wartime service; we should pay tribute to them and all their efforts. On 7 July 1917, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps became the British Army’s first all-female unit. More than 57,000 women served from July 1917 to 1921, including 10,000 in France.
I would like to recognise in particular the contribution of two great Scottish women to the WAAC: Alexandra “Mona” Chalmers Watson and Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan. Mona was from a high-achieving Edinburgh family and was the first woman to graduate from Edinburgh University as a doctor. Helen, who studied botany at King’s College London, had deep family roots in Ayrshire and Aberdeen. As well as playing leading roles in the WAAC, they fought hard against the patriarchy to show that women must have a more equal place in society and in the world.
It is also 100 years since Passchendaele, one of the most notorious battles of the first world war, which the House commemorated last month. In just three and a half months of fighting, an estimated 550,000 Allied and German troops were killed, wounded or lost. Around 90,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers went missing: 50,000 were buried without being identified, and 42,000 were never recovered from the fields of Flanders, which turned into an ocean of mud.
As well as paying tribute to those who lost their lives, I would like to recognise the contribution of Sister Kate Luard, who served as a nurse in the second Boer war as well as being head nurse at a casualty station on the western front. Sister Luard often described her work in letters from Passchendaele as “UBC”—“utter bloody chaos”. Despite the chaos, she persisted, saving countless lives. I am glad that her efforts were recognised; she was awarded the Royal Red Cross and bar. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to serve so close to the frontline under such enormous pressures, but her letters are a small insight into the passion and dedication that it must have taken to do so:
“The uproar is almost stupefying. They burst on two sides—streams of shrapnel which were quite hot when you picked them up. They came everywhere, through our canvas huts. Bursting shells are an ugly sight—black or yellow smoke and streams of jagged shells flying violently in all directions. It doesn’t look as if we should ever sleep again.”
More than 100,000 women joined Britain’s armed forces during the war. From ambulance driving to translating, women served Britain in a variety of ways; I will highlight a few more. Elizabeth Knocker and Mairi Chisholm set up their own first aid post close to the Belgian frontline at Pervyse in November 1914. Mary O’Connell Bianconi went to France in August 1917 as a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, where she worked as a driver in the St Omer ambulance convoy. After an air raid in July 1918, Molly and six of her driver colleagues drove their ambulances to pick up the wounded. Dame Katharine Furse joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment in 1909. On the outbreak of the first world war, she was chosen to be head of the first VAD unit to be sent to France. In 1917 she became the director of the newly formed Women’s Royal Naval Service.
We all know the immeasurable contribution women made back home—everything from working in munitions factories to building guns. I wish that I could identify by name each and every woman who made an enormous contribution to the great war. Unfortunately, time does not allow, but those unmentioned are by no means unnoticed. It is hard to imagine that women with such passion and hunger to help, and who spoke up when they were told to be quiet, could ever be forgotten. They most definitely helped to pave the way for future women to crack the glass ceiling.
Some important centenaries approach next year. To name a few, April 2018 will mark the formation of the Women’s Royal Air Force, an invaluable asset to the RAF in which around 32,000 women enrolled in its first two years. May 2018 marks the day that nine members of the Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps became the first British women to die on active military service when their trench was hit by a German bomb in Abbeville, France.
Many of the women whom I have mentioned saved lives through innovative thinking, putting the wellbeing of others above their own safety. They often worked under fire, in unthinkable conditions with little sleep and few resources. They offered a helping hand not because they wanted praise, but because they had valuable experience and skills to offer to those who were also putting their lives on the line for their country. I am extremely pleased to have had this opportunity to ensure that we continue to give them the recognition that they deserve, and I hope that their legacy will live on.
I will finish where I started by reading out what is on the gravestone of Dr Elsie Inglis, who is buried in Dean cemetery in Edinburgh:
“To the beloved and honoured memory of Elsie Maud Inglis. Born 1864, died on active service 1917. Surgeon, philanthropist, patriot, a leader of the movement for the political emancipation of women and founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for foreign service. Mors janua vitae”—
meaning “Death is the gateway to life”.
Several hon. Members rose—
Philip Davies (in the Chair)
Order. There are six people seeking to catch my eye in this debate. I will call the Front Benchers from 10.30, so we have 45 minutes to divide between six people. Members can do their own arithmetic, but that is about seven to eight minutes each. I will not impose a time limit at this stage, but I hope that people will bear other contributors in mind.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) for securing this debate on an important part of our world war one history that at times is unfortunately overlooked. The contribution made by women in the great war, in particular Dr Elsie Inglis, should not be understated, and it is a pleasure to pay tribute to them today.
As the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, I am proud to draw Members’ attention to the role played by women of the borders at that challenging time, especially those who served alongside Elsie. While reading about the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, I could only imagine the harrowing scenes that they saw. One of those women was Sarah Dempster Allan, born in 1889 in the small village of Sprouston near Kelso in my constituency. On the outbreak of war, Sarah joined the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and was posted to a chateau near Troyes, where she performed her duties in a canvas tent. I am sure that it felt a long way from the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, which she had left to join the cause.
Because their unit was housed in a portable tent, she was then moved to Salonika in Greece before moving on to Macedonia. Unfortunately, her time helping the Serbs was short-lived; she was forced to evacuate back to Greece, and return to the United Kingdom shortly after. Despite being born in 1889, Sarah lived well into the 20th century, dying at the age of 102. It is an honour to tell colleagues her story here today.
Of course, the Scottish Women’s Hospitals were only one way that women helped to win the war. Munitions factories, the civil service and agriculture would have been crippled by the flight of young men to fight on the frontlines had women not stepped forward to help the cause. Propaganda posters from the time give us a visual reminder of the huge need for women to do their bit for the war effort. There can be no question but that that call was answered; Elsie is proof of that. Even when the Government refused to help her, Dr Inglis and her team went above and beyond the call of duty by travelling the 2,000 miles to Serbia to help those in dire need.
That does not even come close to giving a full picture of the time. Many women, while taking on extra practical duties for the war effort at home or abroad, had to endure tremendous heartache and sorrow. Living in constant fear of bad news from the front about their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, uncles and cousins would have been an experience tantamount to torture, never mind living with the constant threat of invasion. We must not forget the many women who set up or joined branches of the women’s institute, women’s guild and “the rural”, many of which continue today, including in my constituency, as part of that important war effort. Turning surplus produce into vital rations for the frontline was as important a task as any other.
Without the contribution of women such as Elsie Inglis of Edinburgh or Sarah Allan of Kelso, our brave men on the frontline would have gone without bullets in their guns, uniforms on their backs and food in their rations; they would have been left for dead on the battlefield with their injuries unattended. Almost certainly, we would have lost the war, and we may not have been standing in this place today. As the then Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, put it:
“For this service to our common cause humanity owes them unbounded gratitude.”
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on securing this debate. It is timely given the important anniversaries of women’s role in our history that we are celebrating and commemorating.
The contributions made by women during the first world war have long been overlooked. As we commemorate the centenary of those events, it is important that the topic receives the respect and recognition it deserves. It is important to recognise that for too long, the role of women in history in general, and particularly in conflict, has been airbrushed out—largely by men. As the European continent and much of the world descended into war, many brave soldiers and sailors, including Plymouth lads, responded to the call; they were sent overseas to the trenches or to serve their country in the Royal Navy. They were not alone in their bravery: many of Plymouth’s women back home valiantly stepped in to fill the roles that had been left vacant and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South has described, took part in providing medical support.
As more men were sent to the front, women were able to move into roles that previously had not been open to them. In Plymouth, many women became the factory workers, railway guards, postwomen, tram drivers and police officers who kept Britain and Plymouth going during those dark years. That happened right across the country, not least in my area. Thanks to the support of superb local historian Chris Robinson, who writes about the role of women in Plymouth in the world wars, some of the stories of the sacrifices that women made can come to the fore.
One key role that women took up in world war one, which proved vital to our war effort, was the often dirty and dangerous work in our munitions factories. Women put their lives at risk, being exposed to poisonous chemicals and accidental explosions. In Plymouth, a technical school was established for women in that work, and within a year nearly 400 women had been trained there in how to create munitions and were busy working on production lines in Union Street, Prince Rock and Bull Point. Women carried out that important work, helping the allies in their endeavours to outgun the central powers. The great travesty is that women were thanked for that service by receiving less than half the wages of men doing similar work.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
I pay tribute to the women of Glasgow who worked in the munitions factory. At the start of world war one, about 15,000 women were reckoned to work there; by the end, over 65,000 women were working there and playing a vital role in supporting the Army as they went forward. I place on record my tribute to those women of Glasgow.
Luke Pollard
There are many untold stories of women’s contributions to the war effort that need to be told across the country, including in Scotland.
A further way in which women contributed to the war effort came with the establishment of the women’s police service, which was set up by Margaret Damer Dawson in 1914. Damer Dawson had worked towards establishing a female presence in the police force for a number of years, but the war provided a new opportunity. The WPS was Britain’s first uniformed women’s police service, and within the first three months there were 50 recruits in Plymouth. That voluntary service of spirited women paved the way for the first official female police officers a few years later. One of the first to join up and serve in the WPS was Plymouth’s Nancy Astor, who is celebrating her own anniversary in two years’ time as the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat and who represented the seat that I now represent. She opened the door for more women to stand for election, and her service to our country started in the women’s police service in Plymouth.
I pay tribute to the people who have worked so hard over the last year to recognise the role of women in world war one, in particular the volunteers and staff from Plymouth City Council and Plymouth Museum who have expertly welcomed visitors and told stories of men and women’s services to our armed forces at the Commonwealth War Graves’ “Poppies: Wave” on Plymouth Hoe. That memorable and moving installation created a wave over our war memorial and is a fantastic example of how to use the ceramic poppies. It provided an opportunity for events and discussions about the people named on the war memorial, who were predominantly men, and the untold stories of women who contributed.
Earlier this year, shortly after being elected, I tabled a number of parliamentary questions about the role of women in public life and in particular about the number of statues that we have of women. As 50% of the population, it is right that 50% of the stories that are told are about women. I understand that the Department does not keep central statistics on the number of statues or pieces of public art dedicated to women from history, but given the anniversary of women getting the right to vote next year and the 100th anniversary of Nancy Astor’s election in 1919, now might be a good time to start, so we can begin to correct that and to tell the story of women’s role in public life.
When we commemorate the anniversary of the first world war, it is important to remember the brave men and women up and down the country who gave their service to our country, not only those who fought on the front or at sea, but those who fought on the home front as well. I hope that this debate concludes with the erection of the statue and the memorials that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South spoke about, and that it enables us to talk more profoundly and clearly about the role of women in world war one, which has been far too overlooked to date.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
It is, as always, a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on securing this timely and important debate.
Dr Elsie Inglis made an enormous contribution to humanity. She set up hospitals that helped thousands of injured men, woman and children, combatants and civilians, who were caught up in the horror of world war one in Serbia. She battled to improve hygiene and cleanliness against typhus and other diseases. It is also beholden on us, however, to give credit to her political thinking and the women’s suffrage movement, in which she became involved in the 1890s to protest about the grossly inadequate medical facilities available to women at the time. That led directly to her founding the medical school for women.
We have heard Members speak eloquently about Dr Inglis, a woman who led in making a better world, but I will take this opportunity to discuss a colleague of hers, Bessie Dora Bowhill, another woman who organised and improved others’ lives. She was the daughter of a prosperous farmer in Berwickshire, then part of the constituency of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). She was born on 12 April 1869 at Marygold in the parish of Bunkle and Preston.
John Lamont
May I correct the hon. Gentleman’s pronunciation of “Marygold”? I wish to ensure that the official record is accurate.
Martin Whitfield
I am grateful for that intervention. Bessie’s parents retired to Dunbar, which was then part of the constituency of Berwickshire but is now part of East Lothian. Bessie embarked on a nursing career that took her not only all over Scotland, but on two major overseas adventures. She trained in Edinburgh in the 1890s and she was night superintendent at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary until May 1900, when the Boer war started. She enlisted in Princess Christian’s Army Nursing Service Reserve and was sent to the No. 13 Stationary hospital outside Durban in South Africa, where she served for the duration of the Boer war. On her return, she worked in hospitals in Falkirk, Dundee and again in Aberdeen before being appointed matron of Perth Royal Infirmary in 1909.
After the outbreak of world war one, she volunteered with Dr Elsie Inglis in the Scottish women’s hospital in Serbia, where she retained her senior position as matron of the unit and served until 1916. When she returned home, our local paper carried Bessie’s report of her ordeal, “Dunbar Nurse’s Experience in Serbia A Tale of Privation and Adventure”, in her own words, including the following account:
“At night the Prussian Guards simply walked into the town without any fuss whatever, and took it. Dr Inglis and her staff were told to prepare beds for 50 Germans, and next morning we received orders to leave the hospital to them. Only half-an-hour was given to us to get out, and all we were allowed to take was our beds and bedding.”
Bessie was awarded the British War Medal and the British Victory Medal for her work in Serbia. She was also awarded Serbia’s Cross of Mercy.
After that, Bessie slips from the historical record. Perhaps she was unable to carry on in nursing after what she witnessed in Serbia. I have found only two subsequent mentions of her: on 26 February 1916, the minutes of the Scottish Matrons Association record that its members agreed to send her a telegram to express their admiration for her heroism; and on 10 June 1916, she hosted tea at her nurses’ home. She died in York on 12 September 1930, aged 61.
I raise Bessie’s case today to highlight the enormous contributions made by women, which far too often go unnoticed and without thanks, but which have been crucial to shaping and deciding the future of us all, and often illuminate and focus the true meaning of moments in history. I think of the strength of the contribution made by women during the miners’ strike of 1984-85. The roots of the strike go back to the aftermath of the devolution debacle in the 1970s. The Labour Government fell in 1979, when they were defeated by one vote in a vote of no confidence; Scottish National party Members were among those who voted against them. The result was the 1979 election and the victory of a Conservative Government under Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. In 2014, in moving a motion in the Scottish Parliament on the miners’ strike, Iain Gray said:
“With so much at stake, it was no surprise, then, that when the dispute came, it was not just any strike... In East Lothian, the Labour club was turned over to the strikers as their headquarters and soup kitchen. The Co-operative was generous to those who were its members as well as its customers. The Royal Musselburgh Golf Club felled its trees for fuel and the council set up a hardship fund.
The wider labour movement mobilised too, in practical ways, collecting food and money to keep the miners—”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 20 March 2014; c. 29224.]
Philip Davies (in the Chair)
Order. I have given the hon. Gentleman a little latitude, but he seems to be straying from the title of the debate; the miners’ strike is quite some distance from Dr Elsie Inglis and the contribution of women to world war one. If he got back to the subject, I am sure we would all be grateful.
Martin Whitfield
I accept your guidance from the Chair, Mr Davies; I merely wished to reiterate that the contribution made—often silently—by women during world war one and subsequently has often gone unheard in a history written by men.
Millicent Fawcett, an English suffrage organiser from Dr Inglis’ time, described the suffrage movement, in words that are still so apt today in the fight for justice and equality for all, as
“like a glacier; slow moving but unstoppable”.
We must remember and celebrate the bravery, intelligence and service of women such as Dr Elsie Inglis and Matron Bessie Bowhill, of women who supported the miners’ strike by setting up the soup kitchens, and of women today.
Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
Dr Inglis, like Keir Hardie, supported the suffragettes; that is where the link with the miners may come in. Both opposed the war, but both were there to help out when the time came.
Martin Whitfield
I am grateful for that intervention.
We must remember women such as Dr Inglis, but also women today who suffer under universal credit, zero-hours contracts and ill health, but fight for others before themselves. Whether through imaginative thinking, fighting typhoid or promoting cleanliness, they have always supported and served others before themselves. I hope that the battle will be won for women sooner rather than later.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is always a pleasure to speak in Westminster Hall debates. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on presenting his case so well. It is no surprise that we all wish to speak not only about Dr Elsie Inglis, but about women from our own parts of the country who did so much so many years ago. The debate gives us a timely opportunity to do so, almost 100 years to the day since Dr Inglis’ death.
Some may wonder what an Ulster Scotsman has to say about the contribution of Dr Inglis and women in general to the world war. It can be summed up very briefly: I have to give sincere thanks and honour the memory of a lady who was one of a generation of women who won the war on the home front, and whose memory should be honoured when we mention any victory in the war. It is good to have that on the record. A well known saying that I use often and that is certainly true in my case is that behind every good man is a better woman. Behind every victory in the world war was a woman at home, keeping the home fires burning, the cattle milked and the grain growing, caring for the children and continuing life.
This summer, I attended the Milwaukee Irish Fest, as I have done for the last six years; it is an honour as a Unionist to attend such an occasion. I was pleased to see Carol Walker of the Somme Association in Newtownards as a fellow speaker on the list. Her topic was the role of women in the first world war, and she has been kind enough to provide me with her notes on the topic. They are fascinating and give a small insight into the wealth of knowledge and experience that is available from a visit to the Somme Museum on the boundary of Newtownards in my constituency of Strangford. I encourage any visitor to my wonderful constituency to take the time to tour the museum and learn more about our vibrant history and the vital role that we played in the war.
Prior to the outbreak of the first world war, more than 800,000 women in Britain were in paid employment. The majority were in low-paid jobs—domestic service, agriculture or fireside industries such as sewing—and were paid 50% less than men doing the same job. That was a matter that clearly needed to be addressed and settled. In the 19th century, education reinforced the female role as that of a wife and mother, but women were increasingly beginning to make a significant impact on society as their legal and social status started gradually to improve.
By 1910, universities in Ireland were admitting women to all courses, and by 1914 education was much more open to women, but it was mainly the wealthy who could enjoy the benefit. Middle-class women tended to take “respectable” jobs, such as governess or teacher. Irish women had a long informal involvement in politics in the 19th century, with many participating in food riots and agrarian societies. The general progress being made by women throughout society allowed them to become more actively involved in the political issues of the day, such as home rule. Many thousands of Unionist women signed a declaration against home rule in 1912—indeed, more women signed than men.
I would like to talk about two ladies. One notable local political woman was Winifred Carney, a suffragist, trade unionist and Irish independence activist who was born in Bangor but moved to Falls Road in Belfast. She was in charge of the women’s section of the Irish Textile Workers Union, where she met James Connolly and became his personal secretary. Winnie was also a member of Cumann na mBan and was present at the General Post Office during the Easter rising of 1916. She probably had a “road to Damascus” experience, as she later married George McBride from Belfast, an Orangeman and a member of the Ulster Volunteer Force. Such is the history of our politics in Northern Ireland! George had served with the 36th Ulster Division at the Battle of the Somme.
The overall lack of women’s involvement at the higher levels of pre-war politics resulted in ignorance of women’s issues. A major issue was the right to vote. On 4 August 1914, war broke out and changed the role of women. The first world war was a time of huge social change, particularly for women. It was the catalyst to speed up changes that were already happening. Some 80,000 women had volunteered for war service by 1918. Initially, they were not allowed to go to the front, but more than 25,000 women served there in different roles, including as nursing auxiliaries.
Jessie Getty from Newtownards, the main town in my constituency, joined the Ulster Volunteer Force nursing corps in 1913 and went on to enlist in a voluntary aid detachment on the outbreak of war. Jessie served at the military hospital in Wimereux during the first world war and, like so many others went on to marry a soldier whom she had nursed back to health.
During the war years, many women were prominent in supporting war charities such as the Red Cross and sailors’ charities. Buffets were regularly provided for returning soldiers by ladies at the railway stations and docks in Belfast. In the old town hall, they packed parcels and dispatched them fortnightly to Ulster prisoners of war. Clearly, women were very active; they may not have been at the front in large numbers, in battle or in nursing care, but at home they were very much holding the reins. Nurses worked long hours looking after wounded sailors and soldiers in the accommodation provided by the UVF hospitals; that is an enormous part of our history, too.
Many married women found that their husbands returned from the war with serious mental as well as physical injuries. Today, such issues are addressed more than in the past—in those days they were perhaps unknown. Many men were treated for the effects of neurasthenia, but for countless others no support was sought or provided. In those days we clearly did not have the level of care that we have at least the potential for today. Many were left to cope alone with flashbacks, night terrors and severe depression, and a great strain was put on family life and relationships.
The first world war was a watershed for women, especially in relation to new employment and enhanced voting opportunities. The work of the suffragettes and women’s contribution in war made it apparent that a change in the laws concerning elections was needed, but that was slow to happen. Overall, even though more women were becoming involved in trade unions, women were still employed on lower wages than men—often half the male rate. That is still a battle to be fought today, for some.
Time has beaten me, but I conclude by again highlighting why this Ulsterman is speaking on this topic: I recognise how thankful we must be to the thousands of women who helped to win the war, at home and on the frontlines alike. They must be remembered, and honoured, and that is what we all seek to do in the debate.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) for securing what, for me, is a crucial debate.
I admit that before I heard about the campaign for the Elsie Inglis memorial in Edinburgh I knew little about her. As I heard more and was drawn in, I was astonished at the contribution she had made and moved by what she had done, not just for the many soldiers she saved or eased through the horrific suffering and death of the first world war, but for me and my generation. As has been mentioned, the centenary of that great war is coming up next year, but there is another centenary, that of the Representation of the People Act 1918, and Elsie Inglis was at the forefront of campaigning on both.
In Edinburgh, Elsie Inglis was one of eight women—the others being Sophia Jex-Blake, Isabel Thorne, Edith Pechey, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Mary Anderson and Emily Bovell—who campaigned for the right of women to practise medicine in the city. I wonder where we would be today without them. They led the way, and so many women have been able to follow and do so much. Elsie Inglis was a role model for the women of her time, but she is also a role model for us all today. Before the war, she had qualified as a physician and, appalled at the standard of care for other women, she was prompted to become a suffragist and to set up a maternity hospital in Edinburgh for poor women. The hospital, originally called The Hospice, became the Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospital. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh South and many others have detailed, Elsie Inglis’ achievements were huge, as were those of many other women in the great war, in world war two and in every conflict since. The contributions, suffering and achievements of those women have been vital to not just our modern wellbeing but our very survival as we are today.
The fact that these women have often been overlooked is at times the result of the women’s own modesty. Recently, at the funeral of a friend’s grandmother, I heard her story for the first time. She was to many people an ordinary, loving grandmother and mother, who had led a pretty standard Scottish life, but at the funeral I heard the remarkable moving story of a then young woman, who like many others had put her life on hold to join up and serve in the armed forces. She was a spotter for the RAF. That is an example of the contributions that so often have been overlooked. It is my generation who have benefited from many such achievements, who are able to stand here today and contribute to the wellbeing of our country. No opportunity to recognise those contributions should go unmarked.
Elsie Inglis is not just an example of the women who made a contribution to the great war; she is part of a glorious thread woven through British history of the contributions that women have made at home during war and at the front itself, and after war too. My mother, Nessie Jardine, appears on a monument in my home town to those who have died from asbestos-related conditions as a result of working in the shipyards on the Clyde and elsewhere in Scotland, which have played such a vital role in this country’s wellbeing. By honouring Elsie Inglis, we honour all such people, and this is an opportunity for which we should be grateful.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), who has done us a great service in introducing the debate and drawing attention to the extraordinary story of Dr Elsie Inglis. I had not planned to contribute, but hearing the amazing story of Elsie reminded me of another formidable woman, and I want briefly to refer to her achievements.
Before I do that, however, I want to reflect on the fact that now, of course, world war one is a war of history not of memory and, for many, the conflict is characterised by the slaughter in the trenches on the frontline. It is incredibly important that we commemorate that aspect of the campaign, but this debate has provided a timely reminder of the extraordinary contribution made by women over that period in history and the process of social change that was unleashed by the conflict.
I was pleased to see the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) in the debate earlier. I have had the pleasure of supporting some of the work he has been doing in commemorating the centenary of the first world war, and during that process I have had the opportunity to look at many amazing and extraordinary stories of the contribution made by women throughout that period of our history, many in Yorkshire and in my constituency of Barnsley. But one woman particularly caught my attention and I want to tell her story.
This is the story of a woman called Mary Barbour; some hon. Members will know it. Mary lived in Glasgow, and politics meant as little to her as it does to some of the people most disillusioned with our politics today, but in 1914 something changed. Mary’s husband, David, went to fight on the frontline and she was left alone at home with their two young boys. With so many men away on the frontline, the city’s private landlords sensed an opportunity and cynically began hiking the rents of Mary and her neighbours, trying to make an easy profit out of people they thought could not fight back. But in Mary Barbour’s case, they messed with the wrong woman.
Working with friends, Mary organised a rent strike. Together, they led tenants into a protest that grew into one of 20,000 people and became known as Mrs Barbour’s Army. Together, they forced the Government to take immediate action to protect people from unfair rent increases—the first-ever rent protection legislation. Mrs Barbour did not even have a vote when the war broke out, but her experiences led her to become one of the first women to represent her city as an elected councillor—as it happens, Mr Davies, a Labour councillor. Mrs Barbour did not wait for someone to tell her she could make a difference; she just did it. She did not ask for anyone’s permission to say what she knew to be right; she just said it.
Hugh Gaffney
Mary Barbour—who, along with many other great women, stood up for this country—will be getting a statue in January, in Govan, Glasgow, where she came from. The statue also includes ordinary people—Mary Barbour’s Army—marching behind her. This is the first time there will be a statue of ordinary children and women, and it will soon be unveiled in Govan, Mary Barber’s home town.
Dan Jarvis
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) made a point about the importance of commemorating the stories of women, so I am delighted to hear that the formidable Mary Barbour will have her story formally marked with the erection of a statue in January.
In holding the debate today, we are shining an important light on some incredible and inspiring stories of women who were true pioneers. We are doing so in a way that recognises their memory and the fact that the struggle for equality is not a battle consigned to history, but one that is very much alive today.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Davies. I commend the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on bringing the debate forward today. I am particularly pleased to speak in it not only as a woman and an Edinburgh MP, but as someone who has long held an interest in the work of Dr Elsie Maud Inglis, one of Edinburgh’s finest adopted daughters.
Elsie pursued women’s equality not just through words, but through work. She campaigned for the vote and she took part in the war, even when she was rudely told not to. Elsie did not “know her place”—she wanted to make a better world for all women. Many folk in her home city of Edinburgh, where she lived, trained and worked for much of her life, still do not know who Dr Elsie Inglis really was, beyond the name of the old maternity hospital where so many Edinburghers, including my partner, were born.
As we have heard, awareness of Elsie Inglis’s work is growing, with a local campaign in the Edinburgh Evening News gathering steam and a long-standing and relentless campaign for greater recognition led by Alan Cumming and Ian McFarlane. There are a few plaques here and there that commemorate the tremendous work of the Scottish women’s hospitals, but notably there are many more in Serbia, as we have heard. All credit to Clydesdale bank for putting Elsie’s image on its £50 notes in 2009. However, it is hardly the heights that Winston Churchill predicted when he said:
“The record of their work, lit up by the fame of Dr Inglis, will shine in history.”
I am not going to go over all Elsie Inglis’s achievements—those have been ably covered by other Members—but suffice it to say that hers is an incredible story. The grit and passion this woman and her colleagues showed in standing up to the prevailing attitudes to women and driving their plans forward regardless remain an inspiration to us all. The challenges for women at that time make her story all the more astonishing. Elsie Inglis was not a nurturing angel in the role women were expected to adopt; we remember her for her surgeon’s skills, her leadership, her tenacity and her vision, and for the impact she made on so many lives and the principles by which she lived. Elsie may have had a relatively privileged background, but she chose to take on the screaming wealth and gender inequalities of society. She was a progressive before that term became fashionable.
As convenor of culture in Edinburgh, I supported another 100th anniversary back in 2009, when there was the recreation of the 1909 Gude Cause suffrage procession along Princes Street, which I believe Elsie played a part in organising. That was such a memorable day, when we sisters and a few brothers celebrated not just the efforts of those women in gaining the vote, but the changes we have seen in the 100 years since. The accompanying “Votes for Women” exhibition at the Museum of Edinburgh—it was curated by another woman passionate about the history of the suffrage movement in Scotland, the excellent and late Helen Clark—was hugely successful and was extended by popular demand month after month.
Finally, the role Elsie Inglis and her contemporaries played in carving a path for me and other women to get involved in politics and medicine and to help build a better society for our daughters and our sons began to be more widely recognised in Edinburgh. Elsie deserves a statue in Edinburgh, at least as much as the grand generals on horses, the visiting royals clad in tartan trews or that famous terrier in the graveyard. I hope we get one, and soon. If as many Edinburgh girls and women as could manage it gave just £1 each towards that project, we would reach the target very soon. That would be a lovely tribute from those of us who owe many of the freedoms we enjoy today to women like Elsie. However, it is even more important that her legacy is a living one, where we work to protect our NHS from privatisation, tackle poverty and inequality, and ensure that every child has the best possible start in life. I am sure Elsie would approve of the Scottish Government’s baby box policy. One of my favourite slogans from the 1909 march, which was recreated in song for the anniversary, is:
“Ye maunna tramp on the Scottish thistle”.
That mood still resonates now, and the UK Government would do well to mind it.
It is good to see at least one woman being celebrated in this Parliament, which has so often failed many, many women. I could refer to the unfairness dished out to the Women Against State Pension Inequality pensioners, or how universal credit disproportionately targets women. There is the horrifying rape clause, the continuing disparity in wages between men and women, and many more examples. Elsie Inglis was an utterly remarkable woman who did an enormous amount of good, but she was fortunate to have started from a position of some privilege. We should be levelling the playing field and giving every woman a chance—at least a chance—of a life lived to its full potential. I am certain she would agree with that. Her great-nephew, the Reverend Hugh Inglis Maddox, said recently:
“My great-aunt spent her life showing men that women could do anything.”
Let that be her legacy.
I welcome the commemorations for the 100th anniversary of Elsie Inglis’s death. At the weekend, I—alongside our Health Minister, Elsie’s descendants and Edinburgh’s Lord Provost—attended a beautiful memorial service in Dean cemetery, where Elsie lies. It is good to see Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon paying hearty tribute to this hero. I believe she is attending the ceremony in St Giles cathedral tomorrow. Here in London, the many roles of women in world war one are marked in a lovely, moving memorial at the Cenotaph, but among all the unsung heroes, Elsie’s is a name that deserves to be sung about—a story that deserves to be told.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on securing today’s debate. We have heard some wonderful contributions, starting with his own, followed by a speech from the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) made a good point about the statistics on the representation of women in public art; perhaps the Minister could reflect on that. Given what we have heard today, the representation of women in our public art is pitiful, and much needs to be done to rectify that, including collecting statistics. Indeed, another matter that the Minister could fruitfully give some thought to after the debate is the number of women artists represented in the Government’s art collection.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) reminded us of the role of women in the great war, but after being admonished by you, Mr Davies, he did not stray too far into the issues relating to the miners’ strike. I think the historical thread he was trying to draw out was understood by all concerned: women have made a huge contribution not only during national and international conflict, but during industrial conflict in this country.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) appropriately reminded us of the complexity of politics in Ireland at the time of the great war, embodied in the person he spoke about, Winnie Carney. That complexity is at last being much more openly acknowledged, as is the contribution that Irish men and women from all over Ireland made during the great war, prior to the Easter rising and the civil war that followed the great war. It is right that that should be much more openly acknowledged and debated in the UK and Ireland.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) said that the women are part of a “glorious thread woven through British history”, and I entirely endorse that remark, which sums up in a single phrase what we are discussing this morning. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) spoke about Mary Barbour, a huge figure in the “Red Clydeside” movement at the time of the great war and thereafter. Indeed, as well as the rent strike, she organised the women’s peace crusade. When discussing the great war we should also talk about the complexities and the controversy in relation to the way that that war broke out and was fought.
I am glad to be here on behalf of the Labour Front Bench and pleased to be able to contribute to this important debate during the period of the first world war centenary commemorations. As we have heard, the story of Dr Elsie Inglis is remarkable. Her work in setting up women’s medical units on the western front so soon after the outbreak of the war, and her later involvement in arranging women’s despatch units to attend to other areas of fighting, is an incredible story. As a result of her work, there were 14 Scottish women’s hospitals along the frontline, where almost 1,500 women served, often in atrocious conditions, serving an estimated 20,000 allied soldiers.
Today we have heard of Dr Inglis’ drive and her initiative and compassion, all of which led her to use her skills to help others. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South said that when she was told by the War Office to,
“go home and sit still”,
she turned to France for support to make her goal a reality. She also turned to the sisterhood and solidarity of the women’s suffrage organisations, which were crucial to her success, as they raised the equivalent of £53 million in today’s money in support of her cause. She is a fine example for us all to follow. Do not follow the Government’s advice at all times is one message I take from her example. We are grateful today for her service and her sacrifice, and indeed her belligerence, independence and stubbornness, which led her to carry on despite the opposition from her own Government. This month’s celebrations in Edinburgh are a fitting tribute to her work and I wish all the best for the service at St Giles’ Cathedral taking place tomorrow, which hon. Members have mentioned.
Earlier this year we had the opportunity to pay tribute in the Chamber to those who fought in Passchendaele. During that debate I was glad to be able to pay particular tribute, as a Member of Parliament representing a Welsh constituency, to the Welch Regiment, the South Wales Borderers and the Royal Welch Fusiliers, who all fought alongside each other in the 38th Division, and to the Welsh Guards who fought in the third battle of Ypres. In Wales we particularly remember the poignant death of the poet Ellis Evans, better known as Hedd Wyn, who was killed before he was able to claim his prize of the chair at the National Eisteddfod during the war; he was killed at Passchendaele. As ever, we remain in remembrance of their great sacrifice for the freedom and future of our country. In addition to paying tribute to the local forces as part of that debate, many Members talked of the brave work of women across the country, as well as from their particular constituencies, during the great war.
Across the UK women served at home and abroad to ensure the success of the allied forces. Many, like Dr Elsie Inglis, left for the western front to care for the wounded. In the munitions factories, as we have heard, many working-class women undertook hazardous manufacturing work. In fact, in the second world war, my father’s sister, my Auntie Mary, worked in the Currans munitions factory in Cardiff. In the first world war there were 11 munitions factories in Wales alone, and by the end of the war 80% of the workforce in those factories were women. It is a myth that women were not in paid work before the first world war. Many, like my own relatives, worked in service before getting married. Many of the women who worked in the munitions factories transferred their aprons working in service to work in overalls in the munitions factories. In that dangerous and dirty work, they found both a way to contribute to the war effort on the home front, and for many, for the first time, a way to earn a significant and stable independent income.
The percentage of women in paid work increased from 24% at the outset of the first world war to 37% by 1918. In 1917, 20,000 women joined the Women’s Land Army across the UK. In my constituency, the Green Farm became what is now the very large housing estate of Ely. That subject is quite topical in some ways, as the estate was part of the drive to build homes fit for heroes after the first world war. As a farm during the war, it was predominantly run by female farmhands. One of the workers, Agnes Greatorex, who left domestic service to work there, said:
“Every morning, we would get up at five o'clock and milk a hundred cows. We would then take the milk to Glan Ely Hospital,”
where many of the injured soldiers returning from the war were looked after. For many, such work was taken on in addition to the weight of domestic work. Although many men went to fight, women often became the breadwinner at home, bearing the brunt of the increased emotional and domestic labour of running a house and caring for a family. We should also remember that others served at home, but not in the armed forces. Like my grandfather, Edward Evans, they were not allowed to be conscripted in wartime because they worked in the coalmines, but they made their contribution serving at home. My grandmother, Gwellian Evans, worked in service and then domestically supported her husband.
Women such as Dr Elsie Inglis and Agnes Greatorex are a part our history, and we owe them a huge debt. I should also mention some prominent women from Wales. Gwendoline and Margaret Davies are better known as philanthropists in the arts, but they worked with the French Red Cross in canteens and organised convalescent hospitals and transit camps on the frontline. Annie Brewer, a military nurse from Newport, spent the war in France and won many medals for her courage. One citation applauded her
“coolness and total disregard of danger, lavishing her attention on men wounded under fire”.
That sums up some of the incredibly brave contribution made by women on the frontline during the war.
A poster during the first world war depicted a woman wearing overalls and said:
“On her their lives depend.”
Our tributes today make that same message abundantly clear. It is no coincidence that the centenary commemoration of women’s suffrage closely follows that of the first world war. As we know, the suffragettes largely suspended their organising during the war in order to concentrate on the war effort. In the end, the crucial contribution of women to the war helped change the perception of women in the UK, and in November 1918 women over the age of 30 were given the right to vote.
Given Dr Inglis’ commitment to women’s suffrage, it is particularly poignant that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South reminded us, she died a year before the passage of the Representation of the People Act. It is a great injustice that despite her historic sacrifice for our country, she never had the opportunity to cast a vote in an election to this place.
Before I close on the topic of women in the first world war, it is right to consider how these issues continue to play out today. Women’s work—their physical, professional and emotional labour—remains often underappreciated and underpaid. Of course, women play a vital frontline role in our armed forces today. We have come a long way since 1918, but it remains all too common that the contributions of women are underplayed, so I am pleased that this debate today has shone a spotlight on the accomplishments and sacrifices of so many historic women, from extraordinary actions to daily perseverance. I warmly welcome the WomensWork100 programme, which will launch in 2018 through the First World War Centenary Partnership. I thank all the organisations involved for their hard work throughout the commemoration period, in particular the Imperial War Museum.
Our armed forces communities continue to protect us, and I am proud of and humbled by the sacrifices they still make today. At home, the UK armed forces, supported by the entire armed forces community of families, reservists, veterans and cadets, continue to support responses to terrorist incidents and to protect our aerospace. Abroad, they are currently involved in more than 30 operations in 20 countries, from supporting the European Union and UN peacekeeping missions in South Sudan, to responding to the continuing threat posed by Daesh. As we take this time today to remember the contributions and sacrifices made during the first world war, we should also remember the sacrifices that have been made every year since then and are still being made by the brave men and women of the armed forces community. We should also redouble our efforts—all of us; men and women—to work for peace.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (John Glen)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) for introducing the debate. I know the subject is close to the hearts of many Members across the House, and that has been reflected in the nine moving and poignant speeches and the several interventions made this morning.
We have heard of the importance of Dr Inglis’s work and how it serves as one of many examples of the contributions of women to the war effort. This is a very important subject as we reflect on the first world war 100 years on. I pay tribute to my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who has done so much, alongside other Members of the House, including the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), to commemorate the first world war. There has been a significant number of events, and those taking place in 2018 will be announced early in the new year.
As hon. Members have observed, Dr Inglis was a hugely inspirational woman. As one of the first female doctors in the UK, a pioneer of women in medicine and an ardent campaigner for votes for women, she is a remarkable figure in our history. The hon. Members for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) and for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) spoke about the collection of data. I am open to representations on that matter, but it is important that many commemorations have been based on decisions made in different local authorities. It is about getting the right balance between spending money and allowing local campaigns to come to fruition in the right way. A large number of commemorations that have taken place over the last few years reflected inputs from local communities. Although I do not rule anything out, there are a number of communities across our history—perhaps even ethnic minorities—whose contributions have not been reflected. There is a judgment to be made on where we draw the line on that, but I note the sensible points that have been raised.
Through the upheaval of the first world war, Dr Inglis achieved international fame for the drive, dedication and compassion that were woven into her life, as well as her determination to do what she believed was right—refusing, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh South said, to go home and sit still. She is an enduring inspirational role model for us all. Instead of sitting still, she turned her energies to establishing field hospitals for service overseas.
As has been mentioned, Serbia in particular was in dire need of doctors, and some 600 British women served there as volunteers during the war—in large part due to Dr Inglis’s pioneering work to raise awareness and funds for that cause. She arrived in Serbia in January 1915 with the Scottish women’s hospitals, and used her skill and tenacity to save lives and alleviate suffering in extremely harsh and hazardous circumstances. She demonstrated extraordinary leadership and great loyalty in refusing to abandon Serbian troops in the field, and was herself sent into German captivity with the wounded, rather than withdrawing when the opportunity arose.
I am delighted that the Scottish commemorations panel, ably led by Norman Drummond, is delivering a number of events to commemorate the work of Dr Inglis and her fellow members of the Scottish women’s hospitals movement. A wreath-laying ceremony took place on Sunday at the grave of Dr Inglis in Dean cemetery, Edinburgh, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh South mentioned. Tomorrow, a commemorative service will take place in the presence of Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal in St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, timed to start 100 years to the minute from Dr Inglis’s funeral there.
As with all its previous events, the Scottish panel has produced an historical publication, available to members of the public on its website. The impact of Dr Inglis’s contribution reflects the sacrifice and courage of so many women—something that has been raised by hon. Members across the Chamber. My hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) gave a moving and poignant account of the contribution made by individuals from his constituency. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport spoke about the work of Chris Robinson and the sacrifices made by those who worked with poisonous chemicals in Plymouth—a city that is close to my own heart, following my extensive attempt to get elected there several years ago.
The hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) spoke of Bessie Bowhill and her enormous contribution. Such contributions were often under-reported; that theme has run across many of the individuals we have discussed. We did not really know about their contribution, and that is not right.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) spoke movingly about the many women who made such strong contributions and sacrifices in difficult circumstances, and about the premature death of her own mother—as with my father—through asbestos poisoning.
In 2015, the British residence in Belgrade, as was also mentioned in some very well-researched speeches, was named in Dr Inglis’s honour, as a reflection of her service in Serbia and the historical relationship between the UK and Serbia. She was also featured on stamps issued by the Serbian Mail in 2015, along with other British women of the Scottish women’s hospitals movement. Closer to home, I understand that the Edinburgh & Lothians Health Foundation has an annual Elsie Inglis staff development award, and there is a permanent memorial to her in St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh.
Dr Inglis’s contribution also reminds us of the role played by other remarkable women who made history during the first world war, such as Gertrude Bell, who played an extraordinary role in the middle east; Edith Cavell, the nurse executed in 1915, who was commemorated in a series of events in October 2015; Flora Sandes, who also served in Serbia with the Serbian army; and Vera Brittain, the Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, who left a powerful account of her experiences and the reality of modern war. Those well known heroines are the most recognisable women of the first world war, but we should also remember the vital role played by many less well known, but no less inspiring, women—a theme of some of this morning’s speeches.
The range of organisations established during the war reflects the range of contributions made by women, and the strength of their desire to play their part. Although it is not possible in the remaining time to recount every organisation founded by, or for, women during the war, I will highlight some of the most prominent to give an idea of the scale and breadth of their contribution.
Under military control from the start of the war, Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, and its part-time equivalent, the Territorial Force Nursing Service, were greatly expanded and served throughout the war on every front and in every campaign, often in the harshest conditions. Their professionalism and compassion feature in the recollections of many of those who experienced their care. They were supported by the Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross—staffed by both men and women—which was tasked with nursing, the administration of hospitals and rest stations, clerical and transport duties, and, in response to new developments, air raid duties. Working in Royal Army Medical Corps hospitals from February 1915, they numbered more than 82,000 members by 1920.
Women also served in the Army, the Navy and the newly-founded Royal Air Force in a range of roles previously performed exclusively by men. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was formed in February 1917 and eventually numbered 57,000 volunteers. In recognition of that service, the corps was renamed Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps in April 1918. The Women’s Royal Naval Service, universally known as the Wrens, was also formed in 1917, with 5,500 women serving by 1918 in a wide range of roles. On 10 October 1918, 19-year-old Josephine Carr from Cork became the first Wren to die on active service when RMS Leinster was torpedoed by a German U-boat.
The Women’s Royal Air Force was created as part of the newly-established RAF on 1 April 1918, and 9,000 women already serving alongside the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service volunteered to join. Many will remember Harry Patch, the last Tommy. However, the last surviving veteran of the first world war from any country is believed to be Florence Green, who served with the WRAF in the UK and died at the age of 110 in 2012. More than 100,000 women served in Britain’s armed forces during the war.
Other auxiliary forces assisted with the war effort at home. The Women’s Land Army, formed in February 1917, provided a dedicated agricultural workforce and went on to employ some 113,000 women as field workers, carters, milkers and ploughwomen. Indeed, by the end of the war women made up around one third of all agricultural labour. The first female police officers also served during the first world war. The women’s patrols were tasked with supervising women around factories and workers’ hostels, as well as patrolling railway stations and public spaces.
In addition, a huge number of auxiliary and volunteer organisations were established, which reflected the desire of women across the country to take part in the war and serve their country. The enthusiasm with which women joined the groups and the way they performed their roles played a large part in the decision to increase recruitment of women in the forces.
The Women’s Legion, which was formed in July 1915, eventually became the largest entirely voluntary body. Its volunteers were involved in many forms of work and the strength of response is often cited as a factor in influencing the Government to accept and organise female labour on a more formal basis.
