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Oral Answers to Questions
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Kevin Foster)
The Government recently announced measures to strengthen and protect our democratic processes, including a consultation on electoral integrity. Before we launch the consultation, we will hold discussions with interested groups and explore the scope for cross-party co-operation. It will be published in due course.
Ruth Cadbury
Earlier this year, my constituents were bombarded with Facebook adverts telling them that I was stealing Brexit and ignoring their votes. It has been reported that behind those adverts was hundreds of thousands of pounds of dark money. Does the Minister agree that it is vital that voters know who is funding political adverts on social media?
Kevin Foster
Part of our announcement was that we will bring in a requirement for digital imprints where candidates or campaigners are involved, and some social media platforms have already implemented that. We are also looking, as part of a wider consultation, at how to have modern and up-to-date electoral rules, but it is about ensuring that we do it well rather than quickly.
Alex Cunningham
The problem is much more widespread. The Guardian reported that American donors have given $5.6 million to US funding bodies, which passed it to, among others, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute and Policy Exchange. Will the consultation look specifically at how think-tanks are funded and by whom, or is the Minister worried that that is a little bit too close to home?
Kevin Foster
We are clear that the consultation needs to look at a wide range of issues, including the potential for shell companies or organisations to be used to funnel money into media campaigns. As I said in my initial answer, we are keen to get this right and to secure cross-party co-operation, so that we can have a robust system in law, because we know that any loopholes left in a rushed piece of legislation would be exploited.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that part of having integrity in the system is ensuring that it is easy for people to understand? Electoral systems are critical to that, so will he bring forward plans to introduce first past the post in all English elections?
Kevin Foster
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is a great advocate of the first-past-the-post system, which has served this country well for many generations, producing stable government. Any changes to introduce first past the post in other elections would have to compete for legislative time with other priorities.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
Since we publicly raised concerns just over a year ago, the Conservative party has accepted more than £1 million from donors with links to Russia, including the wife of Vladimir Putin’s former deputy Finance Minister, who has donated £112,500 to the Conservative party in the past three months alone, making a total of up to £626,000. Will the review that the Minister is undertaking look at links between the Conservative party and the biggest kleptocrat of all, President Putin?
Kevin Foster
The person referred to is actually a British citizen, but I am not going to take lectures on the influence of Russia in British politics from the Opposition, whose leader wanted us to hand over evidence to Russia after the Salisbury attack—rather than believing our intelligence service, he would rather believe Mr Putin’s.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Kevin Foster)
The Cabinet Office does not collect or hold information on the number of eligible electors who do not register to vote in any election. The process for EU nationals to register and declare their intention to vote in the UK for these elections was similar to the system used in previous European parliamentary elections.
Rachael Maskell
Many of my constituents were denied a vote in the EU elections. Following yesterday’s urgent question, it is clear that the Government failed to implement the recommendations of the 2014 Electoral Commission review, failed to follow EU law, failed to try to extend the deadline for submitting the UC1 form and failed to uphold the human rights of EU residents in the UK. Was that simply Government incompetence, or did they deliberately deny EU citizens the right to vote?
Kevin Foster
I am very clear that the Government followed our legal obligations, and on 5 April the Electoral Commission published guidance for electoral registration officers, reminding them to prepare and issue UC1 forms to EU citizens on the register. Again, I reject this; and, again, the system was similar to what we have had in previous European Union elections.
Vicky Foxcroft
On 23 May, my constituents Joanna Pardoe, Lues Huesca Molina, Paloma Luna, Peter Tait, Pierro Izzolino, Cristiana Bottigella, Sophie Beswick, Yaiza Rivero and dozens more were denied a vote in the EU elections. Yesterday, the Minister failed to apologise to them and the hundreds of other EU citizens who were unable to exercise their democratic right because of the impossible timetable set for Lewisham electoral services by this Government. Will he apologise today?
Kevin Foster
I am afraid the timetable is exactly the same legal timetable there has been for previous European parliamentary elections and, ultimately, ensuring compliance with it is the job of the local ERO.
Bambos Charalambous
Two campaign groups, the3million and British in Europe, have raised more than £40 million to fund a legal challenge to the parliamentary election process. What assessment have the Government made of whether they took the necessary steps at the European elections to uphold article 3 of protocol 1 of the European convention on human rights, which protects our right to vote?
Kevin Foster
As said previously, the Government complied with all legal obligations and followed an almost identical process to what happened for previous European parliamentary elections. The requirement to make this declaration is part of European law, and we have to share such declarations before polling day. Again, while people may not like the outcome of those elections, I suggest they are better engaging with what voters said than trying to argue the process.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that the UC1 form is not some arbitrary requirement, as has been suggested, but a core requirement of European law that is required of all European member states and has not been changed since previous elections?
Kevin Foster
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is right to say that this is a requirement that applied in 2009 and 2014, and there is a requirement under European law for us to have a declaration supplied to other member states about their citizens voting in this country to prevent double voting. It is interesting that those who are usually great fans of following European law did not want to follow this particular piece of it.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
Yesterday, the Minister told me that he had received official advice that it would not be possible to bring forward a statutory instrument in advance of the European elections to allow more time for EU citizens to declare their intention on where they wished to vote and that that would not be possible because it would contravene European law. How can that be the case given that other European countries do it differently and that EU law sets no time requirements for registration, and will he publish the advice that he received?
Kevin Foster
EU law makes it clear that we have to supply details of the declarations sufficiently before polling day, which rather conflicts with the Scottish National party idea, suggested a couple of weeks ago, that we could fill in declarations at the polling station. Quite clearly, something cannot be done before polling day if the information is collected on polling day. We were clear that, with the timescales, we followed the legal process that was there from previous European parliamentary elections and complied with all our legal obligations.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
On this matter, the Minister appears to be taking his cue from Shaggy, protesting, “It Wasn’t Me”. Six times yesterday, he refused to apologise to these EU citizens who have been disenfranchised. Can I suggest that he change the record and perhaps take his cue from Timbaland, and “Apologize”—apologise to those European citizens who have every right to vote in these elections, but were turned away on polling day?
Kevin Foster
It does seem like a bit of a broken record from the Labour party, and not an acceptance that this is exactly the same process EU citizens had to follow to vote in European parliamentary elections while the Labour party were in government. The best assessment will be the one done by the Electoral Commission, which will do so independently, following a statutory duty to review major polling events.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Kevin Foster)
The Government are committed to meeting the requirement of the framework convention for the protection of national minorities in respect of Cornish populations. We work with Cornwall Council to encourage the promotion of Cornish culture, and we have committed £100,000 over two years to the council to support this.
Steve Double
I thank the Minister for his answer. In 2014, when the decision was made by the Council of Europe, the Government welcomed the decision and said that this would give the Cornish the same recognition as the other Celtic parts of the UK. Does the Minister share my view that, to keep this commitment, the Cornish should be allowed to identify in the forthcoming census as Cornish by way of a tick-box, just as the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish will be able to do?
Kevin Foster
I always welcome the determination shown by my hon. Friend to be a strong Cornish voice for Cornwall in the Chamber and to put the county first on the agenda. The Government will be guided by the recommendation of the Office for National Statistics to the Government and Parliament about the demand for particular questions when we lay the census orders before Parliament later this year.
Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)
One of the best ways in which the Department could recognise Cornish minority status is to drop the ludicrous suggestion of having a Cornwall-Devon boundary review. Will the Minister commit to giving the Cornish the same rights as the Welsh and the Scots?
Kevin Foster
The boundary review is independent, and in due course we will bring the orders before the House so that it can make a decision.
Mr Speaker
I rise with a degree of uncertainty, because ordinarily I seek to accommodate the hon. Lady, but the question has not been broadened by the character and contents of the answer, and I gently point out that Glasgow Central is a considerable distance from Cornwall. If she is sufficiently dextrous and can shoehorn an inquiry on Cornwall into a question about Cornwall that would be helpful.
Alison Thewliss
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your indulgence. Protection of the Cornish language is important, but there is no right, as there is for the Welsh, to write to the UK Government in Cornish, or to write to the UK Government in Gaelic and receive a response in that language. Would the Minister consider a UK language protection Bill that would protect Cornish and Scots Gaelic in the same way that Welsh is protected?
Kevin Foster
We can see that Celtic roots are strong, both in Cornwall and in Scotland, and that there is a link between them. We are always keen to help to promote the culture of these isles, and the different languages that are spoken across them are part of our vibrant United Kingdom. The Cabinet is always open to suggestions about how we can better do that, as the Department is keen to promote our Union.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Kevin Foster)
The Government are delivering a programme of work to strengthen the integrity of our electoral system and ensure that elections are secure and fit for the 21st century. Validated figures will be published as part of the evaluations undertaken both by the Cabinet Office and by the independent Electoral Commission of the 2019 pilots.
Alex Norris
According to interim figures for the pilot areas in May, 800 people were denied a vote because of ID requirements, yet last year there were only eight reported cases of personation fraud across the whole country. Is not the reality that this is not about protecting our electoral system—it is about voter suppression?
Kevin Foster
If it was so bad, why did the Labour party introduce a system of voter ID in Northern Ireland that has had no noticeable impact on voter turnout? To be clear, this is about securing the ballot, and we look forward to the Electoral Commission’s conclusions on the pilots.
Mr Cunningham
Does the Minister not agree that electoral fraud is rare in this country and could be tackled locally? If he thinks that that is how it should be tackled, will he help local government with resources?
Kevin Foster
It is always a pleasure to be asked a question by the hon. Gentleman. We are taking a range of measures to secure the protection of our electoral system, and I do not think that an ID check that originated in the 19th century and that was based on a small percentage of the community—and I must say, men—voting, where everyone was known, is still fit in the 21st century.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Most people would think that voter ID requirements are perfectly reasonable. On the pilots, what steps were taken comprehensively to ensure that people were aware of the requirements?
Kevin Foster
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. A range of work was done locally, supported by the Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office with councils’ consent, to ensure that voters were aware of the requirements. The indications so far are that that has been successful, but of course we will look at the Electoral Commission’s independent review before making further decisions on the process.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
The Minister without Portfolio (Brandon Lewis)
The Government are working with disability organisations to help political parties better support disabled candidates. In December 2018, we launched the £250,000 EnAble fund, providing grants that cover disability-related expenses that people might face when seeking elected office.
Alex Chalk
I have met many talented students with disabilities in Cheltenham from the National Star College, so I commend my right hon. Friend for removing disability expenses from the electoral spending limits. Surely, that should apply across the United Kingdom. Does he not agree that it should be rolled out to Wales, too?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That is, of course, a matter for the Welsh Labour party in the Welsh Assembly. We have taken the view here that excluding disability-related expenses is vital to closing the gap between candidates with disabilities and candidates without disabilities, therefore enhancing equality of opportunity.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
In supporting candidates with disabilities to stand in elections, does the Minister not agree that there could be a further benefit? It could result in the voting population of those with disabilities coming to the voting booths in person to vote for disabled or able-bodied candidates.
Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. It is good for us to ensure we have candidates from all backgrounds and all abilities, with candidates with disabilities having the opportunity to stand. There is a duty on all of us in political parties to do that. I am very proud that the Conservative party has a fund to support candidates who need extra help.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments in answer to this question. Does he agree that we all want to encourage maximum participation to ensure we get the very best candidates to stand and participate in all elections?
Brandon Lewis
My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. That is absolutely right, and as I say, it is why I am very proud to be the chairman of a party that has a fund, through the Conservative Foundation, that puts money into supporting candidates in that way. It is for all of us in all political parties to support candidates of all types and abilities to come forward, stand and represent their constituents.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
May I encourage the Minister to look at hidden disabilities, such as fibromyalgia and ME, as well as physical disabilities, to ensure that people with hidden disabilities, which might not be instantly recognisable, are included in the democratic process?
Brandon Lewis
Yes. The hon. Gentleman is right. It is for all of us to ensure we have a holistic approach to make sure nobody is ever left behind and everybody has a chance to reach their full potential.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Mr David Lidington)
The National Cyber Security Centre provides expert technical advice to Departments and Government contractors, but also to the wider private and public sectors, on how to prevent, detect and recover from cyber-attacks.
Craig Tracey
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Does he agree that, while it is important to ensure we protect the Government from attacks to new systems, we protect legacy systems, too?
Mr Lidington
I completely agree. Whoever leads the next Government, it would be good advice for the relevant Department to take forward a consolidated bid in the next public spending round, so that this issue can be tackled on a cross-Government basis.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Providing national insurance data can be at the root of the difficulties that young people face when registering to vote. Will the Minister identify how Departments can better share data with local councils to help more people exercise their democratic right and still ensure cyber-security?
Mr Lidington
We are looking at the potential reform of the canvassing operation by local authorities to compile the electoral register. As the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, there is a fine balance to be struck between the benefits one gets from data sharing between different Government agencies and the importance of maintaining the confidentiality of very sensitive private data.
Jo Platt (Leigh) (Lab/Co-op)
Today, the Public Accounts Committee found that, incredibly, a third of the funding for the Government’s cyber-security strategy has been transferred or loaned to other Government projects and that £69 million of cyber-funding has been taken from the strategy completely. Will the Minister confirm whether that is because the Government do not think our cyber-security is an important priority for them, or whether that is because even national security is not exempt from Tory austerity?
Mr Lidington
What the report shows very clearly is that the cyber-security of this country, and particularly of Government Departments and agencies, has been strengthened since the introduction and implementation of the national cyber-security strategy. The work that the National Cyber Security Centre, in particular, is leading on is helping Government Departments and the private sector alike to keep in touch with the developing and changing nature of the threat and to raise our defences accordingly.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Kevin Foster)
The Government are committed to scrapping the arbitrary 15-year rule. We were disappointed that the Overseas Electors Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) did not succeed, but we remain committed to implementing votes for life and are considering the next steps to deliver that.
Sir David Amess
Is my hon. Friend aware that not everyone is enthusiastic about these changes, starting with me? Even though it would affect two of my daughters, who live permanently in America, I cannot for the life of me understand the justification for these changes. Will he also comment on reciprocal arrangements for non-nationals voting here?
Kevin Foster
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, but I have to disagree with him. I am clear that we need to take the choice that is right for this country and our citizens who live abroad, many of whom have literally fought for this country and still retain very strong emotional connections to it and an interest in its affairs. That is why the Government’s view is that the 15-year limit is arbitrary and should be removed.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Oliver Dowden)
We are doing more than ever to encourage SMEs in public procurement. Recently published figures show an increase in spend from the previous year. Examples of measures that we have taken include streamlining procurement processes and improving transparency and, from September, we will be able to exclude suppliers that fail to pay subcontractors on time.
Mr Dhesi
Research from the Federation of Small Businesses shows that 25% of businesses that are in supply chains for public infrastructure projects experience late payment more than half the time. Along with the Government lagging dismally behind their target of spending 33% of central Government procurement with SMEs by 2022, is this not yet more evidence that they simply do not represent the interests of small businesses?
Oliver Dowden
I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would welcome figures that show we are spending more with small businesses than ever before. On his point about prompt payment, we set a very challenging target of 90% of undisputed invoices from SMEs being paid within five days and we are meeting that for most Departments.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Mr David Lidington)
We are now moving towards the 20th anniversary of devolution in Scotland and Wales and we are making every effort possible to restore devolved Government in Northern Ireland. Under this Government, the devolved Parliaments have been given more powers than ever before, with new powers over income tax, transport and the benefit system, and we have been clear that, when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, a significant number of powers will flow back to those Parliaments. We are committed to upholding the devolution settlements and to strengthening the Union between all parts of the United Kingdom. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
I am not sure that the Minister is being accorded the respectful attention that his celebrity status within Her Majesty’s Government warrants, and I hope that there can be an improvement on that in the minutes ahead.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Yesterday, during the urgent question, the Government were asked how many names of EU citizens were transmitted from this country to other countries after the 7 May deadline. What is the Government’s response to the fact that, under the directive, article 9.4 says that EU citizens shall remain eligible to vote in perpetuity and not have to fill in additional forms?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Kevin Foster)
The process was exactly the same as for previous European parliamentary elections and I urge the hon. Gentleman to look at the independent review that the Electoral Commission will do following the poll.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
The Minister without Portfolio (Brandon Lewis)
The Government are committed to ensuring that all citizens feel empowered to participate in democracy. In the Cabinet Office, we have delivered projects to promote and encourage participation among young people, including a scheme to recruit and train some 1,000 youth democracy ambassadors. I know that my hon. Friend has personally worked very hard on this issue and I give great credit to him for that, because political parties have a role to play in getting young people involved in politics as well. I am very proud that, in the Conservative party, with his good work, we have seen over 100 new young Conservative branches in just a year.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Mr Lidington
The Prime Minister could not have been clearer yesterday that the future of the NHS will not be on the table in trade negotiations. The hon. Gentleman would be better advised to focus on the need to improve the declining standards in the Scottish NHS, for which his party is responsible.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Kevin Foster
My hon. Friend’s examples show why an arbitrary 15-year limit is not correct. The Government are considering their options to bring this forward at the earliest opportunity.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
Kevin Foster
Legislation allows returning officers to use schools as polling places to ensure sufficient provision of polling places. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that there needs to be a balance, particularly because we need to find accessible buildings and in some cases schools will be the only ones, but there should be a discussion between returning officers and schools to ensure that the burden of this requirement is not too great.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Kevin Foster
The vast majority of liberal democracies worldwide, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand, consider 18 the right age at which to enfranchise young people. Parliament has debated the question of lowering the voting age in a number of contexts and has repeatedly voted against doing so.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
Mr Lidington
It was the First Minister herself who said that the 2014 referendum was a once-in-a-generation decision. I believe that we should take her at her word during that referendum campaign and uphold the clear will of the Scottish people as expressed in the 2014 referendum.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
To strengthen the Union, what actions are the Government taking to deliver investment and growth to all four nations of our United Kingdom, especially in places such as Stoke-on-Trent?
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend is right. That is why such measures as the modern industrial strategy and the city deals programme bring benefits to every part of the United Kingdom. As he knows, Stoke-on-Trent has benefited from the transforming cities programme to the tune of more than £5.5 million and from the ultrafast broadband programme by more than £9 million.
Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) has said, Nicola Sturgeon laid the draft legislation for a second independence referendum last week, but with only one in five Scots supporting what she is doing. Can the Minister assure me that his Department is doing all it can to protect and preserve our United Kingdom, which we are so proud to be part of?
Mr Lidington
The Government believe, and I believe the majority of people in Scotland continue to believe, that all of us are stronger by being proud of being not only Scottish, English, Welsh or Northern Irish, but part of a union of four nations in the United Kingdom.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Mr David Lidington)
I have been asked to reply.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is in Portsmouth today, with other world leaders, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings. The commemoration will involve more than 4,000 personnel in D-day events in the United Kingdom and France and representatives of every country that fought alongside the United Kingdom in Operation Overlord—and, appropriately, our former adversaries as well. I am sure that Members in all parts of the House will want to join me in paying tribute to the sacrifice of those who fought to secure the liberty and peace that we enjoy today, and to the courage which made possible the restoration of democracy, human rights and the rule of law to our continent of Europe. I am also sure that the whole House will want to join me in sending our very best wishes to our Muslim constituents here in the United Kingdom, and to Muslims around the world who are celebrating Eid al-Fitr.
I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others earlier today, and I shall have further such meetings later.
Tim Loughton
As my right hon. Friend has said, today in Portsmouth and tomorrow in Normandy, we honour the veterans and the 150,000 British, American, Canadian and other allied troops who led the charge to liberate Europe from the real Nazi scum. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, when a minority of hate-fuelled demonstrators yell “Nazi scum” in the faces of American tourists and intimidate others who are legitimately welcoming the visit of the American President, however we may take issue with him—and when, regrettably, they are spurred on by certain hon. Members—they attack the greatest alliance of free nations, and demean the memory of those brave troops and veterans whose sacrifice secured the right of all of us to free speech and lawful protest?
Mr Lidington
I agree with every word that my hon. Friend has just said. It is worth our reminding ourselves that the fact that we and our neighbouring countries across the channel enjoy today the freedom to express our views publicly, to assemble and demonstrate our points of view, and to argue peacefully against one another in this place, is derived from the courage and the sacrifice of the wartime generation, whether from the United Kingdom, the United States of America, or our other allies. We should remember and salute that courage and that sacrifice, and should not demean it by engaging in the sort of disgraceful behaviour to which my hon. Friend has referred.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to step in on behalf of my colleagues today and, indeed, to stand opposite the right hon. Gentleman. I echo his comments about the marking of the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings, which are being commemorated in Portsmouth today. We must never forget the extraordinary sacrifices of all those who landed in Normandy on that day, and the achievements of our servicemen and women who came together to fight fascism and protect our freedom.
I, too, wish a happy Eid al-Fitr to all our Muslim friends throughout the United Kingdom. Let me also express solidarity with all the women who are fighting pension injustice in court and outside Parliament today.
I congratulate both English teams who competed in the Champions League final on Saturday. It pains me, as a Manchester United fan, to congratulate Liverpool on their victory, although—fair play—Liverpool fans did rename “Margaret Thatcher Square” in Madrid “Jeremy Corbyn Square”. I reckon that that deserves brownie points, even from a Man United fan.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister had to repeat to President Trump a journalist’s question about whether the NHS was on the table as part of a United States trade deal. Given that the Prime Minister was silent on the matter, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will clarify the Government’s position. Will the Tory party give US companies access to the NHS—yes or no?
Mr Lidington
May I first welcome the hon. Lady to these new responsibilities for her and agree with her comments both about D-day and the success of English football teams in the two most recent European finals, and also wish both the English and Scottish women’s elevens well in their forthcoming matches?
I welcome the hon. Lady. I feel slightly sorry for the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), who I have become used to jousting with and who seems to have been dispatched to internal exile somewhere else along the Opposition Front Bench. The hon. Lady perhaps needs to watch out because I think there is a lesson there: anybody who outshines the dear leader at the Dispatch Box risks being airbrushed out of the politburo history at the earliest opportunity.
The Prime Minister has been very clear and she spoke for everyone in the Government and on this side of the House: when it comes to trade negotiations, the NHS is not, and will not be, up for sale.
Rebecca Long Bailey
The right hon. Gentleman is full of the banter today, Mr Speaker.
The President certainly seemed to think the NHS was on the table yesterday. So does the Trade Secretary, but who knows who speaks for the Government at the moment? The Prime Minister did nothing to allay concerns yesterday, so I hope she was more forceful in raising climate change with a President who initiated the US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, opened up record amounts of land for oil and gas drilling and called climate change a hoax. Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm whether yesterday the Prime Minister made any attempt to convince the President that climate change is in fact real?
Mr Lidington
Yes, the Prime Minister did raise climate change with the President yesterday and she made it clear at their joint press conference yesterday afternoon that she had done that. We are very proud of this country’s commitment to the international agreements to reduce global carbon emissions and we have a better track record in reducing those emissions than any other G7 member state.
Rebecca Long Bailey
The statistics that the right hon. Gentleman referred to relate to emissions cuts since 2010, when the UK benefited from policies put in place by the last Labour Government—policies that have since been dismantled. But how much authority do this Government actually have on this issue? Three current Cabinet Ministers have denied the scientific consensus on climate change, and several of those standing in the Tory leadership contest have close links with organisations and individuals promoting climate denial. It does not bode well. Figures released in April show that the UK is set to miss its own carbon budgets by an ever-widening margin. Would the right hon. Gentleman like to explain why the Government are off track in respect of meeting their own targets?
Mr Lidington
We are not off track in respect of meeting those targets. Since 2010, the United Kingdom has decarbonised our economy faster than any other G7 country. We generate now a record amount of electricity from renewable energy sources and we have just gone through the longest period in our history without relying on electricity generated from coal. That stands starkly against what appears to be the Labour party’s declared policy, which is to reopen the coal mines but not actually to burn the coal that they mine.
Rebecca Long Bailey
Let me be clear: the Labour party does not condone the reopening of any coal mine to be used for energy purposes. Once again, the right hon. Gentleman refers to climate emissions reductions that were implemented using Labour party policy—Labour policies that have since been dismantled. Not only are the Government failing to meet their targets, but last year actually saw the smallest drop in carbon emissions in the last six years: just 2%. At that rate it would take until the end of the century to reach net zero emissions. Just yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the Government are accused of trying to “fiddle its emissions figures”, ignoring their official advisers. So let me ask the right hon. Gentleman a simple policy question: the Labour party has committed to banning fracking. Will the Government ban fracking and allow new onshore wind in England—yes or no?
Mr Lidington
What the Government are committed to is to reducing emissions in line with our domestic and global targets. We have not only met but outperformed our first and second carbon budgets, and we are on track towards meeting the third. For some time into the future, there will be a need to use gas as a transitional fuel, but it is much less polluting than other forms of hydrocarbon-based energy and it will therefore be a good source during the transition period while we make ready to move to a completely decarbonised economy.
Rebecca Long Bailey
This is absolutely staggering. The Government promote fracking, which is backed by only 12% of the public, yet they effectively block onshore wind, which is backed by 79% of the public. New solar is down 94% and home insulation is down 98%. Parliament has declared a climate emergency, yet there is no evidence that this Government take it seriously. We need a green industrial revolution to tackle climate change. The Swansea tidal lagoon alone would have required 100,000 tonnes of steel, mainly from Port Talbot, but the Government refused to back it. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what the Government have actually done to support our steel industry since signing the steel charter?
Mr Lidington
If we look at what is actually happening in the real world, rather than at the ideological tracts that the hon. Lady appears to spend her time reading, we see that there are already about 400,000 jobs in low-carbon businesses and their supply chains throughout the United Kingdom, with scope for much more low-carbon growth to support up to 2 million jobs in the future. We have now received advice from the independent Committee on Climate Change about how to time and to legislate for our transition to a completely decarbonised economy, and we will be bringing forward later this year our decisions on how and when we will be taking that action.
Rebecca Long Bailey
The independent Committee on Climate Change has repeatedly criticised the Government’s approach to decarbonising our economy. I note that there was not a single word in the right hon. Gentleman’s response on what support the Government will provide for the steel industry, and people from Redcar to Scunthorpe know that his empty rhetoric will not solve their catastrophe. Climate change is an existential threat. To safeguard our future, we will need to mobilise all our resources, just like we did when we rebuilt Britain after the second world war. If we took the challenge seriously, we could create hundreds of thousands of jobs in low-carbon industries, reverse decades of decline in our de-industrialised areas and lead the world in renewable technologies, but the Government are letting us down. They have recklessly run the clock down on Brexit, and is it not the truth that their failure is now running down the clock on our planet?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Lady asks about Government help for the steel industry. The answer to her question is that we have provided taxpayer-funded subsidies to cut energy costs in the steel industry. We have also supported globally, and introduced here, trade defence measures to shut out unfair competition and the dumping of steel. When I was in Sheffield a few days ago, I talked to specialist steelmakers in South Yorkshire who welcomed this Government’s commitment to the advanced manufacturing centre there and to the work we are doing on technical and vocational training. They were optimistic about the future of steelmaking and manufacturing in this country under the policies that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has been taking through.
When I looked at the hon. Lady’s video about the Labour party’s new commitment to what it terms a green industrial revolution, I saw that it concluded with a focus on words about renationalisation and bringing industries back into public ownership, as if that were the way forward. We know from the CBI that the cost of that would be £176 billion, taken from the pockets of taxpayers throughout the United Kingdom. That money could be used to build 3 million new homes. Those Labour policies would put at risk the finances of decent working families in every part of this country.
Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
Mr Lidington
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting this important issue. We are committed to ensuring that people of all ages have access to the care and support that they need; that is why we have given local authorities access to nearly £4 billion more for adult social care this year.
However, we recognise that we also need to make sure that best practice is observed across all local authorities and NHS trusts, where the evidence is that delayed discharges are higher in some areas than others. We will be publishing the Green Paper at the earliest opportunity to set out the hard strategic choices that will face the Government, whoever leads the Government in the months to come, and to describe proposals to ensure that the social care system is sustainable over the longer term.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
I associate myself and my Scottish National party colleagues with the comments of others. Our thoughts are with the veterans gathered in Portsmouth today to commemorate the anniversary of D-day. Today is also World Environment Day—an important reminder that climate change remains the biggest challenge facing the world. I also wish a very happy Eid Mubarak to all those celebrating across the UK today.
Yesterday, Donald Trump said that the NHS was “on the table” in the trade talks with the UK. Today, he says he is not so sure. This is someone who does not even believe in climate change—a President who simply cannot be trusted. Why, then, are the UK Government so obsessed with pursuing a trade deal that puts Scotland’s NHS at risk?
Mr Lidington
The Government are not putting the NHS at risk in Scotland or anywhere else, and the Prime Minister has made that very clear indeed. What I fear is putting standards at risk at the NHS in Scotland is the SNP’s obsession with constitutional matters and the referendum rather than focusing on the better delivery of public services.
Kirsty Blackman
We have the best performing NHS in the UK, with the highest number of GPs per head of population. If this week has proven anything, it is that there is no guarantee that our NHS is safe. In 2014, Westminster promised that Scotland’s NHS would be in public hands for as long as the people of Scotland wanted that. But now this Tory Government are actively working to deny the Scottish Parliament the powers to safeguard our NHS and protect our public services.
The truth is that, under this Government, Scotland will not have a veto—we may not even have a say. The Scottish Government will never allow our precious NHS to be signed away in a Tory-Trump trade deal. If the Minister and his fellow MPs cannot make that same pledge here today, they will never, ever be forgiven.
Mr Lidington
At the risk of repeating myself, under this Government, and under the stewardship of anyone on the Government Benches, the NHS is not going to be up for grabs in a trade negotiation with the United States or with anybody else at all. When the hon. Lady talks about the need for a voice for Scotland, she ought to have more confidence in the ability of herself and her colleagues to represent the interests of Scotland here in debates and in the Committees on which they sit. At the moment, they are leaving it to my 13 Conservative colleagues to be the true voice of Scotland.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
Mr Lidington
I very much endorse what my right hon. Friend says, and I believe that, in Paul Bristow, Peterborough would have a formidable champion for the interests of the residents of every part of that constituency.
Laura Pidcock (North West Durham) (Lab)
Mr Lidington
The legacy of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will be a country in which income inequality is down and wages have been rising faster than inflation for more than a year. We have the lowest unemployment since the 1970s and record numbers of people in jobs. It is about time that the hon. Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) stopped talking our country down. On this side of the House, we want to raise our country up.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Mr Lidington
Let me say two things. First, I believe that freedom of speech is one of our most precious inheritances from previous generations, and we should do everything we can in this place and outside to uphold that principle. When it comes to any specific case, it would clearly be wrong for me to pass comment on something that is before the courts.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
Mr Lidington
South Wales police is actually receiving up to £290 million of funding in the current financial year, which is an increase of £19 million on the last financial year. To get to grips with serious crime—no one would have anything but sympathy for the victims to whom she refers and their families—we also need to look at what drives young men in particular, towards gang membership and participation in violent crime. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, in partnership with other Ministers, is now leading that work, which I hope will bring benefits to the hon. Lady’s constituency and many others.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend makes a very important point; the car industry is one of the most important sectors—but by no means the only one—in this country that relies heavily on just-in-time, cross-border supply chains with enterprises in other member states of the European Union. That is why the Government remain focused on ensuring that our departure from the EU is smooth and orderly, and with a deal that allows for those just-in-time supply chains to be protected.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Mr Lidington
May I first congratulate the hon. Gentleman and his partner—I have looked at his Twitter feed—on the imminent birth of their second child later this year? I wish both he and his partner well. On his question, it was this Government who went to the independent Committee on Climate Change to ask for advice about how, and over what timeframe, to make that move to complete decarbonisation. We have only very recently received that advice. It will clearly need to be considered within Government, and we want to bring forward our decision at the earliest possible opportunity, because I share his view of the importance of getting on with this.
Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)
Mr Lidington
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting this initiative in Bolton. As he knows, high streets are changing, and the Government are committed to helping communities such as Bolton to adapt to that change. We have already set in hand the £675 million future high streets fund, and we welcome Bolton Council’s applications, which are being assessed, alongside other applications. We will make an announcement about the places that are successful later this summer, and I know that my hon. Friend will continue to be a very doughty champion for his city.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Mr Lidington
NHS England is, I understand, increasing the baseline funding of the Hammersmith and Fulham clinical commissioning group to ensure that it is not financially disadvantaged by hosting GP at hand. But to improve its service to patients, the NHS is going to need to embrace innovation. Digital technologies such as those used by GP at hand do offer convenience for patients and often allow clinicians to work more efficiently. That is why our new GP contract gives everyone the right to digital first primary care, including web and video consultations from 2021, if that is what they want to receive.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
Mr Lidington
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting the particular example of Pegasus bridge and the heroism shown by servicemen from our two counties. He is right that today we need to pay tribute to the men and women who took part in the success of Operation Overlord, from whichever part of the United Kingdom or from whichever allied country they came.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I know that he is due to meet Ministers from the Ministry of Justice fairly soon to talk about whether the MOJ could introduce similar practices for its services; I will draw his question to the attention of the Minister for Policing, to see whether a comparable meeting can be established with the Home Office.
Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)
Petts Wood in the London Borough of Bromley is designated an area of special residential character, but it has suffered from inconsistent decision making at the hands of the unaccountable Planning Inspectorate. Will my right hon. Friend use his good offices to help me to secure the meeting that I have long been requesting but that the Planning Inspectorate has for some reason consistently declined?
Mr Lidington
I am happy, in the first instance, to ensure that my hon. Friend has a meeting with the relevant Minister in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I hope that that will enable him to find a way forward.
Mr Speaker
It would be a gross discourtesy if it were otherwise. It is extraordinary that the hon. Gentleman should have to ask for a meeting, but there we are. He is going to get his meeting.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Mr Lidington
One does get a bit sick of these scare stories after a while. The hon. Lady might like to pretend otherwise, but the majority of contracting out to the private sector in the NHS did not take place under a Conservative Administration; it took place under the Labour Government, with Andy Burnham urging that it be accelerated. The truth is that during the NHS’s 70-year lifetime, it has had more years under Conservative stewardship than under Labour stewardship. If we look at what is happening today, we see the NHS getting the biggest cash boost ever in its history and a long-term plan for its future, made possible by Conservative policies.
Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)
I remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
I echo what the Minister said about our teams that are going to the World cup and their performances later this month. This country is further represented by the three match officials who have been selected: Sian Massey and Lisa Rashid from England, and my colleague from Scotland Kylie Cockburn. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating them on the dedication, commitment and ability as match officials that has seen them called up to the World cup, and will he wish all our match officials a successful and productive tournament?
Mr Lidington
I felt that perhaps the shop steward for the amalgamated union of association football officials was speaking then. I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in congratulating Sian, Lisa and Kylie on their having been selected as assistant referees. It is a first-class achievement and I wish them, as well as both teams, all success for the World cup.
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)
Mr Lidington
I think I can give the hon. Lady an encouraging message to take back to the pupils of St Gregory’s school, which is that, under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, the Government have launched a resources and waste strategy, which includes consulting on plans to introduce consistent recycling for all households, consulting on a deposit return scheme to drive up the recycling of cans and bottles and plans for producers to pay the full cost of managing packaging waste for extended producer responsibility. I think that that makes a good package.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Thirty years ago this week, some 2,000 democrats—maybe more, but we will never know the number—were murdered in Tiananmen Square. Even now in China, a great firewall prevents Wikipedia, Google and others from communicating with the Chinese people. Although China has moved on, does my right hon. Friend not think it the height of hypocrisy that those who demonstrated against the President of America chose not to demonstrate against the President of China when he came here?
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend makes a telling point about the inconsistency in standards among some leading members of this House. It was indeed 30 years yesterday since the tragic and shocking events in which so many people lost their lives while protesting peacefully in and around Tiananmen Square. The sad truth today is that people in China are still unable to exercise their right to protest peacefully—a right given to them by international agreements to which the Chinese Government have signed up. We continue to urge the Chinese Government to respect citizens’ freedom of association, assembly, expression and other fundamental rights and freedoms as is supposed to be enshrined in China’s constitution as well as in international law.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price is commemorating the D-day landings at the Normandy memorial today. We share the feeling for all those people who were involved in that historical event.
I guess that, when President Trump’s visit was thought up months ago, the plan was that the UK would have left the EU. “Take back control”, they said, but what we saw this week was a vision of things to come: of razzle dazzle concealing the reality of sovereignty reduced to sycophancy. Some 68% of Welsh exports go to the EU. Only 14% of Welsh exports go to the US. Post-Brexit, the British Government will have to choose which deal to strike. Which deal would the Minister prioritise?
Mr Lidington
If the hon. Lady had been studying the various publications from the Government, she would have seen that our objective is to have a very close, deep future partnership on trade and other matters with our neighbours in the European Union while, at the same time, having the freedom to pursue trade deals with other parts of the world, including with the United States. I ask the hon. Lady to pause before condemning the state visit by the elected Head of State and Government of our staunchest ally at a time when we commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings and trying to criticise that for political purposes. We can disagree with President Trump—any of us is free to do so—but he is here as the elected Head of State of our staunch consistent ally and we should honour and respect him during that visit.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be aware from his recent visit to Cornwall of the development potential of the space sector there. Therefore, I am sure he will join me in welcoming the announcement yesterday of £7.8 million of Government support for the development of Europe’s first horizontal spaceport in Cornwall. Will he also join me in congratulating all the Spaceport Cornwall team on their successful bid? Will he use his offices to ensure that the Government do everything they can to make sure that the regulations are in place to allow satellites to be launched as soon as possible? While he is on his feet, will he congratulate the Cornish rugby team on its excellent win on Sunday against Cheshire to become county champions?
Mr Lidington
I am delighted to congratulate the Cornish rugby team, as my hon. Friend invites me to do. I was also very pleased to see the decision being made to give that support to the Cornwall spaceport initiative. I remember very vividly meeting representatives of the spaceport during my visit to Goonhilly Earth Station earlier this year. There are some really exciting commercial opportunities available for Cornwall and the United Kingdom.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
In July 2016, my constituent Mr Goff was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. He was treated with two lines of chemotherapy, and he initially responded well, but he had recurrent infections that required antibiotics. He went into remission in 2018, and his personal independence payment was stopped in December 2018. Mr Goff appealed the decision. Despite the fact that he was receiving treatment, his appeal was refused. In February, he was told that his cancer had relapsed—it is incurable. He is now being told that his mobility car will be repossessed this week. Removing his PIP will leave him short of money, unable to get to most of his daily appointments and at risk of infection when travelling on public transport. I appeal to everybody on the Government Benches: show some compassion. Someone intervene and stop this injustice.
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I do not know any more about the detail of his constituent’s case than what he has just set out before the House. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is in her place on the Front Bench and will have heard what he said. I shall ask her to make sure that a Minister from that Department speaks to the hon. Gentleman urgently to get to the bottom of what has happened.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
The National Readership Challenge launches today, and I particularly recommend to colleagues the conclusions on further education in the Government’s post-18 education review—to reverse the decline of core spending, to increase the unit funding rate and to allow for three-year funding plans. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that should be essential reading for Treasury Ministers before the autumn spending review and that more funding for further education would be very welcome?
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend makes a very important point about the vital role that further education plays not only in equipping young men and women with the skills they need to give them good career opportunities, but often also in providing a passport to higher education at a later stage in their careers. The Augar review provides a blueprint for how we can make sure that everybody can follow the path that is right for them, and my hon. Friend is right to say that we need to study Augar’s conclusions carefully in the run-up to the forthcoming spending review.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
Police Scotland prepared a report for the Crown Office on extraordinary rendition flights stopping at Scottish airports. Counter-terrorism officers and the Lord Advocate have made it clear that they require full access to the unredacted Senate intelligence committee report from the United States Government, who have so far refused to provide it, and that is prohibiting them from determining whether a crime was committed. Given that intelligence sharing is supposed to underpin our relationship with the US, has anyone from the Government raised this issue with President Trump while he has been here? If not, will the right hon. Gentleman pledge to do so on behalf of Scotland’s law enforcement agencies before President Trump departs UK soil today?
Mr Lidington
Unsurprisingly, and in line with precedent under all Governments, I am not prepared to discuss security intelligence matters on the Floor of the House, but I will draw the hon. Gentleman’s question to the attention of those of my colleagues in the Government who are directly responsible for these areas of policy.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
My thoughts today are with my 94-year-old step-father, who has once again returned to Normandy to remember that it was soldiers, sailors and airmen from not only the UK and the US, but our allies—especially those all over the Commonwealth—who fought for our lives. May we use this moment to thank them, to thank those who serve in our armed forces today and to thank our Prime Minister, who, in her last few days in the job, is serving our country with great dignity?
Mr Lidington
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. I am sure she will be able to take back to her stepfather a salute from the entire House for his service and that of his comrades in Normandy 75 years ago. I agree with every word she said.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
Twelve months ago, the Prime Minister told this House that she wanted a speedy resolution to the funding row between NHS England and Vertex regarding the drug Orkambi to treat cystic fibrosis. My seven-year-old constituent Oliver Ward wrote to the Prime Minister recently asking what progress she has made. Could the Minister please give Oliver some good news and tell him that he need not get up every day worrying about this terrible injustice?
Mr Lidington
I shall ask the Health Secretary or one of his team to contact the hon. Gentleman at the earliest opportunity to try to give Oliver the news that he wishes for.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
May I assume that it relates to matters that cannot wait until after the urgent questions—not because of the fullness of the hon. Gentleman’s diary but because the matter appertains to exchanges that have just taken place?
Martin Docherty-Hughes
Speaking on a day on which we commemorate the freedom of Europe, it came to my attention at the weekend that a fellow member of the Council of Europe—the Georgian state, and especially its Ministry of the Interior—will not provide security during Pride month to the first ever Pride march through Tbilisi. Given the history of anti-LGBT violence funded by the Russian state in previous years, I wonder, Mr Speaker, how we can convey not only to the Government of Georgia but to its ambassador in the United Kingdom that this House is not only concerned but gravely disappointed by their limitation on human dignity within the Georgian nation.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has partly achieved his objective by the ruse—and I will call it the ruse—of a point of order, which conceivably could have been the substitute for a question that he might have wanted to ask. If that was his objective, he has achieved it. I cannot speak for the House as a whole, but to judge from debates that have taken place in this Chamber in recent years, my strong sense is that his point will have struck a chord. The idea that such a march should not be able to take place within a safe space, with its participants’ physical security underpinned, offends very strongly against our instincts, so I hope that such measures as are necessary to be taken by Georgians will be taken.
More widely, if I heard the hon. Gentleman correctly, he made what struck me as a wholly uncontroversial observation about the record of the Russian state in human rights generally and, more particularly, the protection—or rather the non-protection—of the rights of LGBT people. That is a profoundly unsatisfactory state of affairs, and it is about time it became more civilised in these important matters. [Interruption.] It is always good to have the sedentary support of the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), and I thank him for what he has said.
Interim NHS People Plan
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op) (Urgent Question)
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to make a statement on the interim NHS people plan.
The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)
The NHS published its interim people plan on Monday, and I laid a written ministerial statement at the earliest opportunity yesterday.
The plan is a first, but critically important, step in ensuring that the NHS has the people, leadership and culture it needs to deliver the NHS long-term plan. The interim people plan has been developed by Baroness Dido Harding, the chair of NHS Improvement, in partnership with frontline staff, NHS employers and a wider range of other representative groups and stakeholders. It takes a tough look at the challenges facing people working across the NHS. It sets out how leaders will be supported to create cultures that empower staff and make sure that every member of staff, regardless of their background, will be able to progress.
Critically, the plan calls for all NHS organisations to set out how they will ensure that the NHS is the best place to work. The recently appointed chief people officer for the NHS will play a vital role in supporting the NHS to do this. The interim people plan sets out a number of practical steps to increase the supply of clinical staff. This includes an extra 5,000 additional clinical placements for nurse training places by September 2019 and a commitment to further expansion of medical school places.
Ultimately, the plan will ensure that the NHS is best able to retain the highly skilled and dedicated staff who choose a career in healthcare, including the most senior clinicians. Therefore, we have listened to their concerns that pension tax changes are discouraging them from doing extra work for patients. That is why Government will consult on how to introduce new flexibilities for this critically important staff group.
But we are not complacent. We know there is more work to do to secure the people, leadership and culture that the NHS needs. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has asked Baroness Harding to lead further work over the summer to prepare the final people plan. As has always been intended, the final people plan will be published soon after the conclusion of the spending review, when there will be further clarity on education and training budgets.
I would like to take this opportunity once again to place on record my thanks, and the thanks, I am sure, of everybody across the whole House, to all the NHS staff who do a wonderful job in ensuring that our constituents—their patients—get excellent care.
Jonathan Ashworth
It is a pleasure, as always, to see the Minister of State, but the Secretary of State should be doing his day job and be here answering questions about the health service, not playing his Tory leadership games.
Our NHS is struggling with vacancies of 100,000. Our NHS staff are the very best in the world—and none of them wants to be part of a trade deal with the Americans, of course—but they are working under immense pressure because of these chronic shortages. Shortages put patient care at risk, and that means that standards of care are falling. This means that our constituents wait longer to get a GP appointment because we have lost 1,000 GPs. It means that women are turned away from maternity units because we are short of 3,500 midwives. It means that cancer diagnosis is delayed because of shortages in the cancer workforce. As Dido Harding’s report shows, we are short of 40,000 nurses in the workforce, and that is now critical. It means that at a time when mental health problems are increasing—The Lancet reports today on an increase in non-suicidal self-harm—we have actually lost 5,000 mental health nurses since 2010. We have problems in the learning disability sector. Health Education England today warns that because of the shortages in learning disability nursing, we are set to
“hit critical levels in the next five years”,
with vacancies of 30%. We have an ageing population. Adult social care is short of 110,000 staff, and yet district nursing has been cut by 50%. We do not have enough nurses on our children’s wards. Health visitors and school nurses in our communities have been cut.
This NHS workforce crisis is linked to decisions of this Government. As Dido Harding’s report says,
“applications for nursing and midwifery courses have fallen since the education funding reforms”.
Those education funding reforms include the abolition of the bursary. Is not that therefore a damning indictment of the decision by this Government to abolish the bursary, and will the Minister now commit to bringing it back?
The report also references continuing professional development, where budgets have again been cut, by a third. It says:
“Employers have…been investing less in their people, as pressures on NHS finances have grown.”
Is that not an admission that Tory austerity, with nine years of underfunding in the NHS, has contributed to the workforce crisis of today?
The Health Secretary has said that he wants “a new Windrush Generation” of overseas nurses to fill the staffing gap, so can the Minister explain why a commitment to recruit 5,000 extra nurses a year internationally was dropped from the Dido Harding report? Did the Government put pressure on Baroness Harding? On international recruitment, can he guarantee that no one offered a job in the NHS or care sector will be restricted by the £30,000 salary cap, as the chair of Health Education England called for yesterday at the Health and Social Care Committee?
Finally, the Minister referenced the spending review. He will have seen that the Chief Secretary said yesterday at a Select Committee that the spending review is now unlikely to be ready for 2020-21. That means that new funding for training, for Health Education England and for capital investment in public health and social care will not come on stream until 2021—two years away. Does the Minister think that that is an acceptable way to deal with the NHS crisis we are facing? I urge the Minister, for whom I have a lot of respect, to accept that we cannot keep delaying this situation further. The Health Secretary needs to abandon his leadership games, focus on his day job and get a grip.
Stephen Hammond
The House will have listened to the hon. Gentleman. It is important to put out some facts, which were missing from his fact-free analysis. For example, we have had 52,000 more professionally qualified clinical staff in the last nine years, almost 16,500 more doctors and over 17,000 more nurses on our wards. He set out a list of promises, but with little detail and no means to pay for them. He asked a number of questions, which I will respond to.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the number of nurses and said that there was no plan. There clearly is. Increasing nursing is a priority, and this plan sets out—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) would like to listen, this plan sets out a focus to ensure that we can recruit nurses. The hon. Gentleman talked about applications, but he will know that applications for nursing places are up 4% on the previous year. He will also know that the plan sets out 5,000 more clinical placements available in September this year, which is a 25% increase on the previous year. He will know that the plan sets out 7,500 more nursing associates. The plan also quite clearly sets out measures that will ensure that the NHS is the best place to work, and therefore more nurses will want to stay in it.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about a number of other issues. The Migration Advisory Committee has made recommendations, which he will have seen. He will know that the Secretary of State has made a firm commitment that we intend to continue to recruit internationally, as well as increasing domestic recruitment. He mentioned continuing professional development. It would be useful if he had read the plan, which sets out commitments to ensure continuing education and opportunities for education for all staff in the NHS. He will have seen that there will be a final level of commitment.
The hon. Gentleman speculates about the spending review. He speculates about a number of things, but it would be better not to speculate. It would also be better not to make allegations about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who was doing his day job yesterday. I know that the hon. Gentleman is always interested in soundbites, and one soundbite he should have taken notice of was when my right hon. Friend said yesterday:
“the NHS is not on the table in any trade talks. The NHS is not a bargaining chip in negotiations, with the US or otherwise.”
Stephen Hammond
Perhaps that is the soundbite that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues—including the hon. Member for Dewsbury, who is shouting across the Chamber yet again—should remember.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
I welcome the Minister’s announcement that the Government are giving higher priority still to the recruitment and retention of staff in the NHS. It is an undeniable fact that there are acute shortages, particularly of nurses, in practically every part of the NHS, and we urgently need to improve our recruitment and retention. With that in mind, will he confirm that in finalising the people plan, serious consideration will be given to the immigration rules that will apply to recruitment after we leave the European Union? About one in 20 of the whole staff of the NHS at the moment are citizens of the European Union, and it would make no sense at all to put new restrictions of any kind on people coming from the European Union who want to make a valuable contribution to our health service. In Nottingham, we used to run recruitment campaigns for nurses in Romania. We are a long way away from being able to in any way put restrictions on staff coming from any part of the continent.
Stephen Hammond
My right hon. and learned Friend the Father of the House is completely correct. We want to make sure it is clear that the EU nationals who work in the national health service—there are more than 63,000 of them—are valued and make a huge contribution to our NHS. He will probably be aware that my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Home Secretary are in continuing negotiations, to ensure that there is no change to that position. I guarantee that we want to see EU nationals continue to work in and contribute to our great health service.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
I welcome the interim NHS people plan. Workforce is the greatest challenge across all four health services, but the 41,000 nursing vacancies in NHS England are simply a patient safety issue and cannot be parked on some shelf or kicked into the long grass. The plan identifies the removal of the nursing bursary and the imposition of student fees leading to a drop of over 30% in new student nurses. Will the Minister commit to re-establishing the bursary? Scotland preserved the bursary and free tuition, and our nursing vacancy rate is less than half that. The plan also calls for 5,000 new GPs. I remember the former Secretary of State promising 5,000 new GPs by next year, and rather than being close to delivering that, there are 1,000 fewer. How will the Minister deliver 5,000 extra GPs? Will he increase funding to Health Education England to deliver it?
There is no question but that the NHS across the UK will need non-UK staff. How will the Minister attract both EU and non-EU staff when there has been a 90% drop in European nurses coming here, and non-EU doctors are leaving because of visa charges and the £400 a year they pay per member of their family to access NHS services? What is he going to do about the pension tax allowance rules that are driving young consultants out of the NHS?
Stephen Hammond
I thank the hon. Lady for welcoming the plan. I think she will accept that this is a good interim plan; it is a stepping stone. She asks what we are doing to fill nursing places. I point out yet again that we are increasing applications and ensuring that there are 5,000 extra clinical placements available, which is a 25% increase on last year. Far from being complacent about the number of nursing applicants, we are looking to ensure that more nurses can be trained in this country, beyond the 35,000 who are being trained at the moment.
The hon. Lady asked about doctors. The Royal College of Physicians has made it clear that we need more medical school students. We are committed to increasing the number of undergraduate medical school places for domestic students by 1,500, with the first 630 being taken up last year. By 2020, there will be five new medical schools across England, helping to deliver—[Interruption.] Of course it takes time, but if we do not take that step now, we will never make the end of that journey. That has been a consistent problem for many years. There are still more doctors coming through now, but we need to do more, which is why this plan is being put in place.
The hon. Lady will have heard me say to my right hon. and learned Friend the Father of the House that there are more than 63,000 EU nationals working in the health service. That is more than there were in December 2017, and over 5,000 more than there were in June 2016. She is right to point out that we want those skills in the right clinical areas. I reiterate what I said a moment ago: we wish to make it absolutely clear that the contribution of EU nationals working in the health service is extraordinary and valued and will continue to be so.
The hon. Lady briefly mentioned pensions. She will have noted that we launched a consultation yesterday, setting out some ideas. I am pleased to say that the British Medical Association has welcomed them but asked us to look at other flexibility within the pension rules. I encourage the hon. Lady and all consultants to take part in that consultation.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
The Minister knows from our time together in the Department how much I welcome the interim people plan. It simply is the turnkey without which our long-term plan just cannot work. He is aware of how important retention is, and that is at the heart of the plan. I know he has mentioned this several times already—and consultations are great, and I will encourage my constituents to take part—but may I ask him to look urgently at the changes to the NHS pension scheme in relation to the annual allowance and the lifetime allowance? My trust has contacted me to say that senior consultant doctors and senior nurses are receiving unexpected tax bills of tens of thousands of pounds—up to £50,000—which is starting to have an impact on decisions about their future and the additional sessional work they are prepared to take up. This is impacting on patient care now, so on behalf of my constituents, I urge him—I know he will take this seriously—to look urgently at the NHS pension scheme issue.
Stephen Hammond
Again, my hon. Friend was absolutely right at the start of his question to point out that this is a key stepping stone to making sure that the long-term plan works. He is also absolutely right to point out that we recognise and have taken extraordinarily seriously the difficulties that a number of clinicians have had with the pension tax changes. He will know from his time in the Department that we have been in continuous discussions with the Treasury about what options may be available. I have set out today that the consultation will propose a new 50:50 option for higher-earning clinicians to halve the rate of pension growth in exchange for halving contributions. I accept that that is only one part of the solution, but it is a step forward. I welcome contributions to the consultation, and I urge him and his consultants to take part.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
In our area, GP practices have had serious problems recruiting, and one constituent has contacted me about surgeries being cancelled and having been told that the next routine appointment, for what is actually a serious condition, will be in August. My constituents cannot wait that long for GP appointments. Frankly, Ministers have had nine years to anticipate this crisis, and instead of making things better, they have in fact made things worse, with the King’s Fund warning that GP shortages could treble in the next five years. Frankly, the warm words the Minister has said are not urgent enough and not substantial enough to turn this around, so what is he going to do in the next six months to make a difference to my constituents, who are waiting far too long for important appointments?
Stephen Hammond
The right hon. Lady is right to be angry because her constituents should not be waiting that long. If she wishes to speak to me afterwards, I will take that up directly, with her, on behalf of her constituents.
The right hon. Lady says that we are not taking this seriously and not acting urgently enough. She will know that this interim people plan makes sure we will have not only more people recruited to the NHS, but more people wishing to stay working within the NHS. One of the key issues the NHS has faced is that a lot of people have decided not to work within it, and the key part of the people plan—this being the interim before the final is published later—is actually about ensuring we have more staff there. I reject what the right hon. Lady says. We are taking this seriously, and we are acting on it now.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I welcome the record amounts of investment going into the NHS, but may I seek assurances from the Minister that we will be using those resources to ensure that specialist clinicians in areas such as blood cancer and heart disease are properly supported so that we have the training for those personnel to tackle those conditions in particular? I say that as the chairman of the all-party groups on both conditions.
Stephen Hammond
My hon. Friend will know, because I have been in debates with him before, that I recognise the exceptional work that those two all-party groups do. He will know from the long-term plan that we have set out new commitments on diagnosis for all cancers and for cardiac. He will know that the reason why we have set out an interim people plan and will then set out a final people plan is that a long-term plan cannot work unless we have the people to back it up and are training the right number of people. This plan sets out how to recruit more people, how to train more people, how to give people the skills to deal with what will face the clinicians and the physicians of the 21st century, and that is key to delivering what he has asked for.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Baroness Harding, who is a Conservative peer, and Sir David Behan, the head of Health Education England, told the Health Committee yesterday in absolutely clear terms that both the abolition of nursing bursaries and Brexit are seriously exacerbating the staffing crisis in the NHS. Are they wrong?