Women began to contribute more than ever to Britain’s industrial output. Although women made up a substantial part of the industrial workforce before the war, largely in the textile industry, as the demand for shells and munitions increased, women were employed in the munitions industry in larger numbers. As has been mentioned a number of times in the debate, working long hours, in difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions, women helped to supply the troops with weapons, ammunition and equipment. By 1918, almost a million women were employed in some aspect of munitions work. Women also began working in much larger numbers in the transport industry. During the war, the number of women working on the railways rose from 9,000 to 50,000. Elsewhere, they worked as bus drivers, conductors, ticket collectors and porters.
I am very pleased to say that that huge range of activity will be reflected in “WomensWork100”, a programme led by the Imperial War Museums and the Centenary Partnership. An international programme of exhibitions, events, activities and digital resources will be launched in February 2018 and will recognise and celebrate the working lives of women during the first world war. Through the stories of those who joined the workforce and against the backdrop of the campaign for female suffrage, it will use the IWM’s Women’s Work Collection to explore the breadth of women’s roles.
The creation of that collection is closely linked with the establishment of the museum. Almost immediately after its creation in 1917, the museum formed a committee to source material to ensure that the role of women would be recorded. That material included items donated by Dr Inglis’s sisters, some of which are on permanent display at the Imperial War Museum North. It is particularly appropriate that next year Imperial War Museums will be sharing stories from the collection.
The Department for Communities and Local Government, which has responsibility for commemorating women’s suffrage, has plans for a project called “Inspirational Women: Speak Up”. It will enable schools across the country to research and present content about the contribution of women to society and will include women such as Dr Elsie Inglis and Sophia Duleep Singh, who served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, tending wounded Indian troops in Brighton.
Although the courage, self-sacrifice and determination of such women is inspiring, we should not lose sight of the loss and hardship endured by women during the war, as reflected in the speech by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). In a recent debate introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), it was noted that some 600 memorial plaques were issued to the families of women who died in the first world war in the service of their country. Each plaque represents a very personal and tragic story of loss and sacrifice.
Women’s suffrage is somewhat outside the scope of this debate, but the contribution of women to the national effort was rightly a significant factor in the passing of the Representation of the People Act in February 1918. Although I note the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire about what happened subsequently, I am sure that the IWM and DCLG programmes, as well as many other local and community projects, will reflect on that element of women’s experience during the war. The war galvanised women of all ages and social backgrounds to support the war effort and to reconsider their position in society. We should not lose sight of the ever-present contribution of women at home and to the family, maintaining some sense of normality, or looking after the children of those who had entered the workforce.
In those respects and many others, the contribution of women to all aspects of the first world war was hugely significant. I am conscious that the debate has only touched on the many fascinating and moving stories of many millions of our forebears. I am sure that tomorrow our thoughts will turn to Dr Inglis, but as we approach the final year of centenary commemorations, we will continue to recognise and remember the huge role played by women during the first world war and ensure that it is not forgotten.
Ian Murray
I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister for their wonderful contributions and the moving stories they told from their personal experience. What we see from the debate—from Dr Elsie Inglis, Mary Barbour and Florence Green, whom the Minister mentioned; from Plymouth to Wales to Glasgow to Edinburgh, from Barnsley to Caithness to Northern Ireland and right across the country; from the RAF, the Army and the Royal Navy—is that the contribution that these dedicated, passionate and often modest women made to the war effort, and subsequently, without any regard to their own safety, shows that we owe them a great deal of respect and remembrance. Perhaps, if someone from the BBC is watching, they might want to change “Dad’s Army” to “Mum’s Army” and make a new comedy series about the contribution of women to the war effort.
We will see many centenaries this year and next in the run-up to the centenary of the end of the first world war. For everyone who made an effort, particularly for women, we will do two things: thank them for the service they gave this country and say that we will always remember them.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Dr Elsie Inglis and the contribution of women to World War One.
Voter Registration: Nottingham North
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered voter registration in Nottingham North constituency.
This is the first time I have served under your chairship, Mr Davies. I intend to take you on a journey to Aspley in my constituency via Athens. My topic is restricted to my constituency, but has wider applications to the rest of my city, and indeed to Shipley, Kingswood—the constituency represented by the Minister—and the rest of the country.
Our free and fair democracy is at the root of what makes us a special nation. We host the mother of all Parliaments, and in our participatory democracy we are treated all the same, whoever we are and wherever we come from. It is special, and it is to be cherished and, crucially, nurtured and developed. Democracy was established by the Athenians, but is frequently executed by people in Aspley. Democracy is strong only when it is truly participatory, which tells us something about voter turnout: if next to no one voted, the validity of the contest would be undermined. Voter participation ought to be of interest to us all, but this debate is about one specific part of participation: voter registration. Perhaps mercifully, discussions about turnout and extending the franchise will have to be left to another day.
I secured this debate to state publicly a belief of mine to see whether the Government share it. It is a simple but important statement: I believe strongly that the Government ought to prioritise the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register. That might sound like a broad statement, and it might sound uncontroversial or even facile, but it is none of those things. It is a crucial statement about our democracy, and if we accept it, I think it will act as a call to action. I will talk about some actions later, but first I want to talk about some of the challenges relating to voter registration that we face in my community and the reasons for the current situation; then I will move on to what we might do about it.
Let me start with the very basics. This is a discussion about voter registration in my constituency, Nottingham North. We know that we do not have a complete register of voters, but we do not know how incomplete it is. We do not know who or how many voters we are missing. To prepare for this debate—I have been putting in requests for many weeks, perhaps even months, since I was elected—I have been tabling questions to the Cabinet Office. The Minister may recognise them; others in the Chamber definitely will. I tabled one on 3 November to ask for the Cabinet Office’s estimates of how short we are on the electoral register in Nottingham North. I was given a holding reply on 15 November and heard back this morning—25 days later—with the answer I suspected I would get, which is that the Cabinet Office does not know. That lack of knowledge is not born out of disinterestedness or discourtesy, but it is a pretty good demonstration of where we are as a nation on this issue.
We do not know how many people are not registered; instead, we draw on global estimates. The House of Commons Library estimates that about 6 million people are missing from the register across the UK. On an even distribution, that would mean that more than 9,000 are missing in my constituency, but when it comes to those not on the register, distribution is not even. People from poorer backgrounds in a working-class community such as mine in the north and west of Nottingham are much less likely to register to vote, so it stands to reason that in my community the number of missing voters is much higher than 9,000. That is a significant proportion stacked against the 70,000 registered to vote at the latest update. That situation significantly weakens our democracy, so it is right that we are concerned about it.
It is hard to find out the current position. I drew on the resources of our excellent local authority in Nottingham. Every year, all electoral services teams in the country are required by law to conduct an annual canvass of every property in the electoral area to ensure—we are all keen on this—that the information on the register is complete, accurate and up-to-date, but that means that local authorities are forced to spend time and resources chasing households in which the number and identity of the residents have not changed. In Nottingham, the council sends a household enquiry form. If it is unreturned, it is followed by a further letter, and if that letter is not returned, by a visit from a canvasser. Only then can the council send an invitation to register, which again if it is not returned, is followed up by a second letter and by a canvasser after that.
That process does not strike me as very efficient. It is very challenging and it succeeds only 74% of the time in Nottingham, so it is both hard and not particularly effective. The council told me that the expense of printing and posting letters and training and paying staff is substantial, and that the administrative time it takes to process all of the responses is phenomenal. It is a real challenge. Despite all the effort that goes into it, since the introduction of individual electoral registration the Electoral Commission thinks that about 87% responded in 2017, as opposed to 93% in 2013. It is expensive, it is hard to do and it is not getting better.
An eminent individual I will name shortly said:
“Currently the annual canvass costs around £65 million to conduct every year—it is too high and we must take advantage of new and emerging technology to make the process more efficient where we can.”
As I say, those are not my words. The Minister may well recognise them, because they are his. I hope he shares my view that the annual canvass is too expensive. It does not produce fully accurate registers. It is time to make changes.
The solution that the Cabinet Office offers to local authorities is to use a phone and emails as a different way of contacting households. That is sensible, but I would like us to be much more ambitious, because the consequences are significant. We know that voter registration rates remain particularly low among young people and those who live in privately rented accommodation. About three quarters of 18 and 19-year-olds and 70% of 20 to 24-year-olds are registered, compared with 95% of the over 65s. There is a real imbalance.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on making such a powerful case. Does he agree that one of the issues we face in Nottingham is the under-registration of students? It is clear that, since the university no longer automatically registers students who live in halls, let alone all those who live in houses in multiple occupation in their second and third years, large numbers of young people have not been able to exercise their right to vote.
Alex Norris
I share that view. Later, I will talk about block registration, which was a recommendation of an excellent report that I intend to draw on. For a long time, my hon. Friend and I have been out on doorsteps, carrying around our forms, desperately trying to get people to register when we meet those who have not. I think there might be a better way to do it.
The differences are even starker when we look at housing tenure. Only 63% of private renters are registered to vote—far from the 94% of those who own their own homes. Access to the ballot box ought to act as the ultimate leveller, but at the moment it does not.
Low registration can lead to a rush to register, which is the last thing that hard-pressed local authorities need. On the registration deadline before the EU referendum, the Government website crashed due to the number of people trying to register late, which led to the deadline having to be extended. I remember that that was very controversial. Similarly, people do not want to miss out, so although they may assume that they are already on the register, they may send in duplicate applications anyway. Electoral registration officers’ estimates of the proportion of duplicate applications ahead of the 2017 general election ranged from 30% of the total submitted in some areas to an incredible 70% in others. People who have registered and done the right thing are fine, but they do not know that and do not feel they can check, so they put their registration in again. That is not a sign of a healthy system. If the registration does not work, people get turned away from polling stations. At the 2015 general election, two thirds of polling stations turned away at least one person. Unsurprisingly, the most common reason for that is that they are not on the register. Again, that is not good for confidence in our democracy.
Finally—I have left this last for emphasis—all of us may have noticed the upcoming boundary changes. The electoral register has an even more crucial role in that process, because it forms the basis of our country’s electoral map. We are therefore in the process of setting new parliamentary boundaries that we know are based on flawed assumptions. We are trying to tackle imbalanced constituencies in a way that will only produce further imbalances. It is a fool’s errand. We need a really good register so we can set our boundaries properly.
What can we do about it? It will probably not be a revelation to anyone in the Chamber—especially if they have been following me on Twitter in the last 20 minutes—that I believe in automatic voter registration. I am not the only one who is enthusiastic about that idea. For several years, both the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators have been calling for automatic registration, as did the now-dissolved Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which was chaired by my predecessor, Graham Allen. I promise hon. Members that there is not a gene in Nottingham North Members of Parliament that makes us interested in constitutional affairs. I am particularly interested in this one, but I cannot match the breadth of my predecessor’s interests. When I was preparing for this debate, I half-expected him to intervene at some point to clarify something. That has not happened yet, so I will carry on, on my own. His Committee, which he led with distinction, conducted the largest public consultation ever achieved by a Select Committee, and it recommended the introduction of automatic registration. The all-party group on democratic participation recommended it, and so did the Electoral Reform Society, Bite the Ballot and Operation Black Vote. The list goes on and on, but it is not just experts: according to the Electoral Commission, 59% of people support the idea of automatic registration, and it is even more popular among younger age groups, with two thirds of 18 to 34-year-olds voicing support.
Automatic voter registration would make two transformative yet simple changes to voter registration: first, eligible citizens who interact with government agencies would be registered to vote unless they decline; and, secondly, agencies could transfer voter registration information electronically to election officials. Those two changes would create a seamless process that is less error prone and more convenient for both voters and government officials. Such a policy would boost registration rates, clean up the rolls, make voting more convenient and reduce the potential for voter fraud, all the while lowering costs.
The end game is to achieve full participation in our democracy and, as I say, an accurate system is a better way to do that, but this is not simply a theoretical exercise, something I have dreamt up at home and asked Ministers to go on, on the back of my ideas—it is already happening. In the US, they are way ahead of us. In March 2015 the state of Oregon became the first to pass a breakthrough law to register automatically eligible citizens who have a driver’s licence, but with the choice to opt out. Registration has increased since the policy was implemented, and last November voter turnout in the state was the highest for decades, and one of the highest rates in the country. Since then nine other states have followed suit and 32 of the remaining 40 are considering similar legislation.
Automatic registration is not just about the registration rate, but about accuracy and saving money. Delaware estimated that it saved $200,000 in the first year alone of implementation. We could do that too. We should unleash the collective knowledge of the state—whether of the Departments for Work and Pensions and of Health, or the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency—to wire up a system that makes a complete and accurate register.
We could build in other areas, too. Bite The Ballot and Dr Toby James, with the all-party group on democratic participation, published an outstanding report with 25 recommendations to reform our voter registration system. Published more than a year and a half ago, it was welcomed by the Government and praised by the Minister as a publication that will
“go down in history as helping to evolve the UK’s electoral registration system”,
but so far only two of the recommendations have been implemented. Today I hope to hear about more, in particular the one on block registration in care homes and halls of residence. That recommendation could be introduced quickly.
We know there is emphasis on voter fraud. That played out during Cabinet Office questions last week, when there was plenty of discussion about voter fraud. Certainly, voter fraud is something that the Cabinet Office is interested in. It is a criminal offence and ought to be treated seriously—it is another way to undermine our democracy—but the evidence tells us that electoral fraud is exceptionally rare. In the past 20 years in Nottingham, exactly zero cases have resulted in people being prosecuted. In 2016 in the UK more broadly, of 260 cases of alleged electoral fraud, only two led to convictions, while 138 cases were dropped with no further action. Stand that against nearly 34 million people voting in the EU referendum and we are talking about fewer than one in 10 million people being convicted of that offence—stacked against 6 million missed off the register. Both issues are important, but I am arguing that one ought to have considerably greater emphasis placed on it by Ministers.
I hope that I have demonstrated the real challenges to registration in my constituency, the sterling efforts of our local authority, despite the considerable pressures on it and the weak hand it has been dealt, and outlined a better, evidence-based approach for Ministers to follow in the future. I am sure that the Minister will forgive me for drawing on his previous comments, and I look forward to hearing more from him.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Skidmore)
Thank you for your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I am grateful that you are presiding over this debate, because you too take a personal interest in electoral matters and I am sure you enjoyed the contribution from the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) as much as I did.
It is striking that although we sit on opposite sides of the political divide, I agree with much in the hon. Gentleman’s speech on electoral registration being a matter of social justice. I will touch on that later, but I am determined that, as a Government, we will look at the burning injustice for those people who are unable to access the ballot box for whatever reason. Next year, it will be 100 years since women got the right to vote, but now many people do not vote because they do not wish to—that is their freedom—although many people who want to vote will still be unable to do so. I will talk about what the Government have been doing and intend to do to improve access to registration and, therefore, to our elections.
The hon. Gentleman paid tribute to his predecessor Graham Allen. In July 2016, two days into my job as a Minister, I was here in Westminster Hall to respond to Mr Allen’s debate on the issue of a constitutional convention. I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is following in the proud footsteps of his predecessor by taking up the matter of voter registration. It is incredibly important for that issue to be raised in the House and I thank him for securing the debate. As is evident from his recent parliamentary question to the Cabinet Office, which he mentioned, electoral registration is of interest to him, and I commend him for that.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the issue of data. To consider what we do and do not know, at the moment we do not have the accurate data to be able to track movements of people within certain locations. I am passionate about changing the nature of the electoral registration conversation from focusing only on top-line national issues.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the “Missing Millions” report, which I commend for highlighting the number of people missing from the register, but what we do not know is who those missing millions are and whether they are all actually missing or have gone off and registered in a different location. I am absolutely determined for us in the Government to do the work on the much finer-grained detail to achieve a more accurate picture of where we need to focus our resources. I will talk about that in connection with our democratic engagement programme for the future.
We need to move away from the national conversations on voter registration and talk about democratic inclusion versus democratic exclusion and where the democratically excluded are. The hon. Gentleman mentioned certain target groups that had traditionally under-registered and were under-represented, such as home movers. He mentioned the Electoral Commission report that highlighted the number of renters who are not on the electoral register. For me, one of the most significant statistics is that only 28% of renters join the electoral register in their first year of moving into a property. We are looking at trying to tackle that churn.
I will have to disappoint the hon. Gentleman in his passion for automatic voter registration. I am equally passionate about the system of individual electoral registration, which is here to stay. More than £70 million has been invested in putting the system in place and in enabling the successful transition to individual electoral registration. At the core of that system is the conviction that individuals should own their own registration status. When it comes to our democracy, voting and registration, I am a passionate believer in voting being not only a right but a responsibility. Gone are the days of the old head-of-the-household system, in which one individual registered numerous others; now it is the right and responsibility of each and every individual to decide when and where they want to be registered.
Individual electoral registration has proved not only more responsive to the needs of electors, but a success in making the system more robust and in driving up the accuracy of the electoral registers. The Electoral Commission report on the 1 December 2016 registers provides the best and most recent full assessment of the completeness and accuracy of the electoral registers across Great Britain.
Lilian Greenwood
The Minister may be wedded to individual registration, but will he not accept that there are some groups he needs to work much harder with? That might be those who have poor language skills or learning disabilities. They might want to register but find the process difficult. Will he commit to put in extra measures to ensure that those people who want to vote but find the existing process difficult can access it effectively?
Chris Skidmore
The hon. Lady is clearly as passionate about this issue as I am—only last week, she asked a question during Cabinet Office questions. As a Government, we are absolutely determined to ensure that by the next general election in 2022 we will have made our elections the most accessible ever. Clearly, 100 years on from women getting the right to vote, there are still those who are unable to vote. We want to be able to change that. Looking at the whole process—the journey through our democracy—from registration through to turning up at the polling station, we need to do more.
We had a call for evidence, and 260 people have responded so far. In the spring, we will publish a report on actions the Government intend to take forward. I have already managed to make certain changes—for example, with the certificate for visual impairment—on data held at NHS level. Last year, there was a consultation. I wrote to the Health Minister to make the case that that data should be shared with local authorities and electoral registration officers, so that when a certificate exists for those who are blind or visually impaired, it should be possible to use it to contact people in the local authority area, perhaps with forms in Braille—although it is not frequently used nowadays, and it is important to keep up with the technology when it comes to access to elections—or large print. It is about establishing who the vulnerable people are who need the extra effort and attention.
Again, it is about data and about ensuring from an early position that we can act as a Government. I agree entirely with the hon. Lady that we need extra investment in those certain groups, but we also need knowledge of those under-registered groups. We have run a knowledge and capability review to try to understand people’s needs. Since becoming a Minister, I have been touring every area and region of the country to try to understand the needs of the most vulnerable.
When it comes to individual electoral registration, the completeness of the register is stable at around 85%, but its accuracy has now increased to 91%. There is more to do. I share the hon. Gentleman’s vision of having as complete and accurate a register as possible, although I perhaps disagree about the methods to achieve that. Since 2014, 30 million people have registered to vote using the IER system, and 75% of those did so online. During this year’s general election, nearly three quarters of the 2.9 million applications were made using the register to vote website. I am sure he will join me in welcoming the fact that electors across Nottingham have engaged with this new system, mirroring the trend we have seen nationally. Since 2014, 197,042 applications to register to vote have been submitted to Nottingham City Council—79,314 of those were from 16 to 24 year- olds—and 24,978 applications were submitted to Nottingham City Council ahead of the 2017 general election, from 18 April to 22 May.
The hon. Gentleman also touched on the issue of duplicate registrations, which the Association of Electoral Administrators has raised with me. In a way, that problem is part of the success of the register to vote website—the opportunity and flexibility that it gives to individuals to register—and the side effect is duplicate applications. At the 2017 general election, we added a page to the website that said that if people were already registered with their local authority they would still be on the register, which we believe screened about 5% of applications. However, as a Government we are determined to look at the issue. I am not convinced that a centralised database is necessarily the way forward, but we are continuing our work and we want to work closely with the AEA and the Electoral Commission on those barriers.
I addressed the AEA conference in Brighton earlier this year and I committed the Cabinet Office to holding an annual electoral summit, which will take place on 11 December, with representatives from the AEA and from the Electoral Commission, so that we can plan out the registration and democratic engagement strategies for several years. We are launching a democratic engagement programme, which will be published this side of Christmas. It is the first Government electoral engagement strategy and we are determined to ensure that, rather than focus on electoral events, when money is invested suddenly in the run-up to an election, we can plan across a five-year cycle where we need to focus our attention to help the most vulnerable people and to drive up the completeness and accuracy of the register. I will be delighted to share that work with the hon. Gentleman when it is published and to have a separate meeting to talk him through the Government’s plans.
As part of my tour, I visited the British Chinese Project in Nottingham, and I attended a round table with electoral service managers in Gedling. The hon. Gentleman is fortunate to have passionate electoral service managers in his local area who do good work. I learned a lot from my conversations with them, which I hope will be reflected in the strategy.
On the annual canvass, again, we do not disagree in principle. The annual canvass is a 20th century process—an analogue system in a digital age. We have already seen the modernisation of IER and the register to vote website, but the annual canvass process is in the past and it needs to catch up. It is a significant cost for local authorities, of between £60 million and £65 million. I am determined to try to enable permanent change to reform that system, but what does permanent change look like?
I am determined that we make measured and evaluated changes to the annual canvass that do not risk upsetting the existing system, so that when it comes to preserving the completeness and accuracy of the registers, we do not move simply from one system to another. That is why we established a pilot process. We had three pilot areas in 2016 and we have 24 across the UK in 2017. All the pilots are being evaluated by the Electoral Commission and that evaluation has to be published by the end of 2018, I think. I am determined that we go forward with permanent change to the annual canvass. The pilots so far have tried to give local authorities greater flexibility over the canvassing process.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the endless number of letters that can go back and forth, the paper that is wasted in that communication process and the canvass itself, which can cost £1 for every door knocked on. Legislation may require people to return to a particular address, on occasion up to nine times. Although the canvass procedures are in primary legislation and we are looking to make changes to that, we will shortly lay a statutory instrument that will aim to make further improvements to the registration process within the existing canvass, and which will be debated early next January. The hon. Gentleman might want to speak to Labour Whips or the Committee of Selection because we would be delighted to have him on the Committee to continue these discussions.
The statutory instrument will aim to make further improvements to the registration process by streamlining the deletions process and rationalising correspondence that electors receive in the registration process. The same statutory instrument will also seek to improve the anonymous registration system to ensure that it is accessible to those escaping domestic abuse who need to register in such a way.
The hon. Lady mentioned vulnerable groups; one of the vulnerable groups that I have been determined to help, particularly in view of next year’s 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote, is those women who are survivors of domestic violence and who might be residing in refuges, who are unable to register to vote without risking their identity being revealed. They have to sign up to an anonymous registration system by going to either a director of social services or a chief constable of police. We will lower that attestation process to domestic refuge managers. There are 12,000 women in domestic violence refuges, but only about 2,300 women use the anonymous registration scheme. I hope that for the May elections we can demonstrate that change and give those women back their voice in the democratic process.
I passionately believe that voting is more than just a cross on a ballot paper. Voting is the end point: there is a process by which we need to re-engage communities, but there are some people who might not want to engage in the electoral registration process to begin with. How do we work with organisations such as the British Chinese Project, which I mentioned and which sees the low levels of literacy among first generation Chinese people, for instance? How do we engage people to make them understand that that registration process and having their say are equally important and vital for them to take part in our democracy?
I am determined to look at that, through reflecting on the democratic society. There are civil society organisations and groups that do a fantastic job helping to register vulnerable people. One of my first visits was to Birmingham, where I met Uprising—a charity that went around with tablets to help people to register to vote.
What can we do as a Government to try to engage those groups with the wider community and to try to provide them with opportunities? I have announced the first National Democracy Week, which will take place next year on the 90th anniversary of the Equal Franchise Act. When we think about our democracy, we think of Magna Carta and parliamentary sovereignty, and think of ours as being one of the oldest democracies in the world, but it is remarkable that it has been just 90 years since women got the equal right to vote.
In celebration of that moment, I want to set out a week’s programme, and the hon. Gentleman will be more than welcome to involve the people of Nottingham. I want to make sure that events take place across the country. How can we ensure that we look at the state of our democracy 90 years on from the Equal Franchise Act and what can we do over the next 10 years, to 2028, to ensure that we have as complete and accurate a register as possible?
There are other events taking place next year, including the suffrage celebrations, with £5 million set out for that. A key part of it will be investment in education and democratic participation. The week before last, I met the National Citizen Service to look at engagement models for young people.
I want to reassure the hon. Gentleman that although we differ on the point of principle, it is a point of principle. I understand that hon. Members feel passionately about automatic electoral registration. I believe that individual electoral registration is here to stay, but in that context we are determined to ensure that we register as many people as possible. This is a social justice issue and we will publish our democratic engagement plan shortly.
Question put and agreed to.
Rohingya Crisis
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Rohingya crisis.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley.
I visited the Kutupalong refugee camp earlier this month, as part of a cross-party delegation to Bangladesh organised by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I thank both organisations for organising that visit, which gave me and others the opportunity to speak to non-governmental organisations working on the ground and to the Rohingya themselves about their most urgent needs, which they identified as food, shelter, education, clothes, water and sanitation. That is complemented by the UNHCR’s assessment that there is
“an urgent need for…more space for shelters and infrastructure…including water points, latrines, bathing areas, distribution points, child safe…spaces, safe spaces for women and girls”
and community centres.
Although stories about the crisis are familiar, my visit brought home the vastness of the camps. The UNHCR’s head of emergency planning told our group of parliamentarians that the camps needed to house the new refugees are the equivalent of a city larger than Manchester being established almost overnight, with no infrastructure, housing, water, sanitation or any of the tools needed for self-subsistence. The scale of the need is truly vast. The International Rescue Committee estimates that nearly 300,000 people need food security assistance and more than 400,000 people need healthcare. Only a fraction of the 453,000 Rohingya children at camps receive education. The young people we met were desperate for education—particularly higher education.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She alludes to the issues facing young people. Does she agree that, in addition to the horrendous conditions she outlines, the news that emerged yesterday that organised gangs are taking advantage of women—particularly vulnerable young women, but also older women—is another complicating factor? That needs to be resolved in addition to the humanitarian crisis.
Dr Blackman-Woods
The hon. Gentleman makes a really relevant point, which I will come to later.
The school that we visited was doing a valiant job of teaching children in shifts, but that is really a drop in the ocean. Much more education and schools are needed in the camps.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for introducing this important debate. It is of course incredibly important that we deal with the current acute situation, but does she recognise that, the current crisis aside, most Rohingya people are not actually recognised? They are not entitled to state education or healthcare, and many cannot even access employment. We need to address that.
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend makes a really good point. I was coming to the lack of citizenship that underpins most of the problems that the Rohingya people face. They have suffered persecution in Myanmar for decades. The 1982 citizenship law denies them citizenship. They are deprived of the right to vote and unable to access higher education or travel freely. Their lack of official citizenship, which is underpinned by ethnic conflict, is at the root of all those problems. Even before this year, 212,000 Rohingyas had fled Myanmar for Bangladesh, but the latest wave of forced displacement is one of the largest population movements in living memory. More than 640,000 people fled Myanmar in the wake of the August attacks, and the camps are now estimated to be home to more than 836,000 Rohingyas.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. Does she agree that a basic step towards resolving the terrible tragedy that she describes would be the repeal of the 1982 citizenship law?
Dr Blackman-Woods
My right hon. Friend makes a really important point. I will ask the Minister how we can apply international pressure, particularly on the military in Myanmar, to ensure that that is achieved.
The horrific violence over the summer in Rakhine state, in which more than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims were killed by the Burmese security forces and other militia groups, was described by the UN as
“a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
Reading reports of mass executions, gang rapes, the burning of villages and the killing of children is harrowing, but it does not compare with hearing first-hand reports of violence from people in the camps. As if that violence were not enough, the Rohingya face horrific journeys when fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh. They must trek for days through the countryside in Rakhine state to reach the border crossing, which has been planted with landmines. Some have paid fisherman to take them across the Naf river in fishing boats, but many have drowned trying to make it across.
Despite the deal signed on 23 November between Myanmar and Bangladesh to return the Rohingya to Myanmar, there is understandably widespread aversion among the displaced Rohingya to returning to their home state at present.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the supposed agreement between the Bangladeshis and the Burmese about return is deeply problematic, given the state of camps in Rakhine and the way the Rohingya are being treated? I visited Burma twice. Our Government need to ensure that security arrangements are in place and that the Rohingyas’ protection is guaranteed before any such process takes place.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way—she is being very generous with her time—and thank her for raising this topic. The repatriation deal requires that refugees produce a load of documentation, including names of family members, previous addresses, birth dates and a statement of voluntary return. Does she agree that, given the systematic denial of citizenship rights, that will be incredibly difficult for them?
Dr Blackman-Woods
I absolutely agree.
Human Rights Watch has provided evidence of at least 288 villages in northern Rakhine state being partly or completely burned since 25 August. The International Rescue Committee described the deal as “at best, premature,” noting that Rohingya refugees are still fleeing Rakhine state and arriving in Bangladesh. The IRC describes ongoing violent clearance of villages and mining of the border by the Myanmar military, and states that
“it is clear that the conditions for safe, voluntary and informed returns are not being met.”
The IRC also states that 81% of the Rohingyas it interviewed do not wish to return to Myanmar at present.
The UK Government and our representatives in the international community must do all they can to press all sides to ensure the safety, livelihoods and, crucially, citizenship rights of the Rohingya if they return. The Burmese Government also need to address the widespread and credible reports of horrific human rights violations in Myanmar, and to stop anti-Rohingya propaganda, which has spread across the country.
Amid the tragedy, the response by the Department for International Development and British NGOs in the camps should be commended. I am pleased that the UK has committed £47 million to meet urgent humanitarian needs in the camps, including £5 million to match the generous donations of the UK public to the Disasters Emergency Committee. The UK is the largest bilateral donor to the crisis and has given more than one third of the overall money donated by the international community. In addition, our existing work in the region means that, when the crisis hit, we were already in a position to provide lifesaving support. Without DFID’s existing networks, that aid would have taken longer to reach those in need.
British NGOs, including Oxfam, ActionAid, the Red Cross and Save the Children, are also doing an incredible job, alongside others, in very difficult conditions. Oxfam alone has reached more than 185,000 people, providing clean drinking water and sanitation facilities. I could give many examples of the amazing work being done by our NGOs in the camps, including setting up emergency health units and providing clothing and emergency kits for people arriving at the camp. We should also pay tribute to the international organisations such as UNHCR, the International Rescue Committee and Médecins sans Frontières, which have been vital in providing frontline support in the camps and have already saved thousands of lives.
The British public, too, have played a remarkable role with their donations. UK aid has provided emergency food for 174,000 people and lifesaving nutritional support to more than 60,000 children under five.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that a great deal of that aid needs to be directed in particular toward women and children suffering violence?
Dr Blackman-Woods
Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I will come to in a minute.
UK aid has provided safe drinking water and latrines to 138,000 people. It has also provided counselling and psychological support for over 10,000 women suffering from the traumas of war and sexual violence. I witnessed that service myself in the transit camps, where newly arrived refugees, traumatised by their experiences, have their medical and personal needs assessed before moving to the camp. That showed the difference international efforts are making on the ground, particularly the support being given to women and children. It was also heartening to see the generosity of so many of the ordinary people of Bangladesh, who though poor themselves have given a lot to the refugees and welcomed them into their country. Nevertheless, the UNHCR has estimated that there is a shortfall of £247 million in the funding needed from the international community to meet the needs in the camps.
Turning to the response from the international community, while Britain and France initially put forward a Security Council resolution on Myanmar in late October, China and Russia refused to co-operate, meaning that it is now only a statement passed by the Security Council and does not carry the weight of a resolution. The statement said that the Security Council
“strongly condemns the widespread violence that has taken place in Rakhine State, Myanmar,”
and
“further expresses grave concern over reports of human rights violations and abuses in Rakhine State, including by the Myanmar security forces”.
It has therefore been up to individual Governments to take action to try to resolve the crisis. As a number of hon. Members in this room will know, much more work needs to be done to come to an international solution. Many critics noted with surprise that the Rohingya crisis was barely mentioned at the most recent summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which took place earlier in November. The UK and EU should be using our relationship with ASEAN to push it to make the crisis a higher priority for the whole region.
What should the UK Government’s priorities be? The UK Government must do all they can to ensure that any deal reached between Myanmar and Bangladesh to return the refugees ensures that return is safe, voluntary and informed. For as long as the Rohingyas are living in the camps, the UK and international community must have four urgent priorities. First, international aid is essential in ensuring that the Rohingyas’ basic needs are met and that camp life can improve. The donors’ meeting in February, where more aid is being requested, will be critical in that respect. Secondly, the camps need more space, so it is urgent that Bangladesh determines as soon as possible how that can be achieved. Thirdly, staff and volunteers from UNHCR and NGOs are doing an amazing job servicing the camps and supporting the Rohingyas. They do not seek recognition for their efforts, but their brilliant work in difficult circumstances should be acknowledged.
Fourthly, the underlying problem of the Rohingya is not only the violence and persecution they face in Myanmar, but their lack of citizenship. I will never forget the young man, aged 25, who we met at our first meeting at the camp. He had been born at the camp, as his parents had fled Myanmar in an earlier displacement. Despite facing huge challenges with regard to shelter and food, he told us the most important thing he wanted was citizenship, because then he could make his own way in the world. At present, that will not be easily achieved. The military in Myanmar have refused citizenship, and Bangladesh is reluctant to give permanent residency to so many people in a very poor area of a low-income country.
International pressure to solve the crisis is of the utmost urgency, and I would like to hear from the Minister what the Government are going to do to try to step up the amount of aid delivered not only by the UK Government but by other partners, and how they will press for a longer-term international solution to the problem.
Several hon. Members rose—
Ian Paisley (in the Chair)
Order. I will call Mr Philip Hollobone to speak next, but there is obviously considerable interest in the debate. As a result, in order to give sufficient time to the Front-Bench spokespersons of the Labour and Scottish National parties and the Government, I am cutting the time immediately to three minutes per speech.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
It is an honour to serve under your distinguished chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and a huge pleasure to congratulate the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on her excellent speech. I had the privilege of going on the same CPA visit to see the Rohingyas as the hon. Lady, and it seemed to me that two responses were required from Her Majesty’s Government, who are so ably represented here by my right hon. Friend the Minister.
The first is the diplomatic response to the grossest example of ethnic cleansing that one could come up with. It is ethnic cleansing, pure and simple, and must be 100% condemned through all diplomatic channels available to us. I appreciate the sensitivities of the nascent democracy in Burma, but we must make it clear that the generals are responsible for this ethnic cleansing and that the international community will not put up with it. When it comes to the potential return of Rohingya refugees, returning stateless people to remain stateless in their country of origin is not good enough. These people require their nationhood to be given to them.
The second response required from Her Majesty’s Government is humanitarian assistance. Britain has a good record of providing financial assistance directly to the camps, but more will obviously be required. We must stimulate further contributions from other countries, particularly Muslim countries, because we are dealing with a Muslim population and there are lots of rich Muslim countries in the world that, frankly, should be stepping up to the plate rather more.
On the CPA visit to the refugee camp, we had the privilege of meeting some truly inspirational aid workers from the UNHCR and the International Rescue Committee. It was a privilege to meet them and see the fantastic work that they do.
The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
Reflecting on what my hon. Friend just said, it would be very dangerous for this to be seen as only a Muslim issue. It is a global humanitarian catastrophe, and while I accept what he says—that we want to see all nations contributing—to try to frame it in an ethnic way would be the wrong way forward.
Mr Hollobone
The point I am making is absolutely right: yes, it is an international emergency, but the Rohingya are being expelled because they are Muslim. We must not ignore that fact. We also have to accept that there are very rich Muslim nations in the world that can step up to the plate. I do not think that the Minister and I disagree; help is great, wherever it comes from.
The international aid workers we met, many of whom have been international aid workers for a long time, told us that the Kutupalong camp, which we visited and which had more than 400,000 people in it, is the most congested refugee camp they have ever experienced. That is a huge problem because, as was certainly made clear to us, the outbreak of disease is a really big concern. When we asked what the solution is, they said they will simply have to create more, smaller camps in that part of Bangladesh, which will minimise the risk of a disease outbreak. If we can encourage the Bangladeshi Government to do that—they have been very generous—that would be good.
The aid workers made the point that we need to think about the medium term. There has been a rush of refugees into Bangladesh, but those people will not go back in a hurry and they will not go back in numbers, so we need to think five or 10 years ahead. The aid workers also told us that in absolutely no way should those people be returned to any unsafe situation, and that there must be an informed, safe, voluntary, dignified and sustainable return, or no return at all.
The Bangladeshis need to speed up the entry clearance process for refugee aid workers. Some of the pre-registration processes for refugee organisations are, frankly, taking too long; they can take six to 12 months. I am sure the Minister is on the case and will listen carefully to the debate.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
The UK has a proud history of being courageous, compassionate and generous, and of leading the way on humanitarian rights in the international community. I am here to say that we must act to protect the Rohingya people.
Last week, I returned from the camps, where I was not just visiting but working as a doctor. I visited all the camps on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border and also went to the checkpoints. I promised the people I met that I would tell their stories. People had to choose between returning to the fires and picking their three children who were burning alive, or picking the two children who were still alive and running with a shirt over their back, making the treacherous journey over the border into Bangladesh. I held those charred babies in my arms and made a promise to tell their story.
I say on the record, as I have all week, that this is not ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing is not a crime in humanitarian law. This is genocide—the systematic dehumanisation of a population of people—and we have to call it out. We are proud to be British and all that stands for. Our standing in the world is to be applauded. The amount we give to humanitarian efforts is absolutely wonderful, but it is tantamount to putting a sticking plaster on a gunshot wound and allowing the shooter to roam free. We cannot be bystanders to this genocide.
I met an imam who managed to escape into the bushes as the military arrived in his village and started shooting everybody. He described, through his tears, all the men being mutilated and killed as their wives were forced to watch; women being dragged backwards by their hair and gang raped repeatedly as their children were forced to watch; and their children, as they ran away screaming, being dragged back and thrown into the fires. I know that that is hard to hear, but I promised I would tell their stories.
We cannot be bystanders to a genocide in which a group of people really believe that throwing living babies into fire is just. What does that say about what we will allow to happen in our world? What does it say about the world that we are raising our families in? I met a four-year-old girl—the same age as my eldest daughter—who was absolutely mute because of the injuries she had sustained and the journey she had made, without her parents, into Bangladesh. She was able to say only, “They killed them all,” before being unable to speak again.
We are a full member of the UN Security Council, we have leverage and we can make changes. We cannot stand by and let this happen. I am calling for an independent ministerial delegation to go to Myanmar, into the Rakhine province, and to call this what it is.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan). I, too, visited the camps, and like her I made that promise. It still feels as raw today as when I went there.
I will make a few points in the short time I have. I agree with the Minister that this is not only a Muslim problem; we were told of Hindus who had been expelled because they are Rohingya. The very fact that the Pope may have been advised—I would not wish to give His Holiness advice—not to use the word “Rohingya” is very wrong. All of us should be free to describe the Rohingya for who they are and what they are. Apparently, a delegation from Burma came over a year or so back at the invitation of the Bangladeshi Government. They went into the camps and said they did not see any Rohingya, only Bangladeshis. That is the problem.
If the Myanmar Government deny people who they are, sending them back there will make no difference. There is a cultural problem here—tacit agreement with the process that has happened. The local people in Myanmar are “not unhappy” that these people have been driven out in the most horrific manner. That needs to be addressed. Otherwise, sending the Rohingya back will only send them back into a scenario in which they are permanently under threat, despised and robbed of their rights. I put it very clearly on the record that we must not accept any pressure to not use the terminology of their race. They are Rohingya and should be respected as such, and the fundamental flaw in this is that Myanmar does not recognise that.
I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) said about permits, and I, too, am concerned that valuable groups such as Islamic Relief UK and Restless Beings want to work in the camps but cannot get access. If this is a legitimate aid process, as much as help as possible should be accepted.
I am also concerned about the estimated 285,000 people outside the camps. The camps are one part of the problem, but there are also huge numbers of people lost in the system. I respect the hon. Member for Tooting saying that this is genocide. I am not sure whether it meets the criteria for that—it looked that way to me—but it is certainly at least ethnic cleansing, and we must not pussyfoot around calling it what it is.
When we talk only about numbers of people and moving them around, we are denying those people their identity and their human rights. Therefore, to me, if nothing else comes out of the debate, we must at least put Myanmar, its Government and its military on notice that the world has noted what they have done. Simply allowing people back in—Bangladesh is under pressure and I see why it wants that repatriation—does not forgive the crime that has happened. That crime needs to be examined and taken to the highest level, and if it is a crime against humanity, which it looks like to me, people should be held accountable and there should be trials. I would welcome that and be proud if my own Government led the calls for it to happen.
Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
My speech will be very short because everybody will more or less say the same thing that I will. I was one of the delegates who went to Myanmar as part of the CPA group. I also went into that camp, and what I saw has left a mark on me. I am a nurse and have seen many things, but that is the worst of people’s humanity I have ever seen. How people can treat others like that is beyond me.
All we are asking is for this to be recognised as what it is: the dehumanisation of people going to Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a very poor country—what are we expecting it to do? It cannot cope with what is happening. We have been told that by December, which is only a couple of days away, 1 million people from Myanmar will be on its borders. We have to do something. I am here to support my colleagues across parties in saying to the Minister that we have to do something. Please listen.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I want to say from the outset that there is a court in The Hague where the people who have been perpetrating these murderous activities will end up, and it is for this Parliament and this Government to work internationally to make sure that they are brought to justice.
By coincidence, my researcher worked in what was then Burma, long before the new golden leadership, when the generals were in charge. There is nothing new about what has been going on there. Colleagues who went to the camps saw people born there not 10 years ago or 15 years ago, but in excess of 25 years ago. It is a crying shame that the camps are still in that condition. The longevity of the camps is very important. I had the honour and privilege of visiting our troops in South Sudan—another place in the world where we should all be ashamed of what is going on—and the camps there had fresh water, sanitation and some longevity, so that when the rains came, the people there were protected.
At the same time, we need to think of the people of Bangladesh. These camps are on the side of the river, on some of the most fertile land that these people, who are subsistence farmers, have. That land has been taken away from them for generations now, and more will be taken away. The right sort of compensation needs to be directed to them, through either our aid budget or the international community.
Sir Mike Penning
I will not, because I want everybody to be able to speak. That is very important.
I am very worried that we might be encouraging people to go back to Myanmar with the so-called deal between Bangladesh and the Myanmar Government. People are being asked up to give up really quite personal details that could be easily used against them when they return to this place—I am conscious of not talking about a country, because it is not a country. These people have no rights. It is illegal under international law to make someone have no citizenship at all, yet that is exactly what has happened there for generation after generation.
My view, which may be different from colleagues’ views, is that we must not be part of any deal that encourages people to go back to watch their daughters being raped—they are not of my daughters’ age, of 26 or 27; girls of 11, 10 or younger are being raped—and their sons castrated in front of them. That is what is going on. That is the sort of thing that, if we are not careful, we will condone.
There is no change in the country. The generals are still in control, and they feel they can do this to these people because nothing will happen to them. We must make sure that something does happen to them and that they go to the international court in The Hague, so that we protect these people.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on securing the debate.
It is imperative that we all make the effort to continue raising the plight of the Rohingyan people—those displaced and those still living in Myanmar—who face the continued threat of persecution and violence. That includes a woman having her unborn baby cut out from her and killed, babies snatched from their mothers and thrown into fires and burned alive, children beaten to death with shovels, children forced to watch as family members are tortured, raped and killed and mass rape of girls as young as five.
If we stop to contemplate those atrocities even for a moment, we can be in no doubt that what has taken place is ethnic cleansing and genocide. The US and the UN have both said that. The British Government are yet to recognise it. I have said it before and I will say it again: 640,000 people have been deliberately driven from their homes, with many killed or tortured. I fear that the international community is failing these people, who are stateless within their own country and do not have the necessary level of aid and support as refugees.
The thing I want to focus on and that I am deeply concerned about, like my colleagues, is the Rohingyan refugees’ potential return to Myanmar. A proposed return without secured political and human rights may create a perception of progress while in reality abandoning the Rohingya people to a life of normalised terror. With the current situation and the animosity, this is no time to be talking about simply returning the Rohingya to Myanmar. If return is on the table, what exactly are they returning to? Without rights and acceptance, what difference will it make? How can we expect people to return when they are dehumanised and persecuted daily?
It is far too early to be returning people to uncertainty. Early surveys indicate that only 10% would wish to return at this point anyway. The 1951 UN refugee convention is absolutely clear about the forced return of refugees and the conditions of safe return that would be required. That is an absolute principle within international law, and any forcible repatriation must be rejected by the entire international community.
Last time I spoke on this subject, I pleaded with the Government to look seriously at more targeted sanctions against the Burmese military and to convince the Burmese military—not just the leadership—to accept what is going on and change the status quo. So far, all we have done within Europe and the UN is to stop our military training and deny visas to military personnel. That is simply not enough.
Rushanara Ali
Does my hon. Friend agree that the UK Government should look at the business interests of the Burmese generals who have been prosecuting these acts of violence and terror and sanction them? Will the Minister address that point today?
Naz Shah
I absolutely agree. I said it previously, but it must be reiterated: unless we sanction the military and carry out these investigations, we are not telling the world that we are serious about this issue.
The Myanmar military and leadership need to understand that actions have consequences and repercussions, and that we as an international community will not stand by and allow this to continue. They need to understand that Great Britain and those who have spoken today have been heard and listened to and that these people’s stories are reaching our shores. They are the stories of tears that my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) spoke about, of women who are homeless and of children who will know no certainty for years to come and have no future. They have come out of the chip pan and into the fire, and they are still burning—literally. This is not something we can accept or stand by and watch. We must be doing more.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on securing this important debate on the most serious humanitarian crisis facing the world today.
On visiting the camps with the Conservative Friends of Bangladesh in September, I witnessed some of the most horrific scenes imaginable. I know that several hon. Members across the Chamber have also visited. We saw makeshift camps as far as the eye can see and poor sanitation, and it is mostly women and children there, because husbands have been killed. We saw women fleeing with their children—largely daughters—because their houses had been burned, walking for five days with just the clothes on their back, clutching their children. In every case, when we spoke to people, it was the Myanmar military that had conducted those atrocities and horrific attacks.
I have to say, I am immensely proud of the role that the United Kingdom has played in terms of aid. We visited the Kutupalong camp and a camp right on the border with Myanmar—so close that we could see the smoke over the border—and were shown images of landmines and heard horrific tales. I was really proud to see the Union flag from the British people and that aid was going there. I think we are the largest bilateral donor, having given some £47 million. I was pleased to see the Secretary of State for International Development there this weekend, committing a further £12 million. I am pleased that we are playing our part, but that is only half of this issue. We have to provide the aid, but the second half is the diplomatic efforts.
I am also proud of what Bangladesh has done. It has a population of 160 million, and Sheikh Hasina has welcomed these people and said, “If we can feed 160 million, we can feed another 500,000 Rohingya.” That is an incredibly noble thing to do, and I applaud the Bangladeshi Government. However, I draw the line at the deal with Myanmar, because I have serious concerns about sending people back to a state—Rakhine state—in which they are not welcome, are persecuted and will have all sorts of untold violence inflicted upon them.
Will Quince
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Stateless people will not have rights or protections, which is a serious concern. All the refugees we spoke to in the camps said they wanted to go back to Rakhine province, but only when it was safe and their security was guaranteed. Before we talk about, endorse, sanction or support any deals between the Myanmar Government and Bangladesh, it is important that security and protection is guaranteed and that we see the humanitarian charities and NGOs in there to protect those people’s rights.
Several hon. Members have talked about what the UK is doing. I am proud of what the Minister has done so far. There is always more that we can do, but we need to talk about tangible measures that the British Government can take. As we know, measures at the UN have been blocked by both China and Russia. China is key. I met the Foreign Secretary only last week. We have to put pressure on China, which has a border with Myanmar, because it also has concerns about humanitarian crises in Myanmar spreading and refugees potentially entering into China. We have to stress the point that China is key, and diplomatic efforts should be directed that way.
I am conscious of the time, so I will conclude. I know the Minister is as passionate about solving the issue as the rest of us. I implore him to do as much as he can to help to resolve it.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) for securing this important debate. It is good to see so many colleagues here, particularly from the CPA delegation, of which I was a member a couple of weeks ago. I have a substantial British Bangladeshi diaspora in my constituency. As the Rohingya crisis has developed at such speed and at such scale during the past couple of months, I have received lots of representations and a lot of concern has been expressed about what was going on, so I felt privileged to take part in the delegation to go and see for myself what was happening. I wanted to understand the nature of the crisis and also the role that the Bangladeshi Government and their people have played in the humanitarian effort, but most importantly what I, we and the Government can and should do in terms of humanitarian support and political international solutions.
I want to reiterate the praise that we have heard today for the Bangladeshi Government, for the Bangladeshi host families in Cox’s Bazar, the NGOs and the generous fund-raising efforts of the British public. On that last point, I want to mention my local councillor, Ali Ahmed and the Bangladesh Association Cardiff, who so far have raised £30,000 for the international relief effort.
What I saw and what I heard directly at the Kutupalong camp will stay with me for a very long time. I saw a mass of humanity, literally as far as the horizon, and that was not the entire camp; it was only a small proportion. There was no space, no water and no sanitation. People were picking up shelter packs. I do not know where they were going to walk to so as to erect these pieces of tarpaulin and bamboo shoots to make some sort of shelter. There was literally no space. As we approach the cyclone season, I really worry that if a cyclone hits that camp, we will see the destruction and death of hundreds of thousands of people.
I have three questions for the Minister. I want to thank him for a frank discussion at the all-party group on Bangladesh last week. I know he visited Myanmar last week. What representations were made and to whom? Can he tell us a little more about the response that he got? What can he tell us about the agreement between Burma and Bangladesh on the return of the Rohingya to Burma, which disturbs me and obviously several other Members greatly? Finally, to take up the point made by the hon. Member for Colchester about China, what diplomatic efforts are being made with the Chinese, who clearly have significant leverage to make the Burmese regime deal with the situation in some way? So far they have done nothing and have been complicit in what I agree has been genocide.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on securing this debate and giving us all a chance to participate. I declare an interest as the chairman of the all-party group on freedom of religious belief, which speaks out for the right of everybody to hold their own religion and belief and to practise that. The case of the Rohingyas is one that I have spoken on numerous times in this place. Indeed, the last time we had a debate here in Westminster Hall, I spoke on them specifically, along with others. Like others, I am not afraid to stand and speak up. I do what I can to raise awareness and possibly help to bring about a change in the horrendous situation.
On Thursday 23 November, Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement to repatriate the Rohingya refugees. Ever mindful that the monsoon season is on the way, the Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Ministry stated that a joint working group would be set up within these three weeks to manage the process, and the return of the refugees would start within two months. Human rights groups have raised several concerns about the agreement, and I must agree with their concerns. The first is that the military generals could still obstruct the process, and it is unclear where the Rohingya will be resettled, given that many villages have been razed.
Let us be clear about the scale of the crisis: 624,000 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Bangladesh since the Burmese military launched its ethnic cleansing and its genocidal, brutal, bloody, murder of innocents. The sheer volume of refugees indicates that fleeting statements cannot be made with no plan in place. These people need assurances that they can return home—indeed, that there is a place for them to return to. They need to know that they are back for good and welcome for good, and that they need not be concerned about having to uproot their lives and their children in the near future. Without a guarantee of citizenship, the Rohingya will be vulnerable to the same discrimination and violence that they have experienced for decades. That is not acceptable. They need their guarantee of citizenship.
China has indicated a wish to try to do something. There may be some light at the end of the tunnel, but there is not enough light to make the path home safe, and more needs to be done. I thank the Minister for all the hard work that he does. I know he is very compassionate and has a personal interest in this matter. I look to him to provide an update of what steps we are taking to help this nation of people who are so desperately in need of international aid and support. We must do something right now.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) for securing this important debate and for bringing our attention to her visit to the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. If we watch the TV and follow these stories, it is bad enough. My hon. Friend should be thanked for her efforts in bringing the reality that she has experienced at first hand to this House.
The UN refugee agency said that what it is doing was like establishing a city the size of Manchester overnight, but one with no infrastructure, housing, water, sanitation or tools for survival. However, that is better than the alternative. We have all heard the most horrific stories of brutality. It is difficult to comprehend the suffering. The Prime Minister has called the Rohingya crisis heartbreaking and has pledged to deepen partnerships with Asian countries in a move to combat such problems. The Foreign Secretary is looking for more analysis. That is not enough. The massacre of the Rohingya is genocide. We cannot keep denying the truth against the weight of evidence, and we cannot keep talking about how shocking the human suffering is without acting.
The UK is well placed to influence stakeholders in Myanmar and across the region, and at the United Nations. Last week, Burma and Bangladesh signed an agreement to repatriate refugees, although Burma gave no details of how many would be allowed to return home. Repatriations are expected to begin in the next month or two, but the Myanmar Government’s continued denial of a well-evidenced campaign of ethnic cleansing is astonishing.
Can we really believe that the Rohingyas’ home, or what is left of it, is safe to return to? Repatriations must not happen prematurely and without assurances that there is a genuine solution in place. I ask the Government to do everything in their power to bring about lasting peace and to ensure that no Rohingya will be returned to a place where they will not be safe. It should be recognised that the people of Bangladesh have opened their borders and their hearts to people in desperate need. If Bangladesh is to deliver a progressive refugee policy under such strain, the international community must step up its support. It is right that we continue to talk about the atrocities, but we also need to see proper recognition of the scale of the issue from the international community, and we need action to stop the horror.
Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on securing this timely debate and bringing further attention to such an important issue. I also echo many of the comments that have been made in the debate today. It is utterly heartbreaking to read and hear reports about the devastation in Rakhine state and of the desperate situation that many are facing in Bangladesh. We have a responsibility to speak out against those atrocities and do all we can to stop them, and having listened to colleagues from across the House speak in this debate today, it is clear that that is something on which we all agree.
More than half a million Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since August, and more than 340,000 of those are children, many travelling unaccompanied. That is the largest displacement of people in a short period since the Rwandan genocide. Two hundred and eighty-four Rohingya villages have been torched; tens of thousands of people have been victims of gender-based violence, including rape and sexual assault; thousands more people have been violently attacked, and many of those have tragically lost their lives. We must be prepared to call this what it is: a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.
I commend the steps that the Government have taken so far in an effort to tackle this crisis. Unfortunately, however, as we all know, in reality that action is not enough. We have been speaking for long enough, and the situation continues to worsen. I call on the Government to lead the way in organising an immediate co-ordinated and effective international response to the crisis, and to urge the other members of the United Nations Security Council to come together and use their collective power to help this persecuted minority. The Burmese Government must be held to account, and the war crimes that have been committed by the Burmese military must be investigated in an international court. The Rohingya people need justice.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on securing this important debate. Many of my constituents have been, and remain, extremely concerned about the situation in Rakhine state. It was the subject of the first wide-scale correspondence campaign that I received as a Member of Parliament, and it remains one of the biggest. Like me, my constituents were appalled about the extreme violence inflicted on the Rohingya in Rakhine state, which has been going on for years.
It is difficult to imagine the scale of the exodus: more than 600,000 people have crossed into Bangladesh since the end of August. No wonder UN officials described the situation as a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing. Will the Minister confirm whether our Government have officially classified the situation as such? More to the point, has it been classified as a genocide? That is what I feel it actually is.
Mark Field
Yes, we have made it clear that it is ethnic cleansing. The question of whether it is genocide is a legal issue and not something that Governments can decide. There has to be a legal process through the international community. The ethnic cleansing point has been made—I have made it on the Floor of the House, and my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development have also made it very clear that this seems like a case of ethnic cleansing.
Mr Dhesi
I thank the Minister for his response, but he will be the first to acknowledge that that does not mean that these events have been classified as a crime against humanity. Hopefully we will pursue the Myanmar Government on that.
It is to the credit of Bangladesh and other nations that they have attempted to accommodate and assist the Rohingya refugees. While a repatriation agreement has been made, help and resources to deal with the humanitarian crisis are still urgently needed. The International Organisation for Migration estimates that more than 820,000 Rohingya need urgent support to survive—food, water and medicine. The UN and international aid agencies must be allowed to reach displaced families, and the Foreign Office must maintain pressure on the Burmese authorities to ensure that humanitarian aid gets to Rohingya communities.
This is a human rights crisis as well as a humanitarian crisis, and concerns about rising levels of intolerance in Myanmar remain. I spoke previously in Parliament about the enormous respect that was accorded to the de facto leader of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, by this country during her own struggle for democracy—she of all people should respect the rights of all, especially minorities. It is therefore understandable that human rights groups remain concerned over the repatriation agreement signed last week. Because the Rohingya are not regarded as Burmese citizens by the military, there remains a distinct and serious concern that the generals could still obstruct the repatriation. Kofi Annan’s Rakhine commission recommended that the Rohingya be granted citizenship and freedom of movement. Mr Annan stated:
“This is a critical step for Rakhines and Muslims alike. Only in this way can they break out of the hostility that leads to the violence and despair that has blighted their lives for so long.”
Without citizenship, the Rohingya may still be vulnerable to the discrimination and violence that has been ongoing for decades.
I hope that our Government will take a global lead in finding long-term solutions to achieve lasting peace once violence has ceased and humanitarian access has been put in place, and that they will work with the authorities on the implementation of Kofi Annan’s Rakhine commission recommendations. Before I sit down, let me record the enormous gratitude and respect that I and no doubt all hon. Members feel towards the aid workers and organisations, including the superb humanitarian charity, Khalsa Aid, whose founder, Ravi Singh, lives in my constituency. We are in their debt as they undertake such efforts in circumstances that we can hardly imagine.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on securing this debate and on her leadership role as a senior member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. I thank her for her great kindness and support for me and all other members of the delegation who visited the camp in Kutupalong. It was a lifetime experience—certainly the worst sight that I have ever seen in my life, and I have visited many refugee camps over the years.
There is a feeling of desperation and impotence when we see the scale of this problem—when we look, human being to human being, at a young child carrying an even younger child who is hopelessly paralysed, and when we imagine the depth of suffering of people who have gone through the worst experiences that life has to offer. We cannot see ourselves as having any facile solution to this issue; it is not easy. There is no future in Bangladesh for a million people. We cannot allow the camp to continue, let alone grow, yet that is one of the alternatives. Another alternative—all alternatives are unpalatable—is for people to return to Myanmar. Can that be done? I believe that we should not dismiss it, but we have seen in the eyes of people in the refugee camp their fear about going back. Who could not understand that?
I believe we have a record with our services of brilliant work in creating, defending and protecting peace. That work has been going on for decades. If people do go back, and that is the only practical solution to this crisis, we must guarantee support and be generous enough to provide resources in great quantities, so as to solve this enormous series of tragedies.
What sticks in the mind is not just the individuals, but standing on a high point in the camp and looking out over hills into the distance, and as far as the eye can see, it is all refugee camps. All that many of the refugees have is a piece of tarpaulin and a stick to protect themselves. The horrors are there. This country deserves great credit for the aid that we have given, but despite all the heroic, herculean tasks that we have performed, it is inadequate—pitiful—given the scale of the problem. There is not enough food. The water is contaminated. There is no serious police service there. The dangers of fire and of disease breaking out are ever present.
Although the status quo is intolerable and offends humanity, we must look with intelligence and care towards practical solutions. I am afraid that means considering the return of the Rohingyas, if they wish to return and if we can provide adequate protection for them—
Ian Paisley (in the Chair)
Order. I must call the first Opposition spokesperson, Hannah Bardell.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. Please excuse my voice; the cold has reached Livingston, but I will do my best to get through my speech and be heard.
I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on securing the debate and on a really powerful speech. We were able to hear from all those in the Chamber who have visited Myanmar and seen at first hand the tragedy that is unfolding. It struck me during the hon. Lady’s speech that some of the things being denied to the Rohingya people—food, education, sanitation, water and citizenship—are the very basic needs of human beings, and that we should be and are joining together proudly to stand against what is and appears to be genocide. I appreciate the Minister’s point about the legal language in relation to that and the definitions, but I urge him to look for every avenue possible, to use the utmost imagination and every channel available to him and the Government, to stand up to the regime on behalf of the Rohingya people.
Hannah Bardell
Although the hon. Lady and I are in different parties, I agree with her words and sentiments, because language is very important in these situations. However, although our words and our support are very important, we will be judged on our actions. I think that this place is at its best when we are in agreement, and we are in agreement today across all parties and, indeed, all Governments. The Scottish Government pledged in September £120,000 from their humanitarian emergency fund for the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for the Rohingya people.
We have seen images of what is unfolding and heard the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) talk about going to the area as a doctor to use her skills to provide support. We are very fortunate that people come to this place with professional skills that they can then use in their role as parliamentarians. I cannot imagine what that is like; I have not been myself, but those who have visited have spoken powerfully about their experiences at first hand. I commend the hon. Lady for the work that she did in her own time to support those who are suffering so terribly.
The hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) spoke about military sanctions and what the Government can do to crack down in that regard. Watching the news recently, we have seen the reporter Alex Crawford, who managed to gain access to a camp. As the world rolls on and Brexit rolls on, some of these stories, some of these issues, fall away into the background. Sadly, we often see only through the lens of our media what is happening, and it is a huge challenge for them to report on it. Some of the experiences captured in the images—of people’s houses being burned and so on—are some of the worst experiences that human beings can possibly have. It is just devastating, so we must pull together and look at all the options available to us.
The return of people to their state will be hugely challenging, but I ask the Minister what practically we can do when we are talking about timescales of five or 10 years. That seems truly incredible. In a world and in countries of plenty such as ours, can we not find solutions and shorten that time? These are such long timescales for people living in such terribly tragic situations.
I know that there are huge challenges in looking to resettle people, which has been considered. I think that Canada has been looking at resettlement options, but are there avenues for the countries in the United Kingdom to give more support in that regard? I would be very interested to hear from the Minister on that front. I know that many other people wish to speak, and my voice is failing me, but I congratulate all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate, and I again call on the Government to do everything they possibly can to support the Rohingya people.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) on securing this very important and timely debate. I thank her not just for making her speech, but for taking the time to go to Bangladesh to see the situation of the Rohingya people. I also thank, for giving their time and bringing back their testimony, the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith), the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) and my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) and for Newport West (Paul Flynn). Their words have been heard today in the House. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), for Bradford West (Naz Shah), for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) and for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for their excellent speeches.
The humanitarian situation, as the Minister knows better than I do, is extremely serious. He will have heard the many terrible stories about sexual violence. We therefore want to know that the Foreign Office is continuing the excellent initiative of the previous Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in deploying the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict team. I suggest to the Minister that perhaps that needs more resources than it has at the moment.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
I am hugely concerned about the unaccompanied children now in the camps. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that those children, living in the dreadful conditions that we have heard about today, are ripe for exploitation by people traffickers? We need to be in there, ensuring that that is not happening.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The risks to the people in the camps, whether of disease or violence, are very significant. The British people have done a great thing in mobilising a lot of resources, and the Government have responded well to that.
I welcome the acknowledgement by the United Nations and the United States Government that this is a case of ethnic cleansing. I am pleased that the Minister has moved on from saying that it looks like ethnic cleansing to saying that it is ethnic cleansing. Clearly we need to look into the legal situation. That means we must have people going into the camps and to Myanmar to find out about the situation. I am talking about qualified, legal experts from the UN. As many hon. Members have said, on both sides of the Chamber, it is extremely important that the perpetrators of these horrendous crimes are brought to justice, and the first step is securing the evidence. The Myanmar military continue to deny their responsibility and to deny access, and that must be one of the things that we now make a priority.
Everyone in the Chamber recognises the fantastic generosity of the Bangladeshi people. Notwithstanding that, there are clearly a lot of questions about the proposal to repatriate people from Bangladesh to Myanmar. These are people; they are not cattle to be shunted backwards and forwards across the border. We need to make that absolutely clear. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the conditions in northern Rakhine state are not suitable at the moment for “safe and sustainable returns”.
Hon. Members have spoken about the problems of putting together documentation. It is also vital, if this is to be done in the right way, that it is voluntary repatriation and that people are not forced, with the fear of yet more violence, back across the border. Obviously that means that the UN and the international community need to put resources in to facilitate that situation, probably on both sides of the border, because at the moment the situation is clearly not safe.
The fundamental issue, of course, is that the Rohingya people are not equal under the law in Myanmar and their citizenship is not recognised. Like the hon. Member for St Albans, I think it is regrettable that the Pope was advised that he would inflame the situation if he said that these were Rohingya people. It is basic to people’s identity that they determine that identity themselves and everybody else acknowledges it. I am pleased that Ministers have been calling on the Myanmar Government to implement the recommendations of Kofi Annan’s Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, because only those will give us a sustainable solution and secure the legal status of the Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar, which has the highest number of stateless people anywhere in the world. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) spoke about the importance of changing the 1982 citizenship law. That is obviously a crucial part of building a new, safe situation and returning the law in that country to international norms.
Great Britain has an important role to play here. We have an historic involvement with these countries and we have shown our generosity by giving aid, but we have also been the pen-holder at the United Nations in the diplomacy through which the Government have been trying to secure an international consensus on the need for change. If it helps the Minister, I will say on behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition that China and Russia should be supporting the British Government’s diplomatic efforts, because it is clear that the UN cannot move on substantively without their agreement. I think that they need to acknowledge their international responsibilities.
Getting the Myanmar Government to acknowledge the rights of the Rohingya people will require a change to the Myanmar constitution. That means it must go through their Parliament with 75% of the vote. That is only going to happen if they feel that they need to do this. We can help them to understand that they do need to do it. This is where the issue of sanctions comes in. I ask the Minister to consider a few further points on sanctions, in line with the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali). Will the Government join the United States in considering targeted sanctions? Will the Government confirm whether it supports a UN-mandated global arms embargo against Myanmar, comprehensive visa restrictions against the military and their families and associates, and, significantly, halting investment in business with companies owned by the Myanmar military?
This is an extremely difficult situation. I know that the Minister is committed to tackling it as well as is possible. He has been in the region twice. I just want to assure him of our support in facilitating a resolution to this crisis, in both the short and the long term.
The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
Thank you, Mr Paisley, for calling me to speak. Having visited Burma last week, for the second time in seven weeks, I welcome the opportunity to update the House on the heartbreakingly appalling situation facing the Rohingya people of Rakhine state and the active work of the UK Government to address it in both Burma and Bangladesh, and in the UN and the international community.
I thank all colleagues for their powerful contributions and testimony, particularly the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods). They should rest assured that their words will be heard not just across the road in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but around the globe, as we make the case about what is happening. I am well aware that in Burma people actively listen to what is happening in the UK Parliament, so these are words that will be listened to far afield.
Since military operations began in Rakhine state on 25 August, more than 620,000 Rohingya have fled across the border into Bangladesh. Many have given heart-wrenching accounts, which I know many have heard, about the human rights abuses, including unspeakable sexual violence, which has been suffered or witnessed in Rakhine. Up to 1,000 people are still crossing that border each and every day. This is a movement of people on a colossal scale, with few parallels in recent times. I accept the point, made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), that this issue with the Rohingya goes back to the formation of the Burmese state, but the sheer scale of it over the past three months has been remarkable.
I pay tribute again to the Government of Bangladesh for the support they have offered the Rohingya. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s decision to open the border and allow the refugees to enter has without doubt saved countless lives. Last Thursday, as has been pointed out, Bangladesh and Burma signed a memorandum of understanding on the return of refugees to Rakhine. We understand that a joint working group will be set up within three weeks, with the aim of commencing the processing of returns within two months.
I want to touch on the UK Government’s position, because I know that there are concerns across the House. We will press for quick progress on the implementation of this bilateral agreement, but we will be absolutely clear that any returns must be safe, voluntary and dignified, and there must be appropriate international oversight. In my view, which I think is shared by many Members here, it is too early even to talk about voluntary returns at this stage. The Rohingya have rightly addressed legitimate concerns about their personal security. The severe restrictions that Amnesty International has described persist. Access to livelihood and humanitarian aid remains insufficient. That was evident to me from the other side of the border when, on my first visit to Burma, I went to a camp in Sittwe that had been set up in 2012, during one of the more recent times of strife.
It is not a life for the people living in that camp; it is barely a subsistence living. They are able to live and eat, they have healthcare and UK aid is able to provide fairly significantly, but it is not a life that anyone can recognise. It was heartbreaking to chat to Rohingya people there who had had businesses and professions, and who were left in limbo for five years, and potentially for many years to come. That option is not satisfactory. It would get people across the border, but the notion of setting up similar sorts of camps for the future for many years to come has to be a non-starter.
Jo Stevens
The Minister just said that the working group and implementation would start within two months, and that any scheme must be “safe, voluntary and dignified,” but then I think he said that clearly people are not going to return voluntarily. Will he clarify that point?
Mark Field
I am making the point that we want to see people return. I will move on to the important point made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) a moment ago. Although the Government are not directly criticising the agreement, our position is that we should be telling both Governments that substantial progress on the ground will be necessary, as well as proper engagement with both ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya—if needed—if any Rohingya are to return. We want to see the momentum on this issue. The reason for that—I think it was alluded to earlier—is that if the Rohingya do not return, ruthlessly the Burmese military will have got their way; they will have got what they wanted. That is why, although I accept that we should not dream of forcing Rohingya to return, nor should we do this with such swiftness that they are not secure on the ground.
Equally—this is the slight concern I have with the contribution from the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell), who spoke for the Scottish National party—even to talk about resettlement at this stage plays into the hands of the Burmese military, and I think it is something we should avoid. I understand that she is doing it for the best of humanitarian motives, but realistically at the moment we must try to insist that the Rohingya return to their rightful homeland.
Rushanara Ali
Perhaps the Minister will allude to this shortly, but will there be an international presence? Will we be pushing for an independent security presence to protect them, because otherwise we are expecting the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing to be the ones managing this process?
Mark Field
Absolutely. We will. I am also wary of the idea of having a long-term presence there, rather like what has happened in the middle east where one has an unsustainable position for the longer term, but in the short term we need to have an independent international presence to police this matter.
The UK Government have concluded that the inexcusable violence perpetrated on the Rohingya by the Burmese military and ethnic Rakhine militia appears to be ethnic cleansing—or is ethnic cleansing. The UK has been leading the international response diplomatically, politically and in terms of humanitarian support.
Mark Field
If the hon. Lady will excuse me, I am wary that I am running out of time and I want to touch on sanctions and other issues that have been raised.
On 6 November we proposed, and secured with unanimous support, the first UN Security Council presidential statement on Burma in a decade. With this the Security Council made clear its expectations of the Burmese authorities: no further excessive military force; immediate UN humanitarian access; mechanisms to allow voluntary return; and an investigation into human rights violations, including allegations of sexual violence.
Elsewhere in the UN, we are co-sponsoring a UN General Assembly resolution on the human rights situation in Burma. I note the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) about the importance of China in this situation. Please rest assured that a huge amount of work is going on at the UN to try to bring China on board. I think it would be wrong to overstate China’s leverage on these matters, and there are issues on the Chinese-Burmese border that are nothing to do with the Rohingya, but hon. Members are correct that China has an important role to play. The resolution we are proposing has received the support of 135 member states at the Third Committee. The strong international support for this resolution and the Security Council’s presidential statement send a powerful signal to the Burmese authorities about the military’s conduct and the lasting damage it will do to their international reputation.
May I touch on sanctions, which the hon. Members for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) mentioned? We impose our sanctions through the EU, but we must secure the consensus of all member states. At the October EU Foreign Affairs Council, the Foreign Secretary secured agreement to consider additional measures if the situation did not improve. Evidently, it has not. If the Burmese authorities do not heed the call of the 6 November UNSC presidential statement, we will be returning to EU partners to press for agreement on further measures, which could include targeted sanctions along the lines that the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow referred to. But we would want to be clear about what impact they were having on the military’s conduct, as indeed would our EU partners. I pledge to the House that we will be giving very serious consideration to trying to work out the appropriateness of such sanctions, including to try to discover whether there is any property or companies owned by the Burmese military.
I attended the Asia-Europe Foreign Ministers meeting in Naypyidaw last Monday and Tuesday and had meetings with the Minister of Defence, Sein Win, the Deputy Foreign Minister, Kyaw Tin, and Aung San Suu Kyi’s chief of staff, Kyaw Tint Swe. My hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) will, I hope, be pleased to learn that I did not pussyfoot about. I referred on each occasion to “Rohingya” and got a lecture for my pains in doing so, but we will continue to do so on that basis.
Dr Allin-Khan
I very much appreciate the Minister giving way. Although I acknowledge that the geopolitics of the region might make it difficult for our Government to speak out against Myanmar, and I appreciate that he was there last week at the same time I was, does he not agree that we stood by and blinked while the Rwandan genocide happened and, given the nature of the crimes against humanity that are currently being committed, while we play around with semantics we risk being bystanders to yet another genocide?
Mark Field
The hon. Lady will be aware that I think of this a great deal. I am very much aware, as we should all be in the international community, that we are faced with a set of problems, and one could argue that they are not dissimilar to what happened in Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Srebrenica, and at various other times. The international community needs to be able to come together, but it needs to do that in a united way, and the only way to do that is through the United Nations, which is why we continue to work tirelessly in that regard.
Any long-term resolution needs to address the issue of citizenship in Burma, as has been said. The report of Kofi Annan’s Advisory Commission on Rakhine State remains central to this, and I welcome Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent establishment of an international advisory board, including Lord Darzi and other respected international political figures, to ensure its implementation. She has publicly committed to implementing the commission’s recommendations, which include reviewing the controversial 1982 citizenship law and making progress on citizenship through the existing legal framework.
The main current impetus continues to be the urgent humanitarian needs of the Rohingya refugees. The UK is the single largest bilateral donor to the crisis. We have now contributed £59 million, as has been stated, and we are making a material difference. We are providing food for over 170,000 people, 140,000 people with safe water and sanitation, and emergency nutritional support to more than 60,000 vulnerable children under the age of five. On 23 October I represented the UK at an UN-organised pledging conference in Geneva, where through our leadership we were able to get more money. But the reality is that, as has been pointed out, that will take us through only to February, when we will need to go through that process again. More will be needed from us and others, and we will sustain the international leadership role on the humanitarian response to ensure that it happens.
I want to touch on sexual violence. I have already mentioned the horrifying accounts provided by some Rohingya refugees about sexual and gender-based violence. Earlier this month the UN’s special representative on sexual violence visited Bangladesh and heard consistent and harrowing reports of the widespread and systematic use of sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls, both in the past on the Burmese side of the border and now in the Bangladeshi camps. That clearly needs to stop. The extremely serious conclusions have meant that the UK Government have deployed two civilian experts to Bangladesh. We will obviously review that and whether to increase it to look at the current levels of investigation and documentation of these abhorrent crimes. They will provide us with advice on where the UK can continue to support this vital work. We are committed to ensuring that there is full support for victims and witnesses of these crimes. We need to have accountability, and we are determined that those who have committed human rights violations will be brought properly to account.
I want to thank everyone here for all that they have said. Please rest assured that my door remains open, as the Minister with responsibility in this area. Please feel free to get in touch at any stage if you are able to pass on either more evidence or the strength of the views of many of your constituents. I know that the hon. Member for City of Durham will want to say a few words, so I will sum up.
The UK Government will do our best to maintain a full range of humanitarian, political and diplomatic efforts, leading the international community’s response to this ongoing catastrophe and pressing Burma to meet urgently the expectations set out in the UN Security Council’s presidential statement. I know that diplomacy has a bad name sometimes, and it is something we have to be very determined to try to work together on. Please be assured that we are doing as much as we can. I wish that we could do more. I wish that this situation could be resolved. I wish that there was more goodwill in that part of the world. The Foreign Office will remain steadfastly determined to ensure, as far as we can, the safe return of the Rohingya people, to ensure access for humanitarian aid and to hold to account those who are responsible for these harrowing crimes.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I want to start by thanking Members from all parties for their powerful and moving contributions this afternoon. Those of us who visited the camps made a commitment to the Rohingya people that we would not just walk away from what we had seen, and that when we came back we would raise the situation that they face and ask for two things: that the humanitarian aid would continue and be stepped up so that their conditions in the camps are made more tolerable; and that we use our role as MPs to put pressure on our own Government and the international community to come to an agreement with Myanmar and solve this problem for the longer term, so that they would be given safe return to Myanmar, that that would be overseen by the international community and, critically, that they would be given citizenship, because that is what they need in the longer term to be able to lead their lives. I thank the Minister for his comments, and we will continue to work with him.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
Charitable Fundraising Websites
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered charitable fundraising websites and associated charges.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Britain is a nation of givers. More than 160,000 charities are registered in England and Wales, and, thanks to the generosity of the British public, last year they raised almost £10 billion in donations. We all immensely value their role in our communities and public services, and I know that Members will join me in thanking them for the tremendous part they play in providing support for vulnerable and local community groups.
Charities contribute to every walk of life, such as medical research, animal welfare and local hospices, to name but a few. However, larger organisations such as Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation and Oxfam—those with incomes of more than £5 million —make up only 1% of registered charities, and 40% of charities have an income of less than £10,000 a year. Those charities tend to be embedded in our communities, often engaging with local causes.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I know that my hon. Friend will raise some interesting points, but will she also join me in recognising that today is Giving Tuesday? That provides a good opportunity for us all to celebrate the work across the country of the small charities that she refers to, as well as local, national and international charities.
Mary Robinson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is right to point out that Giving Tuesday is our opportunity to celebrate the volunteers who work in our communities to raise money for charities.
Charities rely largely on donors and Government grants for their income. Over the past decade, donating to charities online has become a well established practice. Websites such as BT MyDonate, Virgin Money Giving and JustGiving, which is the largest site, have become the go-to places to donate to charities. Such platforms allow donors to search for their preferred charity and donate money using their smartphones, computers and other electronic devices. In a few clicks, donors can register their debit or credit card, choose their charitable cause and donate.
Last year, websites, social media and apps accounted for more than £2.4 billion in donations, representing 26%, or one in four, of all donations made in the United Kingdom. That figure will only increase as charities adapt to the evolving technological landscape. People like using online platforms because they provide a hassle-free way to present a fundraising case, and they allow individual donors to set up their own mini fundraising campaigns for causes close to their heart. Indeed, many hon. Members may have used the sites to raise money for charities in their own constituencies, perhaps by running the London or Manchester marathons, or by climbing Kilimanjaro—if they are very athletic and adventurous.
Rather than using traditional means of donation, such as cheques or bank transfers, young donors in particular find it far more convenient to donate to charities through online platforms. If we look at the spread of donations across age, we see that last year 58% of donors who contributed online were aged between 16 and 44. Many charities also find using third-party sites more convenient. They provide a huge bonus by attracting funds from friends and family who fundraise on a smaller scale for large charities, such as for the hugely successful Motor Neurone Disease Association ice bucket challenge some years ago.
However, the ability to raise funds generally comes at a cost. Most online giving platforms charge charities an administration or transaction fee for processing each donation. Those typically range from zero to £2 per donation and can make a significant difference to the overall amount that a charity receives, especially if the total comes from many small donations that are all subject to a fee. There are also set-up or monthly rental charges that charities pay for a presence on fundraising websites.
Most fundraising platforms are not-for-profit organisations, although a few sites are run for profit. JustGiving is run for profit. Charities, depending on their size, are required to pay a monthly subscription fee to JustGiving of up to £39, plus VAT, and are charged a 5% fee on the amount raised. The fee is taken from the gift aid received, if eligible, or is deducted from the total if no gift aid can be claimed. Virgin Money Giving is a non-profit company. Charities registering with it are required to pay a one-off set-up fee of £150 and it takes a 2% fee on donations, but all the gift aid is received by the charity.
I declare an interest as a Greater Manchester Member of Parliament, because one online fundraiser, the Wonderful Organisation, is located in Manchester. Wonderful.org is the only site in the UK not to charge any fees. Its core belief is that charities should receive 100% of donations from their fundraising efforts, including gift aid. It is a non-profit organisation run by volunteers and funded entirely by corporate sponsorship from philanthropic businesses, which guarantees that charities, fundraisers and sponsors pay nothing and that the charity or good cause gets all the benefits in full.
As hon. Members may have gathered, the landscape for charities and giving sites is confusing. Transparency is therefore a fundamental issue facing the sector. A recent survey revealed that almost 80% of the people who use the largest run-for-profit platform are unaware that it is a for-profit business. To put that into context, when we register for a bank account or credit card, we understand that institutions have a legal responsibility to explain to customers certain charges and fees that they may be obligated to pay. With large sums being donated and handled, transparency is important.
It is apparent that when people donate online many are unaware of the fees and charges. The sector is telling me that users are simply not aware or do not know. For example, in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, Karolina Hanusova created a fundraising page on JustGiving. Through her fantastic efforts, she raised more than £400,000 for the survivors and victims of the fire, but £25,000 of the total was taken in processing fees. Karolina was surprised to find that such a significant amount was deducted from the total raised.
Karolina’s case is not uncommon. Immediately following the Manchester Arena bombing in May, the Manchester Evening News began an appeal, raising £2.5 million through the JustGiving website, but that was subject to deductions of £100,000 in fees. Time and again, I have come across users who registered with fundraising websites but were not aware of such substantial charges being taken from the donated funds. Users need to be aware of the costs and fees so that they can make an informed choice, just as we would expect with any other financial body. The payment process needs to be clear from start to finish.
Public trust in charities is critical and has become a key question over recent years following various crises and media coverage of the sector. Worryingly, this year’s Charities Aid Foundation report revealed that only 50% of the population—half, that is—believe that charities are trustworthy. Clearly, that has to be taken seriously by the sector, and I believe that the sector is now doing that.
I understand that the Charity Commission and the Fundraising Regulator recently met 14 major UK giving platforms to discuss these issues and to agree principles collectively to increase public understanding and transparency. Online fundraising platforms have agreed to provide information to the Fundraising Regulator about their complaints process, and to work with the regulators and the Government to explore how their transparency on fees and charges can be improved.
I am pleased that registration with the Fundraising Regulator is now open to third-party fundraisers, offering platforms an opportunity to demonstrate a public commitment to meeting the highest standards for fundraising. I urge the Government to encourage platforms that have not yet registered to consider doing so and signing up to the code of practice.
However, the Fundraising Regulator is a self-regulating body with no formal powers, so I further ask the Minister, what powers can be granted to the regulator to give it some teeth in dealing with platforms that do not adhere to the code of conduct? All charities must submit their accounts or annual returns to the Charity Commission, and those are available to view on the commission’s website. One benefit of compulsory charity registration is increased transparency across the sector. Perhaps the Fundraising Regulator could replicate that best practice. I suggest that to move towards that aim and promote best practice and transparency, online platforms should also be encouraged to submit their accounts to the commission or Fundraising Regulator.
Anecdotally, many people assume that fundraising platforms are themselves charities. They are not. They are more akin to agents or intermediaries. Although I am of the opinion that not-for-profit platforms are a better fit for the charitable sector, they too have operating costs that are ultimately borne by charities. Card-processing fees are the principal culprit. All charities must pay transaction fees on receipt of donations from PayPal, credit cards and major banks.
I have met representatives of Wonderful.org, whose running costs are covered by corporate sponsors. That is a great initiative. Will the Minister highlight what steps the Government are taking to encourage large corporations and banks to engage with the charitable sector on this issue? For instance, they might provide assistance by exempting card charges and processing fees. After all, corporate responsibility is at the core of many banking companies’ charitable activities, and that would be one way to engage with charities that clearly matter to the general public.
I would like to mention gift aid. Some platforms use a part of taxpayers’ gift aid—a scheme enabling charities to reclaim tax on donations—to cover their costs. Gift aid is a significant cog in the charitable sector. It increases the value of donations to charities by allowing them to reclaim basic rate tax on donations as long as the donor pays tax. Charities can take the donation and reclaim the basic rate of tax from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Since the introduction of gift aid in 1990, more than £13 billion in relief has been paid to UK charities. The commitment of this and previous Governments to supporting and expanding gift aid has been a tremendous boost to charitable fundraising—currently, it allows charities to claim an extra £25 for every £100 donated—but although some sites automatically pass on the full amount, others do not. In my opinion, the gift aid reclaimed should benefit the relevant charity, rather than being used to pay an intermediary cost.
I believe that the way forward must be ensuring, with guidance from the Fundraising Regulator and the Charity Commission, that online fundraising platforms are transparent and clear from the outset. I am encouraged by the action that has been taken to update the regulator’s code of practice, but I seek further assurance that the Government will take on board fundraisers’ concerns to make the process as transparent as it needs to be and get more people giving with confidence to our wonderful charities and good causes.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Tracey Crouch)
It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) for bringing such a topical and important issue to our attention.
We should celebrate the fact that we are a generous nation. As my hon. Friend said, Charities Aid Foundation research indicates that the British public donated about £10 billion to charity in 2016, making the UK the most generous nation in Europe and one of the most generous in the world. Today is Giving Tuesday, the global day of giving that encourages people to volunteer, donate to charity and spread the word about doing good stuff. Last year, 4.5 million people in the UK gave their time or money to charity on Giving Tuesday, and for the second year running the campaign broke the world record for the most money donated online in 24 hours.
Many people need to be asked before they give, so charities have to invest some of their money in fundraising in order to raise funds to undertake their important work. According to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, every £1 that a charity invests in fundraising raises an average of £4 in return. Fundraising, when done well, also means that charities can develop positive relationships with their supporters.
Recent years have seen the emergence and rapid growth of online fundraising platforms as a new and convenient way for people to donate to charity or other causes. Huge sums are raised for charity through online fundraising platforms. The largest, JustGiving, has helped people to raise more than £3 billion for good causes since 2001. We need only look at the incredible public generosity and use of online fundraising platforms following recent tragic events such as the Grenfell tower fire and the terrorist attacks in London and Manchester to gauge the popularity of that form of fundraising. However, fundraising must be undertaken responsibly by all if public trust is to be maintained.
Sadly, in 2015, charity fundraising came into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, risking public trust and confidence in charity. Two years on, the charity sector has taken responsibility and embraced change. It set up a new independent and effective self-regulatory body, the Fundraising Regulator, which has worked with fundraisers and charities to strengthen and enforce the code of practice. It has implemented the Fundraising Preference Service, enabling members of the public to easily put a stop to unwanted fundraising requests. Charities and their trustees have embraced higher standards. They are monitoring and overseeing their fundraising activities much more closely, and are strengthening their data protection policies and practices.
My hon. Friend asked whether we could give the Fundraising Regulator more teeth. The regulator regulates the fundraising community by consent. Working with the sector, it has taken major steps to strengthen the regulation of fundraising and ensure that the public are protected from poor practices. Where there is deliberate abuse or unlawful activity, it is for the Fundraising Regulator to report to the relevant statutory regulators—for example, the Charity Commission, the Information Commissioner or the Financial Conduct Authority, and in appropriate cases the police—and encourage them to use their statutory powers. We think that effective self-regulation rather than Government intervention can deliver on the public’s expectations.
As my hon. Friend also mentioned, recent online fundraising has shed light on the need for improved standards of transparency and accountability for online fundraising platforms. The issues include a lack of transparency about website fees and charges, the potential for online fraudulent activity, and the need for the public to have access to good advice about online giving. We need to ensure that high standards and best practice are shared and followed across all online fundraising platforms. That is why, earlier this year, I asked the Fundraising Regulator and the Charity Commission to work with the online fundraising platforms to address public concerns and promote high standards and good practice.
The Fundraising Regulator and the Charity Commission convened a summit with 14 of the largest online fundraising platforms in September. The aim was to agree collectively on principles to increase public understanding and transparency about the different forms of online donating, in order to secure public trust and confidence. I am pleased to report a positive response from the online fundraising platforms and a number of commitments from their meeting with the regulators. They have confirmed their commitment to transparency on fees and charges and have agreed to work with the Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator to explore how that can be improved. They have also agreed to disseminate clear and consistent public advice about the choices available for donating. They will review their resilience to fraud and help the regulators to review the code of fundraising practice with the aim of expanding the standards for online fundraising.
On fees and charges, we need to recognise that there is a range of commercial and not-for-profit organisations that operate as online fundraising platforms. In addition to the debit and credit card transaction fees that apply in all cases, there are significant costs to be covered in providing the service. That is the case for online fundraising platforms and for traditional methods. In some cases, those costs or a proportion of them are subsidised by associated businesses as part of their social responsibility programmes, reducing the proportion of fees that comes out of individual donors’ gifts. In other cases, fees are taken from the donation or any gift aid on the donation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle asked about gift aid and the fees that are taken from the total value of the donation plus gift aid. That is the case regardless of whether the platform says that the fees are taken from the body of the donation or from the gift aid that is paid on top of it. Platforms also take responsibility for processing gift aid claims on a charity’s behalf, including any associated reporting and audit requirements. As always, we continue to have discussions with those involved. It is important that in all cases any charges and fees are reasonable and transparent, so that donors can make an informed choice. I welcome the decision that some fundraising platforms took to waive or reduce their fees, or to make a donation, in relation to fundraising for disasters such as the Grenfell Tower fire and the terror attacks earlier this year.