Stephen Hammond
I am sure they will also have said that one of the things Health Education England has explicitly set out is that one of the biggest barriers to more nurses was that there was not the placement capacity. I am sure Sir David Behan will also have set out that he therefore welcomes entirely the 5,000 extra clinical placements that are being made available, which is a 25% increase on last year.
The right hon. Gentleman will also know, as I have set out, that there are more EU nationals working in the NHS now than there were at the time of the referendum. However, one of the reasons why we are having an interim people plan is that we are not complacent. There are huge challenges, as I set out not only in my written ministerial statement, but in my opening remarks. That is why this plan is addressing the shortages in nursing, and it is right that we do so.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I welcome very much this initiative, and I am delighted by all that has been said. The chief executive officer of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital announced his departure on Monday, following a catalogue of failings. Despite these failings, formal complaints to Dido Harding and others and a series of calls for his dismissal, the CEO has apparently resigned of his own volition to take up another highly paid job within the NHS and is not going to work his notice because he has too much holiday to take. Does the Minister agree that senior management in any organisation, including the NHS, must be held to account for their performance, and will the people plan deliver this?
Stephen Hammond
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful statement on behalf of her constituents about the change of leadership. I am obviously aware of the change of leadership, including the departure of the chief executive, and I am aware that it raises a number of issues, which she and I may wish to have a meeting to discuss. She is right to ask whether we are tackling the culture to make sure that we have the best leaders in the NHS, whether we are ensuring that they are properly trained for the challenges of the 21st century and whether we are making sure that they are not only held accountable but supported to make sure they are doing the best they can. That is why Sir David Behan led a chapter in the whole draft people plan, which will lead into the final people plan, on leadership. The right leadership for the NHS will make sure that our constituents get better care.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
It has been reported this week that there has been a dramatic rise in self-harm, with one in five girls cutting, burning or poisoning themselves. Despite this, the NHS trust in my constituency has cut the Lewisham child and adolescent mental health services budget, due to central Government cuts. We desperately need more funding and more staff. Given that the Government are not on track to meet their mental health workforce target for 2020-21, is the Minister really confident that we can meet these new, larger recruitment targets?
Stephen Hammond
I am confident that we are putting in place the measures that will allow those targets to be met. There is a comprehensive expansion of mental health services, with an additional £2.3 billion being invested over the next four years, which will make sure we resolve the problems the hon. Lady has highlighted. In particular, 350,000 more children will get the support they need, which I am sure will translate into dealing with the issues at local level that she has raised.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
GP retention is a significant challenge in my constituency, and GPs do often raise the impact of the current pension system. May I say to my hon. Friend that I very much welcome the consultation on pension arrangements for clinicians, but can he set out the potential timing of when those changes may come into force? He will be aware that GPs are making decisions right now about things such as early retirement, and we need this as a matter of urgency.
Stephen Hammond
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The Department will launch the consultation at the end of this month. It will set out the proposals, which we spoke about yesterday, to introduce greater pension flexibility. They are designed to take away the disincentives not only for senior clinicians but clearly for GPs. That consultation will last for the normal length of time, and I hope we will be able to proceed quickly thereafter.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
When I came to Parliament 35 years ago, I had served for three years on the royal commission on the NHS. We made many recommendations. When I hear the Minister talk about things that will be done and say that notice has been taken of reports, I am reminded that that report landed on Margaret Thatcher’s desk. The recommendations that we made were never carried out. One was about the shortage of doctors. Thirty-five years ago, we knew that there would be a shortage of doctors. We made many other important points, which should have been acted on. What assurances can the Minister give so that on this occasion the recommendations in the report will be acted on? What is the point of all these words and all this work done by people on things such as royal commissions unless the Government take action?
Stephen Hammond
The Government are taking action specifically on the points that the right hon. Lady made. We committed to increase the number of undergraduate medical school places by 1,500, and 630 are already in place.
Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)
I thank the Minister for grappling with the NHS pension scheme issue. I am not convinced that the 50:50 option is a long-term, sustainable option, so will he confirm, as the Secretary of State said yesterday, that the consultation will be open to exploring other mechanisms? In particular, will he keep banging at the Treasury’s door, because the ultimate solution is in its power? The way in which it has tried to dodge this and pass it to the Department of Health and Social Care is a bit of disgrace.
Stephen Hammond
My right hon. Friend—I am sorry, my hon. Friend; I am only presaging something that will happen in future—will know that when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State speaks he says what he means. The consultation will be open to looking at other schemes and other potential flexibility. My hon. Friend will know that the British Medical Association has welcomed the 50:50 option but would like to see other options. He will also know, much as the Department might like to make tax policy, we do not do so, so it would be injudicious of me to commit, but I am happy to continue our long-standing conversations with the Treasury on this matter.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
There will be no people plan if Donald Trump gets his hands on our NHS. Unlike Donald Trump, the NHS does not discriminate, and staff value everyone who walks through the door as equal. Does the Minister agree that the NHS was not for sale yesterday, it is not for sale today, and it must not be for sale tomorrow?
Stephen Hammond
The good news is that I think the hon. Lady was agreeing with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who set that out yesterday. I welcome the fact that she supports him.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
The fishing village of Mevagissey risks losing its GP surgery because the last remaining doctor there has handed the contract back to the NHS. The people of Mevagissey have launched an incredible campaign to find a new GP for their village. Does the Minister support their campaign, and will he spread the message far and wide that there is an amazing community waiting for a new GP and that all expressions of interest are welcome? Can he reassure me that the new people plan contains measures not only to recruit more doctors but to ensure that rural and coastal communities can find the GPs they desperately need?
Stephen Hammond
My hon. Friend is right, and I am happy to support the campaign by the people of Mevagissey, which is a wonderful part of the country to live in. I am happy, too, to assist him in that campaign if he wishes to come and speak to me about it. He is right that the plan sets out ways to recruit and retain more doctors, including GPs in rural and coastal locations, as well as those in urban locations.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Would the Minister join me, first, in congratulating the Royal College of Nursing on backing a people’s vote? Does he accept that one reason for that was doubtless that the number of nurses and midwives from the EU has dropped by 5,000 in the past two years? Will he set out what extra cost and complexity will be associated with the recruitment of nurses and midwives from the European Union, if indeed we leave the EU, in future?
Stephen Hammond
I am sorry, I wholeheartedly apologise to the right hon. Gentleman. I certainly join him in welcoming the RCN’s welcome for a people plan. It is a great and sensible step forward, without being complacent about what needs to be done in the next phase, which will be published later in the year. He will know that we have been working with other EU members to ensure that, after what I hope is an orderly Brexit, there is continued recognition of medical qualifications. He will know that the European Commission has already set out its desire for a wide-ranging, extensive reciprocal healthcare agreement, and the Government continue to work to achieve that ambition.
Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
I do not think that the Minister is taking this seriously. In the past two years, 5,000 nurses and midwives from EU countries have left the NHS, at a time when we are 40,000 nurses short. Does he agree with David Behan, the chair of Health Education England, who agreed yesterday that Brexit was exacerbating the NHS staffing crisis?
Stephen Hammond
I have already set out the fact that the Department, the whole NHS management, the whole NHS, and we as a country welcome and recognise the huge contribution of EU nationals in the NHS. I have set out our desire to continue to ensure that EU nationals work in the NHS. Alongside that, I know that Sir David Behan will have also said to the hon. Gentleman that it is important that we have more routes into nursing to ensure that those 40,000 vacancies that he discussed do not continue, which is why we have set out in the plan more nursing apprenticeships, more nursing associates and more clinical placements. It is important to have both international and domestic recruitment.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Minister has talked a lot about leadership. He said in his opening statement that there was a need to create in the NHS leaders who could create cultures that empowered staff. What is he going to do about the bullying at the top of the NHS, including in NHS England and NHS Improvement, which Dido Harding admitted yesterday at the Health Committee?
Stephen Hammond
The hon. Lady is right: that culture is not acceptable and must be driven out. She will have read the interim people plan, which talks explicitly about ensuring that we create leadership that stops that culture. There is a chapter on making the NHS the best place to work. She will know that we have been working across the country to ensure that all staff know that they are valued, that they have the right to speak up and that the culture of bullying must be driven out. I shall speak with Baroness Harding, as I do regularly, to ensure that that message is spread throughout the NHS and that staff know that they are valued.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I realise that health is devolved to the Scottish Government. Nevertheless it has to be said that the Scottish Government are having enormous trouble with their workforce planning, which means that doctors and nurses have to pick up the slack and that we are wasting good money on employing agency staff, which need not happen. May I make a plea to Her Majesty’s Government to share workforce planning and best practice with the Scottish Government so that they can get that right?
Stephen Hammond
As the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, health matters in Scotland are devolved, but I am delighted to share any of the excellent initiatives that are set out in the draft people plan with the Scottish Government.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
Despite the vital role played by carers in society, they merit just a paragraph in the plan. Will the Minister ensure that his Department matches Labour’s commitment to publish a full strategy for carers and to increase carer’s allowance to the same rate as jobseeker’s allowance?
Stephen Hammond
I welcome Labour’s commitment to publish a paper, but the hon. Lady will know that the Department is going to publish a Green Paper on adult social care. We are finalising that. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) shouts at me. I know he makes a lot of promises without detail. We want to make promises that have detail and can work.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
This is an important report into NHS people planning. It is an interim report, so there is an opportunity to identify any deficiencies. My particular concern is about the cancer workforce, in particular the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South about the loss of bursaries not just for nurses but for therapeutic radiographers. May I draw the attention of the Minister, with due respect, to the fact that the radiotherapy and oncology course at Portsmouth University recently closed? Concerns are being expressed and not just by politicians on the Opposition Benches. Mr Richard Evans, chief executive of the Society of Radiographers, said that he has concerns about whether our hospitals and specialist cancer centres will be able to recruit enough skilled and trained personnel. This could even threaten the delivery of cancer treatment and the ambitious plans that the Minister has in the new cancer strategy.
Stephen Hammond
The hon. Gentleman is right: this is a serious plan. As he rightly points out, it is an interim plan. It sets out a number of specific actions for this year. It also sets out a number of clear action paths and trajectories to ensure that the people plan is achieved. I would be delighted to meet him and other officers of the all-party group to ensure that we get the skills in the right places to ensure that the ambitious and deliverable plans in the long-term plan can happen.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I raised the cost of the Babylon GP at Hand app and the cuts in the number of conventional GPs at Prime Minister’s questions but, with respect to the Minister for the Cabinet Office, he missed the point, astonishingly. Even if NHS England funds £21 million of the shortfall for this year, that is still money from the public purse and it does not address the past cost to Hammersmith and Fulham of at least £12 million or any future costs. Will the Government suspend the Babylon contract while there is a proper investigation into this privatisation of the NHS?
Stephen Hammond
It is not a privatisation of the NHS; it is a scheme allowing greater access to GP services. The hon. Gentleman will know that it is delivering healthcare to a number of his constituents as well.
Sure Start: IFS Report
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
(Urgent question): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. To ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on the Institute for Fiscal Studies report on Sure Start children’s centres.
The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)
The Government very much welcome the recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on the effects of Sure Start. It is crucial that, in our pursuit of better outcomes for children and families and in making spending decisions, we are guided by high-quality evidence. The report gives us more of that.
The report shows very clearly that children in disadvantaged areas benefit most from services. Indeed, those in the richest 30% of neighbourhoods saw practically no impact at all. The policy framework we have in place reflects that evidence. In 2013, the Government introduced a new core purpose for children’s centres, focusing on families in the greatest need of support. While we have seen local authorities remodel services, there are now more children’s centres than at any other time prior to 2008—in fact, since Tony Blair was Prime Minister. This is at a time when the Government are making record investment in childcare, with more than 700,000 of the most disadvantaged two-year olds having benefited from 15 hours’ free childcare since its introduction in 2013. In addition, under the Government’s healthy child programme, children and families now receive five mandatory health visitor checks in the early years. The statutory framework also contains important protections so that outcomes for children and families, particularly the most disadvantaged, will not be adversely affected by the proposed changes to children’s centre provision.
The IFS concludes that policy makers must
“consider which types of services and models of provision can most effectively help this group”.
The Government agree. Indeed, we already have work under way to do exactly that. As part of our £8.5 million early years local government programme, we announced in April that the Early Intervention Foundation will look at children’s centres and other delivery models to find out what works well, so that local authorities have more evidence to help them to continue to make the best decisions for their communities.
Lucy Powell
I thank the Minister for her reply, but I think it bears little relation to reality.
Sure Start is a proud Labour legacy. It has a proven track record of transforming lives, yet it has been allowed to wither on the vine by this Government. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, in its significant report yesterday, highlighted that austerity has hit Sure Start hard, with budgets falling by two thirds. We have seen over 1,000 centres close since 2010. The report also shows that Sure Start saved the NHS millions of pounds by significantly reducing hospitalisation of children, especially those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. There is a clear lesson here for Government: investment in early intervention saves money later on. Closing Sure Start centres is a false economy.
Will the Minister use the report as ammunition, with the Tory leadership contenders and the Treasury ahead of the spending review, for a new commitment to revitalise Sure Start? What is happening to the Government’s review on the first 1,001 critical days, which was led by the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom)? I pay tribute to her work and her focus on this issue. Will the review be published before we get a new Prime Minister—I understand that it was ready to go—and will renewing Sure Start be central to its recommendations? Will the Government match Labour’s commitment to save Sure Start and invest £500 million in resurrecting it? Given the clear benefits of children’s centres in creating social mobility, will she properly fund local authorities so that they can do everything possible to keep children’s centres open?
The decimation of Sure Start has been a travesty. It flies in the face of all the evidence that early intervention is key to tackling disadvantage. It must be reversed.
Anne Milton
I pay tribute to the hon. Lady. This has been a passion of hers and she has worked very hard across the House to gain support. She is absolutely right that investment in early intervention is important. I should point out that, in the first paragraph of the executive summary, the report makes it clear that
“the UK is now one of the highest spenders on the under-5s in Europe”.
Those are OECD figures from 2014. I would just say to her that what matters is to have a universal offer, but it is also about the way services are delivered. That is not necessarily always most effective through centres. They definitely have a role, but it is about services and making sure that we get the services to those who need them the most.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), a member of the Education Committee, on her urgent question. In Essex, we have an extraordinary family hub that the Children’s Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), has visited. It is a one-stop shop for mentoring, health support, education support and counselling services. Our manifesto commitment was to have family hubs across the country. Will my right hon. Friend commit to having such hubs and roll them out across the United Kingdom?
Anne Milton
I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments and congratulate Essex on its work on its family hubs. The point he makes is important. It is not just about one-stop shops; it is also about ensuring that, for families who never go near family hubs or children’s centres, we can deliver services in their own homes. On the quality of children’s centres, in 2010, 68% of early years providers were good or outstanding. Today, the figure is 95%. On outcomes, in 2013, 52% of children left reception with a good level of development. Today, 72% of children do so. It is about making sure that we get the services that are appropriate for a local area to those who need them the most.
Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) for asking it.
The IFS report showed that Sure Start reduces the hospital admissions gap between rich and poor children by half. Put simply, thousands of children are ending up in hospital because of cuts to Sure Start. Sure Start was the jewel in the crown of the Labour Government, and politicians, policy makers and the public have long understood its benefits. Even back in 2010, the Conservative party pledged to recruit 4,200 Sure Start health visitors for exactly that reason. It was a Conservative election manifesto promise, but what is the reality? A cut of two thirds in funding and over 1,000 Sure Start and children’s centres have been lost since 2010.
Will the Minister join me in welcoming the report and commit to responding in detail to each of its recommendations before the summer recess? However, it should not be the IFS that marks the Government’s homework. In 2015, the then Conservative Government promised a consultation on Sure Start, but nothing has materialised. When will that work be completed and will the Minister commit to a publication deadline today? At a time when NHS budgets are stretched, should we not be investing in preventive measures such as Sure Start to keep children from ending up in hospital? Will she make that point forcefully in the spending review?
Tory leadership candidates are scrambling over themselves to make pledges to reverse their cuts, but if they are genuinely serious about social justice, now is the time to show that by pledging to reverse the scandalous cuts they have made to Sure Start.
Anne Milton
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. Being fixed in a dogmatic way on Sure Start children’s centres is not necessarily—[Interruption.] Perhaps she will let me finish. It is important that anything we do is evidence-based. As the report makes clear, statistically the IFS cannot necessarily be confident that the effects that it highlighted on hospitalisation are not due to chance. We need to make sure that we get the right services in the right place, in the right setting, for the families who need them most. Public Health England is currently looking at the healthy child programme, which is 10 years old. It wants to modernise that, focusing it on the first 1,000 days, and she has been involved in that. Looking at the team around the child and at solutions to make sure that vulnerable children and families get the help they need means that we need universal reach and a targeted response where it is needed most.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) for her excellent and long-standing work on early years, and I very much enjoy being a member of the Education Committee alongside her. With increasing numbers of children being taken into care, what is the Minister doing to help the most vulnerable families to stay safely together?
Anne Milton
It is important that families who can stay safely together—the critical word is “safely”—are supported to do so. A number of initiatives are going on: I talked about Public Health England looking at the health child programme and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is looking at home learning environments. There are a number of initiatives and this involves children’s services, education and the NHS all working together—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) is shaking her head. If she thinks differently, she should say so, but this will not be solved, and families who need help will not be helped unless we have an integrated approach to make sure that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) said, families can stay safely together.
Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on securing this really important urgent question, and I enjoy working with her on the Education Committee. As the former head of a school with a phase 1 Sure Start, I welcome the recent IFS report, which acknowledges the life-changing work that Sure Start centres deliver for the most vulnerable families in our most deprived areas. Can we have a guarantee that there will be a full commitment and funding from the Government to Sure Start centres and early intervention projects now and in future?
Anne Milton
The hon. Lady has a wealth of experience in this field. I can guarantee that our interventions will be evidence-based, which is the critical thing. She talks about cuts, but as the IFS report states, the UK is now one of the highest spenders on the under-fives in Europe, so we are spending money. What matters is making sure that we get the help to those who need it most.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on raising this incredibly important issue. The Minister talks rightly about evidence-based decision making. The evidence shows that in recent years, there has been a 17% increase in the number of children being taken into care and that the reduction in funding for Sure Start centres is a contributory factor. Some 655,000 referrals to children’s services—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State is muttering from a sedentary position that that is not backed up, but the correlation is very clear for all to see. It is both tragic and expensive to reduce funding for Sure Start centres, leading to the need for much more drastic and tragic intervention later. In rural communities such as mine, parents have to travel much further to a Sure Start centre. Will the Government commit to capital funding, so that local authorities can co-locate libraries, children’s centres and Sure Start centres so that they can keep performing?
Anne Milton
I point out to the hon. Gentleman that correlation and causation are not the same thing. The IFS report, which we have very much welcomed, is cautious in making that distinction. The important thing is that we can build children’s Sure Start centres in his constituency, which, as he says, is very rural, but what has always mattered to me—I am a former Public Health Minister—is this: what about the families who do not go there?
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
On the eve of the election in 2010, David Cameron, who became Prime Minister, promised that Sure Start would be safe in his hands, yet here we are nine years later and over 1,000 Sure Start centres have closed, the rest have been hollowed out and two thirds of the budget has gone, and still the IFS has said that they are doing some powerful work with the poorest in our communities. Like me, does the Minister wonder what amazing achievements there could have been from these centres if they had not been decimated and savagely cut in the way that they were?
Anne Milton
The hon. Lady has always been a champion of early years in all the work that she has done. It is not just the budget spent on Sure Start centres that matters; it is the budget coming in, and the visits from health visitors, which are so crucial—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady is shaking her head. It is not just that budget. As the report makes clear, we are the highest spender in Europe. What matters is the universal offer and making sure that we target the support to those who need it most and possibly to families who are not attending the centres—what about them?
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I invite the Minister to come to my constituency and see the communities that were being served by the five Sure Starts that were closed. She can see whether they were the best off in the country—I think she will find that they were not. Surely she understands that there is a connection between those closures and the 30% increase in the number of children going into care in County Durham.
Anne Milton
I am going to sound very repetitive, but this needs to be evidence-based. Sure Start centres—[Interruption.] Read the IFS report and read the wealth of evidence out there. This is part of the problem, but I think the hon. Lady will find that there are more places giving 15 hours free childcare than there ever were Sure Start centres.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I have some sympathy for the Minister, only because the evidence she is not looking at is the evidence she can do little about—the fact that the dramatic cuts from the Treasury to these services and to local authorities have resulted in many local authorities, very reluctantly, having to close children’s services. She says she does not think the model works, but the evidence shows that investment in early years is the best investment we can make. Without it, we have to make good the damage later on. I suggest that she ask parents whether they are satisfied with the present level of support. The evidence suggests that they will say no.
Anne Milton
The hon. Gentleman is a doughty champion of all things to do with education. As the Minister responsible for post-16 education not at university, I see the results of children having suffered from poor educational backgrounds and possibly insufficient family support. He mentioned the word “model”. That is the key. It is not one model we need to reach the most vulnerable families. I point again to the 700,000 of the most disadvantaged two-year-olds who have benefited from the entitlement to 15 hours free early-years education a week. This is an important addition to what else is being done. There is no one model that works in this area.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
When I held a summit on parental loneliness in my constituency, the local children’s centres made clear the vital role they played in supporting local families—often some of the most vulnerable. Despite this, 12 of the Sure Start centres in Bromley have closed since 2010. The Minister talks about universal reach, but with only six centres left in the entire Borough of Bromley—a huge London borough—and with our health visiting services cut, does she not recognise that universal reach is impossible without significant investment and an end to austerity?
Anne Milton
I can only refer the hon. Lady to the report that states that we are the highest-spending nation in the OECD. It is very easy for Opposition Members to throw the word “austerity” around without looking at the evidence or the other models available. She is fixated on a centre. What about the families and mothers who are too depressed to go there? I am saying we need good—[Interruption.]
Anne Milton
We need a variety of models of care and we will be led by the evidence.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
This is becoming a very frustrating exchange. On the one hand, the Minister, who I respect greatly and work with and who we know cares, is saying that this is about families in the greatest need, but on the other hand, she is saying, “What about the families who don’t go there?” My experience in Bristol stems from when this started. I was brought in to help join up the provision on education, early years and health services. They did not work well together, so we supported measures to tackle health inequalities—measures on family things such as parenting, mental health, domestic violence, cooking, nutrition, and so on. We did that through outreach to the families who would not normally come and by supporting families in the greatest need. What we are losing now is that universality principle and the point about how it actually works—that is where the evidence is. This is a frustrating exchange because the evidence is there. If she can tell us what the Government seek to replace the model with and help us to understand those outcomes, perhaps we can have a more productive exchange for the benefit of all those families who need this provision.
Anne Milton
I agree 100% with the hon. Lady. In some ways, these discussions should be more consensual given that we all want the same ends. I must repeat that there are more children’s centres now than at any time when Tony Blair was Prime Minister. It is not just about having centres either. In 2010, 68% of early years providers were good or outstanding and now 95% are. The presence of a centre in itself does not necessarily answer the question. Similarly, in 2013, 52% of children left reception with a good level of development; today, that figure is 72%. That is a marked increase. It is about the quality of care as much as the presence of a centre. I go back to what I said to the hon. Member for Batley and Spen: sticking in a dogmatic way to one thing will not work. We have improved quality, which is critical, and it is important that we are led by the evidence, including the IFS report, which—I say for a third time—I very much welcome. It is one of many things. The work that Public Health England is doing on modernising the healthy child programme is also critical to ensuring universal reach and a targeted response, but so too is looking at the team around the family.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
Following on from my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), I visited a lot of Sure Start centres in my capacity as a domestic violence practitioner and helped them with their work. We are talking about a woman’s ability to walk into a centre, without any stigma and without anyone knowing why she is there, and get help not just with childcare but with the domestic violence she is suffering, her mental health problems, and so on, and all that in her locality from people she trusts. What is it about that that the Minister seems to object to—in, I have to say, quite a dogmatic way?
Anne Milton
I congratulate the hon. Lady on her work at the domestic violence centre, and she is absolutely right: women—and men, because sometimes men suffer from domestic violence—need to feel free to go to some place where they feel they can report their situation. I do not have a dogmatic objection. This is the problem with our debate. We want the same ends. I am saying only that no silver bullet answers the question we all want answered by ensuring both sufficient universal support and a targeted approach.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Since 2012, all five Sure Start centres in my constituency, serving the most disadvantaged areas, have closed, with devastating impacts on early years interventions in those areas. The Minister needs to visit Durham to understand that Sure Start’s multi-agency approach and access to a wide range of services has not been replaced by other services largely because of cuts to local authorities. Will she commit to coming to Durham, will she carry out a complete review of early years provision and children’s services and ensure it is funded properly, and will she agree to ring-fence money for Sure Start?
Anne Milton
I thank the hon. Lady for her invitation. I am not the Minister responsible for this policy area, but I will make sure that her invitation is passed to the Minister who is responsible, and I am sure that at the earliest possible opportunity he will come to Durham to see the evidence on the ground. As she said, one needs to see what it has been replaced with. I am not sure what the provision of the free childcare entitlement for two-year-olds is like in her area, but it will be important to look at that as well to see what benefit it is giving to families who might otherwise have gone to the children’s centre.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
I remember a conversation with a constituent who said her Sure Start centre literally saved her life. She was suffering from post-natal depression but she went to the centre and spoke to other mums and dads, and it was they who convinced her that she needed professional help. Unfortunately, that Sure Start centre has now closed, along with more than half of the Sure Start centres in Kirklees, owing to savage Government cuts. Will the Minister publish figures for the number of designated centres across the country so that we can know exactly what damage has been done and—crucially—will she demand that the new Prime Minister undo that damage by reversing the cuts in full?
Anne Milton
The right hon. Lady raises an important issue—she is the first to have specifically raised it—and that is maternal mental health, which is a significant problem for many and is not limited to those from disadvantaged areas. I think that is important. Paternal mental health is now getting slightly more attention than previously. I cannot comment on Kirklees specifically, but if there is any information that we can send her, I will make sure she receives it.
Mr Speaker
With typical generosity, the Minister has elevated the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) to membership of the Privy Council. As far as I can discern or guess, it can only be a matter of time.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
One of the great successes of Sure Start was that it reached out to rural areas. We saw that particularly in Dursley and the Top of Town in Stroud. The problem with the cuts is that they have come along with other cuts in, for instance, the number of health visitors. All the increases that were put in place by the Government post-2010 have gone. We also see all sorts of problems in the private and voluntary sectors. Will the Minister agree at least to look at the impact on rural areas? There may not appear to be great areas of deprivation, but to people in those areas who are suffering as a result of deprivation, this matters just as much.
Anne Milton
Perhaps, Mr Speaker, that was because I believe that all women should be Privy Counsellors. They are very under-represented on the Privy Council.
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about rurality. As I said at the outset—and I did not make the comment flippantly—we will ensure that all that we do is evidence-based, and that our evidence is robust.
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Has the Minister any plans to look into the impact of centres providing early-years support on reducing youth violence? I ask because last year the cross-party Youth Violence Commission published a report that, as well as suggesting we should take a public health approach to tackling youth violence, said that early childhood centres should be revitalised.
The Minister refers to the need for evidence. Our report was written in partnership with Warwick University, and a great many academics gave evidence, including a representative of the Open University. Edward Melhuish is one of the leading academics analysing the impacts of Sure Start and early childhood centres. Will the Minister agree to read our report and respond to it, and will she also look into the material published by Edward Melhuish on Sure Start and early childhood centres?
Anne Milton
The hon. Lady rightly raises the issue of youth violence, which is behind much of the work done by Members on the first 1,000 years. [Hon. Members: “1,000 days.”] I mean 1,000 days. “The First 1000 days of life” is based on the premise that many life chances are set in those early years. I think that both the Department of Health’s healthy child programme and our Secretary of State’s focus on improving home learning, particularly family learning, are important. However, I shall be delighted to look at Edward Melhuish’s report when I am able to do so.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I was Hounslow’s Cabinet lead for children and young people when the Tories, who were in opposition in this place, shifted their view and came round to fully supporting the Labour Government’s roll-out of universal Sure Start provision as a multi-agency service. They did so because of the vast body of credible evidence of the real benefits provided by fully funded Sure Start centres, not just in health and mental health—which are covered in the IFS’s report—but in, for instance, social mobility, educational outcomes, and the provision of domestic violence services. Where is the evidence that informs the Government’s change of policy, as a result of which Sure Start centres are withering on the vine—or is the Minister struggling to justify it in the light of the effects of Government austerity on her Department?
Anne Milton
No. Let me remind the hon. Lady that the report makes it clear that we are one of the highest spenders on early years—[Interruption.] It is in the report, on the first paragraph of the executive summary.
I can only reiterate that, while words like “austerity” can be thrown around, this is about the money we are putting into, for example, the free childcare entitlement. It all matters. It all goes towards giving young families and children the early years support they need.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
With all due respect to the Minister, she has misrepresented the research, which showed that universal, multi-functional services—not residualised services—had a positive relationship with outcomes for disadvantaged children. In my city of Oxford, children’s centres are anything but that: they are just shells for private or voluntary services, or for residualised services such as contact centres or social services. The access is not there.
The Minister keeps talking about health visitors. Is she aware that under her Government the proportion of children receiving those visits at the right time is appallingly low in many parts of the country? Is she aware that it has fallen under her Government?
Anne Milton
The hon. Lady refers to universal, multi-functional services, and to health visitors. There are five statutory health visits. Well over 90% of contacts are made with children in the first few months of their lives, and 80% are made with those aged between two and two and a half. I think that that is welcome, but we always need to know what underlies such figures. I know that Public Health England is looking at the healthy child programme, and I am sure that it will look at those figures as well.
Points of Order
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Earlier today, the Minister for the Cabinet Office may have accidentally said, in response to a question about the UK’s carbon budgets, “We are not off track” to meeting those targets at all. The Government’s official adviser on climate change, the Committee on Climate Change, has reported that the UK is off track to meeting its fourth and fifth carbon budgets, and official statistics published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have also shown that it is off track. It is therefore a matter of established fact that the UK is off track to meeting its targets. Can you advise me, Mr Speaker, on how we can correct the record?
Mr Speaker
I think that the hon. Lady has done so very successfully, not least to her own satisfaction. The observation that she has just made will be faithfully recorded in the Official Report, which she may choose to disseminate more widely, possibly in her own constituency or beyond. I hope that she will go about her business with an additional glint in her eye and spring in her step in the knowledge that she has taken early action to put the record straight, as she sees it.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker, of which I have given notice both to you and to the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson).
Last week, on the BBC’s “Question Time” programme, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire said that 80% of school leavers in Bearsden, in her constituency, went to university, and claimed that only 4% of school leavers in Govan did so. That has caused much consternation and offence in Govan, and it has been discussed by various organisations there, including Govan Community Council. As you would expect, Mr Speaker, I have written to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, which has advised me that the
“statistics quoted on Question Time relate to the Govan and Linthouse intermediate zone and are based on one of the indicators used for multiple deprivation…These statistics are different from the school leaver destination statistics for the following reasons…the proportion is based on the overall 17-21 population (not just school leavers)…they relate to entries into a first degree course only…the time periods are different”.
As I have said, Mr Speaker, offence and consternation have been caused. Can you advise me first on how the statistics can be corrected, secondly on how we can ensure a more respectable debate on school leaver destinations, and finally on how the House can receive an apology from the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire for causing such offence to the people of Govan?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice that he wished to raise this matter. I cannot say that it satisfies the criterion for a point of order, although it is not in a small minority in that respect, in terms of what purport to be points of order. Moreover, I am grateful to him for confirming that he has informed the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire of his intention to raise the matter: that is especially important in view of the charge he has levelled against her.
As I think the hon. Gentleman knows and as I have just said, that was not a point of order. I have no responsibilities for the accuracy or otherwise of what may have been said on a television programme, even one so notably august as the BBC’s “Question Time”, by a Member of this House. I did see “Question Time” last week, although I do not recall the particular use of statistics upon which the hon. Gentleman quite understandably focused his beady eye.
In response to the hon. Gentleman’s inquiry about how he could achieve redress, let me say that I think that by raising the issue he has found his own salvation, and in the process, perhaps, that of the people of Govan, with whom he may wish to communicate further on this matter. It is not for me to plunge into an internecine conflict between colleagues. All that I will say, as far as the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire is concerned, is that in the 14 years for which I have known her I have always regarded her as a person of absolutely unfailing personal courtesy. We will leave it there for now.
Bill Presented
Vehicle Emissions (Idling Penalties) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Wera Hobhouse presented a Bill to increase penalties for stationary vehicle idling offences, to grant local authorities increased powers to issue such penalties, and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 395).
Freehold Properties (Management Charges)
Wednesday 5th June 2019
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Freehold Properties (Management Charges) Bill 2017-19 View all Freehold Properties (Management Charges) 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
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require landlords to provide accounts of management charges payable under section 19 of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 to freehold property owners, and for connected purposes.
These payable management charges are usually known as estate management schemes. As the name suggests, estate management schemes allow the landlord or scheme manager to collect money in relation to the retention of some degree of management control on the land that had been sold to the leaseholders. This often also includes control over amenities and common areas related to the freehold dwelling houses. The rationale of the original legislation was to allow the landlord to collect, retain and spend the fees for the general good of the area.
In my constituency I have Calthorpe’s Edgbaston estate, which covers a 2.5 square mile area. I read directly from Calthorpe’s website:
“We introduced the Scheme of Management under Section 19 of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 to ensure that the original character of individual properties and the uniqueness of our residential developments are retained. Under the Scheme it places obligations on freehold occupiers to ensure they adhere to a number of requirements.”
Under section 19 of the 1967 Act freehold occupiers must adhere to a range of requirements by virtue of the scheme of management. For Calthorpe estate residents these can range from not building without permission to not hanging or laying out washing to dry on Sundays. So there are the obligations on freeholders but section 19 does not contain any obligations on the landlord, and that is why I have today brought forward this ten-minute rule Bill.
As it stands, the management scheme is only enforceable by landlords. Freeholders of individual dwellings have no right to know where their money is being spent. These residents have no rights of redress and no rights to enforce action when breaches of the scheme occur. We need transparency for residents to be able to hold their landlord or scheme manager to account. This Bill would create a requirement for the landlord or scheme manager to provide transparent accounts outlining the management charges received and the nature of the expenditure.
The Government have spoken at length about legislating to give freeholders the same rights as leaseholders when it comes to service charges. I quote from one of their letters I received from the Minster for housing and homelessness, the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler), regarding this issue:
“I believe very strongly that service charges should be transparent, communicated effectively and that there should be a clear route to redress or challenge if things go wrong.”
I want to be clear: the management charges to which this Bill pertains apply to freeholders and are distinct from services charges. I am asking that the fees related to estate management schemes are not forgotten. It is clear to me that currently the balance of power is neither fair nor appropriate. Management companies can, by law, use enforcement agents to collect the management charges but individual dwelling freeholders are unable even to obtain details of where the money they have been charged goes or has gone.
I thank the Calthorpe Residents Society for its work on this. These residents, and others around the country who face similar predicaments as a result of their management schemes, have made repeated representations to their landlords asking for an account of the expenditure to see how the management fee that they pay is being spent. To date, no accounts have been made available for the Calthorpe residents. This means residents have no way of knowing how their annual fees are being spent by the landlords or scheme managers in maintaining a high quality across the estate. Residents who own their own homes as freeholders are left feeling helpless as they try to find out how much is left in the scheme, and they are rightly aggrieved that, despite their payment into the said fund, the opaqueness of it makes them powerless to try to enforce the responsibilities of the landlord or management scheme manager.
Today I ask the Government to strengthen the legal position of all freeholders to ensure that they have the right to know how the money that they must pay to the landlord or scheme manager under section 19 of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 is being spent.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Preet Kaur Gill, Jack Dromey, Kate Osamor, Helen Goodman, Jo Platt, Maria Caulfield, Ruth George, Caroline Lucas, Mr Virendra Sharma, Jeremy Lefroy, Huw Merriman and Kevin Hollinrake present the Bill.
Preet Kaur Gill accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 396).
Rehabilitation of Offenders
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
15:07 - The House having divided: - Ayes: 266 / Noes: 192 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Robert Buckland)
I beg to move,
That the draft Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2019, which was laid before this House on 1 April, be approved.
The purpose of this draft instrument is to include inquiries established under the Inquiries Act 2005 as “excepted proceedings” in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975. That will enable those types of inquiry to consider the spent convictions of individuals. This legislative change was requested initially by Sir John Mitting, chair of the undercover policing inquiry, and I will pause now to pay tribute to his predecessor as chair, the late Sir Christopher Pitchford. Sir Christopher was a distinguished member of the Bar, a High Court judge and Lord Justice of Appeal, who sadly died in the middle of this inquiry. He is much missed by all of us who knew and respected him as an outstanding lawyer of his generation.
Sir John stepped into the breach and is conducting this lengthy and serious inquiry. The reason for the request he has made is that information on individuals’ spent convictions is important for the purposes of the terms of reference of the inquiry.
The inquiry is examining undercover police operations conducted by English and Welsh police forces from 1968 onwards, including whether the police were justified in launching undercover operations against a group. To give full consideration to this, the inquiry needs to be able to consider the convictions of members of the groups; however, given the historical nature of the inquiry, many of these convictions will be spent, and therefore not disclosable under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.
The statutory instrument will give Sir John’s inquiry the ability to consider spent convictions. The change is vital for the inquiry to successfully fulfil its remit, and hon. Members will be aware that there is a high and appropriate level of public interest in this inquiry. Although the undercover policing inquiry is a particularly clear case of an inquiry where spent convictions are relevant, the amendment will allow any inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005 to admit evidence of spent convictions and cautions, but—this is important—limited only to where that is necessary to fulfil the terms of reference of that inquiry. It is likely that other inquiries may in future need to consider spent criminal records.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I appreciate his reassurance that the test is of necessity. Can he assure me that the same approach is intended to be taken by the chairman of the inquiry, as, for example, will be taken by a judge in determining the test of necessity and also relevance to the topic matter of an inquiry? Relevance is the normal test in court. Can he assure us that necessity will include that as well?
Robert Buckland
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is the Chair of the Justice Committee and a barrister of long standing at the criminal Bar. He is absolutely right to talk about the test of relevance. It is not the purport of any inquiry ambit or the function of any inquiry chair to adopt a floodgates approach to the disclosure and use of spent convictions. In the other place, the noble Baroness Barran put it very well when she set out to their lordships a flowchart of the way in which a particular decision about the use of spent convictions would be taken. She said:
“The first question is: does the individual have spent convictions, yes or no? If the answer is yes, are they relevant? Will they be treated anonymously? If they apply for anonymity, will that be agreed to? Further, even if it is not anonymous, is the hearing held in private or in public? If it is held in private, could the information then be published?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 May 2019; Vol. 797, c. 1792.]
I thought that that was a clear exposition of the framework within which a decision maker would carry out their function when it comes to spent convictions. In other words, that is the sort of filter that I think meets the concerns not only of Members in the other place but of Members in this House.
I was talking about future inquiries, and was saying it is likely that other inquiries may need to consider spent criminal records, as these can be key to determining whether authorities have acted reasonably in assessing and responding to risk. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 affords offenders protection from having to disclose their convictions and cautions, once those convictions and cautions have become what is termed “spent” under the Act. That is the point at which the offender has become rehabilitated. The exceptions order to that Act lists activities or categories of jobs where those protections are lifted so that offenders, if asked, need to disclose their spent convictions.
The primary rationale behind the exceptions order is that there are certain jobs—positions of public trust, for example, or those involving unsupervised work with children—where more complete or relevant disclosure of an individual’s criminal record may be appropriate to mitigate risks to public safety. The exceptions order is not limited to employment purposes, although that is its primary use. The amendment proposed here is not employment-related, but related only to the consideration of evidence of spent convictions and cautions in inquiries that are caused to be held under the Inquiries Act 2005.
David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
The Justice Committee has produced a report that recommends “banning the box”, to deal with the issue of spent convictions, and the Government gave a very positive response. There may be occasions when there is a crossover between an individual who might apply for a job in the public sector and somebody who is covered by an inquiry. I just want to get the Minister’s take on that particular point.
Robert Buckland
The right hon. Gentleman raises a very proper point, and I can assure him that the work that his Committee has done and the campaign to ban the box are matters that I and my colleagues in the Department are considering very carefully indeed. I will chart the changes that we have already made to the 1974 Act and the direction of travel later in my remarks, but I would say to him for that in the flowchart that I have outlined, the sort of concerns that he properly raises about an individual’s employment prospects could be raised in the inquiry before the Chair, when the Chair decides whether to publish the information or to retain anonymity. So there will be safeguards designed to protect against the sort of mischief that he properly probes me about.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
May I politely remind my hon. and learned Friend that it is not just employment prospects that will suffer if the box is not banned? There can often be a problem with getting social housing—indeed, any sort of housing—as well as with getting insurance or going to university or college. I welcome this statutory instrument, but it is particularly important that we get this absolutely right and proportionate.
Robert Buckland
My hon. Friend uses the word “proportionate”, and as a distinguished former Government lawyer, she knows what that means. I think many other people—Madam Deputy Speaker included—will know precisely what it means. It means, in effect, making sure that any measure does not defeat the purpose for which it was brought into force. In other words, it must not become self-defeating, and the response must be in line with the nature of the challenge. My hon. Friend is also absolutely right to talk about the wider context. We have to look at meaningful rehabilitation, and we have all seen plenty of examples of individuals who have committed offences and been punished for their crimes and who have been able to go on in later life to make a success of their work and family life and become the sort of citizens we want to see in our society. That is self-evident, and it is certainly the experience that all of us will have had at some point or other.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
I think the Minister is putting all our fears to rest. Paragraph 7.6 of the accompanying explanatory memorandum refers only to independent inquiries into child sexual abuse. Is that in effect what this is all about, or is it going to be wider than that? I thought that if people had signed the sex offenders register, that was already admissible evidence, so could the Minister confirm that this is not just about historical child sex abuse and tell us what the status of the sex offenders register is?
Robert Buckland
I am looking again at paragraph 7.6, and I think its purpose is to illustrate other examples of inquiries that have been set up pursuant to the Inquiries Act 2005. I will go on to explain that, because that does not cover every public inquiry. I will give the House a few examples as I develop my argument. In this case, the ongoing independent inquiry into child sexual abuse is used as an example of a 2005 Act statutory inquiry that may need to consider criminal records in the course of its deliberations. It is therefore a useful illustration of another inquiry that was set up because there was a strong public interest to be served and one would benefit from not having to undergo what would otherwise be a rather cumbersome and lengthy process of looking at the admission of evidence on a case-by-case basis.
As we know, the independent inquiry is taking considerable time, and it would be in the wider public interest for its work to be sped up in this way.
The hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) talked about the register; as he knows, sex offenders are required to sign that on conviction. That public document is recorded and kept just as a conviction would be. From memory, how long an offender has to stay on the register will depend on the seriousness of the offence. Some very serious child sexual offences will, of course, rightly require life registration, so the matter will remain on public record.
The hon. Gentleman was a Member when that Act was passed; he might have a better institutional memory than mine when it comes to the debates that led up to that. My experience of it was as a practitioner and recorder, having to make sure that defendants complied with the requirement. The sex offenders register is not a court order but a statutory obligation that follows automatically on conviction.
I come back to the exceptions order, whose primary use is for employment purposes. The amendment that we are discussing is not, of course, employment related: it relates only to the consideration of evidence of spent convictions in inquiries caused to be held under the Inquiries Act 2005. Although a number of judicial proceedings are exempt from the protections of disclosure—in those proceedings, there is no restriction on considering or basing conclusions on spent conviction information—inquiries made under the 2005 Act are not currently exempt.
Examples of proceedings that are exempt include circumstances ranging from solicitor and police disciplinary proceedings, to proceedings relating to taxi driver and security licences. We feel that the work of inquiries set up under the 2005 Act is necessarily of such public interest and importance that they must have the ability to consider all the evidence relevant to their work. To extend that ability to these inquiries, we must amend the exceptions order.
The draft instrument is necessary to amend the order to enable inquiries caused to be held under the 2005 Act to admit and consider evidence of convictions and cautions that have become spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, where it is necessary to fulfil the terms of reference of that inquiry; the word “relevance” again comes very much into play.
We recognise the importance of the 1974 Act, which offers vital protections to people with convictions. We improved those protections in 2014, reducing the amount of time that most people with convictions had to wait before their convictions became spent. As I mentioned in responding to the intervention made by the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson), we are considering proposals for further reform to the 1974 Act following the recommendations made by various reviews in recent years, including those carried out by the Justice Committee, on which the right hon. Gentleman serves.
There are demanding criteria for inclusion on the exceptions order. Our proposed inclusion would be the first addition to the order in three years. As I said, the amendment proposed here is not about employment; it relates only to the consideration of evidence of spent convictions and cautions in judicial proceedings—namely, before inquiries caused to be held under the Inquiries Act 2005.
Understandably, their lordships raised concerns in the other place about granting all inquiries the right to consider spent convictions and the effect that would have on individual rights. I want to make it crystal clear that we have proposed to extend this power only to a limited number of inquiries; as I said, we are talking only about inquiries set up under the 2005 Act, so non-statutory inquiries, such as both the Butler and Chilcot inquiries on the Iraq war, would not be covered by this legislation.
This legislation applies only to inquiries where considering spent convictions is necessary to fulfil their terms of reference. An inquiry’s terms of reference are set by the Minister, in consultation with the chairman of the inquiry. That provides an element of individual consideration of whether the exception should apply to each inquiry that ensures that this will not apply indiscriminately. Frankly, considering spent convictions will not be necessary for the vast majority of inquiries. In other words, the measure already has a limited application.
Our view is that sufficient safeguards are in place to ensure that individual rights—the issue that concerned their lordships—are preserved as far as is necessary. Under section 1 of the Inquiries Act 2005, inquiries are caused to be held by a Minister when particular events have caused, or are capable of causing, public concern, or there is public concern that particular events have occurred. As such, inquiries by design are held only where they are in the public interest, so any limited interference with an offender’s article 8 right to private life under the European convention on human rights would be necessary and proportionate.
Article 8 enshrines the right to respect for private life, but that is a qualified right. Subsection (2) provides that there shall be no interference with that right except such as is in accordance with the law and necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety, or the economic wellbeing of the country, or else for the prevention of disorder or crime, the protection of health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. Section 19 of the 2005 Act has specific regard to these rights, in as far as they ought be protected, but it does so in a way that enables the inquiry to fulfil its terms of reference and consider matters necessary in the public interest. In that way, the 2005 Act directly reflects the qualified nature of the right to privacy.
Robert Neill
The Minister is being most generous, but will he help me? He asserts, in terms, that if the inquiry is set up under the Act, it automatically triggers some of the exemptions to article 8. What is the remedy, however, if a person who is to be called as a witness by the inquiry is aggrieved and wishes to challenge the finding of the inquiry chair to admit the evidence of a spent conviction? Would there be a judicial review in the ordinary way?
Robert Buckland
There would be a judicial review. That point was considered carefully in the other place. I readily accept and deal full on with the potentially onerous nature of having to bring a judicial review to challenge proceedings. But as I have said, the filter system that any chair would have to operate is considerable. There are safeguards and guarantees in respect of anonymity and publication that provide the sort of safeguard that, if misapplied, would quickly and obviously attract criticism when a higher court came to scrutinise the decision process.
Victoria Prentis
Will the Minister help the House? Are the chairmen of these inquiries not nearly always senior judges, who are perfectly able to make the sort of evaluation that he is telling us about?
Robert Buckland
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As she will know, the process of obtaining a senior serving member of the judiciary will be done in consultation between the appropriate Secretary of State or Minister and, usually, the Lord Chief Justice, who will consider availability carefully. Retired High Court judges or lord and lady justices of appeal can also be considered. We are particularly fortunate, as I said at the beginning, to have Sir John and, formerly, Sir Christopher. They were asked to fulfil the role of chair as a result of consultation between Ministers and the Lord Chief Justice.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
If I understand it, this is about spent convictions. As we do not know the nature of any future inquiry in which spent convictions would need to be disclosed, would it not make sense to introduce a statutory instrument when a future inquiry needs such disclosure?
Robert Buckland
The hon. Lady tempts me down the road of ad hocery, which, as we know, can be a somewhat cumbersome instrument when it comes to issues of this nature. She can be reassured that the narrow nature of this proposed exception means that, first, the type of inquiry is tightly constrained to within the 2005 Act. Secondly, I do not envisage that many of even those types of inquiry will have to deal with the issue of spent convictions. Where they do, there will be a clear process for the chair to follow in assessing relevance, whether the spent convictions should be anonymised and whether they should be published. I would submit that there are lots of safeguards, which I hope will cure her justified concerns.
I am at times, quite properly, an advocate of ad hocery, which has been part of our system since time immemorial, and I agree with the words of the noble Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the former Lord Chancellor:
“My Lords, I well understand the need for this order in respect of the application that has been made, but innovating the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act to any extent can be done only as a matter of principle. It cannot be done ad hoc for a particular inquiry. Therefore, what is the principle under which it would be allowable in respect of this inquiry? The answer is that it is required to fulfil the inquiry’s remit. Only that would justify it. The application says, ‘We cannot fulfil the remit we have been given unless we are allowed to examine this matter’.
In my submission, it is extremely difficult to have an ad hoc system.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 May 2019; Vol. 797, c. 1788-89.]
I entirely agree with the noble Lord, and I would pray in aid his remarks in support of my argument today.
I was addressing the right to privacy, and I was going to elaborate upon my earlier remarks on anonymity. Inquiry chairs must preserve the anonymity of individuals as far as is necessary to respect their legal right to privacy. The chair of an inquiry has the power under section 19 of the 2005 Act to restrict the publication of information via a restriction notice. The undercover policing inquiry, for example, has invited applications for restriction orders. Individuals can use these orders to seek to maintain their anonymity.
The chairman must apply a strict balancing test under section 19, taking all relevant circumstances, including potential harm or damage to an individual, into account when deciding to make a restriction order. Where an individual is not satisfied that this has been done appropriately, they can make representations to the inquiry and ultimately, as I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), they can judicially review the decision. Together, we feel these represent a strong system of checks to ensure that individuals’ rights are upheld.
As some inquiries will be obliged to have regard to the rights of those who hold criminal records and to the legitimacy of using such evidence in the course of their duties, our view is that the duties of all inquiries are of sufficient seriousness to justify clarifying that they may take spent criminal record evidence into consideration where they believe it is necessary.
Although we do not think that considering spent convictions is likely to be necessary for the vast majority of inquiries, adding only the UCPI to the exceptions order would set a precedent that may lead to further requests—that is the ad hocery point. Adding those inquiries to the exceptions order now will ensure that more efficient use is made of the parliamentary process, as further amendments will not be required for each specific individual inquiry as and when it arises.
Not proceeding with legislation would prevent the UCPI and other statutory inquiries from admitting evidence of spent convictions, which would mean treating people with spent convictions as though those convictions had never occurred. The worry is that the inquiries would then have to accept a somewhat distorted version of reality. That could ultimately lead to conclusions based in part, or sometimes in whole, on false premises, which clearly would not be in the public interest.
We have to remember the wider purpose of inquiries set up under the 2005 Act, the job that chairs are given, the serious and grave nature of many of these inquiries and the strong public interest that underpins and runs through such proceedings and their purpose. My conclusion is that not doing so would clearly not be in the wider public interest, and I therefore strongly commend this statutory instrument to the House.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister to his new position. We worked together on the Justice Committee and, as always, he is eloquent in trying to convince the House to pass something that I am sure, in his heart of hearts, he knows is not correct. As a lawyer and advocate, he must understand the concerns that have been raised, especially in the other place. I am sure he is well aware that the other place voted against this statutory instrument and the rebellion included a number of Conservative Members of the House of Lords. I ask him, even at this stage, to reconsider whether this statutory instrument should be approved.
The Opposition understand the sentiment and the principle behind this statutory instrument in terms of assisting public inquiries into groups where spent convictions may or may not be relevant. The request came from Sir John Mitting, the chair of the inquiry into undercover police operations from 1968 onwards, including whether the police were justified in launching undercover operations against this particular group.
The request makes sense because one of the issues in this particular undercover operation is whether any of the convictions occurred because of agents provocateurs, which is where a person has committed an offence because an undercover police officer somehow encouraged or facilitated it, or put the idea in their head. The concept of agents provocateurs is a complex legal issue, and it is clear from some of the allegations that this may have happened in this set of undercover police operations, so the convictions of some of those who may give evidence will be pertinent and relevant because they might shed light on the actions of the police officers. Therefore, we understand that for this particular inquiry this approach may be relevant and spent convictions will add a critical context to the inquiries that we would not have under the current system. However, we believe that the wording of this proposal is far too wide and is not properly structured. As my colleague Baroness Chakrabarti said, it seeks to use
“a sledge-hammer to crack a walnut.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 May 2019; Vol. 797, c. 1786.]
It is too far-reaching and too blunt to be effective without seriously threatening rehabilitation and privacy.
The powers granted by the order would mean that the spent convictions of past offenders under investigation would become unspent in terms of policing and inquiries, and, crucially, may become unspent in the public eye. It completely goes against the spirit of rehabilitation that served sentences may be reopened for potentially unconnected investigatory purposes. In this information age, the checks and balances proposed by the Minister, whereby an inquiry’s chair may rule spent convictions inadmissible, may come too late to protect the individual; this information may be raised and shared by counsel in countless different circumstances before the chair can decide whether it is relevant and, therefore, admissible. Furthermore, given the speed at which information travels on the internet, any ruling by a chair could become a bit of a lame-duck decision, because the information would probably have already reached the public sphere. Indeed, Lord Hogan-Howe, the former Metropolitan Chief Commissioner, pointed out that the internet hive mind may mean that
“the public may know more than the inquiry chairman.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 May 2019; Vol. 797, c. 1791.]
In essence, once the information is out, the information is out, and it is unrealistic to expect every subject of this instrument to have the energy, time and resources to lodge a judicial review or request a restriction order to maintain anonymity. In any case, a restriction order from the chair of the inquiry would be likely to come too late to prevent the damage being done.
It is worth noting that, since the introduction of the 2005 Act, there have been only 23 public inquiries and this is the first time that a provision such as this has been proposed. Surely we should not be setting such a troubling precedent because of one inquiry; 22 others have not sought such blunt and excessive powers. It would only take someone to overlook a potentially minor and irrelevant conviction in their past and fail to mention it to their representative for their credibility and witness evidence to be undermined. This really calls into question how far the justice system will try to support rehabilitation, when spent convictions can be brought into public inquiries with limited oversight.
The checks and balances proposed seriously threaten article 8 of the European convention on human rights because they presume, first, that information regarding spent convictions will not reach the public eye without prior approval and, secondly, that the subjects of the instrument have the time, energy and resources to ensure that their rights are properly protected. I re-emphasise this point because we must recognise that, with the legal aid cuts and all the other cuts that have been carried out, and with a lot of people who are involved in these inquiries often not being financially solvent, trying to get legal assistance to maintain a judicial challenge or review is almost impossible. The lives of these ordinary people are being made even worse with this particular legislation, given the wide nature of its current format; people’s rights will not be properly effected.
At the heart of our criminal justice system is a need for the rehabilitation of convicted offenders, and the need for fair and transparent public inquiries is of real public interest. If the alternative to this overreaching order is to individually discuss the procedures of each public inquiry, that is a use of parliamentary time that accurately reflects public interest; I would much sooner the House establish the admissibility of spent convictions in terms of a public inquiry in advance of each inquiry.
Again, I say to the Minister that it is still not too late to take this SI away and reconsider the issues we have raised. We are talking about real issues, such as the fact that vulnerable witnesses may be dissuaded from giving evidence to a public inquiry for fear that a spent conviction for a minor offence committed when they were a child could come up and be in the public domain, and their families could find out, as could prospective employers. The consequences for those victims may be enormous, so they may not wish to engage in any particular inquiry, in which case we would not be being very effective. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee expressed serious concerns about
“the breadth of the power and what impact it might have on the lives of those who have been rehabilitated.”