My hon. Friend asked whether we could put pressure on the industry to reduce debit and credit transaction fees. I assure her that UK card processing fees of generally between 1% and 2% compare favourably with the payment processing fees charged in other countries, which are usually higher—significantly so in some cases. I am fairly certain that members of the industry will be watching this debate and they are welcome to discuss what they can do to help support charities’ fundraising efforts with me and my colleagues.
The Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator will continue to work with the online fundraising platforms and will keep me updated on progress. They sent me a letter yesterday that outlined current progress, which I am happy to share with my hon. Friend. Those platforms provide an important service that is popular with the public and raises significant sums for charity. They have shown that they are willing and committed to work with the regulators and the Government to respond to public concerns and to strengthen standards and transparency. I welcome that, and I hope that other hon. Members do too.
Again, I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate, particularly on Giving Tuesday. I am willing to continue the conversation outside this Chamber.
Question put and agreed to.
Rural Economy of Wales
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of the rural economy in Wales.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am grateful for the opportunity to have a debate on a topic that is of great importance to the people of Ceredigion, whom I serve, and a subject that is close to my heart.
An economic strategy that facilitates growth in rural and urban Wales and forges stronger links between them is sorely needed if we are to avoid building a geographically unbalanced Welsh economy. I hope that we can debate the ways in which the current approach fails rural Wales and how those failings can be addressed. The rural economy is resilient and there is potential for greater development that should not be left unrealised. At the very least, I hope to persuade hon. Members that securing a prosperous future for the Welsh rural economy is not a cause that should be championed only by those fortunate enough to represent rural constituencies; it should be a priority for us all. As such, it is good to see right hon. and hon. Members from urban as well as rural constituencies here, and I look forward to their contributions.
The development of the rural economy should form a key part of an economic strategy for Wales if we are to avoid a national economy unhelpfully concentrated in a few areas or in one corner of the country. We need look no further than the UK economy to understand the consequences of an unbalanced approach to economic development. Page 218 of the “Industrial Strategy” White Paper illustrates all too clearly how focusing attention and investment on urban centres has meant that the productivity of rural areas is consistently below the UK average, in stark and rather depressing contrast to that of larger towns and cities. I am sure that we will hear a great deal in this debate about the supposed successes of the UK’s current economic approach, but who benefits from the status quo? If that approach gives rise to such grotesque regional inequality, can it truly be considered a success? It is not over-ambitious, let alone idealistic, to believe that the prospects for individuals living in the countryside should be just as promising as those for individuals living in cities.
Although I am not surprised, I am concerned that the development of the rural economy is not high on the UK Chancellor’s list of priorities. Last week’s Budget offered no sign of imminent change in the UK’s approach to rural development, and even less promise for the rural economy in Wales. Indeed, one is left to infer from the few policies on offer that the Government’s intentions for the rural economy, at least in England, amount to little more than improving existing connections between the countryside and the cities to ensure that the prosperity of the economic engines and powerhouses trickles to the rural periphery that little bit faster. Yet again, I fear we have a Budget that serves the south-east of England rather well, at the expense of the rest of the UK.
Buried deep in the Budget, however, there was a cautious and no doubt carefully worded announcement about a growth deal for mid-Wales. It does not overwhelm me with confidence, nor am I over-enamoured of the thought of delineating new economic areas without considering whether there are sufficient cultural, economic and social links to justify those new lines on the map. Nevertheless, I appreciate that the growth deal for mid-Wales—or perhaps the Welsh midlands—could be a real opportunity to deliver for some of those rural communities that have suffered chronic under-investment and neglect by successive Governments. It is also a chance to diversify the base of the rural economy to ensure that, just like the economic success stories of the cities, the economy of rural Wales is rooted in a rich mixture of sectors and industries.
Agriculture, the food and drink industry and tourism are at the heart of the present rural economy, as I am sure other right hon. and hon. Members will explain in more detail. A growth deal for rural Wales would need to safeguard those foundations, but it could also enable us to build a more mixed economy on them, and in so doing secure a more prosperous future for rural areas. It is therefore important to stress that if a growth deal is produced for mid Wales, it cannot mindlessly replicate the model used for city deals. The Government must do more than merely pay lip-service to the idea; they should work with the Welsh Government to engage with stakeholders and forge a bespoke package that focuses on addressing the unique challenges and opportunities facing the rural economy.
One fundamental problem that could be addressed by a worthwhile growth deal is the poor connectivity in many rural areas of Wales. Broadband, or rather the lack of it, is by far the most prevalent issue raised by my constituents in Ceredigion, which is among the 10 worst constituencies for broadband speeds—an affliction that also plagues the Minister’s constituency. Wales has the perceived benefit of being able to receive investment from the Welsh Government and the UK Government, but thus far both have failed to outline how broadband will be delivered to some of the most rural parts of the country.
Recently, the UK Government invested significant sums to improve broadband infrastructure in three of the four UK nations, but unfortunately not Wales. They managed to find £20 million extra for ultrafast broadband in Northern Ireland. For the time being, I am confident that residents in Ceredigion would happily settle for superfast broadband. The UK Government also managed to find £10 million for full-fibre broadband in six trial areas across England and Scotland, but what about rural Wales?
According to Ministers, the decision on where to invest that money was based on how likely they believed the investment was to stimulate economic growth. Rural Wales should not be written off as an area that has no potential, that would not be successful even if it had effective digital infrastructure, or that is simply not worth it. Why should shared office spaces and other opportunities afforded to start-ups and small businesses be poorer in rural areas? Why should essential utilities such as adequate broadband and mobile infrastructure be dismissed as luxuries for those who live in the countryside? If we are to make Ceredigion and other rural areas of Wales more practical places for businesses to locate and expand, and if we are to ensure that communities can fully benefit from the opportunities afforded by better digital connectivity, investing in broadband and mobile infrastructure is crucial.
Why stop there? A potential growth deal for the Welsh midlands—sorry, for mid-Wales—could also include an ambitious package of investment in transport infrastructure. Reopening the railway line between Aberystwyth and Carmarthen would help to reconnect north and south Wales. Installing a network of electric vehicle charging points would allow rural Wales to make the most of advances in electric cars. As well as improving connectivity, such investment by the UK and Welsh Governments would send a clear signal to budding entrepreneurs and start-ups that the countryside is open for business. It would be a strong statement of intent and confidence.
I am not alone in thinking that rural Wales is worth such an investment. Ceredigion has almost 9,000 microbusinesses, which account for up to 94% of all businesses in the constituency. They sustain the local economy and make up our communities, yet they are penalised by poor all-round connectivity. Improving that connectivity is key to supporting and sustaining those entrepreneurial, innovative and hugely important businesses while opening the door to new enterprises.
I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to speak, but it would be remiss of me not to speak briefly about the need to secure the current foundations of the rural economy, or about how a potential growth deal could help to steady nerves in what is proving to be a most uncertain time. Food and drink manufacturing contributes £1.5 billion to the Welsh economy, supports more than 22,000 jobs and generates more than £330 million in exports. It sits at the heart of the food and drink supply chain that generates a total of £4.5 billion for the economy and supports more than 240,000 jobs across Wales. Agriculture in Ceredigion directly employs more than 6,000 people. Some £40.8 million is spent on goods and services purchased by farmers, which in turn sustains additional spending of £96.9 million.
Although they are seldom associated with the rural economy, the teaching and research conducted in our universities also make a vital contribution: on Ceredigion’s economy alone, they have an annual economic impact worth approximately £250 million. The uncertainty surrounding Brexit is throwing our higher education sector into uncertainty. Clarifying future funding and visa arrangements would go a long way towards addressing that.
David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman will know that sheep and beef farming are critical parts of the economy, not just in his constituency but in north Wales. Does he agree that the Minister should give an assurance that those products will eventually be tariff-free post-Brexit? If they are not, we will face potential loss of business and therefore loss of income to the rural economy.
Ben Lake
I agree that an assurance that beef and lamb exports will not be subject to tariffs or non-tariff barriers post-Brexit would go a long way towards securing the future of agricultural industry and would settle a lot of nerves across the country.
It is imperative that any growth deal for mid-Wales takes account of the significant burden that leaving the EU places on such sectors. The UK Government’s steadfast pursuit of severing all ties with the single market risks undermining the rural economy. We should strive to build a more mixed rural economy, but we must also secure its foundations. I was therefore glad to learn that my Plaid Cymru colleagues in the Welsh Assembly have helped to safeguard the future of Welsh agriculture by securing £6 million of funding for a grant scheme to help young entrants to establish themselves in agriculture. With Brexit negotiations stumbling at every possible hurdle, such funding cannot come quickly enough. The right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) alludes to the effect of Brexit on tariffs; it looks increasingly likely that any meaningful beneficial relationship with the single market and customs union will be abandoned.
I am deeply concerned that Welsh agriculture will be sacrificed in EU negotiations. We will have to compete with markets with far lower food hygiene and animal welfare standards, while losing unrestricted access to our main export market. Welsh farmers will be hardest hit by the double whammy of cheap imports and new regulatory barriers. A staggering 90% of Welsh food and drink produce, produced mainly in rural areas such as mine, is exported easily, directly and freely to the European Union. Do the Government expect farmers simply to replace 90% of their customers overnight? We desperately need certainty and clarity.
The damaging impact of Brexit uncertainty on the whole rural economy should not be underestimated. The National Farmers Union’s farm confidence survey in April showed that 20% of farmers are likely to reduce investment as a result. Without clarity on trading relationships or the support payments that make up to 80% of farm incomes in Wales, it is hardly surprising that many are postponing further investment in their businesses. That should alarm us all, because for every £1 invested in the farming industry, more than £7.40 is put back into the local economy. Our communities simply cannot afford to lose such investment. Without it, the future of the rural economy looks very bleak indeed.
Tourism is a £2.8 billion Welsh industry that employs 4,000 people in Ceredigion and contributes £70 million to gross value added. It often goes hand in hand with agriculture and is an important contributor to the rural economy. Plaid Cymru has proposed a 15% reduction in VAT for the tourism and hospitality sector, which would generate an estimated 5,500 additional jobs and an economic boost of £166 million. Our proposal is not innovative or pioneering thinking, but simply common sense. It would stimulate investment, create jobs, increase consumer spending and help to ensure that Wales’s visitor economy continues to thrive. Even the UK Government think it is a good idea: the Chancellor announced a review of tourism VAT in his Budget, although of course it applied only to Northern Ireland. If it is good enough for Northern Ireland, why is it not good enough for us? Could it not be included as part of a growth deal package for the Welsh midlands—sorry, mid-Wales? At the very least, it should offer resources to support organisations such as Mynyddoedd Cambria that work to forge closer links between the old market towns of the Elenydd—the Cambrian mountains—and ensure that coastal and inland areas benefit from tourism.
It is deeply frustrating that the potential of the Welsh rural economy was not adequately pursued in last week’s Budget, but a growth deal could be the first step towards correcting that mistake. Offering the support and investment required to sustain today’s rural economy will be crucial, but just as important is the opportunity to change how the rural economy is understood, recast how rural development is pursued, and rejuvenate our aspirations for such development. Such new thinking is already being explored by colleagues of mine, including a former Member of this House. The economic region of Arfor aims to develop west Wales into a more cohesive and connected entity. There is no reason why a growth deal for the Welsh midlands—or mid-Wales—could not support and work in conjunction with such an economic area.
I have already mentioned the importance of the agriculture, food and tourism sectors to today’s rural economy. Let us make the most of the opportunity presented by the growth deal to redefine the rural economy of tomorrow. If done properly, such a deal could begin to address the issues plaguing today’s industries and could implement the conditions necessary to facilitate a more versatile future for the rural economy. It could concentrate on improving connectivity and offering greater support to higher education institutions so that they can build on their expertise and cement themselves as centres for the technologies of the future.
After all, why should rural Wales not be at the forefront of biotechnology and research? It could be the centre of cutting-edge knowledge, tackling global issues such as food security. Aberystwyth University’s institute of biological, environmental and rural sciences is already an internationally renowned research and teaching centre for biotechnology and environment studies. It is leading the work to address some of the most pressing issues facing the agricultural sector, and it has already received support from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council for its Aberystwyth innovation and enterprise campus. Just imagine the potential benefits of further investment in our other universities in rural Wales! Such investment could serve as the foundation of a bigger Welsh biotechnology industry, shaping the future of food and farming for generations and increasing the breadth of highly skilled and highly paid careers available in rural Wales. That is just one example that is open to the rural economy if we wish to explore it.
I am in no doubt that the Welsh and UK Governments desperately need to reconsider their approach to economic development and to refocus attention on the rural economy, to ensure that it forms an integral part of any economic strategy for Wales and that it is more than a simple afterthought, an also-ran, a non-essential addition to the real work of developing our cities and urban areas.
People should have a realistic hope of being able to pursue a career, and of being able to afford to settle down and lead a prosperous life in any part of Wales. I hope the Minister accepts the points I have raised in the spirit in which they are offered. The possibilities for a mixed and advanced rural economy in Wales are endless, provided that the potential is unlocked with the right investment and the right growth deal for the Welsh midlands—or mid-Wales.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. The debate is due to finish at 5.30 pm, which means that, under the rules of the House, I need to call the first of the Front-Bench spokesmen at seven minutes past 5. There are guideline limits of five minutes for the Scottish National party, five minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister, with three minutes for Mr Lake to sum up at the end. Three Members are seeking to catch my eye, which means that there will be a time limit of eight minutes for each of them.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Congratulations are very much in order for the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), the Member for the Welsh midlands—I like the sound of that. I am not sure what the comparative term would be for Members from north Wales; I think we will stick to north Wales. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) said, “Scotland”. We will stick to north Wales—we have better weather, I think.
I am conscious of the importance of the subject of the debate. My own constituency includes many rural communities. I will not be able to name them all, which risks offending people, but in its 240 square miles are the villages in the Ceiriog valley, Minera, Llangollen, Corwen, Cynnwyd, Glyndyfrdwy, Carrog, Llandrillo, many of the Maelor villages and many other areas the main industry of which may not be farming but which involves a considerable amount of agriculture. I was interested to hear from the National Farmers Union Cymru that about 60,000 people in Wales are employed full or part-time in Welsh agriculture. That is a staggering number, especially when one considers the ramifications for other industries in those areas.
I do not always quote the Countryside Alliance, but I would like to do so today. [Interruption.] I am glad that the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) agrees with me. The points that the Countryside Alliance has made on the issue are superb. It notes, for instance, that Wales exported £12.3 billion-worth of goods outside the UK in 2015, of which 67% went to the European Union. It makes the point that it is vital that the UK Government seek to maintain tariff-free access to EU markets for food and agricultural produce. It notes also that if the UK Government do not establish a new trade agreement with the EU before leaving and do not adopt World Trade Organisation terms, the £12 billion-worth of food and agricultural produce that the UK exports to the EU each year will face the prospect of high tariffs, which would be damaging to UK producers, including those in Wales, and to EU consumers. That shows that the future of the Welsh rural economy is inextricably linked to what happens in, and how the UK Government and others deal with, the Brexit negotiations.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn made the point well about beef and lamb exports. We also need to note that farmers in Wales must never become a bargaining chip. If the UK Government—in their trade deals with large meat-exporting countries, such as New Zealand, Australia, Brazil and the USA—do not listen to our farming industry, that will be devastating for our rural economies. I know that the Minister has always, in himself, made positive noises about our relations with the EU, and I make the point to him that where there is a transfer of powers post-Brexit in areas that are currently devolved, it is vital that those powers are devolved to the Welsh Government.
One spark of light after Brexit—if it ever happens—might be what happens with the common agricultural policy, or CAP. The NFU, in what I think is the reverse of spin, made the point that although Wales has only 4.7% of the UK population it has 9% of the UK CAP allowances. I do not think that that was meant to be spin; I think it was meant to show how important the rural economy is to Wales. If we are to look at a new CAP that will apply Wales-wide and UK-wide, we need to reshape it in a way that makes it less interested in supporting the likes of the Duke of Westminster and more interested in supporting the Welsh hill farmer—for the many, not the few, and for small family farms.
Tourism, of course, is vital to any discussion on the Welsh economy, and I was delighted that the “Under the Arches” festival at Pontcysyllte aqueduct in my constituency won a prestigious north Wales tourism award. There is so much in my area that is connected with tourism, such as the Llangollen railway extending, as it will fairly soon, into the middle of Corwen; the Dee Valley area of outstanding natural beauty; and much that is developing in the Ceiriog valley and in many other places. Will the Minister support our plans locally for the vital adaptation of Ruabon station so that there can be better disability access? I am sure he would wish to support those efforts.
Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that that worthwhile step would best be made in conjunction with the introduction of a half-hourly service between Chester and Shrewsbury, along one of the most beautiful railway lines in the United Kingdom, so that more people from the west midlands and the north-west of England, as well as from the rest of the country, could see just how good it is?
Susan Elan Jones
That is a wonderful idea.
I would also like to mention the Welsh Government’s rural development programme. It has been innovative, with support for food, timber and other businesses, as well as farm business grants and even a micro small business fund. Many companies in my constituency, and other areas, have benefited, and I welcome the diversity of projects it provides.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Is it not the case that the Labour Government’s economic policy for rural Wales has been a complete and utter failure? Does the hon. Lady agree with Baroness Morgan, who also serves in the Assembly, that there needs to be a dedicated economic plan for rural areas in Wales, and that that indicates that the Welsh Government have failed?
Susan Elan Jones
The hon. Gentleman always puts it so well in his own way, does he not? The points my good colleague Baroness Morgan made referred to the need for development programmes in specific areas. In the same way as we speak of the north Wales deal, I think she was thinking of something dedicated specifically to certain parts of west Wales. I think that the hon. Gentleman is being a bit mischievous in referring to our elected Government in Wales as a failure.
On the Welsh Government’s budget for the forthcoming year, I very much welcome the extra support on homelessness in the £340 million for the building of 20,000 affordable homes. We need to recognise that homelessness is not just an urban problem. I also welcome the courageous decision to suspend the right to buy on council houses. That was not an easy decision, and it was not uncontroversial in its day, but it made the point. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) might agree with me a little more on this point: if we are serious about tai, gwaith, iaith—houses, jobs, language—as a driver in rural Wales, we must look at that sort of policy.
I will say a quick word on rural areas in Wales, Welsh-speaking areas and planning laws. I very much support the Welsh Labour Government’s policy—it is supported by others, too—for 1 million Welsh speakers in Wales. That is an important policy, and consensus on it is vital.
I sometimes think we are a little reticent in Wales when it comes to planning issues. In some cases, that is simply because of our history as a nation, and that is a mistake. In Cornwall, Cumbria and other parts of the UK, people are prepared to look thoughtfully at issues connected with second homes and affordability. As we look at the rural economy and parts of Welsh-speaking Wales, we should not be frightened of doing that.
Finally, one has to say something about broadband. I am delighted to have been able to work with other representatives in making Gwynfryn, Llandrillo and a few other places a bit more connected. I welcome the Superfast Cymru project, but we have more to do to ensure that that is connected in every part of Wales.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) on securing this significant debate. As the youngest Welsh MP—I do not know whether he likes me reminding him of that fact—it is evident that he has already played an inspiring role in representing his constituency and his country.
Considering the interest in this debate and the comments that have already been made, I will be as brief as possible and confine my remarks to one key issue: addressing the need to counterbalance the dynamics in Wales between the east and the west. There is a cognitive block in viewing the geography of Wales in terms of north and south, and that in turn blocks our growth as a nation. Undoubtedly there are some unifying factors among north Walians—the gogs, as we call ourselves—and our compatriots in the south. For example, the gogs will always call milk “llefrith”, and the south will wrongly insist on having borrowed the word from Latin and so call it “llaeth”. We do enjoy these differences, but let us never forget that the language unites us along a north-south axis, while our historic infrastructure and economic convention would have us looking east-west all the time.
Wales’s cities and large towns generally lie in the east, but in the west, rural Wales is made up of villages and market towns. The public sector, agriculture and tourism are the pillars of the economy in those communities. None the less, it is in those rural villages and towns that we find the highest concentration of Welsh speakers, and I am proud to represent Dwyfor Meirionnydd, the constituency with the highest proportion of Welsh speakers anywhere in the world. Sadly, in my constituency and other rural Welsh constituencies, we also find some of the lowest wages in Europe. As already noted by other Members, the economies of the region—the public sector, agriculture and tourism—are teetering on the brink of crisis. We cherish all those economies, but they are all vulnerable.
With massive outflows of young productive people, EU funding at risk and a Westminster Government hunkered down in the south-east and, frankly, focused solely on the needs and interests of that region, rural Wales faces unprecedented challenges. This re-formulation or resetting of how our nation of Wales could be perceived is best summed up by the work of my colleague Adam Price AM. He is sitting in the Public Gallery, and I welcome him. His concept of Arfor would see a new socioeconomic map drawn for Wales along a more appropriate boundary, acknowledging the east-west norm, but also looking at the issue from an alternative and counter-balancing north-south axis. That would not only allow investment to be more appropriately targeted to suit areas in the east and west, but foster greater north-south integration. That simple re-imagining or re-perceiving could not only save economies and communities, but safeguard our language and those rare communities where Welsh is not a minority language and is used by the majority. That is important to our perception of the use of the language. Bringing these majority Welsh speaking areas together to offer real opportunities for young Welsh speakers will give our language the environment in which it can thrive into the future.
To finish, I will give three examples looking at how Arfor could energise the economy of the west of Wales and Wales as a whole. First, we could transform tourism jobs from being a gap-year filler to offering the living wage and a long-term career. As a first step, we could set up a tourism academy linking business to universities and further education colleges to ensure we have the skills and expertise we need—skills made in Wales, for the needs of Wales, for the salaries of Wales and that stay with us.
Secondly, we could have a community bank for west Wales. As commercial banks disappear from our high streets—even ATMs in rural areas are under threat—rural people are left without basic services. A new model of community banking could fill the gaps.
Finally, we need the conventional and digital infrastructure that will truly transform west Wales. Let us consider reopening the Aberystwyth to Carmarthen rail line and the digital infrastructure that my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion spoke about so eloquently. We need swiftly to move people, bits and the knowledge economy across Wales to move into the future.
Rural Wales has been the cauldron of Welsh culture and remains the heartland of our language and its traditions. Let it be the pair dadeni—the cauldron of rebirth. Economically, it faces its greatest challenge in modern history, yet I am confident, despite everything and everyone—er gwaetha pawb a phopeth—that we need only to be given the tools to build our own future.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) on the tone he set in opening the debate. I pay tribute to him and his predecessor Mark Williams, who for many years adopted the same tone of consensus in Wales. He brought people together to speak as Welsh MPs in the House of Commons.
I congratulate the NFU on providing a concise brief, much of which the hon. Gentleman referred to, and I make no apologies in echoing some of the statistics that it provided. Indeed, farming unions have been helpful to Members over many years, and I pay tribute to the work they do not just for their members, but for the communities of rural Wales. They play a very positive role in the social fabric of Wales, and I thank them for that.
I will concentrate my contribution on a matter that has been affecting my constituents for a long time, but in particular since 2010: the over-centralisation of many of the UK Government’s services, away from rural and semi-rural areas to the towns and cities of Wales and the UK. I will also touch on food and drink and the importance of agriculture, tourism and connectivity.
The Welsh food and drink industry is hugely important, as the hon. Gentleman said, to the whole economy of urban and rural Wales. The backbone of the food industry is Welsh agriculture. As has been said, it is a progressive, outward-looking industry that exports much of its produce across the European Union—some 90% of it is freely traded across the EU. A third of the lamb that the United Kingdom exports is Welsh lamb, which is without a doubt the finest lamb in the UK. It is hugely important, and we need to pay tribute to our agriculture industry and our farmers and offer them help and support.
I know the Minister listens carefully to what is said and represents our views to Government as a Minister in the Wales Office. He talks about securing EU funding to 2020, but I challenge him to go further than that. Our farming industry needs safeguarding post-Brexit. The money we receive from the common agricultural policy needs to be ring-fenced. If the funding is done through the Barnett formula, we will lose out. That is the challenge for the Government. When they talk about agriculture and rural Wales, they need to safeguard the monies we receive now. Alternatively, the Minister can tell us exactly how he will replenish that money.
Liz Saville Roberts
I beg the hon. Gentleman to bring to bear what influence he can on the Welsh Government to get them to commit to maintaining the same level of income for farmers when that money is transferred from Westminster under the devolved processes, whatever they may be.
Albert Owen
That is the point I was making: it should not just go through the Barnett formula, because we would lose out by getting only a certain percentage. We need like-for-like funding, because when the European Union negotiates the amount, it looks at need in a way that is fairer to rural communities.
Connectivity is also important. In north-west Wales, and indeed in Ceredigion on the west coast of Wales, we suffer from a double whammy in being not just rural communities, but peripheral communities. Often a Cardiff or London-centric view predominates in the United Kingdom, so we have to fight harder for services and the connectivity that we deserve. I consider north-west Wales to be the heart of the British Isles. I do not see it as peripheral; it is only peripheral to someone looking up towards it from down south. It is the heart of the British Isles, because to our west is the island of Ireland and Northern Ireland, to our north is Scotland, and to our east is England. We are the heart of the British Isles, and need to start speaking with that confidence.
When there are roll-outs of programmes such as 5G, which we heard about in the Budget, it should be started and test-piloted in difficult rural areas, not just in the large towns and cities of the United Kingdom. That is the challenge for the Wales Office in the UK Government. Swansea deserves its connectivity, but so too does rural Wales. If the Government are serious about spreading wealth across the United Kingdom, they need to pilot projects in rural and peripheral areas.
Simon Hart
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the technology already exists? It is available in the Alps, in Norway, and in the highlands of Scotland. The technology is, to some extent, proven. What is actually required, as I am sure the Minister will confirm, is political will.
Albert Owen
The hon. Gentleman has asked me a question and answered it in the way that I would have: it does require political will. Each time the Government trial something, I ask them to go not for the easy towns and cities, but for rural and peripheral areas.
Tourism is hugely important. It is the fastest-growing industry in the United Kingdom and in the world, and we have some of the best brands in Wales. Many visitors to Wales come for our coastline, our national parks, our areas of outstanding natural beauty, and the tranquillity, which is best seen on the Isle of Anglesey—the heart of the British Isles. In my opinion, Anglesey is very much the jewel in the crown of Welsh tourism. There are, however, serious challenges in rural Wales. If we are to develop a 21st-century economy, we need 21st-century tools to do the job. As I said, in the digital age we do have better connectivity in broadband and mobile, but it is still behind many parts of the UK. We should address that problem, and the Ministers from the Wales Office need to fight for it.
I commend the roll-out package that was put together in partnership between the UK Government, the Welsh Government, the EU and BT. I hope that the EU money can be replenished in some way in the future, because that package has worked in many places. I have been working with BT, the Welsh Government, and indeed the Ministers in the Wales Office, including the Minister here today, who has listened to what I and other Members have been saying.
When I talk about rural Wales, I talk about inter- dependency with urban Wales as well, which is very important. My main point is about the centralisation of UK Government services. We have seen court closures over many years, which not only result in denial of local access to justice but damage to local economies. Many of the local economies created by solicitors’ offices and the extra boost given to the economy by the areas around the courts are lost for good. Many personnel move from those areas to where the courts move to. We have seen HMRC, for example, moving its offices from the west to the east, to central Wales, down to Cardiff. That does not help rural economies in north and north- west Wales.
Ian C. Lucas
I am afraid this is an irresistible opportunity to talk about the Government’s appalling proposal to shift HMRC from Wrexham in north Wales, my constituency, which has many rural areas, to Cardiff’s city centre. Is that not exactly the opposite of what we should be doing?
Albert Owen
Yes, it is. The Government talk, as many Governments do, about decentralisation and devolution of services, but they act in the opposite way, pulling out services from rural areas. Those rural areas have very competent people, with the skill sets to do those jobs for many years. The services are being moved just to save the Government money, and in the long run communities are getting left behind.
My final point has nothing to do with the Government, although the Government need to take some responsibility. We need to get proper banking policy in this country. When high street banks close in rural areas and in small and larger towns, it rips the heart out of those communities. Local government, the Welsh Government and the UK taxpayer are paying for those communities, yet banks just walk away. We know what banks have done to our global economy; we see the recession across the world and in this country. Those banks have responsibilities, but we need to plug those gaps, because often buildings are left empty, jobs are lost and the local high street suffers.
Rural Wales needs a strong voice and, with Welsh MPs across the parties, we have one. We also need a Government here in the UK that are listening and putting devolution into practice, with real delivery of jobs and services in our rural communities, so that rural and urban Wales can compete on a level playing field with the rest of the United Kingdom. I thank the hon. Member for Ceredigion for giving me the opportunity to say that, because I want to stand up in future and say how much better things are in Wales because rural and urban areas have worked together to create the best place to live, work and visit in the whole of the United Kingdom.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
We now come to the first of the Opposition Front-Bench speeches. The guideline limit for both the Scottish National party and the Labour party Front Benchers is five minutes.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
Tapadh leibh, a Cathraiche. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) on securing this timely debate. He is a passionate campaigner and champion for the people of Wales in this House. In the less than half a year that he has been here, he has done an enormous amount to hold both of Wales’s Governments to account, and I have no doubt he will continue to do so in the coming months and years.
The focus on the future of our rural economy is timely, because we stand at a fork in the road, given our Brexit negotiations. The decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, which was rejected in all 32 of Scotland’s local authorities, will have potentially catastrophic consequences for rural communities across these islands—not least in Wales, which has benefited enormously from EU funding. Indeed, in some cases, it is the only money that has come into Wales in recent years. The current negotiating position taken by Her Majesty’s Government is deeply flawed, isolationist and wrong-headed. I will outline one or two areas in which I feel a change in tone and position could help soften the forthcoming Brexit blow to our economy. I will also outline a couple of ideas from a domestic policy perspective that would deal with some of the challenges facing our Welsh colleagues.
First, I will add a bit of context to the scene so eloquently set out by the hon. Gentleman. Given that time is at a premium, and I am conscious that I am something of an intruder on this debate, 1 will focus solely on food and drink. Quite rightly, food and drink is a priority economic sector in Wales, with 170,000 people contributing to gross sales of £17.3 billion. Much like Scotland, Wales is staring into the abyss as we look over the cliff edge of a hard Brexit, to which we have been driven by the Back Benchers of the Conservative party. Although Wales as a whole narrowly voted to leave the EU, it is worth noting that not all areas did. Ceredigion, for example, which is mainly rural, voted 54.6% to remain, and Gwynedd, with a large agricultural industry, voted 58.9% to stay in the EU. If the Minister is serious about being Wales’s voice in Whitehall, and not Whitehall’s voice in Wales, he should immediately commit to joining the Welsh and Scottish Governments in calling for our membership of the single market and customs union to be maintained.
On trade, it is abundantly clear that access to the single market is essential for our agriculture sector. No one wants to see prime Welsh lamb, or any other fresh produce for that matter, stuck on a lorry, in a queue, waiting for customs clearance. I very much echo what the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) said. I will not get into the battle about whose lamb is better—I think I might lose that one. As it stands, what will happen is that lamb will be stuck in a queue on a lorry.
On labour, it is vital that our sectors retain the ability to recruit staff from across the European Union. That is why free movement of people must be protected, which can easily be achieved by remaining in the single market. Scotland and Wales’s problem has never been immigration; it has been emigration. Just as in Scotland, Wales needs to build a strong rural economy that will encourage young people to stay, and not exacerbate the brain-drain problem outlined by the hon. Member for Ceredigion.
We need action on a domestic front from the Conservative Government in London as well as the Labour Government in Cardiff. It is important that we ensure that the right infrastructure is in place to support the rural economy. That means action to improve broadband provision, and investment in mobile coverage and drastically improving the rail network. To give an example, in Scotland every year we provide more than £1 billion for public transport and other sustainable options. I know from personal experience of visiting and holidaying in Wales—I spent some time in the summer of 2016 in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) in north Wales and I echo what he says about connectivity—that the rail network is particularly poor and could do with upgrading. The hon. Member for Ceredigion has already outlined why and how that can be done, including a rail link between Aberystwyth and Carmarthen.
Before I conclude, I want to say a word about how we support the most vulnerable and those on low incomes in our rural communities. With respect, my advice is perhaps aimed more at colleagues on the Labour benches, who would do well to take a leaf out of the SNP Scottish Government’s book and axe the bedroom tax and the public sector pay cap, which affects people in rural communities. Delivering for the many, not the few, cannot just be a soundbite. It needs to be backed up with action, because with devolved power comes devolved responsibility, and there is a moral responsibility on the Welsh Labour Government in Cardiff to act here too.
David Linden
If the right hon. Gentleman wants to indicate how he is going to lift the public sector pay cap, I am happy to give way.
David Hanson
I think the hon. Gentleman will find the bedroom tax is not devolved in Wales.
David Linden
My understanding is that the Welsh Government have spent something like 0.44% of what the SNP Government have spent on discretionary housing payments. I am happy to give way again if the right hon. Gentleman wants to correct that. I see he does not want to.
Wales cannot be stuck between an isolationist Government in Westminster and a lethargic Government in Wales. I very much commend the hon. Member for Ceredigion for bringing this matter to the House.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Let me first congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake). To have a debate this late in the day and to have 10 Welsh MPs here shows the importance of the subject; to have five of them from north Wales and five of them Labour shows the importance of the debate to north Wales.
It is vital that we carefully consider how rural Wales can respond to increasing digitisation, the global economy and the challenges of leaving the European Union in a time of austerity. The Welsh Labour Government are committed to the success of their rural communities and have rolled out several initiatives to that end, but law makers in Cardiff have had their hands tied. The most recent Welsh Government budget, published in October, has been developed against a backdrop of unprecedented cuts and ongoing austerity.
In the referendum, the people of Wales did not give carte blanche to this Government to leave the single market or the customs union, or to make Wales and people in rural Wales poorer. Access to the single market and customs union membership, whether permanently or in a transitional period before long-term arrangements can be made, is necessary to provide the economic activity and jobs on which a sustainable future for rural Wales can be built. That is true of the UK generally, but especially in Wales where our economy has depended on EU funds for so many years. That investment is really appreciated in Wales, particularly by farmers and the farming community.
As has already been quoted, 67% of Welsh exports went to the EU. The corresponding figure for all food and live animal exports was 83%; for meat exports, it was 93%. Agricultural goods generally carry higher import tariffs than other commodities, and if this Government fail to secure tariff-free trade post-Brexit, the effects will devastate the Welsh agricultural sector overnight.
Brexit also raises challenges for Wales in the way of European subsidies and structural funds. The Minister will be aware—I have mentioned this time and again—that I helped to secure European structural funds for his county of Conwy and for my county of Denbighshire.
Chris Ruane
The Minister should know that history. It is a huge amount of money for the whole of Wales—€320 million per year in direct subsidies from the common agricultural policy, with a further €355 million to support rural development.
I ask the Minister, as I have asked him before, to make sure that we have extra funding beyond 2020. Our urban and rural communities have been supported by extra funds from Europe over the past 17 years. We want to be treated as well by Westminster as we have been by Brussels. We have had a big dollop of jam—a big dollop of funding—for Wales. We do not want it taken away and for the jam to be spread thinly across the whole of the UK. We need that funding and the Minister must do his job and make sure that we get it.
On productivity and broadband, thanks to the efforts of the Welsh Labour Government, unemployment in rural Wales in 2016 decreased roughly in line with the Welsh average of 4% and productivity continues to increase. However, productivity in rural communities still lags behind the Welsh average. The Welsh Government recognise that and are helping boost productivity with the “Superfast Cymru” project, rolling out superfast broadband across the country. In an increasingly digital economy, the effects of high-speed internet are really needed in our rural communities. Sadly, Wales’s biggest export has been our young people. There has been a brain drain out of Wales for decades. Superfast broadband offers a chance to stop and reverse that. People want to live in rural communities, especially when they are bringing up families. To do that, they need access to superfast broadband to make sure that they can conduct their digital businesses from areas such as rural Wales.
I just want to touch on the north Wales and the mid-Wales growth funds. I ask the Minister to ensure that the funding allocated to those projects is as great as the funding allocated to city deals in England and Wales.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
If the Minister concludes his remarks no later than 5.27 pm, that will allow Mr Lake time to sum up the debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Guto Bebb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I also join in the congratulations for the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) on what was a very constructive speech and the tributes to his predecessor, who was also always constructive in this Chamber.
We have had a wide-ranging and constructive debate. It is a pleasure to be able to highlight some of the success stories and some of the work that needs to be done. The hon. Gentleman highlighted the need for a mid-Wales growth deal, although he was not particularly generous in his support for the comments made by the Chancellor in the Budget. I think it is a major step forward.
Since 2015, we have had a city deal for Cardiff and the 10 local authorities surrounding Cardiff and we have had a regional deal for Swansea—not just for Swansea, but for Swansea and the region surrounding Swansea, including Carmarthenshire, Neath, Port Talbot and Pembrokeshire. We are working on a growth deal for north Wales; I had the privilege yesterday to be at the acceptance of the bid from north Wales. I was joined at the session by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas). It was a constructive session and there was engagement across the political spectrum. We had leaders of local authorities in north Wales of all political colours. We had a Plaid leader in the session, a Plaid member who was also a leader but not currently a Plaid leader. I am not quite sure what is going on in my own county of Conwy, but we do have a good leader, who was there, and we also had leaders from other north Wales counties, who were of a Labour party persuasion.
Albert Owen
I want to say on the record what I have said to the Minister privately—that he should involve Welsh MPs from north Wales in the growth deal. Yes, let us have bottom up and get the bid, but we have a mandate from the communities as well.
Guto Bebb
I am absolutely delighted to welcome that comment. It was great to see the hon. Member for Wrexham there. In addition, I am engaging with north Wales MPs and there will be a roundtable session in Gwydyr House with the bid authors and north Wales MPs in due course.
The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) made a very important point in highlighting the fact that growth deals are bottom up. The key thing is that the proposals from north Wales were coming in from local authorities representing the whole of north Wales. Our responsibility down here in Westminster—the responsibility of the UK Government—and the responsibly of the Welsh Government is to work constructively with the partners in north Wales.
This is the template for an approach for mid-Wales. One of the key things I am aware of as a UK Government Minister representing Wales is the importance of ensuring that we do not forget mid-Wales. One of the key things that we highlighted in the Budget is that, although of course we need to deliver a growth deal for north Wales—after all, in the context of this debate, a significant part of north Wales can undoubtedly be described as rural—we also need to deliver for mid-Wales. I want to be able to stand up and say categorically that we will have delivered growth deals for every single local authority in Wales. We have already delivered for 14 local authorities in south Wales. We are working with the six in north Wales, and we are opening the door to a deal in mid-Wales.
We passionately believe that such deals should come from the bottom up. That is why, in the discussions with the leader of Gwynedd County Council and the chief executive of Carmarthenshire County Council, and in the discussions that Lord Bourne, my fellow Minister in the Wales Office, had yesterday with the chief executive of Ceredigion Council and the vice-chancellor of Aberystwyth University, we were very clear that we do not think that the mid-Wales deal has to be confined to Powys and Ceredigion.
I am sure the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) is aware of examples in Scotland of counties involved in more than one growth deal. We are keen to ensure that if the proposers from mid-Wales say that they want involvement from south Gwynedd—Meirionnydd, for example—Dyffryn Teifi in Carmarthenshire or even north Pembrokeshire, that is something we can look at, because we want to work to deliver the growth deals that are needed in every part of Wales. If people are telling us that the way to do that is to expand or to work as two counties in mid-Wales, we will listen. I am pleased to say in the spirit of co-operation that, over the past few years, the relationship with the Welsh Government Minister for the economy has been extremely constructive.
One thing that has been highlighted in this debate is that we have an east-west issue in relation to economic development. I would argue—perhaps some Opposition Members would agree—that there was perhaps too much emphasis in the early years of devolution on strengthening ties within Wales, which was perfectly understandable. When a new institution is being created for Wales, there needs to be a coherence to Wales. But we also need to recognise the economic realities, including the links between Newport and Bristol, and the cross-border links in north-east Wales. We need to ensure we have a strong Welsh economy that is able to work with our partners in other parts of the United Kingdom.
The hon. Member for Ynys Môn said that Wales is not a peripheral region. I could not agree more. The north Wales growth deal can link to the northern powerhouse and the success stories that are Manchester and Leeds, and a sector deal for the nuclear industry could make a huge difference not just for north-west Wales, but for the entirety of the north Wales economy and the north-west of England economy. That shows clearly that we are not a peripheral region and that we have a huge contribution to make.
I want to touch quickly on the involvement of universities. The hon. Member for Ceredigion was absolutely right to highlight the importance of universities for economic development. He is fortunate to represent not one but two universities in his constituency. The contribution of Glyndwr University and Bangor University to the north Wales growth deal is an example of what can be done. I was pleased that Lord Bourne met the vice-chancellor of Aberystwyth yesterday, because universities will have a crucial role in any mid-Wales growth deal. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to highlight the importance of the university and further education sector in developing growth deals.
I am aware that time is short, so I will highlight some other issues that were raised in debate. Concerns were raised about broadband connectivity. Listening to the hon. Gentleman, I could be forgiven for thinking that I was listening to his predecessor. Broadband connectivity in Ceredigion is indeed a very serious issue, as it is in many parts of rural Wales, although there are some areas where that is not the case. For example, the connectivity in Aberdaron on the Llŷn peninsular, which is much better than the connectivity in the majority of my constituency, is an example of what can be done. Rural Wales can be served if there is a desire to serve rural Wales, but we need some honesty in this Chamber. For broadband connectivity to be supplied across Wales, there has to be a partnership between the private sector, the Welsh Government and the UK Government.
Back in September, I announced the £56 million of addition spending to be made available through the claw-back on the contract with BT, but it is disappointing that that figure was lower than the 11% secured for Wales in 2011 because take-up in Wales had been lower. There has been a lack of transparency in Wales about why and how the priorities for rolling out broadband were set. It is unacceptable that Ceredigion—an area with two universities, which can make such a contribution to our rural economy—has been so ill-served by the way the Welsh Government have rolled out the contract. We can rectify the situation, and we need to do so, but that can be done only if we work together.
I expected that the agricultural sector would be more of a key part of this debate. We understand the importance of the agricultural sector for Ceredigion and most of rural Wales, including Powys. The Government have gone a long way in trying to reassure the sector. First, we guaranteed that the funding will be in place until 2020. We also said that there will be comparable funding until 2022. I hear what the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) is saying about getting guarantees post-2022, but a funding guarantee until after 2022 would be a longer period of certainty than we would have had if we had decided to remain within the European Union. The farming community appreciates that guarantee.
The hon. Member for Ynys Môn made an important point, which I am happy to accept, about the importance of ensuring that our share of future agricultural funding is based on the historical trend, rather than a Barnett-based system. The Wales Office and Ministers representing Wales in the Wales Office will be making that case, but we have to do so with sensitivity because we cannot say to the Welsh Government, “This is a chunk of money for you, but you must spend it on this specific area.” If we did that, we would be accused of a power grab.
Guto Bebb
I am afraid I cannot take an intervention from the hon. Lady because I am coming to the end of my speech.
This has been a constructive debate and the Wales Office is more than delighted to continue it with hon. Members. Our door is always open. The way we are working in north Wales and the way we have worked with the city deals in south Wales show what can be done when we work together on a cross-party, cross-governmental basis. I want to be part of a success story in mid-Wales to follow on from the success story in north Wales.
Ben Lake
Thank you for chairing this debate, Mr Hollobone. It has been a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank all Members of Parliament—particularly the 10 Welsh Members of Parliament—who attended. That reflects the importance of the rural economy for Members of Parliament from Wales.
I outlined some of the problems facing the future of the rural economy, and we have had a broad discussion about them. We have covered issues relating to what our relationship with the European Union means for our trading arrangements and the future of rural development payments. We also outlined some of the possibilities and opportunities for the rural economy in Wales.
The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) set out the problem of centralisation and the need for decentralisation. It would send a very strong signal if the UK and Welsh Governments were able to decentralise a lot more of their institutions to rural areas. I am fortunate in Ceredigion to have a Welsh Government building in Aberystwyth, but perhaps there is more we could do to implement that.
Albert Owen
I am glad the hon. Gentleman has highlighted that point. Is he as disappointed as me that the Minister did not refer to that? The Government have responsibility for it, and by keeping agencies open they would help local economies.
Ben Lake
I agree. The Government, and the public sector more broadly, can play a very important role in investing and locating agencies in more rural areas. That would send a signal—a vote of confidence in rural areas—to the private sector that the countryside is open for business, as I said earlier.
I am conscious that time is getting the better of me. We have an opportunity with the growth deal in particular to work on a cross-party basis. This debate has been constructive, which can only be a good thing. We have an opportunity not only to safeguard the current rural economy, but to lay the foundations of the rural economy of tomorrow. Making better use of our higher education institutions and improving connectivity would be a great way to start. Just like decentralising some of the Government agencies, getting the growth deal right would send a clear signal to the outside world—to businesses and entrepreneurs—that the countryside is open for business, and that they should locate our businesses with us. Diolch.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the future of the rural economy in Wales.
Written Statements
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Council
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The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Karen Bradley)
The Education, Youth, Culture and Sport (EYCS) Council took place in Brussels on 20 and 21 November 2017. The UK’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU represented the interests of the UK at the Youth, Culture and Sport sessions of this Council.
Youth
The Council achieved a general approach among EU member states on the proposals laying down the framework for the European Solidarity Corps. The UK voted in favour of the general approach, which achieved almost unanimous support. The Commission commented on how they would consider the expansion of geographical scope of the Corps, which is an important matter for the UK. Members also unanimously agreed to adopt draft Council conclusions on Smart Youth Work.
The main policy debate focused on the issues that matter to young people and possible European efforts to address these issues. The debate was positive, with the UK setting out the importance of hearing directly from young people about the issues that matter to them, as well as highlighting the important work of the British Youth Council. The Commission also provided information on a new narrative for Europe, which further emphasised the importance of giving a political voice to Europe’s youth.
Culture/Audio-visual
Draft Council conclusions on promoting access to culture via digital means, were adopted by the Council with the UK supporting their adoption.
On audio-visual, the presidency provided an update on the Audio-visual Media Services Directive (AVMSD). This update acted as the first reading since a general approach was achieved at the last EYCS Council in May 2017. The discussion focused on the progress thus far of Trilogue discussions between the Council and the European Parliament. Crucial areas of agreement thus far between the EP and Council included the provision of greater access of online digital content to people with disabilities. The UK emphasised how it can be a valuable asset as discussion progressed with the EP.
A policy debate on the role of culture in building cohesive societies in Europe, and a later item on remaking Europe through culture, put forward by the French delegation, emphasised a number of important themes including cultural heritage, using culture to integrate migrants, and the mobility of artists. The UK’s position, in line with the spirit of the discussion, was supportive of the role culture plays in building community cohesion, raising the importance of tourism, and how creative and cultural exports shape the way member states, and the EU as a bloc, are viewed by the rest of the world.
Information was provided by the German delegation on the current legislative proposal regarding, the regulation on the import of cultural goods. This focused on the responsibility of member states to better regulate the illicit trade of cultural goods as a means to prevent such trade funding terrorist activities. The UK did not comment on these proposals, however my Department and HM Revenue and Customs continue to work with the EU in developing this file. In addition to this item, information was provided on international cultural relations, cultural property, and the role of the EU in the defence of cultural heritage crisis areas.
Sport
The Council session on sport led with a policy debate, covering the main challenges facing sport in the 21st century and co-operation between the EU, Governments, and the sport movement. The debate highlighted the crucial role of sport for society as a whole and the importance of protecting the autonomy and integrity of sport. The UK’s intervention emphasised how we are ensuring all citizens can access sport, targeting the least active in society. We also drew attention to the work that the UK Government are doing to combat corrupt practices in sport, through our Code for Sports Governance and our work alongside the International Olympic Committee to develop an “International Partnership Against Corruption in Sport”. Council conclusions on the role of coaches in society and a Council resolution on the EU structured dialogue on sport were adopted, with the UK supporting both items.
The Bulgarian delegation provided information regarding the meeting of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Foundation Board in Seoul on 16 November. The Polish delegation then announced the 2019 World conference on doping in sport to be held in Katowice, and provided an informal invitation to member states. There was also information from the Greek delegation on supporting the Olympic Truce during the Winter Olympic Games, to be held in Pyeongchang, South Korea in 2018.
Other
The Council received information from the Bulgarian delegation, as the incoming presidency for the first half of 2018, setting out their work programme for the next six months. They highlighted a number of priorities for their presidency including:
continuing to move forward with the revision of AVMSD;
moving to the next stage of discussions on the EU Solidarity Corps, while focusing on the role of young people in peace-keeping and security;
highlighting the importance of cultural heritage and strengthening international relations through culture; and
fighting doping through information and education of young people.
The next Council is scheduled for 22 and 23 May 2018.
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November Agriculture and Fisheries Council
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The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)
I represented the United Kingdom at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council on 6 November in Brussels.
The Council opened with member states responding to the presidency’s questions on the sustainable use of pesticides. There was widespread agreement that national action plans are a good way for member states to tailor their approach to meeting the objectives of the sustainable use of pesticides directive, and widespread support for the principles of integrated pest management. The UK welcomed the European Commission’s report on the sustainable use of pesticides, highlighting that integrated pest management is the key to future crop protection.
The presidency outlined the conclusions of the sustainable soil management conference held on 4-6 October in Tallinn, which highlighted the importance of managing soils and designing policies based on a strong evidence base. Responding to questions posed by the presidency, the UK informed Council that soil health goes hand in hand with farming productivity.
Commissioner Hogan then updated the Council on EU agricultural trade.
“Three further items were discussed under ‘any other business”:
The Slovakian and Czech delegations thanked Council for co-operation on the issue of dual quality foodstuffs.
The Agriculture Ministers of the Visegrad member states informed Council about the renewable energy directive post-2020.
The Agriculture Ministers of the Visegrad member states informed Council about the BIOEAST initiative.
On 23 June 2016, the EU referendum took place and the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Until exit negotiations are concluded, the UK remains a full member of the European Union and all the rights and obligations of EU membership remain in force. During this period the Government will continue to negotiate, implement and apply EU legislation. The outcome of these negotiations will determine what arrangements apply in relation to EU legislation in future once the UK has left the EU.
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EU Exit: Release of Sectoral Reports
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Robin Walker)
Following the Opposition day debate motion on 1 November, the Government committed to making arrangements to respond to the motion which called on the Government to provide the Committee on Exiting the European Union with impact assessments arising from the sectoral analysis they have conducted with regards to the list of 58 sectors referred to in the answer of 26 June 2017 to written question 239.
On 27 November the Department for Exiting the European Union provided analysis covering these 58 sectors of the economy to the House of Commons Committee on Exiting the EU and the House of Lords European Union Committee. The reports were also shared with the devolved Administrations on the same terms.
As the Government have previously made clear, the information requested in the motion does not exist in the form requested. During the Opposition day debate I told the House “there has been some misunderstanding about what this sectoral analysis actually is. It is not a series of 58 impact assessments.” The Secretary of State for Exiting the EU also made this clear before the House of Lords EU Committee on 31 October and to the House at DEXEU oral questions on 2 November.
The reports cover:
i. a description of each sector;
ii. the current EU regulatory regime;
iii. existing frameworks for how trade is facilitated between countries in this sector, and;
iv. sector views.
We now consider the motion of 1 November 2017 to have been satisfied.
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November General Affairs Council
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Robin Walker)
I represented the UK at the General Affairs Council (GAC) meeting in Brussels on Monday 20 November, in place of Minister of State Lord Callanan. The main items on the agenda were: preparations for the December European Council on 14 and 15 December; a follow-up to the October European Council; legislative programming, with the Commission presenting its 2018 work programme; the implementation of the inter-institutional agreement; and a roadmap of the European semester.
A provisional report of the meeting and the conclusions adopted can be found on the Council of the European Union’s website at:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/gac/2017/11/20
Preparation of the European Council, 14 to 15 December 2017
The presidency presented the annotated draft agenda for the December European Council, which included defence; social issues, education and culture; and migration.
On the defence agenda item, the Council welcomed a discussion of both PESCO (Permanent Structured Co-operation) and EU-NATO co-operation. I intervened to agree on the importance of EU-NATO co-operation. I also stressed the need for third country participation in PESCO and welcomed early sight of the accompanying Council decision.
Ministers also welcomed the agenda item on social, education and culture following on from the Gothenburg social summit on 17 November. The outcomes of this meeting would provide the basis for Council conclusions. I confirmed the UK’s ongoing commitment to education and culture, as set out in the Prime Minister’s Florence speech and agreed on the importance of mobility and exchange programmes such as Erasmus.
Under the migration item, Ministers welcomed a discussion of both internal and external aspects of migration which would be discussed by leaders over dinner.
October European Council follow-up
The presidency and Commission highlighted the need to address the funding gap for the EU Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) for projects in Libya. I emphasised the UK’s significant bilateral contributions to Libya, which contribute to EUTF outcomes.
Legislative programming—Commission’s work programme (CWP) 2018
Following a presentation by the Commission, Ministers exchanged views on the CWP. These views will determine the Council’s input for the joint declaration between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on legislative priorities for 2018 and the first few months of 2019. I intervened to express support for open, flexible markets which lead to prosperity and strong economies. I also reiterated the UK’s unconditional commitment to ensuring European security.
Interinstitutional Acts implementation
The presidency provided an update on the implementation of the interinstitutional agreement, particularly with regards to international agreements, delegated and implementing Acts and the transparency register. Meanwhile, the Commission explained the role of the new task force on proportionality and subsidiarity, as set out previously by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in his State of the Union speech.
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Developments in Zimbabwe
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Boris Johnson)
Since I updated the House on 15 November there have been historic developments in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe’s 37-year rule came to an end on 21 November, sparking joyous celebrations as Zimbabweans looked forward to the opportunity for a brighter future.
The UK’s objective has remained constant throughout these dramatic developments. We want to support the people of Zimbabwe in building a democratic, stable and prosperous country. The only way for Zimbabwe to achieve a legitimate Government is through free and fair elections held in accordance with the constitution. We stand ready to support a legitimate Government to rebuild their beautiful country, working alongside our international and regional partners, with whom we are already engaging in order to lead the response.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was inaugurated on 24 November, has stated that this marks the beginning of a “new unfolding democracy” in Zimbabwe. He must now demonstrate his sincerity by delivering political and economic reform. In particular, he must hold an election in which all Zimbabweans can participate without fear of intimidation or violence. A transition from one despotic ruler to another would be a tragedy for Zimbabwe and its people.
The process of democratisation and economic recovery will be led by Zimbabweans. The Minister for Africa visited Harare on 23 and 24 November and met with actors from across the political spectrum to discuss the transition to democracy. He made clear to the incoming Administration that the UK stands ready to play a key role in support Zimbabwe’s recovery, but only on the basis of genuine political and economic reforms, including respect for human rights and the rule of law. In this moment of hope for Zimbabwe, the UK will be looking for tangible indications of progress.
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Foreign Affairs Council 16 October
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The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), attended the Foreign Affairs Council on 16 October. The Foreign Affairs Council was chaired by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini. The meeting was held in Luxembourg.
Foreign Affairs Council
The meeting covered discussions on Burma, Iran, Turkey, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and human rights.
Burma
The Council adopted conclusions on Burma, in the light of the humanitarian and human rights situation in Rakhine state.
Iran
EU Foreign Ministers agreed a statement underlining EU commitment to the continued full and effective implementation of the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPoA), and also expressing concerns related to Iran’s ballistic missiles programme and increasing tensions in the region.
Turkey
Over lunch, EU Foreign Ministers discussed Turkey in preparation for the European Council discussions held by EU Heads of State and Government on 19 October. They focused on co-operation with Turkey in the region, including Syria, Iraq and relations with Iran.
DPRK
The Council discussed the situation in the Korean peninsula following recent provocative acts by the DPRK. EU Foreign Ministers agreed the need to maintain pressure on the DPRK, including through engagement with regional actors and outreach efforts to strengthen the implementation of UNSC resolutions by all UN member states. The Council adopted additional EU sanctions on the DPRK to complement and reinforce the UN Security Council sanctions.
Human rights
EU Foreign Ministers discussed the EU’s policy on human rights. Conclusions were adopted on the mid-term review of the “Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy” and the “Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the World in 2016”.
EU Foreign Ministers agreed a number of measures without discussion:
the Council adopted conclusions on an EU strategy on Afghanistan;
the Council adopted conclusions on Bosnia and Herzegovina;
the Council approved the EU programme of exercises and exercise-related activities under the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) for the period 2017-21;
the Council approved the signing and conclusion of a protocol to the partnership and co-operation agreement establishing a partnership between the EU and the Kyrgyz Republic to take account of the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the European Union;
the Council established and launched a new CSDP mission to support security sector reform in Iraq. The Council also adopted the operation plan and a decision authorising the opening of negotiations to conclude an agreement on the status of the EU advisory mission (EUAM);
the Council adopted three decisions authorising the opening of negotiations with Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina for agreements on activities carried out by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency in those countries;
the Council adopted two decisions on positions to be adopted by the EU at the joint Council of Caribbean States (Cariforum) and EU member states to be held on 17 November 2017;
the Council received the high representative’s report on the six-monthly review of Operation Althea.
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Foreign Affairs Council 13 November
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The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), and the Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), attended the joint session of the Foreign Affairs Council (Foreign and Defence Ministers) on 13 November. The Council was chaired by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini. The meeting was held in Brussels.
Foreign Affairs Council
EU Foreign Ministers discussed EU-Africa relations and EU strategic communications. EU Defence Ministers discussed EU-NATO and met as the European Defence Agency steering board. EU Foreign and Defence Ministers also participated in a joint session on security and defence co-operation.
Venezuela
The Council adopted conclusions on Venezuela and agreed targeted sanctions to encourage a peaceful, negotiated solution. These included an embargo on arms and related material that might be used for internal repression, and a legal framework for the possible targeted listing of persons.
EU-Africa relations
Foreign Ministers discussed EU-Africa relations with particular reference to the upcoming fifth African Union-EU summit on 29 and 30 November in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. EU Foreign Ministers welcomed the focus on youth and discussed the common challenges which were expected to be covered at the summit.
EU strategic communications
Foreign Ministers discussed the European External Action Service’s current work on strategic communications for the eastern partnership region, the southern neighbourhood and the western Balkans. The Council agreed to further enhance the work, and supported the development of the three taskforces. EU Foreign Ministers underlined the need to counter disinformation where and when needed.
Security and defence co-operation
EU Foreign and Defence Ministers discussed the implementation of the EU global strategy in the area of security and defence. In the margins of the Council, 23 member states signed a notification for the establishment of a permanent structured co-operation (PESCO). The UK did not sign.
EU-NATO
EU Defence Ministers discussed EU-NATO co-operation together with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
European Defence Agency
EU Defence Ministers met as the European Defence Agency (EDA) steering board.
Ministers agreed a number of measures without discussion:
the Council adopted the legal acts providing for the delisting of the FARC from the EU list of individuals and entities subject to restrictive measures to combat terrorism;
the Council adopted conclusions on a strategic approach to resilience in the EU’s external action;
the Council appointed Toivo Klaar as EU special representative for the south Caucasus and the crisis in Georgia;
the Council adopted a regulation reviewing the list of luxury goods subject to an import and export ban on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea;
the Council adopted a decision to open negotiations on a missions framework participation agreement with Jordan;
the Council approved the requirements catalogue 2017 which identifies the military capability requirements for the common security and defence policy stemming from the EU level of ambition as agreed by the Council in November 2016;
the Council endorsed the European Defence Agency report and adopted the guidelines for the work of the European Defence Agency in 2018;
the Council established the EU position ahead of the ninth meeting of the Stabilisation and Association Council between the EU and Albania which will take place on 15 November in Brussels; and
the Council established the EU position ahead of the fourth meeting of the Stabilisation and Association Council between the EU and Serbia which will take place on 16 November in Brussels.
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Trade Remedies
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade (Dr Liam Fox)
On 28 November the Government published a call for evidence to identify UK interest in existing EU trade remedy measures. Currently, there are a number of trade remedy measures being applied by the EU, some of which are relevant and significant to UK industry. In preparation for the UK being an independent trading nation, it is important that we provide certainty and continuity to UK businesses, and avoid exposing them to injury from known unfair trade practices.
The call for evidence will obtain the necessary information from UK businesses to enable the Government to assess which measures matter to the UK and therefore can be maintained when the UK begins to operate its own independent trade remedies framework. The Government will take account of the terms of any time-limited implementation period agreed between the UK and the EU.
We recognise that new EU measures may be put in place after the call for evidence closes and before the UK begins to operate its independent trade remedies framework. We will approach those interested parties ahead of the UK operating its independent trade remedies framework to understand whether there is an interest for any future measures to be maintained.
We will assess whether the transition of an existing measure is important to UK industry, and can be retained based on three criteria:
We have received an application from UK companies which produce products subject to trade remedies measures;
The application is supported by a sufficient proportion of the UK companies which produce those products;
The market share of the UK companies which produce those products is above a certain level.
The Government are committed to ensuring continuity to UK industry as the UK prepares to leave the EU. We are also committed to maintaining a fair and transparent approach to the handling of these existing remedies and aligning them as far as possible with our WTO obligations.
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House of Lords
Teacher Education: Arts, Crafts and Design
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve initial teacher education in order to ensure a high standard of teaching of art, craft and design subjects in schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, at their most recent Ofsted inspection, 100% of initial teacher training providers were judged to be either good or outstanding. We have worked with a sector-led group chaired by Stephen Munday to develop a new framework of core initial teacher training content which was published last year. It is enabling providers as well as trainees to have a better understanding of the essential elements of good ITT content, including in the arts.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that high-quality teaching of art and design subjects in schools is essential, not least for driving future innovation, an ambition of the industrial strategy? Has he looked at the recent Oxford Brookes University research, which bears out the increasing concern that for these subjects the PGCE route, which is contracting, is significantly preferable to School Direct, not just because of the subject-specific training but for the wider context of networking and access to community-based practice? Will the Government address these concerns?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I agree with the noble Earl that a broad and balanced curriculum is an essential part of a child’s education. I am afraid that I have not seen the Oxford Brookes report but I reassure him that many schools buy-in the PGCE qualification to run alongside their own School Direct programme to enable students to benefit from this in addition to the practical emphasis of the school-based approach.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have missed their own target for the last five years on teacher recruitment and retention. Does the Minister think that lifting the public sector pay cap, tackling rising workloads and allowing teachers more say in the curriculum might alleviate the serious position in which the Government have put us?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we have 15,000 additional teachers in the system today compared with 2010, and an increasing number of teachers are returning to the profession. Last year, we had increasing numbers recruited in maths, all the sciences, modern foreign languages, geography and art. I acknowledge that there are one or two shortages but I do not feel that we have in any way a teaching recruitment crisis.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend be kind enough to tell me what the precise arrangements are between his department and BEIS in order that his department should play its part in the work that has to be done if the industrial strategy is to include this important area, which was announced as a central theme yesterday when the industrial strategy was implemented?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, we have put particular emphasis on technical skills with the announcement of our T-level programme, which will begin in two years’ time. By 2020, we will be spending an additional half billion pounds a year on technical education.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, if somebody receives their training in a classroom-based situation, how will they receive the extra tuition required to teach design, art and crafts unless they are in those classrooms? The Minister is not addressing that.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, in 2014 we asked Sir Andrew Carter to chair an independent review of the quality of ITT courses. Following on from that we have issued three reports in our efforts to improve the framework. We have the framework on the core content of ITT, new behaviour management content and national standards for school-based ITT mentors.
Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply, and I wonder if I can push him a little bit further. I think the whole House would agree that provision of the arts for school-age children is vital if we are to maintain our position as one of the world-leading nations in contributing to the arts globally. Can we get any comfort from the Minister on the provision of, and the Government’s promise to provide, arts in the classroom for our children growing up?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, as I said a moment ago, the Government strongly support a broad and balanced curriculum. We recently announced £400 million of funding between 2016 and 2020 for a diverse portfolio of arts and music education programmes. This includes £300 million for music education hubs and £58 million in 2016-18 for music and dance schemes. We have music education hubs supporting over 14,000 ensembles and choirs, nearly 8,000 of which are based in schools. Over 340,000 children participate in these. We also have Progress 8, which, as I am sure noble Lords will be aware, encourages a broad and balanced curriculum. Of the eight subjects that are measured, three are open subjects, which include arts.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, despite what the Minister has just said, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grade, that the Conservatives have allowed the arts and creative subjects in schools to be neglected in recent years—
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
I paraphrase, of course. Design and technology is one of the subjects that many teachers are now unable to offer because of the Government’s failure to adequately fund schools. A Labour Government will provide an arts pupil premium to allow every primary school child—
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
I can understand the nervous laughter in various corners of the House. It will allow every primary school child in England to learn a musical instrument, to experience dance and drama and to regularly visit theatres, museums and art galleries. Our aim is for arts facilities in state schools to match as near as possible those in many private schools. Can the Minister tell me why his Government do not match that ambition?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I suspect that we have a slightly different emphasis on education and its priorities. However, I assure the noble Lord that the number of art and design teacher trainees has risen nearly every year for the last five years. Indeed, in 2016-17 we had the most we have had in five years.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is absolutely crucial, particularly after 2019, that both our teachers and our young people are kept alive to the glories of European civilisation in all its manifestations, and to the particular contribution that this country has made to them?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend’s statement. The EBacc has brought important subjects such as history back into the curriculum. We have seen an increase in the number of pupils studying history, which did not happen under the previous Government.
Mental Health Care: Vulnerable Children
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Wheeler
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what actions they are taking to address the concerns raised by the Care Quality Commission in its review published in October about the particular difficulties faced by children and young people in vulnerable circumstances, such as looked-after children and those with learning disabilities, in accessing mental health care.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, improving children’s and young people’s mental health is a priority for the Government, especially for the most vulnerable. The Government welcome the CQC’s recent report in this area, which was commissioned by the Prime Minister in January. Government initiatives to improve the mental health of vulnerable children include piloting new approaches to the mental health assessments that looked-after children receive as part of their initial health assessment, and testing models for personal budget use for looked after children.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. With the Green Paper promised before Christmas, I hope we will not have to wait until the next CQC review for the urgent action that is needed, given the scale of unmet need for mental health care among vulnerable children. Barnardo’s recent survey showed that one in four looked-after children faced a mental health crisis on leaving care, and yet nearly 65% of them did not receive any statutory support; and whilst in care, local factors such as a lack of permanent or settled placement can lead to support action being denied. On children with learning difficulties, in all my research for this Question I was truly alarmed at the lack of information that is available on the scale and problems of this vulnerable group of children. What action is the Minister taking to ensure that the CQC, Ofsted and, sadly, the police and probation inspectors combine their efforts to investigate this issue as closely as it deserves?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
The noble Baroness is right to highlight these disturbing facts about the mental health of looked-after children. Nearly 50% of looked-after children have a diagnosed mental health disorder, so that is what we are up against. In terms of how we are dealing with it, the increases in funding to raise the number of treatments that are taking place by 70,000 will obviously help vulnerable children, and there is the additional assessment that I have talked about. She asked particularly about children with learning difficulties. I am sure that she is aware of it, but I would point her and other noble Lords to the Lenehan review, which set out several recommendations, all of which the Government have adopted. One of the actions that stems from that includes new guidance from the Local Government Association and NHS England on commissioning mental health services for children with learning difficulties.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
Does my noble friend the Minister agree that we can take some comfort from, particularly, chapter 4 of the first phase of the CQC report, which was commissioned by the Prime Minister only in January this year? With 80% of specialist mental health care for children and young people being rated as good or outstanding, there is much, to quote the report,
“we should celebrate and learn from”
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My noble friend is right to highlight that overall the provision is good. There is still work to do, particularly in specialist community mental health services. Part of the strategy we are undertaking is to make sure that those services have the staff they need. There will be 21,000 more posts in mental health services to ensure that the average rating improves over time.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester
Does the Minister agree that there remains, despite lots of good work, a terrible stigma attached to mental health problems? Will he assure us that the Government are committed to tackling it, as we seek to do in the Church, while also improving provision for identification and treatment?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
The right reverend Prelate is quite right: there is stigma attached. There have been a number of important initiatives, not least from His Royal Highness Prince Harry—who I am sure we all want to congratulate on his recent engagement—to reduce stigma and to demonstrate that mental health problems can, unfortunately, strike anyone of any positional station in society at any time in their life. Making that admission is the first step to seeking help.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, what are the Government doing to make sure that health trusts spend the resources available on this area of work? The facilities that these children are being seen in is appalling in some cases. What are the Government going to do about both of those issues?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I can reassure the noble Lord that spending on children and young people’s mental health by CCGs, which are responsible for commissioning those services, increased by 20% between 2014-15 and 2015-16, so spending is increasing. Clearly, one of the areas in which that money is being spent is on better facilities. One of the additional changes is that about 150 new beds will be commissioned in underserved areas so that we can reduce the number of out-of-area placements, which can be quite disturbing for some of the children and young people who have to use them.
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, in England there are around 60,000 looked-after children, and there is evidence that some health providers are denying treatment to looked-after children if they have not yet established a permanent living situation. This is completely unacceptable. What action are the Government taking to ensure that all children’s care is addressed? Will the Minister confirm that the long-awaited Green Paper will be published this year?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I ask the noble Baroness to write to me on that specific case. Of course, health services should never be withheld on such a basis; they should be provided on the basis of need, as we all know. I can confirm that the Green Paper will be published before the end of the year.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister explain why some looked-after children who have been on waiting lists for mental health care and are then transferred out of the area for foster care have to start their wait for access to mental health services again, if we have a National Health Service?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
I think this picture of a fragmented service is one that the CQC report highlights. One of the ways in which the Government are trying to address that is through incentive payments in the tariff system to make sure that trusts are incentivised to join up care, particularly when children are moving from place to place.
Lord Cotter (LD)
The Minister mentioned concerns about mental health, but crisis teams are reported not to be available in all parts of the country for under-18s, who are very vulnerable. Will the Minister look into crisis teams not being available for under-18s in many parts of the country?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
The noble Lord is highlighting that there is a good deal of variation, which is again highlighted in the CQC review. I think that is what he is describing in terms of crisis teams. I will certainly look into that and write to him with more details.
Air Quality
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, we have committed £3.5 billion for air quality and cleaner transport. We are helping local authorities to tackle pollution hotspots and have allocated £255 million to accelerate local action to meet concentration limits. Ninety-two per cent of monitored roads will meet limits next year. We are investing in vehicle retrofitting, ultra-low emission vehicles, cycling and walking, and implementing tougher real driving emissions tests. Next year, our clean air strategy will outline how we will tackle air pollution more widely.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. However, will he confirm that, according to the United Nations, air quality in 44 of our towns and cities is such that it is too dangerous to breathe? According to the Royal College of Physicians, last year, the health impact of poor air quality was £20 billion. It is estimated that 50,000 people die each year from poor air quality, of whom 9,000 are in London. Surely we have to do more than the Minister has said the Government will do?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the Government take this seriously because we are well aware of the health issues. This issue affects many countries; as the noble Lord will know, 17 other EU member states have the same problem with nitrogen dioxide. We are working very closely with local authorities, particularly those in which we need to make more rapid progress, to escalate the issue, because we are well aware of the health consequences. It is a very serious issue.
Lord Cunningham of Felling (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister explain to the House whether there are ongoing discussions with motor manufacturers in the United Kingdom, particularly those—there are some—that offer only vehicles with diesel engines while exporting to other parts of the world with petrol engines in exactly the same vehicles? Is it not clear, particularly after what my noble friend Lord Dubs said, that oxides of nitrogen and other particulate matter from diesel engines are the biggest single threat to health in this country, particularly among children, who go to and from school and play and shop at street level, therefore risking damage to their health?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I entirely agree with a lot of what the noble Lord said. That is precisely why this country intends to act and why we have invested in the ultra-low emissions vehicle regime. Importantly, we are in discussions with motor manufacturers because one of the problems we have had with nitrogen dioxide is that the driving emissions tests have been on a laboratory, not a real driving, basis. From September this year, all new cars will have to meet emissions limits in real driving conditions.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that diesel cars—I must confess that I drive one—are extremely important in rural areas and for people who drive long distances? Will he ensure that any future false reporting by manufacturers will be penalised, so that the vehicle driver is not left to pick up the pieces? Surely this is an area in which he can work very closely with BEIS.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, my noble friend makes a very strong point. Manufacturers undoubtedly have a responsibility. What happened with Volkswagen was a disgrace. Clearly, we do not seek to punish those drivers who in good faith went for diesel, but there was a dash for diesel, which we all now very much regret.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, the Minister referred to the Government’s sum of £255 million to improve air quality. Is he aware that Transport for London has a budget of £875 million to improve air quality in London alone? Does he therefore accept that £255 million is a woefully inadequate sum if local authorities are to be enabled to improve air quality and the Government are truly to improve air quality across the whole country?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I think I should repeat the first line of my reply: we have committed £3.5 billion for air quality and cleaner transport. We are helping 28 local authorities that need to accelerate their plans so that we can specifically tackle those hotspots. I reassure the noble Baroness that we are very much concentrating on this matter.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, since 2014 there have been 27 air pollution episodes. That does not sound particularly bad until you realise that one episode lasted 10 days, 300 people died and 1,600 people were admitted to hospital. There is currently no action plan in place for Public Health England. Will the Minister ask it to put one in place, as it does for hot and cold weather?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, obviously this is a matter on which we have to collaborate and we are, with both the Department of Health and the Department for Transport. Another issue for collaboration is that there are times when half the air pollution in this country comes from abroad. I suspect we send some to them. This is why international collaboration is also very important.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, the Minister spoke about working with local authorities. Will he be a little more specific about what the Government may outline for local authorities that have schools in very high traffic pollution areas, some of them with playing fields underneath motorway flyover areas?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, this is very important. The City of Westminster, for example, is concentrating on stopping idling engines outside schools. This is also an area where, under the Environment Act 1995, local authorities have duties to review and assess local air quality. There are provisions around schools, so this should and can be addressed.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister accept Defra’s own modelling, which shows that the most effective measure to reach compliance with the law in the shortest possible time is to introduce charges for polluting cars entering designated clean air zones? Why do the Government not act on their own best advice and expect all polluting local authorities to act on it?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, under our arrangements in the air quality plan to do with nitrogen dioxide in particular, there are all sorts of ways local authorities can take action, and they have ability to create clean air zones. That is on the statute book and is something we are working on with local authorities. Clearly there will be highly localised solutions to some of these problems with nitrogen dioxide.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, is it worth reflecting on the fact that the last Labour Government cut the duty on diesel and encouraged us all to buy diesel cars? Will my noble friend not take lectures from Labour on what we should be doing?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, we now have to deal with a very serious issue. We are not compliant only on nitrogen dioxide; we are compliant in all other areas of air quality. This is one that we need to address. My noble friend is absolutely right that this problem has come about because we dashed for diesel. It is diesel vehicles that have caused the problems with nitrogen dioxide that we are now addressing.
Budget: Reduction of Waste
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of St Albans
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to implement action announced in the Budget Statement to reduce levels of waste.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, the Government’s call for evidence to explore whether the tax system or charges could help reduce single-use plastic waste will be launched early in the new year. The implementation of policy thereafter will depend on the outcome of this call for evidence.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
I thank the Minister for his Answer. While I welcome all plans for reducing the amount of waste that is being created, will the Minister also commit to implementing the strategy announced in April by the last Government, which promised a world-class anti-littering campaign and a litter innovation fund?
Lord Bates
We launched the litter strategy for England earlier in the year. That has an ambition to ensure consistency in anti-littering across government, tough enforcement on those responsible for littering and an ambitious clean-up of our streets, highways and byways. The litter innovation fund was launched in August and it will be open to people to come forward with innovative ideas as to how we can implement that strategy. I think we are in a strong place as regards that.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, in the Budget report there is reference to £30 million being allocated to the Environment Agency to deal with illegal waste management arrangements. Why is that money being allocated only to the Environment Agency and not to local authorities, when they are dealing with a huge problem nationally of illegal tipping, which is stripping out from local authorities funds that are preciously needed in other areas of environmental health?
Lord Bates
The noble Lord is absolutely right in saying that the Environment Agency takes the lead on that. The £30 million was committed to it and in 2015 we announced another £20 million to tackle waste crime, which costs local authorities, the taxpayer and business around £605 million a year. It is a very important part of this, the Environment Agency in England takes the lead on it and it is right that it should have the resources to tackle waste crime.
Lord Geddes (Con)
Will my noble friend use his best endeavours to persuade the publishers of magazines to encase their products in paper rather than plastic, perhaps beginning with the House magazine?
Lord Bates
These are great and innovative ideas and things that ought to be looked at. We have some very strict targets for increasing the recycling of paper products and we are on our way to meeting them by 2020. It means that everyone has to play their part, including the House magazine.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, has the Minister had a chance to study reports from the Institute of Engineering and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which state that between 6% and 10% of greenhouse gases are produced by food waste, that around 100 million tonnes of food was dumped in Europe in the course of the last year alone and that, worldwide, if the food that is being wasted were available to eat, it would feed 1 billion people who are estimated to be without food or hungry today?
Lord Bates
The noble Lord is absolutely right. Of course, as part of our clean growth strategy, we have an ambition to reduce the level of food waste by half by 2030. The Courtauld initiative is also aiming to reduce food waste between 2015 and 2025. It is also part of the ambition of sustainable development goal 12. So all the strategy, all the rules and all the ambition are there—we just need to see the action.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, given the nearly 40% cut in local authority funding this year, can the Minister say what incentives he intends to implement to encourage householders to increase recycling to assist councils to meet their recycling targets and reduce expensive landfill and fly-tipping?
Lord Bates
In terms of landfill, of course it was the landfill tax introduced by the Conservative Government in 1996 that has reduced the amount going into landfill by some 70%. On local authorities, it is not just about money; it is actually about ambition and determination. We have neighbouring local authorities with varying recycling rates. Lewisham has a recycling rate of 18% but Southwark has a recycling rate of 35%, while Trafford has a recycling rate of 60%. We think that it is not just about money; it is about learning and the political leadership that will ensure that we deliver this.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that normally this House would take some encouragement from the fact that the Treasury is taking the lead on an environmental issue? But what is it proposing to do? It is proposing to carry out an inquiry into how taxation impacts on plastics. Surely it can be a bit more proactive than that.
Lord Bates
One of the most recent ideas we had on that was about plastic carrier bags; we put 5p on them two years ago. As a result, we have seen usage reduce by 83% in two years, saving 9 billion plastic bags and leading to a 40% reduction in the number of plastic bags washed up on British beaches. That is exactly the type of innovative initiative that the Treasury should be working on, in partnership with other government departments.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, following on from that comment, does my noble friend recognise that in fact large numbers of people in this country would welcome a complete ban on plastic bags throughout England? There is also a general sense that there is excess packaging on fruit and vegetables. Just as my noble friend suggested that we could start at home, large amounts of fruit and veg that are delivered to this House go from grower to wholesaler, are wrapped in plastic and then delivered for immediate consumption in the restaurants in this building. It is unnecessary.
Lord Bates
My noble friend is absolutely right. This matter is urgent because if you put one plastic bottle in the ground today in a landfill site, it will not be fully degraded until 2457. The legacy we are leaving to our children is extraordinary. That is part of the reason we are taking the tough action that we are—not just for this generation and this time but for future generations.
Brexit: Release of Impact Assessments
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given to an Urgent Question in another place. The Statement is as follows:
“On 1 November the House passed a Motion asking that impact assessments arising from sectoral analyses be provided to the Committee on Exiting the European Union. Mr Speaker, this Government take very seriously their parliamentary responsibilities and have been clear that they would be providing information to the committee. In the past three weeks, departments have worked to collate and bring forward this information in a way that is accessible and informative.
I am glad to be able to confirm this information has been provided, not only to the Committee for Exiting the European Union but to the House of Lords EU Committee and, indeed, the devolved Administrations. I can also, with Mr Speaker’s permission, inform the House that we have initiated discussions with the parliamentary authorities to make this information available to all colleagues through a reading room.
We were clear that we would respond to the Motion but also that the documents did not exist in the form requested. Indeed, I made it clear to the House during the debate that day that,
“there has been some misunderstanding about what this sectoral analysis actually is. It is not a series of 58 economic impact assessments”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/11/17; col. 887.]
The sectoral analysis is a wide mix of qualitative and quantitative analysis, contained in a range of documents developed at different times since the referendum.
The House of Commons has itself recognised that while Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament, the Government also have an obligation to consider where it would not be in the public interest for material to be published. Furthermore, it is important to recognise that in some cases there may be confidential or commercially sensitive information in this analysis, and that in many cases it has been developed to underpin advice to Ministers of the negotiation options in various scenarios. It is well understood, as was the case under successive Administrations, that such advice to Ministers must remain private. We have also explained that we have a clear obligation not to disclose information when doing so would not be in the public interest.
In light of all that, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State made a Statement on 7 November, in which he explained that, given that the documents did not exist in the form requested, it would take some time,
“to collate and bring together this information in a way that is accessible and informative for the Committee”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/11/17; col. 231WS.]
He committed that those reports would be provided within three weeks. In providing that information to the committee yesterday, we have met that commitment.
Ministers also have a specific responsibility, which Parliament has endorsed, not to release information that would undermine our negotiating position. Contrary to what has been asserted in some places, the committee did not give any assurances that what was passed to it would not subsequently be published in full. Where there are precedents for Government passing information to Select Committees in confidence, these will be on the basis of assurances received before the material is shared, or a clear set of rules such as those governing intelligence material.
When he met the Secretary of State, the chairman of the committee said that he was willing to enter into a dialogue after the committee had received documents from the Government. This is not the same as an assurance that, if we had provided confidential or sensitive material, it would not be published, and it is not in keeping with the usual practice of committees on these sensitive issues. As such, the sectoral reports do not contain material which would undermine the UK’s hand in the negotiations, or material that is commercially or market sensitive.
Mr Speaker, this debate really seems to be about the “release” of the reports. As you pointed out succinctly yesterday,
‘publication is to the Committee and the matter is in the hands of the Committee’.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/11/17; col. 50.]
Therefore, I suspect many of the questions I receive today should be directed to the chair of the committee and his fellow members. The House should be in no doubt—this has been a very substantial undertaking. We have been as open as possible, subject to the overwhelming national interests of preserving our negotiating position. We have collated over 800 pages of analysis for the committees less than a month from the Motion being passed. This covers all of the 58 sectors.
We now consider the Motion of 1 November 2017 to have been satisfied”.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I thank the Minister for reading out that Statement. Has the Minister read the 58 reports? Assuming he has, does the evidence within these analyses show that leaving the customs union will benefit our economy?
Lord Callanan
I have not read all the reports, although I have read very many of them. These documents are constantly being updated and collated. New information is coming to light and new facts are emerging, all of which inform our negotiating position. The Government have been very clear that we are leaving the customs union and the single market. I believe that this will be firmly in the country’s best interests.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, are this Government not a serial offender when it comes to the arrogance of their executive power? The Brexit pledges were all about taking back control and Westminster sovereignty, but Parliament has been refused a decision on Article 50. There has been an attempted power grab in the withdrawal Bill and now there is this.
In her speech to the Conservative Party conference in October last year, the Prime Minister gave many pledges about change, transparency and honesty and how she had heard the call of millions of people. Is it not time to stop hiding from the British people and to stop keeping them in the dark about the Government’s extreme Brexit plans? Should these reports not be published in full, rather than going through a Whitehall whitewash? Why are the Government trying to spare their own blushes and hide from the people the disaster that Brexit will mean for their jobs, their rights and the environment?
Lord Callanan
We are not hiding behind any documents. We have provided an unprecedented level of information to the committee. We have been as open and transparent as possible, subject only to preserving our negotiating position. With the permission of the House, I should like to answer a question which I was not asked, but which I expected to be asked by the noble Baronesses—will the House have access to this material? The answer is yes.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, I can confirm that, as acting chairman of your Lordships’ European Union Committee, I have received these documents. I have not read them all, but I had a chance to look at some of them last night. The committee will have a chance to discuss a way forward at its meeting tomorrow afternoon. It will want to take account of the views expressed in this House this afternoon before it comes to any conclusion.
Meanwhile, will the Minister expand a little on the reference in the covering letter from David Davis to Hilary Benn and to me to,
“aspects of the analyses which may still be sensitive to the negotiations, especially in the context of this particular point in time”.
When will this particular point in time have passed, at which point the sensitivity about releasing the information will presumably also have passed?
Lord Callanan
My Lords, as the House will be aware from media reports, this is a very fast-moving and dynamic negotiation environment. Some people might observe that the negotiations are sometimes not moving as fast as we might like. Nevertheless, things are changing all the time. New information is coming to light; papers are shared and discussions take place with our European partners. It is a complex and varied negotiation and we will be as open and transparent as possible. We will share all the information we possibly can, subject only to preserving our negotiating position. I cannot believe that most Members of the House would think anything else wise to do.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that in the normal course of events, notwithstanding his replies to date, when legislation is published in Parliament there is an impact assessment released for the benefit of parliamentarians? Will he confirm that when, for example, the agriculture and environment Bills come before this place it is the Government’s intention to publish the usual impact assessments at that time?
Lord Callanan
I am not privy to the details of those Bills, which are being done by different departments, but I would expect that they will publish impact assessments at the time.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister have another go at answering the question put to him about the customs union? Does the report indicate whether it would be a good or bad thing for us to stay in or leave the customs union?
Lord Callanan
My Lords, I might be repeating myself but this is a series of sectoral analyses, analysing individual sectors of the economy in great detail. They show what things are going on in their sectors, what stakeholders have said to us and other key factors facing us. As I have said, it is the policy of the Government that we will leave the single market and the customs union, because that is in the best interests of satisfying the result of the referendum.
Lord Higgins (Con)
My Lords, the implication of what my noble friend has said is that the Government announced immediately that we would withdraw from the single market and the customs union before they had all the information, which has now become available. Should they not reassess the position?
Lord Callanan
My Lords, consistent with the result of the referendum we will be leaving the single market and we will be leaving the customs union.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, will the Minister confirm what I think I understood from his answer to one question, which is that the 850 pages form a completely different document to that which the Government put together on the basis of 58 sectoral analyses? If he does confirm that, can he explain why it was that in the debate in the other place on revealing the 58 studies, nobody from the government side explained that they were being asked, as he said, for something that did not exist?
Lord Callanan
No, they are not completely different documents. Much of the material is the same as it was in the original documents. Some of them were drawn up two years ago and some more recently. We thought that they should be updated and the information in them is often more current. There is more information in them than in some of the original documents. We think it is in a more accessible and open format.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Government state that this is unprecedented. I declare an interest: I was involved in an earlier exercise which the Conservatives in 2010 demanded, under the coalition agreement, that the Liberal Democrats should have access to. We had 32 detailed reports on the balance of competences between the United Kingdom and the European Union, which I negotiated as a Minister with David Lidington and Greg Clark. When they came out, Number 10 was very unhappy that almost all of them said that the single market was clearly in Britain’s interest and that the balance of regulations suited industry and other stakeholders. It did its best to suppress them; they were usually published as we broke up for the summer or for Christmas. Unfortunately, in the run-up to the referendum not only the leave campaign but the Conservatives in the remain campaign ignored that evidence base. Can we be sure that this time the Government will not ignore evidence as they continue these negotiations?
Lord Callanan
My Lords, of course we will not ignore evidence, but the Liberal Democrats seem to want to ignore the result of the referendum. The referendum result was clear and the Article 50 Bill was passed in both Houses. We are leaving the European Union, and of course we will use all available information to inform our negotiating position. This is the most important negotiation that any Government have carried out for many years. We are determined to get it right, and we are determined to get a good deal for the United Kingdom.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
The noble Lord has told us that we are ignoring the result of the referendum. Nobody is arguing about the result of the referendum. However he did say in response to my noble friend Lady Hayter’s question that he had read “some” of these sectoral analyses, but he did not answer her question about what those sectoral analyses told him. He simply asserted that it is in the long-term interest of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. What did the sectoral analyses that he has read say about whether it is good or bad for those sectors in terms of leaving the EU?
Lord Callanan
I have my view on what they said, but the noble Lord will be able to judge for himself. We will make these documents available in a reading room, and he can read them and then come back and argue the point then.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
Can my noble friend confirm that one reason why it is a bad idea to stay in the customs union is because we would not be able to negotiate free trade deals with other countries all round the world?