As I have said, we successfully tabled a motion of regret about this SI in the other place. We gained sizeable support on this matter, including from some on the Conservative Benches. A Conservative peer, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, who is a member of that Committee, said that the concerns of the Committee and the other House were raised with the Ministry of Justice but its response was “largely fanciful” and “not realistic”. We therefore ask the Government and the Minister to seriously reconsider this SI, for all the reasons that have been mentioned.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I am always wary of extending powers that can trespass upon the convention rights of citizens and generally wary of giving blanket powers to organs of the state. I am very much in favour of the rehabilitation of offenders legislation and spent convictions. As the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) observed, the Justice Committee recently published a report that urges the Government to consider reducing the amount of disclosure that is required, particularly in relation to spent convictions that occurred when the person concerned was a child or young person. There is no doubt that that is a desirable course of action, because the inappropriate and unnecessary disclosure of spent convictions can be a serious bar to rehabilitation—I think we would all be as one on that.
That is why I looked twice when I saw this statutory instrument; I looked at it with some care and at what was said about it in the other place. On balance, having listened to the Minister’s careful and thoughtful explanation, and with all respect to the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench and for whom I have great regard, I find that the objection to it is ill-founded. This is enabling legislation, in the sense that, I understand, it makes provision for spent convictions to be admitted in particular classes of statutory inquiry where they are relevant—it is not general legislation insisting that this should happen. As the Minister rightly said, the relevance test has to be met in any event.
One or two questions are raised that we could helpfully think about. First, it is asserted that there may be a risk of people being dissuaded from becoming witnesses at an inquiry if the provision is in force. With respect to the Opposition Front Bencher, I am not convinced by that, because the same would happen under the ad hocery arrangement that is suggested. If someone were likely to be a witness in a particular inquiry, they would be put off as much by ad hoc secondary legislation as by the generally enabling provision before the House.
Victoria Prentis
Does my hon. Friend agree that as statutory inquiries have the ability to summons witnesses, as much as many courts do, that would deal with the issue?
Robert Neill
That is precisely right. Someone summoned to give evidence to a statutory inquiry would be obliged to come forward. With all due respect, it seems to me that it is a false point that should not weigh on us.
The second point is that even when people are summoned there is still a safeguard. It seems to me that the safeguard of the application of the test of relevance, in what is after all an inquisitorial process, as opposed to the criminal, adversarial one, is proper and appropriate. I am concerned about the potential cost of somebody having to seek a judicial review, because that process is lengthy and difficult.
Robert Buckland
One of the great functions of this debate is to tease out some of the issues. Before public inquiries are published, is there not a Maxwellisation process whereby individuals who might be referred to in a way that is potentially adverse to their interests are notified? Is that not another safeguard?
Robert Neill
It is indeed; my hon. and learned Friend anticipates the point I was about to move on to. A series of steps and procedures have to be gone through in relation to a statutory inquiry, and that puts the person concerned on clear notice that the issue may become relevant and may be raised. They then have the opportunity to make representations before the chair of the inquiry. Should the ruling go against them, there is then the fall-back position of a judicial review.
Out of a sense of fairness, and taking an approach of equality of arms, if someone is summoned to give evidence before a statutory inquiry and it is likely that a spent conviction is going to be considered as being admissible and argument is going to take place on those grounds, that person, if they are not otherwise legally represented already, ought to have the ability to be legally represented. I urge my hon. and learned Friend to consider, where appropriate, with those in his Department who deal with matters of legal aid, that that person, if they are not represented either as part of a class or group or because of their own means, should have access to legal aid to argue before the inquiry whether the spent conviction should be admitted. It involves a very small sum of money because in practice it is likely to happen only on a limited number of occasions.
That would be an appropriate additional safeguard from the point of view of equality of arms. I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will take that point away. Subject to that request, it seems to me that the safeguards are met. It is better to deal with this matter with one piece of legislation rather than to come back on an ad hoc basis.
I hope that this discussion also reminds us all of the advantage of having legally qualified inquiry chairs. Non-statutory inquiries that do not have legally qualified chairs have sometimes spiralled out of control because the chairs are not adept at dealing with, for example, the admissibility of evidence or case management generally, in the same way as a judge is able to. Perhaps that lesson can be taken away, too, but that should not stand in the way of our supporting a useful and proportionate statutory instrument, having weighed up all the pros and cons, as we have in this debate.
Robert Buckland
This might not have been the longest of debates, but I very much hope that those listening, particularly in the other place, will abandon their usual criticism of our House, because it has been a wide-ranging debate. It has included not only contributions from the Opposition Front Bencher—I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) for her warm words; we served together on the Justice Committee for a lengthy period and her background in law is well known—but important contributions in interventions from the right hon. Member for Delyn (David Hanson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), and the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee.
Through the debate we have dealt with and, I hope, laid to rest some of the objections that have been raised. On the objection that somehow the prospect of the potential disclosure of spent convictions in the limited circumstances described might deter people from coming forward, it has been pointed out that witnesses can be and are summonsed under the 2005 Act inquiry process, so the question of their not choosing to come forward becomes somewhat more academic.
On the issue of challenge, I have already set out the five-stage test that the chair of an inquiry would apply before admitting into evidence and then publishing the details of spent convictions. Under the Maxwellisation process, before publication the chair and the inquiry secretariat will invite representations from people who might be referred to in a way that is adverse to their personal interest, and those people will then be able to make full representations before final publication. That is yet another check and balance in the inquiry system.
Let me say a few words of slight dissent from what my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said about always needing a former judge, perhaps, or someone who is legally qualified as chair. I pray in aid the independent inquiry into child abuse, which Professor Alexis Jay is chairing expertly. Of course, she enjoys the support of highly qualified lawyers: the counsel to that inquiry, Brian Altman QC, and his team are there to help to make sure that the inquiry keeps very much to the course of relevance, and they look carefully at how proceedings are conducted. Of course, those proceedings are ongoing, so I shall say no more about them out of respect for the independence of that important inquiry and its work.
The Government are absolutely committed not only to maintaining the protections in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 but to looking into proposals for strengthening it. I look forward to engaging warmly with right hon. and hon. Members on that work. There is a strong case for adding the type of inquiry we have discussed to the exceptions order. An ad hoc approach would not be appropriate. I submit that the strong public interest that would be served by the proposal, the narrow nature of the extension, the checks and balances that will exist to protect the interests of those affected and the wider public interest should all drive the House to the conclusion that this draft statutory instrument should indeed be approved, and I commend it to the House.
Question put.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Animals
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (David Rutley)
I beg to move,
That the draft Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 13 May, be approved.
It is good to be here in the Chamber taking action on animal welfare again, after the Third Reading of the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill yesterday, and I very much appreciate the support of so many hon. Members for that legislation.
The regulations are important because they put in place Lucy’s law. They establish a ban on commercial third-party sales of puppies and kittens under six months of age in England—a ban that has been called for by committed campaigners and that has overwhelming public support. This is a positive step forward in cracking down on unscrupulous breeders and tackling the scourge of puppy smuggling.
Lucy was a Cavalier King Charles spaniel who died in 2016 after suffering terrible conditions on a Welsh puppy farm. Her plight inspired the Lucy’s law campaign, which harnessed widespread support from the public and the animal welfare sector. Dogs such as Lucy are often used by unscrupulous breeders to produce multiple litters of puppies, which are taken from their mothers when just a few weeks old and advertised online or sold in pet shops.
There is not an animal lover in the land who would wish to support this abhorrent profiteering from cruelty, but here is the problem: under current rules, it is difficult for would-be buyers to know whether a seller is a bone fide hobby breeder who raises puppies and kittens in a caring environment, as their advertisement claims, or someone who breeds animals simply as a money-making exercise, without regard for their welfare.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Many of my constituents feel strongly that stronger action needs to be taken against the rogue elements among breeders, and there will be a lot of support for the measures that are being brought forward. The Minister is absolutely right about the appalling scenes that we have seen. To what extent does he believe that the steps being proposed will not just make things a little better but end this evil trade once and for all?
David Rutley
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is good to see that he has been campaigning hard locally on these issues and supports this campaign and that his constituents feel the same. I can assure him that this legislation will be a material step on. It has been welcomed by charities across the board—I will praise them in a minute for the fantastic work they have been doing—which feel assured that the proposals will not only crack down on unscrupulous breeders but be a positive step against puppy smuggling.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Following on from the Minister’s proper remark about positive steps, does he agree that those who adopt rescue animals—dogs and cats, but particularly dogs—deserve a great round of applause because they are not only fulfilling their own needs but helping to provide a proper home to an animal that would otherwise be mistreated or abandoned?
David Rutley
That is absolutely right. This legislation means that people will be able to buy puppies directly from a breeder or from a rehoming centre. It is vital to recognise that those who bring a rehomed puppy or kitten into their home are really looking after the welfare of that animal. Their efforts should absolutely be praised, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend has done that today.
The activities of these unscrupulous breeders are bad for buyers and also bad for the countless good breeders in this country whose reputations and businesses are at risk when the actions of others less decent than themselves threaten the integrity of the sector overall. That is why we are taking action today, just like we did yesterday.
I would like to thank the brilliant campaigners and animal lovers who have helped to bring this positive change before the House today. The Lucy’s law campaign has been championed by vet and campaigner Marc Abraham and his fellow campaigners at Pup Aid. Lucy’s law is supported tirelessly by organisations big and small, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Mayhew, Cats Protection, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, and the Dogs Trust, all of which do so much to strengthen animal welfare across the country. I should also highlight the important work and support of the all-party parliamentary group on dog welfare so ably chaired by the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), who is in her place.
This decision to ban third-party sales of puppies and kittens followed a call for evidence in a public consultation that received over 6,500 responses, of which no fewer than 96% supported the proposal. The call for evidence was launched in response to an e-petition that called for a ban on the sale of puppies by pet shops and other third parties. The petition received over 148,000 signatures and triggered a debate in the House on 21 May 2018. This further demonstrates how Parliament and this Government can respond to public concerns.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we also have to stamp down on those who steal puppies to order? Many puppies are taken from outside people’s houses, outside shops and the like simply because there is a market for them. This measure makes the market more regulated, and that can only be applauded.
David Rutley
I thank my hon. Friend, who makes another really good point. Absolutely—this will help in that dimension, but there is also more that we need to do to make people more aware of where they are sourcing their puppies. We need to do more to tackle puppy theft and dog theft. We will be working on that with various campaigners in the months ahead.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
Everyone involved in the tough grassroots campaigning that took over 10 years to reach this point should be congratulated. I would particularly like to congratulate people in my constituency who worked very hard to get to this point. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that at the moment Wales is not included in this measure? Does he expect the Welsh Government to follow suit very quickly in doing a similar thing?
David Rutley
I thank the right hon. Lady for her point. I will come on to what happens in the devolved Administrations. It is fair to say, however, that the Welsh Government are now considering their response to the three-month consultation. I praise her local campaigners for their hard work. It does take time to get these changes through, but I am pleased to say that in the space of a couple of days we are taking really tough action, on a cross-party basis, to move the agenda forward on animal welfare.
This statutory instrument implements Lucy’s law by making an amendment to the parent regulations—the Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) Regulations 2018. The commercial sale of pets is already a licensable activity. The amendment means that licensed pet sellers, including pet shops and dealers, will no longer be able to sell puppies or kittens under the age of six months unless they themselves have bred the animals. Alongside the public consultation, a draft regulatory triage assessment was published. This legislation does not require a full impact assessment as the net estimated impact falls significantly below the necessary threshold of £5 million.
The ban will enter into force on 6 April 2020. The additional time before the ban coming into force will allow the sector to prepare. If the ban is rushed, it may encourage abandonment of puppies or their breeding mothers, or other unscrupulous activity. This approach is being supported by welfare groups and campaigners. Once it is enforced, the best place to buy or adopt a puppy or kitten will be directly with the responsible breeder or through one of the country’s many animal rehoming centres.
This Government have shown that we take animal welfare very seriously.
Toby Perkins
The Minister is absolutely right to publicise and to put on record how many excellent, responsible breeders there are out there. There have been occasions in the past where Governments have legislated for all the right reasons but ended up creating nightmares for some of the smaller organisations, in particular. What representations has he had on this, and how much can he reassure us that the legislation, as well as being robust, is sufficiently well drafted that it will not create unintended consequences for responsible smaller breeders?
David Rutley
That is a good point. I think the hon. Gentleman will also recognise that when the regulations to which he is referring were introduced last year, the Department took a step back, listened to the concerns and addressed them. We have learned from that and worked closely with a number of welfare groups to ensure that the regulations before us are in a really good state, and we have time ahead of 6 April 2020 to ensure that they are fully worked through.
This instrument will help to address a number of welfare concerns associated with puppies and kittens bought and sold by third parties. Those concerns include the early separation of animals from their mothers, unnecessary journeys at a young age from breeder to pet shop, the sale of puppies and kittens at inappropriate commercial premises, and unscrupulous breeders who are associated with third-party sales. The ban will help to tackle the blight of puppy smuggling, and it will also help the public to make more informed and responsible choices when sourcing a puppy or kitten. It will build on the new licensing regulations, which came into force in October 2018 and introduced a range of welfare improvements for dog breeding and pet sales.
Comprehensive statutory guidance underpins the 2018 regulations, and it was produced by the sectors concerned under the auspices of the Canine and Feline Sector Group. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is updating the statutory guidance on the activity of selling animals as pets, to take account of this ban on third-party sales. The changes are intended to assist local authority inspectors and licence holders by clarifying that non-commercial rehoming of puppies and kittens does not require a licence and requiring local authorities to notify existing licence holders of the change, so that they can prepare appropriately.
The guidance also outlines how to determine whether a licence holder bred the puppies and kittens they offer for sale, which is very important. A licence holder should be able to provide supporting evidence such as photographs, microchips and veterinary records to show that they housed and cared for the animal and its mother for the first eight weeks of its life, as well as the licence itself. The draft guidance has been shared with the sector, and we intend to finalise it well before the ban comes into force in April 2020, which I hope addresses the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins).
This statutory instrument applies to England only because the parent regulations apply to England only. Animal welfare is a fully devolved issue, and respective parts of the United Kingdom have slightly different approaches to the licensing of pet sellers and other animal activities. I understand that a three-month consultation was recently concluded on banning third-party sales in Wales, and the Welsh Government are now considering those responses, which is good news. In Northern Ireland, Members of the Legislative Assembly have shown support for a similar ban to be introduced, and officials in the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs are following developments in England closely. Scotland has committed to reform the licensing of sanctuaries, breeders and pet shops and is considering a ban on third-party sales.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for introducing this excellent piece of legislation. He mentioned Wales. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee visited a puppy farm in Wales about three years ago—I am sure that the Chair of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), will touch on this—and it changed my mind on puppy farming. It was very disappointing to see that dogs could not be dogs. Could the Minister speak to the Welsh Government, to ensure that the information he has gleaned is shared with them and they can reach the same conclusion as us?
David Rutley
I know that a lot is going on to share best practice and experience among the devolved Administrations, and I will ensure that that takes place. I am sure that there is an active dialogue. There certainly has been a very active dialogue in preparing the many SIs related to EU exit, so those relationships have been formed. It makes absolute sense, because in some areas Scotland is slightly ahead of us, and in this area we will be slightly ahead of other devolved Administrations. We do not want to have an animal welfare race, but we certainly want to ensure that we learn from this experience, because it is about the welfare of very important and much loved animals. My hon. Friend makes a good point, and we will follow that up.
The ban on commercial third-party sales of puppies and kittens is an important step towards further improving welfare standards to ensure that our beloved pet dogs and cats have the best start in life. This Government are committed to protecting and enhancing the welfare of animals, and this statutory instrument is another step in delivering on these commitments. For the reasons I have set out, I commend this statutory instrument to the House.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
I am delighted to be able to take part in this short debate. The Minister will be relieved that we will not divide the House; in fact, we are very supportive of this measure, and we think its time has come. It has taken a long time to get to this stage, but that does not mean we should in any way undermine how important this bit of legislation is.
I will ask the Minister some questions, because this is one of a number of pieces of legislation that DEFRA is obliged to bring forward, and we are clearly still looking for improvements to sentencing. Dare I say we need a definition of sentience? It is also clear that even rehoming and rescue centres need to be properly defined. I will come on to some of the concerns about that a bit later. As I say, this is only partial legislation, and it has to be made part of much fuller animal welfare legislation.
Today, we will pass this legislation, which is lovingly referred to as Lucy’s law, after the King Charles spaniel that the Minister mentioned. I think it is rather nice that we have given it such a title because that animal was dreadfully abused. It was forced to breed many more times than she should have been and, even worse, the puppies were taken away in the most draconian manner. The petition gained 150,000 signatures, which proves that the British are a nation of animal lovers.
Ann Clwyd
It is worth reminding people that when Lucy was rescued from a Welsh puppy farm five years ago, she was suffering. The Cavalier King Charles spaniel’s hips had fused together, and she had a curved spine, bald patches and epilepsy after years of mistreatment. She had been kept in a cage for most of her life, and was no longer able to have puppies. Although she was rehomed, sadly, she died. In memory of Lucy, I would be grateful to my hon. Friend if he mentioned her and the many people who have campaigned in her name.
Dr Drew
I thank my right hon. Friend for that. Clearly, it is a dreadful story, and she has filled in the back details.
As I have said, I know the British are a nation of animal lovers, but it is wonderful that 150,000 people put their signature where their heart was. The petition was launched by Beverley Cuddy, editor of Dogs Today magazine. She made the rather rash statement that if the Government accepted it, she would wear an “I love Michael Gove” T-shirt. She may like to give that to the President of the United States when she has finished with it, so he can be completely clear about who that is. She subsequently said that she would wear such a T-shirt about my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman), the shadow Secretary of State, but we will leave that there.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron)—I never get the constituency quite right, but I will keep trying—who is a doyenne of the all-party group on dog advisory welfare. Of course, a lot of other Members have supported this. Behind the scenes, there has been tireless campaigning by Pup Aid, CARIAD or Care and Respect Includes All Dogs, Canine Action UK, the RSPCA, the Dogs Trust, Battersea Dogs and Cats, and Cats Protection, as well as others I have not mentioned. We can be justly proud of how they have managed to get the law through to this stage. That was not difficult in terms of the complication of the legislation, but the sheer effort of trying to get things through this place does take time and effort.
Chris Davies
There is a name the hon. Gentleman has missed out, which is Marc Abraham, who has been right behind this campaign. We heard from the Minister that he is a vet of distinction, and he really has led this campaign from the front. I would like the Opposition Front Bencher to pay him credit.
As the hon. Gentleman has mentioned the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the T-shirt about loving him, perhaps from the Conservative side of the House I could praise an organisation I do not usually praise, which is the Daily Mirror? It led a very good campaign on Lucy’s law, and we should pay it credit for doing so.
Dr Drew
I was coming on to Marc Abraham, but the hon. Gentleman has pre-empted me. I will take that bit out, as he has paid due regard to Marc.
There are many dog and cat breeders who will hopefully continue to provide the route that people should use to buy their pets. Animal companionship is something that we greatly underestimate. A number of us have fought hard to make sure that places that previously banned people from taking their pets in, including sheltered housing, rethought that, because it is important for people, particularly older people who may live alone, to have such companionship. We strongly support the statutory instrument, but would ask the Minister where the money is coming from, as this is not a nil cost. It is about having to up our game on supervising this operation. Organisations such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are our eyes and ears, but at the end of the day, we have to recognise that there will be an impact on the public purse.
The Dogs Trust has said that this is one of a number of changes that it wishes to see. It is seeking an update in the pet travel scheme, which is connected to puppy smuggling, as some people abuse the way in which we can rightly bring animals into the country. Much tougher controls on that illegal operation are needed. Is that something that the Government have in train? I have asked about sentencing and sentience, and the regulation of animal centres, refuges and rehoming centres. Pet passports need to be revisited, because things have moved on since the original legislation was introduced.
Marc Abraham has written to us all, asking a number of rhetorical questions to show why the legislation needs to be introduced and looking at the Aunt Sallies that have been set up. Will the Minister say on public record why we can be assured that the measure will bear down on this dreadful trade? Marc asked why we are debating this today. That is down to him and to many other people. He also asked whether rehoming centres could be used as a devious device by people in the trade acting immorally but not illegally. Will the Minister explain how we are to make sure that Lucy’s law works in practice? Likewise, if the trade goes underground, as it could if we are not careful, what measures would the Government put in place? Marc answered that by saying that this was a perfectly good bit of legislation. It is important in its own right, but we should not lose sight of the fact that puppy smuggling is an ever-present and immoral trade. He ended by looking at that to make sure that if we agreed legislation today, it would have a positive impact on puppy smuggling, otherwise we would fail and would need to revisit the legislation and widen it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Jo Platt), in a debate that I attended, looked at the need to regulate animal rescue centres. It would be interesting to hear the Minister’s views on that. Is it something that the Government will introduce in due course? The RSPCA has argued that the difference between the best centres for the rehoming and rescue of animals and the worst is so dramatic that we need to look at how we ensure that the poorer centres are removed.
Without further ado, I am very happy to say that we support the regulations. We hope the Government will see them as not just a feather in their cap, but a feather in the cap of all those who led the charge in getting this piece of legislation through. I hope the Minister will say some good things about the other points I have mentioned, because it is no good just passing these regulations if we ignore the other important areas where it is clear there is animal abuse. Everyone in the Chamber wants to bear down on that. We can do our bit not just through this statutory instrument, but by what we do subsequently.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I welcome the Minister’s speech and the statutory instrument. I also welcome the contribution from the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) and endorse what he said about the need to change the law to increase the sentence to up to five years. At the moment, the maximum sentence is six months and four months if you plead guilty. For some of the horrendous cases, that is not enough. I do not think that party managers on any side of the House need worry about getting the regulations through, as only somebody who is slightly off-piece would go against them. We really need to get this done.
I am happy to welcome the regulations. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies) said, three years ago, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee undertook a report into animal welfare. One of our recommendations was to ban third-party puppy sales. The Government decided that they could not go along with that, but when one chairs a Select Committee one never gets too worked up about that because there is a constant dripping and eventually the stone starts to wear and a new Secretary of State comes in and decides on a consultation. It is very good to see the regulations here today.
I want to talk about the practicalities. I, too, pay tribute to Marc Abraham and all the organisations. Many people have supported the campaign to get these measures on to the statute book. I include in that the general public because, as has been said, we are a nation of lovers. Do not forget: we are talking not just about dogs, but about cats. I am always corrected by Cats Protection. Cats also matter very much, so I want to put that on the record.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire talked about the time we visited a puppy farm in Wales. The dogs were bred far too often and did not get proper exercise, and the surroundings and conditions were poor. What also struck me was that the breeders received about £200 for the puppies, which were going to a dealer in Birmingham, who was probably selling them for £500 or £600. There are several issues here. Not only were the puppies bred in the wrong conditions, which were poor, but the money was going back not to the breeders but to the dealers.
I do not know how we deal with this exactly. I think I am right in saying that there are between 7 million and 9 million dogs in the country. That is quite a lot of dogs. If you say that, on average, a dog lives 10 years, you probably need 750,000 puppies a year to replace the dogs that have died. Therefore, we need good, proper puppy breeding probably on a reasonably large scale. It needs to be done properly, with bitches not overbred and other things taken into consideration; otherwise more and more puppies—I know the Government are tightening up on this—will be smuggled into the country. There only needs to be one television programme that promotes a particular breed of dog and then everybody in the world wants that particular breed of dog, and there are not the puppies here, so they become very lucrative. For some of the gangs, it is probably more profitable than dealing in drugs or anything like that and they are less likely to get prosecuted or to get as heavy a penalty. There are criminal elements who see this very much as a money-making operation.
I know that the Government cannot stipulate the quantities and breeds of puppies that are bred, and I do not think the shadow Minister, in a socialist Government, would even consider the idea of prescribing how many breeds or types of dog should be bred—[Interruption.] Only teasing, don’t worry. We must face this issue because we have to ensure that there is a good supply of healthy puppies who are properly assimilated with their mother and are at the right age when they leave her. The set-up should not be as it is in many of these situations, where the puppies do not have their true mother and do not belong to that mother. All those things are a real problem, so this legislation is absolutely right. However, it will not completely cure the problem if we do not deal with the sentencing, so that someone who is cruel to animals can get up to a five-year sentence. Let us send the right message out to the criminal element and let us look at how the puppies are bred and make sure that we encourage best practice.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech and has done a fantastic job on this issue with the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. There is a big demand for puppies, but does he agree that we should educate the public to take on cats and dogs from cat and dog homes? I mention cats as well; I would not want to miss them out. Such animals make excellent family pets, but they are often overlooked because they are not the in-thing or the popular breed. Part of that is educating the public.
Neil Parish
The hon. Lady always makes a very good contribution and I congratulate her on doing a great deal of work on animal welfare. She is absolutely right; that is essential. If someone wants a puppy, a kitten, a cat or a dog, they should look at what is available at rescue centres. However—as I said before—we have to realise the number of puppies that is needed. Children naturally love a puppy and this is the other problem: very often a child will go along to see a puppy and it might be one that has been misbred, has an illness, or has been smuggled in, but that child falls in love with the puppy and, naturally, the parents buy it for their children. Perhaps there are then huge veterinary bills, or the dog has bad hips, bad shoulders or a bad whatever, and all these things add to the tale of woe. We have to face up to that reality, but the hon. Lady is absolutely right about rescue centres. The point was made, of course, by the Minister and shadow Minister that we have to be careful that these situations are not used as a way of carrying on some sort of abuse of animals.
Chris Davies
As chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend led an excellent investigation and inquiry into puppy farming. He raises a particularly strong point. The criminal element in this and every other country will find a vacuum. If we rightly constrain the breeding, there will be a deficit between the number of people wanting puppies and the amount that we can supply, so they will come in from outside. Puppy smuggling will therefore be more of a problem than it is at the moment. As we found during our investigation, many puppies do not reach these shores alive. When they do, they are quite often deformed or damaged and they create a massive problem for the new owner, so we will really need to look at and crack down on puppy smuggling.
Neil Parish
My hon. Friend reinforces exactly the point that I am making: too many puppies will be smuggled in. We are getting tighter at the ports, but we need to get tighter still and have people there. They will come through at different times of the day and night when there is nobody about.
There is another linked issue. Legally, one can go and buy five puppies and bring them in. How many people buy five puppies for themselves? Very few in my estimation. It is a legal loophole. Basically, someone gets a fraudulent form signed by an interesting vet in some other country— I will be diplomatic today, which is unusual for me.
Neil Parish
I thank the Minister for that sedentary comment.
Seriously, it is a problem. People can legally bring them in. If someone has a signed certificate from a vet in a particular country, they can bring them in. This could be another bonus from Brexit, dare I say it?
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Speaking as someone who moves our two dogs backwards and forwards all the time on a pet passport, I presume that all five puppies would have pet passports, which are expensive—in our case, about €50 each time we visit the vet.
Neil Parish
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. It is quite expensive, but I am not convinced that where many of these puppies come from the expense is so great. We must also remember that people are probably making £1,200, £1,500 or even £2,000 per puppy with some breeds. They are not smuggling in mongrels or cross-breeds; they are bringing in pure-bred dogs, although they are probably not as pure as they think they are and probably have the potential for disease, which is another issue to deal with—we could be bringing in dangerous diseases at the same time.
I have gone on a bit—you have allowed me to digress, Madam Deputy Speaker—but all these things are closely linked, as I am sure the Minister is aware. I welcome the regulations. There is another issue in respect of banning third-party sales. Let us imagine an establishment that is perhaps not the best breeder in the world. There is a problem there. If someone has to go to the premises to buy the puppies, they will, I hope, see the mother and what is happening in that breeding establishment, so to some degree it will be self-policing. If people go there and think there is something wrong, they are likely to report it and action will likely be taken—either the puppy establishment will be closed down or its operation will be tightened up and things will get better, since sometimes people breed badly out of inadequacy, rather than meaning to do it. So there is a combination of things. One only has to talk to the RSPCA to understand the problem.
Those are the key issues. The other issue, of course, which is more difficult for any Government to deal with, is that of backstreet breeding where people breed dangerous dogs. That is where microchipping comes in and all those other things that can hopefully go with it. By linking microchipping with the ban on third-party puppy sales, we should be able to tighten up on the backstreet breeding as well, however difficult it might be. The Metropolitan police and others are very good at the process because they have the specialists, although that is not the case all over the country.
I will not go any wider than that, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you have been very lenient on me. Suffice it to say that I am delighted to support the regulations.
Neil Parish
The right hon. Lady is, of course, right. It is also true that there are still a lot of feral cats, and if a feral cat gives birth to kittens, unless someone gets hold of them within a few days they will be feral as well.
The right hon. Lady need not worry: we will not forget cats. Cats are lovely. Dogs are lovely too, but sometimes they are given, shall I say, too big a bite of the bone.
Let me finally end my speech by asking the Minister not only to introduce this legislation, but, please, to increase the sentence for cruelty to animals to five years as soon as possible.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
It is a privilege to contribute to such an important debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to see you in the Chair listening to it, and it is a pleasure to speak about the important legislation known as Lucy’s law. I thank the Minister for his perseverance: a ban on third-party puppy and kitten sales is a momentous achievement. It has been supported overwhelmingly by the public, and it will make a fundamental difference.
Members of the public do not generally go to the dark web or illicit dealers to buy a puppy or a kitten, although they may do so to buy, for instance, drugs or guns. Most people who want to buy a puppy or a kitten want to make sure that it has come from a good place, that it is healthy, and that they are doing the right thing. This law is important because it will close the market for puppy farmers who are doing such a callous job in respect of animal welfare. Puppy smugglers will also take a direct hit, because there will be no legitimate reason for them to bring lots of puppies into the UK when there is no third-party market from which to sell them.
While the law will not close every loophole, it will tackle many of the issues that have been raised today, including third-party sales. Puppy farmers and smugglers survive because people are unaware of the background of pain and suffering and the abhorrent animal cruelty of puppy farms and puppy smuggling, which is masked because the animals are sold through third parties. Public education campaigns are not enough of themselves; they must be reinforced by legislation. It is confusing when people are told, “Always try to see the mother on site with the puppy that you are buying”, while puppies are being sold via the internet and even in motorway service stations, or through other third parties such as pet shops. In those circumstances, people cannot be sure of a puppy’s background, which is often hidden.
I want to thank, in particular, Marc Abraham. “Where’s mum?” is part of the Lucy’s law campaign, and I believe that both Marc and his own mum are here today. He has shown fantastic leadership in this campaign for many years.
It was an absolute privilege for me, as chair of the all-party parliamentary dog advisory welfare group, to launch the Lucy’s law campaign in Parliament in 2017. It has been a tremendous cross-party campaign. He is not here today, but I wanted particularly to mention the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who has done so much to support the campaign. The public have really taken to it, and I have been described online a number of times as “the dog woman of Westminster”. They have missed out the cats, but I think that I would have to relinquish that title to the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on cats and who looks after their welfare so well.
As I have said, this is a cross-party campaign. Support for it has been led tremendously well by Marc Abraham, and it has also been supported by Peter Egan, our patron at the all-party group. He is a great animal welfare campaigner, as well as being a fantastic actor.
I want to thank Pup Aid, Sarah Clover and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA. We have received fantastic support from Ricky Gervais, Rachel Riley, Brian May, Beverley Cuddy at Dogs Today, and many others, including Andrew Penman of the Daily Mail, who has already been mentioned. That is to name just a few, but everybody has come together in Parliament—the public, celebrities and animal welfare campaigners—to make this happen. The legislation will follow in Wales, post-consultation; I really do believe that will happen. As the Minister said, consultation is under way in Scotland on a raft of animal welfare measures and I hope that what I could call “MacLucy’s law” will happen in Scotland very soon.
Today’s events are a tribute to Lucy, the King Charles spaniel who is the eponymous hero of Lucy’s law. She was rescued by the wonderful Lisa Garner. As we have heard, until Lucy was rescued she was kept in a cage for most of her former life until she was no longer able to have puppies and then discarded. Her hips were fused together, her spine was curved, she had bald patches and epilepsy and suffered years and years of mistreatment. She had three good years of love with Lisa Garner but unfortunately died in 2016, and the campaign was launched in Parliament in 2017 in tribute to Lucy.
With Lucy’s law we are working together to look after the “underdog”. We are also looking out for all the dogs behind the scenes in puppy farms, hidden from the public, and their pups, who are often sold at five weeks, which is far too young, with no thought for any care or welfare by those engaged in this horrendous activity.
I thank everybody who has campaigned so hard on this important law and the Minister. Lucy’s law has been very much a cross-party, positive achievement in this Parliament and testifies to the progress in animal welfare legislation in this House.
David Rutley
First, I say once again that it is fantastic to be able to participate in such a positive debate and to make such positive progress. I am grateful for all the contributions made today; they have all been constructive and the questions raised are legitimate. We do need to answer them and I will do my level best to do so.
It is important to correct the record, however. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said we are “a nation of lovers”; I think in the context of this debate he meant animal lovers. We will leave the other subject for a different day, but we are talking about animal welfare here today. I just want to make sure that is absolutely clear.
It is important that we do not forget the cats. The right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) was very clear about that, as she was in her praise of the tireless campaigners, which the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) did a fantastic job of doing, too.
Bob Stewart
Cats, as Winston Churchill said, look down on us, dogs look up at us, but pigs look us in the eye as equals. I just wanted to make that point, as a dog lover more than a cat lover.
David Rutley
Madam Deputy Speaker, I will allow you to decide whether that was in order. My hon. Friend has strayed slightly from the subject of today’s discussion, but as always he educates us on his views, and on those of Winston Churchill.
I cannot get away from cats because a very active member of our private office team is the proud owner of Percy, a kitten, and we have regular updates on his progress. I am grateful for the contributions to the debate, and it is important to highlight some of the work being done in the devolved areas as well. I am pleased to hear about “MacLucy’s” law; I have never heard it described as that before. We must make progress in those areas as well.
Dr Cameron
It is important that “MacLucy’s” law is taken forward across the UK, because we would not like puppy smugglers or farmers to feel that there is a safe haven anywhere. Given that so much has been put into the campaign, I ask the Minister to speak with counterparts in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to try to make sure that this practice applies across the board.
David Rutley
Yes, I absolutely will do that. I have said that to colleagues in the context of Wales, and we will do that in Scotland as well. We need to move this forward in the United Kingdom.
I should also highlight the number of Whips who have been in the debate today—although they are not able to speak—including the Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), and my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart). They are huge animal lovers and wanted to be associated with the progress we are making today.
I want to deal with some of the points made by the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) and my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton on sentencing and increased sentences. We remain committed to introducing the necessary legislation to increase the maximum penalty for animal cruelty from six months’ imprisonment to five years’ imprisonment, and I am working at the highest levels to ensure that the legislation needed to make the change is introduced at the earliest opportunity.
David Rutley
I will give way in just one second, because I was about to say that I am sure that those who make decisions about what goes on in this Chamber—the business managers—will listen carefully to those on the Opposition Benches and to the experienced voice of the Chair of the EFRA Committee in their calls to move this legislation forward. They have told us that they will not attempt to block this legislation, because everybody sees how important it is.
Neil Parish
I thank my hon. Friend, and that is exactly that point that I wanted to re-emphasise. There is so much cross-party support, and I cannot see why the managers of business in this House, on either side, should be worried. I know that the Minister is working hard, but please may we have this legislation sooner rather than later? He promised us several times that this was going to be done very quickly, but I must question him gently on how quickly he means. When will it be?
David Rutley
I have never ever had any gentle questioning from my hon. Friend. As I have said, I am pressing hard to get this done as fast as we can, and our aim is to bring this forward as soon as we can.
The hon. Member for Stroud made a contribution on sentience, and the supportive contributions that my colleagues have made today show that the UK is a global leader in animal welfare. The Government’s policies on animal welfare are driven by a recognition that animals are sentient beings. We are acting energetically to reduce the risk of harm to animals, whether they are pets, on farms or in the wild, and we will ensure that any changes required to UK law after we leave the EU are made in a rigorous and comprehensive way to ensure that animal sentience is recognised. DEFRA continues to engage with stakeholders to further refine the Government’s proposals on sentience, and we are currently seeking the right legislative vehicle in this context.
The hon. Member for Stroud also made points about rescuing and rehoming centres. I hear the concerns that he expressed about these organisations. In the Westminster Hall debate on 26 February 2019 on animal rescue homes, I said that
“we must do everything we can to ensure that good welfare practices are in place in all animal rescue homes.”—[Official Report, 26 February 2019; Vol. 655, c. 74WH.]
Legitimate rescue homes do incredible work rescuing and rehoming thousands of sick and abandoned stray animals each year. We have heard praise for them in today’s debate as well. I had the honour of visiting the Mayhew rehoming centre a few weeks ago when we announced the laying of this statutory instrument, and we discussed the importance of responsible purchasing and rehoming of puppies and kittens. We want to make progress here, and we need to be confident of the benefits and impacts of any regulations placed on these organisations, particularly some of the smaller rescue and rehoming charities, which is why we are actively exploring these issues with the organisations involved.
The hon. Member for Stroud asked about resources for local authorities leading on implementing and enforcing animal licensing controls. Importantly, they have the power to charge fees, which factor in the reasonable costs of enforcement associated with licensable activity. DEFRA works closely with local authorities and the City of London leads on the training of local authority inspectors. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton talked about the importance of self-policing, and it is important that we continue to get intelligence and input from the public as well. They have an important role to play.
Further contributions were made about the importance of addressing puppy smuggling. In other debates we have highlighted the need to do further work on this, and I personally and DEFRA take a zero-tolerance approach to this abhorrent crime. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton has talked about the number of puppies that should be allowed to come across our border at any given point in time with one owner. As I have said to him in other places, we would be in a position to review that after we leave the EU.
There was further discussion about Marc Abraham’s views on licensing and rescue homes. I am pleased that he can be with us today; it is great to see him recognised for the important campaign that he has taken forward. We agree that there is a clear difference between a legitimate charitable rehoming centre and a business selling pets. The latter will be subject to a ban on third party sales for puppies and kittens, but as I have already discussed we are seeking to regulate the rescue and rehoming sector.
Rehoming charities often charge a rehoming fee. Some have suggested that unscrupulous pet sellers could take advantage of that by reinventing themselves as rescue and rehoming organisations to get around the ban. That is why we will be working with canine and feline sector groups and local authorities to develop specific guidance to help distinguish between non-commercial rescue and rehoming centres, which are charities, and pet sellers, which are businesses.
The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow made important points about the publicity campaign that we need to take forward. We need to do further work on helping people to purchase pets responsibly, and we have committed to doing that. We have also assured the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that we will work to provide the best advice to help people to look after their dogs and cats responsibly.
The Government are committed to protecting animal welfare. This legislation will help put an end to the inhumane and abhorrent conditions that animals such as Lucy are subjected to. It will ensure that puppies and kittens are born and reared in a safe environment with their mothers and sold from their place of birth. Those who decide to bring a pet into their home can know that it will be healthy and has come from a responsible breeder. I commend this statutory instrument to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Animal Welfare (Licensing of Activities Involving Animals) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 13 May, be approved.
Backbench Business
Invisible Disabilities and Accessibility Challenges
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered invisible disabilities and accessibility challenges.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) for co-sponsoring the application, and the right hon. and hon. Members who will take part. I also thank the Minister who is responding; I was extremely grateful that, along with other colleagues, he spared the time yesterday to attend the roundtable discussion on this issue. We are all keen to look into this matter more closely over the coming months. I hope the Minister will agree that the roundtable was a constructive, illuminating and at times exciting discussion in which we were able to preview the new accessibility signage that reflects all disabilities, whether visible or invisible.
Before discussing the new signage and the wider campaign to improve our understanding of invisible disabilities, I want to reflect briefly on the progress that we have made as a society when it comes to people with all disabilities. The landmark legislation that I, as a Labour Member of Parliament, am particularly proud of, is the Equality Act 2010: a historic amalgamation of rights, placed under one statute, in the final days of the last Labour Government. The Act enshrined all the protections in one place for all disabled people in this country—a benchmark for our future direction of travel.
Many pieces of legislation start with an inspirational story involving an inspirational campaigner acting as a catalyst for change. One such campaigner is the reason why I stand here today to speak on this issue. Before I came into politics and before I considered standing to represent East Lothian as Member of Parliament—even before Brexit started, believe it or not—I had the honour of being a teacher at Prestonpans Primary School. I had the great pleasure of teaching hundreds of children over the years. I truly take pride in every young person I had the privilege to teach.
One person, who has already achieved so much in her short life and is now my constituent is Grace Warnock. Grace is a passionate, articulate, intelligent and creative young person, who is determined to change the hearts and minds of people around her. She is resolute in her mission to remind everyone that not all disabilities are visible. Grace suffers from Crohn’s disease—a condition that many hon. Members will be aware of. Those with Crohn’s need more than most to use accessible toilet facilities, sometimes at very short notice. When Grace tried to use an accessible toilet some years ago, she was accosted, heckled and abused. She was targeted because Crohn’s is not a visible illness. I would not blame any young person who, after experiencing such an incident, kept their head down, possibly even avoiding accessible toilets and facilities.
Grace felt embarrassed. She was upset, but she was also determined to do something about it, so she created a toilet sign that strikes a powerful chord—one that asks people to have a heart and to consider the range of disabilities that exists. This sign, first displayed in her primary school, has spread across Scotland and is changing perceptions along the way. It is empowering people like Grace, who may feel unable to do so, to use accessible facilities, which is a great testament to Grace’s work and to her mum, Judith. The next step is to take forward the energy, the enthusiasm and the ideas of Grace’s campaign and to put forward new signage that can be a British and international standard.
That brings me to the work of another inspirational woman, Lucy Richards. Lucy is the creative director of StudioLR, and she wants to use design to take on some of society’s big challenges and to make a positive impact on people’s lives. Lucy specialises in inclusive design, creations that are simple for people to understand. Working with people with dementia and in partnership with Life Changes Trust, an incredible charity based in Scotland, she has designed a new set of everyday symbols that help people find their way around. She was inspired by Grace’s campaign, and her work includes a new symbol for people with any disability. There is a need for a sign that is easily understandable to all.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I am sure that my hon. Friend, like me, has been contacted on many occasions by blind constituents, who have great difficulty finding their way around obstacles on the pavement. He also mentions toilets, and there is now a big shortage of toilets in the towns of this country, which may well be down to local government cuts. The Government should be looking at those two issues.
Martin Whitfield
My hon. Friend anticipates, as he so often wisely does, where my speech is going on street furniture and people with sight problems, and on the availability of toilets and facilities generally across the United Kingdom.
Yesterday I was delighted to meet the British Standards Institution, which supports the establishment of inclusive signage. Understandably, the process of standardisation is rigorous, and it is fair to say that it perhaps does not lend itself to political timetables. I am under no illusion. This is a long-term project, and there are a number of barriers that stand in the way.
Of course, because of parliamentary convention, I cannot explicitly show hon. Members the symbol. However, I am happy to preview the design after the debate. The “any disability” symbol depicts a range of disabilities, both visible and invisible, and it can be accompanied by text saying, “For people with any disability.” This is a profoundly important message that strikes at the heart of the campaign.
The nucleus of the campaign that Grace started those years ago is about changing the perception of what disability looks like. It strikes at the heart of how we define a disability. There are 13.3 million disabled people in the UK—21% of the population. If we examine the figures more closely, they reveal that 25% of those who are disabled report a mental health impairment and a further 18% have other non-visible conditions, yet I worry that what it means to be disabled is still not properly understood.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech on such an important issue. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on disability, I was approached before this debate by a number of individuals who would like me to point out that those with an autistic spectrum disorder are often overlooked or badly understood by members of the public, and such disorders are certainly not noted as a disability because they are not visible. As I know because my husband suffered a head injury while serving in the Army, head injuries can cause cognitive processing difficulties, and so on, that are not obvious. This signage is great work, and it will aid understanding of the whole range of disabilities and impairments.
Martin Whitfield
The hon. Lady raises a most profound and important point: people’s understanding of disability is influenced more by their personal experience than by what society brings together as to what it is to be disabled.
The figures show that those with non-visible disabilities suffer an unfair double attack. What sits at the heart of Grace’s campaign about having a heart and of what we hope to achieve here today and in the future is making that playing field more level and fairer. I worry about a misunderstanding of what amounts to “a disability”. Crohn’s and Colitis UK, which is leading the way in trying to change perceptions about this issue, has undertaken a huge amount of research, which shows that 93% of people think that if they challenge someone who looks healthy for using an accessible toilet, they are “standing up” for the “rights of disabled people” or doing this because the situation is not “fair” on others. One noticeable aspect of this debate is that I do not think many of the people who took part in that survey answered maliciously; they genuinely feel they are doing the right thing by pointing out to someone they do not think is disabled that they are doing the wrong thing. Their first thought is, “I want to stand up for people who are marginalised in society, those who rightly deserve full accessibility rights”. This instinctive reaction to what people believe a disability “looks like” needs to be challenged.
It is worth noting that the false perceptions of what constitutes a disability have a profound effect on the individual’s mental health. In preparing for this debate, I have been made aware of some incredibly upsetting cases of abuse directed at disabled people who have been queueing for accessible toilets or trying to use a parking bay. Further research by Crohn’s and Colitis UK shows that two thirds of people with Crohn’s or colitis have experienced an accident while they have been queuing to use a toilet, and they have, in turn, received abuse for that. Almost half say that they will change their attitude to social spaces such as restaurants because of their condition. That is just wrong, in this society; it is a damning picture of the everyday experience that disabled people suffer.
I was struck recently by an article on the impact of invisible illnesses by how hurtful people’s perceptions are. The piece noted what just an everyday misconception associated with a disability can do. We are talking about the idea, “You can’t be sick because you look so well.” There is a misconceived image of what it looks like to have one of these illnesses, and things start with a tiny casual gesture or throwaway line but then quickly evolve into something far more pernicious.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Dementia is one of those invisible cognitive impairments. I chair the all-party group on dementia, which has just conducted an inquiry on dementia as a disability. As a society, we still face issues on access to blue badges and on attitudes and how people relate to those with dementia. I am very grateful to him for his speech today.
Martin Whitfield
I am grateful for that intervention. The Minister will find that one of my requests at the end may make reference to that point.
Let me follow up on what has been said about those who suffer acquired brain injury, as there are many instances where people feel that the person in front of them is drunk and has not suffered an injury. People who have fatigue syndromes are accused of laziness when they ask for a seat. In employment, people with these invisible conditions are often disproportionately discriminated against. Those with neurological conditions such as autism will struggle in a conventional workplace setting, but this is to miss the great opportunity and strength that people with autism can offer in the workplace.
I was interested to hear yesterday from leading charities about the impact of signage, particularly in respect of conditions that affect the functioning of the brain. Signage that vulnerable people can understand works for everybody and will go a long way towards allowing people, particularly those with dementia, to become and to feel more integrated in society. It is such small changes that go a long way towards changing the lives of significant numbers of people.
I stress that I do not want this debate, nor the introduction of new signage, to dilute the need to reform and rearrange the built environment for those who suffer from a physical disability. Wheelchair users and those with mobility challenges face huge obstacles in our society, and this is in no way an attempt to split the two groups. In fact, it is an attempt to bring them together. Whether it is the creation of more accessible homes, the altering of transport infrastructure or the forcing of private companies to improve their surroundings, it is all helpful.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I remember that when I was trained as a dementia friend I was shocked to be informed that sometimes if a person with dementia comes across a dark rug on the floor, they get absolutely petrified because they think it is a hole. When we make public places, we have to realise that we need to be careful when we put down a dark rug or piece of carpet or whatever, because it might look like a hole to someone with dementia, and they are sometimes terrified.
Martin Whitfield
That powerful intervention shows that those people who are not suffering from dementia or do not feel that they have a disability need to think about the simple things to make the world and the community accessible to everybody in society.
We have an obligation under article 19 of the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. We should continue to lead by example. Will the Minister update the House on the work the Government are doing to ensure that the UK continues to meet its international obligations? In particular, how are the Government ensuring that those with invisible disabilities face no barriers to their day-to-day lives? How can we make sure that they can live their lives without facing abuse?
I call on the Minister to support the campaign for an easily understandable disability sign and, crucially, for there to be a standardised version of this sign that truly represents people with a wide range of visible and invisible disabilities. Once we have accepted the layout and design of a new accessible sign, we can start to progress the campaign and to consider how it can be rolled out. On that point, will the Minister consult colleagues across Government to explore the possibility of implementing such signage on our blue badge parking and disability railcards? People with a range of invisible disabilities are entitled to hold those passes. It would be a symbolic and practical change to the lives of those with such conditions if Government literature reflected the use of the new sign. I would be grateful if the Minister would agree to one further meeting with me and colleagues to discuss how we can move the matter forward.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend’s excellent speech. He made the point about people not recognising disability, but there are problems even when it is recognised. Tanni Grey-Thompson is a very well-known former athlete who uses a wheelchair, and she suffered terrible embarrassment on a train because of failure to access a disabled toilet. Even when someone is well known, that often does not help them if the facilities are not made available when they should be.
Martin Whitfield
Absolutely, and that is why the call for a new sign is a small request in a big argument that requires society to change its view and stop seeing people with disabilities and instead see disabled people.
I thank Lucy Richards for the work she has put into creating the new signage, and I am grateful for the support of everyone who attended yesterday’s roundtable, including my hon. Friends the Members for Newport West (Ruth Jones) and for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) and the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant). I am also grateful for the work of the Life Changes Trust, Innovations in Dementia, Dr Gordon Hayward and Rob Turpin of the British Standards Institution. I also thank my constituent Grace for the incredible work that she has put into the campaign.
In conclusion, although we must keep ensuring that our built-up environment is fit for purpose for everyone who uses it, environmental changes go hand in hand with changing social perceptions and meeting the holistic range of accessibility challenges that individuals in our community face. I hope that hon. and right hon. Members will use this time today to note the value of changing perceptions about invisible disabilities.
This debate is about far more than just accessible signage, but symbols matter because societal attitudes reflect the way that they are interpreted. Until we start a national conversation on how we change and adapt accessibility signs to reflect any and all disabilities, we will continue to marginalise disabled people across the UK. That goes against Grace’s fundamental reason for starting this campaign: she wants society and people to have a heart.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
It is truly an honour to follow the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) in this debate. I congratulate him on his excellent speech and thank him and the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) for bringing forward this important debate this afternoon.
Reading the original application to the Backbench Business Committee, I was struck by the campaign from the hon. Gentleman’s constituent Grace Warnock. Members across the whole House should be grateful for the work that she has done to raise awareness of the challenges that she and, indeed, very many of our own constituents face on a daily basis.
Although it is an enormous time after the actual event, may I welcome the hon. Member for Newport West to this House? I served with her predecessor on various Committees and cross-party groups and was proud to be one of the very few Tories that he never verbally slaughtered in the Chamber, presumably because we mischievously used to gang up on the then Chairman of the Committee on which we both served just for a giggle. He will be much missed in this place, but I am in no doubt that she will very quickly find her own way in this incredible madhouse.
I will not pretend that I am an expert on disability, hidden or otherwise. I am, however, very proud to be the independent chair of Medway Council’s physical disability partnership board—a role that I have had for some time. I have learned a phenomenal amount about the challenges that those with physical disabilities face—something that I as an able-bodied individual would never ordinarily appreciate. The right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who is no longer in her place, was quite right to mention some of the challenges that exist, such as being able to find suitable toilets, which is something that Baroness Grey-Thompson experienced.
I recall hearing a story while serving on the partnership board that may make Members laugh because it is amusing—apart from to those to whom it is relevant. A blind constituent of mine got on a bus and asked the driver to tell her when she was at her stop, to which the driver replied, “Well, can’t the dog tell you?” That just shows how we as a society still have so much to learn about physical disabilities, and even more to learn about hidden disabilities. In my time as chair of the partnership board, I have got to understand other disabilities or health conditions better, but I am always willing to accept that I need to learn so much more.
One of my great pleasures in life is whiling away time shopping, yet so many places are desperately inaccessible to those with hidden disabilities. I am pleased that, across my constituency and slightly beyond its borders, greater efforts are being made to support better accessibility for those with varying disabilities. The Pentagon shopping centre in Chatham, for example, has Sound-Out Sunday on the first Sunday of every month. It is not until it is explained that it seems like a complete no brainer. The centre minimises ambient noise, including turning off music and hand dryers, as well as having a chill-out zone, should people need to take a break from the crowds. Bluewater, which is a major retail outlet in north Kent, beyond my constituency, is permanently introducing services, including weekly quiet hours, sensory toy bags and hidden disability lanyards that allow staff to proactively offer assistance.
My young son’s soft play centre of choice, Adventure Kidz in Aylesford, offers special educational needs and autism friendly sessions so that there is inclusivity even at the earliest stage in life. My son does not have autism, but he does not like hand dryers. He gets incredibly upset by them, so we find it difficult to take him into a public toilet. I therefore just have that tiny insight into what it must be like for those who do have autism to find themselves really quite unsettled by noise. Anything that public places can do to reduce that impact and that disturbance, particularly for young children with autism, is incredibly important and very welcome.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The hon. Lady’s speech is very enlightening about many of the things we could be doing. Following on from the comments by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield), does she think that one of the issues we have to overcome with invisible disabilities is not only our own ignorance of what they might be, but people’s reticence to come forward because they fear that their invisible disability might be rejected as a disability?
Tracey Crouch
I absolutely agree. I always think that one of the main advantages of being Members of Parliament is that we get exposure to issues that, ordinarily, members of the public do not. We get to learn things and to discover issues and conditions that ordinarily pass the vast majority of members of the public by. The more we can do to educate and inform people about these issues, the better. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) mentioned what he had learned as a dementia friend. Like the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), I was previously—before ministerial life—a co-chair of the all-party group on dementia. What we learn in this place about dementia is incredible, and we need to get that across to everyone.
As the chair of the partnership board, I have learned things about disabilities that I would never have come across. Some of that is just about basic education and information. Unless someone has a family member who is affected, or they themselves have a disability—physical, visible, intellectual or hidden—they do not necessarily know about these things, and they certainly do not understand them. I have tried in my speech not to use the word “understand”, because I do not think I would ever fully understand these things; I could only appreciate the challenges that people face.
It will be no surprise to anybody in the House that one of my other great pleasures in life is watching and participating in sport. I want briefly to give a nod to the amazing Special Olympics team and their sponsors—especially Coca-Cola, which has partnered them since 1978. Special Olympics is by far the largest disability sports organisation in the world, with a strapline of transforming people’s lives through sport. Our competitors, who do not receive any regular funding from central Government—much to my disappointment, but not due to a lack of effort—are quite possibly the happiest, smiliest, most appreciative group of people you will ever meet in your life. I would like to mention the phenomenal work of my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who has supported Special Olympics for many years.
Special Olympics GB notes that 200 babies are born with an intellectual disability every week. Eight out of 10 of them will be bullied and all will be socially excluded. Sport dramatically enhances the psychological, physical and social wellbeing of every athlete, as well as having a positive impact on family members, who often face increased isolation and mental health deterioration.
Team GB has just returned from this year’s world games in Abu Dhabi with 169 medals, 61 of which were gold. What an amazing achievement, but what a shame it was barely mentioned. For the competitors, the world games would have been a life-enhancing moment, and I for one am trying to get some of the medal winners to come to my constituency, to go round some of my local schools and especially to meet those who share similar challenges—who knows, those athletes might even inspire them into sport in one way or another.
Sport England has been enormously helpful in recent years, and it now provides much-needed funds to get more people with physical, hidden and intellectual disabilities active. We know that those with disabilities are twice as likely to be inactive as able-bodied people. Sport England has also provided funds to Special Olympics to engage more volunteers and to support the delivery of competitions, to help it develop its commercial opportunities. However, I firmly believe we should be doing more as a state to support the Special Olympics organisation and its competitors.
When the Minister held this brief before, and I was still in my old post, we spoke of what more we could do to support Special Olympics. I would be grateful if he agreed to resume that discussion with this now humble Back Bencher and others who might have an interest. There is a real appetite for the future world games to be held here, and I see no reason why we should not support that bid in the way we did for the Olympics and the Paralympics. Imagine how brilliant it would be for our athletes who have a variety of different disabilities to compete in front of home crowds as we welcome several thousand athletes from 170 countries around the world.
Had I realised that I would have more time, I would have prepared something celebrating some of the excellent work that goes on in my constituency, in this House and beyond on having a better understanding of dementia. The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth has been doing a fantastic job in that regard. Locally, we have a dementia alliance that is trying to work with all partners to ensure that we have proper dementia-friendly communities. We have an ambition to make this place dementia-friendly, but we still have a very long way to go with that. We could start by getting rid of all the black strips and black rugs in this place.
Bradfields Academy is one of my favourite schools in my constituency. I am an honorary member of its school council. It is a special educational needs school. It has children there with extremely challenging disabilities, yet it is one of the calmest and kindest schools that I go to in my constituency.