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, in relation to a matter of this importance and the release of information, is it really right that the Government should be judge in their own court? Would the Government be prepared to let independent people, perhaps a group of privy counsellors, look at the information that has not been revealed and decide whether more of it should be revealed to the House of Commons and to this House?
Lord Callanan
My Lords, many Members of this House are independent and we fully value their judgment. They will be able to look at the documents. Many Members are on the Brexit Select Committee and I am sure they will let us know their point of view in due course.
Maternal Safety Strategy
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, with the permission of the House, I shall repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health in the other place on the maternity strategy. The Statement is as follows:
“Giving birth in England is the most common reason for admission to hospital. Thanks to the dedication and skill of NHS maternity teams, the vast majority of the roughly 700,000 babies born each year are delivered safely with high levels of satisfaction by parents. However, there is still too much avoidable harm and death. Every child lost is a heart-rending tragedy for families that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. It is also deeply traumatic for NHS staff involved. Stillbirth rates are falling, but still lag behind many developed countries in Europe, and when it comes to injury, brain damage sustained at birth can often last a lifetime, with about two multi-million pound claims settled against the NHS every single week.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said this year that 76% of the 1,000 cases of birth-related deaths or severe brain injuries that occurred in 2015 might have had a different outcome with different care. So in 2015 I announced a plan to halve the rate of maternal deaths, neonatal deaths, brain injuries and stillbirths. Last October, I set out a detailed strategy to support this ambition. Since then local maternity systems have formed across England to work with users of NHS services to make maternity services safer and more personal. More than 80% of trusts now have a named board-level maternity champion, and 136 NHS trusts have now received a share of an £8.1 million training fund. We are six months into a year-long training programme and, as of June, more than 12,000 additional staff have been trained. The maternal and neonatal health safety collaborative was launched on 28 February; 44 wave 1 trusts have attended intensive training on quality improvement science and are working on implementing local quality improvement projects with regular visits from a dedicated quality improvement manager; and 25 trusts were successful with their bids for a share of the £250,000 maternity safety innovation fund and have been progressing with their projects to drive improvements in safety.
However, the Government’s ambition is for the health service to be the safest, highest-quality care available anywhere in the world, so there is much more work that needs to be done. Today I am therefore announcing a series of additional measures. First, we are still not good enough at sharing best practice. When you fly to New York, your friends do not tell you to make sure you get a good pilot. But if you get cancer, that is exactly what they ask about your doctor. We need to standardise best practice so that every NHS patient can be confident they are getting the highest standards of care. So when it comes to maternity safety, we are going to try a completely different approach.
From next year, every case of a stillbirth, neonatal death, suspected brain injury or maternal death that is notified to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists Each Baby Counts programme—about 1,000 incidents annually—will be investigated not by the trust at which the incident happened, but independently, with a thorough, learning-focused investigation conducted by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, or HSIB. The new body started this year, drawing on the approach to investigations in the airline industry, and has successfully reduced fatalities with thorough, independent investigations whose lessons are rapidly disseminated around the whole system. The new independent maternity safety investigations will involve families from the outset, and will have an explicit remit not just to get to the bottom of what happened in an individual instance but to spread knowledge around the system so that mistakes are not repeated. The first investigations will happen in April next year, and will be rolled out nationally throughout the year, meaning we will have complied with recommendation 23 of the Kirkup report into Morecambe Bay.
Secondly, following concerns that some neonatal deaths are being wrongly classified as stillbirths, which means a coroner’s inquest cannot take place, I will be working with the Ministry of Justice to look closely into enabling, for the first time, full-term stillbirths to be covered by coronial law, giving due consideration to the impact on the devolved Administration in Wales. I would like to thank the honourable Member for East Worthing and Shoreham for his campaigning on this issue.
Next, we will do more to improve the training of maternity staff in best practice. Today we are launching the Atain e-learning programme for healthcare professionals involved in the care of newborns to improve care for babies, mothers and families. The Atain programme works to reduce avoidable causes of harm that can lead to infants born at term being admitted to a neonatal unit. We will also increase training for consultants on the care of pregnant women with significant health conditions such as cardiovascular disease.
We also know that smoking during pregnancy is closely correlated with neonatal harm. Our tobacco control plan commits the Government to reduce the prevalence of smoking in pregnancy from 10.7% to 6% or less by 2022, so today we will provide new funding to train health practitioners, such as maternity support workers, to deliver evidence-based smoking cessation according to appropriate national standards.
The 1,000 new investigations into Each Baby Counts cases will help us transform what can be a blame culture into what needs to be a learning culture. But one of the current barriers to learning is litigation. So earlier this year I consulted on the rapid resolution and redress scheme, which would offer families with brain-damaged children better access to support and compensation as an alternative to the court system. My intention is that in incidents of possibly avoidable serious brain injury at birth, successfully establishing the new independent HSIB investigations will be an important step on the road to introducing a full rapid resolution and redress scheme in order to reduce delays in delivering support and compensation for families. Today, I am publishing a summary of responses to our consultation, which reflect strong support for the key aims of the scheme: to improve safety, patient experience and cost effectiveness. Going forward, I will look to launch the scheme, ideally from 2019.
Finally, a word about the costs involved. NHS Resolution spent almost £500 million settling obstetric claims in 2016-17. For every pound the NHS spends on delivering a baby, another 60p is spent by another part of the NHS on settling claims related to previous births. Trusts that improve their maternity safety are also saving the NHS money, allowing more funding to be made available for front-line care. In order to create a strong financial incentive to improve maternity safety, we will increase by 10% the CNST maternity premium paid by every trust, but refund that increase, possibly with an even greater discount, if they can demonstrate compliance with 10 criteria identified as best practice on maternity safety.
Taken together, these measures give me confidence that we can bring forward the date by which we achieve a halving of neonatal deaths, maternal deaths, injuries and stillbirths from 2030 to 2025, which I am today setting as the new target date for our ‘halve-it’ ambition. Our commitment to reduce the rate by 20% by 2020 remains and, following powerful representations made by voluntary sector organisations, I will also include a reduction in the national rate of preterm births from 8% to 6% within this ambition. In particular, we need to build on the good evidence that women who have continuity of carer throughout their pregnancy are less likely to experience a preterm delivery, with safer outcomes for themselves and their babies.
Mr Speaker, I would not be standing here today making this Statement were it not for the campaigning of numerous parents who have been through the agony of losing a treasured child. Instead of moving on and trying to draw a line under their tragedy, they have chosen to relive it over and over again. I have often mentioned members of the public such as James Titcombe and Carl Hendrickson, to whom again I pay tribute. I also want to mention Members of this House who have bravely spoken out about their own experiences, including the honourable Members for Colchester, for Eddisbury, for Lewisham, Deptford, for Washington and Sunderland West, for Banbury and for North Ayrshire and Arran. The passionate hope of bereaved families outside this House as they stand shoulder to shoulder with those Members inside this House is that by drawing attention to what may have gone wrong in their own case, mistakes are not repeated and others are spared the terrible heartache that they and their families endured. We owe it to each and every one of them to make this new strategy work, and I commend this Statement to the House”.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this important and very serious Statement today. To lose a baby is a heartbreaking matter for parents and families, and something from which sometimes they never recover. Clearly, it should not be so hard for parents to find out what may have gone wrong and why they do not have the healthy baby that they were so eagerly anticipating. So it is quite right to have a much simpler and more transparent process to find out whether anything went wrong, what it was and whether it might have been avoided, and to apologise in a timely fashion if things went wrong.
I welcome the announcement that all notifiable cases of stillbirth and neonatal death in England will now receive an independent investigation by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch. The HSIB is a new organisation; are we going to see primary legislation in this Session establishing it? This development is definitely an important step that could bring certainty and closure to hundreds of families every year. We on these Benches also welcome the moves by the Secretary of State to allow coroners to investigate stillbirths. There is much else to welcome in this, including the tobacco control plan, which is a passion of my own.
Our National Health Service offers some of the best neonatal care in the world, and the progress set out today is a tribute to the extraordinary work of midwives and maternity staff across the country. However, it is shocking and heartbreaking that in nearly 80% of the cases referred to by the Minister, improvements in care might have made a difference to the outcome for the baby when things have gone wrong. There is no doubt that staffing shortages mean that midwives are under enormous pressure, which can lead to situations that have a devastating impact on families. While of course we welcome the Secretary of State’s ambition to bring forward to 2025 the target date for halving the rate of stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth, that can be delivered only if the NHS units providing those services are properly resourced and properly staffed.
I looked in vain for something in the Statement to tackle the low levels of maternity staff, an issue that is clearly linked to safety. Noble Lords will know that the heavy workload in maternity units was among the main issues identified by today’s report, with service capacity in maternity units affecting over one-fifth of the deaths reviewed. Earlier this year, research revealed that half of maternity units had closed their doors to mothers at some point in 2016, with staffing and capacity issues the most common reasons. The Royal College of Midwives tells us that we are around 3,500 midwives short of the number needed, and this summer, for the first time, there were more nurses and midwives leaving the register than joining it. This issue will be exacerbated by the fall-off of new recruits from Europe post Brexit.
A survey published by the National Childbirth Trust this year showed that 50% of women having babies experienced what NICE describes as a red-flag event. These are indicators of dangerously low staffing levels, such as a woman not receiving one-to-one care during established labour. What action will the Government take alongside some of these excellent proposals properly to address the staffing shortages as part of the strategy to improve safety? I hope that the Minister can reassure us today that the Government will provide the resources that NHS midwives and their colleagues need to deliver on these ambitions.
Finally, if and when parents resort to legal remedies, as they sometimes feel they have no choice but to do, do the Government intend to deal with the performance of the NHS Litigation Authority in terms of both timeliness—acknowledging fault in a timely manner—and learning lessons which are properly disseminated? As the Minister quite rightly said, we must have a learning culture, but one area which fails is the conduct of the NHS Litigation Authority.
I thank the Minister for the Statement, and we would be very interested in working with him to put legislation on the book that makes these proposals happen.
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, I pay credit to our midwives, who do a wonderful job all across the country, and to those who campaigned to get the report and have spoken about it—I woke up this morning to a very moving Radio 4 piece on the “Today” programme.
I also welcome the Statement from the Secretary of State. Bereaved parents certainly want an answer, and this is an ideal way of helping them to reach some sort of closure. One of the critical points that the Each Baby Counts report makes about maternity care is the importance of continuity of care both for the expectant mother and for the team in the delivery suite. Staffing is an issue, with the workforce being short by 3,500 and a third of our midwives approaching retirement. Some midwives are adopting different patterns of work or choosing to leave the profession, but temporary midwives, be they bank or agency, are not the solution. They undermine the continuity that is so critical. A perfect storm is approaching about recruitment and retention.
Will the Government reconsider some form of financial support for midwives in training? Are any other incentives being considered? Will they guarantee an NHS midwife who is an EU national a job should we leave the EU? What measures are being considered to bolster the morale of NHS midwives, because at the moment, it is really quite low?
Lord O'Shaughnessy
My Lords, I thank both noble Baronesses for their overall support for the important announcements made today, and join them in paying tribute to both the staff, who provide amazing care every day, which of course is the norm for most parents, and those campaigners who have campaigned so bravely to raise the profile of these issues with great success.
I shall deal with the issues raised in order. First, on legislation, it is important to point out that the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch is up and running. Obviously, the intention is that the Bill will put it on a statutory basis, which will give it a degree of security and continuity. Draft legislation will be considered by a committee before turning it into a fully fledged Bill. Although I am not entirely sure of the timetable, I reassure the noble Baroness that we intend to have proper primary legislation following consideration of the draft Bill.
It is important to recognise that the number of staff has increased in the past few years, whether maternity nurses working in maternity services and neonatal nursing, midwives or doctors working in obstetrics and gynaecology. It is also important to recognise, first, that the number of births has risen, so there is a greater workload; and secondly, that on average births are becoming more complicated, as mothers become older, on average, and have more concomitant health problems—smoking and obesity are two of the greatest. I recognise the challenge.
I should point out that more than 6,800 midwives are in training, so there is an intention to continue growing the workforce. However, I recognise that more needs to be done to support them so that they can deliver the care. That is why the training packages announced today are so important.
In terms of learning lessons, the whole point of the rapid-resolution redress process by involving the HSIB is to provide resolution to parents so that they are satisfied while avoiding the sometimes adversarial situation that can emerge, when all that happens is that the problem is delayed for 10 years and creates great heartache for the families involved. We are trying to come up with a process that deals with it more quickly, without disadvantaging the families concerned, and means that it is easier to spread the lessons. That is why the independent HSIB investigations are so important.
Finally, I emphasise the point about the importance of continuity of care, which is referred to on page 16 of the maternity strategy. Here is a stark fact: women who receive continuity of midwife-led care are 16% less likely to lose their babies. That is about one in six, an extraordinary statistic. I understand that it does not necessarily require more staff to deliver that but it does require staff to be organised differently. That is one of the challenges that we have ahead.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, credit where credit is due: I commend the Government for this initiative. It was first suggested some years ago but that does not matter; it is here now. My question relates to the root cause analysis, which is rightly the way to analyse stillbirths that occur. It should take account of all the circumstances, including staffing levels, as mentioned. It is not just about the care itself. Can the Minister clarify how the system of doing root cause analysis of every stillbirth will work if, at the same time, a coroner is doing an investigation?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I thank the noble Lord for his support for today’s announcements. Obviously, independent investigations are just that. They will be operated by HSIB, which will be able to delve into the causes of the tragedy, however it might have happened, and provide an opinion on that. On the interaction with the coroner’s report, obviously we have focused mainly today on these new independent investigations and we are looking at extending coronial law to take in stillbirths that were previously not included. That is one of the issues that needs to be worked out in the coming months through interaction with the Ministry of Justice.
Baroness Cumberlege (Con)
My Lords, I start by declaring my interests. I am a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Nursing, and president of the National Childbirth Trust. Those positions are unremunerated but I am remunerated by NHS England for implementing the report of the review of maternity services.
There is absolutely no doubt that the Secretary of State has concentrated the minds of all of those working in and for the NHS on safety. It is the golden thread that has run throughout his time in office, especially now when he is concentrating on maternity services. We have never seen safer services, but we are being urged to go further with some new initiatives that have been declared today.
I welcome the Statement, particularly the part on investigations. Those of us tasked with implementing the report Better Births—the review of maternity services for England—have been concerned by the way many investigations have been conducted, causing further misery and trauma to the families concerned. We have full confidence that the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch will ensure independence, and above all, will involve the families. After all, the families were there; they knew what took place. They have a legitimate role in investigations, but often their views and experiences are ignored. Even worse, the learning that has been gathered has not been passed down to the teams within the trust, nor indeed has it spread to other organisations in the wider world. It is absolutely essential that that happens so that we see fewer stillbirths, early neonatal deaths and brain-injured children.
It was those anxieties that made us in the maternity review consider a new scheme, for which we coined the title “rapid resolution and redress”. I pay tribute to Professor Sir Cyril Chantler, who was my vice-chairman. He has worked tirelessly with colleagues across the world and in this country to frame the scheme, so we are delighted that Ministers see the merit of this proposal. However, I should like to question my noble friend about the timing. I understand that more policy work is to be done, but is it possible to bring forward the second part of the implementation of rapid resolution and redress so that the families in question do not have to wait until 2019?
I am interested in the coroner’s investigations. I understand the desire to ensure that no stone is left unturned, but I want to express my concerns at this moment because it is another inquisitorial initiative, when RRR is designed to avoid using the courts in order to spare parents from trials and tribulations. Therefore, I ask my noble friend to consider whether there could be a pause so as to wait for the evaluation of RRR; otherwise, we will have a range of initiatives which not only might cause confusion but will be in conflict with one another. I thank my noble friends for introducing continuity of care—something that is very close to my heart.
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I am delighted to be able to respond to my noble friend, who, probably more than anyone else, has really led the charge in this area. I pay tribute to her for her work on better births, as I do to Sir Cyril Chantler, her deputy. She is right that patient safety is the golden thread that runs through all the work that the Secretary of State has led, and she is right to highlight that we have safer services. The changes that we are making, together with bringing forward the “halve it” ambition, will save 4,000 babies’ lives, which is a great prize.
With regard to my noble friend’s questions, the endorsement of the HSIB is very welcome. Some months ago I organised a briefing for noble Lords with Keith Conradi, who runs it, and I shall be very happy to organise another one. It is a very interesting organisation with an interesting methodology that has proved incredibly effective in the airline industry, where Mr Conradi comes from.
On RRR, I appreciate my noble friend’s concerns about the timing and I will certainly look into whether it is possible to bring forward its implementation. As she knows, there are some issues around governance and how it will operate that mean that we need to tread carefully, but I shall certainly take that into consideration because we want to get the scheme up and running as soon as possible.
Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I too declare an interest. Like the noble Baroness opposite, I am an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Of course I welcome this investigation that the Government have announced, but I am a little worried that at the end of the investigation we shall hear the usual phrase “lessons will be learned”. From past experience, lessons are never learned, especially in the health service, because the main cause of the difficulty and of these babies dying is a shortage of midwives and a lack of staff. When will the Government seriously address funding in all sectors of the health service but, on this occasion, especially midwifery?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
The whole point of these reforms is that lessons should be learned, and they can be. The Francis inquiry, and other investigations that have taken place into poor practice, have led to dramatic improvements. The fact that there are over 10,000 more nurses on wards was a direct response to the Mid Staffordshire crisis and the finding that there were not enough staff on wards to look after patients and make sure that they were not vulnerable. It is possible to be optimistic about this. We are already seeing improvements through the learning from deaths programme and from the reduction in the number of stillbirths. The noble Baroness is shaking her head but that is rather a gloomy view, which does not reflect the support for these proposals in this House.
In answer to the point about staffing, there are more midwives in the service and more coming through training. We need to make sure that that continues so that the level of support that is needed is there.
Baroness Hayman (CB)
My Lords, like others, I welcome the Statement and the determination to deal with this issue. The Minister will recall that a few weeks ago I asked him about coroners’ inquests on stillbirths and I will address myself to that. Does he agree that, for many parents, the depth of their bereavement at a stillbirth means that they feel the weight and authority of a coronial investigation is absolutely warranted? I therefore welcome the discussions that are to take place. Can the Minister tell me a little about the timing of that and about the legislative vehicle? I understand that primary legislation will be necessary and a Private Member’s Bill that refers to this is currently in the Commons.
Lord O’Shaughnessy
I am glad to be able to return to the topic, which the noble Baroness has raised before. There was a powerful story on “Today” this morning, about parents who wanted precisely that for the level of authority it would bring. The hospital was not necessarily treating them as well as it could. These independent investigations will provide a degree of authority and independence that is perhaps sometimes lacking. We want to see how this pans out, but the Secretary of State is committed to looking at coroners investigating stillbirths. This is obviously a complex issue, so I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me if I am not in a position to provide more detail at this point. However, there is a desire and willingness to look into this in the months ahead. When we have some more details, I will certainly write to her.
Space Industry Bill [HL]
Tuesday 28th November 2017
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Space Industry Act 2018 View all Space Industry Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 73(a) Amendment for Third Reading (PDF, 49KB) - (27 Nov 2017)
Lord McNally
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, this amendment is the result of unfinished business at the end of Report. Basically, there has been an argument throughout this Bill, and there will be in other Bills that come before us, about the worrying nature of the use of secondary legislation that is vaguely promised and vaguely described in primary legislation. In this respect, Clause 67(1), which is vaguely written, refers back to Clause 1(1) which again makes vague commitments. The amendment merely suggests that there should be crisper and more tightly drawn references which avoid blank cheques and abuse of secondary legislation.
I do not intend to press this to a vote this afternoon, but to leave it as a bit of business still to be considered. The other place will need to look at it, because it should be as worrying to them as it is to this House.
I put on record my appreciation for the removal from the Bill of the Henry VIII clause, and I hope that will be a guide for other Bills that are coming before us. I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who is not in his place, who has made it quite clear that Henry VIII clauses were to be avoided, and that this example of putting in Henry VIII clauses and vague “blank cheque” secondary legislation was a problem that needed to be addressed. That is not to deny the fact that we also need to be able to future-proof Bills as best we can, particularly a Bill such as this. It is a matter of getting the balance right between future-proofing and ring-fencing them in terms of the powers that we write in.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, emphasised in his lecture at King’s College in 2016:
“This is not an attack on delegated legislation”.
However, in that lecture he quoted one of his distinguished predecessors as Lord Chief Justice—Lord Hewart—who, in 1929, warned against,
“the increase of bureaucratic, departmental authority over the citizen”.
The moving of power from Parliament to the Executive is one of the ironies of the Brexit process.
We believe that if we do not heed the warnings of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and others, we face a constitutional car crash. At the very least, future-proofing should be tightly drawn. The super-affirmative process should be used where necessary, as should sunset clauses. I believe that we need to look at the case for making certain types of secondary legislation amendable by both Houses. That is the thinking behind this amendment—a billet-doux to send down the Corridor to the other place. I beg to move.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
I assume that when she comes to respond the Minister will talk about the wording of the amendment and, if she is not going to accept it on behalf of the Government, will indicate why it is not acceptable. Therefore, my brief comments and questions are based on the assumption that she will talk about the wording of the amendment and what it would mean if it were included in the Bill, because obviously I share the concerns that have been expressed. I hope that if the Minister is not prepared to accept the amendment on behalf of the Government, she will at least indicate a willingness to reflect further on this matter prior to its being considered in the House of Commons.
In her response, perhaps the Minister could say what the Government envisage they might want to do through regulations under Clause 67(1) as it stands that they consider they would not be able to do through regulations under Clause 67(1) if it were amended in line with this amendment. Or, to put it the other way round, what do the Government consider they would not be able to do that they might want to do through regulations under Clause 67(1) amended in line with this amendment that they would be able to do through regulations under Clause 67(1) as it stands?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Sugg) (Con)
My Lords, we debated this issue extensively in Committee and on Report, and I regret that I have been unable to convince noble Lords of the necessity of this provision as drafted.
The wording of the clause—which is why we are keen to include it rather than the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord McNally—is consistent with that contained in Section 60(2) of the Civil Aviation Act 1982, the latter being a power to do anything,
“generally for regulating air navigation”.
A similar power arises under Section 11(1) of the Outer Space Act 1986 to enable the making of regulations generally for carrying that Act into effect. That is why we put forward the wording that we did in the Bill.
As noble Lords are well aware, there are a number of other regulation-making powers in the Bill, notably around security and safety. However, we need to ensure that we can regulate those wider matters relating to spaceflight and associated activities carried out in the UK that are not covered by the other powers. For example, this may include implementation of our international obligations relating to spaceflight arising from bilateral or multilateral treaties. We know from our experience in other sectors, such as aviation, that despite our best efforts there needs to be the flexibility to deal with any unexpected circumstances. The Government therefore remain convinced that this provision, as currently drafted, is needed to ensure that all aspects of the Bill can be fully implemented effectively.
Lord McNally
My Lords, as I indicated, what we said, the probing of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and the Minister’s reply are in Hansard and will be of use in the other place when they make their judgment about whether the Bill is drafted tightly enough in these matters. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I thank all those involved for their interest in, engagement with and scrutiny of the Bill over the past few months. The UK space industry is a British success story—a story of invention, innovation and global ambition. The Bill will take us further, enabling new satellite launch services and low-gravity spaceflight from UK spaceports, and supporting our industrial strategy to deliver a stronger economy that works for everyone.
I thank my predecessor, my noble friend Lord Callanan, who took the Bill through its early stages, and I thank the noble Lords, Lord Rosser, Lord Tunnicliffe, Lord McNally, and Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who provided rigorous scrutiny throughout this process. I am grateful for the contributions of my noble friend Lord Moynihan; I, for one, will miss the strong advocacy for a certain location in Scotland. Finally, I thank policy officials and lawyers from the UK Space Agency, the Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for their work on the Bill.
It has been a privilege to debate the Bill with noble Lords, whose knowledge and expertise I have found incredibly helpful. We have taken on many of the recommendations of the DPRRC and the Constitution Committee, and I thank them for their work. The constructive engagement, conversations and debates we have had together have led to significant improvements to the Bill. This is an example of this House at its best, where proper scrutiny and challenge can—put simply—lead to a better Bill. Today, therefore, we stand one step closer to a new commercial space age, and I beg to move.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, the Minister and the Bill team for their willingness to consider the points we have raised about the Bill during its passage through this House. A number of meetings have been held, which we appreciated, and we welcome the changes the Government have been prepared to see made to the Bill as a result.
I also thank my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe for—I was going to say “his advice and support” but the reality is that it has been infinitely more than that. I also thank Grace Wright in our office for all the hard and vitally important work that she has done for us on the Bill.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, in thanking both the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. Although I teased him at the time that he was not missed, it is clear that there was a smooth and orderly passing of the ball to the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, who has carried out her role with great skill and charm and has made herself and officials available, for which we are grateful. Our Bill team consisted of Sarah Pughe, who has been a great help to me, and my noble friends Lady Randerson and Lord Fox. I have enjoyed working with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, who brings his eye for detail to these matters, and with the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, who brought his experiences as an ex-pilot. I will remember two contributions by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. He reminded us that a rocket is a controlled explosion, which puts some of the health and safety aspects into perspective. He also said that the first civil aviation Act in 1920 completely underestimated the explosion of air travel that was about to come. Therefore, those who write off this Bill as a bit of futurology may be surprised at how soon some of this comes to pass.
I take pride that the problem of space rubbish has been put firmly in the Bill. It is now part of the Liberal Democrat lexicon, along with clean pavements and other matters. It was a delight to have contributions from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who, as a Minister, made such a contribution to giving the space industry of which we are so proud its impetus. We all look forward to the opening of the Moynihan International Spaceport in Scotland, which I am sure will be a festive occasion.
One has to say and lead the worry that Brexit casts a long shadow over this industry. It is important that, if Brexit were to go ahead, the industry be well protected to make progress.
Again I thank the Minister and her team for making this Bill a good example of the House of Lords at work.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I add my gratitude and appreciation to the ministerial team, both present and past, who have worked so diligently on this Bill. It was very helpful that the Bill was published in an early form for consultation in both Houses, which has led to a series of improvements. My noble friend the Minister has listened carefully, particularly on the question of secondary legislation, to ensure that as much of that as possible was addressed during the passage of the Bill. Indeed, it will continue to be so in another place.
This is an important Bill which provides the regulatory and legal framework now which will take the industry forward. However, none of us should be under any illusion—while we can provide the regulatory and legal framework—that we do not need to work closely with the private sector to make sure that this is a commercial success. Ultimately, these spaceports will require close co-operation between government and the private sector.
My noble friend has mentioned that I have been an advocate in part for a certain location in Scotland, which I think was her phrase. The House should be under no illusion whatever that that location is Prestwick Airport. It is head and shoulders the best airport to be licensed for spacecraft activities at the earliest possible stage in this country. This has been self-evident throughout our deliberations. All noble Lords will, of course, be welcome to the opening of Prestwick when it is finally licensed as the first spaceport in the United Kingdom.
Lord Lang of Monkton (Con)
My Lords, I wonder whether I might be permitted a brief intervention. I do so with some diffidence and an apology to your Lordships for not being present on Second Reading, for diary reasons, although I have sat in on some of the subsequent parts of the Bill.
I too have an interest to declare. Like my noble friend Lord Moynihan, I live quite close to Prestwick Airport—almost as close as he does, but on the other side of the runway. However, I am glad to say that I am on the same side of the argument as him. I strongly endorse all that he said with such clarity, efficiency and thoroughness throughout all the stages of the Bill. Regarding the suitability of Prestwick Airport—I know that we are talking about the Bill, not just Prestwick Airport; I had better say first that it was a good Bill and is now a better Bill as a result of the consideration it has had—I cannot help but support its case. It is a fine, well-established airport of long standing. It was a base for the stratocruisers that left London, on their way to New York; they stopped there to refuel, both outwards and inwards. From there, it moved on to another fine record, with the location of Scottish Aviation. It now has 2,300 aerospace jobs nearby. It is close to the sea and open at all hours. Really, it is underused, but it has a basic infrastructure that could receive all the elaborate infrastructure needed for a space base.
There is a slightly broader point that is briefly worth making. The fact remains that the Scottish economy is trailing that of the rest of the United Kingdom, for reasons that I will not indulge in, for political reasons. In Scotland, the Ayrshire economy is also suffering to a considerable degree. It is one of the most socially deprived areas in Scotland, with one in five people living in a deprived area—rather more than in the rest of Scotland. Unemployment is at nearly 8% in Ayrshire, compared to 5% in the rest of Scotland. There is a strong case for the triggering of a huge potential economic payback from the circumstances in which the spaceport would be located.
The Government made a commitment in their manifesto at the last election to invest in Scotland. This is an opportunity to do so.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
My Lord, this is not a Third Reading speech. You are meant to just quickly say thank you and then we will move on.
Lord Lang of Monkton
I will bring my speech to an immediate conclusion. These are important, but peripheral, points. The essential point is that the Bill is a fine one and that Prestwick is an ideal location. I wish the Bill all speed for the rest of its passage.
Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Bill
Tuesday 28th November 2017
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Act 2018 View all Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 65-R-I Marshalled list for Report (PDF, 60KB) - (24 Nov 2017)
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
That the Report be now received.
Clause 1: Relief from local non-domestic rates: occupied hereditaments
Amendment 1
Baroness Pinnock
“(c) require that a certain proportion of the relief granted to providers under this Act must apply to hereditaments in deprived or isolated areas of England and Wales.”
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I now bring us from space back down to earth with the telecoms Bill. I draw the House’s attention to my interest as a councillor in Kirklees and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
As I said at earlier stages of the Bill, this is a constructive way of providing an incentive to IT providers to lay more fibre, with the intention of enabling more properties—both households and businesses—to access superfast broadband. My concern throughout the passage of the Bill has been that a scarce resource—public money—is being used indiscriminately. Any company that lays fibre, be it a billion-pound company or a smaller provider, can benefit. Any fibre that is laid will qualify, regardless of the wider public interest.
The benefit of fibre to the cabinet in the street is dependent on the distance from that cabinet to the property. At 300 metres away, the benefit will be negligible—although the Government’s current, but unjustifiable, measure is 1 kilometre. Broadband speeds are also dependent on the connectivity from the cabinet to the property; a copper connection further degenerates the broadband speed available. By the way, I am pleased to see that action is being taken elsewhere to ensure that adverts for broadband speeds will show realistic speeds attainable in properties, particularly households.
The concerns I just described are the reasons for the amendment. Its purpose is to make sure that the Government make the most effective possible use of scarce public resources. I listened most carefully to the Minister’s response in Committee to the practical difficulties in my amendment. It would now add this to the list of potential regulations under proposed new subsection (10) of Section 44 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988. It would require that at least some part of the resources is allocated to improve connectivity in areas of deprivation and isolation. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, raised connectivity in remote areas. I thank her for her remarks. It is an issue that we explored at Second Reading and in Grand Committee, and one that I absolutely agreed is of utmost importance, as I do now.
The amendment seeks to ensure that deprived or isolated areas receive “a certain proportion” of the relief. However, it is not clear what exactly that would entail as the term “a certain proportion” is not defined. By its very nature, all areas would get “a certain proportion” of the relief depending on how much and where fibre is deployed and lit from 1 April 2017. If the noble Baroness intends for “deprived or isolated areas”—again, those are not defined—to receive a higher proportion of the relief than others, the amendment would not have that effect.
The Government cannot therefore agree to the amendment as it is technically deficient and does not fully engage with how the telecoms networks are deployed and the approach taken to upgrade our networks with more fibre. I do not want to dwell on the technical deficiencies because even if they were resolved the amendment would still not be in keeping with the Bill’s very simple aim—to promote fibre connectivity wherever it takes place.
As my right honourable friend the Minister for Digital said in the other place, we need to think of the fibre network like a growing tree—he is a romantic soul. We already have a strong trunk, which links our great cities and connects Britain to the world, but we must now grow the boughs and branches. We must grow out this fibre not just in the trunk or the boughs, but in a multitude of branches that serve people’s houses, businesses, and all the public services of the land. The point is, we need to support fibre everywhere and if the relief is not available to support the growth of those branches then they may not grow at all, such is the difficult balance of the business case for more fibre. Therefore, if we seek to ensure that particular areas benefit more than others it is possible we will undermine that business case and deprived or isolated areas may not benefit at all. I do not believe this was the noble Baroness’s intention.
We do agree that it is vital to see improved connectivity in remote and indeed rural areas. People need at least acceptable broadband at home and at work; it is essential for modern life. That is why the Government have consulted on the design of a broadband universal service obligation, which would provide a digital safety net by giving everyone, no matter where they live, the legal right to request a connection to broadband speeds of at least 10 megabits per second. But we are not satisfied with just acceptable levels of access: we want to ensure that businesses and households throughout the country have access to faster broadband—superfast and better. By the end of this year, 19 out of 20 premises will have access to superfast broadband. We are taking steps to ensure that the figure rises even further in the next two years so that 97% of households and businesses have superfast access.
Some £30 million of the £200 million funding under the England Rural Development Programme has been made available through Defra. This is targeted at supporting rural businesses and growth, for broadband services in these areas at speeds of 30 megabits per second or faster where this is not currently available or planned, and to ensure that all areas can and do have the broadband speeds they will need for the future.
The Government are delivering a series of measures to support the rollout of fibre broadband in addition to the measure we are debating today. We launched the £190 million challenge fund as part of the Autumn Budget for local bodies to bid into as part of the local full fibre networks programme. As it was being developed during this year, we received a great deal of interest in that programme from local bodies in all parts of the UK, not least in rural and remote areas. The projects delivered under this programme will, we expect, encourage further commercial development of future-proofed fibre networks right across the country. This follows our announcement last year of more than £1 billion to support digital infrastructure.
Also part of that substantial sum is the digital infrastructure investment fund. That involves £400 million of government financing now being administered by fund managers and will attract significant private investment which will be available for alternative providers to use for fibre networks. This work will have impacts right across the country and enable operators to make the commercial case for wider deployment. In summary, therefore, the Government acknowledge that all areas of the country need decent broadband. That includes urban and rural areas which do not have it. I have outlined the measures the Government are taking to achieve this, but the Bill has one simple aim: to incentivise new fibre optic cable wherever it is laid, because we need it everywhere. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I notice that the Minister, in his detailed response, made the assertion that we would have what he described as “decent broadband” throughout the country. I have to say that I query the definition of “decent broadband” that is provided by the Government. A speed of 10 megabits per second is not really acceptable in the current way that business and households operate. The Government’s measure of “decent broadband” being within one kilometre of where the fibre is laid to the street cabinet certainly does not provide broadband speeds at the property, given that 300 metres away it has degenerated to such an extent that the improvement is negligible.
What concerns me, and I have pressed it throughout the passage of the Bill, is that all public bodies—understandably, and supported by me—are moving to digital by design. For instance, if you are unemployed and in receipt of employment and support allowance you are required to make job applications online. If you are not in a facility with good broadband speeds, that is really difficult.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
Let me make one thing clear: the universal service obligation, which we have said will come in 2020, will be at 10 megabits per second which although I know is not acceptable to a lot of people, will allow things such as job applications to be done: you can even download and watch a film at 10 megabits per second. The universal service obligation, which is a safety net, will be available to everyone.
Baroness Pinnock
I thank the Minister for his intervention but if he has ever tried to watch a film at 10 megabits per second he will discover that you get gaps while you are watching it because the download speed is variable.
I am concerned about people who live in isolated areas and those in more deprived communities who will not be able to afford full fibre to their household and the consequent monthly payments. I have been making this case throughout the passage of the Bill, because we need to consider broadband access as an essential utility and at the moment I do not think that the Government are seeing it in that light. Nevertheless, I understand the technical arguments that have been made and I accept the Minister’s statement that the Government appreciate the importance of all households having access to broadband Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Time period for the availability of the relief under this Act
(1) Subject to the provisions under section 6(2), the amendments made by this Act will have effect for the period of five financial years after 1 April 2017.(2) The appropriate national authority may by regulations made by statutory instrument extend the time period for which the relief is to be made available.(3) A statutory instrument containing regulations made by the Secretary of State under subsection (2) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.(4) A statutory instrument containing regulations made by the Welsh Ministers under subsection (2) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, the National Assembly for Wales.(5) For the purposes of this section, “appropriate national authority” is(a) in relation to England, the Secretary of State;(b) in relation to Wales, the Welsh Ministers.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, first, I draw the attention of the House to my registered interests: namely, as a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
As we have heard, the Bill is not controversial. It seeks to help with the boosting of the switchover to fibre from our old copper broadband network. This is important as we need to increase the take-up of fibre at a faster pace, and it is recognised that an exemption from business rates could prove an incentive to speed up the process and get more of our outdated network on to a fibre network in a shorter period of time.
Amendment 4 in my name adds a new clause which puts into the Bill the time from which the relief from business rates will operate; namely, five years from 1 April 2017. I considered the issues at Second Reading and in Committee and my amendment seeks to give an additional power to the Secretary of State in England and to Welsh Ministers in Wales: that is, the ability to seek approval to extend the period for which the business rate relief is available to those companies that are installing new fibre beyond the initial period of five years.
The extension would have to be approved by both Houses of Parliament using the affirmative procedure. There will be parliamentary oversight of the process as it enables the Government to have the power to extend the scheme without the need for primary legislation. I think it is proportionate in the circumstances. It is a simple measure and will be an effective way of continuing the scheme if it has been deemed successful in helping roll out the network faster. Of course, if it has not been successful, the scheme will be ended and the option will not be taken up. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for moving this amendment. As noble Lords will know, the matter of whether the five years of the rate relief scheme should appear in the Bill was also raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.
As currently drafted, the Bill would allow the relief to apply indefinitely. The draft regulations that we published for consultation would provide that the relief is limited to five years from 1 April 2017—so the five-year period of the scheme appears in secondary legislation rather than in the Bill. We have taken this approach to retain the ability to repeat the scheme for later years without the need to return for more primary legislation. This will allow us to consider the success of the scheme in a timely manner as 2022 approaches.
Nevertheless, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has made a very strong argument for why the five years should appear in the Bill. We have been clear that the purpose of the Bill is to implement the Chancellor’s commitment to offer five years of relief, and we now accept that such a fundamental aspect of the policy should appear in the Bill. But I am grateful that the noble Lord also recognises the value of retaining the ability to extend or repeat the relief scheme without another Bill. Therefore, we also agree that we should take a power to change the period of the relief and that this power should be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, as the noble Lord set out.
As I have discussed with the noble Lord—and I appreciate the opportunity to do so—we intend to move our own amendment at Third Reading, achieving the noble Lord’s aim but ironing out one or two drafting defects just to ensure that we can make these changes. We will table the amendment tomorrow. Once more I thank the noble Lord for his constructive and helpful approach. I hope that, with these assurances, he will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, very much. As he said, we had a very useful meeting a few days ago. I am very pleased that the Government have accepted the main thrust of what I am suggesting to the House. I am happy to withdraw the amendment at this stage and look forward to seeing the Minister’s amendment when he tables it tomorrow.
Mental Health Services: Black and Minority Ethnic Communities
Lord Boateng
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in improving mental health services for people from black and ethnic minority communities.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, in moving the Motion in my name on the Order Paper, I pay tribute at the outset to the very many black and minority ethnic patients who have suffered from what the Prime Minister rightly described as “a long-standing injustice” —discrimination in the mental health service of our NHS. I want also to pay tribute to their carers, their families and the clinicians who have stood behind and alongside them in what has often been a difficult and challenging fight to have recognised the injustice to which they have been subjected.
This injustice is rooted in the issue of race. There is no escape from that reality, however uncomfortable it may be. All the evidence—from the Mental Health Foundation and the Prime Minister’s own excellent race disparity audit—shows that, if you are from a black or minority ethnic community, you are more likely to be hospitalised, to be in receipt of pharmaceutical rather than talking therapeutic interventions, to be detained or to have less good outcomes than your white counterparts. You are also more likely to feel alienated and ill served by the mental health service. This is the sad reality of the conditions that black and minority ethnic patients face in the mental health system.
In earlier debates in this House, we have heard that it is the Secretary of State’s wish that safety should run like a golden thread through the NHS. This is a commendable wish but, sadly, for black and minority ethnic people NHS mental health services are not a safe place. Too many have died or been the subject of abuse for us to be able to say this with any degree of certainty.
In his ground-breaking report on the tragic circumstances surrounding the death in secure hospital accommodation of Rocky Bennett, Mr Justice Blofeld referred to institutional racism in NHS mental health services. He referred to the services received by black and minority ethnic communities as “a festering abscess” on the NHS. I fear that many people who have experienced what the black and minority ethnic communities go through in the NHS will concur with that verdict.
The Prime Minister has done the nation a great service by highlighting the injustices in the treatment of black and minority ethnic people within the NHS and by initiating an independent review of the Mental Health Act. I commend and welcome that, but it is important to remember that it is only one part of the picture. The wider picture is the context in which the Act is administered. So we look forward to the outcome of the independent review. We hope that the Government will legislate urgently on it and that it will have rights-based conclusions. These will enable patients to access services that are underwritten by capacity within the health service so that we can meet the norms that we look to achieve. We hope for all those things.
In the meantime, it is vital that we address the issue of patient care now. I hope that in the course of this short debate we will be able to come up with some practical recommendations and proposals in that regard which can be implemented—and implemented as a matter of urgency. Over the years, there have been many inquiries and studies in this area. They were initiated by successive Governments with good intentions but the reality is that, in the main, they have been only partially implemented and when they have, I fear that they were underresourced. I urge the Minister, as she takes forward the Prime Minister’s initiative on mental health, to ensure that along with the recommendations come resources, a timescale for those recommendations to be implemented and, importantly, a gathering of the data to enable us to judge the outcomes. Without the data, we will not be able to make the judgments or have the insights necessary to establish whether patients are getting the care that they need.
It is also important that we spread good practice. I have been a very junior Health Minister and I know that the holy grail in the NHS is to spread good practice. There is some great stuff going on out there, even in the field of BAME mental health, but there is also some terrible stuff. The challenge for Ministers, service providers and commissioners is in how we spread the good practice and ensure that inevitable pressures on budgets do not lead to neglect of this area because it is simply all too difficult. It is difficult and complex; we are dealing with not just an illness but racism and the encompassing social disadvantage and exclusion. No one pretends it is easy but we have to address it, and in ways that make a practical difference on the ground to hard-pressed clinicians, to hard-pressed community workers and, above all, to the patients and their carers.
I shall make a number of brief points on some positive ways forward. First, it is important to recognise the interface between local authorities, health authorities, hospitals and providers in this area. I believe—I championed this as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and I go on doing so—in having pooled budgets wherever you possibly can. I am also driven to the conclusion that although the Treasury does not like hypothecation or ring-fences, there is no alternative when it comes to mental health. If we do not ring-fence then I am afraid, for reasons that many Peers in this Room who have day-to-day experience of it will know, it simply will not happen. I urge the Minister, as she takes forward these proposals with her colleagues, to look at pooled budgets and ring-fencing.
Secondly, it is important that we find ways of ensuring that patients themselves have a voice and that patient advocacy is taken seriously. My early experience as a young community lawyer in this area showed that patients need advocates. They may need community advocates and sometimes they need professional advocates. We have to look at how they access help in that regard.
My third point is on early intervention. I fear that, when we look at what the evidence shows in relation to black and minority ethnic communities, all too often it is the police and the prison officers who have to deal with this issue, because there has been no earlier accessing of services. I have been Police Minister and Prisons Minister. I know just how hard it is for those professionals, without adequate training or support from the surrounding services, to deal with mental health patients in custodial settings and in circumstances in which the police are called to the scene on the streets or in private premises. We have to look at ways, whether community street triage or whatever, of ensuring that the police and prison services get the professional support, and the funding underpinning that, to enable them to respond and, even more importantly, that these communities have a sense that they can access services before they reach that acute and desperate level; that is, early intervention.
Finally, progress and best practice in this area have tended to come when the community and the voluntary sector in the community have been involved. There are some excellent examples in Brent, Lambeth, Birmingham and elsewhere of black and minority ethnic community-led voluntary organisations working with GPs and hospitals to deliver services. Very often, these organisations are the first to get cut at a time of pressure on local authority and health budgets. They are, in fact, the last organisations we should be cutting out of the picture, because they are a depository of good practice and understanding and a gateway into the service for the community.