I pay tribute to Kent Autism Trust, which is doing some brilliant work with local people and local employers to get a better understanding of autism and how we can support people with autism into the workplace and in our communities.
I would like to make special mention of those who support people with Parkinson’s disease. As the hon. Member for East Lothian said, some people assume that people with Parkinson’s are drunk. It is one of those conditions where people think that some sort of inebriation has been involved because of their reactions. We still have a long way to go in getting a better understanding of that.
I pay tribute to the work that the Government are doing with Changing Places. I recently listened to an incredibly powerful and emotive phone-in on a local radio station about the challenges that people still face in just going into their own communities, particularly town centres, and finding it very difficult to find places to use the toilet.
Some debates in this House really influence and inspire Members to do more for their constituents, and so far this has definitely been one of them. I am genuinely inspired by the hon. Gentleman’s constituent Grace. I will take away much of what I have learned today and consider what more I can do, in addition to the work I do on physical disabilities, to support those with hidden disabilities in my own constituency and beyond.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) for instigating this debate, which I am delighted to be able to co-sponsor.
The whole point of the development of a new sign—Grace’s sign—is to be welcomed as a physical reminder that not all disabilities are visible, but also as a general encouragement to us all not to take people at face value. We need to have compassion and care for one another, as this sign reminds us. As a physiotherapist, I was well used to treating patients with disabilities that were visible because of, say, a plaster cast, crutches or a wheelchair. These are outward signs that the individual needs to be given extra consideration in a number of ways. We are all very used to seeing someone with a visual impairment using a white stick or a guide dog, and hopefully we react appropriately. This is perfectly normal.
In my previous role as a physiotherapist, I spent some time working with stroke patients, and it was my goal to help them to walk independently without the use of a stick. But my patients would often tell me that they wanted to keep the stick, even though they could walk independently, because other people knew that it signified that they may need additional time or space when walking. Certainly, in crowded areas, my patients valued the stick as an outward reminder to others that they needed to be treated with just a bit more care. So it is with people who may have invisible additional needs or disabilities.
My hon. Friend explained the origin of the planned new sign, so I do not need to repeat that, but there are others who have other invisible disabilities such as learning difficulties. I have worked with some fantastic children, young adults and adults who have learning difficulties. They do not want our sympathy; there is no need—they are getting on with their lives very well, thank you. What they need is our empathy and understanding. They may require extra help when accessing toilet facilities or a parking space for the family car close to the shops. These people look perfectly normal, whatever “normal” may be. They can walk, but some days they may not want to walk for whatever reason. Those are times when Grace’s sign would explain to the ordinary person that they need the extra space or help to ensure that they can get on with their lives.
Many people with mental health issues struggle to access public amenities at times. Their condition may fluctuate greatly, and that group of people would also benefit from Grace’s sign, to remind others that sometimes they need extra time or space when they are out and about.
I have been contacted by Jonathan Kingsley from Muscular Dystrophy UK, who reminded me that although some people with one of the 60 types of this muscle-wasting disease may be able to walk, they cannot walk far. Their ability to walk may fluctuate on a day-to-day basis, so they need to be able to park close to amenities. People with muscular dystrophy may not use a stick or wheelchair, but they cannot walk far and may require assistance when using public toilets. Again, Grace’s sign would remind the general public that people do not use disabled parking spaces or toilets unless they need to.
Sometimes people just need reminding to stop and think. They are not necessarily being unkind. Indeed, they may think they are protecting the person with genuine additional needs and stopping people using facilities inappropriately. They genuinely want to help people with disabilities, but they need to be gently reminded that not all disabilities are visible.
I hope that Members now have a better awareness of the nature of invisible disabilities. I call on the Minister to ensure that we work together on a cross-party basis to get this sign developed and implemented, perhaps at some pilot sites to start with. Ultimately, we need a sign that is universally recognised, to help the general public to better understand invisible disabilities and thus ensure that our society becomes more considerate and compassionate to all its members.
Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones). I thank her and the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) for securing this very important debate.
People are often quick to form perceptions and slow to establish facts. For example, the young person not rising to give their elder a seat may in reality have a life-changing condition that genuinely prevents them from affording such a courtesy. Bowel and bladder cancer patients or persons with inflammatory bowel conditions may have undergone major surgery and be living with a stoma and discreetly concealed bag. The complexities of emptying and changing the bag in a sterile environment are difficult enough out in the community, without persons giving them the evil eye or, worse still, berating them for using an accessible toilet. Those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may not be at the stage of carrying an oxygen cylinder around with them, but they may nevertheless be unable to use a downstairs or upstairs toilet, opting for the accessible toilet on their level.
In 2017, the BBC’s “Newsbeat” ran an article on new signage appearing on accessible—formerly disabled—toilets, which read simply, “Not every disability is visible.” That is a fact; not every disability is visible. At that time, Tottenham Hotspur were reported to be the first football club to feature a revised sign on their accessible toilets. Two years later, I have not observed many such signs bearing that important additional information. Charities such as Crohn’s and Colitis UK are lending their support to have the more informative signs fitted. That would not be an immense cost to many organisations in the United Kingdom and it would be a kindly thing to do for those who need a bit of extra help.
“Can’t wait!” toilet cards have been available for some time to those with incontinence. When discreetly exhibited, the card confirms to others that the holder has a medical condition and needs to use the toilet urgently. That may mean using the accessible toilet, if the other toilets are occupied or there are queues. Those who daily face the fears and stresses associated with their conditions’ symptoms and side effects from treatment should not have to face the potential additional burden of confrontation from ill-informed and often wicked, thoughtless protagonists who believe that they know better.
There is a wider issue: the availability of public toilets in general. Such facilities are on the decline throughout the UK due to financial cuts, inappropriate use by substance abusers or needless vandalism. I have had constituents contacting my office to express concern that they are becoming not quite housebound, but limited in the activities they are able to undertake outwith their homes as a result of the closure of public toilets. Their confidence is affected and there is a risk of social isolation evolving. I think that the closure of toilets is something that applies throughout the UK. We do not really realise that there are invisible victims of these closures. I was a councillor for 10 years and, yes, I too carry the burden of responsibility for being part of the closure programme in South Ayrshire.
Groups such as Inclusion Scotland work to achieve positive changes to policy and practice so that disabled people are fully included throughout all Scottish society, as they should be, as equal citizens. The Disability Rights Commission seeks to ensure that people are aware of their rights. The Government have undoubtedly enhanced legal protection under the Equality Act 2010, which was mentioned earlier. They have expanded their disability sector champions scheme, continue to roll-out their Disability Confident scheme, have announced their inclusive transport strategy and are consulting on a change to English building regulations relative to Changing Places toilets for those with profound disabilities.
However, at a time of concerns over social isolation, for those with the illnesses I have touched on, it is the basic quality of everyday life that must be our immediate focus. Will the theory of the Government policies address the real and practical issues of not being, as people say, caught short, or of having to face the indignity of being refused the use of a facility or challenged in doing so, as it was so eloquently put by the hon. Member for East Lothian?
For the most part, I believe it is the able-bodied across the United Kingdom who require to be re-educated. We must as a Government be proactive in putting the message out there. I ask the Minister to consider how the Government could facilitate such important improvements for those living with invisible disabilities. As has been said, improved signage would be a start and it is low cost. The Government could work together with devolved Governments, local authorities, recognised charities and transport groups to ensure, where possible, that toilet facilities are provided and are accessible to all.
If I may, I will take a moment not to berate bus companies, which give a good service, but to point out that there are terminuses—a point of departure and a point of arrival—where there is no toilet facility. I will simply name Ayr bus station, but I am sure there are such bus stations throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. Is it not important for people to have access to a toilet on boarding the bus and that on their arrival they can be confident of finding access to an accessible toilet? I ask local transport groups, such as the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport, to ensure that this goes on and I plead with bus station operators to go—dare I say it?—the extra mile for their customers.
For the wider community, I have a simple thought: be kind and thoughtful towards accessible toilet users as they may have invisible disabilities and accessibility challenges.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) on securing this debate. It is an important issue. It is a shame that the Chamber is so empty again because every Member of this place will have constituents who have hidden disabilities. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) on her speech. She clearly has some relevant experience that she is bringing to this place.
I am pleased to be able to take part in the debate because I believe that the issue of hidden disabilities can have an immense impact on individuals’ lives. It is something we do not speak about enough in the Chamber. As some hon. Members may know from my contribution in a Westminster Hall debate earlier this year, my wife has an invisible condition—fibromyalgia—so I am well aware of how some of these conditions can be very hard to deal with. She can look perfectly okay on the outside, but she is really suffering on the inside. Fatigue can wipe out fibromyalgia sufferers for days at a time, and the pain experienced can vary from aching muscles and painful joints to extreme tenderness all over. There are cognitive challenges too, such as brain fog, insomnia and disturbed sleep. In fact, there are so many symptoms, it is not possible to list them all here. Just as with many of the conditions we have heard about today, the outside world cannot see that there is any issue at all.
My wife, like many others, has tried to find ways to manage her condition. She has to pace herself, plan ahead and make adjustments to keep her symptoms under control. That is the only way in which she can manage her condition. She does not always succeed—it still catches her out. It is incredibly frustrating and tough to know how best to help and improve things, which is why I, along with others, have called for greater awareness of the condition by the medical profession and employers so that fibromyalgia sufferers are not disadvantaged by more than their symptoms, and so that they have support out there in the world.
In common with many people with invisible, long-term and fluctuating conditions, what matters most to people with fibromyalgia is how their condition is treated and supported. Much more research is needed on the condition and how it begins. We need consistent treatment pathways and better training for medical professionals to recognise those symptoms and recommend treatment. There is a huge need for services to be put in place to support and enable people with invisible conditions to live their lives as fully as possible.
I should like to discuss the barriers that people with invisible conditions face in their everyday life, beginning with getting back to work. I recently spoke in a Westminster Hall debate on another invisible condition, arthritis. An estimated 16,000 people in my constituency live with back pain. Another 4,000 and 8,000 people respectively are estimated to live with hip and knee conditions. Those are just some of the estimated 17.8 million people who live with arthritis or related conditions across the country. About half of them live with pain every day. That is a staggering number of people coping in their everyday lives, while people around them are blissfully unaware of their suffering. Just because we cannot see their pain does not mean that it should be ignored or written off as just how it is.
As with fibromyalgia, the problems that people with arthritic conditions face are exacerbated by the fact that they can fluctuate in severity, leaving them unsure how well they will be able to cope from day to day. That can make it difficult to hold down a regular job, but that should not be used as cover for discrimination. Many people with arthritis want to work and can do so if the right support is in place. Such help is available through the Access to Work scheme, but that is not working as well as it should, as various arthritis charities have said. They are also calling for the Government to commission research on the meaning of “reasonable adjustments”, and for support to be put in place to help people who challenge employers who do not act on Access to Work recommendations. Employers, as we know, are obliged to make reasonable adjustments but, if someone is in work and not a member of a trade union, who will argue the case for them?
There was a Westminster Hall debate yesterday on trade union access to workplaces My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) has introduced a private Member’s Bill on the issue, as some well-known employers have actively sought to prevent trade unions from accessing workplaces by banning visits or by manipulating shift patterns to prevent opportunities for engagement. It is important that we do as much as we can to ensure that people have access to trade unions at work so that they can be adequately represented. Rights are only as good as our ability to enforce them.
To return to employment opportunities for people with invisible conditions, on a practical level, how easy is it for them to raise issues associated with their condition at a job interview, or when they begin work? It is a difficult conversation to have because, although discrimination is unlawful, that does not mean that it does not happen or that it is not a difficult subject to raise at the beginning of an employment relationship. If an employer refuses to make adjustments, how realistic is it to expect people to take them to tribunal, especially without support, and what reassurance can we give them that if they raise those issues and put their head above the parapet it will not rebound negatively on them?
I want to say a few words about the challenges of employment for people with autism. In a recent survey of over 2,000 autistic adults, just over half of respondents said that they had told their current or most recent employer that they were autistic, but just under a third had not. For people with autism, busy workplaces can be socially overwhelming, or they can overload them with too much information from noisy conversation, bright lights or other sensory stimuli. Many of these barriers can be overcome quickly, easily and cheaply through increased understand. We recently had some training here in Parliament on autism awareness—I certainly found it valuable. We can also make simple adaptations to the environment. Sadly, at the moment the National Autistic Society reports that about a third of its respondents said that support or adjustments made by their current or most recent employer, both in relation to sensory needs and to autism generally, were poor or very poor. We need to ensure that Access to Work is working effectively for autistic people and that specialist support is available throughout the country.
What about those with invisible conditions who are not well enough to work? We have talked about this issue many times, but my constituents’ experience of work capability assessments has not been good. Many decisions are overturned at tribunal and it seems to me that the system does not learn from its mistakes. A constituent of mine with two conditions I have already mentioned, arthritis and fibromyalgia, was assessed five times in eight years. At each assessment she was found fit to work. On each occasion she appealed and on each occasion she won the appeal. How can the process be wrong so many times? How can that waste of public money on five separate occasions be justified when the final decision has been the same every time? What does that say about the Government’s approach to people with long-term conditions? How many times does someone actually have to prove that they are not fit to work before it is accepted?
Debbie Abrahams
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech, particularly in relation to the work capability assessment. Is he aware that sanctions are more likely for people with invisible health conditions? This is a real issue that needs to be addressed.
Justin Madders
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. From my experience in the constituency, those with mental health issues in particular sometimes have real difficulty engaging in the process. That does, very unfairly, lead to sanctions.
Some constituents have raised concerns about the speed at which assessments are carried out and the fact that assessors do not listen to the answers given. Others have had their request for a home assessment refused, despite medical evidence being provided that they are necessary. I am thinking, in particular, of one of my constituents who has an invisible condition but was refused a home assessment. That condition was agoraphobia. Surely the need for a home assessment in those circumstances was obvious? People who enter the system deserve compassion, respect and support. They should not be made to feel that they are on trial because they are ill. I am afraid that that is the experience of so many people who come to see me about the assessments.
I want to say a few words on accessible toilets. I recently met a constituent who has a stoma, which, as I am sure Members are aware, is where the bowel is diverted through the abdomen so that bodily waste can be collected in a stoma bag. Stoma surgery is often used to treat a number of invisible illnesses, including cancer, Crohn’s disease, colitis and diverticulitis. People of all ages are affected and have additional needs—for example, when using a toilet. But, as their condition is hidden, they often, as we have heard, face prejudice. There are no accurate figures on the number of people with stomas in the UK, but estimates range from 120,000 to 150,000. A lifestyle survey by Colostomy UK in 2016 of over 1,300 people with stomas found that 19% had experienced discrimination, either in the workplace, in public or elsewhere, and 30% of respondents had been challenged or criticised for using an accessible toilet. A constituent I met last week is actively campaigning in my local area, raising awareness of the needs of people with stomas. This has included encouraging local businesses and organisations to change the signage, so that accessible toilets are able to reflect the hidden nature of conditions. We have accessible toilets here in Parliament, which have signs to remind us that not every disability is visible. I see no reason every disabled toilet could not have accessible toilet signage along the same lines.
People with a stoma have additional needs when using the toilet, which can make even a simple day trip to the shops or the supermarket extremely stressful. A few easy-to-implement changes to accessible toilets would make a huge difference to people living with a stoma: ensuring that every toilet has a hook on the door to hang clothing, handbags and luggage while changing stoma bags; a shelf to spread out the items they need; a mirror to allow users to see their stoma while changing; and a disposal bin in every cubicle to avoid embarrassment for men and women having to dispose of their stoma bag in public view. I do not see why those changes cannot be implemented across the whole country.
Many people have conditions or disabilities that affect their everyday lives and they are disadvantaged by barriers in society and in the workplace. It is incumbent on all of us to do what we can to remove barriers that restrict opportunities and choices for people with disabilities, invisible or otherwise. We need to ensure that no one is held back because of these conditions, not just because we know that fairer societies are better for us all, but because everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders). I thank the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) for securing this really important debate and for giving us the opportunity to discuss the issues that are faced by and raised by our constituents, who have disabilities both visible and invisible, which can be a barrier to their independence.
One barrier to independence should not be travel. The disability charity, Scope, in its report, “Independent. Confident. Connected.” found that 40% of disabled people often experience issues or difficulties when travelling by train in the UK, but there has been progress in transport accessibility in recent years, driven in no small part by the Equality Act 2010. However, I would like to touch on a number of issues that disabled or impaired residents of Cheadle still face. These issues remain a real concern and I would like to see them addressed.
We are all keen to encourage people out of cars and on to public transport. It is really important that public transport recognises invisible and visible disabilities and makes the accommodations that need to be made for people to travel. Cheadle Hulme in my constituency is an important station on the rail corridor from Stoke-on-Trent and Crewe to Manchester Piccadilly, and it is well used by commuters travelling to and from my constituency for work or leisure. The construction and completion of lifts and a footbridge with funding from the Access for All programme is very much welcome, but several wheelchair users have encountered issues with the station’s disabled access and particularly the lift, which is active only until quarter to 9 in the evening, even though trains continue beyond that time. That is an important issue for people who have disabilities. Because of it, one constituent had to get off at Stockport station and get a taxi to Cheadle Hulme, which is a journey of four miles. Another—this was a really terrible experience for him—had to carry his disabled daughter and luggage down the station stairs because the lift cannot be in use 24 hours a day, as it relies on the station being manned.
I recognise that all transport companies, such as Northern, seek to address these issues and provide help for those who need assistance, but that help is often not well known about by passengers or the service is not consistent enough to adapt to the needs of disabled people. I am pleased, however, that Northern is actively looking at how to address this issue and is undertaking a pilot at another station using technology so that lifts can be monitored remotely. It is important to know that there are ways to address all these issues. Whether a person has a visible or invisible impairment or need, these issues can be addressed.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
The hon. Lady’s point is entirely valid, because Northern has proposed to remove guards from trains. That makes the accessibility problem even more difficult, particularly given the number of unstaffed stations on the Northern network.
Mary Robinson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I agree that we need to make sure that we have the right safety measures in place on all our trains, but my point is about the accessibility when people arrive at stations and the issues that they may have if a lift is not working. Clearly, we would not want a person to have to carry their disabled child up and down stairs.
Seven thousand people in the UK rely on an assistance dog to help with practical tasks and to go about their daily lives. For many people, the first and only visible sign of their invisible illness is their dog. I recently discussed this issue with Lynne from my constituency and I was distressed to hear the effect it has had on her. She was refused access to a taxi because the driver did not want the dog in her car. She suffers from regular epileptic seizures. She looks no different from any other person, but she is accompanied by her assistance dog, who can detect when she is about to have a seizure. I was amazed to hear that humans emit a specific odour that some dogs can recognise, which means they can warn their owner of an oncoming seizure, sometimes a significant period in advance, to allow them to find a safe place and get the assistance they need. My constituent was left waiting in the pouring rain for 30 minutes for another taxi after being refused passage. The taxi would not accept her assistance dog as a passenger. She reports that sometimes taxis arrive, see her dog and move on or refuse to pick her up.
Businesses such as private hire taxi firms are a vital transport service for people suffering with physical or mental conditions—they enable them to get about—and they need to be made aware of the legislation protecting people with assistance dogs. It is a concern that not enough licensing authorities require drivers to complete disability awareness and equality training, and this should include people who have disabilities that are visible and those that are not.
I am encouraged that in response to the task and finish group report, which investigated the issue, Ministers have stated that they intend to include new guidance for licensing authorities. Under the Equality Act 2010, taxi and minicab drivers cannot refuse a booking on the grounds that someone has an assistance dog accompanying them. I appreciate that in some circumstances they may not be able to have dogs as passengers in their cars—for example, if they are allergic—but that is why the legislation allows for drivers to carry certificates of exemption.
Customers must be aware of this, however, when booking a taxi so that they are not left literally out in the cold. I would like all taxi drivers to complete disability awareness and equality training so that they know they should report discrimination. We also need to take action against drivers who discriminate against disabled passengers so that experiences such as those of my constituent do not continue. This is not about forcing new regulations on business; it is about reinforcing current legislation to protect disabled people.
Like epilepsy, bowel disease is also an invisible illness. While someone may appear to look okay on the outside, they might suffer from an invisible illness such as Crohn’s or colitis and might urgently need to use a toilet when out and about.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
I know I have just arrived in the debate, but I would like to pick up the hon. Lady’s point about Crohn’s and colitis. A close member of my family was diagnosed a few years ago with colitis, and their struggle to find public toilets and amenities and have it recognised has been a huge challenge. Does she agree that we need to raise awareness of those invisible diseases?
Mary Robinson
The hon. Lady knows from her own family experience how important this is and how seriously we need to address it. People who suffer from illnesses such as Crohn’s and colitis might urgently need to use the toilet when out and about, and we need to ensure they can and that they are accessible. It is a major anxiety for people that stops them or prevents them from going out and about. Sometimes people have to think long and hard about their journey because of the impact it might have if they need to use a toilet urgently. That is why the roll-out of accessibility signage is so important. It needs to be addressed and people need to be made aware of it. I would like this to be a bigger issue that is taken on board by more and more shops, retailers and restaurants.
A “Can’t Wait!” card is available to people with hidden illnesses—bowel disease, and so on—that they can show to staff at restaurants and shops without having to give a long explanation about their condition. In many cases, people find this embarrassing to talk about to strangers. That is the whole point of doing something about it. Some retailers are part of the “Can’t Wait!” card scheme and recognise it, but a lot of independent businesses do not, and the wider knowledge and encouragement of such schemes is needed, alongside the roll-out of more accessible signage. I would be grateful if the Minister informed the House in his closing remarks what more the Department can do to encourage businesses to recognise these schemes. Whether or not someone is disabled, their ability to go about their daily life without hindrance is a right, and one that we must ensure is respected.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I am grateful to each and every one of the Members on both sides of the House who have spoken so far, but I am particularly grateful to the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) for initiating this Back-Bench business debate. While—sadly—there is not much in the way of business going on in the House, I think it absolutely right that a debate of such importance take place on the Floor of the House rather than in Westminster Hall, as is so often the case.
I also thank the hon. Member for East Lothian for his passionate words about Grace and her mum Judith, and their campaign in respect of Grace’s son. In too many cases, younger and younger people are experiencing disability. The fact that across Scotland a sign can be seen saying “Not all disabilities are visible” is encouraging to many people who now feel that their disabilities are recognised.
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak up for many of my constituents who face hardship, extra costs and discrimination owing to invisible disabilities or illnesses. It is extremely important for us to recognise in this place that invisible disabilities can have a powerful impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. I think that that has been recognised throughout today’s debate, but we need to ensure that such conditions are fully recognised and respected in everyday society and the workplace. As we heard from the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), celebrating disability in sport is just one example of the ways in which we can ensure that society as a whole recognises the abilities that many people have, while also having a disability. The way in which society views disabilities such as dementia, Parkinson’s and autism often contributes greatly to people’s experiences of disability, and can also be stressful for the parents of young children.
There are many misconceptions about what a disabled person is “supposed” to look like, but many disabilities do not present themselves in an obvious physical way. That includes physical health conditions and neurological and mental health issues. My hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) told us that her own husband had suffered a head injury. That is another disability that is not seen every day, and I commend my hon. Friend for sharing her experience with the House.
Recently, in this place, I have been making the case that invisible conditions such as fibromyalgia and arthritis do not receive the recognition, the attention or the levels of support that they deserve. The Minister is probably tired of hearing the same voices arguing the case, but I think that Government Departments could do more to recognise not just fibromyalgia and arthritis but all the illnesses, diseases and symptoms that are not currently recognised within the departmental framework.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) on initiating the debate.
ME is another of the invisible conditions that are not receiving enough recognition. I understand that the Minister and I are to meet in an couple of weeks to discuss this very issue, but does my hon. Friend agree that such invisible conditions are often not recognised in work capability assessments? Some sort of indicator would be helpful in those circumstances.
Angela Crawley
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. As the Minister knows, I have highlighted that issue time and again during Westminster Hall debates in relation to ME, fibromyalgia, arthritis and other lesser-known illnesses. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) gave his own personal account, speaking passionately, on behalf of his wife, about fibromyalgia.
What has not been covered so far today, although I assumed that we might hear about it at some point, is the fact that conditions such as anxiety and depression are also deeply misunderstood, although they are often as disabling as a physical illness. Those invisible illnesses exemplify the way in which conditions without obvious symptoms can escape the untrained eye while wreaking havoc on people’s lives, but that, too, has not been recognised by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Anxiety and depression are not easy conditions to talk about, and many men suffer quietly with symptoms because they are too afraid to speak up. I think it incumbent on everyone in the House to speak up themselves, and to ensure that people know that it is okay to ask for help. That is because, sadly, the stigma that still exists around too many illnesses can make it very distressing to have to explain and justify the additional needs to loved ones or family members, never mind employers. I know from personal experience of losing a loved one to mental ill health that it is essential that these people have the recognition and support that they deserve, because I would hate to see more people lose their lives unnecessarily.
I have also recently tried to highlight how the cuts to disability benefits by this Government are making it more difficult for disabled people to live independently and with dignity. I see the Minister roll his eyes and I appreciate that he is just one of many Ministers who have taken on this departmental responsibility and I have every sympathy as he has a large ship to steer in the right direction, but the fact of the matter is that the DWP has failed to recognise many of the disabilities today, and if we are going to sit in this House and debate the subject it is only right that we address concerns about things that reside in Government Departments.
Many diagnosed with disability and a persistent long-term health condition can be empowered and enabled to seek the support they require to live a fulfilling and long life, but the reality is that there are higher costs to living with a disability. Many are unable to work, and the difficulties they face in navigating the welfare system can be seen in all our casework. Whether the Minister is willing to acknowledge that is another matter, but it is a simple fact that if we went to any case officer in any constituency we would hear the same problems. Disabled people face overall higher costs than non-disabled people, and the cuts to their income can be devastating because they often do not have savings; they do not have a fall-back. Many do not have a support system, so what does the Minister propose they do if the last people they can turn to are this state and this Government and they are not getting the support they need? The bottom line is that shaking our head and saying it is not the case is simply not good enough. We perhaps only hear the worst of cases, but if we are just hearing some of the worst cases I dread to think how many other people do not come to us, do not know how to be advocates for themselves, and do not know how to get the support they need. I dread to think how they experience the DWP service.
Where there is a gap that is supposed to be plugged by benefits such as the personal independence payment, people instead face the blatant discrimination of a disability assessment. Is it really right that someone should face a panel of people and a medical practitioner to prove an already diagnosed medical condition? Is it really necessary when they have a diagnosed medical condition to then further prove that medical condition to other health practitioners who are often not as qualified as those who made the original diagnosis?
The system is not working for people who need help, and that is because of the ideology of this austerity-driven Government. They are ultimately cutting on the backs of the poor. In 2016 the Government introduced regulations which specifically excluded people with psychological conditions from receiving higher points in PIP assessments. I appreciate that that was not under the Minister’s stewardship, but consecutive Ministers who have had responsibility for this area have failed to address these systemic issues.
It took a defeat in the courts for the DWP to overturn this practice. Is it right that public money should be spent trying to defend the indefensible? That demonstrates the direction of the Government, their perspective on disabled people, and their contempt for their additional needs. The DWP looks at the needs of disabled people at arms’ length, with assessments contracted to a private company.
While I appreciate that some of the assessors are highly skilled medical professionals who have the empathy required to work in a clinical setting, this is not always the case. Numerous constituents have complained to me of assessors who did not understand their illness and who could not imagine how difficult life is on a bad day with fibromyalgia or depression. They were simply not listened to, and the report they received simply did not reflect their experience of the assessment. Assessors are simply not trained in spotting these illnesses, and that is reflected in the points awarded in their assessment reports. The result is that people in genuine need either have to put up and shut up or they challenge the outcome through a gruelling mandatory reconsideration and appeals process. The very fact that the outcomes are often overturned at that stage implies that there is a systemic problem with the system. This is a flawed system that needs to be reviewed urgently, and I urge the Minister to take that action.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about PIP assessments. Epilepsy Scotland says that 77% of those who appealed when they lost out on their PIP won on appeal. The DWP denied PIP to over 53% of people living with epilepsy who had previously had DLA, so this absolutely bears out my hon. Friend’s point that those with particular conditions such as epilepsy are not being well served by the system.
Angela Crawley
I wholeheartedly agree. Fundamentally, this is all I want the Minister to take home today. I genuinely want us to be able to work cross-party across the House to get this right, because this is not simply about levelling this at the Government. We all have a responsibility to make the system work better.
As the Minister knows, I am a member of the Women and Equalities Committee, and we have consistently argued that more can be done to support disabled people. I think he would agree that there is always more that we could do within the built environment to support those with a disability. It is often not the disability itself that disabling; it is the built environment and the structures within society that disable the individual.
Bill Grant
Is it not the case that the Scottish Government had the opportunity to recreate a Scottish social security system? The hon. Lady has spent some time berating the current system, yet the opportunity was gifted to the Scottish Government, as it should have been, through devolution.
Angela Crawley
The hon. Gentleman knows fine well that there is a Scottish social security service, and the approval ratings and general success of the implementation of that system provide evidence that where this is done correctly and with an ethos of integrity and respect, it works far better than an interrogative system that implies that people must prove that they are disabled. Frankly, I would expect more from the hon. Gentleman, who often makes the case in this House that it is the responsibility of the Scottish Government and Scottish taxpayers to mitigate this Conservative Government’s austerity measures. He knows that that is an inconceivable and ridiculous notion.
Once more, I call on the Government to define specifically what “reasonable adjustments” are, because too many employers are unable to provide the level of support required because “reasonable adjustments” have not been exactly defined. For that matter, the Equality Act 2010 is often not being enforced, particularly across Government Departments and in outside bodies that are accountable to the Government. There is more that the Minister can do to ensure that the Equality Act works for people and that the definition of “reasonable adjustments” is clear so that employers can support people.
We need to have a shift in the way we look at disability in this country. We should commend the companies and employers who are making the changes needed to help disabled people to continue into work, but we also need to ensure that the people who require welfare support are actually receiving it and not being excluded owing to processes that are not fit for purpose. The Minister has heard me make these asks several times, and I know that he is probably tired of hearing me make them, but I urge him to speak to his colleagues across the Departments —specifically, given his remit, to the Department for Work and Pensions—and to champion reforms with those disabilities in mind. If the true measure of a society can be found in how it treats its weakest members, right now we are coming up short. So, before yet another reshuffle and yet another Prime Minister, I urge this Minister to make a lasting impact and improve the lives of disabled people.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
This has been a fantastic, high-quality debate. It is a shame that the attendance was a bit—[Interruption.] Yes, it is quality over quantity, which is what we tend to find at the moment. Perhaps other things are going on and focusing minds elsewhere. I would like to begin by thanking my hon. Friends the Members for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) and for Newport West (Ruth Jones) for securing the debate and for their excellent and passionate opening speeches. They both mentioned Grace and her “have a heart” campaign. That is a fantastic example of a lived experience-led campaign, and they are often the most powerful and successful. I join my hon. Friends in commending Grace and her campaign, which I wish widespread success.
At this juncture, I also want to mention the Changing Places campaign, which I have been involved with in my constituency on behalf of a constituent whose son has spina bifida. I was shocked to find out how few facilities there are across my constituency; no doubt the same applies to all constituencies.
I thank all hon. Members who have taken part today, including the hon. Members for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant)—[Interruption.] I am going to crucify all these constituency names with my Geordie accent. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders)—I just about managed that one—and the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson), as well as the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley), who spoke for the SNP. I thank them all for their excellent speeches.
Members may have noticed that I am not a Department for Work and Pensions shadow Minister—I am shadow Public Health Minister—but I am happy to be closing this debate on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova). I do chair the all-party parliamentary group on dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties. Those are also, of course, invisible disabilities; I shall come back to that aspect later.
As we have heard, in the last census, one in five people in the UK reported having a disability or limiting long-term health condition. The vast majority of disabled people have hidden impairments not immediately obvious to others—neurodiversity, Crohn’s disease, colitis, dementia, arthritis, or mental distress and energy impairment conditions such as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, and chronic fatigue syndrome, to name but a few.
According to Scope, nearly half the British public are not aware that they even know someone who has a disability. People with invisible impairments face attitudinal barriers in every part of their lives, from accessing public toilets to using disabled parking bays, but I will concentrate mainly on education, access to social security and employment.
People with invisible disabilities often face significant exclusion and stigma in education. For example, the lack of awareness of autism in schools affects autistic students at every level. As a result, fewer than half of children and young people on the autism spectrum say that they are happy in education. SEND provisions are woefully inadequate and have been devastated by brutal cuts to our schools and sixth forms, worth £2 billion per year.
What assessment has the Minister made of the impact funding cuts have on children with autism and their ability to stay in mainstream schools? The issue is about accessibility and access to the curriculum. Autistic children are sometimes forced to wait for more than a year for the SEND support that they need, and just one in 10 parents is satisfied by the education, health and care plan for their child. As I know, children with dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties experience that, too: my son is severely dyslexic, and as I mentioned earlier, I am the chair of the APPG on dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties.
Earlier this year, our group released a report entitled “The Human Cost of Dyslexia—the emotional and psychological impact of poorly supported dyslexia”. It outlined the ways in which missed or poorly supported dyslexia during education has made such children feel stupid, unvalued by society, guilty—as if the problem was their fault—and disinterested in education. The implications can lead to under-achievement at every level of education, in careers and work life thereafter and, at the extreme end, to disengagement from society. That is reflected in the fact that there are proportionately more people with dyslexia in the criminal justice system than among the general population. The same can be said for a number of SEND conditions.
Unfortunately, the issues faced by people with invisible disabilities during childhood do not disappear but actually worsen in adulthood. The employment gap between disabled people and non-disabled people is 30.1 percentage points and has remained just above 30 percentage points for the past decade. This is something that the last Labour Government were trying to tackle. We had the Valuing People Now partnership boards—before he had to dash to a meeting, my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) told me that he chaired the successful board in Gateshead—but, sadly, the coalition Government scrapped them in 2012. Three years later, in 2015, the Government pledged to halve the disability employment gap to 15 percentage points. [Interruption.] The Minister is getting frustrated.
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)
Does the hon. Lady not welcome the fact that just short of 1 million more disabled people were in work in the past five years alone and that for the first time ever, which I emphasise, more than half of disabled people are now in work? We have made significant progress. There is much, much more to do, but we are in a significantly better position than we were in 2010.
Mrs Hodgson
I am sure the Minister will be making all those points in his contribution.
The Government pledged to halve the disabled employment gap to 15 percentage points in 2015, but the 2017 Conservative manifesto set a new target to get an extra 1 million disabled people into work by 2027, which is a much downgraded commitment. If that is not the case, will the Minister please clarify the Government’s target and update us on the progress on closing the employment gap? The National Audit Office released a damning report concluding that the DWP lacks any clear measures to support disabled people into work. [Interruption.] It is about accessibility. I cannot see how it is not about this debate.
What will the Government do to ensure that clear measures are put in place to support disabled people, including those with invisible disabilities, into work? A recent TUC survey found that more than two thirds of respondents say there is more stigma for disabled people when their impairment cannot be seen by others in the workplace.
For example, people with autism often face significant stigma and difficulty in work. According to the National Autistic Society, just 16% of autistic adults are in full-time employment, compared with 80% of non-disabled people who are in work in the UK. The vast majority of autistic people face a hostile environment in the labour market, and there is an appalling lack of understanding of autism among jobcentre staff, disability employment advisers and some employers. The same goes for the police and the criminal justice system, which can lead to autistic people being wrongfully arrested when their only crime is being autistic. What will the Government do to ensure better understanding of autism across society?
The Government’s Disability Confident scheme lacks any credible performance measures to ensure that employers support disabled people into work, and it is possible to reach level 3 accreditation without actually employing a single disabled person. Is that something the Government will review?
People with fibromyalgia, which as we have heard is an invisible disability affecting up to 1 million people in the UK, also fall victim to barriers in the labour market. Under this Government, fibromyalgia sufferers face a lack of proper understanding of their condition, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, as well as a lack of vital in-work support. Only 63% of people with musculoskeletal conditions are in work, with many forced out of work by the difficulties of daily life due to their invisible disability.
The Access to Work scheme could play a vital part in ensuring that employers provide valuable reasonable adjustments in the workplace for people with invisible disabilities. However, a survey conducted by Versus Arthritis found that just 59% of respondents with conditions such as fibromyalgia and only 41% of employers are aware of the scheme. What steps can the Minister take to ensure that employers are aware of the scheme and to encourage take-up?
As we have heard during the debate, assessments for PIP, employment and support allowance and universal credit are failing people with invisible impairments such as mental health problems and mental distress. The Time to Change campaign has reported that 90% of people with mental distress have experienced stigma, including in employment and in accessing social security support. The current assessment framework fundamentally discriminates against people with mental distress, and I am sure that we will all have constituents who have experienced this and felt overwhelmed by the process. The process begins with an arduous written assessment, which is 34 pages long in the case of PIP. That is followed by the collation of medical evidence, which can involve travelling extensively, liaising with different health services and facing huge expense. Finally, there is an often invalidating and often humiliating face-to-face assessment.
In 2013, an upper tribunal panel said that the design of the work capability assessment substantially disadvantaged mental health claimants, as it relied upon the self-reporting of a disability. In 2017, the Government changed the eligibility criteria for the PIP mobility component, to exclude certain people undertaking journeys who are facing “overwhelming psychological distress”. These changes, which were ruled to be unlawfully discriminatory by a High Court and which will take years to complete, prove, once again, the DWP’s shocking disregard for people with mental distress. Some 220,000 people are owed back payments by the DWP, but thus far the Government have only reviewed 10% of cases. When does the Minister expect to have reviewed all these cases?
It is clear from this debate that people with invisible disabilities face stigma in all areas of their lives. That is due not only to the chronic lack of knowledge and awareness of invisible disabilities across society, but to the Government’s cruel loopholes that discriminate against people with invisible disabilities. I hope that the Minister will take on board everything he has heard today. I know he probably is not happy with what he has heard from me, but there we are.
The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Justin Tomlinson)
It is a real pleasure to respond to this proactive and constructive debate. Until the last two, the majority of speakers stuck to the spirit of this incredibly important subject, and I know that people worked incredibly hard to get this vital debate secured through the Backbench Business Committee. First, I say to the hon. Member for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield), “Yes, yes and yes.” How about that? There are not many debates in which a Minister can just totally and whole- heartedly agree.
I had a stroke of luck, because on Saturday a Red Box was dispatched to my house. We knew this debate was coming up, so a 3,500-word draft speech was prepared and there was a lot of briefing on what subjects would be covered. I thought that the best thing to do was to pop the kettle on, have a cup of tea and look at something else first. As I did so, I found an invitation to a meeting of the all-party group on this very subject on Tuesday. As a matter of luck, I was therefore able to attend a brilliant meeting to discuss exactly what would be coming forward. I had further luck, as the various areas of priority for us were then connected to three further meetings I had later in the week, prior to this debate, and I will be covering all those in a little more detail.
There is a huge amount of respect for the hon. Gentleman, who has built a brilliant reputation in this area for a long time, both in his role before he came to the House and in the House. He is widely respected and he is right to recognise the progress that has been made since the Equality Act 2010. I pay tribute to the Labour party for its work in that area. Our Government has rightly continued, as I am sure all future Governments will, to work with stakeholders to build on that incredibly important step, which does make a real difference.
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that we need to improve awareness. He talked about how 93% of people who challenge feel that they are doing the right thing because they want to stand up for those who are marginalised in society, and I am acutely aware of that point. This was summed up by an incident I saw where someone with a disabled autistic daughter parked in a disabled parking space, with a blue badge, yet received abuse.
It was not a one-off—I am sure it happens all over the place. On that stat—93% of people would challenge someone—they probably feel that they are doing the right thing, but because of the lack of awareness and the additional challenges of hidden disabilities, society is creating awkwardness and putting people off and that is affecting people’s lives.
I shall come shortly to Grace, the inspiration, but first let me whizz through some of the excellent speeches and respond to them directly. My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) has done brilliant work, both in her constituency with the partnership board and in her former role as everybody’s favourite sports Minister. When I was previously a disability Minister, we worked together carefully to push organisations such as the Premier League, which was, to its credit, very proactive. Richard Scudamore, the departing chief executive, took a personal interest in improving disability access in premier league stadiums. I could not have asked for more support from the sports Minister in that policy area.
My hon. Friend was absolutely right to highlight the importance of the Special Olympics. The point that I really picked up on was just how happy people are—in all the visits in my 19 years as an MP, a Minister and a councillor, nothing has come close to the joy that I saw when I went to a learning disability netball session. I literally thought that the young adults were going to explode with excitement. I am glad that my hon. Friend also took the time to highlight the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who has done a huge amount in this policy area.
The hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) has made a good impression since her recent arrival in the House, from which we are all benefiting. This is the second debate to which she has contributed and I have responded. She brings real-life experience in this area, particularly in respect of strokes, and it was really important to highlight that. She reminds us how important it is that we do this because some people will need extra time and space. That is crucial.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) led a brilliant Westminster Hall debate just a few weeks ago and carried on today in the same form. Not every disability is visible. He was right to highlight that there is not an immense cost to making a real difference in this policy area. That came through in many speeches, and I will cover it in more detail later.
Through the direct experiences of his wife, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) raised some incredibly important points about access to work and sanctions. He has raised them before in other debates and he always raises them in a constructive manner. I want to try to keep to the spirit of the debate, so I offer him a personal meeting so that we can explore the issues in more detail and do them justice.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) was absolutely right to highlight the challenges in respect of public transport, an area on which she has worked tirelessly. She also raised the issue of assistance dogs, on which British Guide Dogs has been one of the best and most visible campaigning charities, particularly in respect of the misunderstanding of what taxi drivers should or should not do and how we can tighten things up through licensing. My hon. Friend was also right to highlight the brilliance of medical dogs that can smell certain conditions—it is the equivalent of detecting one particle in a swimming pool, which is absolutely amazing. What a difference we can also make in the retail environment, which I will cover a little later.
Perhaps the hon. Members for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) did not quite follow the spirit of the debate—that is one of the challenges when one arrives with a pre-written speech. I gently say to them that we are spending £55 billion a year on supporting those with long-term health conditions and disabilities. That is a record amount and is up £10 billion. Only 16% of DLA claimants had the highest rate of support, compared with 32% of those on PIP. Disability employment is at a record high: in respect of our target of 1 million by 2027, we are at 440,000 after two years. As I said in an intervention earlier, for the first time we have more disabled people in work than not in work. There is still more to do, though, specifically for people with autism in jobcentres. I am grateful for the work of Autism Alliance UK, which helped to create the autism toolkit. In the spirit of the debate, I am happy to meet both Members to discuss all those issues in detail, but will keep to the theme—
Justin Tomlinson
Let me keep to the spirit of the debate.
This debate has happened because of Grace Warnock, a truly inspirational superstar who had a fantastic teacher, who can take some credit for starting this brilliant journey. She is an amazing young person dealing with the challenges of Crohn’s disease. She was targeted with abuse because of her hidden disability. Understandably, many people, including many of us, would have shied away. I am sure that, day in, day out, people are shying away, but she stood her ground and she has made a difference. We should all celebrate her courage. I am very proud that she was awarded the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award in 2018—the very least that we can collectively do to celebrate her brilliance. It is absolutely right that her energy, enthusiasm and ideas are used to drive us forward.
Sense sent us all a briefing in which it summed up why we should listen carefully to Grace. It said that many public facilities are not currently fully accessible. Many people have multiple complex and/or invisible disabilities and require greater support and accessibility in order to access the local community, but these facilities are often not provided. Change could include the invisible disability sign, greater Changing Places provisions, improved accessible public transport and greater staff awareness for people working in public places. Greater provision of such facilities would lead to better inclusion and help to improve attitudes towards disabled people. Every one of us in this place would agree with every word of that.
That brings me to the all-party group meeting that I attended only yesterday. It was fantastic to see such cross-party support and some really impressive individuals making a difference in an area which, as the hon. Member for East Lothian rightly highlighted, is complex. We all agree that we want Grace’s sign to be a stepping stone to improved signage that is internationally recognised but, as ever, it is not simple. Everything in the political environment takes a little bit longer than perhaps we would like. To get international recognition of a new symbol involves a process with various stages from the initial proposals, through to consensus building, public consultation and publication. It can take a number of years, but that does ensure that, when it is done, it is done properly and is of long standing.
In our country, the British Standards Institution, the UK national standards body, in effect audits and approves something before it is considered by the International Organization for Standardization. The APPG gave an update and a presentation on the work that is being done and I was thrilled that the BSI was fully involved and fully supportive. It is right to highlight those people, beyond the MPs on the APPG, who have done so much work. Lucy Richards, the designer, has taken on Grace’s idea to international stellar levels. I was incredibly impressed by that. Having run a marketing company, it gave me a warm glow to remember the joys of looking at designs. There has been support from Life Changes through Anna Buchan, who provided the funding needed to carry out that extensive work. I should also mention user experts such as Dr Gordon Hayward, Steve Milton and Robert Turpin from the BSI. We had all the movers and shakers making sure that this has been fully road tested, so that when we are ready to take it to the international standards organisation it will tick all of the boxes. I thank the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones), the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), who were all present and supportive of that vital work. I will do everything that I can to support that going forward.
I did say that I was lucky with the other meetings that came up. This week, I met various sector champions who are helping to represent all of us to challenge those particular areas to do more and to highlight best practice. The first of those was retail sector champion Samantha Sen. Many of the speakers today have talked about the importance of getting it right in retail. That highlights the fact that this is a win, win. This is not just for those with hidden disabilities. If retailers can get it right, they can access the combined spending power of disabled people, which stands at £249 billion—those 13 million disabled people have considerable spending power.
Seventy-five per cent. of disabled people and their families have left a shop because of poor customer service. I do not believe that there is a single retailer who wakes up in the morning and says, “I want to turn away business.” I do not think that, on any of our visits, we have ever had a retailer saying, “I have too much business. Please do less.” I had the pleasure this morning of speaking at and opening the Retail Forum, at which many of the leading retailers and estate owners—including British Land and the Crown Estate—were present. They absolutely buy into this. They have a real appetite for sharing best practice. It is being channelled through the Purple Tuesday campaign, which many MPs support. On 12 November, we will have a genuine focus on this issue. When they set that up, they expected 70 retailers to be involved; it was actually over 700, and this year they expect it to be over 900. That is making a difference in retail and I commend all those retailers for being so engaged.
I also met Stephen Brookes, who is our transport sector champion. Many people will have worked with him on his brilliant work to tackle disability hate crime, which made a real difference to the Government’s way of going forward. He has real expertise; he initially started with the challenges on the Blackpool buses and spread out to rail and buses across the whole country. Part of the way through our conversation—this was amazing—I said I had been to an all-party parliamentary group that was beginning to look at how we can improve signage. I said, “One of the things I would like you to do is to meet the members of the APPG to give your expertise.” He said, “I have got something to show you. I have seen a sign that is amazing,” and he brought out the sign that had been presented at the all-party parliamentary group. He has confirmed that he would be delighted to support the APPG’s work. That will build on the Government’s new inclusive transport strategy to create a transport system that provides equal access for disabled people by 2030. That is a really important area, because disabled people should be able to travel confidently, easily and without extra cost.
Stephen Brookes reassured me that, over the last three years, there has been a complete shift, particularly with the rail companies and providers such as Network Rail. Any of their major improvements now have to go through their built environment access panel, for which there is a pan-disability group, to make sure they get things right for everyone and that they get them right at the beginning—it is a lot easier to do that then than it is to retrospectively fix things. I was encouraged that so many providers have understood the importance of this issue.
I also met Andrew Miller, who is our arts and culture sector champion. He, again, talked about the huge progress that is being made in our cultural venues and our live music venues. I pay tribute to Attitudes is Everything, one of my favourite charities, which makes live music venues accessible. When I was first a disability Minister, and I insisted on having a picture of Attitudes is Everything, my officials airbrushed out the pint glasses some of its members were enjoying as part of their evening entertainment, saying that that probably was not right for a ministerial wall. I got that corrected and the picture was put back in place.
I understand the importance of this issue, given that my first graduate job was as a nightclub manager. Interruption.] There are not many who could say that. [Interruption.] Mr Deputy Speaker has suggested that that was maybe because I liked dancing; actually, I was probably a manager because I was not very good at dancing. Andrew Miller and I talked in detail about what more all these venues, which an individual may visit only once or twice, could do. Many now put a lot of additional information up in advance on their websites so that users can check. What disabled users do not want to do is travel all the way to a venue and be left red faced when the facilities are not accessible.
I had a look at a website, which looked, in theory, like it was following good practice. It talked about free admission for carers or helpers; free loan of a wheelchair or motorised scooter; providing a personalised guiding scheme for unaccompanied disabled people, as long as it was booked in advance; subtitled video and large print being available; low-level counters; the induction loop system; and guide, hearing and assistance dogs being welcome. However, there was not a single point of contact, and probably the most important thing that any retailer or leisure provider can do is make it crystal clear that there is one. Those with disabilities do not fit into a neat box—everybody has their own unique challenges —and being able to talk things through and knowing where to go if there is a problem can make a real difference. It can also benefit facilities, which can then tap those 13 million customers with their £249 billion.
Finally, I met Huw Edwards, who is our physical activity and leisure sector champion. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford highlighted the importance of sport, I pay tribute to Sport England for doing lots more to focus on opportunities for those with disabilities, recognising the importance of sport and physical activity for disabled people through the Sporting Future strategy. I welcome the fact that we are seeing increases in activity. Again, there is still lots more to do, but it is right that we promote opportunities and share best practice. So many want to do more but need this information.
As I initially indicated with my triple yes, I am keen to do everything I can, as quickly as possible, to get this. I was blown away yesterday when I saw the designs and the right balance of the imagery, dealing with all the competing demands across the pan-disability spectrum and getting more detail with the words. I think this will make a real difference. As was said, not all things have to cost a huge amount of money. On this issue, everybody will do everything they can to make sure that Grace’s brave stand really does make a difference, not just in the UK but internationally.
It has been a real pleasure to take part in such a constructive and positive debate. Parliament is at its best today.
Martin Whitfield
It is right to say that we have seen Parliament at its best today. There are many distractions—shall we call them?—that take up political time. I know that Members from all parts of the House are doing other work today. Nevertheless, over 50 Members from across the whole House supported the application for this Backbench Business debate. It is right that the message should go out from here today that this is a cross-party ask and a cross-party right. I go back to the discussion about symbols: it is a symbol of how important this place feels our disabled community are, because they are an essential part of our society and we are stronger for them.
I thank all the Members who spoke and intervened. I finish with the words of the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant)—my hon. Friend— although not the ones he may think I will finish on. He said that this is the kind thing to do. As Grace said, it is about letting people have a heart about our whole society.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered invisible disabilities and accessibility challenges.
Business without Debate
Delegated Legislation
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
With the leave of the House, we shall take motions 6 to 8 together.
High Speed Rail (West Midlands – Crewe) Bill
Church Representation and Ministers Measure
Business of the House
Petitions
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
We now come to the petitions. I hope that Mr Gwynne is not going to read the individual names out.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise—with a bad back—to present a petition organised by my formidable constituents, Megan Montgomery, Amanda Baxter and the parents and supporters of Vale View Primary School in Reddish. Vale View is one of 26 schools across England where it is proposed to close early on a Friday in order to cut costs. According to the independent School Cuts campaign, Vale View, like every other school in the borough of Stockport, has seen a massive reduction in funding since 2015. At Vale View, it is £430,122, or a £446 per- pupil drop in funding. This is not on. I support the parents in their protest and take pride in presenting their mammoth petition. I hope that Ministers take note of the strength of feeling on this issue and act.
The petition reads:
The petition of parents, families and carers of pupils at Vale View Primary School, Reddish,
Declares that Vale View Primary School, Mill Lane in Reddish is trying to close early on Friday afternoons to save money meaning that parents will either have to leave work early to pick their children up, or pay for child care in school; further that it will disrupt children’s learning; further that Vale View is not the only school proposing this; further that schools across the country are affected thanks to real terms funding cuts of £2.5bn; further that schools are being asked to make cuts to staffing, drop subjects and other activities and are asking parents to chip in to help run them; further that we think it’s ridiculous that in 2019 schools are being forced to shut their doors early, or cut entire subjects because the government won’t give them the money they need; further that investment in schools is investment in our children’s future; further notes a related online petition—
now printed out—
on this same matter that has received 113,610 signatures; and further that the government should be doing everything it can to make sure children in England have the best start in life and the best education to help them succeed.
The petitioners therefore request the House of Commons to ask the government to increase funding for schools, so they can afford the staff and equipment they need without taking cost saving measures like cutting school hours.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002458]
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I think the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) needed a manual handling course or risk assessment before presenting that petition.
I rise on behalf of the residents of Glasgow South West, who are among the most sophisticated electorates in these islands. They have organised a petition on behalf of Mary Nnamani and her family, who are well known to the constituency office staff, charities in Glasgow South West and the Church community. I want to pay particular tribute to the Hastie family and the parishioners of Our Lady and St George’s, who have helped to organise this petition of 387 signatures over one week.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of Glasgow South West
Declares that Mary Nnamani and her family who fled from Nigeria in danger of their lives have become a full and valued part of our community in Glasgow through our schools and Church Community; further that the Nnamani family have claimed asylum here and we would dearly love them to stay.
The petitioners, therefore, request that the House of Commons urges the Home Office to grant Mary Nnamani and her family the right to remain in this country, where they have claimed asylum.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002459]
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Further to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), I rise in support of Mary Nnamani and her children. I pay tribute to the parishioners of Our Lady and St George’s who have gathered this petition. It is clear from their support that this is a valued family within the community. Glasgow is their home, and the community very much want them to stay. It is greatly frustrating to see further Home Office misery put upon the people of Glasgow. I would like to thank those from my constituency who have signed the petition, and particularly Grace Buckley, who is incredibly active in Glasgow in supporting human rights causes in the city and around the world.
The petition reads:
The petition of residents of Glasgow Central
Declares that Mary Nnamani and her family who fled from Nigeria in danger of their lives have become a full and valued part of our community in Glasgow through our schools and Church Community; further that the Nnamani family have claimed asylum here and we would dearly love them to stay.
The petitioners, therefore, request that the House of Commons urges the Home Office to grant Mary Nnamani and her family the right to remain in this country, where they have claimed asylum.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002460]
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I want to add my congratulations to and admiration of the parishioners of Our Lady and St George’s in Penilee, who have so efficiently organised this petition, and particularly my constituents among their number who have signed it. The case of Mary Nnamani and her family clearly demonstrates that the hostile environment is alive and well. I hope that this and so many other cases will be urgently reviewed and that that policy will eventually come to an end.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of Glasgow North
Declares that Mary Nnamani and her family who fled from Nigeria in danger of their lives have become a full and valued part of our community in Glasgow through our schools and Church Community; further that the Nnamani family have claimed asylum here and we would dearly love them to stay.
The petitioners, therefore, request that the House of Commons urges the Home Office to grant Mary Nnamani and her family the right to remain in this country, where they have claimed asylum.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002461]
Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)
I rise in solidarity with the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and all his constituents, particularly the parishioners of Our Lady and St George’s in Penilee. As we see so often, it is churches that are performing the role in the community of providing solidarity, sustenance and moral support to so many people in our communities who are victims of the oppressive behaviour of the Home Office. The Home Office is denying the basic rights of justice and sanctuary to those who have fled to this country seeking asylum, and who are often facing the worst possible conditions and psychological torment. It is great that this act of solidarity across parties and across the city of Glasgow can, I hope, bring some degree of encouragement and, thankfully, some respite to a family who are facing such torment at this point in time.
I present this petition on behalf of the constituents of Glasgow North East. The petition reads:
The petition of residents of Glasgow North East,
Declares that Mary Nnamani and her family who fled from Nigeria in danger of their lives have become a full and valued part of our community in Glasgow through our schools and Church Community; further that the Nnamani family have claimed asylum here and we would dearly love them to stay.
The petitioners, therefore, request that the House of Commons urges the Home Office to grant Mary Nnamani and her family the right to remain in this country, where they have claimed asylum.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002462]
Funeral Plans: Regulation
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to Mr Speaker for granting me this opportunity to raise the important issue of funeral plan regulation again in the House. Much has changed since the last time I brought a debate on funeral plan regulation to the Chamber. I will go into more detail regarding what has happened in the industry shortly, but first I want to explain why this is such an important issue and why action is so important.