I end on that, save to say: we know what needs to be done. I sense that across the Chamber, in both Houses and in the wider community there is a desire and a will that it should be done, so let us adopt what I learned in South Africa as a particular approach when there is a will and when there is an outcome. It is encapsulated in this one word “Vukuzenzele”, which simply means, “Let’s get on with it. Let’s do it”.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing such an important and timely debate on an issue of real interest to many people and communities across the country. Good mental health is essential for a healthy society, and it is positive that recently there has been a greater emphasis on mental health and calls for it to be afforded parity with physical health. I have worked with people with mental health difficulties. I worked in Tottenham in mental health services, I was a councillor in Hackney and in Islington, and I sat on one of the first mental health and social care trusts, the Camden and Islington trust, which was established about 15 years ago to bring mental health and social care together—so we have come a long way. However, the figures show that black and minority ethnic communities are still not getting access, quality services and, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said, early intervention at the appropriate time.
Yesterday, while preparing for this debate, I read that there are now 5,000 fewer mental health nurses than there were in 2010. Will the Minister say whether that is the case—and, if it is, what is being done to recruit more mental health nurses?
Figures show that in recent years people from the black community have had the highest rate of detention in hospitals under the Mental Health Act—56.9 per 100 people—and people from Asian groups have had the second-highest rate. These are shocking and very stark figures. We know that socio-economic factors contribute to these findings. We know that coming from a poorer background, living in an inner city and encountering poverty and discrimination contribute to poor mental health. Stigma is attached, and there is a lack of willingness to seek help when necessary because families and individuals worry that they may be stigmatised within their own community.
For a long time there has been a lot of research—it is not new research; it has been going on for many years—and many findings about the challenges facing BME communities. However, so far there has not been significant change to improve the outcomes and satisfaction consistently—this is the important point—across the country. There are pockets of excellence, and some very good services, but they are not always accessible to people across the country. Health services and local councils, as I have said in my previous roles, have a range of statutory duties and functions related to mental health and supporting mental health well-being. From housing to public health, social care and leisure services, councils lead local services that help prevent mental ill-health and which support early intervention and provide ongoing support.
The evidence, some of which was referred to by the noble Lord, is overwhelming. It always shocks me—it did when I first read it 15 years ago, and it still shocks me now—that people from black and minority ethnic groups living in the UK are more likely to be diagnosed with mental health problems, more likely to be diagnosed and admitted to hospital, more likely to experience a poor outcome from their treatments, and less likely to have talking and other therapies.
It is particularly shocking that African-Caribbean people are still more likely to enter mental health services via the courts or the police than from primary care, which is the gatekeeper for treatment for most people. They are more likely to be treated under the Mental Health Act and more likely to receive medication, and are often overrepresented in high and medium secure units and prisons. This was the finding of a report by the Mental Health Foundation in 2014. I would be very surprised if those figures have changed dramatically in the intervening years. It is very disappointing.
I will turn briefly to youth justice. The Taylor review in 2016 indicated that many children and young people who offend have mental health, behavioural or learning difficulties, and often these conditions have gone undiagnosed. These problems can often be the root cause of a child’s offending, and frequently are a barrier to progress in education and proper engagement at school. This is particularly concerning because as many as 60% to 70% of children and adolescents who experience mental health difficulties have not had appropriate interventions at an early age. Can the Minister say what is being done to address this appalling statistic?
In a recent review of child and adolescent mental health services by the CQC, waiting times were highlighted as a big concern. Young people themselves, when they were interviewed for the report, said that they felt that the waiting lists were the big problem and that when they reached crisis point they ended up in A&E. Staff in A&E are already at breaking point and are not trained sufficiently to deal with this. This is a real problem and creates a revolving door for many young people.
At school, mental health support is not always there. As we have already heard, early intervention support is not always available, so young people and children in schools who need it are often quickly labelled as “naughty”, “a troublemaker” or “difficult”, and find themselves excluded or facing time out of school, when in fact what they and their family need is proper support in dealing with these early signs. There is a great disparity in the way BME communities, children and young people are treated. There is a plethora of research and information which highlights this. We do not need to prove it; we know it exists. What we are doing is highlighting what we can do about it.
The commission called for a patients and carers race equality standard to be piloted in mental health, to ensure that there is no discrimination against particular groups of patients, alongside other efforts to improve the experience of care for people from BME communities, including staff training. Will the review of the Mental Health Act consider how we can prevent more people from BAME communities reaching mental health crisis in the first place?
What steps will the review of the Mental Health Act take to ensure that the views of a cross-section of society are being represented? It is really important that views are heard. If we want to reduce the inequalities in mental health for BAME communities, we need to make health services work for them. That means listening, particularly to those who are already in the system, their families and their carers, who are constantly trying to get the best services for family members. It also means supporting the voluntary and community organisations that are working to meet the needs of communities. Without this, it would be impossible for BAME people to have confidence in mental health care services.
Lord Ouseley (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing this debate and for his eloquent introduction to it. No one is better equipped to articulate this issue than the noble Lord, with his experience not only on the streets across London and other parts of the country but in occupying high office.
My own experience with mental health services goes back some four or five decades, running local authority adult care services at a time when mental health services were almost invisible. Predominantly white mental health patients were hidden away, left in corners or locked away. Very rarely were any specialised services prioritised for people with mental health conditions. That is the memory that I still hold of seeing how mentally ill people were treated. Thankfully, we have moved on and that era is now over. We are better aware of the needs of people with mental health disorders.
As the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, pointed out, what was important during that period was community-based responses to the needs of people within those communities who were being deprived of the right diagnosis and the right care. The extent and complexity of mental health issues require careful consideration to determine the appropriateness and adequacy of provision to meet the different and varied needs of patients and sufferers, as well as providing support for their dependants and carers. That was the situation then and it remains so now.
Another complexity within this debate is how we respond to an increasingly diverse population, with a wide range of ethnic minority groups experiencing some degree of adverse mental health conditions. Given language and cultural differences and the way that people interact with standardised perceptions of monocultural responses, there are likely to be wrong diagnoses and inappropriate prescriptions. That has been the case in responding to the mental health needs of black and minority ethnic sufferers over the years.
Incremental improvements in service provision have been driven by representations and campaigning by voluntary community groups. That has been backed up by community representation and research studies showing ethnic disproportionality and race disparities, with the evidence of discriminatory treatment. Data from surveys and studies consistently confirms variations in the prevalence of disorders affecting different ethnic groups and requiring appropriate responses to meet their particular needs.
Arguing about the particular and different needs of ethnic minorities is often seen as pleading for special treatment. However, we should understand that, by responding to the different needs of BAME patients and sufferers, the NHS is able to enhance its responses to all sufferers and patients by recognising the importance of dealing with each individual in an evidence-based and appropriate manner. It is the way in which we are able to deal with one particular problem that exposes the weaknesses of not treating people as individuals and diagnosing their needs in a proper and appropriate way. The ultimate benefit of ending discrimination and disproportionality in mental health services as they impact on black and minority ethnic communities will be the essential knock-on effect of making mental health services provision more appropriate for meeting the individual needs of every mental health patient and sufferer in the country.
Race and ethnic disproportionality is a fact, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, pointed out. It is a reality. With one in six adults in the UK and one in 10 children experiencing some form of mental health condition, the NHS is under pressure to respond with adequate resources—one issue already picked up—expert practitioners, clinicians, carers and the provision of advice and support to meet the medical and care needs of patients and sufferers and, to stress once again, their families and those who are supporting them.
The Government’s recent Race Disparity Audit reveals that, in the general adult population, black women were recently assessed as more likely to have experiences of common mental disorders such as anxiety and/or depression and black men were the most likely to have experienced psychotic disorders. There is nothing new in that. Most significant, and well known for years among the black and minority ethnic communities, is the fact that black adults were more likely than adults in any other ethnic minority group to have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Assumptions made by some police officers when attending reported incidents, particularly involving black and ethnic minority men, often result in them being detained in police cells rather than receiving appropriate treatment for their mental health disorders. Many of the deaths in custody, which have indeed disproportionately involved black and minority ethnic men, appear avoidable in retrospect. Some have even received inquest verdicts of unlawful killing without any consequential prosecutions or justice for the families of the deceased. The use of unreasonable force in such scenarios has been highlighted by campaigning organisations, and the recently reported use of Tasers by police entering mental hospitals when called on is another issue that must be addressed, because it is of concern to the community.
With regard to the progress being made to improve mental health services for black and minority ethnic communities, it is important to get some response from the Minister about the guidance alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, on good practice: how it is being disseminated and implemented, the action that should flow and who is involved in assessing the effectiveness of the implementation and the process. Are community organisations, families and, indeed, patients part of that process? There is also concern about the involvement of community groups in helping to reduce barriers and improve the uptake of and access to psychological therapies to all sections of the community.
In conclusion, my final point is one which probably deserves a lot more time. It is the increasing number of children and young people who are affected by mental health conditions. It would be useful if the Minister could tell us what systems are in place for the rapid and early identification of children in need of specialised services and for them to be referred to the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, with access to evidence-based and appropriate interventions.
The Lord Bishop of Worcester
My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing this debate and, like the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, pay tribute not only to his eloquent introduction but to all he has done in this area. We owe him a great debt of gratitude.
Some of the evidence which has already been cited—there is lots more— concerning black and minority-ethnic individuals and mental health is a dreadful indictment of our society. One of the most shocking statistics to me is that UK minority-ethnic individuals are 40% more likely than white Britons to come into contact with mental health services through the criminal justice system rather than through referral from GPs or talking therapies. There have been a number of explanations for these differences, including limited awareness of or reluctance to engage with statutory services at an early stage of illness, possibly due to previous poor experiences, the belief that services are not culturally appropriate, or the stigma around mental health in some communities. Cultural differences in how mental health is perceived may also decrease the likelihood of individuals seeking care before reaching crisis point.
However, it has been recognised that differences in treatment for individuals experiencing mental health issues also arise from what is politely described as cultural differences on the part of the onlooker—in particular in relation to a number of high-profile cases involving Afro-Caribbean men, to which the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, has already referred. The problem arises from racialised views of a black man being more aggressive or out of control. Such views are racist and a terrible indictment on our society.
It is good that organisations working with black and minority-ethnic communities around mental health have recognised and responded to many of these issues. Understanding them and highlighting best practice, as has been indicated, is crucial to tackling poor mental health outcomes in black and minority-ethnic communities. I fear that the Church’s record has not always been good in its attitude to mental health or indeed, in its attitude to black and minority-ethnic people. We are now working very hard on both, and I hope that we have something positive to offer.
Medical Ethics: A Christian Perspective, published by the Mission and Public Affairs Council as a position paper, articulates salient theological themes informing Christian approaches to healthcare in general and adumbrates four guiding ethical principles arising from them: affirming life; caring for the vulnerable; building community; and respecting the individual. I make reference here only to the imperative to affirm life. That is to say that every individual life has purpose, value and meaning, even if some individuals may doubt that for themselves. It also means that we wish to see everyone attain the highest quality of life possible in whatever circumstances they find themselves. A civilised society is one that fundamentally affirms life and ensures that this and other benefits and protection are fairly experienced by all its members.
In practice, of course, this means giving particular attention to vulnerable individuals and groups. History indicates that the powerful will often neglect or abuse the vulnerable unless strong and specific action is taken to protect them. Caring for the vulnerable, however, goes beyond issues of protection. It includes ensuring that vulnerable people are supported, cared for and enabled to live fulfilled lives, and being afforded the same respect as other members of society. That is what is at stake here. You do not have to be a Christian to sign up for all that.
As the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, suggested, most people agree on what needs to be done—on both sides of this House, in the other place, and in wider society. If we are to be a truly civilised society, we need to put resources into ensuring that these problems are properly addressed. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, has suggested some sensible, practical ways forward while we await the outcome of the welcome inquiry into mental health legislation which the Prime Minister has announced.
What can the Church do? We have been looking at this as part of a black and minority-ethnic concerns mental health project. In Breaking the Circles of Fear, the Church of England Mission and Public Affairs Council published a report in which we make it clear that in addition to church leaders, church workers and chaplains becoming more fully aware of mental health issues among black and minority-ethnic individuals, we want to ensure that cultural competence is displayed by all those ministering to individuals with poor mental health.
That could have a large effect on wider society. The Church has a ready-made network of communities, buildings and pastoral contacts that we want to utilise in helping to design and deliver culturally appropriate and accessible services in collaboration with local communities. Being embedded in communities, the Church can play a leading role in helping to educate both communities and health professionals with regard to health issues. At all levels the Church can be a voice for the voiceless, helping to reduce the stigma often associated with early mental illness, and thereby helping to address the problem of the lack of early intervention among black and minority-ethnic individuals.
I stand with the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, in commending the Prime Minister’s initiative on mental health and in pressing for the question of patient care to be addressed in the meantime, before the independent inquiry reports. I hope that the Minister will be able to give assurances on this.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Boateng for promoting this important debate and for the very masterly way in which he introduced it. I also welcome the return of the noble Baroness the Minister. I normally speak on alcohol and drugs issues but there is a very strong overlap here with mental health, and I hope to speak on mental health more in the future than I have in the past—particularly on this area, where I have some experience.
As we are aware, the Government’s recently published race audit highlighted differences in the rates of mental illness among different ethnic groups. For example, it is estimated that in the past year psychotic disorders were more than 10 times as prevalent among black men as among white men. With regard to access to treatment, the audit highlighted that white British adults were more likely to receive treatment for a mental or emotional problem compared with other ethnic groups.
The acute care commission report, led by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, who is here today, helpfully summarised some of the evidence around access to general mental health services. For example, Indian, Bangladeshi and Chinese people had consistently low referral rates to crisis teams, but BME groups, particularly black Caribbean patients, were generally more likely to be admitted to hospital once they had been seen by a crisis team. There is also evidence that some BME groups have more complex pathways into care than white patients, with more involvement by the police and the criminal justice system, as my noble friend Lord Boateng and others have mentioned.
We also know that, compared to white patients, black patients are 53.8% more likely and Asian patients 42.4% more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act. I therefore welcome the independent review into the Mental Health Act being led by Professor Sir Simon Wessely. I hope that it will provide an in-depth analysis of why this is happening. I hope that the review will also consider how we can prevent people reaching a crisis in the first place and how we can improve crisis services for those who need them most. Therefore, I would be grateful if the noble Baroness could say just what research will be coming out in this exercise and how we are going to establish the main causes behind these problems.
Moving back to services, we know that the literature suggests that there are multiple complex reasons for these differences between ethnic groups. BME groups have higher rates of mental illness, and there are also some psychosocial factors to take into consideration. For example, there is evidence that some BME groups are less likely to view themselves as having a mental illness. In some communities, there is still a large amount of stigma surrounding mental illness and there can also be a mistrust of the services on offer. These factors may lead to patients not seeking help early and thus presenting in crisis.
So why is this still happening? We have known about inequalities in our mental health care system for many years and a number of policies have tried to tackle these issues—for example, there was the Delivering Race Equality in Mental Health Care report as long ago as 2005. These policies have helped to raise awareness of the issues, but the inequalities still remain. What is the Minister’s analysis of why these policies have not had the desired effect and how can we implement policy which starts to improve the current situation?
Next, I would like to focus on the recommendation from the acute care commission, led by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, which asked for a patients’ and carers’ race equality standard to be piloted to try to improve the experience of care for people from BME communities. What progress has been made on the report’s recommendation that it should:
“Identify a clear and measurable set of Race Equality Standards for acute mental health services by October 2016 and pilot them in a selection of Trusts from April 2017”?
We need to raise awareness of mental ill health and availability of services among BME groups. We need to ensure that there are strategies in place to reduce the stigma of mental illness and to ensure that services are more culturally aware. One recommendation from the guide published by the joint commissioning panel for mental health is that we need,
“targeted investment in public mental health interventions for BME communities”.
What it is being done to ensure that commissioners across the country are starting to take this recommendation on board and act on it?
How can the Government bring together different groups, such as healthcare services, social services, police, community groups, commissioners and, of course, drug and alcohol treatment services, so that patients and carers work together on this topic to develop culturally appropriate interventions and to make real improvements? One problem that I often see is that if someone has a drink and drug problem as well as a mental health one, no attention is paid to the latter. Vice versa, if someone goes into hospital with mental health as well as drink and drug problems, no help is offered to them. They fall between the two and we need to look for ways to bring the services together and avoid a repetition of the problems.
In summary, inequalities in mental health have, as we all know, persisted for many years. Past attempts have not had the impact we would like to see in improving the situation. We need to be united in our campaign efforts to ensure that people from BME groups get the access to mental health services they need. We need to improve public mental health and focus more on prevention than we have in the past. The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health says:
“People with mental health problems, regardless of their age, ethnicity, or any other characteristic will have swift access to holistic, integrated and evidence-based care for the biological, psychological and social issues related to their needs, in the least restrictive setting and as close to home as possible”.
How can we make this a reality now?
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for bringing this crucial debate to this House and for exploring many of the key issues so eloquently. I declare my interest as a qualified mental health nurse of some 39 years’ standing, who has worked in south London and in rural communities. I am particularly pleased to welcome the return of the noble Baroness. She qualified as a nurse at about the same time as me. I also thank Kathleen McCurdy, a psychiatrist from Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, who is working with me at the moment and who has helped me with this speech.
Other noble Lords have already highlighted the huge disadvantage faced by black and minority ethnic people in the area of mental health. They suffer higher incidences of mental illness, higher rates of admission, threefold excess of compulsory detention under the Mental Health Act, longer periods of hospitalisation, negative experiences of services and poorer overall outcomes than the majority of the population.
As the recent race disparity audit highlights, it is impossible to generalise about BME people and health in the UK. Given the multicultural nature of our country, the term encompasses any number of different societies and cultures, each with a heterogeneous population. We have to remember that each patient is a person with their own unique needs within this wider cultural context and with a right to equal and uncoerced treatment for their mental health problems. Co-design between patients, their significant others and health professionals is essential good practice.
As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the UK was scrutinised last year by a committee, which was highly critical of our treatment of people with a range of disabilities. Its subsequent report expressed significant concern about the use of physical and chemical restraint in healthcare settings on people with disabilities and expressly noted that this disproportionately affected persons belonging to ethnic minority communities. The committee criticised what it referred to as the,
“absence of a unified State party strategy to review these practices”.
I am optimistic that the current review of the Mental Health Act will offer recommendations on that, but that will of course take time. Indeed, there is plentiful evidence to suggest higher rates of coercive practices when it comes to the groups we are talking about. Not only are the rates of compulsory detention under the Mental Health Act significantly higher for ethnic minorities, in particular Afro-Caribbean men, but research by McKenzie and Bhui suggests that people of BME backgrounds are more likely to be placed in seclusion during their admission and much less likely to be offered psychotherapy or other talking therapies. Even following release from hospital, the use of restrictive practices persists for some ethnic groups. Black men are five times more likely to be placed on a community treatment order than their white counterparts, meaning that they may be recalled to hospital if they do not comply with a set of conditions.
Another aspect I wish to highlight is the interface with the criminal justice system, as many BME patients come into contact with mental health systems not via GPs but via the police, the courts or in prison. Black people are 50% more likely to be referred to the mental health system by the police. Additionally, black people disproportionately make up 25% of prisoners and some 40% of young offenders. Other groups are also over- represented in prison populations, particularly Traveller communities, but none is as highly represented as the BME group.
The Angiolini report, published in January this year, acknowledges the disproportionate number of BME people who die after the use of force in custody. We know from a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission that 50% of people who die in custody have mental health problems and 20% are black, which is hugely in excess of the 3% black people in the population as a whole. This is perhaps an unsurprising statistic given the number of high-profile cases of deaths in psychiatric hospitals and police custody secondary to restraint, including Seni Lewis, who was only 22 when he died while being restrained by police on a psychiatric ward. He is one of 46 mental health patients who died following restraint between 2000 and 2014. I am optimistic that the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill making its way through the Houses of Parliament will begin to improve the situation by standardising and allowing scrutiny of practice, but it will be a drop in the ocean compared with the cultural and systemic changes required to improve this complex issue.
However, it is important to acknowledge the positive steps being taken and improvements in good practice that already exist—for example, the street triage schemes, in which a mental health professional, usually a psychiatric nurse, accompanies police to incidents where a subject may need mental health support. Initiated in 2013, these schemes have been effective at reducing Section 136 emergency admissions to hospital and may benefit ethnic minority patients who may otherwise be detained unnecessarily in a police cell or at a place of safety.
I was impressed to hear about the Black Thrive scheme, an initiative led by the Afro-Caribbean community in Lambeth to create a positive dialogue around mental health. It is linked to Healthwatch and the local health and well-being board, and aims to help in prevention, access to support and experience.
On workforce and staffing, it is vital to have a workforce that reflects the diversity of the community it serves. The NHS is the largest employer of BME people in the UK, and since its formation has prided itself on employing BME staff from both the UK and around the world. In 2008, 25% of successful applicants to nursing courses identified as BAME, and this number increased to 30% in mental health nursing. Since the scrapping of bursaries for student nurses, the number of applicants to nursing has fallen. Work needs to be done to make nursing an attractive option to minority ethnic students from the UK, particularly in the context of the drop in overseas nurses coming to work here. I have talked before about the importance of continued professional development, and a key part of this is cultural competence. The European Psychiatric Association recommends mandatory training on cultural competence and sensitivity in areas where it is needed.
There is a well-established link between staff satisfaction and subsequent patient experience—when people understand each other. However, BME staff consistently report higher levels of discrimination and bullying in the workplace and are afforded less opportunity to advance their careers. For example, over two-fifths of London’s population and its NHS staff are from BME backgrounds, but only 8% of trust boards and 12% of senior management are from the same background. Will the Minister give due consideration to investing in a diverse and culturally competent NHS workforce that, at all levels of seniority, reflects the multicultural society in which we live and is trained to be culturally sensitive and able to empower patients?
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, timing remains particularly tight for this debate. I know that we have only three more speakers but I respectfully ask that they stick to eight minutes and conclude their remarks at eight minutes.
Lord Crisp (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Watkins of Tavistock, who is a mental health nurse—an extraordinarily important profession in the whole world of mental health. I also congratulate the noble Lord on raising this important debate. As he said, there has been some improvement but there is much further to go, and it needs to be used and tackled systematically and practically. I note that this is not a simple issue, bringing together as it does issues of race, culture, societal attitudes and epidemiology. However, there should no longer be any excuses for the slow progress that is being made. It has been discussed and thought about for years, and expert guidance is now available from the Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health, set up by the Royal College. I declare an interest as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
First, can the Minister say how effectively this guidance on commissioning is being applied, and with what impact? As other noble Lords have said, it is also good to see that the review of mental health has been asked by the Prime Minister to look particularly at the disproportionate numbers of people from black and minority ethnic groups who have been detained under the Act. I ask the question that other noble Lords have asked as well: will this review consider what can be done to prevent people from black and minority ethnic communities reaching mental health crisis point in the first place? We need to stop the flow into the system, not just treat people better when they are in the system.
On my own recent experience and observation, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, already mentioned, I had the honour to chair on behalf of the Royal College an independent commission on adult acute in-patient psychiatric care, which was made up of a whole group of patients, carers and many people from black and minority ethnic communities. We published a report in February last year—almost two years ago— and as the Minister knows, we are still waiting for the Government’s response. I thank her colleague, the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, for his recent reply to my Written Question, which assured me that the response will be published soon—indeed, I think he said “shortly”.
We made headline recommendations about treating mental and physical health with parity of esteem. The two big issues were: why do we not have a four-hour standard for mental health as we do for physical health; and why are so many people still being admitted for general psychiatric issues out of their own area, sometimes over long distances?
Those were the headline issues, but we also addressed issues relating to people from black and minority ethnic communities. We found clear evidence of the problems that people have talked about here. We saw and heard from people about their experiences. We also saw and heard about good experiences and good practice—both exist within the health service, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said.
We made two specifically relevant recommendations. The first one was about carers. We found that all too often carers were excluded from the initial assessment of patients when they were brought into the service—sometimes with good cause, of course, but in general not; in general it was a routine exclusion of carers. This is related to the points made by the noble Lords, Lord Boateng and Lord Ouseley, about the importance of community-led engagement and voluntary organisations. Carers are a vital source. They provide continuity of experience and advocacy and some level of stability. Their exclusion is probably particularly damaging in cases of people from black and minority ethnic communities who may be feeling disadvantaged within that environment in the first place. We recommended that patients and carers are enabled to play an even greater role in their own care, as well as in service design, provision, monitoring and governance.
I am delighted to say that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, has already mentioned the second recommendation—it is always good when one’s own recommendations are recommended by someone else—but let me spell it out a little more. I suspect people know that in the NHS there is a workforce race equality standard. This is a standard introduced by Yvonne Coghill and colleagues from NHS England which looks at the way in which the workforce within the NHS is treated with regard to a few key indicators about how people from black and minority ethnic communities may be treated differently from others. That was published earlier this year and is starting to have an impact and effect because trusts are able to see the actual experience of their staff. We said as part of our review, “Why is there not a patient and carers race equality standard? Why is there not a standard that looks at the experience of patients and carers?” This could potentially have the same impact of drawing to the attention of trust management and trust boards—who sometimes do not know about these things because they are not close enough to the ground—the experience of their patients and carers. It is interesting that one was introduced in the NHS for staff before one for patients and carers, but I will not go down that route. We recommended that a patient and carers race equality standard should be introduced and piloted in mental health because it was evident that there was a problem in that area.
I conclude—satisfactorily within my time, I hope—by asking a final question: when will we receive our response; and, when the Government respond, will they accept these two recommendations on carers and, importantly, on the patients and carers race equality standard?
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, on the incredibly powerful and vivid way in which he introduced this debate. I will remember for a long time the words about this being a festering abscess.
The fact that we are having this debate shows not only how complex and critical the subject is but, frankly, how little progress has been made in improving mental health services for people from the BAME communities, despite repeated reports over the years highlighting the issues, debates in this Chamber and elsewhere. We pride ourselves on being a nation of diversity and equality, and yet the Government’s recently published Race Disparity Audit demonstrates that this is an issue in which we have patently not managed to provide anything like an adequate solution. Indeed, the NHS adult psychiatric survey published only last year showed that black adults were the least likely to receive treatment for mental illness.
The NHS’s The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health states:
“There has been a transformation in mental health over the last 50 years”,
due to “advances in care” and,
“the growth of community based mental health services”.
Obviously, such advances are welcome. However, research over that time period has shown repeatedly that people from BME communities have more adverse experiences and negative outcomes from mental health care, in terms of access to care and experience and type of care—things we have already heard about today.
Despite earlier targeted programmes, such as the Department of Health’s Delivering Race Equality programme—back in 2005, for those with a long memory —these inequalities have not improved. There are still significant ethnic disparities in rates of admission to hospital, detention under the Mental Health Act and practices such as the use of seclusion, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins. Indeed, one of the main concerns driving the independent review of the Mental Health Act is the disproportionate number of people from black and ethnic minorities detained under the Act. Like other noble Lords, I welcome the review and the sharp focus that the Prime Minister has placed on mental health as part of a wider social justice agenda.
I want to say at this point—I think it has come across strongly this evening—that it is so important that the review does not look purely at the point at which someone is being detained, but considers how we can prevent people from reaching a crisis in the first place and what we can do to improve crisis services for people who need emergency help. That has been one of the key points in the debate.
It is a statement of the obvious, but still worth saying, that focusing primarily on mental ill-health, rather than on how we can keep our communities healthy in the first place, is like trying to fix a leak by putting a bucket under the hole. Preventing mental health issues from arising, and intervening early if problems surface, can happen at a local level. Local government has a vital role to play. Clearly, local authorities need adequate funding to commission personalised services and to promote good mental health and well-being in their communities. I know from LGA figures how the core money that local authorities receive from central government has been going down year on year, which makes it difficult for them to fulfil their public health duties. Against this backdrop, can the Minister say what plans the Government have to encourage local commissioners to implement the Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health guidance on services for black and minority ethnic patients, specifically to identify and implement concrete measures to reduce the inequalities we have heard about?
As other noble Lords have highlighted in the debate, it is also important to acknowledge the socioeconomic factors that play a large part in psychiatric illness, with people from poorer backgrounds, people living in deprived communities and people encountering adversity and, yes, discrimination being particularly at risk. There are other critical issues: repeated studies have shown that cultural understanding is key to providing an effective mental health service that works for everyone. Other noble Lords have talked about that; I do not want to repeat what they have said.
It is a matter of real concern that there has been no real specific, targeted and strong national framework for improving mental health care for black and ethnic minority communities since 2010. Campaigning groups have expressed concern that mental health services lack a sense of strategic direction for reducing the inequalities in black and ethnic minority mental health that we have heard about.
However, there is positive news to report. There is good practice on the ground. Previous reports have highlighted many suggestions for solutions, and I have heard heartwarming stories from different local communities about the projects that have been set up to tackle the issue. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, I was encouraged to hear about the Black Thrive project in Lambeth, particularly the way in which it encouraged local people to understand their mental health needs and what services are available, and supported them to use their voices to shape and influence the commissioning of local services.
I applaud the new Synergi Collaborative Centre that has just been launched. This five-year collaboration between Queen Mary University of London, the University of Manchester and Words of Colour Productions is concerned with addressing the links between ethnic inequalities, multiple disadvantage and severe mental illness, with funding from the Lankelly Chase Foundation. This begs the question: what are the Government going to do to support and encourage excellent initiatives such as these? To be truly effective we need a clear national framework championed by government to improve mental health services for people from black and minority ethnic communities, with clear lines of accountability. It cannot all be left to the voluntary sector and local responses, however praiseworthy they may be.
Last year, the Government committed to invest an additional £1 billion in front-line mental health services by 2021 to deliver the five-year forward view for mental health—a welcome road map for reform of mental health services. I noticed that there was no mention of this in the Budget; indeed, there was no mention of mental health at all. I conclude by asking the Minister what proportion of money announced for the NHS in last week’s Budget will be earmarked for mental health care, whether it will be ring-fenced and whether specific money will be earmarked for tackling the quite shocking inequalities in access and outcomes for black and minority ethnic communities that we have been talking about.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a very moving and powerful debate. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Boateng for leading it. I well remember when, as a Health Minister, I met him at the Home Office to discuss health in prisons. I learned then very clearly his passion and determination. I am glad he has brought that to our discussions tonight. He talked about the issue being injustice rooted in race. I do not think we can describe the problem more explicitly.
We have had an amazing amount of briefing from many organisations, and I thank them. I am certainly not going to repeat them; the case is absolutely made and convincing. However, I looked at the briefing from the University of Essex’s Institute for Economic and Social Research, which showed the clear link between racial and ethnic harassment and mental health. Around one in 10 people from an ethnic minority background living in England has experienced some form of racial harassment in the past year and the briefing showed the connection between that harassment and stress, anxiety, depression and poor mental health. This is a fundamental issue that we have to tackle in society and in the National Health Service, because there are real issues about the way people from black and minority ethnic communities are treated by our National Health Service.
We know that there is forthcoming mental health legislation and we have the Prime Minister’s promise of action, which are both welcome, but the overwhelming message to the Minister is that we cannot wait for this before some determined action needs to take place. I was struck, as my noble friend Lord Boateng said, that we have had so many reports. We know what to do. The report from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, waited two years for a response from the Government. We have the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, published in February 2016, with 57 recommendations. I put it to the noble Baroness that we constantly hear from Ministers that this is a priority, but we do not see any real hard-edged action to put these recommendations into practice.
I want to revisit some of the points raised by my noble friend. He set out some issues to be tackled, such as the need for hard recommendations, with timescales for implementation and resources. I agree with him about hypothecation. I know that we are beginning to see extra spending on mental health, but how long has it taken the NHS to do this? I am afraid I do not believe the NHS, left to itself, will ever prioritise funding for mental health services. That is why I firmly believe there will have to be a hypothecated budget.
I also think we have to look at the way in which financial incentives are put in place in the health service, because the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health fundamentally attacked the present funding system. The use of block contracts is rewarding low-cost interventions, regardless of outcomes, and penalising those that increase access or deliver more costly interventions, even though they may improve outcomes. We cannot go on like this. Why do we still have block contracts in mental health? It is because it is regarded as less important within the Government and the Department of Health. We have different, more sophisticated systems for other parts of the health services; why is mental health being left till last? It has produced a horrendous situation where we disincentivise the most effective outcomes.
My noble friend talked about data outcomes. We have to have reliable data so that we can judge outcomes. Spreading good practice, local authority/NHS collaboration, pooled budgets: none of this is rocket science. We know that it can be done—the question is whether there is a will to do it. On the Patient Voice and using community action groups and the voluntary sector, the health service seems to have done its best to cut out many of these groups because of its funding decisions in the last few years. That is a very great pity.
The noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, talked about discrimination and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester talked about cultural competence. I fear that the NHS has a long way to go before we can say that it has really tackled those issues. We are focusing on mental health services but I hope that Ministers will reflect on a more general cultural problem within the NHS, which is as much about the workforce, as the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, said, as it is about service provision. My noble friend Lord Brooke anticipated the report of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. I totally agree with him about carers being excluded from initial assessment. It is difficult to fathom how that can be justified as a general principle. What he had to say about the workforce race equality standard and patient and carers’ equality standards was very profound and would be very helpful to the boards of organisations, which are probably not aware of some of these issues at the moment.
My noble friend ended by asking how we are going to make it happen. He said, “Let us get on with it”. I agree with him, but my final point for the Minister is this: if the Government stick to the mantra that this can be left to clinical commissioning groups, albeit with some national commissioning advice, we might as well give up and go home now. It simply is not going to happen. CCGs do not have the capacity or the will to do it. At the end of the day, Ministers have to take responsibility; they have to take a grip and there has to be national direction and national hypothecation. We know what needs to be done but at the moment I simply do not see the tools at central government level to enable it to happen. I hope that the noble Baroness will correct me if I am wrong.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, for securing this short debate and other noble Lords for their contributions on this important issue, which is close to my heart as well. I will try to address as many points as possible after my opening remarks. I apologise if I speak rather fast, but I always seem to be beaten by the clock when there is so much that I want to say. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Hussein-Ece and Lady Watkins, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, all mentioned, we know that people from black and minority-ethnic backgrounds experience significant inequalities in access to, and experience of, mental health care, with particular overrepresentation in acute and secure mental health services.
In the past, as noble Lords have mentioned, matters have gone terribly, tragically wrong, so in July 2016, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, mentioned, the Prime Minister launched the race disparity audit, an audit of public services to help end the burning injustices that many people from ethnic minorities experience. Last month, the Cabinet Office published the audit, which showed a complex picture. In some measures it reported significant disparities between and within ethnic groups, and in others it showed that there had been a narrowing of the gaps between ethnicities.
As the noble Lords, Lord Brooke and Lord Ouseley, mentioned, we know that black women are more likely than any other ethnic gender group to experience a common mental health disorder such as anxiety or depression. Similarly, black men are the most likely to have experienced a psychotic disorder in the past year. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, mentioned, white British adults are more likely to be receiving treatment for a mental or emotional problem than other ethnicities.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, mentioned, we also know that a disproportionate number of people from black and minority ethnicities are detained under the Mental Health Act. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Hussein-Ece and Lady Watkins, the noble Lords, Lord Ouseley and Lord Brooke, and the right reverend Prelate all mentioned, the Mental Health Foundation reported that Afro-Caribbean men were more likely to enter mental health services via the criminal justice system. The report also suggested, as did the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, that there was a potential for mental illness to be overdiagnosed in people whose first language was not English. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, mentioned, we also know that the stigma of mental illness prevents many people from a variety of cultural backgrounds seeking early help.
The current situation is clearly unacceptable. Therefore, what are we doing? As the noble Lords, Lord Boateng and Lord Ouseley, mentioned, we are reforming mental health legislation. We have commissioned an independent review of the Mental Health Act, which will report next year, aiming to improve the lives of tens of thousands of people detained under the Act each year. Professor Sir Simon Wessely will chair the review and work is under way with stakeholders to identify priorities, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, mentioned, with an interim report expected in early 2018. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, will recall from his time in government the previous revision of the Mental Health Act, which he commenced in the late 1990s. Earlier this year, the Government accepted the recommendations of the independent Mental Health Taskforce report, the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, which made it clear that inequalities must be tackled at local and national level.
However, this is not just about reports. As the noble Lords, Lord Boateng, Lord Ouseley and Lord Hunt, mentioned, it is about what is happening now. We are committed to real service improvement. NHS England set an expectation for local services to improve representation and recovery rates for black and minority-ethnic groups in improving access to psychological therapies services, leading to consistent improvement over the past five months. These therapies, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, mentioned, are vital.
In secure care, NHS England’s project to address the overrepresentation of black individuals in mental health secure settings has resulted in a new mental health community forensic model to be piloted from next year. A “black voices” network has also been established to encourage co-produced approaches to wider initiatives.
NHS England has also commissioned the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health to develop guidance to support commissioners and providers in addressing health inequalities. In due course NHS England will publish new pathways for crisis and acute care, building on input from experts-by-experience from ethnic-minority backgrounds. As the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said, patients who have a voice need to be part of the solution. This will be followed by a community mental health pathway in 2018-19 and a patient and carers race equality standard.
However, we know that successfully improving mental health care for black and minority-ethnic groups needs specific local community as well as national action. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, talked about a joined-up approach. That is why initiatives such as Birmingham’s 300 Voices project, led by the government-funded Time to Change campaign, are essential. Young African and Caribbean men, health professionals, the police and community representatives shared their experience of mental health support, including issues of stigma and discrimination, and produced a practical toolkit which can be rolled out to communities across the country.
The Care Quality Commission is developing a publication to highlight providers’ good practice in reducing the need for restrictive interventions. This will be published by December 2018. We know that restrictive physical interventions are risky for all individuals involved and have a negative impact on patients’ dignity and trust in services. The CQC also has an important role in improving equality as part of the mental health trust inspections. As the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, mentioned, good practice is vital. The CQC recognises the good practice of those providing services with a focus on improving black and minority-ethnic mental health.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, talked about recognising that mentally ill people need access to dedicated care at all times of the day. That is why, in January 2016, we announced that crisis resolution and home treatment teams would receive £400 million in additional funding by 2021 and that we would invest £247 million to 2021 in hospital emergency departments to support people with immediate mental health needs. Just last month, we launched a new £15 million scheme—Beyond Places of Safety. This will provide capital grants to help develop and enhance facilities for urgent and emergency mental healthcare in 2018-20, including places of calm—crisis cafés that offer support to people who are at risk of mental health crisis.
The noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, talked about children and mental health. The soon-to-be-published joint education and health committees’ Children and Young People’s Mental Health Green Paper will set out improvements for the mental health of children. To further help equip our children and young people with the life skills they need, we have committed to providing mental health first aid training to a teacher in every secondary school by 2019, and to reach 1,000 schools by the end of the year. In their manifesto, the Government expanded this commitment to every primary school, and we are exploring options to deliver this.
During a debate yesterday on education and skills, there was an interesting comment about pharmacies as a tool for gathering information on people who are prescribed anti-depressants. This could give a local view of problems in an area and enable people to move in to help.
The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, talked about recruitment and training. The Mental Health Workforce Plan, published in July, underpins the start of one of the biggest expansions of mental health services in Europe, creating 21,000 new posts by 2021. The recommendations of the independent review of the Mental Health Act, alongside ongoing work in response to the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, will be instrumental in addressing the perennial injustice of racial disparities on display within mental health services. We will sustain efforts at national and local level to do so.
Many noble Lords mentioned the importance of data. NHS England is requesting from NHS Digital and other partners that all relevant data reports are broken down by protected characteristics. Breakdowns of access and outcomes across ethnic groups are now available within the mental health services dataset. This will allow the systematic identification of areas for improvement and monitoring of progress.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, mentioned the workforce, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins. I mentioned the extra 21,000 but it is interesting that in looking at the present workforce, there were 15,512 community psychiatric nurses in May 2010 and in July 2017 there were 16,583. The figure has gone up but obviously not by enough and we need to really concentrate on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, talked about overseas staff and staff speaking the necessary languages. We have to concentrate more on making sure that we try to bring people into mental health nursing and the other professions who speak a range of languages. But as far as Brexit is concerned, it is important that these staff are not unnecessarily concerned about their future. The Prime Minister has been clear that she wants to protect the status of EU nationals living here.
I am looking at the time but I want to answer the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp. He mentioned carers being excluded from an initial assessment. This seems absolutely extraordinary and I am going to take it back to the department. It seems to me completely obvious that they should be included in first-time assessments and, if it is not happening, I shall certainly find out why. As to when the response is coming out, I say soon.
The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, mentioned ring-fencing and I say quickly that it is for local areas to decide where to invest, based on local needs, in line with national priorities set out by the Government and NHS England.
As always, if there are points that I have not covered, which I am sure is true, I will make sure that we write to noble Lords. We must all work together to make sure that the vulnerable, their families and carers can feel confident that they are getting the right treatment in the right place and at the right time. As the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, said, the treatment must also be equal for all. I thank noble Lords for all their contributions.
Royal Marines
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Burnett
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the future of the Royal Marines.
Lord Burnett (LD)
My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entries in the Members’ register of interests. I am delighted that a number of noble Lords have put their names down to speak this evening and I shall try not to be too long-winded so as to give plenty of time to others.
This debate comes closely behind a debate in the other place on the UK’s amphibious capability, which took place on 21 November, and the debate on UK defences in this House on 23 November. They were both excellent debates and ably moved, first, by the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and, secondly, by the noble Lord, Lord Soley. Many Peers and Members of the other place rightly described the increasing threats not only to our security but to that of our allies and the overseas territories for which we are responsible. Many drew attention to the importance to us, as a maritime nation that relies so heavily on trade moving by sea, of having an effective Royal Navy and Royal Marines. Furthermore, the financial predicament of the Ministry of Defence was described in detail in both debates.
The common thread continually made by Peers and Members of the other place was the necessity for this country, if it wishes to retain any credibility in defence and to comply with its treaty obligations, to fund defence to meet the threats and our nation’s needs—and to retain our amphibious capability. There was overwhelming support and gratitude expressed during the debates in both Houses to the Royal Marines.
Amphibious warfare is not an occupation for amateurs. It requires deep knowledge, great experience, expertise and skill. I remind Members of the House that we possess those skills in the naval service and have refined them over decades. The business of getting troops from ship to shore with supplies, ammunition and resupplies—including heavy and armoured vehicles, artillery, engineers and their equipment, medical facilities, water and so forth—is extremely complex. The logistics, timing and flexibility required dictate that you need a knowledgeable and experienced team, whatever operations are being conducted. From all-out combat to humanitarian operations, teamwork and experience are essential.
Only HMS “Bulwark” and HMS “Albion” have the necessary command and control capabilities, and only these ships have the necessary landing craft to deal with heavy loads. The landing craft and the skills of their Royal Marine coxswains and crews are an essential arm in any amphibious operation. These skills in amphibious operations are not a relic of the past. In the past 15 years, we have used our amphibious capabilities in all-out combat in Iraq, peacekeeping in Sierra Leone and, this year, in the Caribbean on humanitarian relief operations, where 40 Commando Royal Marines were deployed in the shortest time and distinguished themselves in that operation. It is a skill that, if lost, would be extremely difficult to recover.
We in the naval service have this experience, knowledge and flexibility. Of our allies, only the United States has this amphibious capability—albeit that it is far greater. The House has been told at least once that Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges of the United States army gave his views in robust terms as to the advisability of us retaining our amphibious contribution to the allied effort. The ability of a UK Government to operate effectively on their own territory from the sea gives the maximum political choice to any Prime Minister.
I could embellish the point, but I want to lead on to remind the House of some of the main operational capabilities that the Royal Marines, which are only 4.5% of Britain’s defence forces, bring to this country’s joint defence effort. The Royal Marines comprise three commando units. They are all part of 3 Commando Brigade. One commando unit is always lead commando group and is vital for joint theatre entry. The lead commando group offers the political choice to which I have referred and has 28 days’ self-contained supply when deployed on land. The Royal Marines and 3 Commando Brigade sit at the core of European amphibious initiatives. We have unique, long-lasting relations and friendships, particularly with the United States Marine Corps, with which in recent decades we have served on numerous operations. We have very close relations with the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps and the French marines. We are an essential partner in the United States Marine Corps/NATO amphibious force initiative.
In addition, some of the additional and essential capabilities the corps provides include the provision of what I have in the past described as the uniquely high proportion of the UK’s badged regular Special Forces operators. I have said in the past that if you shrink the pool of talent, you necessarily shrink the number of Special Forces operators. The noble Viscount, Lord Slim, who I am delighted to say will be speaking this evening, has unrivalled knowledge and expertise on this matter, and he has made the point time and time again. Our Special Forces have the highest reputation. Their tasking is growing continually. They are an increasingly vital and crucial part of this country’s defence effort.