Pre-paid funeral plans allow consumers to save for a funeral. If they are sold and handled appropriately, they are a good thing. They allow people to purchase a funeral and secure it at today’s prices. They can avoid the double-whammy shock of losing a loved one and dealing with the financial consequences of a funeral at the same time. Alongside appropriate regulation of the funeral industry itself and the wider anti-poverty work that is required, funeral plans are the best route to avoiding funeral poverty.
I proposed a ten-minute rule Bill in December 2016, as I want to see better regulation of this market. The debate in 2016 followed a report from Citizens Advice Scotland that same year, commissioned by the Scottish Government, on funeral poverty. It made a series of recommendations regarding the action required to stop funeral poverty. Many of them were devolved responsibilities that are now being pursued by the Scottish Government, but some were issues reserved to Westminster, including this one of the regulation of funeral plans. That report, with its case studies of people being mis-sold funeral plans, and representations made to me by constituents prompted me to ask this Government whether they should be doing more. According to UK Government figures, about 200,000 funeral plans are sold each year, and I expect that figure to continue to rise.
Jim Shannon
Mr Deputy Speaker, I did seek the hon. Gentleman’s permission beforehand, so I have done this the right way.
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, who so often brings to an Adjournment debate many important political issues that we are all involved in and which I am aware of as well. I know of many people who immediately began a funeral payment policy when they retired, yet this has proved to be a negative move for many families. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, while it is admirable that 95% of funeral plan providers are signed up to regulation by the Funeral Planning Authority, the fact that this is completely self-regulated takes some of the sting out of the tail? I believe there is also a role for the Government to play, perhaps in stronger legislation to protect the elderly and the vulnerable from being taken advantage of as they come towards the end of their life.
Neil Gray
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and it would not be an Adjournment debate without his intervening.
The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue, which is the current status of the Funeral Planning Authority, which I will come on to discuss in greater detail in my speech. He is right that it is a voluntary body at the moment, and there has been much debate about whether the best route of regulating this market is through putting the FPA on a statutory footing or through Financial Conduct Authority regulation. The Government appear to be looking at FCA regulation, which I am happy enough with, although I do have some concerns about the direction of travel, which I will ask the Minister to look at. The hon. Gentleman is right. At the moment, the FPA perhaps does not have the teeth to regulate the market properly. It would acknowledge that although it has done a great deal of work in this area since my ten-minute rule Bill was introduced, if it were to have a full suite of powers to regulate the market properly, that would require it to become a statutory body.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is right. My hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) brings a great number of important issues to the Chamber, and this is one on which he has spoken many times. He will be pleased to know that this week I heard from a local family-run funeral service in my constituency, who expressed support for the Treasury proposals and for enhanced consumer protection. He made the point that most funeral firms, as we know from the Treasury proposals, are small and micro businesses. He is concerned, given that the majority of funerals are delivered by those businesses, that such businesses could be at competitive disadvantage compared with larger providers and threatened by the cost of FCA regulations. What are my hon. Friend’s thoughts on that?
Neil Gray
I am well aware of that family-run business, and I share its concerns. My hon. Friend speaks well for them, and it is a point that I wish to make. How do the Government protect competition in the market to make sure that smaller funeral providers and funeral plan providers are not squeezed out of the market by the burden of FCA regulation? Of all the criticisms of the route that the Government have chosen, that is the one that is expressed most keenly by people in the market.
Given the number of funeral plans that have been sold in recent years and the growth in the sector, it is critical that we get the regulation right and ensure that consumers are protected. The Citizens Advice report published a few years ago gave examples of mis-selling—people were promised particular aspects of a funeral, but when the plan was redeemed they were told that that was not part of the deal. Particular cars, coffins or flowers that were chosen for sentimental reasons, for example, were not delivered, although people thought they had paid for them. There have been widespread reports of bad sales practices such as cold calling, aggressive selling and the targeting of vulnerable customers.
Since I introduced my ten-minute rule Bill, which proposed the areas of regulation that the Government now appear to have adopted, a significant amount of change has taken place in the market. The FPA, as I have said, has taken great steps to reform its practices as a voluntary market regulator, and it suggests that 95% of the market has signed up to its regulatory model. There have been great moves across the market to reform practices, including by plan providers themselves. Some of them are moving away from the third-party selling model that appeared to be problematic and was part of the 5% issue that concerns us all. I am pleased that my Bill proposal, which was intended to spark debate and action for change, has led to that progress. I am grateful to the Minister for taking action.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for introducing the debate on a subject that is close to my heart. I met him, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and other Members attending this debate to form a working party, and we intend to consider how we support the Government in looking at environmental funerals, funeral plans and the social fund. While I welcome the Government’s announcement, does the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) agree that we need to look at the small percentage of funeral plans that are not covered by the FPA? In that two-year window, there is an opportunity for people who can least afford to pay exorbitant fees to be exploited.
Neil Gray
I thank the hon. Lady, who is a doughty campaigner in this area, for her intervention. It should go without saying that she has done a great deal, particularly on children’s funerals, and I commend her for her work. She is absolutely right. There is a potential gap, with the two or three-year transition period the Government propose, before moving to FCA regulation. I will turn to my concerns about that in due course, but she is absolutely right to raise the issue and I look forward to continuing to work with her in this area to try to drive the changes we want.
I am pleased that my Bill proposal, which was intended to spark debate and action for change, has started that progress. I commend the Minister in particular. I am grateful that the Government are taking this issue seriously enough to consult on funeral plan regulation and are now proposing moving to a model of FCA regulation. A consultation is now under way until August on what the Government now propose to do in this area. I am grateful to the Minister and to some of his colleagues who also wish to see change and have supported my work, such as the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), but I do have some concerns about the direction of travel that I am sure the Minister will be able to answer.
There should be some clear benefits to moving to FCA regulation, such as access to the Financial Ombudsman Service for those who have complaints about the products they have received, but it is not yet clear whether consumers who have a dispute over a funeral plan product will be able to access the financial services compensation scheme.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate and, more importantly, on his Bill. Has he noticed how funeral costs and some of the practices that go on in the industry are now being highlighted in the press? Does he not agree that there should be a good look at costs in more depth? Very often, bereaved families feel ashamed to raise the question of cost, because there is the matter of pride.
Neil Gray
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, who raises an important issue. He might be aware that the Scottish Government are doing some work in this regard to set up a funerals regulator, part of which will be looking at the practices of funeral directors. I believe—I will turn to this in my speech—that that is probably what the Competition and Markets Authority investigation will be looking at, too. It is also right to acknowledge that many family-run funeral directors are linchpins of their communities. Some take on great burdens, acknowledging the hardships their customers are going through. It is right that we acknowledge that, while also accepting that there are some in the market who are not perhaps operating to the qualities that we would hope and expect to see.
On the financial services compensation scheme issue, I hope the Minister will be able to clarify in his response whether he envisages this particular model of regulation covering the financial services compensation scheme.
I am also concerned that although the Government appear very keen to move forward to a different regulatory model, as they have accepted there is a problem, they have not, in their own work, quantified the consumer detriment in the market. There was clearly a problem identified by Citizens Advice Scotland researchers in 2016, but to what extent has that problem been improved or exacerbated? The Government need to do a bit more work to update the findings of the Citizens Advice Scotland report and also the “Fairer Finance” report that followed my 10-minute rule Bill. It is clear that there are still issues in the market that need to be addressed, but I think the Minister must agree that it is for the Government now to quantify what they are so that the FCA is clear as to its remit and focus.
There also needs to be greater clarity on the likely three-year wait for changes to take effect. First of all, what happens with regulation in the interim, as there will be no incentive for those currently signed up to the voluntary scheme to carry on engaging? There certainly will not be an incentive for those outside FPA regulation—those we really wish to target in whatever model of regulation we bring forward—to come on board. What assurances can the Minister give about what the market will look like and how it will behave during the three-year wait until the FCA fully takes up responsibility for the market? Will the Minister say how many firms will be regulated under the scheme? The Treasury’s consultation document accepts that there will be consolidation in the market, as my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) suggested. In other words, there will be fewer companies offering these services because of the burden of FCA regulation. Has the Minister assessed whether he feels this model would continue to provide appropriate competition in the market for the consumer? Of course, the Competition and Markets Authority has been critical of some bigger funeral companies for inflated funeral costs, yet this move may give an even bigger market share to those same companies.
I do not have a crystal ball or any insider knowledge, but I fully expect the CMA to follow the Scottish Government’s lead by recommending a funeral regulator, which will look after the funeral director industry and probably some of the at-need market. That means we will be left either with a bit of a crossover in regulation or blurred lines as to who will have overall regulatory responsibility. Perhaps the Minister can clarify how he sees the regulatory environment working when both these areas are established.
In conclusion, for the last three years I have been working across this House, with the funeral plan market and with campaigning organisations to ensure that consumers are protected from being ripped off when they are perhaps at their most vulnerable. I want to see a system of regulation that stops the outrageous practices that we have had reports of in recent years, and I want to see consumer confidence so that there is a greater uptake of funeral plans to avoid the growing problem of funeral poverty.
I am greatly heartened by the Government’s acknowledging that they share my concerns and have effectively taken on my ten-minute rule Bill. I thank the Minister and his officials for what they have done to date, but I hope he will also accept that there is a great deal of work still to do and many questions to answer. Above all else, we have to ensure that the regulatory system in place for this critical industry gets it right for consumers. That means ensuring that we have consumer protection from cold calling, greater transparency in pricing, greater transparency in the products on offer and a better link between some plan providers and the funeral directors. There needs to be greater recourse to pursue complaints and to be compensated when things go wrong.
I am not particularly bothered about who from which body has responsibility for the regulation at the end of the day. I just want to make sure that it is right and that it stops people being ripped off and funeral poverty being exacerbated. We must therefore look at where problems remain with similar issues in the over-50s plan market, which is under FCA regulation, and learn lessons for funeral plan regulation.
Thank you again, Mr Speaker, for granting this debate. I want to know from the Minister that the FCA will always see this area as a priority and that he is alive to the concerns I have expressed this evening, while accepting my thanks for pursuing this matter in the way he has.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) on securing this debate, and I thank him for all the work that he has done on this topic with his colleagues. I hope that today marks a significant moment, following the excellent work that he has undertaken. I acknowledge the ambiguities that exist at this time. Although I will try to address a number of them in my response, I invite him to meet me and officials to go through them in detail so that we can fully absorb his concerns.
I also acknowledge the work that has been undertaken by other Members who have spoken in the debate, including, in particular, that done by the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who has an ongoing interest in this topic. I mention particularly the work that she has done with the children’s funeral fund. I hope that her Adjournment debate on 1 May, with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), was of assistance.
On Sunday, I launched a consultation that outlines the Government’s proposal to bring all funeral plan providers within the remit of the Financial Conduct Authority. I will take this opportunity to outline the rationale behind that announcement and do my best to respond to the questions that have been raised.
Sadly, many of us in the Chamber will have had to plan a funeral for a loved one. It is a difficult, emotional and expensive experience, with an average funeral costing between £4,000 and £6,000. For the last 14 years, funeral costs have been rising at twice the rate of inflation—about 6% per annum—so it is understandable that people wish to make some of the arrangements in advance, giving them the peace of mind that their loved ones will not be left with difficult decisions or a large bill after they have passed on. Funeral plans allow people to make these arrangements, to pay for their funeral in advance and to lock in a price. The market for funeral plans has grown considerably in recent years, with sales rising by nearly 200% between 2006 and 2018. Almost 1.4 million plans are now held by individuals up and down the country.
The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts asked about the Government’s perception of what this intervention will do to the market. That is difficult to anticipate at this point, but we will look carefully at the responses throughout the consultation, which runs up to 25 August, and will be alive to those concerns. The huge growth in the market, combined with a largely voluntary regulatory framework, has given rise to some pretty shameful practices, with some companies taking advantage of people only trying to do the right thing by their families. It is clear that the market has outgrown the 18-year-old legislative framework and that more robust regulation is needed, as the hon. Gentleman explained to the House more than two and a half years ago.
I will briefly describe the current framework. At present, funeral plan providers who offer plans backed by either a trust or an insurance contract are excluded from FCA regulation. It appears that all funeral plan providers have structured their business such that they benefit from these exclusions. A system of voluntary regulation has been established by the FPA, which has done some good work covering about 95% of the market, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, but the reports of poor practice have largely come from providers that are not FPA members. A system that allows market participants to choose whether to be regulated cannot be sustainable for a market of this size and nature—we are talking about £3.5 billion being invested by 1.3 million people—because only the reputable firms will choose to comply.
For these reasons and following reports of poor practice, I launched a call for evidence in June last year on the regulation of the funeral plan market. The Government sought views and evidence on how the market was operating and on the Government’s initial policy proposal to bring funeral plan providers within the FCA’s remit. In the light of the evidence received, it is clear that consumer detriment is present in the market, both at the point of sale and afterwards. At the point of sale, some providers and their distributors use high-pressure and misleading sales tactics to promote and sell funeral plans. Given the context—what these individuals are trying to do at a difficult time in their lives—that is particularly unacceptable. Standards of disclosure are also poor, leaving people unsure of what is included in their plan.
We have also found that after a plan has been purchased some providers remove high upfront costs in the form of commission or administration fees, which have been as high as £800, leading to concerns about whether there will be enough money left to pay for the funeral. Some funeral directors have also been named on plans without their knowledge or prior consent, and in some circumstances this has led to an alternative funeral director being appointed, with customers at that vulnerable time left confused about who will conduct the funeral service. There is also anecdotal evidence of conflicts of interest within some trusts’ investment strategies, and there are clear signs that consumers are being disadvantaged.
Perhaps the most striking finding, however, was that 84% of respondents agreed that regulation must be made compulsory, so there is clear demand from the market itself for enhanced regulation. Action must and will be taken. Consumers need to understand the products they buy and be confident they are well regulated. This should have wider benefits beyond the immediate funeral plan sector. Research by the CMA, which is investigating the wider market, has found that the vast majority of people do not shop around for a funeral, which is entirely understandable following a bereavement. A properly regulated funeral plan sector that enables people to plan ahead with confidence and shop around should have knock-on effects for competition in the wider funeral sector.
The FCA is best placed to take on responsibility for regulating the sector, although I acknowledge the concern about the cost and nature of that regulation and would be happy to discuss that with the hon. Gentleman in a meeting. We need to get that right, given the wide range of small family providers, and to make sure it is appropriate. The FCA would be obliged to consult on that. It is none the less a well-established regulator, accustomed to taking strong regulatory action when necessary, and it has the appropriate rule-making powers to tackle the conduct and prudential concerns that are identified in the market. It will be able to develop a targeted and proportionate approach to regulating the market, in line with its statutory objectives.
My Department has developed a full legislative proposal to bring funeral plans within the FCA’s remit. That framework will ensure that the Government meet their three stated objectives for the regulation of the funeral plan market. First, all funeral plan providers and their distributors will be subject to robust conduct standards via FCA rules. Secondly, the FCA will have the necessary powers to tackle the prudential concerns in the market. Finally—this was raised by the hon. Gentleman—consumers will have access to the Financial Ombudsman Service if things go wrong.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) referred to compensation. I want to ask Minister about this because it was discussed at the working group today. If someone pays for a funeral plan and the firm that takes the money goes bust or ceases to operate, will there be a method whereby people can get their money back?
John Glen
That would be resolved by the process in which we are currently engaged—the consultation process, and the proposals for legislation in the autumn—and my expectation is that that is what we shall be aiming for.
We should set the framework for a market that functions more fairly and in the interests of consumers. The future regulatory framework for funeral plans was set out, in detail, in a consultation that I launched on Sunday. The consultation will run for 12 weeks, and it will give stakeholders an opportunity to comment on the proposed legislative framework before the Government consider the responses and finalise their proposed approach.
The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts asked an important question about what would happen during the gap between now and the introduction of the full new regulations. Whatever regulatory route is chosen, a transition will be necessary. FCA regulation can be carried out via secondary legislation and will therefore be quickest. The membership of the existing regulatory authority—the self-defining one—clearly has some reputational benefits in the interim, and I would encourage consumers to use the FPA-regulated providers during that period. I recognise that there is a dispute about the most appropriate way forward. That is what the consultation will be about, and the Government will reflect carefully before presenting proposals.
I hope that I have responded adequately to the points that have been raised. I thank colleagues on both sides of the House for their contributions to the debate. This is a very important issue involving real human misery, and as the hon. Gentleman has said, what was happening was an outrage. I am determined that we will get this right for our constituents across the country and leave the market in a far better state.
Question put and agreed to.
Petition
Public confidence in the Prime Minister
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill (Thirty First sitting)
Wednesday 5th June 2019
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That, notwithstanding the Order of the Committee of Wednesday 4 July 2018, during further proceedings on the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill the Committee do next meet at 10.00 am on Wednesday 10 July and thereafter at 10.00 am on Wednesday 16 October.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. Thanks to everyone for coming.
The Government are in meltdown, but as ever our Committee meets like clockwork. Soon the Conservative party will have a new leader, and our country will have a new Prime Minister. It would be a democratic outrage if that person did not call a general election to let the British people decide whether they want them as Prime Minister. Unfortunately, the Government’s foot-dragging on boundary changes and on my Bill will most likely mean that we end up fighting another election with antiquated boundaries.
Who the next leader of the Conservative party is may well determine, more than any other factor, what happens with boundaries. There are at least two leadership contenders who, based on the 2017 general election results, would either find their seat abolished or lose their seat. The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) is seen as the front-runner, but his seat is set to be too close to call if the boundary changes go ahead; I wonder whether he would be willing to come to some sensible compromise with the Opposition, if only for his own sake. The right hon. Member for Tatton (Ms McVey) is also running for the leadership, but her seat is set to be abolished under the new boundaries. Of course, a member of our Committee—
The Chair
Order. May I ask the hon. Gentleman to pause for a second? We are actually considering the sittings motion, which sets out the new dates for our meetings. We will then come on to the motion to adjourn, which will give him a greater opportunity to elaborate on what he has to say.
Afzal Khan
A member of our Committee, the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean, has thrown his hat in the ring. He is not in his place, but I wish him well; I hope at least that he will understand the issues, because he has been an active contributor to our meetings. I wonder whether the Minister can shed any light on the matter.
Question put and agreed to.
The Chair
We now come to the motion to adjourn, as the Committee cannot consider the clauses of the Bill until the House has agreed a money resolution.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Committee do now adjourn.—(Afzal Khan.)
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Owen. I am grateful for your permission to remove our jackets, because it is very hot.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton is absolutely right that the Government are completely in meltdown. In many respects, it is good to attend this Committee, because it is the one thing that can be guaranteed to run like clockwork. At a time when many bizarre things are happening in this country—whether it is that complete and utter moron President Trump coming to visit and having the red carpet rolled out for him, or the fact that almost half the Conservative party seems to be running for leader—it is just fantastic to be here to focus on what I think is called getting on with the day job. But of course we cannot get on with the day job, because a money resolution has not been provided for the Bill.
As the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton said, a member of our Committee is running for leader of the Conservative party. The hon. Gentleman is right that whenever this circus leaves town and we finally have a new Prime Minister, it will be interesting to see what they will do about parliamentary boundaries. Will they push ahead with the democratically unjust proposal to reduce the number of seats from 650 to 600, or will they recognise—as the Procedure Committee has done—that Parliament has a lot more legislation coming forward? The Procedure Committee, which is probably the weightiest in this Parliament, is looking at whether there should be a budgetary Committee, given how much pressure and scrutiny is on us.
On the one hand, Ministers are saying, “There is so much for MPs to do at the moment,” and on the other hand I suspect that the Minister will tell us, “It is very important to cut the cost of politics and reduce the number of seats to 600.” Someone is wrong somewhere along the line. I think the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton is right to try to protect the number of seats at 650.
We shall see what happens over the next few weeks, and whether we face the prospect of people backing Boris and having Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. We would then have two blonde-haired eejits running a country, one here and one on the other side of the pond.
The Chair
Order. We do not refer to our colleagues by their first name in Committee and it is unparliamentary to call anybody an idiot.
David Linden
I used the word eejit. They are very different in terms of their interpretation. However, I apologise—I should of course have referred to the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
Before I get myself into any more trouble I will sit down. I wish the Minister well. I suspect that he will tell us that while work continues apace, the Government are frightfully busy, when we all know that that is not the case, given that the Secretary of State is spending most of his day walking around the park filming selfie videos.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. My hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow East and for Manchester, Gorton raised an intriguing prospect. As with so much else in the country at the moment, the fate of this Bill may well depend on the outcome of the Conservative leadership contest. However, as we have said previously, the question of how our democracy is founded and operates should not be a matter for party politics or internal party politics. Its credibility and honesty are corroded when the main driver behind the boundary proposals is anything other than what is best for the United Kingdom.
This week is of course the 75th anniversary of D-day, when we celebrate the heroism of the many thousands of men and women who launched the liberation of western Europe, and eventually freed it from the yoke of fascism, leading to the end of hostilities in Europe in the second world war. I make that point to remind the Committee that one year ago almost to the week—the Minister was not the Minister then, but he was present in the Committee—I made exactly the same point.
I make no apology for paying tribute at the start of June every year to the men and women who fought and in many cases died for our freedom. However, the relevant point to this Committee is that I made the same point a year ago, yet here we are one year later, and there has been no progress. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East talked about proceedings continuing apace, but they are not. If they had been continuing apace, we would not be here now. One year later I am making a similar speech and we are no further forward.
I therefore say with great respect to the Minister, suggestions that work is continuing no longer have any credibility. It is time to put up or shut up, if I may be so blunt with the Government. Bring these proposals forward, let the House make a decision and then we can move forward, one way or the other. There is no logical reason why the orders should not have been drafted, and the Government have run out of excuses.
Westminster Hall
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Industrial Strategy: North-East of England
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered industrial strategy in the North East of England.
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am delighted to have been granted this debate on such a crucial subject for our region. There are two local enterprise partnerships in the north-east, so we have two local industrial strategies: one for seven north-east local authorities, and one for the Tees valley. My area is covered by the North East LEP, which leads on the creation of the local industrial strategy, as its footprint includes two combined authorities: the newly created North of Tyne combined authority and the North East combined authority. As the North of Tyne combined authority has a devolution deal that specifically refers to the LIS, the picture is a little more complicated than elsewhere, as the Minister will appreciate. However, both combined authorities are working together, and with businesses and partners and through the LEP board, to make sure the local industrial strategy makes sense for residents and businesses in the north-east.
I will not talk about the north-east’s fantastic industrial and inventive past, because we see that backward look too often in the region, and although it is important to recognise that we have been passionate, ambitious and innovative for hundreds of years, looking back does a disservice to the brilliant people and businesses that we have today. It does not highlight the fact that the north-east has proportionally more businesses in manufacturing—10.5% against 7.7% nationally—or the fact that in 2018, the growth in the number of businesses massively outstripped what was happening nationally; we had 14.2% growth, versus a national fall of 0.5%, and we have seen a growth in productivity since 2014. Those are positive things, but that is not to detract from the less positive things happening in the region that I think my colleagues will talk about.
Looking back would not highlight the fact that the north-east is a brilliant place to live; I am sure all of us in this room agree on that. It is way more affordable than significant parts of the country. As of March, our average house price—for a very nice house—was £123,000, whereas the national average was £227,000, so I urge people to look at relocating to our area.
Mary Glindon
Perhaps not too many, but all are welcome.
I want to talk about what is strategically important to the north-east today, and what will make a difference to our future. For the north-east, the industrial strategy and the local industrial strategy will be about our ambition, the sectors in which we are strong, and the infrastructure that will lead to growth, and they have to be about turning strategy into action. The LIS is seen as building on the north-east strategic plan, which was agreed with businesses and communities of all shapes and sizes. It has an ambition for more and better jobs—100,000 jobs by 2024, with at least 70% being what are termed better jobs in managerial, professional and technical roles. We have already seen more than 64,000 new jobs created, of which 77% are classed as better jobs, but we need more investment and support from the Government, so that more can be achieved, and we need the right infrastructure put in place.
Yesterday, some of us went to the drop-in held by Highways England. I was pleased to go and congratulate it on the fantastic new Silverlink interchange on the A19, which has massively improved access to the Tyne tunnels. It was done on time, through collaboration between the council, businesses, and Highways England—a great feat for the region.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I also visited the Highways England drop-in yesterday; my hon. Friend and I were there at the same time. I was told that the project to widen the A19 between Wynyard and Norton will go ahead in May. Will she join me in welcoming that, and an end to the terrible noise that the people of Billingham suffered as a result of the project?
Mary Glindon
That is fantastic news. I hope that the project is done in the same timely way as Silverlink was, and with minimum disruption.
I hope the Minister is aware that a team from the north-east has been talking to the Government about how to make real the industrial strategy’s grand challenge on ageing, by working with local businesses of all sizes and with our universities. There is an opportunity to meet that challenge in our region. There is definitely a commercial opportunity and benefits for society in working with a population that is living longer. There are benefits for expertise, too. In my constituency, Procter & Gamble’s research and development team is focusing on what its older customers will need to live happy and independent lives. We know about a lot of projects that would influence that.
Across our region, there is groundbreaking work in health and life sciences. I am sure colleagues here will expand on that. The north-east has real strengths in the offshore renewables sector, and our region is ready to take advantage right away of any changes in that environment. Shepherd Offshore, Smulders, WD Close and SMD are all top-class, world-renowned companies in my constituency making a difference across the sector, but they could do even more with the right investments; I will continue to go on about that in Parliament.
One of the main things that hinders the development of those industries to some degree—this is important to South Tyneside, Gateshead and Newcastle—is the need to find a way to secure a significant investment to re-route the National Grid power lines that cross over the Tyne. That would make such a difference in how the Tyne is viewed by companies from around the world. I have been pursuing the issue for a while locally, with National Grid and with another Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Minister, and I am pleased that all four local authorities, the port of Tyne and the North East LEP are working together to look at how the power lines can be diverted to secure further contracts and local jobs for companies up and down the Tyne. I know it is a vast sum of money—around £20 million—but where there is a will, there is a way, and that is what we are working on.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on making a powerful, important and positive speech about our region and its opportunities. She makes the case for the power of public investment and private sector partnership. Does she agree that it is not only large business that should invest in our region? So should small and medium-sized businesses, which are the lifeblood of our economy. For example, Sage, which is headquartered in my constituency, is working really hard to develop a strategy for a public-private partnership, so that through our public sector organisations, there is more support for growth, investment, productivity and exporting. However, it needs a clear industrial strategy to back that up.
Mary Glindon
That was an excellent intervention, which the Minister must have heard. I can only agree wholeheartedly with everything my hon. Friend said.
On digital and data, the north-east’s history of engineering excellence continues in the digital age. North Tyneside was recently judged to be a hotspot for digital growth. In my constituency, and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Sir Alan Campbell), our residents work in world-class digital businesses, such as Accenture and DXC Technology. There is also groundbreaking public service digital work in the Department for Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and work in local companies such as Perfect Image and Infotel UK.
The most important strength in our region is our people. We have thousands of skilled, passionate and hard-working people who drive our economy, creating and leading businesses, large and small, and working together to serve the region. Although the devolution of the adult education budget to the North of Tyne combined authority is a start, and the national careers strategy gives some important pointers, we need to ensure that we leverage the capabilities of local people.
The industrial strategy and local industrial strategy needs must be backed up with deeds. We need sector deals, which make a real difference, and clear support and investment in skills, with joined-up thinking across Government. I ask the Minister to commit to working closely with colleagues in the Department for Transport to ensure that the east coast main line upgrade is prioritised, and that our north-east transforming cities bid gets solid backing.
In both cases, there is a compelling economic case for investment. Colleagues right up the east coast of England and Scotland know that the east coast main line is as critical as investment in HS2. On the transforming cities bid, we are all working together to continue to secure investment to upgrade the metro, to reopen the Northumberland-Newcastle line to passengers, and to ensure that people and businesses can make the right connections in Sunderland, South Tyneside and Durham.
As the north-east is the only region that exports more than it imports, we will be hit hardest by Brexit. I had not mentioned Brexit up until now, but it had to come in somewhere. For 2014 to 2020, our region received £437 million from the European structural investment funds, which will be replaced by the shared prosperity fund post Brexit. The consultation was expected last year, but we know that the Brexit timetable has changed.
The consultation has been postponed, with as yet no further date announced. Worryingly, it has been said in response to recent parliamentary questions that the final decision on the fund’s design will be taken during the spending review. However, the spending review report will be published only with the Budget in the autumn. I hope that the Minister can tell us a bit more, and assure us that the consultation will begin soon. We do not want any gaps in replacing the loss of European funding.
I will be quiet now, because colleagues wish to talk about the industrial challenges in their constituencies. Those challenges are many, and influence the current and future prosperity of our region. I hope that the Minister has listened to what I have said, and will listen carefully to everything that my colleagues ask of him, and that he will give us clarity and reassurance that the Government are prepared to commit adequate support and resources to our great region, so that it can flourish for everyone in the north-east.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) for securing this important debate and for her excellent speech. She has laid out why a proper industrial strategy is so important, especially for us in the north-east.
The north-east strategic economic plan has been active for five years. In that time, the region has seen some great change and investment, despite the uncertain times in which we find ourselves. I am proud to be the Member of Parliament for Washington and Sunderland West, which is home—as all Members know, because I bang on about it enough—to Nissan’s UK car plant. There has also been exciting development around the International Advanced Manufacturing Park, known as IAMP, which I am sure Members will become equally sick of hearing me talk about.
Meanwhile, a bid to unlock a potential £33 million in funding is under way with the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing. That hub will provide advanced manufacturing solutions to many businesses across the market in the region, such as Driving the Electric Revolution, which is based in Sunderland. I am certain that that will attract innovation and investment across the region, to benefit both the local and national economy. Those developments have the potential to transform the north-east.
The north-east strategic economic plan has been successful to a certain extent. It has helped towards the creation of 100,000 more jobs by 2024, as we heard, and the economic gap between the north-east and the rest of the country has narrowed. Some 71,600 jobs have been created so far, of which 70% can be described as “better jobs”. That is an excellent feat for the region and its long-term planning. However, we can be certain that the gap still exists between the north-east and the rest of the UK.
If performance, enabled by investment and infrastructure, had matched that of the rest of England except for London, we would have 93,000 more jobs in the north-east and 25,000 more businesses. The north-east still lags behind in the majority of areas of economic performance, despite, as we heard, securing more foreign investment than any other region. That suggests that the Government’s economic plan is failing us. It has held back the economies and communities of Washington and Sunderland, and those of many other ex-coalfields and post-industrial northern towns.
Alex Cunningham
Does my hon. Friend agree that we have two economies in the north-east: an economy with well-paid jobs, which allows people to go on foreign holidays and enjoy their lives, and poverty that afflicts tens of thousands of people in our area? We have done extremely well as a region; if we just had more investment, we could take so many more people out of poverty.
Mrs Hodgson
Inequality and the wealth gap still exist, probably in all regions—we see it here in London too. Prosperity has never reached some parts of our region, which has led to disenfranchisement in some of our communities. We are now feeling the brunt of that in how they are voting.
Growth is good, but it is important to know where that growth comes from. The quality of communities and how they are sustained by the economy is an important part of keeping the fabric of society vibrant. The role of the Government in the economy must be more than simply growth and redistribution; they should aim to ensure that the country’s growth is responsible and has a social value, so that everyone lives a better life. That is something that the Labour party is committed to, with the introduction of a Minister for manufacturing.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
The hon. Lady makes some really important points, especially on the wealth gap, which I, as a Yorkshire MP, would say is between the north—rather than the north-east—and the south. Skills and education play a key role in improving the lives and opportunities of everyone. Does she welcome the technical education offer, and the announcement of 12 new technical institutions? Two are in the north-east and Yorkshire: one, York College, is in my constituency and the other is New College Durham. Surely we have to grasp that opportunity to ensure that we improve skills and technical education in our region—I say “our region”, as a Yorkshire MP—as the north moves forward.
Mrs Hodgson
I am happy to say that I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Skills are so important. We hear from employers all the time that they often cannot find the necessary skills in the local workforce, which is heartbreaking when many young people are desperate to acquire those skills. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) mentioned, we need to ensure that prosperity is shared among everyone. The rise in the number of apprentices is also welcome, and the technical colleges that the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) mentioned play a huge and important part in that.
The Government often point to low unemployment figures as proof that their approach is working, yet in-work poverty is on the rise. It is at its highest for 20 years, with 4 million people living in poverty despite being in work—it is not just me saying that; the figure comes from Joseph Rowntree Foundation research. One in four workers in the north of England is paid less than the real living wage, after a decade of stagnant wages and the rise of zero-hours contracts. That leads to the two-tier workforce that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North mentioned.
Although we are on our way to closing the gap and making businesses in the north-east a more valuable prospect, we are still recovering from the catastrophes that the region has faced in the last 50 years. Those catastrophes have made our communities resilient, but to ensure that we endure, one thing must be at the heart of any strategy: the environment. We must invest sustainably in our economy to ensure that future growth does not come at the expense of our environment. It is essential to confront the climate crisis in every Government strategy, especially an industrial strategy. I am proud that the Labour party has committed to do that, having already forced the Government to declare a climate emergency in May.
Nissan’s investment in battery technology and electric vehicles has put Sunderland at the forefront of the European market. It is the only plant in the UK that makes a purely battery electric vehicle, the LEAF. Nissan’s expansion on the back of the worldwide move to electrification offers the UK the chance to be a leader among European manufacturers, and our local communities will benefit most.
Sustainability should be at the centre of all sides of development. For example, with the expansion of IAMP, which I mentioned, I would like the local transport network to be developed to ensure that in years to come, the staff who work there will have an alternative to private motorised transport when going to work. An excellent way to do that—another opportunity that I never cease to mention—would be to expand the Tyne and Wear metro to Washington and IAMP.
Economic development is another concern in these turbulent times. The ongoing uncertainty of the Brexit process—I have mentioned it as well—may damage investment and businesses in the north-east, as 55% of Nissan’s exports go to the EU. We need a solid and sensible deal for exiting the EU to give businesses certainty. Parliament has made it clear that it rejects the possibility of a no-deal Brexit, yet the idea of reintroducing a no-deal option has been used numerous times by candidates in the Conservative party’s ongoing leadership campaign—I will name no names; I do not want to give anybody more publicity, not that anybody would take any notice of me—in a reckless attempt to bolster themselves. That is worryingly irresponsible and gives no assurance to UK manufacturers, some of whom described the idea of leaving the EU without a deal as “economic lunacy” this week.
The potential for a bright future in the north-east is high. Our region is growing well, and as my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside said, it is a great place to live, work and have leisure time, but there are more steps to take to ensure that its development can be sustained and work for everyone, which I hope the Minister will consider.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) on securing this important debate. Unlike her, I will refer to the past.
The area that I represent has a rich history of industrial innovation, from the Stockton to Darlington railway, which was the first in the world and will celebrate its 200-year anniversary in a few years’ time, and which laid the foundations of the Tees Valley’s rapid growth, to our world-leading chemical and pharmaceutical industry, John Walker’s invention of the friction match, and Sheraton furniture, which some of us sit on in this place. We have always been an area that leads the way, although our business and industry have changed substantially over the years and we still lament the loss of Tees shipbuilding and the thousands of well-paid jobs it once provided.
Even if we do not always receive the funding and investment we need from national Governments, the Tees Valley has demonstrated again and again that it can change and attract investment, although more could be done to help it to reach its full potential. That said, we are the third best place in the UK for business expansion and the fourth for business innovation, and we are part of the only continuous net-exporting region in the UK—north-east England.
Our Tees Valley combined authority was one of the first, and it has the powers to make the decisions that affect our area in our area. It has a plan for boosting economic growth and creating thousands of jobs. We also have a thriving and innovative industrial sector that we should celebrate and support.
We have much to be proud of, but, sadly, the decline of some industries and the failure of the Government to act mean that unemployment in our area continues to increase—it has gone up month by month in my constituency. The plight of British Steel is a case in point. I was saddened and disappointed to learn that while the Government stand on the sidelines waiting for the official receiver to try to sell the business, our elected Tees Valley Mayor has no power to intervene to protect the hundreds of jobs in steel directly and in the supply chain. I hope that the official receiver can sell the business as an integrated going concern; failure to do so will have huge ramifications for our area and others across the country in terms of jobs, and will mean that we lose a large part of a foundation industry that is crucial to the UK’s manufacturing economy. Perhaps the Minister can update us on where the official receiver is up to in trying to sell the business.
The high cost of energy is a major factor in the steel crisis and for many other industries in our area. That is one reason I have been focusing on the needs of energy intensive industries not just on Teesside but across the country, from chemicals to cement production and from steel to ceramics. They also include the companies developing wind turbines and related products, which have exploited the skills of our talented engineers to produce the goods for offshore and onshore wind farms. All those industries exist in the face of the highest energy costs in Europe, but there is no plan from the Government, or anyone else, to address that or the high carbon taxes.
Our region has a huge advantage when it comes to expanding low-carbon generation through hydrogen production, in which Teesside is the bigger producer in the country; the development of energy storage; the opportunity to develop smart grids to better support our industry and communities; and, of course, carbon capture, use and storage. I set up and chair the all-party parliamentary group on carbon capture and storage, and I was pleased to lead the demands that Teesside should be the first place to utilise its skills and knowledge in that area. CCUS has the potential to create thousands of jobs and protect thousands more. It is also important in meeting the grand clean growth challenge that the Government face and, crucially, in delivering a long-term sustainable future for the other industries based in our region.
We have heard some kindly noises from Ministers but, unfortunately, the Government have been slow to support CCUS. They talk the good talk—we have had statements, ministerial visits and news releases by the dozen—but we await the concrete commitment that will make the Teesside project roll. That is why it is vital that our local industrial strategy really counts in its support not just for CCUS but for our existing industries, and the new ones, that are critical to our future. We need a strategy that provides certainty and direction for local industries, a sound base to attract funding, and support to help the industries to grow.
A local industrial strategy would benefit our chemical and steel industries, which have been hit by Brexit, particularly the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. The chemical industry needs the EU registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—REACH—regulations, which govern the manufacture of chemicals, to apply in the UK after Brexit, but despite a considerable amount of work by Ministers and officials, the outcome remains far from perfect and we all know how nervous the industry remains. If there is no deal, what happens to the regulations such as those for chemicals? Will we be able to sell the chemicals and every other piece of manufactured kit that relies on common standards with the EU?
I mentioned earlier the collapse of British Steel, which leaves 700 direct jobs under threat on Teesside, not to mention the impact the closure would have on the local supply chain. British Steel made it clear that the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit was a major factor in its collapse. Put simply, a no-deal Brexit means no steel industry, and that would have huge negative implications on Teesside and beyond.
Surely we cannot have another repeat of the SSI fiasco, which saw an end to steel production from what was probably the country’s most efficient blast furnace in Redcar. Let us not forget what the Government’s failure to act has meant for people: thousands thrown out of work, many of whom are still seeking work today. Since 2015, the SSI site has seen little progress or interest from the Government.
We know that trying to put land parcels together to redevelop the area is complicated, but it is now years since the closure. Sadly, despite my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) leading Teesside’s charge for investment and raising the issue of the site at every possible opportunity, we have been told the site will get £14 million—nowhere near the £200 million needed to bring the site back into proper use. What we have instead is a plethora of news releases from the Tees Valley Mayor. If we had a million pounds for every news release that has made promises and delivered nothing, we would have the £200 million that is so desperately needed on Teesside.
That said, I am pleased that the Tees Valley combined authority is currently working on a draft industrial strategy that will sit alongside its strategic economic plan. It identifies our local strengths, as well as our weaknesses, and will set a strategic direction for our industries, but our local efforts need to be backed up by the national Government—a Government that have, so far, fallen short in safeguarding our industries.
I am certain that everybody here wants to see our region prosper and thrive. I am sure we all want to reverse the increase in unemployment in our region, but it needs to be backed by more than words and news releases from the Government. I urge the Minister to stand back, look at Teesside carefully and make the right decisions as we go forward.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) for introducing this debate.
Sedgefield is home to the largest business park in the north-east. Between 10,000 and 12,000 people work there, in about 500 companies, from small sole traders up to massive manufacturers, such as Gestamp, Husqvarna, 3M and, obviously, Hitachi, which is now producing the rolling stock for the east coast main line. Trains for Darlington, Durham, Newcastle and Edinburgh will enter service in August this year. Everybody is looking forward to that—we have been waiting about 40 years for it.
Another manufacturer, Roman, produces showers and bathroom furniture and is now the biggest supplier in Europe. We have a very good story to tell. We are home to a university technical college, which opened two or three years ago. It has been graded good by Ofsted and is going from strength to strength. It has a great future. It is sponsored by Gestamp and Hitachi, who want to see a throughput of apprentices, and it is bringing young people into engineering and electronics and all the manufacturing industries that we want to see maintained in Sedgefield and the north-east.
I want to talk a little about the past, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) did. We have a sound tradition of manufacturing and industry in Sedgefield. About 500 yards from Hitachi’s base is Heighington crossing, where George Stephenson assembled Locomotion No. 1 so that it could enter service for the Stockton to Darlington railway back in 1825. The platform has a nice plaque about that. Next to it was the Locomotion No. 1 public house, which is now closed, but was the original ticket office and waiting room —the first ticket office and waiting room. It is there for anybody to go and see. The original platform is there as well—the oldest in the world. We can trace our manufacturing and industrial heritage back at least 200 years.
Alex Cunningham
I am surprised that my hon. Friend would claim that the first ticket office is in his constituency, because there is a plaque on a wall in my constituency that declares the first ticket office in the world to be there. Perhaps we need to meet outside of this room to consider the matter further.
Phil Wilson
We do. All I can say is that that is where the train was assembled, where the ticket office is and where the train set off from.
Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
Order. I hope you will not be asking the Chair to rule on that.
Phil Wilson
No, no, but I know that Stockton had the first passenger railway in the world. We have a lot to be proud of in our area.
NETPark, a science park just outside Sedgefield village is leading the way in all kinds of technologies, including light-based technology. It produces masks that people with diabetes wear when they are asleep, which helps. It is also a catapult centre for the space industry. It is the home of technology for the future. The park overlooks the site of the old Fishburn coke works and pit, where my dad worked all those years ago. If he could only see the technologies that are now on the doorstep of where he was brought up. I am really proud of it all.
There are 9,000 manufacturing jobs in Sedgefield, which is second only to those in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), where there are 17,000 jobs and tens of thousands in the supply chain. We have a supply chain of about 16,000. Manufacturing is a key industry for the north-east of England. Make UK, the manufacturers’ organisation, is now saying that it is very worried about a no-deal scenario, as it is “economic lunacy”. On this side of the House, we can all agree. Make UK’s key findings are that domestic and export orders are continuing to weaken, the gap between output and orders has increased, export orders remain at their weakest since the referendum, there is growing evidence of European companies abandoning UK supply chains, investment intentions are paralysed, and the manufacturing forecast for growth is just 0.2% in 2018 and 0.8% in 2020. These are dire figures. We need to think about those indicators as we further consider in this House what to do about Brexit.
I have deep concerns about Brexit. The north-east is the only region that exports more than it imports, and more than 60% of our exports go to European markets. Being part of the EU, the single market and the customs union is vital to the north-east of England. If there is a no-deal Brexit, it is estimated that GDP will fall by 16%, which could mean the loss of something like 200,000 jobs. Those are dire figures, and we should be broadcasting them all the time.
Between 2014 and 2020, the European structural investment fund invested £437 million in the north-east economy. The aim of EU structural funds is to rebalance our economy through regional investment allocated according to need. Will the Minister tell us where that money will come from when it stops coming from the EU? The Government’s stronger towns fund, launched in March this year, consists of a £1 billion fund allocated to English regions and £600 million available under competitive bidding after Brexit. That is less than 10% of what UK regions would receive if the UK remained in the EU; the north-east alone was projected to receive £1 billion over seven years. The shared prosperity fund, which was designed to reduce inequalities between communities, has released no details on the level of funding, the funding model, the length of funding periods or the fund’s administration.
Another issue that I want to raise with the Minister, which he might not be responsible for, is the high street fund, which was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer a few months ago. We all agree that we need to see improvements to our high streets. Newton Aycliffe in my constituency has a high street that is owned by Freshwater. The environmental area has been vastly improved—something for which the town has won awards—but there is still the problem of empty units and shops closing, which affects not just Newton Aycliffe, but our high streets up and down the country. If the likes of Darlington and Durham are losing their branches of Marks & Spencer, I really worry about the future of high streets in new towns such as Newton Aycliffe. What can we do to remedy that?
I want to make one or two other points. The north-east is one region, but we do not act like one region. If we did, we would become a true powerhouse. The regional development agency, which was abolished by this Government back in 2010-11, was a key asset to the north-east of England. I think it is fair to say that investment was from the public sector to the private sector in the north; in the south-east, it might be from the private sector to the private sector. The regional development agency was therefore a key contributor to bringing investment to the north-east.
Mrs Hodgson
My hon. Friend is making a very good point, which I want to reinforce by putting it on record that, from my recollection, the regional development agency in the north-east was the only one that really worked as it should have. For every £1 that the Government invested in the north-east through the One North East RDA, the return was £7. I might have it wrong, but that is the figure from memory. Does he agree that we should have certainly been able to keep One North East, because it worked?
Phil Wilson
That is right, and to abolish One North East was an act of economic vandalism. It was a kind of ideology gone mad—“If it is public sector, we should abolish it.” We now see the impact of its loss, to the detriment of the north-east of England. We have got rid of the regional development agency, and we do not act as one region. We have two Mayors and three combined authorities competing with each other, whereas we need to be one region—the north-east of England—talking as one for the benefit of the whole region.
I will finish by discussing the issue of Brexit. I remember when the news came out a few months ago about the manufacturing loss of Nissan models such as the X-Trail. I remember people from the region saying on the television, “Well, if Nissan goes, we’ll be okay. We survived the closure of the pits. We survived the closure of the shipyards.” Well, we might have done—we might be starting to come out of that period—but it has taken years. How did we survive that? Why have we got a big upturn in car manufacturing? How have we as a region been able to attract foreign direct investment in the way that we have, with Nissan and Hitachi in my constituency, and with other manufacturers around the country? How were we able to survive the closures of the pits and the shipyards? The reason is that we were in the single market and the customs union, and we had access to the biggest trading bloc—the biggest economic bloc—in the world. My view is that it is absolutely wrong for the region, and for this country, to close the door on that.
We were able to come round from the closure of the pits. I grew up in a pit village, and I know what happened back in the 1980s. We managed to get through the catastrophe of the closure of the shipyards because we were in the single market and the customs union. If we close the door, what will it do for the future of manufacturing and the economic wellbeing of my region and the country? Should there be a no-deal Brexit, GDP will fall by 16%, which is not in the best interest of the people of the north-east of England. We need to be saying that loud and clear from this day on, until we get a resolution to the issue of Brexit. In my view, there is no deal that is better than the one we have now. I have asked the Prime Minister whether the deal she brought forward is better than the one we have now, but I have yet to receive an answer.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) for securing this important debate. It is really apposite that we are having this debate now, as later this month the North East LEP will publish its evidence base, which will contribute to developing our north-east industrial strategy.
As hon. Members have said, we have some difficulties in the north-east. Like others, I am hugely proud of our communities, businesses and places in the north-east. They have real strength, real history and real power, and I want to see us build on that. We need to recognise the issues we face, if we are to have any chance of addressing those difficulties. In my constituency, we have both industrial and retail sites, which I will come to later. We have the Metrocentre, which is still the largest indoor shopping centre in the UK. We also have the long-established Team Valley trading estate, which houses over 700 businesses. Not all of it is in my constituency of Blaydon—some of it is in the Gateshead constituency—but a significant part is. It is really important that we keep our links with the people trading on the estate; they are an important part of our local economy.
As I have said, we need to recognise the issues that we face, if we are to address them. We need to ensure that the north-east can grow and develop its economy, creating more and better jobs. Sadly, unemployment in the region is still 5.4%, compared with 3.8% across the UK, and many of the jobs that have been created are part time and low paid and do not represent the best jobs that we could have for our communities. That is where the industrial strategy is important. It must reflect our current strengths and also grow new sectors. We have heard about the digital sector, and there is also a growing video game sector in Gateshead that we need to develop. Any industrial strategy must consider those new sectors and present new opportunities.
I want to touch on a few of the things that should go into the strategy. The first is infrastructure, which hon. Members have mentioned. Connectivity is a real issue in the north, especially in the north-east. It needs to be addressed if we are to have a positive industrial future. We know that Transport for the North, which covers the whole of the north rather than just the north-east, has submitted a request for industrial funding under the “Rail for the north” strategy. That is a £39 billion development proposal. Many of us in the north-east want to see much more of that rail development in the region, and we will continue to argue for that. We certainly must address that infrastructure issue, and the others that hon. Members have mentioned, if we are to have a positive future industrial strategy.
The issue of European funding was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and others. As we have heard, the north-east is the only region that is a net exporter. We have heard that it will be hit hard by Brexit, especially a no-deal Brexit—there would be an estimated 16% fall in GDP growth. It is important to ensure that we have the right conditions and the right deal for the north-east if we are to avoid real problems.
Hon. Members have already referred to the shared prosperity fund. The north-east currently benefits from EU structural investment funds that are designed to address regional imbalances, receiving £437 million between 2014 and 2020. It is vital that businesses know the size and the terms of the shared prosperity fund as soon as possible. It has been kicked down the road in the years since the initial announcement was made. It is absolutely vital that our businesses know what is coming so they can plan accordingly.
Let me touch on education and skills. As we have heard, the north-east has some excellent universities and further education colleges, including Gateshead College—the outstanding and high-performing college—yet employers still struggle to find workers with the right skills, so we need action to close the skills gap and identify our future skills needs. We must address that in the strategy, and local input—the local power to have a say on skills—is really important when we do that.
The retail sector provides nearly a quarter of the jobs in my constituency. We know that the retail sector, high streets and shopping malls are going through a tough time, so we need a retail strategy. That is one of the weaknesses of the Government’s national industrial strategy. We need a greater emphasis on retail, because it is such a significant part of our economy. We need a proper strategy to deal with the problems on the high street. The Government need look no further than the excellent report on the future of the high street that the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee produced earlier this year. We must also address the wider problems in retail and issues relating to pay, skills and retail sector workers’ personal development and training, so that they are able to develop, enhance their skills, improve the services they provide and add value to the sector.
Alex Cunningham
I congratulate the Select Committee on its excellent report. It visited my constituency to see Stockton high street. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the local authority, which is bringing international athletics to the area? International athletes will be running down the widest high street in England, bringing people into our town centre and boosting our local businesses.
Liz Twist
I am very happy to congratulate Stockton on those innovations—while of course mentioning that Gateshead, which is not to be outdone, has a strong record in international athletics.
The north-east has a rich and proud industrial history, but we need support. Positive steps must be taken to put in place infrastructure. We must recognise and address the particular issues that we face in the north-east.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure and honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), on securing this important and timely debate. The industrial strategy in the north-east does not receive the attention it deserves, so I am grateful to her for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall and for making such a passionate and comprehensive opening speech. She combined in-depth knowledge of her constituency and region with real lived experience. In that, she was joined by my hon. Friends the Members for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), who all grew up and have lived in the region, and spoke with such knowledge. It is a pity that that knowledge is not reflected by the presence of Government Members from north-east constituencies, but Labour Members have done well and have spoken with in-depth knowledge about our region.
Like other hon. Members, I will talk a little about the past. We are very proud of our industrial heritage. I grew up in Newcastle in the shadow of industrial greats such as Armstrong, Stephenson and Parsons—that, by the way, is Rachel Parsons, the world’s first female naval engineer, who inspired me to become an engineer. I always like to remind colleagues from across the UK that the north-east literally drove the first industrial revolution. There might be some debate about where the first ticket office was—you were wise not to rule on that, Mr Betts, but perhaps we can have a parliamentary inquiry on that important subject—but there is no debate about who invented the railways. George Stephenson built the locomotive in my constituency, and our region mined and built many of the industrial riches that flowed from the first industrial revolution.
Today, as we have heard, manufacturing makes up approximately 15% of the north-east economy, and we have more than 63,000 specialist workers in our successful advanced manufacturing sector. We have a 126,000-strong workforce in wider manufacturing, and an average of 51,000 science, technology, engineering and mathematics students come through our universities every year. We are in the top five UK regions for advanced manufacturing. We have world-class universities and growing strengths in science, digital, energy, healthcare and business.
Years of deindustrialisation, and chronic underinvestment in infrastructure and education, have left the north-east with significant economic challenges. No one who lived in the region in the 1980s can forget what forced deindustrialisation did to our region, the economic livelihoods that were lost and the talent and potential that was lost with them. The financialisation of our economy that followed centred on London and the south and meant that thousands of manufacturing jobs in the north-east were lost. As leading economist Mariana Mazzucato has argued, the “two faces” of financialisation are at the heart of capitalism’s fundamental failure. The first is that the financial sector has stopped resourcing the real economy. Instead of investing in companies that produce stuff, finance is financing finance. The second is how financialisation changes the motors behind economic activity, giving investors with short-term interests more control over firms. That disproportionately affects the north-east—a region that still takes pride in making and building things. Its legacy is low productivity and low pay.
As we heard from many of my hon. Friends, Brexit adds more uncertainty. The north-east exports more than it imports, as my hon. Friends the Members for Sedgefield, for Washington and Sunderland West, and for Blaydon highlighted, and more than half of that goes to the European Union. No matter what deal there is, there will be negative economic consequences for our region. A no-deal Brexit would be absolutely catastrophic. I ask the Minister to rule that out personally.
As my hon. Friends emphasised, the north-east received almost £0.5 billion in European structural investment funding in the period 2014 to 2020. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield said, projections for the next seven years suggest that we would have received up to £1 billion in EU funding, but the Government’s paltry stronger towns fund repackages existing money to the tune of £1 billion for all UK regions. As my hon. Friends said, we have no details about the supposed shared prosperity fund. Labour has committed to matching European Union regional development funding for at least the next decade, so will the Minister take this opportunity to commit to tackling regional inequality by guaranteeing the continuation of the current and projected future levels of regional funding?
At the heart of tackling the challenges that our great region faces needs to be a strong, positive industrial strategy capable of building and rebuilding the economy to meet the needs of the future. Until very recently, the Government were incapable of saying “industrial” and “strategy” in the same sentence, so their acknowledgment of the need for local industrial strategies is a step forward. Unfortunately, we have no evidence that the Government’s industrial strategy is anywhere near sufficient for the north-east’s needs. Their industrial strategy is sectoral, favours sectors that are already well organised and can push to the front of the queue, and focuses on what I, as an engineer, would call “sexy science”. Last year, Sheffield Hallam University researchers found that the Government’s industrial strategy pledges would impact only 10% of our manufacturing base and only 1% of the whole economy.
The north-east’s five universities make a huge contribution to our economy—they contribute £750 million directly, and £1 billion more through other industries—yet the golden triangle of London-Cambridge-Oxford attracts the lion’s share of research funding—more than £17 billion, compared with only £600 million for the north-east—despite the north-east’s many research-intensive universities, such as Newcastle University. Cambridge, with a population of just over a quarter of a million, has as many private research and development jobs as the whole of the north. Does the Minister agree that innovation should deliver high-skilled jobs across our country, and how will he ensure that local industrial strategies from our local enterprise partnerships and the North of Tyne Mayor have the resources that they need to deliver high-skilled and high-productivity jobs?
Labour’s “innovation nation” mission would raise R&D to 3% of GDP, and would democratise science and technology, so that they benefit the whole country, as well as the whole region. It would also be certain to benefit the north-east’s growing tech industry. We need to maintain our current centres of excellence, but we must ensure that every region can benefit from innovation and growth. That is why we are committed to putting technology and innovation at the heart of the lowest-paid and least productive sectors. My hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon, and for Stockton North, mentioned the importance of retail. We are committed to creating a retail catapult, which will support the 3 million people who work in retail across the UK, making it the UK’s largest private sector employer.
Much of our additional R&D spend would be drawn on by our industrial strategy missions, such as investing in carbon capture and storage, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North also mentioned, as part of our commitment to decarbonise our economy by 2050 and to deliver hundreds of thousands of green jobs in the process. The Government’s refusal to commit to funding a carbon capture and storage facility on Teesside is another example of their unwillingness to invest in the green technologies of the future.
The regional disparity and unique issues that the north-east faces are the reason that we need the £250 billion national investment bank—a network of regional development banks—to which Labour is committed. That would properly put regional needs first and restore regional decision making. Labour’s national education service will address some of the challenges highlighted by my hon. Friends, by delivering education, free at the point of demand, from cradle to grave, and ensuring that we have the skills that our regional businesses need.
As my hon. Friends also highlighted, improving infrastructure is critical to raising productivity. Under the Tories, infrastructure spending in the north-east is five times lower than in London, which is why Labour’s £250 billion national transformation fund would invest in our transport and digital infrastructure. We have already committed to a £1.4 billion investment in north-east transport, which would renew rolling stock on the Metro and build a Crossrail for the north. Would the Minister like to do the same?
Labour would also establish a new materials and metals catapult centre on Teesside—that is supported by UK Steel, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Confederation of British Industry—to help secure the future of UK steel by encouraging innovation in the materials industry. Will the Minister secure the future of UK steel with a commitment to support it?
As we have heard, the north-east is a fantastic region that offers a quality of life that is second to none, with sun, surf, castles, coasts, rolling landscapes, history—including the Romans—excellent local produce and excellent industry. We need a real industrial strategy to support the north-east, realise its potential and deliver an economy that ensures prosperity for everyone across our region. Labour’s industrial strategy is positive, practical and visionary enough to know the future that we want, while focusing on addressing our present challenges in productivity, skills and wages. Will the Minister commit to doing the same?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrew Stephenson)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon) on securing the debate. I thank hon. Members, who have given very considered and generally good-natured speeches.
I will now start to get controversial. My father was born in Shildon, County Durham, which is of course the home of the railways, and I still have family living in Wylam, Northumberland, which is the birthplace of George Stephenson, the father of the railways. He did much of his pioneering work in Killingworth, in the constituency of the hon. Member for North Tyneside. I am delighted that his work was mentioned by the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), but I will not pass judgment on where the first ticket office was. Sadly, even though I am Andrew George Stephenson and my family descend from that part of the world, I cannot claim to be a descendant of the great man, because George Stephenson had only one son, Robert, who had no children. If we look far back enough, though, who knows?
My father’s first job in the north-east was for British Rail in Shildon, before he moved permanently to Manchester, where he worked in the aerospace sector for Avro, the famed manufacturer of the Lancaster and Vulcan bombers. I know that the pride my family felt at working in vital industries across the north-east of England is still deeply felt by people in the region today.
Our industrial strategy is about ensuring that that heritage of excellence is translated into future success and prosperity. We want to grow productivity and prosperity across all parts of the country, so that whenever young people decide to leave a place such as Shildon for opportunities elsewhere in the country, they do it through choice and not because they feel forced out by a lack of chances closer to home.
As we have heard, the north-east has a proud tradition of innovation, creativity and technical skills. We know that from the histories of railways, mining, shipbuilding and electronics, as well as from today’s leading businesses in the region, such as the cutting-edge offshore energy companies that have moved into the region’s old shipbuilding areas and one of the world’s most productive automotive clusters, based around Nissan. The industrial strategy is about taking that existing strength and blending it with the future-facing technologies and skills that emerge from our knowledge-intensive centres, such as those at Newcastle’s £350 million Helix site, Sunderland’s Software City or Durham’s NETPark.
The industrial strategy focuses on strengthening the foundations of productivity: skilled people, thriving places, ideas, innovation and support for the business environment. The industrial strategy is also about taking on the grand challenges of clean growth, the future of mobility, our ageing society, and artificial intelligence and data. Those are society-changing opportunities and industries of the future in which the UK can build on its strengths and truly lead the world.
Since the publication of the industrial strategy, we have made significant progress across the country. We have committed to the biggest ever increase in R&D, an extra £7 billion by 2021-22, which includes the £1.7 billion that we have already allocated to innovative programmes to support industries and researchers through the first two waves of the industrial strategy challenge fund.
The first wave of the strength in places fund, which supports industrial strategy with a place-based approach to research and innovation, has awarded seedcorn support to two north-east projects to enable them to develop full bids this year: the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing, led by the University of Sunderland; and the north-east cluster for healthy ageing and independent living, led by Newcastle University. In the neighbouring Tees Valley, strength in places support has been awarded to a project to establish the UK hydrogen corridor, which aims to reduce carbon usage dramatically by producing, using and storing hydrogen energy.
Alex Cunningham
Any investment in the north-east is great news, in particular if it encourages innovation, but does the Minister also recognise that we need to support our existing industries? British Steel is a particularly important one at this time. As I asked in my remarks, will he update us on his understanding of the progress being made in that area?
Andrew Stephenson
Certainly. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the issue of British Steel. Since I was appointed, it has probably been the one thing that has taken up more of my time than anything else. The one point of contention in what he said was his suggestion that the Government were standing on the sidelines as British Steel went into liquidation, waiting for the receiver to act.
The hon. Gentleman was in the main Chamber when I answered an urgent question by saying that no stone was being left unturned. At that point, I think that the Department was up to 87 meetings about British Steel. The £120 million bridging loan that we extended to the company earlier in the year showed the Secretary of State’s willingness to think innovatively and to act with regard to British Steel. We considered all sorts of proposals made by the company but, unfortunately, none of them proved compliant with state aid rules—we took legal opinion on that—so the company went into liquidation.
The Government acted immediately by providing the liquidator with an indemnity for the cost of keeping the site running, so that the blast furnaces could be kept running and we would end up with British Steel in the best possible situation to be sold as a going concern. The very next day after the Secretary of State made his statement to the House about the unfortunate news of the liquidation, he and I went up to Scunthorpe to meet trade union representatives and other people on the site to discuss how to work together to ensure that it could be sold as a going concern. I remain hopeful that that will be the case, and I will continue to leave no stone unturned, working with the trade unions, the workers and others on site to ensure that it is sold as a going concern.
Alex Cunningham
I might have been a little unkind to the Minister—that is a hell of a lot of meetings—but talking does not get us far when real funding is needed. If this integrated part of the steel industry cannot be sold as a going concern, just as we nationalised the banks, will the Minister consider nationalising part of the steel industry, even on a temporary basis, to ensure that we do not lose this critical foundation industry?
Andrew Stephenson
I think that I am correct in saying that the Secretary of State has not ruled that option out. However, the thing to bear in mind about nationalisation is that, even if British Steel were nationalised, the same state aid rules apply: the company has to be run on a commercial basis in order to be compliant with those rules. Therefore, nationalisation is not a simple solution; it might be the solution, but it is not an easy option.
Lots of steel companies in the UK and across Europe are doing great work, and I hope that we can find an experienced company in the sector that wants to invest in British Steel. If we look at the steel sector pipeline—orders and infrastructure projects across the UK, such as Hinkley Point, High Speed 2 and various other big projects—there is sizeable domestic demand for products made by British Steel. I think that the company has a strong future. I am therefore very hopeful that over the coming weeks and months we will find a good buyer who will want to invest in the site and, most importantly, its workers who have such skills and knowledge of the industry, to ensure the future of steelmaking in that part of this country.
Chi Onwurah
I thank the Minister for responding to questions about the key strategic asset of British Steel and of that capability. He cited state aid rules as a crucial concern in providing the right level of financial and other support. Does he agree that different countries interpret state aid rules in different ways? Other countries within the European Union have been, shall we say, far more innovative, creative and supportive with their strategic industrial capacities, despite the same state aid rules environment. Will he commit to publishing parts of the legal advice on the possible infringement of state aid, so that we can see whether there is a way to provide British Steel with the support it requires within the European Union and, indeed, World Trade Organisation state aid rules, which other countries do manage to achieve?
Andrew Stephenson
The shadow Minister makes a valid point about the interpretation of state aid rules. The challenge of the rules in relation to the steel sector is that they are particularly rigid. A lot of the global overcapacity was created by illegal subsidies around the world for domestic steel producers.
We received legal advice from within the Department and, on the Secretary of State’s instruction, we sought a second opinion, because we wanted to ensure that there was definitely nothing more that we could do. The accounting officer’s advice has, I believe, been laid in the Libraries of both Houses, so it is available to all hon. Members who wish to see it. I hope that it sets out how the Government looked at the issue in a detailed way.
The reason I mentioned the 87 meetings is that we were meeting morning, evening and night about it, in order to find a way through. The Secretary of State, whom I have the pleasure of working with and serving under, has a real commitment to the north-east. Originally, he is from that part of the world, and he really wants the British Steel site to remain a going concern. Through the number of meetings he has had, the £120 million bridging facility provided to the industry and other things, he clearly demonstrates a commitment to finding a way through, but it has to be legal and compliant with both UK domestic law and EU law. I look forward to continuing to work with him, hon. Members in all parts of the House, trade unions and others to ensure a future for British Steel.
Returning to research and development spending, we have committed record investment in UK infrastructure: £37 billion has been committed through the national productivity investment fund, including £2.5 billion for the transforming cities fund to improve transport, £5.5 billion for the housing infrastructure fund and £740 million for digital infrastructure. That infrastructure investment has been of direct relevance to the north-east of England. In March, the Government announced that £10 million from the first tranche of the transforming cities fund will be allocated to the north-east, and £35.9 million of housing infrastructure funding has been allocated to the region.
Aside from that national work, all places will produce local industrial strategies, setting out how the quest for prosperity will come to life in our cities, towns and rural areas. The first local industrial strategy was published on 16 May in the west midlands. I was delighted to join local councillors and others in Coventry to launch that strategy. The north-east and the Tees Valley areas are both in the second wave of places to produce their own local industrial strategies in collaboration with Government. In the area of the hon. Member for North Tyneside, that work is led by the North East local enterprise partnership, which has a strong history of evidence-based delivery and is well placed to develop a powerful and distinctive local industrial strategy for the region. So far, a number of critical local drivers have been identified to improve productivity in the north-east: from the need to grow small businesses and to improve start-up rates, to improving the skills base of the local workforce.
The north-east boasts a cutting-edge technological and knowledge economy, based on its four leading universities and its fast-growing digital and tech sectors. On the doorstep are tremendous opportunities in east coast offshore energy, as well as deep expertise in advanced manufacturing. I am particularly interested in the contribution that the area could make to the ageing society grand challenge, which was cited by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). The north-east is home to the £40 million National Innovation Centre for Ageing, which reflects Newcastle University’s longstanding leadership in that field. There is a powerful story to tell about how the north-east, with its large rural area and expertise of the transition away from heavy industry, is ideally placed to lead the response to this national and global challenge.
The north-east local industrial strategy will be empowered by the recent North of Tyne devolution deal, which covers three north-east authorities: Newcastle, Northumberland and the home authority of the hon. Member for North Tyneside. I congratulate the three councils on their successful pursuit of devolution, and Jamie Driscoll on his recent election as the first North of Tyne Mayor. The Government have a strong track record of working with the elected mayors, including Ben Houchen in Tees Valley. Alongside specific powers such as control over the adult education budget, the deal includes a total investment fund of £600 million over 30 years, to be used by the area to pursue its local growth goals. Local estimates are that the investment will generate £1.1 billion for the local economy and create 10,000 new jobs.
The north-east local industrial strategy will build on a strong track record of investment in the wider North East local enterprise partnership area. Over the three rounds of the local growth fund, £379.6 million will be invested in the North East LEP area. That includes £1 million for the Ignite centre for engineering and innovation in North Tyneside. I look forward to visiting the north-east and Tees Valley—shortly I will visit the Centre for Process Innovation, which has bases in both areas. That centre has a strong record of collaboration with Government, including a £38 million grant from UK Research and Innovation to establish a national biologics industry innovation centre in Darlington.
Alex Cunningham
I am sure we will welcome the Minister when he comes to the Tees Valley. Will he bring some good news on carbon capture, use and storage?
Andrew Stephenson
I am very keen to see the UK move forward with carbon capture, use and storage. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the report by the Committee on Climate Change, which suggested that we could move towards a target of net zero in the same cost envelope as our current target. It says that carbon capture and storage has to be part of the mix. That will accelerate what the Government are doing in this area. I will certainly pass on remarks from today’s debate to the Minister for Energy and Climate Change, as I am sure she will want to focus on this area. When I am in the region, I will be keen to see some of the work in the renewables sector, and I will also pay close attention to carbon capture, use and storage now that the hon. Gentleman has raised it.
I will visit the CPI’s Redcar centre to discuss its achievements and ambitions and the development of the industrial strategy. I look forward to attending the northern powerhouse SME roadshow in June, to discuss investment opportunities and links to the industrial strategy across the whole of the north. Through local partnerships with Government and the impact of national investments, we expect the north-east and Tees Valley to play a full part in the industrial strategy agenda.
I was pleased to hear a number of hon. Members support various Highways England projects in the region, including Silverlink and improvements to the A19. I take on board the point made by the hon. Member for North Tyneside about power lines; she has raised that point on numerous occasions and has met my ministerial colleague about this issue, who wrote to Ofgem about it, and we are looking at possible ways forward. I am sure we will continue to push the point, and I assure her that her remarks today have not gone unnoticed.
Members rightly raised the importance of the east coast main line. At the Cabinet meeting in Newcastle in July 2018, a £780 million investment in the east coast main line was announced, which hopefully will mean faster journey times and more frequent services. That builds on the £337 million that was announced to upgrade local transport through a new fleet on the Tyne and Wear metro.
I strongly agree with the comments by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West about the importance of Nissan and its huge strength in battery technology. I agree that the company is incredibly well placed to benefit from schemes such as the Government’s £246 million Faraday battery challenge, which is supporting the development of new battery technology in a market that will be worth £5 billion to the UK by 2025.
As the Minister responsible for the automotive sector, I recognise that the sector will go through more change in the next 10 years than it has in the last 100. We need to work closely with car manufacturers based in the UK to help them with that transition and to ensure that they decide this is the best country in the world in which to invest in new, cleaner modes of transport.
Chi Onwurah
The Minister speaks about the importance of battery technology, and Nissan’s strength in particular, but does he recognise that while the five-year fund supports investment in battery technology, it does not support investment in battery manufacturing? In this country we need a battery manufacturing base, so that batteries are not simply imported. Will he speak to that? I also hope he will not forget to respond to the concerns about a replacement for European regional development and structural investment funds.
Andrew Stephenson
The shadow Minister is correct; that is one of the reasons why we have the industrial strategy challenge fund. I mentioned my being in Coventry to launch the west midlands local industrial strategy, which was the first to be launched. On that day, I was delighted to visit the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre and to announce a further £28 million for that facility, which will be about production. It will take technologies being developed in places such as the Advanced Propulsion Centre and see how to produce batteries here in the UK. Some existing companies that have already done incredible work, such as Nissan, have the potential to bid for some of the Government funds that are already available, as well as future funds. That is fundamental because of the number of petrol engines we produce in the UK: to keep the UK as an automotive hub, we need to ensure that companies across the board invest in battery technology and production in the UK.
Questions have been asked about the £675 million high streets fund, the £1.6 billion stronger towns fund and the UK shared prosperity fund. More details of all those funds will be published in due course. They show the Government’s commitment to addressing the challenges raised by Members today. We need to invest more in renewable technologies, as was raised by several Members. The offshore wind sector deal is a great example of that. The Government’s commitment to the sector is underlined by the £92 billion of public and private investment in renewables since 2010. We have just finished an 18-day coal-free run in our power supply.
Lots has been done, but there is lots more to do, and lots of great ideas have been suggested today. I look forward to working with all Members who spoke in the debate and to visiting their constituencies and some of the projects they talked about.
Mary Glindon
I neglected to congratulate the Minister on his appointment. We are all pleased to hear that he has roots in the north-east and a personal knowledge of it, and we will call on that—he has dropped himself right in it.
I hope that the issues about British steel, which have been stressed over and again, will be carried forward because they are so important. Will the Minister take on board and pass on the message that a no-deal Brexit is no good for the north-east in any shape or form? It would be catastrophic.
Members in the debate have shown the pride of the north-east today. We want an industrial strategy that works for everyone—as the Minister said, to get prosperity in every region so nobody misses out and everyone can flourish in the north-east through a good industrial strategy. We will push the Minister as we move towards the publication of our industrial strategy. Thanks again to everyone who has participated in this debate and to you, Mr Betts.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered industrial strategy in the North East of England.
Transport: Cheshire
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered transport in Cheshire.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am glad to see you here, and I thank the other hon. Members present for attending.
The debate is about transport issues in Cheshire, but we could not possibly deal with all the issues in the time available, so I will talk about two issues with a common element that has been causing much anger, frustration and consternation in my constituency and beyond. I refer to the River Mersey and the tolls my constituents face to cross it, be it by the Mersey tunnels or the Mersey Gateway. There is now no way they can cross the river for work, for family reasons or for medical treatment without paying a fee. Of course, there have always been fees for the Mersey tunnels, but not ones that discriminate against people because of where they live.
Let me start with the principle of the tolls. The fact that the Mersey tunnels have always had tolls does not make the tolls’ existence any more defendable. Indeed, it is difficult to understand why they are still in place, given that we have heard repeatedly from Ministers how the removal of tolls can improve an area’s economic performance—an argument that seemingly won in south Wales, where the Severn crossings had their tolls abolished; in Scotland, where the new Forth crossing is not tolled; and in the true blue Tory shires of England, where plans for the A14 upgrade to be tolled around Huntingdon and Cambridge were scrapped.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Would there not be a considerable outcry if just one of the 36 bridges over the River Thames in London were tolled? Is this unfairness not a case of a real north-south divide?
Justin Madders
I agree, and London seems to do better than the rest of the country in terms of per-head transport investment, too.
None of the crossings in Northern Ireland is tolled, none in Scotland is tolled and, as we have heard, London is equally blessed. In fact, more than 90% of tidal crossings in this country are toll free. The argument that tolls harm economic growth seems to be accepted everywhere, except on the River Mersey.
As I said, the tolls on the Mersey tunnels have always been with us. They are not popular, but they have always been part of life. However, an unconscionable decision earlier this year by the Liverpool city region metro Mayor has made them far less acceptable. Regular tunnel users can apply for a fast tag, which gives a discount on the normal fees. From 1 April this year, the fee for those who live in the Merseyside area was reduced from £1.20 to £1, but the fee for those outside the Merseyside area was increased by a whopping 50%, from £1.20 to £1.80. That decision was made with little notice, no consultation and complete disregard for the economic impact on those living outside Merseyside.
Although my constituency is in Cheshire, we are very much in the hinterland of Merseyside—the number of Liverpool shirts I saw over the weekend is testament to that. We are less than 10 miles from Liverpool city centre, and our economic, cultural and family connections mean that people travel there daily. When my constituents ask me whether it is right that they have to pay nearly twice as much as someone who lives just down the road from them to go to work or visit their elderly mother, I tell them, “No, it isn’t.” It is discrimination by postcode, and it is not something I believe anyone who wants fairness in this country can support.
To be fair to the metro Mayor, he would like to be able to get rid of tolls altogether. I am happy to work with him and anyone else who wants to join me on that campaign, but that is a longer-term aim. In the short term, he has defended his decision robustly. He rightly points out that the Liverpool city region has experienced the largest Government funding cuts anywhere in the country, and that the people he represents cannot be expected to shoulder the burden of austerity. His conclusion is that he cannot have non-city region residents’ travel being subsidised. I understand what he says, but he is simply wrong about subsidy.
The Mersey tunnels, for which I understand the tolls are the third highest of their type in the whole country, are operated under the Mersey Tunnels Act 2004, which permits any operating surplus to be used by the transport authority to achieve public transport policies in its local transport plan. In 2017-18, the surplus from operating the tunnels was £16.7 million, so my constituents, far from asking for a subsidy, clearly subsidise the rest of the Merseytravel operation—indeed, all tunnel users do. Given that level of surplus, the decision to increase the costs for my constituents by 50% cannot be said to be critical to Merseytravel’s operations. There is no room for doubt about that. It feels much more like racketeering.
One might argue that the surplus is used to provide good public transport services across Merseyside and beyond, which of course benefits my constituents, albeit to a lesser degree than Merseyside residents. However, a closer look at rail fares suggests that when my constituents use cross-border Merseyrail services, they are again subject to indefensible price differences. For example, a day return from Eastham Rake on the Merseyrail line—the first stop in Merseyside when travelling from Cheshire—to Liverpool is £1.50 cheaper than a day return from Little Sutton. That is 25% extra for just two stops down the line. Although Capenhurst station is not in my constituency, it is used by many of my constituents and it is also just two stops down from Eastham Rake, but a day return to Liverpool from Capenhurst costs more than £3 extra.
It feels like the residents of Cheshire are seen as a soft touch—a cash cow. Sadly, I feel there is a bit of reverse snobbery here, the implication being that people who live in Cheshire are a bit better off, so they can afford to pay more. That just is not the case for the majority of people. My constituency has some pockets of wealth, but it also has some of the most deprived wards in the country. Some of the examples constituents have given me of the hardship they have suffered demonstrate that they are not people with loads of spare cash floating about, waiting to be squeezed until the pips squeak.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Although he feels his constituents are discriminated against, does he accept that the same applies to people from Knowsley, parts of Liverpool and St Helens, for whom there is no public transport option that makes sense? They have only one option: the Mersey Gateway. In some cases, it costs them £20 a week extra to travel to and from work in his constituency or that of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury). Surely that is not acceptable.
Justin Madders
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will talk about the Mersey Gateway later, because we have another very difficult situation there.
As my right hon. Friend says, many people have no option but to cross the Mersey to get to work. Many of those people work in public sector organisations such as the police and the NHS, and have not had a real pay rise for almost a decade. They often work shifts. The only way they can get to work is with their own transport, because public transport does not operate on the routes or at the times they need to get to work.
For example, an Ellesmere Port resident works as a physiotherapist specialising in treating head and neck cancer patients from across the north-west at Aintree Hospital. She pays at least £400 more per year than Wirral residents to get to work. What about the band 5 staff nurse who recently began working at the Royal Liverpool Hospital and, due to her shift times, has to drive from Ellesmere Port to Liverpool? She says she finds it financially crippling to pay tunnel tolls and car park fees. She also makes the point that colleagues who live down the road from her on the Wirral and in Liverpool can pay the lower toll, but they have better public transport options anyway.
We know how hard it is for the NHS to recruit and retain staff, particularly nurses, but this policy seems to be forcing them out. One nurse told me that
“the individual cost of the Toll fees on my current wage may force me to leave my nursing post at the Royal Liverpool NHS Foundation trust and seek employment elsewhere. I find my situation ironic due the desperate need for nursing staff at the hospital but am being forced out by unfair and discriminatory postcode politics.”
I could not have put it better myself. Then there are the people who have to travel across the Mersey at both crossings to get treatment at more specialist healthcare services, such as Broadgreen and Alder Hey. Why should people with the most serious conditions be treated in that way?
I have been given dozens of examples of people who use the tunnels for work and who are thinking of taking their talents elsewhere. Ultimately, this is an economically damaging policy. There are also those who go to visit their family, including elderly relatives. I have a constituent who travels over the Mersey nearly every day to care for her 80-year-old mum, who has dementia. She saves the council a fortune in social care costs, but her contribution does not appear to carry any weight. There are others, including the British Sign Language interpreter, the paramedics, the teachers and the Leahurst veterinary school students. None of those people have been considered, because there has been no assessment of the impact of the decision.
Those are just some examples of the hardship faced by my constituents and others who have no choice but to cross the Mersey—hardship the metro Mayor actually appears to recognise. Last year, he said:
“The introduction of additional tolls has proven to be a significant imposition to many from lower socio-economic groups, who are already struggling to make ends meet.”
He was talking about the Mersey Gateway tolls, but it could just as easily have been the Mersey tunnels tolls. I agree, and his argument applies to both crossings. I also agree with him when he said:
“The economic wellbeing of our city region is a joint responsibility between the combined authority and Government.”
I ask the Minister to set out what he will do to ensure that my constituents no longer face these rip-off charges.
If the Minister does not think it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure citizens of this country do not face postcode discrimination, he must agree that they do have responsibility for promises made by members of the Government. I refer specifically to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who made promises about the Mersey Gateway that have not materialised. In a tweet on 23 April 2015 he said:
“Confirm we’ll extend free bridge tolls to residents of Cheshire W & Chester + Warrington”.
One of my constituents was understandably a little sceptical about that comment, so he emailed the Conservative party candidate for Ellesmere Port and Neston in the 2015 election, who responded in unequivocal terms:
“If we get a majority it’s a firm commitment and applies to all of Cheshire West Council including us. I’ve been involved in making the case to the Chancellor and he’s listened and acted.”
As we know, the Conservatives did win a majority, but the promise was reneged on. As my constituent said, it was a clear and simple promise on which they have totally failed to deliver in any way whatever.
While we are on the subject, I draw the Minister’s attention to a statement by the then Chancellor during the 2015 election regarding Mersey tunnel fees. He said:
“They will definitely be cut. I think we might be able to go further. I’m quite optimistic that we might be able to go further and abolish them altogether”.
Please, Minister, do not say in responding that this is for local operators to determine. When the Chancellor of the day makes clear statements—promises, no less—it is incumbent on the Government to deliver them. The reputation of this place has had a real shaking in recent times, and no wonder when unambiguous, incontestable promises are made just before an election and jettisoned without a second thought. It destroys the very essence of what politics should be about—honesty and integrity—and replaces it with cynicism and callous disrespect for the public.
I turn to our continuing problems with the Mersey Gateway, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) referred. According to the local campaign group, hundreds of thousands of fines have been issued, and so far about 7,500 penalties have been appealed to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, which I understand have all been allowed. If that is correct, it must surely encourage the Minister to make enquiries about what on earth is going on. I urge him to look into how these fines are arising. It is clear there are regular issues with people seeing the signs and paying in time. It is far from clear when people have to pay by and how they should pay. Why does it have to always be online?
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
Many of my constituents have been affected and are deeply upset, getting continual fines after they thought they had paid when there was a problem with the system. Paying online is immensely difficult for older people who do not have access to online facilities. Why should they have to go to a shop somewhere to pay? It should not be up to them to find that; it should be up to toll operators, if a toll is to be charged, to make it as easy as possible for people to cross.
Justin Madders
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The system seems to have been set up to make it as difficult as possible to pay the tolls, which is probably why there are so many difficulties and so many fines. It is the major route to John Lennon airport, and how realistic is it to expect people going on their holidays to pay a toll online by the following day? It is not living in the real world.
There are real concerns about the tactics used by the debt recovery firm once a fine is issued, and about the way costs can escalate to nearly £400 in no time at all. A minimum bailiff charge of £380 for a £2 crossing seems totally disproportionate; it is yet more racketeering. I have heard too many stories of bailiffs turning up unannounced and clamping vehicles before they have spoken to anyone to be confident that they are operating reasonably.
I ask the Minister again to consider that those in the public sector in particular travelling in both directions over the bridge face four-figure increases in their costs just to get to work. I have heard many difficult stories about how people have been affected, including one from a young mum whose husband had a stay in Broadgreen Hospital. It was costing her £15 extra a day just to visit him. She had more than enough to worry about at that time.
Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. In view of those issues and the Conservative party’s promise in 2015, does he agree that now is the time to scrap the Mersey Gateway toll? At the end of the day, the people of the whole region are affected immensely.
Justin Madders
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The injustice of the situation will get worse in the near future, because when the old Silver Jubilee bridge reopens, it will also be tolled. Can the Minister tell us of any other previously toll-free bridge having tolls introduced in such a way? The bridge was partly funded by Cheshire County Council when Halton was part of it. Should not the successor authorities—Cheshire East Council, and Cheshire West and Chester Council—get some sort of refund, or will my constituents have to pay three times over for the crossing, having paid for the original construction, having paid their road tax, and paying every time they cross the river?
My constituents are absolutely fed up with being considered the soft touch of the north-west. They are fed up with being discriminated against because of where they live, and they are fed up with living in a country where the authorities apparently condone a postcode lottery. Most of all, they are fed up with being treated like fools, through promises made that are never kept and not being treated the same as residents of other areas because it cannot be afforded. Minister, it is time to bring back some fairness and equity. Give these people some hope that they will be treated the same as everyone else, and hope that when there is injustice, the Government will step in to correct it.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Michael Ellis)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) on securing this debate on transport issues in Cheshire. As it happens, I intend to visit his constituency tomorrow—[Interruption.] It is already scheduled. I will visit Argent Energy’s biodiesel-from-waste production facility, which is an example of the vital importance of Ellesmere Port to the local and national economy. It will be my first visit out of London since becoming Transport Minister, and I am delighted to do that.
Cheshire is a powerhouse of the northern economy and the UK economy. It is the gateway to the north. It links strongly to its neighbours, the large city regions of Liverpool and Manchester, as well as to the engine of the midlands and, vitally, to north Wales. I recognise that. With its £29.3 billion economy employing over 488,000 people in more than 42,000 businesses, Cheshire is an economic success story and home to almost 920,000 people. The region has particular strengths in advanced manufacturing, science and innovation, and professional services. In fact, Cheshire’s economy outperforms the UK average on a number of measures. The local enterprise partnership’s strategic economic plan is entitled “Cheshire and Warrington Matters”, and I absolutely endorse that view.
The north matters, and transport matters in and to the north. Transport in all its forms and modes is essential for the prosperity, growth and wellbeing of the whole nation. I therefore commend the hon. Gentleman on raising these matters on his constituents’ behalf. The Government recognise that good transport infrastructure is essential for productivity, which is why we are investing significantly across the country to deliver sustained economic development.
On 1 April 2018, Transport for the North became a statutory body, according the north powers and funding not seen in other areas to develop and drive forward transport plans, which will support economic growth. The Government have also committed to creating a northern powerhouse to rebalance our economy. Northern Powerhouse Rail, the flagship scheme within TfN’s strategic vision, will provide the east-west rail links that the north needs. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unlock the full potential of the region.
That is part of our long-term economic plan—one that we share with the north. As Transport Minister, I am committed to improving journeys for passengers in the north. We are carrying out the biggest investment in transport in the region for a generation. Between 2015 and 2020, the Government will have spent over £13 billion improving and modernising northern transport.
Faisal Rashid
Does the Minister agree that it is unfair to ask the public to pay those tolls when that bridge has been untolled for decades?
Michael Ellis
I will come to tolling in a moment, but it is a long-established principle that goes back to the 1930s that those roads and tunnels are tolled. Figures from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority show that in the three years to 2021, central Government’s planned transport capital investment per head for the north-west, the north-east, Yorkshire and Humber will be higher than for London, the south-east and the south-west. Each year we will invest an average of £248 per person in the north, compared with £236 per person in the south.
We are investing in a smart motorway from junctions 6 to 8 of the M56, which serves Manchester airport, and from junctions 21A to 26 of the M6, which links Cheshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Lancashire. Those are important additions to other localised improvements such as tackling congestion on the A55, which I understand is a major factor, as well as at the Posthouse roundabout. Improvements at junction 8 of the M62 are designed to support the rapid and significant expansion of the Omega employment site, which now employs more than 5,000 people. In the 2018 Budget, the Government published their objectives for the second road investment strategy for 2020 to 2025, and we intend to make available £25.3 billion to further develop the strategic road network. My Department is developing an affordable, deliverable investment plan for that, which will be published in a few months.
Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
I am sorry that I missed the start of the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders). Does the Minister agree that the delivery of HS2 is essential for achieving that vision in the north and opening up that capacity?
Michael Ellis
As the hon. Lady knows, we are investing significantly in rail. The reinstatement and reintroduction of services on the Halton curve means that from last month, after a gap of more than 40 years, a direct rail link between the west of Cheshire, north Wales and Liverpool Lime Street now connects those important areas together, unlocking business and opportunities, and providing improved access to the airport. HS2 is, of course, very important, as is the construction of a new station at Warrington West to serve new housing growth. The Northern franchise will lead to the removal of pacers, and brand-new trains will operate on the new Northern Connect service between Liverpool, Warrington Central, Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester airport, as well as a new direct service between Leeds and Chester via Warrington Bank Quay.
Michael Ellis
I am conscious of the time as I want to address the issue of tolls, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Mike Amesbury
For every £4 of investment put into London and the south-east, the north gets £1—those are the Government’s own figures. The Northwich area in my constituency was promised two trains an hour to Manchester, but that has not been delivered by the failing Northern franchise. On tolls, there was a clear promise, as outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), that a local discount scheme would be extended to Cheshire West, Chester and Warrington, but that promise has not been delivered. Will the Minister answer that point?
Michael Ellis
I will come to that in a moment, as I want to talk a little more about HS2. Despite speculation and claims that we should scrap HS2, our commitment to the full HS2 network remains. From 2027, high-speed trains will begin serving Cheshire at Crewe, and the legislative process is under way to extend HS2 to Crewe by 2027—six years earlier than originally planned. For Cheshire, Crewe offers a significant opportunity. We are working actively with local partners to maximise the potential of an HS2 hub at Crewe, both for the wider connectivity to HS2 that that will offer, and for its potential as an agent of change and a significant driver for regeneration and development in and around Crewe, Cheshire and the wider region, including Stoke and Staffordshire.
With Transport for the North we are developing a business case for northern powerhouse rail, and exploring the best options to ensure that the huge economic potential of Warrington and the north Cheshire science corridor is served. Through a £200 million-plus growth deal, we are supporting a significant number of local transport improvements that are vital for people going about their daily business. Those include a new bus station in Chester, bypasses for Congleton, Middlewich and Poynton, and a new highway infrastructure in Crewe, Warrington and Birchwood to alleviate congestion. There is a huge amount of investment. We are also supporting the construction of the new Mersey Gateway crossing, which is the largest local transport scheme in the country and benefits residents of Cheshire, Liverpool city region, and beyond.
Michael Ellis
We have just five minutes left, and I wish to get on to tolling. I acknowledge that tolling to support the estuary crossing, and other crossings, is controversial, and it is clear that the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston has a major disagreement with the Labour Metro Mayor in his region, who changed the hitherto existing position. He is understandably upset about that, but it is a matter for the Mayor, Steve Rotheram. The hon. Gentleman called the tolls “unconscionable” and “racketeering”, and I have noted his comments.
For the Mersey Gateway we were able to ensure that all eligible residents of Halton Borough Council can use the new bridges for free through the local resident discount scheme. It has been the policy of successive UK Governments—both Labour and Conservative—to place tolls on major estuarial crossings, so that those schemes help to pay for the benefits that people receive in those areas. The Government decided to provide free access for the residents of Halton because of their unusual position, given that the existing bridge connects the two parts of the borough on either side of the River Mersey, and that is the only practicable way of travelling between those areas. We looked at the case for extending free tolling to residents of councils beyond Halton, but decided not to do so because the cost to the Government and local authorities would have been disproportionate and substantial.
Since their construction in the 1930s—I think it was 1934—and again in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Mersey tunnels have always been tolled. This is not new. Those tremendous feats of engineering were developed, funded and delivered by the local authorities in the area. The Queensway tunnel, which links Birkenhead and Wallasey with Liverpool, opened in 1934. It cost £8 million at the time and ranked financially as the biggest single municipal enterprise ever undertaken in this country. The Kingsway tunnel, which links Wallasey and Liverpool, opened in 1971 and saw the first example of a giant mechanical “mole” being used in this country. These have always been locally owned assets. Both tunnels have been financed by tolling since they opened, with the toll revenue used to cover the costs of operating, maintaining and enhancing the tunnels, as well as repaying the debt accrued during their construction. Decisions on toll levels rest with the Merseyside local authorities and are now vested in the Liverpool city region mayoral combined authority. They are not a matter for Ministers of the Crown; they are a matter for the Liverpool authorities.
The former Chancellor of the Exchequer may have commented on local tolling in a tweet, or whatever it was, as part of the 2015 general election campaign. [Interruption.] Recognition should be given that my Department worked closely with the combined authority on its review of tunnel tolls, which resulted in a reduction of the fast tag toll for motorists. That was good news, and that is what the Department for Transport did at that time. As hon. Members are probably aware, the process for setting tolls for the Mersey tunnels is set out in the Mersey Tunnels Act 2004, which requires the toll charge to be increased annually in line with inflation, and allows—subject to certain conditions—some of the revenue to be used for wider transport objectives in Merseyside. I hope I have assured hon. Members of the Government’s strong commitment to transport in Cheshire.
Faisal Rashid
The Minister is speaking about millions and billions of pounds of investment in the north but he contradicts himself. Part of that investment should come from the national infrastructure fund, rather than from private investors and tolls, including on an existing bridge that was not previously tolled.
Michael Ellis
If the right hon. Gentleman can make his point in 20 seconds, I will give way to him.
Mr Howarth
Does the Minister accept that having to pay an additional £20 a week just to go to work is unacceptable for my constituents and those of my hon. Friends?
Michael Ellis
I suggest that all hon. Members work actively with their regional Mayors and with Cheshire West and Chester Council to explore what may or may not be possible.
Question put and agreed to.
Universal Credit and Debt
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered universal credit and debt.
Universal credit affects a huge proportion of our population already. As of April this year, 2 million people were on universal credit, and in the last three months more than 200,000 extra households each month have started a claim. By the time it is fully rolled out, around 7 million households, comprising around 15 million people, will be on universal credit—almost one quarter of the population and 28% of people under pension age—and around 38% of our children will be growing up in households on universal credit. It will affect a whole generation.
The impact of universal credit is felt not only at an individual, but at a societal level, so it is incredibly important that we get it right. That is why I set up the all-party parliamentary group on universal credit, to collect evidence and make recommendations. I thank all those parliamentarians here today on both sides of the House who have contributed to that very productive group, alongside our colleagues in the Lords, charities and researchers. I must especially mention Holly in my office, who has been running it as a labour of love.
Most of all, I thank the individuals who are claiming universal credit, particularly all those who responded to the social media outreach that I and Parliament have done for this debate, telling us about their often very personal experiences. The amount of money we have affects not just our bank balance, but our ability to look after both our physical health, in terms of affording housing and enough to eat, medication and travel to health appointments, and our mental health, particularly when we get into debt.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Does she agree that until relatively recently there was a broad political consensus on the need to revise the labyrinth of welfare dependency and the bureaucracy surrounding it, but that that should be done in a way that minimises the impact that she has just been outlining and that many of our constituents are suffering from?
Ruth George
I agree; it was a laudable aim, but unfortunately it is not happening in practice, as shown in some of the evidence. That is why I secured this debate.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. We have had numerous debates on universal credit, and I have said this before and will say it again: we should call a halt to universal credit, and if it cannot be reformed we should disband it, because people are suffering as a result. We also now have the working poor, including in cities such as Coventry, where last year 20,000 people used food banks. When we think about it, the impact that that is having on people is incredible.
Ruth George
I hope the evidence I will bring today, and the evidence colleagues will bring from their own experiences, will help to make that case without my having to make it explicitly. There are certainly many changes that should be made. The evidence I have heard from people who say that it is not just the amount of money they have on universal credit, but their powerlessness against a system that takes deductions seemingly at random and with no recourse to justice, that leaves them feeling absolutely hopeless and in despair.
One man from Wales told me on social media:
“It is very difficult to manage on universal credit, payments are very low…I’ve had to go without food to have heat and vice versa. This with my health condition has led me into depression & despair at times. Universal credit are always deducting monies eg carers allowance etc which has left me worse off. It’s very difficult to get through to talk to anyone via phone and very often treated as a second class citizen.”
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent case for changes to universal credit. Pertinent to what she is saying about people being left unable to pay, does she share my concern that 51% of the food parcels that the Salvation Army distributes are to people who come as a result of having insufficient support from the universal credit system? Does she agree that maybe we should put back the money that was taken out of the budget?
Ruth George
Absolutely. My local jobcentre also tells me that the major reason why people are seeking support with food parcels is that they simply do not have enough to get by on, often because of the deductions.
A mum from East Anglia told me that she has had to resort to loan sharks, and she almost got involved with a man just so that he could buy some food for her and her daughter. Now she has had letters saying that money will be deducted for her debts. She has lost jobs because she could not afford a bus pass and she has friends who resorted to selling their body for food because of their children.
Dr Poulter
The hon. Lady is making some good points, and she is right to draw an association between adverse life events, debt and poor mental health. On the issue facing many of the people she is using as examples, who are experiencing difficulties with universal credit, is it not the case that the wait of five weeks to receive universal credit exacerbates debt issues and the challenges facing people in sometimes very difficult circumstances, and that the Government perhaps need to look at that as a priority in helping to improve the system?
Ruth George
The hon. Gentleman has pre-empted part of my speech. The five-week wait for payments is doing a tremendous amount of damage, putting people into debt right at the start of their claim.
That is not to say that universal credit has not improved—I am sure we will hear a lot about that from the Minister. I pay credit to the Department for listening, and especially to the current Secretary of State, who has made changes beyond those forced on her by High Court cases. However, there is still an enormous amount to do to help people to get by and feel secure with universal credit.
Ellie Reeves
A number of my constituents are living below the poverty line, because that is what their universal credit calculation assesses them as being entitled to. It is not surprising that three quarters of those who are in rent arrears are on universal credit, while only one quarter are not. Does my hon. Friend agree that the way we calculate welfare payments to the most vulnerable must be looked at again?
Ruth George
Absolutely. As I will come on to discuss, the problem is not only welfare payments, but the deductions made from those welfare payments. People who are already in poverty are having huge deductions taken from their incomes with almost no recourse to justice.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Jamie Stone
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. This is a point that I imagine the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) will elaborate on, but the Highland Council’s budgets have been hit to the extent of £2.5 million just from dealing with universal credit. That money is money that we could be spending on classroom assistants, who are facing swingeing cuts not of their own making. Should that money not really be repaid to the Highland Council to make up for all this?
Ruth George
All councils need an uplift in their budget, but if the Department for Work and Pensions was to give money away, I would say it should go into the pockets of the people who are suffering at the sharpest end of universal credit.
We have already seen four years of a benefits freeze that has cut more than 6% from those benefits. That is on top of the three-year freeze in 2011 and the 1% benefit cap from 2014. On housing, the impact of those freezes, together with limiting local housing allowance to the lowest 30% of rents, means that now tenants in 97% of areas must make up a rent shortfall out of their universal credit. In one in five areas, that shortfall for a family with children in a two-bedroom home is at least £100 month, Shelter has calculated. That is a huge amount taken out of an already low income, but universal credit will mean even more reductions.
With managed migration having been delayed, most people will transfer on to universal credit due to a change in circumstances—anything from having their first baby, losing a job or moving to a different local authority area. Those 5 million or so households are not due to receive any transitional protection if they were better off on legacy benefits. Contrary to what Parliament was promised when the cuts to universal credit were pushed through in 2015 and 2016, most people will immediately be worse off.
Even after the changes to universal credit, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has calculated that, although 5.6 million people in working households will gain an average of £3,000 a year, 5.1 million working people will lose an average of £2,300, including 1.7 million who are already in poverty. Of non-working households, 1.9 million people will gain an average of £2,000 a year, but 2.6 million people will lose an average of £1,400 a year, with half of those—1.3 million—already in poverty. Overall, even after the changes, 7.5 million people will gain from universal credit, but 7.7 million people will lose out, including 3 million households already in poverty. While the Government may state that more is being spent on universal credit, which may well be correct, that does not change the fact that the majority of people already on very low incomes, many of whom are in poverty, will be worse off.
Even those who are supposed to be better off on universal credit often struggle because of the deductions from their payments. According to yesterday’s written answer from the Minister, who I thank for responding in time for the debate:
“Of all eligible claims to Universal Credit Full Service due a payment in Feb 2019, 57% (840,000 claims) had a deduction.”
An answer to a further parliamentary question showed that an average of 10% of all universal credit is now deducted from people’s claims. Almost everyone seeing deductions took the advance payment introduced to help people get through the minimum five-week wait for their first payment. Some 60% of people take that advance, mainly because rent is payable in advance, whereas universal credit is payable in arrears. That advance has to be paid off over 12 months, so people are paying 13 months’ rent out of 12 months of income. With a system that in 97% of areas does not even give enough money each month for one month’s rent, it is not surprising that people are struggling, and that five-week wait is absolutely part of that.
On top of repayments for advances, another 440,000 households are also repaying at least one other debt for benefit overpayments, social fund loans or other advances. That does not include third-party debts such as rent arrears, utility bills or council tax debt. The Department does not keep data on those debts that it also deducts. I question why not, as it clearly has the data on the deductions being made and should monitor the impact on vulnerable people. Of those 840,000 households seeing deductions, half were of up to 20% of the standard allowance in universal credit, 170,000 were between 21% and 30%, 238,000 were between 31% and 40%, and 13,000 were above 40%.
With 40% of the standard allowance as the current maximum deduction supposed to be permitted under universal credit, that means deductions of £127 a month for a single person’s claim or £200 a month for a couple. Of the 3.3 million couple-parents already losing an average of £2,500 a year under universal credit—more than £200 a month—a majority see deductions on top of those losses of up to another £200 a month, plus their rent top-up of around £100 a month, so many will be £500 a month, or more than £100 a week, worse off.
It is not surprising that we see such an increase in people going to food banks and struggling with debt, like one of my constituents, Gareth, who is struggling to keep his head above water. He suffers from anxiety and depression. His mother died recently and he split from his partner so had to move into his own place and claim universal credit. He had been working as a cleaner but had to give up his job. He was awarded universal credit of £692 a month, including £374 for housing, although the lowest rent he could find is £500 a month, so he has to make up the shortfall of £126 a month. Some £58 a month is being deducted for his advance payment, and £46 a month for an earlier budgeting and crisis loan, leaving him with £588 a month, of which his rent is £500, so he is left with just £20 a week for all his bills and food. He is experiencing extreme poverty, which is obviously impacting on his health.
Those deductions are things he knows about, but many are not. The second highest number of deductions are for tax credit overpayments, and two thirds of people migrating on to universal credit from tax credits are seeing deductions for an overpayment. The Treasury states that £6.9 billion of tax credit overpayments will be transferred on to universal credit. The reduction in the excess earnings limit in one year from £5,000 to just £1,000 in 2012 has meant that constant overpayments are now hard-wired into tax credits, but in many cases these are historical.
Only 29% of that £6.9 billion relates to 2016-17 onwards. More than half relates to between 2011-12 and 2015-16, and 16% is even older. Many people just were not aware of these overpayments and are not given the opportunity to challenge them. Locally, I have the case of Mrs G, who has a disability. She migrated on to universal credit because she had to move into accessible accommodation, which happened to be in the neighbouring local authority. Only after she had claimed was informed that she had tax credit overpayments of around £450 from 2011 and £850 from 2005. She had not claimed tax credits since 2015, and had paid off the only overpayments of which she had been informed over the next two years. She challenged the overpayments through Derbyshire County Council’s welfare rights service, which is marvellous at handling these cases, but was told that she had been informed about them in 2011 and 2006, and as the Inland Revenue had not received a dispute within three months of those letters being sent, the overpayments could not be challenged.
After losing her disability premiums, Mrs G was already £43 a week worse off under universal credit—almost £200 a month. She was having £42 a month deducted to repay her advance payment and was left with only £169 a month. A further £48 a month was then deducted for her tax credit overpayments, which she faces for years to come. Faced with having to live with a serious disability on just £121 a month, and with no one in government prepared to look into her case, the welfare rights service told me that Mrs G’s mental health deteriorated rapidly and that, on new year’s day, she attempted to take her life. Fortunately the attempt did not succeed, and she is now being supported by her GP, but five months later the issue is still not resolved, even with expert advice and her local MP contacted. Mrs G says,
“it’s on my mind all of the time”,
and it is still affecting her health.
The inability to challenge deductions—or even, in some cases, to find out about them—leaves people feeling utterly helpless and either angry or hopeless. People often receive a note on their journal saying:
“We agreed to pay a fine from your universal credit”,
but they are not even told how much the fine is, where it comes from or how to challenge it. I have seen cases of much more than the 40% limit being taken from people’s standard allowance, leaving them with practically nothing to live on. Advisers on the universal credit helpline have been unhelpful and aggressive, even to Citizens Advice and the welfare rights service.
Real examples like those from in and around my constituency, where limited numbers of people are on universal credit, bear out the problems illustrated in those answers to parliamentary questions. They are key drivers for the increase in food bank use and debt and rent arrears, and are a significant reason for the huge increase in depression and anxiety.
The Government must act. It will not necessarily take anything very radical. Many of the actions have already been agreed, but they need to be brought forward and done now. We need to look at the five-week wait, as I think is agreed across the House, and at the very least, as a first step, bring forward the two-week run-on of jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance and income support from July 2020 to July 2019. The maximum 30% cap on deductions needs to apply now, not in October, when another 800,000 people will have applied for universal credit and be suffering 40% reductions. And people suffering hardship should be able to reduce that.
The extended repayment period for advances from 12 months to 16 months should apply now, not in October 2021. Historical tax credit overpayments should be written off, as the Government stated they were doing back in 2011. Later overpayments should be proved and the opportunity given to challenge them properly before they are collected. The benefit freeze needs to be ended and the cap on rents restored at least to the 30th percentile. And the monthly assessment period should be reviewed, as the High Court has stated it should be.
Just the measures that I have listed would be an enormous help for the hundreds of thousands of people—almost 1 million—suffering already under deductions from universal credit. If this is test and learn, those people are the guinea pigs that this Government are experimenting on. The Government can make changes. We in Parliament get a second chance at legislation, but the people who are suffering this system now are left with spiralling debts, to which they can see no end. They are driven by the unresponsive system even to try to take their own life. They do not get a second chance at living a better life. Their children do not get another chance at a childhood not marred by poverty. Another 60,000 families will apply for universal credit next week. That is why it is not just our job but our absolute duty to get it right.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)
Order. In addition to thanking the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) for her exemplary and moving speech, I point out that a lot of right hon. and hon. Members are hoping to speak, so we will have a limit of between two and three minutes on speeches—voluntarily, at the moment.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I hope that as I am the only speaker from the Government side, you might show me a little leniency, Sir Henry, but anyway, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on securing the debate.
The full roll-out of universal credit in Lowestoft started in May 2016. The process has not been straightforward. Many of the most vulnerable in society have been put under enormous pressure and have faced real challenges in getting by day to day. The situation has improved: the Government have listened and introduced changes. However, much more needs to be done if universal credit is to achieve its goals of transforming people’s lives in a positive way; encouraging and supporting them into work; and simplifying the welfare system.
I sense that at the outset, the sheer scale of the task of introducing universal credit was not recognised. It is a mammoth task that requires a complete change of mindset by everyone involved and the implementation of an enormous IT project. Some of the assumptions on which universal credit was based have been shown to be idealistic and could not be implemented in a fair way in the real world.
Jobcentres, citizens advice bureaux and councils have stepped up to the plate and really worked hard to get the new system working fairly and properly. As I said, the Government have been listening, and have introduced changes to improve the roll-out. They are right to adopt the test and learn approach, but more needs to be done to ensure that debt, which burdens people, causing distress and worry, does not unnecessarily build up. I shall quickly highlight five areas in which action is required to alleviate the albatross of arrears.
First, serious consideration needs to be given to abolishing the five-week wait for universal credit. The think-tank Bright Blue has concluded that the initial waiting period is a design feature that is inherently flawed. Secondly, the feedback that I am receiving from constituents is that the lack of transitional protection for former recipients of the severe disability premium is pushing claimants into debt. The Government need to get on with addressing that.
Thirdly, universal credit needs to be adapted to address the needs of those on zero-hours contracts. Quite often, such work is heavily affected by the weather, and during lull periods, in which people claim universal credit, the delay in payments leads to an inescapable spiral of debt, which is never paid off from one season to another.
Fourthly, there is compelling evidence from organisations supporting those facing domestic violence that the single payment arrangements are putting the victims of domestic violence at added risk, with perpetrators having universal credit payments paid into their own bank accounts. That means that they can use the money as a tool for coercive control. To address that, universal credit payments should be separate by default.
Finally, East Suffolk Citizens Advice has advised me that the Department for Work and Pensions does not provide it with feedback when it makes a request for assistance with the journal of a client whom it is supporting. I appreciate that there are data protection requirements, but that issue needs to be fully addressed if universal support is to be fully effective.
I commend both the Minister and the relatively new Secretary of State—I hope that she stays in her post—for listening and responding. I acknowledge that theirs is a difficult task, but I urge them to take on board the further feedback from this debate. For the sake of the vulnerable people who rely on universal credit, we must get it right.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on an absolutely outstanding opening speech. There is not much more that one can say. However, I will pick up on a few points.
To understand the rise in poverty that people are facing across the country—not in isolated areas, as some on the Government side would like to say—we need look no further than social security policies, unfortunately, and universal credit is a key aspect of that. The Child Poverty Action Group said back in 2015 that an additional 1 million children would be living in poverty. Just a couple of weeks ago, Policy in Practice estimated, on behalf of the Children’s Commissioner, that half of low-income households would lose nearly £3,500 a year, which will see child poverty double. The figure is already at 4 million—three quarters of the children living in poverty are from working families—and it is set to double. That is down to three social security policies: the two-child limit, the benefits cap and universal credit—particularly, as my hon. Friend said, the five-week wait, and the repayment not just of the advance loan but of other debts.
We recognise the intervention in last autumn’s Budget, but it is paltry compared with the £12 billion that was cut in the 2015 summer Budget. It did not go even halfway to restoring what was cut. It is still the case that 40% of people on UC will be and are worse off—this applies especially to disabled people; 1 million disabled people are worse off under universal credit—by nearly £2,000. It also applies to the self-employed and single parents; they are all worse off as a result of universal credit. We have touched on the natural migration that is happening, separately from managed migration, as a result of a change in circumstances.
The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, said last month that the UK’s poorest people face lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. He accused Ministers of being in a state of denial about the impact of policies, including the roll-out of universal credit, and referred to the “systematic immiseration” of a significant part of the British population. I know that his comments have caused some consternation on the Government side, but we have only to look at Westminster tube station to see our homeless people. Two thirds of those in homeless refuges are people who have issues with universal credit. We all have constituency cases—I shall mention a few if that is okay, Sir Henry—of people who are really suffering.
Sally is a single mum who moved out to escape an abusive relationship. Due to her change in circumstances, she has lost £400 from her universal credit. Katie’s employers made a mess of their returns, and she was left with £67 to live on. It was her employer’s error. She said:
“Every time I call they just say there’s nothing they can do and I just have to wait for a decision. Please help me as I’m at the end of hope!”
June was in receipt of employment and support allowance with a severe disability premium. Again due to a change in circumstances, she lost £300 a month. Karen works for the Greater Manchester police and has a two-year-old daughter. She was told by the jobcentre that universal credit would pay for 85% of her childcare. She had to pay it up front, but she was still waiting six months later. That is unacceptable, and it is happening up and down the country.
The Minister will be aware that universal credit has a bad press. In debates such as this, it is our job to draw attention to the dire circumstances that people are facing. There are also rumours, based on leaked emails, that there is a planned propaganda exercise to try to restore the public’s faith in universal credit. I would be grateful if the Minister could address that. I have gone over my time, so I will end there.
Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)
I am afraid we will now have to move to a two-minute limit on speeches.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I congratulate the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on securing this debate.
In Inverness and the highlands, we have had universal credit for six years. Thanks to the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, we were already suffering from austerity. There was one food bank in Inverness. With the addition of universal credit, problems rocketed. We now have a food bank in every quarter of the city and beyond. My constituents face choosing between buying clothes for their children, switching on the heating and putting food on the table.
Other hon. Members will recommend changes, but given the extremely limited time that I have, I will focus on the debt accumulated for every single household in Highland, and give a warning to hon. Members who are dealing with universal credit in their constituency case-loads. Highland Council has incurred debts, directly attributed to universal credit, of £2.5 million. Of those debts, £600,000 is directly due to administrative costs resulting from universal credit. The details of those costs have been provided to the Minister and the UK Government. They have said in written answers to questions that no council should bear an additional burden or debt as a result of universal credit, yet it is a fact that this debt is out there.
It is incumbent on the Minister and his Government to sort this out now for the people of the highlands, to repay the money that those people are due, and to ensure that councils across the rest of Scotland, and the other nations of the UK, are not similarly burdened. This shambolic roll-out of universal credit continues to cause harm in people’s homes and to their health, and to harm those who are not directly involved in universal credit.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Sir Henry. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) for securing this debate, and for her excellent speech setting out the issues. In the time I have, it is not possible to repeat the arguments, but it is clear from the experiences hon. Members have related, from all parts of the United Kingdom, that universal credit is not working.