Uniquely to Britain, the Royal Marines provide expertise in mountain and Arctic warfare. This is especially relevant at present given the growing threat from Russia to our northern flank. Our allies, particularly the Norwegians and other Scandinavian countries, put great value on this. We provide courses open to other members of Britain’s Armed Forces and allies. One such course, the mountain and Arctic warfare course, is extremely rigorous and demanding and provides a vital core of expertise and capability. We provide most of the ships’ force protection teams and security for the nuclear deterrent. The Minister will be well aware of the foregoing and will also be aware of how fortunate we in the Royal Marines are in our ability to recruit and retain officers and enlisted men of the highest calibre.
As a measure of that quality, approximately 17% of enlisted men passed for training have degrees, and 40% are educationally qualified to be officers. Those are fantastic statistics. The Royal Marines’ selection and training ensure that we have troops not only with stamina, strength, fortitude and courage, but also with high intelligence, flexibility and the ability to improvise. Officers, non-commissioned officers and marines have initiative and the highest standards. This is one of the reasons why we provide such a high proportion of the United Kingdom’s badged, regular Special Forces. Our Royal Marines can think for themselves and have a strong team spirit, comradeship, self-discipline and their own unique sense of humour.
At this point, I must pay tribute to the commanding officer and staff of the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines at Lympstone. They manage not only officers’ and recruits’ training but also the training of many of the specialist qualification courses conducted by the Royal Marines. These cover not only mountain and Arctic warfare, to which I have referred, but heavy weapons, platoon weapons, snipers, assault engineers, physical training and other specialisations essential to ensure that a Royal Marine who manages to be selected for training, which is an achievement in itself, and who passes the arduous nine-month course is properly equipped immediately for deployment in a commando unit. If a marine is recommended for promotion to corporal, he must be selected and pass the junior command course, which lasts some months and is rigorous and demanding. The same process occurs again if a corporal is recommended for promotion to sergeant and selected for the senior command course.
A quick résumé of last year’s activity of 3 Commando Brigade illustrates the importance of a brigade that is consistently 50% to 70% deployed at less than five days’ notice to move. Recently, the lead commando group and attached ranks were deployed at very short notice on Operation Ruman for disaster and humanitarian operations in the Caribbean. Immediately 40 Commando were deployed, 45 Commando were brought into readiness and have taken on that commando’s role. Royal Marine units were activated in response to various UK terrorist threats and operations. Members of the 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines have operated in 35 countries this year.
Routinely, we have three boarding teams and up to four maritime sniper pairs embarked in Royal Naval ships. We have multiple ships force protection teams and two United Kingdom Border Force protection teams deployed around the world. We have conducted 20 training team tasks so far this year and deployed in places such as Ukraine, Kenya, Somaliland, Morocco, Tunisia, Cameroon, Saudi Arabia, Oman, India, Indonesia, Lebanon and Senegal. We have, in addition, contributed to the migrant task force in the Mediterranean. We have expertise in jungle and desert warfare, as well as warfare in other climates and terrains. In addition, 43 Commando is tasked to protect the strategic deterrent every day, and that unit remains the defence lead practitioners, outside the UK Special Forces, in close-quarter battle in the land environment.
There would be plenty more to say if I had the time. The point is that as a country we are incredibly fortunate to have, in the Royal Marines, a small force of just under 7,000 men—as I have said, 4.5% of Britain’s Armed Forces—that does so much at the sharp end. We are an integral part of the naval service, and unique in defence in that our officers and enlisted men, and all our commando courses, train at the same place—the Commando Training Centre Royal Marines at Lympstone. This provides a life-changing bond and shared ethos. During the training process, which is long and arduous, you will see the gradual erosion of selfishness and the growth of teamwork and self-discipline. We are an egalitarian force that is motivated by the highest standards. We are commandos within the naval service: we are not a small army in the Navy but a fully integrated part of the naval service. The qualities of Royal Marines—intelligence, strength, stamina, courage, independence and adaptability—make us ideal to lead defence in the new way of warfare. We continue to welcome and master new technologies and changes.
As with personnel of other branches of our Armed Forces, we have recently, and over the centuries, lost many brave men in operations, and many others are having to cope with life-changing injuries. I believe the Secretary of State and the Minister recognise the crucial importance to British defence of the Royal Marines and the importance to the UK of our amphibious capability. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Reports of possible cuts and uncertainty are damaging. The Royal Marines—as I said, 4.5% of our Armed Forces—were awarded over 30% of the gallantry awards in Afghanistan. These outstanding men, to whom we owe so much, have the support and admiration of this House, the other place and the entire country. They are often called on to put their lives in mortal danger on our behalf. They give their wholehearted loyalties to this country, and it is time that this was reciprocated.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, I start by declaring an interest—or, some may think, a dark secret—in that I spent three years in the Royal Marines as a university cadet. I left, or resigned, as I came down from university. I subsequently joined the Army but I retain a great respect for the Royal Marines, about whom we have heard a great deal from the local Lord, Lord Burnett. It may be of interest to the House to know that I left the Royal Marines quite a long time after the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown—at least, I think it is of interest.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, on calling the debate and on expounding the position of the maritime forces, specifically the Royal Marines. Perforce I will not take up too much of the House’s time, but I ask these questions of the House and indeed the Government: what are our ambitions in defence? Do we wish to be able to defend our trading interests? Do we wish to be able to defend our overseas territories or indeed to help them in humanitarian operations, as we have just heard, or do we want to retreat behind the Channel? Do we wish to remain a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council? Do we wish to be regarded as a serious player in NATO? Do we wish to punch above our weight? This is the nation of Drake, Raleigh, Nelson, Jellicoe and Fisher. Do we want to be a serious player in maritime and world affairs?
If, as is rumoured, we were to scrap our maritime landing capability, what signal would that send to an expansionist and aggressive Russia, which daily is testing our maritime defences with submarines? I was listening this morning, as were one or two other Members of the House, to Rear Admiral Bob Tarrant, who stood down last month as Chief of Naval Operations. He expanded on the increase in the bellicosity of Russia and explained that the number of incidents involving Russian submarines has shot up.
What signal would such a move send to Iran, which can currently dominate the Straits of Hormuz coming out of the Persian Gulf and is supporting the Houthi rebels in Yemen, probably for the reason that it wishes to dominate the sea passages into the Red Sea and up to Suez? What signal would it send to our allies, our friends in NATO and especially to the USA? What sort of nation do we want to be?
The last Secretary of State designated this the Year of the Navy but we read that the national security capability review is likely to cut the Navy, particularly maritime landing craft, yet further. It is not just the naval service, the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, but defence and the Armed Forces as a whole. We have to spend more or abandon our ambitions—it is quite straightforward.
I know Mark Sedwill, the National Security Adviser. Noble Lords may not know that, like me, he was a Royal Marine, also, I think, as a university cadet, and then he went on to—dare I say “better” things?—certainly greater things at the Foreign Office. He has been traduced by the press because he is concentrating on cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is hugely important, and I suggest that he is not to blame for having to make this a priority.
My point is that well-equipped people will always remain crucial in terms of defence; they are the big stick that we need to carry.
We must increase our defence spending. Enough, if I may say so, of this trotted out comment of 2% of GDP. Two per cent of GDP would not have included the deterrent cost until six years ago. Two per cent of GDP spent on defence includes my pension but, fit, able and aggressive as I may be, I think it unlikely that I shall be called back to the colours.
We need to spend up to our ambitions, and to a Conservative Government who I support, I say that we need to get our spending priorities right, or retreat as a nation into mediocrity in world affairs. The nation will rightly hold us culpable if we fail to defend it. I have often parroted and now hear Ministers parrot the old adage that the first duty of government is the defence of the realm. I say to my Government: please live up to that pious ambition, aspiration and adage; let us all see it.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, on securing this timely debate. Rumours abound about possible cuts to the Armed Forces. We were told this autumn that there needed to be minor adjustments to the defence programme, but it is clear that defence is in such a mess that, far from minor adjustments, the Government are considering significant cuts. We are witnessing a defence review by stealth. The impact on service morale is huge. Those of us who know the services talk to people who know that to be true, yet we have been told again and again that, far from being in difficulty, the defence budget is growing and all in the garden is rosy. Clearly, it is not.
Why should this be? Despite claims by their detractors, the new carriers are certainly not to blame for the problems in defence funding. First, the spend of 2% of GDP on defence has been achieved by smoke and mirrors. Secondly, the funding of the future equipment programme depends on the services finding substantial efficiencies, which are becoming increasingly unfeasible. Lastly, the falling value of the pound against the dollar presents a new slew of difficulties with many US equipment buys in the pipeline. In short, there is a growing black hole in the MoD budget.
Particularly under fire, it seems from the rumours, is our invaluable amphibious capability. Others will talk in detail about the Royal Marines—indeed, we have heard already what amazing fighting men they are and how important they are for the Special Forces—but I will focus on amphibious shipping and why that impacts on Royal Marine numbers.
Britain’s security and prosperity require unimpeded maritime access and transit. As an island nation, the country needs a broadly maritime strategy: one that has sea control at its core but which enables power and influence to be projected inland. Indeed, being an island—although, amazingly, the national security strategy failed to mention the fact—all operations beyond our shores are expeditionary and demand theatre entry. Strike carriers and amphibious forces are the enablers of this theatre-entry capability. The true fighting power of a navy is its ability to ensure entry around the world using carrier air and amphibious forces and to cause sea denial using carrier air and nuclear submarines.
Since 1945, this entry capability has been used more than 10 times but, despite its significance, there was pressure to remove our amphibious capability after our withdrawal from east of Suez in the 1970s. It was retained primarily for the important reason that Soviet Union war plans included the invasion of north Norway, and it was vital to show our capability of defending that region. With the resurgent Russia, that is still important today.
In 1981, the removal of our amphibious capability was mooted again. At the last moment, an element of it was reprieved and, by very good fortune, nothing had been removed before the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands. Every scrap of amphibious shipping and the Royal Marine Commando Brigade in its entirety were crucial to recapturing the islands, as were 76 British manned merchant ships. Post the Falklands conflict, it was decided that the UK needed to maintain amphibious capability of a full commando brigade, two helicopter landing ships capable of ensuring a simultaneous two-company lift—a lesson from the Falklands, although only one, HMS “Ocean”, was built—two landing ship docks capable of complex communications and command and control, very heavy lift and carrying large landing craft, four logistic landing ships, or the equivalent, a number of smaller landing craft and the ability to take up merchant ships from trade. However, it has been nibbled away at. Post SDSR 2010, the decision was made to reduce the commando brigade to a commando group. Of the four new landing ship dock auxiliaries to replace the landing ship logistics, one was sold to Australia for a knockdown price, after we had paid full price in this country.
In addition, one of the landing ship docks was put into reserve status—only one would actually run. More recently, the Royal Marines have lost another 400 men and the newly refitted HMS “Ocean” , having just had a £57 million refit, is up for sale—an almost incomprehensible decision in strategic capability terms. The latest rumours talk of cutting the marines by a further 1,000 and selling the two LPDs. This would effectively mean the end of the UK amphibious capability and with it, the end of the Royal Marines. Without large amphibious shipping—we are already eating into it—the demand for sea soldiers would switch and drop down below the level of one commando: one battalion in other words. The decision to get rid of the shipping would effectively get rid of the Royal Marines in the form that they are at the moment as a key part of the naval service and as sea soldiers.
Has there been any change to the strategic environment that has provoked this decision? Of course not. This is nothing more than a possible savings measure. We urgently need more spending on defence. The Government should be as robust about this as they are about foreign aid, which now equals 38% of the defence budget. The decline in capability is a choice and not one which our nation should make in today’s chaotic, unpredictable and dangerous world. Our nation would live to regret the loss of our hard-won amphibious capability and the Royal Marines that go with it. Once gone, it will be extremely hard to recover.
Viscount Falkland (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to come into the debate so thoroughly and ably introduced by my friend and former noble friend on the Liberal Democrat Benches.
It might be timely to repeat, if I may, the remarks of the Admiral of the Fleet, Lord St Vincent, when the Royal Marines were formed. He said:
“I never knew an appeal made to them for honour, courage or loyalty that they did not more than realise my highest expectations. If ever the hour of real danger should come to England, they will be found the Country’s sheet anchor”.
Those words summed up that period. He was of course a great supporter of Lord Nelson’s tactical skills, and supported him throughout his career.
Now we have the problem, of which the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, has given some indication, of how these decisions come about. I shudder when I hear the word “cyber”, as indeed I shudder when I hear about driverless cars. I do not think we should overrate those aspects of our modern life. What matters, as Lord St Vincent said, is that the rigorous training and enormous character of a body such as the Royal Marines is not just part of our defence mechanisms but an inspiration to all.
I am rather disappointed that the kinds of values, development and loyalties of the Royal Marines are not more used in schools. It seems that the ethos in schools nowadays is to provide cannon fodder for industrial development and the growth of our GDP—all very important, but the kinds of words used by Lord St Vincent will probably be of great use to those at school of a young age. I do not think schoolchildren should now be tested at a young age or be asked to pass exams; I think they should learn what it is to live a life of honour, bravery and all the things that have been mentioned. That is lacking. Those who advise government have not actually said that the Royal Marines are superfluous but they downgrade their importance for the future.
I am sure we all agree that we are very fortunate to have the noble Lord, Lord West, here, because he has explained so well the ongoing usefulness of the amphibious duties of the attached naval forces, which include, principally, the Royal Marines. Even in the 18th century—I happen to have an ancestor who was involved in an amphibious raid during the American War of Independence—they were considered the world’s leaders in amphibious landings. I think they still are, and that need will be enduring.
I will not go on. I spent too much time quoting Lord St Vincent and I do not want to get a ticket in my pocket or whatever. I just end by saying that it has been a great pleasure to speak in this debate and to have been able to voice an opinion about the value of training, hard work, a team spirit and all the things alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Burnett. I hear that the reduction in the number of bands will not now happen. Apart from the band of the Scots Guards, in which my son served, certainly the greatest band that I have ever heard—I heard it beating retreat at Greenwich one year—is the band of the Royal Marines. It is probably one of the greatest orchestral experiences that one could have.
Lord Astor of Hever (Con)
My Lords, I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, said. As a young army officer many years ago, I served alongside the Royal Marines in Hong Kong and Northern Ireland, and ever since I have had the greatest respect for them and their ethos.
I believe that a serious cut to the Royal Marines would put our international credibility at risk. The noble Lord mentioned General Ben Hodges. I hope that the Government will take on board what he said: that some of the best officers whom he has served with have been Royal Marines, and that he would hate to see the institution that produces men like them degraded. He went on to say that, if Britain cannot maintain its amphibious capability commitments, it risks,
“going into a different sort of category”,
of ally, which would,
“make the job simpler for a potential adversary”.
The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, drew attention to the importance to the United Kingdom, as a maritime nation relying so heavily on trade moving by sea, of a strong Navy and a strong Royal Marines. Without maritime expeditionary strike options, there is a reliance on access to friendly ports or airports, and historical evidence indicates that such access can often be denied or be conditional or unsuitable. A lack of access will narrow options, increase operational risk and potentially make current crisis response plans unviable. Global reach and flexibility are inherent characteristics of a full spectrum Royal Navy able to protect the nation’s vital interests. The ability to act across a spectrum, from disaster relief to expeditionary strike, preserves political choice.
The United Kingdom’s comparative advantage in maritime theatre entry—something that few can emulate—is of critical importance to our key partners. The Royal Marines have a leading allied capability, interwoven with NATO and European initiatives, and are the United States’ partner of choice in the littoral and the Arctic. Their cold-weather-capable commando force is hugely appreciated in north Norway.
Chaos is a dominating feature of our world today. Islamic fundamentalism is a threat that grows more vigorous and malign by the day and it has reached our own shores. Russia mobilises in all dimensions to press her advantages from the Balkans to the Baltic and from Libya to Damascus, to erode the West’s sphere of influence, both conventionally and in the hearts and minds of many of its citizens. The United Kingdom remains a key player in global politics, but it competes in a world where many regional powers, nation states, criminals and extremists are expanding their influence. If we want to have an effect where the vast majority of the world’s population lives, the ability to operate between the sea and the land is vital. Battles may be won at sea, but wars are won on land, among the people. Despite the huge technological leaps that have characterised the last century, this remains true; to have a decisive effect on an opponent, you must at some point land and close with him.
The US recognises the importance of an expeditionary strike capability. With the recently approved littoral operations in a contested environment concept, it seeks to better integrate existing naval and Marine Corps capabilities to overcome the emerging threats within littoral areas, which it sees as rapidly expanding in operational depth, complexity and lethality. This concept will provide the United States with an enhanced geographic flexibility and a range of options with which to respond to the threats within the littoral. To give some indication of the scale of US investment in this concept, it relies on the delivery of a multi-purpose, 38-unit, amphibious fleet. I very much hope that we do not become a “different sort of category” of ally.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, for asking his Question for Short Debate. In 2010, the Conservative-led Government made a decision to retain the carrier programme. To be fair, I could easily argue that decision both ways. However, there is no doubt that the carriers will, in due course, give us a fabulous strategic capability. Even the US has only 11 full-size aircraft carriers in service. We should be able to deploy a UK carrier battle group matched with an amphibious task group. Contrary to what some newspapers seem to think, we have not been able to launch an opposed beach landing for a very long time. However, what we should be able to do is deploy 3 Commando Brigade almost anywhere we would want to in the littoral world, given only a suitable beach—and we can do this with full and effective air cover from the carrier. Furthermore, we could do it with a limited call on US assets in theatre. In other words, we can look after ourselves, which is extremely important to the Americans. As I understand it, the only other European ally which could possibly do this is France—but I do not know to what extent.
This capability is of strategic importance to our relationship with the United States and its President. Of course we co-operate very closely in the submarine world, but that is covert; no one sees it or even detects it. Sometimes it might be desirable for a carrier amphibious group not to be detected, but at other times a show of force may be all that is necessary to avoid or deter open conflict. What on earth is the point of having a carrier battle group capability if we do not have a fully bombed-up 3 Commando Brigade and the amphibious task group to go with it?
I understand that 42 Commando Royal Marines has already been, or will be, made non-deployable as a formed unit. This generates considerable savings as there is no need to train as a formed unit to achieve the required collective performance level and other specialist training is not required—so this increases the Royal Marines’ capacity for other desirable tasks, of which there are many. The unacceptable downside is that it reduces the ability of 3 Commando Brigade to be deployed with two match-fit commandos at any time, because if the choice is only between 40 and 45, one of them might easily be recovering from a battle group level operation or deployment.
The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, and others referred to our two landing platform docks, HMS “Albion” and HMS “Bulwark”—and the noble Lord, Lord West, gave us some detail. SDSR 15 determined that both were essential. If not, they would have been taken out of service at that point, so they must have been essential. My noble friend the Minister will tell us that no decision has been made and that everything is speculation. It seems to me that the only solution we have is to allocate some of the international aid budget—something that I would have opposed even six months ago.
Nevertheless, I have to say that I am extremely depressed about our current defence position. In my opinion we are heading towards having our posterior kicked hard at some point, and we will deserve it. Just because we are doing much more than our larger European partners—with the exception of the French—that does not mean that we are doing enough. Our Armed Forces may be engaged in numerous small but commendable military operations, but that does not equip us to deal with an existential or strategic threat. I believe that Ministers at the highest levels of government are living in a fool’s paradise so far as military capacity is concerned. As far as I am concerned, my noble friend the Minister and his colleagues are on their own and I cannot support this direction of travel.
Lord Judd (Lab)
Like others, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, for so powerfully introducing this debate. He is a long-standing champion of the Royal Marines.
It is a very long time ago, but back in 1974 I was a naval Minister. As such, I chaired the Admiralty Board and we found ourselves in the midst of a very challenging situation because there was a defence review. In the midst of that challenge we decided to say that the one thing we wanted to concentrate on was having a Navy which met the challenges of post-imperial Britain in the kind of world in which we were living, that faced up to the nature of likely future threats and that was designed to meet them. I very quickly came to the conclusion that the Royal Marines were absolutely indispensable in that context. I have never met before or since a body of people with more esprit de corps and personal motivation. I have never met a Royal Marine who was not full of personal motivation. Whatever they did, they did with professional skill of the highest standing on the basis of the most exacting training—and always with a cheerful disposition, it seemed to me. There was a lot of humour in the Royal Marines. They liked twisting the tail of the Minister and challenging him to unarmed combat.
They operated in so many different places and always adapted very quickly. One of my proudest moments was when I was up in the Arctic Circle in Norway on an exercise. The Commandant-General of the Royal Marines, General Gourlay, who became a great personal friend, took me into the sergeants’ mess and told them that I had been working very hard to secure the future of the Royal Marines and that as a token of this he wanted to present me with a Royal Marines tie—and do I treasure that Royal Marine tie.
He was followed by Peter Whiteley, who also became a friend. He was a general of great distinction who was also a distinguished musician. I thought that was appropriate, because one of the unsung heroic stories of the Royal Marines is how they take youngsters from quite modest backgrounds in relatively deprived parts of Britain and turn them into first-class musicians. However, they are not only first-class musicians but first-class soldiers as well. They combine the two, which is something very special.
When I look at the future, I cannot conceive that it will not require flexibility, the ability to move fast, to deploy wherever it is needed and, preferably, to contain situations before they get out of control. When we have a motivated, distinguished, effective organisation such as the Royal Marines, can one think of anything more central to that kind of operation? I have an unrivalled regard for the Army and for much of what we demand of it these days. But it is a fact—I put it this way—that the Royal Marines can move, be there and be doing it while the Army, with its more cumbersome bureaucracy and considerations, is still working out exactly how it should be done.
It would be wanton irresponsibility in any way whatever to reduce the capability of the Royal Marines. On this I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Astor. The challenge is to build up the capability of the Royal Marines, not to undermine it. From that standpoint, I am glad that we are having this debate today and I hope it strengthens our Minister in what I am sure is his own personal involvement in this matter—I would be shocked if it was not. I hope that he will go away from this debate feeling that he has a strong body of support across the Floor in this House to say, “Don’t cut the Royal Marines!”.
Viscount Slim (CB)
My Lords, it gives me the greatest pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who gives so much to your Lordships’ House and always speaks so well.
It is always a pleasure for me to talk about the Royal Marines. My parent regiment is the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and after World War II we came even closer together. During that gloomy moment, when “Prince of Wales” and “Repulse” were sunk, those Royal Marines that got ashore, escaped and were saved were sent as reinforcements to my battalion, which was fighting on the Malayan Peninsula. The liaison and friendship has lasted. We swap an officer between us every year and we get on rather well
I make no bones about it: I hold the British politician responsible for allowing this continuing dismantling of the armed services, and one day I may hold them culpable. We are not prepared, we are not in the best of shape, and we have, I am sad to say, a Government who are always tinkering downwards. They talk about what will arrive, but even the keels of the ships are not down, certainly the submarines are not being made at the moment, and there is a lot more—armoured vehicles and goodness knows what.
I am worried about a reinforcing calamity. If we get medium to large casualties we will have a big problem reinforcing units. Let me give an example of what used to happen. In an hour-and-a-half in Korea, my regiment lost about 30 killed and 70 wounded. The system was geared at that time to get battle-trained reinforcements to units as quickly as possible. In 36 hours we were reinforced by six officers and 100 battle-trained men and once more we became a battalion worth watching. Today if you were to take 200, 300, 500 or 1,000 men from the Royal Marines, if they took heavy or medium casualties there would be no chance of reinforcements.
You do not build a Royal Marine or a soldier overnight, or in a week, or in a month. He is almost built at one year and might be really useful in 18 months. It is no good saying we will find some soldiers or marines to reinforce. It would be bad news if the marines had to take medium or heavy casualties.
The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, has already mentioned that the military relies on the Royal Marines to perform well with the Special Boat Service. The difficulty is that if you start cutting you dilute the product. The lake of selection becomes a rather muddy pond. If anything goes wrong or there is any diminution of the Royal Marines, I see great trouble in keeping up the strength of the SBS, which is a component and a large chunk of the special forces of our country. There is great danger.
I am not having a go at the Minister. The noble Earl is regarded as something rather special in your Lordships’ House. We like him and have affection for him. Perhaps I may explain it in an old soldier’s way: I would happily share a slit trench with him. He may never have been in one before and may never have had his hair parted by a bullet, but I know that he would fight like a good officer and be a marvellous companion. However, I blame his Government at the moment. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, are quite right: we have thrown British taxpayers’ money like confetti to various Governments and it is time we looked after ourselves first.
Baroness Wilcox (Con)
My Lords, it is wonderful for me to be the only girl so far to say something which, I hope, will make a contribution to the debate. There is another girl on the other side of the House who will be closing for the Liberal Democrats and I have no doubt that she will contribute too.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Burnett. I have read his CV: it is quite extraordinary. He seems to have been fighting for most of his life. We are very honoured to have him here and hear what he said, and I am honoured to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Slim. I have heard him speak many times before; he is always passionate and always moves me.
I declare my interest and the reason why I am standing. I was born and bred in Plymouth. Before I say anything else, I hope that that Doorkeeper will smile at me, because he has been moaning at me all week to make sure I stood up. Where is he? There he is. We have a Marine here with us today.
I grew up in a family that either fished or fought. Indeed, fishing and fighting were wonderful things to do. I remember my grandmother’s parlour as a very peculiar place where the curtains were always drawn. I only went in there in strange times, usually when one of her men had died. In her parlour, she only had photos of people who had died in action on the walls. If you did not die in action, my grandmother never put you in that room. Poor Uncle Ernest came back with all sorts of dreadful things having happened to him during the war, but he never got his photograph in there because he did not die in action. Those are the sort of families that grow up in Plymouth. Those are the sort of families that gave me my confidence; they taught me how to cheer when the “sea soldiers” came along and marched in and marched out, when we went to see the ships come back and see whether any of our men did not make it. Therefore, if I may, I want to speak for my town and for the people whom we lost during that time.
There are rumours that reductions in the Royal Navy’s amphibious fleet are being considered under the cross-government review of national security responsibilities, as part of the continued implementation of the 2015 strategic defence and security review. That includes the potential to downgrade the UK’s amphibious capability, with plans to decommission HMS “Albion” and HMS “Bulwark”, and possible subsequent reductions in the Royal Marines garrison in Plymouth. HMS “Albion” and HMS “Bulwark” are central to the UK’s overall amphibious capability; many of the 350 personnel assigned to each of these Devonport-based ships, and their families, live in Plymouth. Maintenance and refit programmes for these vessels also contribute significantly to the city’s economy, directly supporting high-quality jobs at Devonport dockyard and across the wider supply chain.
While I agree that there is a need to ensure that the United Kingdom has the right capabilities to deliver on the SDSR’s objectives, we should want to reiterate the serious security and economic impact of the decision to significantly downgrade our amphibious capability. We have heard that said many times this evening. To maintain UK defence forces at a sufficient level to contribute to global peace, stability and security, I believe that the ability to deploy amphibious craft for both military and humanitarian exercises is a vital factor. The loss of HMS “Bulwark” and HMS “Albion” at Devonport would put that capability at serious risk. Furthermore, Plymouth is currently home to over 700 Royal Marines; speculation over reduction in their numbers at their base location would be felt acutely in the city—the city that bore me.
I urge the Minister to encourage his colleagues in No. 10 to tread carefully as we sail away from the European Union to fresh waters. I am vice-president of the Girl Guides. We are always committing our girls to be prepared. Tonight, I seriously urge that motto on our Government.
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, for securing this timely debate on this critical Question. I declare my honorary captaincy in the Royal Naval Reserve and my membership of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s strategic advisory panel, though I speak as an individual this evening. I also declare a long-standing respect and affection for the Royal Marines since accompanying them to the Norwegian Arctic in January 1978 as a young journalist on the Times to report on their annual reinforcement exercise to protect NATO’s northern flank during the Cold War. A man learns something about himself if he spends a night in a snow hole up a mountain somewhere north of Narvik that is full of Royal Marines. I shall not elaborate.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute on 22 November, General David Petraeus declared that,
“strategic effect comes from capabilities that are truly employable and really matter”.
It is my contention that our country’s amphibious capability, to which the Royal Marines and the sustenance of HMS “Bulwark” and HMS “Albion” are crucial, passes the Petraeus test. Given our deep maritime past, many of us in the UK think amphibiously quite naturally, but in continuing to do so and reacting to the scattering of newspaper reports about the possible decommissioning of “Bulwark” and “Albion” and cuts to the Royal Marines, I do not think we are succumbing to an emotional spasm or nostalgia or an impulse for our country to retain what Stryker McGuire, Newsweek’s man in London for many years, used to call our appetite for being “a pocket superpower”, by which he meant possessing a wide spectrum of top-of-the-range military capabilities in too small quantities.
In terms of the Petraeus test, what does our current amphibious strength bring us and our allies in a perilous and, some would say, darkening world? Greater authorities than I will ever be have already outlined how they see this. I agree with every word they said. Above all, it gives us an ability to react rapidly, flexibly and with agility in a crisis, and a high degree of what a naval friend of mine calls “poise”—the capacity to maintain a position either on the flank of a crisis for deterrence purposes or to apply close-in coercive power in critical places if deterrence fails.
The quality of amphibiosity that the Royal Navy and Royal Marines currently provide is potentially a great disrupter of an adversary’s calculations because it offers the kind of intense hard power that no alternative does, however ingenious—if “Albion” and “Bulwark” go—the alternative of placing marines and helicopters on an adapted Royal Fleet Auxiliary or on carriers way out might be. This UK capacity is highly valued, as many noble Lords have said already, by our allies in the United States and Europe. Indeed, it is the best of its kind among the European powers. To shed it would be noticed and treated as a talisman of decline, a shrivelling of nerve and a shrinking of aspiration—a self-inflicted loss of highly skilled people and specialist equipment that almost certainly could not be made good if the international climate worsened.
I have concentrated on the hard power aspects of amphibiosity, but as we all know and appreciate, and as other noble Lords have highlighted, capacity for humanitarian rescue and protection is needed by a country that not just thinks globally, but has its people living and working in myriad locations in a world 90% of whose population live within a few hundred miles’ reach of the sea. So-called littoral power is a perpetual factor in any serious security calculation.
Possible cuts in Royal Marines manpower reflect the still-wider danger lurking within those early drafts of the 13th defence review since the Second World War, which the Cabinet Office is co-ordinating as we debate this week, with a view to completing I think early in the new year. For example, is it the right moment to cut a corps that provides, as other noble Lords have emphasised, more than 40% of the country’s Special Forces? This is another possibility that our allies are contemplating with real anxiety.
I accept that the country’s economic outlook is far from buoyant and spattered with anxiety-inducing uncertainty, but through all of it we must remain a hard-nosed, hard-power people whose calculations are grounded in the world as it is rather than the world as we might wish it to be. With all its sapping, Brexit-related preoccupations I profoundly hope the Government will not deprive us of our very special bespoke amphibious capability, almost in a fit of absence of mind, despite all the talk about being a more globally minded country post Brexit. If they do, this will be the decision above all others for which the 2017-18 defence review will be remembered. One day, I fear, it will be deeply, deeply regretted.
Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the gap. It is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, and so many others who have served. I am president of the Council of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations and so want to focus on the Royal Marines Reserve.
Members of the RMR complete the commando course, earn the green beret and serve on front-line amphibious operations worldwide alongside their regular counterparts. They embody all the qualities the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, spoke of and provide an essential link to our civilian population. The RMR is a compact organisation, recruiting from four main unit locations in Bristol, London, Merseyside and Scotland, each of which has four or five detachments around the country designed to give them a good geographic coverage. The RMR punched above its weight in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of the new millennium, when integration into the Regular Forces at the junior level was seamless and the professionalism and ability of the reserves was clearly recognised. As an example of this, in 2008 RMR Lance Corporal Matthew Croucher received the George Cross for his actions while deployed with 40 Commando in Afghanistan.
The RMR currently has men deployed on global counterterrorism and counterpiracy, maritime security operations and defence engagement. I understand that the RMR is on course to achieving its target manning level for 2020—the Minister might care to indicate the figures. There are, however, a number of issues affecting it and an important one is the slow responsiveness of the contracted service medical process. Candidates are frequently initially identified as potentially medically unfit and by the time they are reviewed and found to be fit, recruit training has started and the next chance to join is 12 months later. This is a recurring problem across the reserves and I urge my noble friend to address it.
The RMR routinely contributes to 3 Commando Brigade, the Lead Commando Group, 1 Assault Group RM and elsewhere; for example, through ship force protection teams. It provides an important contribution to British defence from a small establishment and at a small cost. It is a real blow that all overseas training in the current year has now been cancelled to help make the savings required, with likely effects on recruiting and retention. I am concerned that, perhaps because of its small size, the RMR’s contribution needs to be better recognised.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, like all noble Lords who have spoken this evening I thank my noble friend Lord Burnett for securing this incredibly important debate. Unlike other noble Lords who have spoken, I will also apologise to him for passing a note from the Whips saying, “Time’s up”. If my noble friend had sat on the Back Benches and hidden away, he might have avoided the Whips’ note. I have never been asked to be a Whip and I believe that is because my party has understood that my timekeeping is always a bit off, so I was a little embarrassed to be the person passing the note. I also note that the Whips have come in force to make sure that I do not do more than my five minutes.
Baroness Smith of Newnham
The Royal Marine Commando mindset is: be the first to understand, the first to adapt and respond and the first to overcome. These are all incredibly important, but the Royal Marines can do those things only if there are Royal Marines in sufficient numbers. It is absolutely clear that across your Lordships’ House and in the other place there is considerable concern about the rumours of further cuts to the Royal Marines. Back in April, the First Sea Lord suggested that the Royal Marines had decided to restructure to better balance skills across the force. Can the Minister tell us whether the Royal Marines indeed decided to restructure, or were they forced to restructure because of financial matters? Are the Royal Marines being adequately resourced? Does the MoD view the Royal Marines as the jewel in the crown of our Armed Forces?
Many Members have mentioned extreme weather training and going to the high north. I had the opportunity to go to northern Norway in February to visit the Royal Marines doing their training. It was illuminating to discover just how important the Royal Marines’ training is, not just for our forces but to our Norwegian and American allies. The idea that training is being reduced is a considerable worry. If we are not able to provide the training that we have been doing, what are the Royal Marines going to provide instead? It is particularly concerning to hear that the Royal Marines Reserve is no longer going to be allowed to go overseas to train. Can the Minister tell us precisely what the Government are expecting to do with the Royal Marines? Can he reassure us that there will not be cuts either to numbers or to the training, which is so important? The Arctic, jungle and desert training are all vital. We have troops who are second to none but every cut weakens our reputation.
As so many Members have said, this is a time of considerable threats. If we take away the training in northern Norway, what message does that send to our NATO allies and to Russia? Presumably not the message Her Majesty’s Government intend to send. The security threats that we face in 2017 are not reducing; if anything, they are getting greater. Leaving the European Union will not reduce any threats. If anything, the need to co-operate with our NATO allies will make it even more important that we work closely together. Our second-to-none Royal Marines should be a fundamental part of that.
On almost everything, these Benches can agree with the mood of the Chamber. But there is one area where it is important to suggest that the Liberal Democrats cannot quite agree with every view. We are committed to defence and we would like to hear that Her Majesty’s Government remain committed to defence expenditure, but we are also committed to international development. Development and defence go together, as we saw recently in the way that we reacted to the hurricanes. Does the Minister agree, and will he reassure the House that aid and defence will go together and that there will be no cuts to the Royal Marines?
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, for introducing the debate. The essential question seems to be: what is the future of the Royal Marines? I believe that with this Government the future is very uncertain—and the reason is the 2015 SDSR.
Defence is in a mess. The gap between the SDSR promise and the money required seems to be, by consensus, some £2 billion per annum. Hence the Royal Marines are under threat, together with HMS “Albion” and HMS “Bulwark”. Labour believes that our amphibious capability is hugely important to the UK’s humanitarian work around the world, as demonstrated recently in Operation Ruman. Cutting this would signal that we are stepping back from our global responsibilities.
The effect of the 2015 SDSR is already showing in the morale of the Royal Marines. I quote from the UK Regular Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey 2017, which states:
“In 2017 the Royal Marines have seen large decreases in morale and satisfaction with Service life in general … The proportion of Royal Marine Officers who rate Service morale as high has decreased 20 percentage points from 2016 to 41%. The proportion of Royal Marine Other Ranks who rate Service morale as high decreased 13 percentage points from 2016 to 16% … Self morale and Unit morale have also fallen for this Service compared to last year. Around a third (32%) of Royal Marine Other Ranks rate self morale as low (up from 24%) and almost half (47%) rate Unit morale as low (up from 32%) … Royal Marine Other Ranks have decreased satisfaction with many aspects of work compared to 2016 whilst other Services remain unchanged”.
“Satisfaction with my job in general” has fallen seven percentage points. “Sense of achievement” has fallen by five percentage points. “Challenge in my job” has fallen by three percentage points, while “the amount and variety of work” has fallen by five percentage points. What is the cause of this collapse in the morale of our elite force? It is not about their immediate superiors. The same review showed three-quarters of all personnel saying that their immediate superiors supported them in their job. More than two-thirds said that their immediate superiors set a positive example. Most organisations would give their right arm for results like that.
So perhaps it is the cuts in training or in overseas deployment that we see in press reports. Can the Minister assure the House that the level of training of the Royal Marines is sufficient to achieve the standards we expect of this elite force? Have there been cuts in equipment? Rumours about “Albion” and “Bulwark” must leave uncertainty in the minds of Royal Marines. Is uncertainty the essence of this collapse in morale? Defence is in a mess. When are this Government going to sort it out?
Finally, I have no doubt that, in his response, the Minister will want to refer to the strategic defence and security review implementation. Last week he said that this was a cross-government review and that Ministers expected to consider its outcome towards the end of the year. I remind the Minister that the end of this year is less than five weeks away. I hope that he will achieve his aspiration. When will we in this House see the review and hear of the cuts to our Armed Forces that we all so fear?
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, on securing this debate on a subject that I know is of great importance to him. I pay tribute to him for his staunch support for the Armed Forces, including in his role as president of the Tavistock branch of the Royal Marines Association. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this extremely important subject.
It is widely recognised that the Royal Marines have a proud and rich history. They were formed in the reign of King Charles II on 28 October 1664, as the Duke of York and Albany’s Maritime Regiment of Foot, or Admiral’s Regiment. The name “Marines” first appeared in the records in 1672 and, in 1802, they were titled the Royal Marines by King George III. On 28 October this year, the Royal Marines celebrated their 353rd birthday. They were present at Lord Nelson’s victory over the combined fleets at Trafalgar—one of the most decisive naval battles in British history. They were involved in the raid on Zeebrugge on 23 April 1918, where two Royal Marines earned the Victoria Cross for their bravery and conduct during the operation. During World War II, at the landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944, 17,500 Royal Marines took part in the largest amphibious operation in history. In 1982, the Royal Marines were essential to the recapture of the Falkland Islands.
I would like to pay tribute to the contribution that the Royal Marines have made to the defence of this country and, indeed, to the defence of others. Today, the Royal Marines are the United Kingdom’s commando force and the Royal Navy’s amphibious troops. An elite force held at very high readiness, they are trained for worldwide rapid response and to be able to deal with a wide spectrum of threats and security challenges, operating in often dangerous and extremely difficult circumstances.
The main deployable force is 3 Commando Brigade, with a Lead Commando Group held at high readiness to deploy globally in support of the UK’s national interests. I say to my noble friend Lord Attlee that 42 Commando has transformed into a dedicated maritime operations commando unit, to work alongside our sailors in a variety of roles, deployed on naval warships and on auxiliary shipping overseas in highly specialised boarding and counterpiracy teams.
Looking back through 2017, the Royal Marines’ activity has been significant, having deployed to more than 30 countries around the world. The tempo was particularly high recently, as has been mentioned, when the lead commando group was deployed at very short notice on Operation Ruman to provide essential and very swift disaster relief in the Caribbean. As a measure of their quality and as the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, emphasised, approximately 17% of Marines have degrees and 40% are educationally qualified to be officers. Royal Marine units in the United Kingdom were also activated for tasking on Operation Temperer, in response to the failed bombing on the London underground. In addition, Royal Marines have contributed to the EU’s naval operation to disrupt the business model of human smugglers and traffickers in the Mediterranean, where many thousands of migrants have been rescued. That illustrates the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd: the Royal Marines are very versatile.
Looking to the future, over the next two years we will see women joining the Royal Marines in the ground close combat role. This is an exciting opportunity and the naval service is already managing expressions of interest from young women who are keen to rise to the challenge.
Being a Royal Marine is about maintaining the standards of the most feared and most respected fighting force in the world. One of the key requirements that is drilled into recruits during the gruelling commando course which all potential Marines must pass is self-reliance in any environment, whether in the middle of the desert or the heart of a tropical jungle. The Marines’ ability to deploy at short notice by air, sea or land means that they comprise a vital component in the Armed Forces’ rapid reaction force, including Special Forces. They deploy around the world in support of UK operations ranging across international engagement, maritime security and warfighting.
Global reach and flexibility are the inherent characteristics of a full spectrum Royal Navy, able to protect the nation’s vital interests and support the Government’s priorities of security, influence and prosperity. In an unstable and uncertain world, there remains a premium on versatility and agile crisis response, which maritime manoeuvres and assured access uniquely provide. Capital ships with a combination of aviation facilities, command and control and surface offload capabilities, along with an embarked Royal Marines commando force, represent a vital component of the nation’s power projection capabilities, which will be enhanced by carrier strike. Furthermore, the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers will be utilised by all three services of the UK Armed Forces. The strategic defence and security review of 2015 made provision to augment the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers and maximise their ability to support expeditionary strike operations. I agree with my noble friend Lord Astor, who said that the ability to act across that spectrum preserves political choice.
Having made that point, perhaps I might address a couple of issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham. She asked about the Royal Marine rebalancing. The changes planned to the size and structure of the Royal Marines, which we have already announced, will allow approximately 200 positions to be reallocated within the naval service. These changes are expected to be broadly cost-neutral within the overall headcount of the naval services. She and the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, also asked about cold-weather training. I can confirm that, as a short-term measure, a number of collective training exercises will not take place this financial year—I emphasise the phrase “short-term measure”. It is anticipated that specialist Royal Marine collective training overseas will resume in the next financial year.
However, I endorse the point made by the noble Baroness about the international aid budget. The UK plays a vital role in helping the world’s poorest and most vulnerable through our aid budget. That is not only our moral duty but in our enlightened self-interest: our humanitarian efforts pay a security dividend and, as we have heard, the Royal Marines can play a part in that.
In recent weeks there has been significant media speculation on possible cuts to our amphibious capabilities and to Her Majesty’s ships “Albion” and “Bulwark” and of a manpower reduction of 1,000 Royal Marines. I have to repeat to the House that these reports are pure and simple speculation and, as I said last week, extremely unhelpful at a time when the Ministry of Defence is contributing to a cross-government review of national security capabilities. This review is being conducted to ensure that the United Kingdom’s investment in capabilities is as joined-up, effective and efficient as possible. Defence aims to use the national security capability review to understand how to spend our growing budget in a more intelligent way, further modernising our Armed Forces against the harder threats across the spectrum of potential conflicts now and into the future. Absolutely no decisions have been taken, and therefore any discussion of specific platforms or capabilities is pure speculation. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, Ministers will consider the conclusions of the national security capability review in due course. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State is taking the opportunity to look at all the work that has been done, study the evidence and reach conclusions in a considered way.
What I can say now—I address this particularly to my noble friend Lord Robathan—is that we have every intention as a country of remaining a leading global power in matters of defence and security, as long we have been. The ability of defence to move troops from ship to shore is an important capability that is expected to endure into the future, the nature and continued delivery of which must be developed in line with current and predicted threats. Similarly, the requirement for defence to possess the ability to operate in the high north remains an important skillset. The Royal Marines are the UK’s specialist Arctic warfare force, as was identified in SDSR 15, and are rightly recognised among our close allies, as noble Lords have mentioned.
I end by reassuring my noble friend Lady Wilcox that the south-west, Plymouth and Devonport in particular, is set to remain as the centre of the Royal Marines. The Royal Marines are an integral part of the Royal Navy and of the United Kingdom’s defence. Their distinction combines excellence, versatility and unique amphibious skills. They have provided 353 years’ unbroken service, protecting the nation’s security with timeless distinction. Through dedication, impressive training and incredible resilience, they have played a crucial role in keeping our country safe, and they will continue to do so.