The Trussell Trust is heavily involved in this debate, and it supports the points put by my hon. Friend, particularly regarding the five-week wait. This subject comes up frequently. In both Houses in the past year, there have been 1,858 references, 70 debates, seven written statements and two Divisions on universal credit, yet we do not seem to be any further forward.
The overwhelming majority of experiences quoted in debates and put forward in questions about universal credit are negative. There is no doubt that it is increasing hardship. The Government must recognise the problems being caused. It has been suggested that it is a flexible and personalised system offering unprecedented support, but that is clearly not the case. We need firm action from Ministers, not just assurances about mitigating the worst effects.
In the few seconds remaining, I ask the Minister whether he thinks it is reasonable, when people are facing such dreadful financial hardship, for the Department to spend over £23 million advertising universal credit in a single newspaper, the Metro? I feel that is a shocking waste of money. [Interruption.] I have received a written parliamentary answer from the Department showing that it is true. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) for bringing this debate. As I often do, I will give a quick example. A troubled young man from my constituency, from a good family, is unable to deal with his social situation and finds himself sleeping rough. As he is a new claimant, he has to move on to universal credit. He goes to the housing executive, which tells him that he is not a priority, and to self-refer to a hostel. He depends on his family.
I want to put on record that the staff at the Ards benefits office—Frances, the manager, Lee and Donna—are tremendous and exceptional. If every person had such people to respond to them, it would be very helpful. They do their best to help, but they can only do what the system allows them to do.
Due to problems in the past, my constituent is already paying £10 a week out of his jobseeker’s allowance, and £40 a month comes off his housing benefit, which leaves him with £30 to live on. Internet is essential for those making online claims. What if somebody cannot use the library or another place with wi-fi? He waits five weeks for a claim that is not even back paid. What if he did not have a loving family, doing what no one would expect them to do for a 40-year-old man? Is this system working? I say to the Minister: it is not—far from it.
I meet people with severe and immediate financial hardship every day. Nearly a quarter—24%—of all universal credit claimants have a deduction of above 20% of their standard allowance. Research by StepChange found that even a deduction of 5% would push nearly half of StepChange clients on benefits into a negative budget. When a 40% deduction is applied—these are serious figures—70% will be pushed into a negative budget.
I ask the Minister: can we give staff such as Frances, Lee and Donna in the social security office in Newtownards the opportunity to read a situation, and allow them the discretion to allow past bad debt to be repaid at a nominal rate? We should understand that the private sector does not understand the bedroom tax, and rent does not come down to what the Government say it should be. It just does not work.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on her speech. It is a fact that more people who go on to universal credit are seeking debt advice. In my constituency, 90% of new claimants in social housing go into rent arrears. Of those, 60% go into arrears of over £600. Those who can least afford the benefits freeze have been hit the hardest by it. We have talked about the five-week wait and the advances. [Interruption.]
Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)
Order. We have a Division. I will suspend the sitting for 15 minutes, assuming there is one Division. We can resume with the hon. Lady when we come back.
Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)
Order. The debate will now conclude at 12 minutes past 4.
Yvonne Fovargue
Thank you, Sir Henry. I was talking about the five-week wait and advances. Even with a 30% payment back, 65% of StepChange clients who are in debt will still have problems paying. They will still have problems paying their gas, electricity and other bills. I want to ask the Minister how advisers ensure that repayments are affordable. I believe that there are safeguards, but I have never heard what they are. Do they use a single financial statement, as most creditors do? Do they look at other debts? We know that many people on universal credit who have had the five-week wait have other debts. They have gone to high-cost lenders and owe on the gas and electricity.
I also want to ask the Minister whether the debts to Departments are included in the proposed breathing space scheme. That would be a help. At least it would give people time to work it out, but unless the DWP accepts affordable repayments, even that will not help people on universal credit who are being forced into debt. I have always said that simplifying the system was a great aim, but people’s lives are not simple, and the people I am talking about are the ones who can least afford a bump in the road. Throwing people into debt makes life more complicated. It makes more people go to the doctor with mental health problems and depression, and eventually it costs the state more.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
This is a great opportunity for the Minister—a valuable chance to hear from different constituencies about the situation of those claiming benefits through universal credit.
Gloucester’s experience broadly mirrors that of the country over the past 18 months. The roll-out has steadily expanded. By February, just over 4,000 people were on universal credit. That represents 26% of our population—slightly more than the 24% figure for Great Britain as a whole, and marginally less than the figure for the south-west region, which is 27%. The figures have continued to rise and I suspect in Gloucester it is now close to 5,000 people.
I pay tribute to the staff of Jobcentre Plus, especially the work coaches, who are implementing the policy and working closely with my office when constituents have difficulties. It is of course true that there are difficulties, and 117 of my constituents have been in touch with me and my office about issues. The vast majority of them are having difficulties with application forms. One of my staff, who is dyslexic, did the form herself. It took her seven minutes. I have tested it myself and it took me marginally longer, but broadly the application form is challenging only for those without personal internet access or much experience of digital processing. That, of course, is why the contract with Citizens Advice is so important.
I shall briefly share the Citizens Advice experience of UC inquiries, which is important. First, the calculation of benefit entitlements is more transparent than under legacy benefits, which is, of course, a significant improvement. Secondly, with the exception of those in receipt of disability benefits, it sees little difference between UC and legacy benefits. Thirdly, the increased availability of advance payments has improved the situation, but further flexibility would, it is noted, be beneficial. The last comment is that it is fairly commonly recognised that those in receipt of disability benefits are worse off than they would be under the previous system. Perhaps the Minister could comment on that. In my experience the situation is varied. People suffering from multiple sclerosis have quite often received greater benefits than previously, so there seems to be a little variation from disability to disability.
Clearly, debt is an important issue. Large numbers of our constituents have debt issues. More research is needed on how those debt issues arise and why so many people have so much debt when they come on to universal credit. That is, of course, a wider issue than universal credit itself.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
I shall be very brief. I know that there are many aspects to universal credit, but I want to focus on the in-built five-week wait, which is pushing people into severe hardship and is cruel in the extreme. To say that advance payments address that is simply disingenuous, since those payments are unaffordable loans by another name, offering claimants the Hobson’s choice of hardship now or hardship later. That must urgently be addressed.
The loans have to be repaid and take no account of people’s ability to repay them. That is how other loans work, but the DWP advance payment loans have repayments set at a fixed level, which can be hard to challenge even if people fall into financial hardship while trying to repay them. Renegotiating repayment levels is rare, but even if someone manages it, they are by that time already likely to be in serious financial difficulty with other bills.
The debt that people are pushed into can sometimes overwhelm them, or can undermine them so much that entering or sustaining employment becomes a much greater challenge, as people are forced to rely on food banks. The only way to deal with that pernicious aspect of universal credit is to remove the need for bridging loans by ending the five-week wait. There should be a single, non-refundable assessment payment for all claimants during the five-week wait period, with immediate effect.
If the Minister does nothing else today, or during his time with his current portfolio, he can and should do one thing: abolish the five-week wait. By doing so, he could make life much easier for many households who are struggling under the system as it is currently designed.
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on securing the debate.
There is an argument for a simplified benefit system, but what we know of universal credit is that it has led to many cases where people are trapped in further poverty owing to the way the system is administered. In its current form, it is causing too much hardship and stress. Every week my constituency office, like many others, supports local people who have been placed in difficult situations. I also work closely with the citizens advice bureau, providing support jointly to constituents in need of advice and support. According to my local citizens advice bureau, the issue of universal credit was raised with it on 1,882 occasions last year. I think that that highlights the scale of the need.
I want to mention advance payments. Because of the wait before people get their first payment, many fall into debt. People clearly need the advance in the initial period, as they have no money to live. However, the repayments are often too high and that leads to continuing debt problems, which cause anxiety and stress. There is much confusion about the repayment period for advance payments. In my constituency, although the maximum period is 12 months, I have heard of cases where repayment is expected within three months. Again, that causes further debt, anxiety and stress. Claimants have a choice of repayment period up to a maximum of 12 months, and up to 40% of their claim.
As we have heard this afternoon, the Government are planning changes to the repayment period, which will be a maximum of 16 months, with deductions of no more than 30% of the claim. Those changes are in the right direction, but they do not go far enough. We have heard more today about looking at other debts, and that is an avenue that it is important to explore. The disappointing thing is that we have to wait until the end of the year for the changes to take effect.
I ask the Minister to give us clarity about the changes and to make them a lot sooner. People need help now, because they are in debt now. They are using food banks more than ever. Will the Minister and the Government take note and take action as soon as possible?
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Henry.
This debate is in stark contrast to the advertisements for universal credit that we see in certain newspapers. Those adverts should not include a DWP or universal credit logo; those advertisements would not look out of place in an episode of “Jackanory”. As a constituent pointed out to me yesterday, one advertisement mentioned the advance payment, but did not say it was a loan. Does that advance come in wrapping paper and ribbon? The advance payment is a loan, and the Government cannot keep denying that or saying that it is something else. That loan is adding to universal credit debt, as is the five-week wait. As has been said, many of those leaving work were paid weekly or fortnightly, and they then have to wait five weeks. People are refusing the advance because it is a loan.
Some 60% of those with debt reductions are not getting the help they need from creditors, so they are borrowing more money. Those with deductions on universal credit are becoming more reliant on foodbanks, and Scottish Welfare Fund crisis grants are increasing all the time as a result. Some 40% of those with deductions are also behind with other household bills, such as food or fuel—it is a circle. My great fear is that the Government are not following Cabinet Office guidelines on debt collection, and that this is become a loan shark’s charter. This is a serious issue, and I hope that the Minister and his Department will get a grip on how they deal with debts and universal credit.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on securing this important debate. With the best will in the world, this seems to have become a state-devised system that, by its design, drives people into gross financial hardship. We have heard about the difficulties of the five-week wait, and about the 40% repayment rate on any debt that occurs. We have not talked about the advance up-front costs of childcare payments and the 85% payment that can be obtained through universal credit.
My constituent is 21. She is a single parent and has an apprenticeship in a doctor’s surgery. She is paid the lower apprenticeship rate, and takes home just £111 a week. She has to pay her childcare upfront. The element of childcare provision in her UC was suspended, and because she obviously required that childcare, she ended up with more than £2,000 of debt. Only the fact that her parents could bail her out helped her through that difficult situation, and an intervention from my office subsequently got that money repaid.
How can we have a system that drives people into debt? There is undoubtedly a link between the two things. It could be rental debt; a local housing association stated that after the launch of universal credit its rent arrears increased immediately, and that as of June 2018, UC claimants accounted for 40% of its overall rent debt. That cannot be allowed to continue. In 2009-10, 350 people used the local food bank, but recent figures suggest that that number is now 2,525. That food bank is now so overburdened that it will have to close to focus on its core system—something has to change.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I also wanted to mention childcare payments, but I will write to the Minister separately and concentrate my remarks on tax credit debt.
Three weeks ago, I was told in an answer to a parliamentary question that 255,000 claimants—one in six universal credit claimants—had received a deduction for alleged historical tax credit overpayments. Last week, in widely reported coverage, Citizens Advice stated that the figure was actually 410,000, which is closer to a quarter of all claimants. Will the Minister clarify that point and say which figure is most accurate? Even the lower figure of a quarter of a million overpayments and the associated debt, as a result of problems within HMRC that are perhaps years old or involve arbitrarily fixed rates that do not reflect people’s wider circumstances, are a real problem. Crucially, many people do not know that they can challenge that overpayment, and its impact is considerable.
I urge the Minister to put in place a new minimum repayment threshold for all non-fraud overpayments or other DWP debt. That threshold should genuinely reflect living costs and not discourage claimants from seeking work. There must be flexibility to consider individual circumstances, and claimants should be encouraged to complete income and expenditure forms, and only be asked to pay what they can afford. No family should ever receive less than their standard allowance or be worse off in employment, and no family should be forced into greater debt by the actions of the DWP.
Jo Platt (Leigh) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on securing this debate. Leigh has been a pilot area for universal credit since 2013, so as a representative of a northern town with extensive experience of universal credit, I can say with certainty and after countless surgeries that it is driving people into poverty, into food banks, and into debt.
We know that universal credit is not working because a recent report by the Association of Retained Council Housing found that in the north of England, 75% of universal credit households were in arrears, compared with 39% of non-universal credit households. In our local authority, universal credit tenants have £1.9 million of rent arrears, which is a shocking £534 per tenant on average. Those are not isolated cases; that is caused by the failing system. With a 97% likelihood of local universal credit claimants falling into arrears, only a total and fundamental overhaul of our welfare system will suffice.
The hard reality facing those going on to universal credit is a choice between a lengthy delay for the first payment or an unaffordable loan that only kicks the can of financial hardship further down the road. Since universal credit was introduced in Leigh, my mailbox has been full of individuals desperate to receive assistance because, through no fault of their own, they have found themselves let down by a system that is so complicated that they struggle to navigate it. How do the Government respond? The Minister can take one of two paths: either he will listen to the facts, stories and experts, or he will follow the Chancellor’s example and claim there is no crisis. For the sake of my constituents who are tackling mounting debt, I sincerely hope he will choose the former path.
Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on securing this debate, on her fantastic speech, and on her fantastic, dedicated work on welfare. She is a tireless campaigner.
As many of today’s contributions and evidence from Citizens Advice Scotland have shown, debt is built into the universal credit system. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) spoke about survivors of domestic abuse, and I too wish to focus on that important area. Survivors of domestic abuse often flee relationships with little or no resources, and often after being subjected to economic abuse. For them, the five-week wait is particularly damaging. Although advances are available, that is a loan that must be paid back.
The charity Refuge recommends that survivors of domestic abuse be exempt from repaying advances, as the initial period after fleeing an abusive relationship can be costly. People often have to buy a lot of possessions and set up a new home and a new life. If they have to repay an advance, their future income will be heavily reduced. I hope the Minister will consider that issue and tell me his thoughts.
As I have highlighted previously, single household payments can easily be used by coercive or abusive partners to trap people in an abusive relationship. Rent arrears accumulated under single payments mean that survivors have restricted options when they are fleeing, and it is common for landlords to refuse to accept tenants who have arrears, even if those arrears were accrued due to domestic abuse. That huge issue must be ironed out.
I wanted to talk about some constituency cases today, but I do not have time. The constituency cases that we raise time and again in respect of universal credit are not unique; this is happening everywhere. This issue is raised on the doorsteps, in our surgeries and with our neighbours. It is such a huge issue and I am fed up with speaking about this cruel system that does not work. The Government must take their fingers out of their ears and stop defending it. They must work with Members across the House who have spoken up about this issue, stop this system and rehaul it once and for all.
Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)
Before I call the SNP spokesman, I thank right hon. and hon. Members for showing so much restraint. The Opposition spokesmen can now go from eight minutes to 10 minutes. I call Mr Neil Gray.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Thank you, Sir Henry. It is a pleasure to serve under your astute chairmanship, which has allowed a bit of latitude in the debate and for so many voices to be heard. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) for securing the debate. She covered a lot of ground in her speech and I will try my best to sum up her contribution and the other important contributions that have been made.
The hon. Lady spoke about deductions being taken, apparently at random. I totally agree. She also mentioned carer’s allowance. She may not be aware that in Scotland we have looked to do something different on carer’s allowance. We are uprating carer’s allowance to better acknowledge, in some small way, the great work that carers do in our society. I encourage her to look at that.
The hon. Lady was right to say that universal credit has improved. There have been some improvements of late, and I am sure she would agree that the changes appear to acknowledge some of the problems that we have all been campaigning on, but do not go the full distance in terms of resolving the problems that are clearly still there—for instance, the two-child policy, the benefit freeze and the five-week wait. I will come back to some of those. She was also right to highlight the so-called major budget interventions that were made by the Government on universal credit. They do not come close to making up for the cuts that were made to it in the 2015 Budget, which made it almost unrecognisable from what was originally envisaged. I commend the hon. Lady on her speech.
The hon. Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for Midlothian (Danielle Rowley) touched on the issue of separate payments. The Scottish Government and the previous Administration in Northern Ireland have looked to try to resolve that, and I would encourage the UK Government to look at that again and to stop insisting on charging for that.
The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) is an authoritative voice on the subject, and it was good to see her here. She was right to draw on the evidence put forward by Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty. The UK Government have chosen to attack him personally, rather than to address the issues that he has quite legitimately raised.
My hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) has possibly the greatest experience of us all on the impact of universal credit. He was right to raise the issue of the £2.5 million debt that Highland Council now finds itself in, and the £600,000 in administration costs that the UK Government should be paying up for. Of course, it is a triple whammy: UK Government austerity on public finances, UK Government austerity on personal finances and now the local authorities have that added burden on their services.
As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) did, I commend DWP staff, who try to resolve the issues we raise with them. They do their best to deal with those issues within the stringent policies implemented by UK Ministers.
The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) was absolutely right about advanced childcare costs—I have had many similar cases. I find it incredible that universal credit is paid in arrears, yet the bills that people have to pay on childcare must largely be paid in advance.
The hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) looked to paint a particular picture on universal credit. I encourage him to look at the Citizens Advice Scotland report and briefing that was available ahead of the debate. I think it would contradict and enlighten him greatly.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) pre-empted much of what I have to say on the five-week wait. I appreciate her intervention. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) dissected the DWP’s propaganda regarding universal credit that has been out of late.
I also commend the hon. Members for Easington (Grahame Morris), Bristol South (Karin Smyth), Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), Leigh (Jo Platt) and Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones). This has been a very broad debate, with many good contributions.
As has already been highlighted, there are a number of issues at play on universal credit and debt. I am grateful to Scope, Shelter, the Child Poverty Action Group, StepChange and Citizens Advice Scotland for their briefings.
The first issue is the five-week wait. I appreciate that the Government have at least partially acknowledged that there is a problem, by looking to extend certain legacy benefits and to expand advance payments. However, much of the run-on for legacy benefits will not happen until next year, and no run-on help is available for those who are in touch with universal credit for the first time. Those fixes are not in themselves going to solve the problem, as the evidence from CPAG and Citizens Advice Scotland confirms. That is why I have asked Ministers to look at making what is now the assessment for an advance the first UC assessment, and making the advance essentially the first payment. If the recipient is shown to need the money at that point, why would the Government deny them that as part of universal credit, rather than financially penalising them for months after? I do not think there would be a major cost implication, other than to shift payments to the front end of the claim instead of further down the line.
Payment of housing costs to landlords is a major issue for both tenants and landlords. My local authority, North Lanarkshire Council, is having serious problems with the inflexibility of the current system on when rent payments are made. That means that I have received loads of cases where council tenants are getting chased for rent arrears, when the delay is in fact caused by the DWP. The DWP has acknowledged that issue, but there is no date for when it will move from a four-weekly to a monthly payment system. I encourage the DWP to work with local authorities and other housing providers to establish a more flexible system that enables them to know for certain when rent is to be paid.
The benefit freeze has already been raised. It is having a major impact on indebtedness as part of universal credit. While most working-age benefits have been frozen for four years, living costs have risen sharply with higher than anticipated levels of inflation. There is not an expectation that the freeze will continue beyond this financial year, but the Treasury is going to more than recoup its estimated savings from the policy this year. Quite frankly, low-income families have paid more than their fair share towards this Government’s policies and the benefit freeze should have ended this year. What estimate have the Government made of the impact that their benefit freeze has had on low-income families and poverty levels? What other detrimental impacts has it had?
Direct deduction rates must be looked at again. The hon. Member for High Peak was right to focus on that issue. If only DWP policy were to match that of the Cabinet Office, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West said, which advocates fairness in debt collection and an understanding of the impact that debt collection processes have on people. As the hon. Member for High Peak said, that could start with the DWP understanding what debt repayments are actually for, so as to better understand the circumstances that the DWP Ministers should have a duty of care to support.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
Does my hon. Friend not think it absolutely shocking that if a terminal patient accrues debt, that passes on to their family? People should be defined by their medical definition and not the arbitrary six months that exists at the moment.
Neil Gray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, she will know that a different system is being created for that in Scotland. I ask the Minister to look at the definition of terminal illness that has been adopted by the Scottish social security agency, which I think would help to deal with some of these problems.
Currently, deductions for indebtedness can be up to 40% of the standard allowance, and the Government are looking to reduce that to 30%. If we accept that the standard allowance is barely enough for anyone to live on in the first place—figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation show that adults without children on UC receive only 40% of the minimum income standard, while adults with children get just 60%—reducing that by a third is just going to exacerbate indebtedness. Most people would struggle if their income was reduced by a third without warning or negotiation, but I also acknowledge that there is a debt, so some effort must be made to repay it. There should be an affordability test and discussions in advance of a deduction being applied, and the recipient should be afforded expert advice and advocacy during that process. That surely has to happen if the DWP is going to give people help and breathing space for indebtedness.
As part of the summer pilot, the Government should consult extensively with key stakeholders, the devolved Governments and the expert charities, and those in receipt of universal credit themselves, particularly disabled people, to make sure that the system is got right and that no one is further impoverished as a result of universal credit.
Speakers from across the House have demonstrated in this debate, once again, that universal credit is still not working. It is time for the Government to listen, to restore and expand the funding available to universal credit and to fix the inbuilt technical issues and flaws that have been raised today and previously, which are contributing to a rise in food bank use and the impoverishment of those both in and out of work.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Thank you, Sir Henry; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
[James Gray in the Chair]
Mike Amesbury
Very briefly.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) for securing this vital debate on universal credit, and for all that she does. The debate’s importance has been powerfully illustrated by the presence of 26 Members in this Chamber.
As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, universal credit was supposedly designed to be the flagship policy of a reformed welfare system that would protect the most vulnerable in our society, support people into work and act as a safety net for those who needed it most. However, as hon. Members’ speeches today have shown, the experience for hundreds of thousands of our constituents has been chaos and hardship, sometimes resulting in tragic circumstances.
What was once hailed as a simplified, holistic and supportive social security reform has become nothing more than a vehicle for cuts. The political choice of austerity has taken more than £37 billion from the welfare state, while giving more than £110 billion of tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals and rich corporations. While the Chancellor looks around and claims to be blind to the poverty that many of us witnessed as we walked into Westminster this morning, the record 1.6 million emergency food parcels that were given out last year alone and the 4.1 million children who are in poverty tell a different story—one that should shame every single one of us in this House.
Riverside, a major social housing provider nationally and in my constituency, has provided me with a case study that illustrates the systemic failure of universal credit on the frontline. The couple involved, who do not wish to give their names because of the sensitive circumstances, said:
“Me and my partner have had so much Universal Credit taken off us, that we are struggling to get gas, electric and food, on a monthly basis, we have tried weekly and that was even worse, the money that we are on makes having a home difficult…so we are having to visit the food bank more regularly.”
That is just one among many cases that have been highlighted in this Chamber today. The changes and cuts to the local housing allowance have helped to drive rent arrears up to alarming levels. According to Shelter, two in five renters in the private sector are having to borrow money. Minister, that needs to change.
It would be easy for the Government to try to dismiss such cases and statistics as cherry-picking from Opposition MPs; in fact, a previous Secretary of State referred to them as “fake news”. But what about the findings of the United Nations rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, who last month published his third and perhaps most damning view of the Government’s welfare policies, stating that our country’s poorest residents face lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”? What about the independent End Child Poverty coalition’s finding that child poverty is the “new normal” in some of the most deprived parts of Britain, with half a million more children living in poverty now than in 2010?
The Trussell Trust has found that when universal credit goes live in an area, food bank demand increases by a massive 52%. The trust’s figures show that a fifth of all referrals to food banks last year were linked to delays in receiving benefits, almost half of which related directly to universal credit. The Minister will claim that advance payments are available to universal credit claimants, so no one should go hungry for lack of cash. However, it has rightly been pointed out in this debate that those are loans that have to be paid back, which means debt on top of debt for the 60% of claimants who are forced down that route.
The five-week delay in payments must end. The system must be reformed. Will the Minister listen to the plethora of organisations that hon. Members have cited today, such as Shelter, Mind, the Child Poverty Action Group and the Riverside housing association? The monthly payments design of universal credit does not reflect the reality of many people’s lives or how they manage their money. A Resolution Foundation study found that most people moving from employment were paid either fortnightly or weekly in their previous job. The research highlighted the fact that people who claim universal credit are often not made aware of alternative payment arrangements to help people who are struggling to manage their own money, and do not always receive them when they apply.
In January, the Secretary of State announced her intention to improve the provision of alternative payment arrangements, make it easier for private renters to have payments made directly to landlords, and test ways to make more frequent payments to more people who struggle with monthly budgeting. Will the Minister tell us what progress has been made on that?
As we have heard today, it is not just advance payments that can lead to deductions from universal credit, but other bills too. Indeed, up to 40% of the universal credit monthly standard allowance can currently be deducted for repayment of advances, utility bill debts and rent and council tax arrears. More than half of universal credit claims had a deduction; as my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak pointed out, that is 844,000 people. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of debt repayments on levels of hardship among universal credit claimants?
According to Citizens Advice, a single person over 25 who claims universal credit can see £127 deducted from their benefits every month to repay existing debts. If the Government are determined to help people to manage their debts, why is their own Department making deductions that often push claimants into hardship?
Mr Sweeney
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. In a recent roving surgery, I visited a constituent who was suffering so much with mental health problems that he was unable even to face opening the letters that he received. He therefore did not receive the information about his situation and was subject to severe sanctions and reductions. He could have challenged them because of his situation, but the DWP was unable even to engage with him to assess the risk that he faced. As a result, he was suicidal. It is absolutely shocking what is going on.
Mike Amesbury
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful contribution that shows the need for more compassion and flexibility in the system. It is clear from the evidence and from this debate that initial decisions to apply deductions follow rigid rules and rates and do not include an affordability test. Will the Minister introduce an affordability test for deductions, particularly multiple deductions, to ensure that nobody is pushed into poverty or destitution?
The Government’s stock response to criticism of their welfare policies is to deny that there is even a problem, but their talk of a jobs miracle is nothing more than a mirage to many people who struggle on zero-hours contracts or in low-paid and part-time employment, with wages not even at 2008 levels. The same attitude is on display again in the new “Universal credit uncovered” propaganda campaign, with newspaper ads—seemingly designed to look like journalism—that aim to explode what are perceived to be media myths about universal credit and set the record straight, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) pointed out. It is perhaps telling that one charity has already reported the campaign to the Advertising Standards Authority. As we have heard today, these are not myths. They are facts, which illustrate a social security system that is failing—a system hollowed out by cruel cuts.
In conclusion, I call on the Minister to halt managed migration in its entirety, end the five-week wait, stop punitive sanctions, introduce split payments, restore the local housing allowance to at least the bottom 30th percentile, pay 85% of childcare support up front, stop the benefits freeze and the immoral two-child limit, and properly fund a compassionate social security system.
The Minister for Employment (Alok Sharma)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, in this very important debate secured by the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George). Whatever our political differences, I am happy to acknowledge that she and indeed all the hon. Members who have spoken care very deeply about their constituents. I want to be clear that I want to ensure that every single person who is claiming universal credit gets the support that they absolutely deserve.
Let me start by setting out where we are with universal credit. Last year, universal credit completed its roll-out to all jobcentres across the country. We now have just under 2 million people claiming this benefit, and all new entrants to the benefits system now claim universal credit.
I entirely agree that we must ensure that we provide support through the welfare system to the most vulnerable. I am pleased that colleagues from all parties, including the hon. Member for High Peak, have acknowledged that changes have been made. My hon. Friends the Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous), and for Gloucester (Richard Graham), talked about the fabulous work being done by work coaches in our jobcentres.
As colleagues will know, in the last two Budgets, we announced changes to universal credit worth an additional £6 billion. I do not like to introduce rancour into this type of debate, and I am always open to discussion, but I gently point out that on those occasions, Opposition Members did not vote to support that extra money going into the system.
In the 2017 Budget, we announced a two-week run-on for those on housing benefit, the removal of the seven-day waiting period, and the ability for a claimant to get up to 100% of their estimated first-period payment as an advance, on the same day if needed. In last year’s Budget, among other measures, we announced increases to work allowances worth £1.7 billion a year. Colleagues touched on the additional run-on; from July 2020, there will be a two-week run-on of Department for Work and Pensions out-of-work legacy benefits for existing claimants who are being moved on to universal credit.
Alok Sharma
The hon. Gentleman will know that we inherited dire financial circumstances from the Opposition—I know that colleagues will not be happy at my mentioning that—and that is why we had to make difficult decisions. However, if Labour Members want more money introduced, then when that money is made available in Budgets, they should support those Budgets.
I will go back to the point about payments, including advance payments. I highlight that advances are interest-free.
Alok Sharma
I am sorry that the hon. Lady is unhappy, but that is a statement of fact.
Alok Sharma
Also, individuals will receive that money as an advance to their universal credit payment, so they will receive 13 payments over a 12-month period. I make it absolutely clear once again that, as I hope colleagues will acknowledge, these are interest-free advances. Of course, from October this year, the Government will reduce the maximum rate—
Alok Sharma
I will not, as there is quite a lot to get through.
From this October, the Government will reduce the maximum rate at which deductions can be made from a universal credit award from 40% to 30% of the standard allowance. By the end of 2019-20, it is forecast that around 290,000 universal credit households will have had deductions reduced, by an average of £295 over the year. It is already possible to extend the period over which advances are repaid to 15 months in certain circumstances, and of course, as Members have acknowledged, from October 2021, the maximum period will be extended to 16 months for all claimants.
One issue not touched on in the debate was payment timeliness, but it is worth pointing out that it has been raised in previous debates, certainly during my time as a Minister. Payment timeliness has improved significantly. We now pay around 85% of new claimants of universal credit in full on time. In addition, 95% of claimants are paid in full within five weeks of their payment due date. If there are delays in making the first payment, that can be due to outstanding verification issues, such as the need to provide bank statements or proof of rent. It can also be due to a claimant not signing their claimant commitment. For ongoing claims, payment timeliness is around 98%.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), raised the issue of employment. The whole point of simplifying the welfare system is to remove the cliff edges and the disincentives to take on work and extra hours that existed under the legacy benefit system. We now offer claimants one-to-one support to help them to move into work.
I hope that colleagues will acknowledge that we are seeing record rates of employment, month after month. The shadow Minister talked about zero-hours contracts, but he will know that less than 3% of people in employment in the UK are on zero-hours contracts. That figure has fallen this year. Indeed, those on zero-hours contracts are doing about 24 hours of work a week on average.
We have recognised that we need to provide a consistently high level of support to those who may have difficulties in making a universal credit claim. That is why we announced our partnership with Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland, which are now funded to provide the “help to claim” service for claimants.
In the past, a number of colleagues have spoken about debt advice. They will know that debt advice is now fully funded by the financial services levy, and that service delivery is commissioned by the Money and Pensions Service, which was launched in January this year. In 2019-20, MaPS will provide around 560,000 sessions of debt advice in England. It is also worth noting that in addition to the funding that Citizens Advice receives for the “help to claim” service, it will, like other organisations, receive additional funding from MaPS to provide debt advice.
A number of colleagues raised the issue of rent arrears. I point out that a report published in July 2018 by the National Federation of ALMOs, or arms-length management organisations, showed that over three quarters of their tenants who had started claiming universal credit were already behind with their rent prior to commencing their claim. Also, research that we have carried out shows that the proportion of universal credit claimants who were in arrears at the start of their claim fell by a third after four months. In the universal credit full service claimant survey, which was published by the DWP in June 2018, 84% of claimants said that they felt confident about managing and paying their housing costs.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester raised the issue of rent arrears and asked what further work we were doing on it. I can confirm that we are carrying out further analysis with a number of housing providers to investigate and understand the true level of rent arrears among their tenants, and what is causing those arrears. Of course, when we have that information, we will publish it.
A number of colleagues raised the issue of tax credit debt. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs already seeks to recover overpayments of tax credit debts. When a claimant moves on to universal credit, any outstanding debt is transferred to the DWP for recovery. This does not include debt that is subject to ongoing disputes or appeals, and HMRC tells the claimant the amount of debt that is being transferred to the DWP for recovery. HMRC and the DWP continue to work closely to improve the claimant journey. This includes having a joint inquiry team to handle any issues that tax credit customers might experience during their move to universal credit. Of course, if claimants are struggling with the rate of repayment applied, they can ask the Department to review that rate.
A large number of points were made during the debate, so I say to hon. Members that if they want to meet me separately to discuss any points in more detail, I am very happy to do that, or they can write to me. However, in the remaining couple of minutes that I have, I will try to cover off some of the points made in the debate.
On the discussion about poverty, I point out that income inequality and absolute poverty are lower now than in 2010, and indeed the number of children—
Alok Sharma
I will not, because I literally have just a couple of minutes left. As I was saying, the number of children in workless households in the UK is down by 665,000 since 2010.
There was a discussion about homelessness. Since 2011, the Government have provided local authorities with about £1 billion in discretionary housing payments to protect the most vulnerable claimants. The hon. Member for High Peak raised the issue of how people know what deductions are being applied to them; that is shown in their statement, separately from the journal, and is available online. She also raised a point about deductions. I point out that if a claimant is subject to deductions to repay an overpayment, and those deductions are causing financial hardship, they can request a review of that rate by contacting the Department. Claimants have had their repayment rate lowered, temporarily suspended, or indeed both.
A number of colleagues also asked why we were not able to bring forward the 30% deduction rate on the standard allowance. The delivery date was chosen to achieve the best balance between continually improving universal credit in order to respond to claimant needs, and ensuring that the service is technically and operationally scalable as the volume of universal credit continues to rise. The hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) raised an issue about the breathing space scheme; the Department is supportive of that scheme, and officials are reviewing it to see how it could be applied to DWP debts. I would be very happy to sit down and talk with her further when more information is available.
A number of colleagues, including the shadow Minister, raised the issue of the Metro campaign. The whole point of the “Universal Credit Uncovered” campaign is to tackle common myths about universal credit. The Department has consulted the Advertising Standards Authority, and our adverts reflect its advice. To those Members who talked about the amount of money being spent on this campaign, I advise them that it is certainly not £23 million.
The issue of split payments was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney; as he knows, those are already available. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) raised the issue of Highland Council. He and I have met a number of times about this issue, and as he will know, my officials continue to engage with Highland Council about that point. Finally, the Scottish Government have themselves cut funding for Highland Council.
In conclusion, we are making changes that are benefiting claimants, but I am always happy to talk to colleagues about how we can do better.
Ruth George
I called on the Minister to bring forward some of the changes. I do not know whether he understood the waffle that his Department gave him to explain why that will not happen, but I would be very grateful to hear his proper explanation for it.
I thank everyone who has contributed, and the organisations for all their research and briefing. To anyone who is watching who is suffering under universal credit and the deductions that are being made, I say this: get advice, challenge those deductions, and come and see your MP about them. Let us get them sorted.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10 (6)).
Authorised Absence from School
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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James Gray (in the Chair)
Would Members leave the Chamber as quickly and quietly as they can, avoiding private conversations if at all possible? The level of interest in the absence from school debate is proved by the absence of Members from the Chamber.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered authorised absence from school.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.
I have raised this issue with the Minister many times, both in debates and directly. I have campaigned for the Government to review and change their policy for some time. I remain of the view that it is not the role of the state to dictate to parents what is right and best for their children; that should be decided in partnership between parents and the school. I wanted to raise the issue again today in the light of a number of recent developments and cases that have been brought to me, both by constituents and by parents elsewhere in the country.
Part of the problem is that although the Government say that absence from school should be authorised by headteachers only in exceptional circumstances, they do not provide clear guidance as to what constitutes an exceptional circumstance. That has led to a degree of confusion and complicated situations, as was highlighted recently by the climate change protests, during which thousands of schoolchildren took time away from school to attend the demonstrations. I am reliably informed—it has been reported—that many of those children were given authorised absence to miss classroom time in order to attend those protests. Leaving aside the point that I do not see how something can be called a strike when people have been given permission to be absent, parents should be able to expect some consistency in the application of the policy.
I do not have a problem with children missing time from the classroom to attend those demonstrations. Education is about far more than what takes place in our classrooms, and attending such events broadens children’s experiences and knowledge and gives them a wider view of the world, so it is incredibly beneficial to their education. However, I need to challenge the inconsistency. Headteachers have granted leave for children to attend those demonstrations, yet in many other cases that I am aware of, parents have requested authorised leave from school from headteachers for what most reasonable people would consider to be equally good reasons and have been denied.
I know of children who had been selected to compete at international level in their sport, yet their school refused to grant them leave to go and represent their country. I know of one child whose parent requested one day off school—the day before the school broke up for Christmas—so that he could fly to see his father who he had not seen for a year, yet the school refused that request for leave. There seems to be huge inconsistency in applying the rules, and I do not believe it should simply be down to headteachers to determine for which events or experiences it is appropriate for children to miss school. Making that decision should primarily be the responsibility of parents, in conjunction with the school.
The current policy came in in 2013. It was brought in through a statutory instrument and no impact assessment was carried out. As I have said many times to the Minister, the lack of an impact assessment was an oversight or a mistake by the Government. Until that time, a common-sense approach allowed headteachers discretion to decide when it was appropriate for children to be given leave to be absent from school for a number of reasons. I still argue that headteachers should be given that discretion, because they know the pupils, the families, the communities that they are part of, and the particular pressures and challenges that such a community might face. They are therefore best placed to make the decision in conjunction with the parents, rather than be dictated to centrally.
The rules are applied inconsistently across the UK. Fines are not imposed in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and even though fines are imposed in Wales, a report commissioned by the Welsh Government showed that they are not working. The number of unauthorised absences has gone up since 2013, particularly for family holidays, so the rules have not reduced the level of unauthorised absence in the way that was expected.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has secured this debate on an extremely important subject. At Timothy Hackworth School in my constituency, there are real worries that if it falls below 96% attendance, because a contagious disease or another perfectly valid reason pushes the number of absences up, Ofsted will mark it down. Will the Minister address the question of whether Ofsted is so inflexible that every school has to achieve 96%, irrespective of circumstance?
Steve Double
I am grateful for that intervention. I will probably elaborate further on the hon. Lady’s point, but she is absolutely right that the drive to attain an attendance level above everything else, with no recognition of the welfare of the children involved, seems to be overriding common sense. One headteacher told me recently in a meeting, “If our school was outstanding in every other respect, but we fell short of the attendance target, we would deemed as ‘requires improvement’ simply for missing the attendance target.” That situation seems bonkers to me. Rather than looking at the wider picture of what is right and best for our children, schools are being driven by the Ofsted inspection regime to focus on an attendance target above all else. I will cite a few examples showing how that has been detrimental to the wellbeing and welfare of children and families in our communities.
We now have a situation where parents who for perfectly legitimate reasons are unable to take a family holiday during the school holiday period are basically subject to an arbitrary tax imposed by the local authority for taking their children out of school. Is the Minister’s Department aware of how local authorities are spending that money? As far as I can see, literally tens of thousands of pounds is being collected by local authorities through these fines, yet no one seems to know how that money is spent. It would be reasonable for parents to know how the extra tax they are paying is being spent.
For many families, the fines are no deterrent, because they are less than the money they save by taking their children on holiday during term time. If having a cheaper holiday is their motivation, facing a fine is not a deterrent. What it does do is penalise the poorest families in our society. It is a regressive tax. In my constituency, many simply cannot afford a holiday in peak season. We are saying to those poorer families, “Because you cannot afford it, you cannot have a holiday unless you face this additional fine.” It is a regressive situation.
Additionally, the fine hits small business owners the hardest. I have many small business owners in my constituency, particularly in the tourism industry, who are simply unable to take time away from their business during the peak season. That is where they make their money. They are faced with either taking their children on holiday out of peak season when business is quieter and they can afford to have a week away, or not having a family holiday. I say respectfully to the Minister that any policy that hits the entrepreneurs and small business owners of our country in particular should have no place under a Conservative Government. We are targeting the very people we say we stand up for.
A key point that I want to make is that the policy is clearly incredibly unpopular with parents. I am grateful to the parliamentary digital engagement team, which put out some public engagement on social media ahead of the debate. We have seen literally tens of thousands of responses. Mumsnet posted it, and it was the post that attracted the most attention in the whole month of May.
Many parents clearly feel strongly about the policy, but my key point is that it damages the relationship between parents—the family—and the school. It pits one against the other. I was a school governor for 19 years. Sadly, I had to step away from that when I was elected to the House, as I simply did not have time to do it any longer, but I know from that time that at the heart of good education is a partnership between the home and the school. We have got to get away from the concept that education takes place only in the classroom. Education is about the whole of life, and parents have a crucial and central role to play in any child’s education. When that works well, it works in partnership with the school.
Time and again, I have seen this policy break that constructive and positive relationship between parents and the school. Constituents have told me that, because the school refused to give them authorised leave and they were then fined, they refuse to fundraise for the school or volunteer to support it. The policy is counterproductive. We should be encouraging positive relationships between parents and schools, but our policy is damaging that relationship. Whatever gains the Department for Education may feel it is making in education by getting children to be in the classroom more often, I would suggest we are losing out from the loss of good will between parents and the school, and the breakdown of that positive relationship.
Helen Goodman
Perhaps I can trespass for another couple of seconds on the hon. Gentleman to say that he is absolutely right. Furthermore, we see rising mental health problems among children and young people, and this kind of stress is exactly what families do not need.
Steve Double
I think the hon. Lady has read my notes; I am slightly worried. The next point I wanted to raise was that one of the unintended consequences—I do not believe anyone in the ministerial team or the Department for Education intends it—is the impact the policy is having on some of the most vulnerable children, including those with special needs and particularly those with mental health challenges. Several parents from my constituency have come to see me because they are at their wits’ end. Their children have severe mental health challenges, yet the school will not authorise them to miss any time off school, when they are not able to attend school regularly because of the mental health challenges they face.
In one case the school said, “We will not authorise your leave until you have a diagnosis for your child,” but we all know that it takes months and months to get a mental health diagnosis for young people. Parents are getting warning letters from the school because their child is missing school, even though it knows that the child has mental health conditions. All that does is aggravate the issue for the child and the parents.
The way the policy is being driven by Ofsted and some of our schools is incredibly detrimental to the wellbeing of some of the most vulnerable children in our communities. I therefore believe that we need to take a serious, long look at the policy. The policy is putting schools and headteachers in an impossible situation. The drive to raise attendance levels above all else is having an incredibly detrimental impact on some families and children.
Part of the problem—this was alluded to earlier by the hon. Lady—is that there is a sense of buck-passing. The DFE says that heads have discretion to exercise their judgment on what is an exceptional circumstance, but headteachers tell me that when they exercise that discretion—correctly, they believe—if the attendance level drops, they are criticised and marked down by Ofsted. When I meet Ofsted staff and challenge them, they tell me that they are only doing what they are instructed to do by the DFE.
There seems to be a vicious circle that no one can break out of. We need to be clear about whether headteachers have discretion to exercise their judgment. If they do, they need to be allowed to do so and not be criticised by Ofsted. If taking discretion away from headteachers is a clear policy being driven from the centre, let us be honest about that so that the headteachers are not put in an impossible situation.
Before winding up, I want to mention the impact on the holiday market and holiday businesses. Many firms get criticised for raising their prices during the peak holiday season, which is basically the school holidays, but the reality is—I have literally hundreds of such businesses in my constituency—that that is now the only time of the year in which they get to make money. Parents are prevented from bringing their children outside the holiday season, so all that demand gets condensed into six or seven weeks in the summer season, and that is when those businesses have to make their money. We cannot blame them. If the demand is there, and they need to make their money in those few short weeks, clearly prices will go up. However, we are exacerbating the issue through this policy. By making the demand so condensed in those few weeks, we are making holidays even more unaffordable for many families, so they have to choose to take their holiday at another time. It is another case of the policy being counterproductive.
I have many examples. When word went out that I had secured this debate, literally thousands of people across the country contacted me with examples of how the policy is negatively affecting their family and children. I do not have time to read many of them, but there are many cases of families struggling to live with the consequences of the policy.
I do not think that the policy is working, and we are not achieving what we actually want to, which is better outcomes for children. We have to take a wider view and understand that education is about more than the classroom. The policy is counterproductive, because it damages the vital, constructive, positive relationship between families and schools, and it hits some of the most vulnerable in our society. Once again, I put it to the Minister that we really need to review the policy and consider a better way of applying the right sort of expectations on parents with regard to having their children in school regularly. We must ensure that we are not damaging children and families as a result of the policy, and look at whether there is a better way of doing this.
The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on securing the debate. I know that this subject is of close interest to him. As he mentioned, it is one that we have debated on a number of occasions over the years.
We can all agree that children’s education should not be disrupted by preventable absences. Regular attendance at school is fundamental to ensuring that every pupil, no matter their background, can meet their full potential. It is about social mobility. That is why I welcome this opportunity to reiterate the Government’s commitment to improving school attendance and ensuring that schools tackle all forms of absence as part of our ambition to create a world-class education system. I will set out the Government’s overall policy on reducing school absence before turning to the issue of term-time holidays.
There is a correlation between time absent from school and attainment. Pupils with higher overall absence tend to do less well in their GCSEs, even after taking their prior attainment and some other characteristics into account, as set out in the report by the Department for Education, “Absence and attainment at key stages 2 and 4: 2013 to 2014”. A pupil who has been absent is also liable to interrupt the education of other pupils and to increase the workload on teachers, as schools seek to ensure that an absent pupil catches up with the work that he or she has missed.
The Government have made the rules clear: no child should be taken out of school without good reason. We have put headteachers back in control by supporting them, and local authorities, to use their powers to deal with absence. We secured changes to the Education (Pupil Registration) (England) Regulations 2006, to which my hon. Friend referred, to reduce overall absence.
The persistent absence threshold was changed from 15% to 10% in September 2015 to encourage schools to act earlier in dealing with patterns of poor attendance. Persistent absence from school remains a society-wide challenge. We recognise the need for further action in this area, following a small but consistent increase in the number of pupils missing 10% or more of sessions in recent years; that figure is up from 10.8% in 2016-17 to 11.2% in 2017-18.
In 2013, we also clarified the law to address the widespread misconception that parents were entitled to take their children on holiday during term time. No such entitlement has ever existed in law. In clarifying the law, the Government ensured that headteachers retained the discretion to authorise a leave of absence when they were confident that the request constituted an exceptional circumstance. The Department has not specified to schools what constitutes exceptional circumstances. Schools know their pupils better than the Department, and can consider the specific details and relevant context behind each request for a leave of absence.
My hon. Friend will agree that what constitutes exceptional circumstances will differ enormously depending on individual and local circumstances. That is why it would not be appropriate for the Government to dictate what exceptional circumstances would warrant authorised absence across the country. We are clear that children should not be absent from school unless the circumstances are genuinely exceptional.
I agree with my hon. Friend that a positive and constructive relationship between parents and schools is essential. That is why we encourage parents to talk to their child’s school to make their case when they require a leave of absence. If parents wish to take their child out of school, the onus is on them to apply to the school in advance for a leave of absence, demonstrating in their application why they believe that there are exceptional circumstances.
I disagree with my hon. Friend that the Department’s attendance policy is counterproductive. Despite a very small increase in overall absence from 4.7% in 2016-17 to 4.8% in 2017-18, overall absence has fallen significantly from 6% in 2009-10. Parents have a duty, under section 7 of the Education Act 1996, to ensure that if their child is of compulsory school age—five to 16—he or she receives an
“efficient full-time education…either by attendance at school or otherwise”.
We have ensured that schools and local authorities have a range of measures to support or sanction parents when their child’s absence from school becomes a problem. The law gives schools and local authorities powers to offer parenting contracts and obtain parenting orders in relation to attendance. The law is clear that if parents register their child at a school and the child fails to attend regularly, parents may be guilty of an offence under section 444 of the 1996 Act, and may be given a penalty notice unless statutory exceptions apply, including where leave has been granted by the headteacher.
The penalty notice offers parents the opportunity to avoid any conviction for the offence, if the penalty is paid in full and within the timescales. Prosecution of a parent is available to local authorities as the ultimate sanction under section 444 of the 1996 Act. Penalties are therefore a way of avoiding prosecution, although of course local authorities can go straight for a prosecution.
Since we last debated the issue, the Supreme Court has clarified that regular attendance in section 444(1) of the 1996 Act means attendance
“in accordance with attendance rules”.
The Court also recognised the disruptive effect of taking a child out of school during term time, both on the child and on the work and study of the other children at the school and in the class.
Turning to my hon. Friend’s point about term-time holidays, the Government recognise the value of family holidays in providing enriching experiences that can indeed have educational value. However, the school year is designed to give families the opportunity to enjoy breaks and holidays without disrupting their children’s education. Schools are in session for 190 out of 365 days, leaving 175 days in a year on which parents can take their children away on holiday. I recognise that the cost of holidays is a frustration for parents, and the Secretary of State and I encourage travel operators to do what they can to provide value for money to families.
The Government do not set term and holiday dates. Decisions around term dates are best taken locally, especially where the local industry—for example, tourism—creates a compelling reason to set term dates that differ from those of the rest of the country. Local authorities are responsible for setting term dates for community schools, community special schools, and voluntary-controlled schools.
Variation in school holiday dates between local authorities already exists. That was seen over the recent Easter holidays. Sheffield City Council, for example, has a fixed Easter break at the beginning of April, which this year fell outside the official Easter peak. Similarly, in 2017, Nottinghamshire County Council took the decision to shorten its summer break and extend its October half term to two weeks, following consultation with parents.
All academies and free schools, which account for about 36% of state-funded schools, have responsibility for setting their term and holiday dates. Other schools, where the governing body is the employer of staff, such as foundation or voluntary-aided schools, also have that power, which some have already used to adapt their term dates to suit the needs of their pupils and local areas. That is an important freedom that the Government have encouraged schools to use. If parents and schools want different term dates, so they can take their children on holidays outside the more expensive peak holiday season, they should discuss that with their local authority, or with their child’s school, if it is a foundation, voluntary-aided school or academy.
Helen Goodman
Will the Minister address the question of whether Ofsted is failing schools if attendance is below 96%? If 96% is the wrong number, will he tell us the right one?
Nick Gibb
I am about to come on to Ofsted, which was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay, and its role in influencing schools’ decisions.
Ofsted’s inspection framework makes it clear that it will consider an up-to-date attendance analysis for all groups of pupils. Inspectors will make a judgment about the behaviour and attitudes in a school. The inspection framework specifies that in doing so, they will look for a strong focus on attendance and punctuality, so that disruption is minimised. They will expect to see clear and effective behaviour and attendance policies, with clearly defined consequences that are applied consistently and fairly by all staff. They will also consider how well the school meets the needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, and pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and other hon. Members for highlighting the issues around school attendance. To answer my hon. Friend’s question about how the money is spent, the requirement is for it to be reinvested in the attendance system in the local area. The system is intended to be cost-neutral. Many areas spend it on supporting projects to improve school attendance locally.[Official Report, 10 June 2019, Vol. 661, c. 3MC.]
The Government take the issue seriously and have put in place a number of measures to prioritise and incentivise school attendance. We will continue to monitor progress and encourage schools and local authorities to use their powers to stagger term dates where appropriate.
Question put and agreed to.
Crime and Antisocial Behaviour: Small Towns
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered rising crime and antisocial behaviour in smaller towns and communities.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I thank hon. Members for coming to this important debate. I am grateful to have the opportunity to hold the debate, because crime is one of the most important issues that my constituents face.
My constituency is a collection of small towns and villages perched just outside Leeds in West Yorkshire. As such, we fall under the responsibility of West Yorkshire police, which covers an enormous area—more than 2,000 sq km—that is home to upwards of 2 million people. Its jurisdiction includes the big cities of Leeds and Bradford and the large towns of Wakefield and Huddersfield. With those big bustling urban centres, it can often feel like a competition for the smaller places that I represent, such as Batley, Birstall, Liversedge, Gomersal, Heckmondwike and Cleckheaton, to get the attention they deserve.
There is a perception that the serious crime happens in big cities, but that could not be further from the truth, which is why this debate focuses specifically on towns and smaller communities. I will use examples from my constituency to demonstrate my concerns. Before that, however, it is important to put the cuts that have been forced on West Yorkshire police on the record. Since 2010, it has lost £140 million in central Government funding and more than 1,000 officers.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that it is often the low-level antisocial behaviour that is an absolute blight on neighbourhoods? The police have so many competing demands, largely because of the reduction in their numbers, that it is difficult for them to respond to everything that they might like to.
Tracy Brabin
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting antisocial behaviour, which I will come to. The cuts certainly have an impact on our streets.
The funding cuts to West Yorkshire police would be worse were it not for the action of the Labour police and crime commissioner, Mark Burns-Williamson, who raised the police funding element of council tax to stem the loss of officers and restart recruitment in the face of cuts to the central grant. I am not a spokesperson for the police, and, let us be honest, many people in my constituency are frustrated with police services, but it is important to acknowledge the context of what they have faced in recent years, because it has an impact on their ability to respond to and deter crime.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
As a fellow West Yorkshire MP, I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I strongly agree that West Yorkshire police has faced major cuts, which are hitting our towns. Does she agree that towns have often been particularly heavily hit by austerity, because overstretched police forces have been forced to concentrate many of their resources in the bigger cities? In Knottingley, there have been recent reports and challenges regarding antisocial behaviour, and in Normanton, there have been attacks on shopkeepers in the town centre. We need neighbourhood police officers in our towns, as well as the crime prevention work, to keep people safe.
Tracy Brabin
My right hon. Friend makes a fantastic point. We need the community presence, as well as the intelligence that comes from relationships with communities. That can stem the flow of antisocial behaviour, because the police know where it is coming from and because they know the families.
Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
It is also important to appreciate that police community support officers—an excellent Labour initiative that contributed to neighbourhood policing while Labour was in power—have faced reductions too. The decline in their number is important, and the reduction in Wrexham town centre is having a noticeable impact on antisocial behaviour.
Tracy Brabin
That is an excellent point. I pay tribute to those officers who are increasingly asked to go beyond the call of duty and attend what are sometimes quite violent situations that they may not have the resources at hand to deal with.
It is not an exaggeration to say that there is a crime epidemic in my constituency, which my constituents are sick to the back teeth of. I, too, am completely fed up and exhausted from hearing from constituents who are at their wits’ end and frightened to leave home after dark because of the menace of nuisance bikes and mopeds.
Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
It is commendable that my hon. Friend has brought this debate to Westminster Hall. I also commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) for her work on towns. Like many hon. Members, I have two towns in my constituency. People feel not just a sense of loss, but fear and worry when there is no visible police station. Great Harwood and Haslingden in my constituency have lost their police stations, for the reason that my right hon. Friend stated—the cuts take place in the small towns—and criminals can see that there is an opportunity to commit crime, so people live in fear.
Tracy Brabin
I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. Certainly, in Batley, the police station has gone up for sale. It is disconcerting for communities when they see that “For sale” sign appear. People wonder, “If I was in a crisis, how long would it take for the police to arrive?”
To return to nuisance bikes and mopeds, the problem goes beyond antisocial behaviour; it is extremely dangerous, not just for the bike owners, but for other road users and pedestrians. The bikes keep people awake at night, which has a serious impact on health, wellbeing, stress and anxiety. It is also a difficult crime to clamp down on, as the perpetrators are on fast-moving vehicles, and most bikes are being used illegally, so simply taking them off the streets is a time-limited hindrance rather than a solution. Equally, we do not necessarily want high-speed chases to happen in built-up areas and little villages.
I am pleased to say, however, that West Yorkshire police and Kirklees Council, working with me, have been able to provide protective equipment for a couple of police motorcycle riders, so that officers can be trained to safely catch those who cause havoc. We know that we need a proper, nationwide response to tackle this problem, rather than piecemeal solutions when an MP gets concerned about something. We know it is going to involve the police, along with schools, youth services and local authority outreach teams. Sadly, those are all things that the Conservatives seem to have no problem cutting.
Let me turn to burglaries. What is happening in my constituency is truly shocking. When I visit the shopping centres in my towns and villages, the frequency of burglaries never fails to shock me. The towns of Batley and Birstall have been particularly badly hit. Burglaries affected almost every shop in Birstall town centre, one after the other. What is most frustrating is that in many cases the crime seems completely brainless—money is not kept on-site and items of high value have been removed. The criminals break in, wreak havoc and usually leave empty-handed. In some cases, they take the charity box. There was a break-in at the Chaiiwala café in Batley. The charity box was taken, and the café reached out on Facebook and said that that person must be very hungry or struggling financially, and that if they contacted the café, it would give them a week’s free food and perhaps support them financially. The shop owners should not have to do this to try to solve a problem that is not necessarily of their making. It is almost as if causing damage is for its own sake.
Last Saturday was Small Business Saturday, and I was really taken aback when visiting business owners. One said they were seriously considering leaving their door open, having been a victim of so many break-ins on numerous occasions, given that it is almost cheaper to leave the door open than have it repaired every time they are broken into. I could go on highlighting such cases, but we need solutions. Town centres are struggling enough; they should not have to contend with repeated break-ins.
The reality in smaller towns is that there usually will not be a police car round the corner during late evenings and through the night, and response officers are prioritising urgent cases such as domestic abuse or violence. So what can we do? Can the Minister tell us whether the Government have given consideration to crime prevention measures as part of plans to support high streets? Perhaps central funding could be made available for co-ordinated alarm systems or even high-quality CCTV, which can be too expensive for smaller shops acting on their own. If criminals are to be caught and prosecuted, surely that is the greatest deterrent possible.
I have used a number of case studies, but Members should be in no doubt that the figures more than back them up. I will come to that shortly.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. On actions, the police in my area are concerned that when a person commits an offence on an estate, it is not standard for an injunction to sit alongside the prosecution, banning them from the area and imposing curfews that do not allow them to go out at night. That should be part and parcel of what is meted out to individuals who cause such havoc for businesses and residents in our communities.
Tracy Brabin
That is a very well-made point. By working with Safer Kirklees and Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing, we can have a joined-up effect on the most persistent burglars and try to get them out of those areas. Our communities do not want such behaviour. However, when we move people on, they can always stay with friends or on people’s sofas. It is important to ensure they are restricted in their opportunities for criminality, so my right hon. Friend makes a very good point.
I now turn to one of my deepest concerns: violent crime. We have seen an escalation in violent crime in our towns and villages. I recently went to our local pub in Cleckheaton, where a couple had been attacked violently with an axe while the pub was open. Although traumatised, the staff, landlord and landlady have been very brave in continuing to open their pub, and they have been overwhelmed by the community response to support them. A pensioner was also brutally attacked on a popular walkway by a gang of youths. A serving soldier was mowed down while celebrating the new year—luckily, the perpetrator is now behind bars. Guns are being discharged far too often in our community.
West Yorkshire police have recently been judged outstanding for reporting crime, for which I celebrate them. Their website breaks down the figures by parliamentary constituency, and I am afraid that it does not make for happy reading. Between April 2018 and March 2019, 2,686 incidents of antisocial behaviour were reported in Batley and Spen. There were 2,700 incidents of burglary, criminal damage or arson. More disturbingly, there have been almost 4,500 reported incidents of violence and sexual offences. Not a month has gone by when fewer than 1,000 crimes have been reported. This is a constituency of just over 100,000 people. Those numbers are shocking and wrong, and we deserve better. For each of the examples I have given, there are literally hundreds of other cases that people felt too demoralised or jaded even to report. We simply must stop crime continuing to rise.
Batley and Spen sounds a bit like the wild west, but it is a wonderful place to live and work. We cannot allow our lives to be blighted by the minority.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does she think that, at the very heart of this, the concern of people in constituencies such as Batley and Spen and Great Grimsby is that quality of life is severely affected as a result of crime, be it violent crime, which has increased in my constituency, or the antisocial behaviour that she has been discussing?
Tracy Brabin
I absolutely agree. In comparison with cities, the quality of life in some towns is being diminished because services are going out to cities—infrastructure and so on. We should not have to put up with the increase in violent crime and antisocial behaviour in nice backwaters; we should have a proper quality of life and choose to live in communities such as ours because they are safer, the quality of life is better and they are great places to bring up children.
We have to be frank: the rise in crime is not just about a couple of bad apples, a family or a gang of kids. The Conservatives used to be the party of law and order—they used to pride themselves on it—but they have done their absolute best since 2010 to destroy that reputation. Police-recorded violent crime has more than doubled since 2010. Knife crime is at its highest on record. Arrests—the currency of deterrence—have halved in a decade, and the number of unsolved crimes stands at an unthinkable 2 million cases. Nine years of austerity has led to 20,000 fewer officers on our streets. The National Audit Office estimates that police funding fell by 19% between 2010-11 and 2018-19, and direct Government funding fell by a staggering 30% over the same period.
Police are not the only force for resolving, and preferably deterring, crime—no hon. Members present would argue that they are. However, they provide a vital service. When the police are seen on the streets less or take longer to respond, or when a crime goes unsolved, trust is diminished and fear creeps in.
Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent case about her constituency, which is very similar to mine—a rural area with lots of towns and where crime is rising. Our police have almost halved in number. Our police stations have been shutting, our magistrates court has shut, and now our custody suite is shutting as well. Police officers will have to travel almost an hour to take people who have been arrested into custody. Does she agree that those cuts, and austerity more widely, lead directly to the rise in crime?
Tracy Brabin
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the reduction of police officers on the streets. If an officer has to travel further with a prisoner, they will be tied up for longer and less available to respond to emergency 999 calls. It is a powerful point.
I said at the beginning that there is a crime epidemic in Batley and Spen. I know that that is strong language, but I think my speech has proved that it is justified. I very much look forward to hearing the contributions from other hon. Members and the Minister, so I will not take up too much more time but finish with this. The challenge is that cities, towns and rural areas are often very different, but the ambition should be the same. Crime ruins lives, and citizens should not be blighted by it or live in fear of it. The purpose of this debate is not to say that towns and smaller communities are more important than other places; it is simply to get a better understanding of the issues and to kick-start the debate about the solutions.
Does the Minister have plans to undertake an audit of crime in towns? My office staff and I tried hard to find data about crime in towns compared with cities, and it is not available. Will she and her Government produce a report that shows the difference in the levels of reported crime and crime that has been resolved in towns, compared with cities? We also need a greater understanding of where money is spent. Most police force areas include towns, cities and rural areas. Perhaps the Minister can work with police forces on that and update the House at a later date.
Several hon. Members rose—
James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) was not here at the beginning of the debate, so I will not call her. Incidentally, I do not think that she or her hon. Friends should really have arrived in the middle of the debate and intervened straightaway, not having been here throughout the speech of the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin). The hon. Member for High Peak will have to forgive me for mildly ticking her off.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) on securing this important debate. It is great to have the opportunity to talk about policing and to commend our policemen and women, who do a fantastic job in difficult circumstances. There is no doubt that they face difficulties. We have fewer police and police community support officers, and that has created problems. I remind hon. Members and everyone who is listening that if Labour had not left the finances in such a state, perhaps that would not have happened. [Interruption.] Labour Members can argue about that, but the bottom line is that if the money is not there, we cannot employ the police we need. I have not met a politician on either side of the House who wants fewer police and to make the environment more difficult for them. Difficult decisions had to be made because the money was not there. We have to accept that and work together to make our communities safer.
I meet my police a lot and spend a lot of time with them. It annoys my police and crime commissioner that I have such a close relationship with them. They tell me not just that there is a lack of cash—there certainly is—and that they have lost lots of police officers, although that is certainly the case, but that crime has changed dramatically in the period we are talking about. They have to spend a huge amount of resources on counter-terrorism, even in west Cornwall and the far south-west. Hon. Members might think that it is not an issue there, but people come in through our ports and harbours, and they need to be followed, arrested and dealt with.
The police also say that they are spending a lot of time and money investigating historical sex crime and abuse. We must recognise that this debate is about not just money but attention being needed elsewhere.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, as usual. Does he agree that we hear a lot about rurality in this place, but sometimes towns next to large conurbations have resources sucked out of them? Police stations are closing in Solihull, yet resources are going directly to Birmingham all the time. That is sometimes a huge challenge for those towns.
Derek Thomas
I welcome that intervention. I assure my hon. Friend that every person in Cornwall knows that argument. For a long time, including before we came to power, resources have been concentrated in Exeter and Devon, rather than in Cornwall, and that has always been a bone of contention. We have argued strongly that resources are needed right down as far as Penzance and the Isles of Scilly.
There is no doubt that in towns in Cornwall, there has been a rise in crime—sometimes violent crime, but certainly drug-related crime. I have talked about the change in the way that things are happening, and certainly drugs are moving around differently. The Government and the police and crime commissioner have made resources available, and have concentrated them in areas such as Penzance and elsewhere in Cornwall where people just did not feel safe. Things were going on in broad daylight that would not have gone on in the past. I completely accept that as we reduce numbers and the visibility of the police, other things are allowed to happen, which much be addressed.
Money has been poured in, and we have seen improvements, although there is still lots to do. The key thing is to communicate to the public that they must report every incident they see, even if they sometimes feel that that is not acted upon. The police tell me that the intelligence they collect is really useful in helping them get to the root of the problem, rather than just deal with the individual on the street corner causing a problem.
I pay tribute to Cornwall Council, the safer communities teams and the police in Cornwall for working together effectively over the past 18 months or so to address these problems, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said, that has sucked resources from other parts of my constituency. I ask the Minister to consider the audit that the hon. Member for Batley and Spen recommended. As resources have been reduced and focused on areas with particular problems, we have begun to see low but concerning levels of crime, antisocial behaviour, and alcohol and drug misuse in our very small towns, and people are not used to that. I represent a town that was always awarded the title of safest town in the country, but now people come to me because they are concerned about things going on—at night, but also in the daytime—that they are not used to seeing. When that happens, it does not just make life uncomfortable for people, but harms the individuals who are caught up in that behaviour. There are opportunities that were not there before.
I ask the Minister to have a look at what is going on in very small towns where we are seeing problems. She should speak to police chiefs about how they will address that, and about what resources they can be given to put people on the street and to engage with the community. I have hosted meetings in St Ives and Helston with businesses, local communities and the police to talk about how communities and businesses can know when to report stuff, what to report and who they should report it to. It is really important that the police know where their resources are needed.
No one in this Chamber would deny that people deserve to feel safe and live in a place they can feel proud of. When they see concerning levels of antisocial behaviour and drug and alcohol misuse, their feeling of pride and safety is significantly compromised.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman also consider the impact that antisocial behaviour has on local businesses and restaurants? After a stabbing in Mitcham town centre only two weeks ago, the restaurateur of the local Italian restaurant said that his business dropped by 20%. Even though the stabbing was linked to gang issues that were of no consequence to the rest of the community, it made people feel unsafe, and they no longer wanted to go to his restaurant.
Derek Thomas
I welcome that intervention. High streets are in big enough trouble as it is without all this stuff going on. In St Ives and Penzance, people started to put stuff on Facebook. People who know St Ives will know that it is a massive tourist attraction, as are Helston and the Lizard. I am concerned about what the people putting stuff on Facebook are doing to their local economy by suggesting that those towns are not places to visit. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that there is a real impact on the local economy, which we must obviously work to support more effectively.
We do not want our families and children to be confronted by these problems or—dare I say it?—dragged into them. Policing is obviously important, but keeping people safe is about much more than how the police do their job and how visible they are. Will the Minister also look at what can be done to support local initiatives, often in the voluntary sector, that work with the police and the local authorities to nip these issues in the bud, and to support people who would otherwise be drawn into the criminal justice system or engage in behaviour that can be a slippery slope? We have all seen that in families that we represent.
Can the Minister talk to police chiefs about what is going on in rural areas? There is growing concern, and it is absolutely right that we nip the problem in the bud. I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the issue; it is the right debate to have. Hopefully, we can work across the House to make our constituencies safer, and to make them places of which we can be proud.
Several hon. Members rose—
James Gray (in the Chair)
Hon. Members now have two minutes. I call Mike Hill.
Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)
Thank you Mr Gray; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) on securing this debate.
I confess that Hartlepool is not a small town by any means, but the constituency is made up of small and distinct communities, such as the Headland, and villages, such as Greatham, Newton Bewley, Dalton Piercey, Hart and Elwick. Although we are part of County Durham by nature—Hartlepool is its historic port—we are in reality one of four local authority areas in the Tees valley that are covered by Cleveland police, which is one of the smallest forces in the country.
The Government’s austerity agenda means that Cleveland police force has suffered a 37% reduction in its staffing budget since 2010, which has resulted in the loss of 500 frontline officers and a substantial number of police community support officers since then. The net effect of policing cuts on Hartlepool was made clear to the nation when my constituency became the focus of a BBC film that was broadcast on the national news; it brought home the stark reality that in a town of 92,028 at the last count, only 10 police officers were on duty on a Saturday night.
Understandably, the reaction of my constituents was a feeling that streets and communities had been abandoned, and that the film was an advert to criminals, showing them that Hartlepool lay unprotected. To compound that, local police cells had been mothballed because of budget pressures, meaning a 30-mile round trip to the custody cells in Middlesbrough for officers depositing offenders.
We have just recruited a new chief constable, Richard Lewis. One of his first jobs was to come to Hartlepool to witness for himself the strength of feeling in our communities. Hartlepool and its outlying villages have never been abandoned by the police—far from it. We have one of the best multi-agency crime prevention teams in the area, and a strong neighbourhood policing ethic. Resources are so stretched, however, that there is a distinct lack of bobbies on the beat, and because of increased demands on police officers’ time, some of the basics are beginning to suffer. It is sad to say, but the number of incidents that the police have failed or not had the capacity to deal with is increasing, according to my mailbag. That includes break-ins, burglaries, damage to vehicles and even assaults.
Cleveland police force is doing what it can by trying to refocus on emergency calls and increasing the number of special constables in its ranks. It is clear as day, however, that without proper funding, the force is fighting with one arm tied behind its back. For our rural communities—villages in particular—the thinner the blue line is spread, the more difficult it becomes to maintain proportionate policing cover. Rural crime is as much an aspect of life in my constituency as urban crime is in urban areas. This situation simply cannot continue. It is imperative that the Government act now for the good of my constituents.
I will make two points to end my speech. First, single-crew policing, which correlates with crime, presents a threat to individual officers attending violent crime scenes. Secondly, only this week, a 48-year-old man was held down by two men and robbed in broad daylight, at half-past one in the afternoon, outside our local hospital. That is not Hartlepool.
James Gray (in the Chair)
My mistake; we have slightly more time than I thought. The Front-Bench speeches will start at 5.22 pm.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Gray; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) on securing this important debate.
Perhaps more controversially, I would say that most people do not see themselves as living in one city or town. Even within a city, they see themselves as living in towns. In my constituency of Mitcham and Morden, people live in Mitcham. They do not live in the borough of Merton or in London, but in Mitcham. That is the area that they are concerned about.
Although Merton is regarded as the fourth safest borough in London, to people living in Mitcham that does not wash when they see escalating antisocial behaviour in the town centre and how petty crime quickly becomes serious crime if left unchecked. If I have time, I will also talk about the sale of air guns in high street shops and the desperate need for more school police officers.
Mitcham town centre is unfortunately a hotbed of antisocial behaviour in the heart of the suburbs. Unchecked antisocial behaviour is the first step on a very slippery slope to the level of crime that we have heard described in the debate; the gulf between antisocial behaviour and serious crime is not as large as many of us allow ourselves to believe. There are small steps between noise and nuisance, drinking and drunkenness, and inconvenience and illegality.
When such antisocial behaviour goes unchecked, it begins to foster and grow. That is about what becomes normal and acceptable, and what goes unchallenged—for example the drug takers who routinely gather outside my constituent Alberta’s backyard in Mitcham, or the street drinking and urinating that has become commonplace in the town centre, or the atmosphere of noise and nuisance that street drinking encourages. All of that often goes unpoliced.
Why does antisocial behaviour go unchecked? It is because we no longer have enough bobbies on the beat to control it. The simple truth is that there is no substitute for a visible police presence in the community. Is it any wonder that Merton alone has lost 90 police officers since 2010, when the Met has been forced to make more than £700 million in cuts in that time, with a further £325 million to be cut by 2021? So much for the end of austerity. The challenge that that depleted force faces is alarming. It simply does not have the support or resources from this Government to challenge the crime that is frightening our streets.
Mrs. B wrote to me to describe how understandably terrified she was when she looked out of her kitchen window and saw a group of young men on bikes with 40-inch machetes. Mr. G wrote to me in horror last month after seeing a man attacked with yet another machete, less than 24 hours after multiple stabbings nearby. He said:
“I’m angry that this has happened where I live and in such a blatant way. I feel sad at how cheap life would seem to these people. And I’m absolutely frustrated with the disintegration of any real responsibility from the state on this issue.”
How many more people need to die on our streets? How many more families need to grieve the tragic loss of a loved one? How many warnings need to be given? We simply need more police on our streets.
In the light of the spread of violent crime across our country, we in this Chamber all have a responsibility to ensure that our streets are safe. That is why I am so furious to report that a store in my constituency is selling guns—yes, guns. Cash Exchange is—legally, I must say—selling airguns in my constituency. We do not have rolling fields; we do not have a rural culture. We have airguns masquerading as sub-machine-guns, which are sold to people who want to look intimidating and frightening on our streets, and it is done legally. Why is the display of those weapons permitted by law? Why is their sale not licensed by the police? Why are the Government not taking active steps to ensure our safety? We do not need those guns in shops in suburban south London.
This is not just about our streets, but about our schools. National funding cuts and high vacancy rates have led to the decline of our treasured school police officers. My local headteachers wrote to me describing school police officers as instrumental to building relationships within their school communities, breaking down the barriers that some families have with the police, and ensuring that more youngsters leave school with a positive view of the police. Sessions and workshops led by officers are important, but they simply do not provide a like-for-like alternative for the school police officer who those youngsters get to know and trust.
Two of the secondary schools in my constituency now share just one school police officer; the other secondary school shares an officer with a school at the other end of the borough. There is a total of just seven officers for Merton’s secondary schools and further education college. That is simply not enough. This is not about point scoring but about the safety of our young people. Adequately funding our police force so that school police officers can be retained is essential to ensuring the safety of those young people.
I ask loud and clear: bring back bobbies on the beat; stop the sale of airguns on our high streets; and stop the loss of schools police officers from our secondary schools. The first duty of any Government is to ensure the protection of their citizens. By that measure, the failure of this Government is devastating.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you, Mr Gray. I also thank the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) for securing the debate and the opportunity for us to participate.
I am conscious that the Minister does not have responsibility for policing or antisocial behaviour in Northern Ireland, but I want to make a contribution to describe what we have done in Northern Ireland and in my constituency in particular. That might add to the debate and help us see how we can move forward.
The issue of antisocial behaviour, of misbehaviour, causes concern. Our force, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, has had its numbers reduced. Rural community policing has not existed since the closures of the village police stations. Some seven have closed over the years—Portaferry, Greyabbey, Donaghadee, Saintfield, Carryduff, Killyleagh and Ballynahinch—with one on the edge of my constituency and the other six in it. No longer is a police officer in a position to take a call, go round to the problem area, lift the children and bring them home to their parents to be dealt with—we simply do not have the police numbers to do that.
Unfortunately, groups of young people can, perhaps inadvertently or unknowingly, cause hassle. Music playing in a field behind someone’s house at midnight is not okay, because it affects a mother and her children who are trying to sleep. Throwing cigarettes and matches into a farmer’s field in a dry spell might cause a fire. Those are all important issues for many people. To the parents who do not know where their child is or what their child is doing, that should be a concern.
Many people try to address antisocial behaviour by creating church groups in their areas. A local church group runs an event on a Saturday night in Newtownards. That helps for part of the time, but not beyond 10 pm. For years, community workers, the PSNI, the council antisocial behaviour team and street pastors have worked together to build up relations with the children and try to find a way forward. What really helped make the change, however, was when planning permission was granted for a development in the area they went to, so the misbehaviour did not happen any longer.
Churches and volunteer groups do a tremendous job, but they cannot run half the night, and antisocial behaviour teams are challenged. What is the answer? We have to put in a foundation. That means more bodies—
James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. Sadly, the House will never know what the answer is. It is time to call the first of the Front Benchers.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gray, and to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—I am sorry he was cut off in his prime.
I thank the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) for securing the debate and for her passionate and eloquent introduction. As she said, we all want to feel safe in our homes and communities. That is as true of constituents living in smaller towns as of those who live anywhere else. It means safety from the full range of offences, from serious violence to antisocial behaviour. As she and other Members have illustrated with some pretty horrifying examples, too many people are impacted by all that. I will briefly set out what the SNP sees as the key strategies for driving down crime and antisocial behaviour.
My starting point is slightly different, because in Scotland, thankfully, we have continued to see a significant and sustained fall in crime over the past decade. Yesterday, for example, we saw analysis showing that attempted murders and serious assaults are down by about 38% on 10 years ago. We have also seen a long-term sustained reduction in experiences and perceptions of antisocial behaviour. I pay tribute to and thank all who have been involved in setting that downward trajectory. None of that is to say that there will not be bumps along the way, that the trend will continue in one direction every single year, or that we take the trend for granted; there is always more that can and must be done.
On that note, as the hon. Member for Batley and Spen said, the work includes not only policing—though that is a focus of this debate—but prevention. It is not simply the police who have to be involved, but every single Government Department.
Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman and I share North Lanarkshire Council. We have heard stories from around the country, and it is exactly the same in Scotland—that is what we are hearing. This year in North Lanarkshire, 900 formal warnings have been given for antisocial behaviour, and 200 have been prevented from going further with mediation. Will he congratulate North Lanarkshire Council on its work?
Stuart C. McDonald
I am happy to congratulate North Lanarkshire Council on that work, which emphasises the role that local authorities have to play. Among the statistics from yesterday was the 35% fall in serious violence and attempted murder in North Lanarkshire, so pretty much every part of Scotland is benefiting from some of that work. The point that I was making, however, is that it has to be a whole-systems approach; it is not just about policing, but about local authorities and every single Government Department being involved in the challenge.
On prevention—or nipping things in the bud, as the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) pithily put it—a lot has already been said in recent debates about the work of the violence reduction unit in Glasgow, which has also been rolled out elsewhere. The “No Knives Better Lives” campaign and programme have complemented other youth-diversionary interventions and activities. The mentors for violence prevention programme is designed to lead young people to more positive destinations and has 140 schools across 22 local authorities taking part. Another initiative, under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, is the cashback for communities fund, through which almost £100 million seized from criminals over the past 10 years has been invested directly in partnership organisations that put on free activities for those who might be at risk or who live in areas with higher than usual crime rates.
Policies need to address head-on the causes of offending behaviour. We know that deprivation is linked to higher crime rates, which is why in years ahead there will be additional investment and focus in the next phase of cashback for communities to raise the attainment of young people from areas of deprivation across Scotland, or those who are at risk of exclusion from schools or of unemployment. That mirrors education policies such as pupil equity funding and the Scottish attainment challenge, which are all designed to improve the life chances of those from more deprived areas of the country.
From another angle, we know that alcohol is a significant factor in all sorts of offences. Again, policies must be directed at that, and in Scotland we have seen the introduction of minimum unit pricing, which studies suggest can deliver a significant fall in some types of crime. I urge Members to consider engaging in that debate.
The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) raised the issue of air rifles. Again, the experience in Scotland has been pretty positive. We introduced licensing two or three years ago, and so far crime involving air rifles is down significantly.
I will finish on policing, which was at the crux of the debate for most Members. To cut to the chase, over the past 10 years police numbers in Scotland have gone up by about 5%, which contrasts with the cut in numbers of about 14% elsewhere in the UK. The Home Secretary himself has acknowledged that that is a crucial factor, so while I recognise that budgets are tight, it can be done. Policing in combination with all that work on prevention must be the way ahead.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) on securing this vital debate.
Since records began, violent crime has never been as high as it is today. Knife crime has never been as high—homicides involving knives increased by 22%—while arrests, the currency of deterrence, have halved in a decade. Unsolved crimes stand at an almost unthinkable 2 million cases. Each of those numbers represents victims, families and friends who have been scarred by violence, and together they represent a national crisis.
Two key things cause rising crime: cutting police numbers and slashing funding for youth services. What have this Government done? They have cut police numbers and slashed funding for youth services. To begin with the police cuts, it is important to remind the House that the Conservative party promised the public that its cuts would not hit the policing frontline. One week before the 2010 election, the previous Tory leader, David Cameron, said:
“Any cabinet minister…who comes to me and says ‘here are my plans’ and they involve front-line reductions, they’ll be sent straight back to their department”.
Five years later, the current Prime Minister claimed that the frontline service had been protected, but we now know that that was not true.
Police numbers are at their lowest for 30 years. We have lost 21,000 officers, more than 6,000 PCSOs and more than 15,000 police staff, including crime investigators. My own police force in Greater Manchester has lost 2,000 officers since 2010. No Government in post-war history—none—have cut police numbers in every year that they have been in office.
The public instinctively understand that cutting police numbers causes rising crime. After all, as the Home Secretary said recently, it is “not exactly rocket science”. Under-resourced police are forced to focus purely on reactive policing. Hotspot policing is known to reduce crime in areas where there has been a surge. Far from simply pushing it away into other areas, evidence suggests that the benefits are felt in areas outside where the hotspot policing is focused. It should therefore concern hon. Members that Chief Constable Thornton, the chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council says:
“I am utterly convinced that intelligence-led policing with a focus on prolific offenders and hot-spot locations makes a real difference. But few officers and staff are able to do less policing.”
Local policing has been shown to increase the legitimacy of the police, which encourages the local community to provide intelligence and report crimes and suspicious behaviour.
Last year, as part of the national initiative to spend a day with the police, I spent a day with my old force, Greater Manchester police. The officers told me that they no longer had the resources to go into schools and talk to students about what the police do and how to stay safe—a vital part of building community links. There is no doubt that the Tories have cut frontline policing, which is driving rising crime.
The second driver of rising crime is cuts to youth services. Our social safety net has been steadily unpicked by this Government. The most vulnerable are struggling to get support, starting at the very first stage of life. Sure Start was a lifeline for many vulnerable families, but it has been cut back and the support it can provide has been reduced. Schools have been crushed under the weight of punitive funding pressure. Cost cutting has hit teaching assistants and special educational needs—just the kind of targeted support that is needed by young people who are falling behind.
Chronic underfunding of the NHS means that young people are routinely denied the mental health support we know can reduce aggression. For those who set out on the wrong path, the Government have ensured an almost total lack of provision for those involved in gangs. Even at this late stage, education, training, employment and health services can reduce violence, including homicides. The sad truth is that, despite the research showing that specialist services for vulnerable youngsters and families can fundamentally alter outcomes, there is not the political will to create a system that will support them. Those decisions taken together have precipitated the crisis we face today.
The Government have cut police numbers to a historic low and cut youth services at every stage of development, and they are now surprised by record crime levels. The most despicable criminals are exploiting the space where well-run and effective early intervention, prevention and diversion strategies once existed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) on securing this interesting debate, which looks at the issue from the perspective of smaller towns and communities—we call them villages in my part of Lincolnshire—and I am pleased to take part in it. I thank hon. Members from across the House for the examples they have given of crime and antisocial behaviour in their constituencies. There have been some particularly moving examples, and I am sure the whole House is united in hoping that those who have been devastated by those crimes get the help and support they need.
This Government are committed to tackling and preventing crime and antisocial behaviour, and we recognise the particular challenges that smaller towns and communities may face, including in Northern Ireland; we may not have heard all that we wished to hear from Northern Ireland, but I am sure the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will tell us what is happening there.
Victoria Atkins
If the hon. Gentleman promises that he will be brief, I will.
Jim Shannon
Let me give the Minister some examples of what we have done: antisocial behaviour officers are in the councils; the PSNI work alongside street pastors and churches; and local community groups organise events to take young people away. Those are three things that make a difference. Also, it is not down to the police only, but the parents.
Victoria Atkins
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that it is a community effort, in spite of the importance of law enforcement. That is why, in our Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, we put in place six powers, some of which can be exercised not just by the police but by local authorities. We appreciate that there will be different solutions to different problems in different areas.
The debate is about “rising crime”. I fully recognise the concerns that Members have raised, but I must remind them of the analysis by the independent Office for National Statistics, which sets out that most people are not victims of crime, and that the likelihood of becoming a victim remains low. We also recognise that there has been a genuine rise in serious violent crime, and there is a range of actions under way to tackle that.
Siobhain McDonagh
Does the Minister realise how maddening the comment, “You are not likely to be the victim”, is to our constituents? If somebody is stabbed in their street or there is a drunk and disorderly person in their shopping centre, they are the victims, and that has an impact on their behaviour.
Victoria Atkins
That is the finding of the Office for National Statistics. We have to work on the evidence; that is the way in which we formulate policy. It is a great shame that the hon. Lady was not able to join the briefing session I held yesterday for colleagues from across the House, to update them on our actions to tackle serious violence. She would have seen the range of activity going on, not just in London but across the country, to tackle crime and the causes of criminal activity. Although the statistics are very worrying at the moment—that is why we are acting as we are—it was acknowledged yesterday in the meeting that there is a cyclical element to them. We saw similar spikes in serious violence in the mid to late 2000s. We bore down on them, and we need to ensure that our actions have a similar impact.
In our serious violence strategy, we put a much greater focus on steering young people away from crime while continuing to promote a strong law enforcement response. We are investing in early intervention projects—my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) made that important point. I am delighted to tell the hon. Member for Batley and Spen that West Yorkshire is receiving more than £1 million until March next year to allow the police, community safety partnerships and others to work together on a programme of early intervention projects to prevent serious violence in the county.
We have also launched the national county lines co-ordination centre, and its work has produced huge benefits; in a single week in May, there were 586 arrests, and 519 vulnerable adults and 364 children were engaged with for safeguarding purposes. I am sure that many colleagues are conscious of the exploitation of young people by criminal gangs. On serious violence, we are looking at how gangs communicate in the 21st century and helping the police to tackle gang-related activity on social media.
We recently passed the Offensive Weapons Act 2019, which tightens up the law on the sale of knives and corrosive substances. We are in the middle of a consultation, to which I encourage hon. Members to respond, on a new legal duty to underpin a public health approach to tackling serious violence. We have introduced a new £200 million youth endowment fund that will be delivered over 10 years. It is locked in. That money will be invested, and it will support long-term interventions with children and young people at risk of involvement with crime and violence. We are conducting an independent review of drug misuse, which will report its initial findings to the Home Secretary in the summer.
As colleagues have mentioned, we have established vehicle theft and burglary taskforces to bring together Government, the police and industry in order to improve our response to those crimes. With reference to burglaries, we are looking at building standards and whether we can design out crime, as has happened in the past with vehicle theft. We continue our work with moped-enabled crimes; in London there has been a heartening decrease in that type of crime. That shows that working across civil society, industry and local authorities can really bring dividends. Colleagues will also be aware of the announcements about retail crime we made recently with regard to the Offensive Weapons Act. I very much hope that we will be able to announce the results of that consultation in due course.
Hon. Members also mentioned the impact of antisocial behaviour. We absolutely recognise the impact that forms of antisocial behaviour can have, which is precisely why we introduced the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The point of the six powers in that Act is that they are flexible and give local forces and local authorities discretion in how they deal with instances and patterns of antisocial behaviour in their areas.
In summary, we very much recognise the impact of crime on not just big cities, but market towns, urban towns, if I am allowed to use that phrase, and villages. That is precisely why, as well as putting in place the suite of measures that we have touched on in this important debate, we have secured an extra £1 billion of funding for the police. That is already enabling police and crime commissioners, including in West Yorkshire, to increase the recruitment of police officers.
As always, I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I very much look forward to debating this issue again in the future. I think we all recognise that concerns about the safety of our constituents and our communities are central to our work here, and to our taking a collegiate approach across the House to ensuring that our country is a safe and comforting place in which to live.
Tracy Brabin
I thank colleagues across the House for their contributions. It is really interesting to know that I am not alone in representing a community that feels that crime has got out of hand. I congratulate West Yorkshire police on the work it does. The Minister talked about money for the police, but the money for West Yorkshire comes from an increase in the precept—the precept is increased in order to increase the number of police officers—so we are paying for it.
I was happy to attend the serious violence strategy meeting, at which I learned a lot. It was really interesting, and a lot of initiatives seem to be going on. However, those initiatives feel focused on knife crime, which is the sort of violent crime that comes at the end. I asked at the meeting what is being done to intervene right at the beginning, and in our communities, to ensure that people do not feel abandoned or that crime is their only hope of getting money, having status or whatever, and are not vulnerable to gangs and so on. As my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) said, early intervention is so important.
Although I understand why it was said, there is an element of complacency around this, in that—
James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady in full flow. We all wanted to hear it, but the rules are strict, and we must stop at precisely the right second.
Written Statements
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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European Union Finances
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Elizabeth Truss)
I am today laying before Parliament the “European Union Finances 2018: statement on the 2018 EU Budget and measures to counter fraud and financial mismanagement” (CP 114). This is a routine annual publication and is the 38th in the series.
The statement gives details of revenue and expenditure in the 2018 European Union Budget, recent developments in EU financial management and measures to counter fraud against the EU Budget. It also includes a chapter and annex on the use of EU funds in the UK over the period.
This year, in light of the UK’s vote to leave the EU, the paper also contains an annex with the latest forecast (previously published in the OBR’s Economic and fiscal outlook in March 2019) of the UK’s financial settlement, as detailed in the withdrawal agreement. Since this forecast, the Government have agreed an extension of Article 50. This extension will affect the size of the financial settlement as the UK will make contributions to the EU as a member state, which would have fallen due under the implementation period. The net effect on EU contributions is zero.
[HCWS1598]
General Affairs Council
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Robin Walker)
Lord Callanan, Minister of State for Exiting the European Union, has made the following statement:
I represented the UK at the General Affairs Council (GAC) in Brussels on 21 May 2019. Until we leave the European Union, we remain committed to fulfilling our rights and obligations as a full member state and continue to act in good faith. A provisional report of the meeting and the conclusions adopted can be found on the Council of the European Union’s website at:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/gac/2019/05/19/
Multiannual financial framework 2021-2027
Ministers discussed the structure of external action expenditure during the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework (MFF). Discussion centred around the neighbourhood, development and international co-operation instrument (NDICI), and the European development fund (EDF). Ministers focused on the Commission’s proposal for integrating the EDF into the EU budget. The Commission stated that this would streamline previous spending on external action by bringing together 12 programmes; a single and larger fund would have more flexibility to respond to emerging priorities. Several member states argued that the European neighbourhood should remain a separate fund or ring-fenced within the NDICI, due to the need to prioritise Europe’s near neighbours.
Preparation of the European Council on 20-21 June 2019: Annotated draft agenda
Ministers discussed the annotated draft agenda of the European Council on 20-21 June. The agenda included the 2019-2024 strategic agenda, the 2021-2027 MFF, climate change and countering disinformation.
The majority of member state interventions focused on climate change, the strategic agenda and enlargement. Ministers were keen to balance ambitious goals with maintaining the global competitiveness of the EU, and being able to address citizens’ needs effectively. A number of member states suggested that the Sibiu declaration should be incorporated into deliverable goals for the strategic agenda. Under discussions on enlargement, some member states hoped that progress would be made at the June European Council to allow accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania.
I intervened to welcome the Sibiu declaration on the strategic agenda. I also highlighted our commitment to combat disinformation in the EU through the joint action plan, as well as domestically, through the White Paper on online harms and the Cairncross review on upholding high quality journalism.
[HCWS1599]
Human Rights and Democracy Report 2018
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
I have today laid before Parliament a copy of the 2018 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Report on Human Rights and Democracy (Cp number: 104).
The report analyses human rights developments overseas in 2018 and illustrates how the Government worked to promote and defend human rights globally.
The report assesses the situation in 30 countries, which the FCO has designated as its human rights priority countries. These are Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Burma, Burundi, Central African Republic, China, Colombia, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Libya, Maldives, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe.
2018 marked the 70th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights, and the 20th anniversary of the UN declaration on human rights defenders. The report demonstrates the principles and values enshrined in these declarations. It sets out the UK’s actions to promote human rights and democracy in a wide range of areas, including through partnerships with human rights defenders, our leadership on promoting media freedom and gender equality, our work to eradicate modern slavery, and our commitment to deliver change for those who are abused, targeted or killed for their beliefs.
[HCWS1596]
Judicial Salary Structure
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
Today I am pleased to publish the Government’s response to the Senior Salaries Review Body’s (SSRB) major review of the judicial salary structure.
Our world-class independent judiciary is a pillar of our democracy and plays a unique role in ensuring our freedoms and prosperity. Every day judges take decisions on critically important issues that directly impact on people’s lives—from trying serious crimes, to deciding care arrangements for vulnerable children.
High Court, circuit and upper tribunal judges in particular play a pivotal role in our justice system. They preside over the most difficult and sensitive family cases and criminal trials, often involving horrific and distressing evidence; resolve the most valuable and legally complex civil disputes; and ensure that the Government behave in a lawful and fair manner.
The importance and influence of our judiciary also reaches beyond our shores. Its reputation for integrity and impartiality helps attract international business to the UK, contributing to a legal services industry worth around £25 billion a year to our economy.
These important judicial roles require highly experienced legal professionals with many years of training and experience behind them. It is imperative that we continue to attract the highest calibre candidates to take up these critical posts.
The SSRB’s major review, which was presented to this House on 26 October 2018, identified clear evidence of severe recruitment and retention issues in the High Court, and of growing problems at the circuit bench and similar issues in the upper tribunal.
For the first time ever, in consecutive recruitment campaigns, we have now failed to fill vacancies in the High Court and at the circuit bench. Currently more than 10% of High Court judicial positions remain unfilled and, as things stand, the chancery division of the High Court, which handles major commercial cases, is already 20% below strength and will be up to 40% below strength by the end of the year without urgent action. The impact of vacancies is already being felt in the family courts, where a shortfall of judges is contributing to significant delays in care proceedings, which involve vulnerable children.
If these recruitment and retention issues are not addressed, cases will take longer to progress through our courts and tribunals, victims of crime will have to wait longer for justice, and vulnerable people and children will be left at risk. If we are unable to fill the growing number of vacancies with judges of the right quality, delays in our courts could also mean business is lost to other English-speaking courts in Singapore, Amsterdam, Paris and elsewhere.
This Government are committed to delivering world-class public services and taking action when the evidence requires it to ensure their continued delivery. That is why today I am announcing a series of policies to support recruitment and retention in the judiciary, to ensure our courts and tribunals system can continue to deliver important services.
The Government are committed to addressing the underlying cause of the recruitment and retention problems. However, it would not be sensible to make pension changes when the McCloud litigation, which could have a significant but uncertain impact on public service pensions, is ongoing. Once that litigation has concluded, the Government will bring forward legislation for a long-term, pensions-based solution for the whole judiciary.
However, there is now a need for immediate action, which is why today I am announcing the introduction of a temporary recruitment and retention allowance at 25% for salaried High Court judges, and 15% for circuit and upper tribunal judges covered by the new pension scheme.
This measure will affect only about a quarter of the salaried judiciary and aims to resolve the immediate recruitment issue until a long-term, sustainable, pension-based solution can be implemented for all judges.
It replaces the existing allowance of 11% for High Court judges, and is lower than the SSRB’s recommendation of a 32% permanent salary increase for High Court judges and a 22% increase for circuit and upper tribunal judges covered by the new pension scheme, striking a balance between an appropriate investment of public funds and addressing serious recruitment and retention problems.
We recognise that the SSRB also pointed to emerging recruitment issues at the district bench and, while the evidence of a problem is not currently strong enough to necessitate immediate action at this tier of the judiciary, we are committed to addressing the underlying cause of the recruitment and retention problems highlighted by the SSRB through a long-term solution for the whole judiciary, which will include pension scheme changes.
The Government will also be making an annual pay award for 2019-20 of 2% for all judges, which will be backdated to 1 April 2019. In addition, we will ensure that judges are placed in the correct salary groupings based on the evidence provided by the SSRB and their independent job comparison panel. Salary group changes will come into effect at the start of the legal year, 1 October 2019.
Similarly the Government will consult on measures designed to address pension tax disincentives that may encourage senior clinicians to limit or reduce their workloads while participating in the NHS pension scheme.
In addition, the Government fully endorse the work that the Lord Chief Justice and Senior President of Tribunals are leading to strengthen leadership and support career development in a modern and professional judiciary.
This includes taking practical steps by encouraging and supporting eligible candidates from under-represented groups successfully to apply for judicial office; supporting career progression for existing judges; growing leadership capability within the judiciary by implementing appraisals and career discussions; developing new training for leadership judges; and giving leadership judges the data and tools they need to drive performance in the system.
This Government are committed to delivering world-class public services and taking action when the evidence requires it to ensure their continued delivery. That is why today I am announcing a package of measures which strikes the right balance between the importance of ensuring we can recruit and retain world-class judges for the future and the necessary investment of public funds.
A copy of the Government response to the SSRB’s major review has been laid in both Houses and will be available online at www.gov.uk.
[HCWS1597]
Justice and Home Affairs Council
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
The EU Justice and Home Affairs Council of Ministers will meet on 6-7 June in Luxembourg. I will represent the UK for justice day. Sir Tim Barrow, Permanent Representative of the UK to the EU and Chris Jones, Director of the Europe Directorate at the Home Office, will represent the UK for interior day.
Justice day on 6 June will begin with a progress report on the proposal on the third-party effects of assignment of claims, which is currently being negotiated in Council working groups. The UK has opted out of this proposal but continues to input to ensure that the legislation does not create any unintended disruption to current financial market practice.
There will then be a policy debate about the use of IT in the proposals to amend the service and taking of evidence regulations. Member states have been divided on the extent to which the processes in each should be digitised. Subject to further considerations about costs, Ministers will be asked whether a mandatory IT system should be introduced and, if so, whether it should be a centralised system or one that is decentralised and based on the existing systems in each member state, and what preferences they have for the type of software that should be used. The UK opted in to the proposal on the service regulation but not the proposal on the taking of evidence regulation.
The Council will then discuss non-legislative activities. First, there will be a policy debate on the future of EU substantive criminal law, which follows a survey of member states seeking views on the use of substantive law in future EU proposals. Given that it looks to future legislative activity, after UK exit, the UK does not seek to direct the conclusions so I will not intervene.
During the working lunch, I will discuss with other Ministers the use of judicial training to foster mutual trust and exchange views on ways to enhance the understanding, confidence and co-operation between judges and prosecutors within EU member states.
After lunch there will be a policy debate on the way forward in the field of mutual recognition in criminal matters. The aim of this debate is to identify matters which may help or hinder more effective mutual recognition, looking in particular at lessons that may be learned from recent CJEU case law and views put forward by member states. In so far as this looks to future legislative activity, the UK does not seek to direct this project since it would be realised after UK exit. The UK is, however, supportive of this work since we aim to be a co-operative partner following UK exit, and as a member state, have experience to offer to the project. I will therefore indicate that the UK will provide its general support and offer assistance.
The presidency will then put Council conclusions which encourage Eurojust and the networks established in the area of judicial co-operation in criminal matters to further develop the co-ordination and synergies between them to Ministers for adoption. The UK supports the work of Eurojust, and agrees that better co-ordination between networks hosted by Eurojust would be helpful for criminal justice co-operation.
The Commission will provide an update on the planned preparatory steps to make the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) operational by the end of 2020. The UK has not opted into EPPO.
The presidency will put the Council decisions relating to the opening of negotiations for EU-US agreement on cross-border access to e-evidence, and authorising the participation in the negotiations on a second additional protocol to the Budapest convention, to ministers for adoption. Whilst the UK supports the overall aim of enhanced international co-operation on e-evidence and its use in preventing and tackling harms to public security, it has not opted into these Council decisions.
Finally, Ministers will adopt the retention of data for the purpose of fighting crime. The agenda item relates to efforts to overcome the challenges of ECJ judgments relating to communications data regimes. The UK supports comprehensively exploring options for lawful regimes in member states, although shares some concerns to an EU-wide legislative solution. The UK has not opted into the relevant measure(s) but this is of interest in the ongoing UK-US CLOUD Act negotiations.
Lithuania will then provide information on actions against judges and prosecutors. Lithuania is seeking co-operation against any possible Interpol alerts launched by Russia to locate or arrest Lithuanian officials involved in a Lithuanian court against former Soviet military officials found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in 1991. I will highlight that the UK considers very seriously any misuse of INTERPOL notices and is committed to ensuring that international norms and codes are upheld.
Interior day will take place on Friday 7 June. Sir Tim Barrow, Permanent Representative of the UK to the EU and Chris Jones, Director of the Europe Directorate at the Home Office, will represent the UK for interior day.
The Council will hold a policy debate on the future of EU law enforcement, and in particular the need for an integrated approach to policing, interagency co-operation and further development of EU policing solutions. The UK supports the concept of an integrated approach to security, accompanied by the development of EU policing solutions which respond to changing threat landscapes and evolving technologies.
The EU counter-terrorism co-ordinator will then present on the implications of 5G for law enforcement work. The UK supports discussion at EU-level on this issue, and further thinking on the nature and extent of the challenges posed by this emerging technology.
The Council will then receive an update on co-operation between competent authorities dealing with counter-terrorism. The presidency will update on work being undertaken to explore practical ways on how to co-operate. The UK supports such co-operation where this adds value over existing exchanges between law enforcement authorities and Europol.
Over lunch, Ministers will undertake an exchange of views with representatives of the UNHCR and the IOM on the challenges ahead on migration and asylum. Following the rise in migrant arrivals across the central Mediterranean, the discussion will return to seeking sustainable solutions on disembarkation and strengthening the response upstream. The UK intervention will focus on our extensive support upstream which ranges from tackling organised immigration crime and the use of strategic communications to building partnerships and capability with source and transit countries to jointly address the drivers of migration.
The presidency will seek to reach a general approach on the draft directive on common standards and procedures in member states for returning illegally staying third-country nationals (recast), with the exception of article 22 on the border procedure and the related recitals. The UK has not opted into this measure and will not intervene.
The presidency will also seek partial general approaches on draft regulations establishing the integrated border management fund, establishing the asylum and migration fund, and establishing the internal security fund. These are subject to wider negotiations on the overall multi-annual financial framework. The UK will not participate in any of these funds, and will not intervene.
[HCWS1600]
Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Panel Members
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister (Mrs Theresa May)
The fire in Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017 was an unimaginable tragedy that should never have happened. The Government set up the Grenfell Tower Inquiry to get to the truth about what happened, deliver justice for victims, survivors, bereaved families and the wider community, and to ensure that such a terrible tragedy could never happen again.
Section 7 (1)(b) of the Inquiries Act 2005 allows me to appoint panel members to the inquiry panel at any time during the inquiry. I have recently announced that Professor Nabeel Hamdi and Thouria Istephan will be appointed to the inquiry panel for phase 2 of the inquiry’s work.
Professor Nabeel Hamdi is a widely accomplished academic with an international reputation in housing and participatory design and planning. Thouria Istephan is an experienced and highly respected architect with a professional focus on health and safety. She is a partner at Foster + Partners and has a range of skills and experience directly relevant to the issues that the inquiry will be investigating in phase 2 of its work.
Given the extent of the tragic circumstances surrounding the fire, we should not be surprised by the scale and breadth of issues to be investigated that have emerged from the inquiry’s work. Phase 2 of the inquiry will be the largest phase in terms of the number and range of issues to be considered and I am confident that these appointments will ensure that the inquiry panel has the diversity of skills and expertise necessary for the scope and complexity of issues to be addressed by phase 2 of the inquiry’s work.
I wrote to the Chair of the inquiry, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, before recess informing him of my decision and to seek his consent to the appointments in accordance with section 7(2)(b) of the Inquiries Act 2005. Sir Martin replied on 29 May 2019 consenting to the appointment. Our exchange of letters can be found on gov.uk: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/names-of-grenfell-tower-inquiry-panel-members-announced- 30-may-2019
[HCWS1595]
Transport Council
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
The Transport Council will be taking place in Luxembourg on Thursday 6 June. This will be the only Transport Council under the Romanian presidency (the presidency).
The Council is expected to reach a general approach on a proposal from the third tranche of the “mobility package” for a legal framework for the electronic communication of freight transport information. The proposal would oblige member state authorities to accept electronic freight documents related to the transport of goods. The Government consider that the proposal includes some positive changes to modernise the processes and, as currently drafted, will provide an acceptable balance between EU-wide action and national discretion.
Next, there will be a progress report on a proposal from the third tranche of the “mobility package” for the regulation on streamlining measures for the realisation of the trans-European transport network (TEN-T). The proposal aims to provide a streamlined approval process for transport infrastructure projects on the TEN-T, speeding up their implementation.
Following this, the Council will give a progress report on a proposal from the first tranche of the “mobility package” to revise the current directive on the use of hired vehicles which aims to regulate under which circumstances member states could limit goods vehicles registered overseas from being hired by their hauliers.
Afterwards, there will be a progress report on the proposal from the first tranche of the “mobility package” to revise the current directive on Eurovignette (road charging). This will provide an update on negotiations on proposals to amend the current directive on charging of heavy goods vehicles. Our view, that national Governments should have the flexibility to do what is right in their circumstances, is shared by many other member states.
Next, the presidency has prepared a progress report on negotiations on proposals to revise the regulation on rail passengers’ rights and obligations, aimed at strengthening the rights of rail passengers, including by improving access for people with disabilities or reduced mobility.
Under any other business, the presidency will provide information on other current legislative proposals. Additionally, it will give an update on “Clean planet for all”, the European strategic long-term vision for a prosperous, modern, competitive and climate neutral economy. The Luxembourg delegation will present information on tackling greenhouse gas emissions and congestion by aviation pricing. The Commission will supply information on three items: airspace capacity; connectivity-related outcomes of the EU-China summit that took place in Brussels on 9 April 2019; and a study on transport exteralities. The Polish delegation will supply information on the conference on “Benefits for regions resulting from the implementation of the route Via Carpatia” that took place in Lancut on 17 April 2019. Finally, the Finnish delegation will provide information on the work programme of their forthcoming presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Over lunch, EU Ministers will be asked to endorse a joint declaration on transport co-operation between the EU and the six eastern partner countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The joint declaration aims to take stock of the main achievements in the transport relations between the EU and the eastern partner countries over the years and it is not legally binding.
[HCWS1594]
House of Lords
NHS: Bullying
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Clark of Windermere
To ask Her Majesty's Government what are the latest figures for bullying in the National Health Service; and what are their plans to reduce the level of such bullying.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting NHS organisations in their responsibility to tackle bullying. Some 28.3% of staff responding to the 2018 NHS staff survey experienced bullying from patients, service users or the public, 3.2% from managers and 19.1% from colleagues. Through the NHS Social Partnership Forum’s collective call to action and commitments in the NHS people plan, the Government are working with these arm’s-length bodies, the royal colleges, the NHS national “freedom to speak up” guardian, NHS organisations and health unions to reduce levels of bullying for all staff, and they deserve our thanks for all their work.
Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her Answer. As she indicated, the NHS depends entirely on the commitment and dedication of its staff. It is really appalling that 28% of them experienced bullying and harassment in the last year alone, as she said. Just 12 months ago, her predecessor as Minister told me that over 70,000 members of staff had suffered physical violence in the service, and those figures are three years old. That is indefensible. We need to protect these employees. Will she make it clear that physical attacks will simply not be tolerated? Will she upgrade the service’s register of violent and abusive patients, relatives and friends, and will she confirm that there will be zero tolerance against physical attacks on our NHS staff?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I thank the noble Lord for his Question and I share his outrage. We absolutely must have zero tolerance of violence against any NHS workers, wherever they work within the National Health Service. That is exactly why the Secretary of State made a commitment to the national NHS violence reduction strategy, which was launched on 31 October 2018. It will put in place arrangements to support trusts in their responsibilities to protect staff. The recommendations include improving governance, improving staff training and development, improving the work environment and better use of legislation, including the new Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act, which had its first conviction in November. That is a significant improvement, but we know that improving general morale and the workforce environment are important, which is why we published the people plan this week.
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, zero tolerance is really important in a workplace, but what are the Government doing to ensure that more senior managers and clinicians do not sexually harass and bully more junior staff?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
My noble friend is right that we must ensure that bullying, wherever it comes from, is reported. It is just as unacceptable that bullying should come from managers and senior people as from those below. As I said in my Answer, the reported level of bullying from managers is 3.2%. This is one reason why we have introduced the “freedom to speak up” guardian, so that NHS workers are free to speak up and feel that they can do so in a safe space.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, the interim report by the noble Baroness, Lady Harding, on NHS staffing highlights persistent shortages of staff, particularly of registered nurses, in many parts of the NHS. To what extent does the Minister believe that bullying is associated with managers focusing on NHS targets without sufficient staff to deliver high-quality care?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The Interim NHS People Plan identified bullying and violence in the workplace as a key challenge that must be addressed, and identified some measures to address them. However, the noble Baroness is absolutely right that an underlying challenge is staffing, which is a major concern for the NHS workforce. The plan looks to address them in a serious and concerted way by recruiting more staff, retaining existing staff, and looking at innovative ways to entice former staff back into the NHS so that we reduce the pressure on the entire system. She will know that the plan includes commitments to recruit 40,000 more nurses over the next five years and to reduce the vacancy rate to 5% by 2028, down from the current 8%, and reiterates the commitment to recruit 5,000 more GPs on top of the 20,000 extra support staff to be recruited in the coming years.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, in addition to the figures cited by the Minister at the beginning of this Question, it has also been revealed that a number of hospital trusts still use non-disclosure agreements effectively to gag people when there has been a resolution to an incident. What guidance do the Government provide to NHS England to ensure that so-called gagging clauses are used only on sensitive matters, such as any compensation payment, and absolutely not to stop whistleblowing?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The noble Baroness is right that non-disclosure agreements cannot cover up bullying. All staff are free to speak up. Non-disclosure agreements should not be used for that purpose in any case. The Government have been very clear on this.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am sure noble Lords will recall my maiden speech 21 years ago, when I spoke about bullying in schools. One of the points that I made then, and I shall make again now, is that an answer to this problem is an independent hotline which people can ring to report misconduct of all kinds, not just bullying, so that organisations do not seek retribution for those who report misconduct.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
I am afraid I was not here 21 years ago to hear the noble Lord’s maiden speech, but I shall look it up with utmost urgency upon leaving the Chamber and I thank him for his proposal. As the work moves from the interim people plan to the people plan, in which the work on bullying and the violence reduction strategy will be developed, I am sure that his proposal will be considered as a very sensible plan.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, how seriously does the CQC take bullying and what does it do about it?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The CQC takes this extremely seriously. One proposal in the people plan is for the CQC’s scorecard to include a proper measure of a sustainable workforce, so that the new staff engagement metrics for the NHS oversight framework can be taken into account in the CQC’s well-led assessments during inspections, and that includes questions about bullying.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I hope that my noble friend will agree that good leadership in the NHS is critical to removing a bullying culture. In that respect, might the Government support the NHS Leadership Academy to the extent that all aspiring chief executives in the NHS should themselves have gone through its Aspiring Chief Executive programme?
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
My noble friend, as ever, makes a very good point. Obviously there are a number of routes where leadership has been shown on this issue. In 2016 the Social Partnership Forum, which is chaired by Ministers but works across the system, gave a call to action, tasking employers and trade unions in all NHS organisations with working in partnership to create positive workplace cultures and to tackle bullying. In addition, recognising that no one organisation has the answer, royal colleges and others have joined together to create an alliance to tackle workplace bullying. They concluded that:
“Bullying behaviour is unacceptable. It is unprofessional and unnecessary. It affects the wellbeing of individuals and the teams within which they work”.
My noble friend’s proposal is another part of the picture. We need to come together across the system to tackle a completely unacceptable set of behaviours in the NHS—one that needs to be stamped out entirely.
Gaza
Lord Hylton
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to discuss with the governments of (1) Israel, and (2) Egypt, how to end the causes of recurrent violence in Gaza.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, we regularly discuss the situation in Gaza with the Israeli and Egyptian Governments. This includes the Minister of State for the Middle East raising our concerns with the Israeli authorities during his visit to Israel in May, as well as discussions with the Egyptian ambassador on 16 May. We are gravely concerned about the recent escalation of violence in Gaza. We welcome the Egyptian and United Nations brokered ceasefire and urge all parties to make progress towards a long-term agreement.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her reply, but is it not intolerable that violence has continued for 12 years, providing an excuse for worldwide terrorism? The blockade also continues, although it has not prevented violence from both sides. Will Her Majesty’s Government call for an end to the blockade and for the normalisation of all relationships? Would an independently facilitated analysis of the causes of strife be helpful in this?
Baroness Goldie
I reassure the noble Lord that we are deeply concerned about the recurring violence in Gaza and the surrounding region, and we regularly lobby the Israelis about the damage that their restrictions are doing to the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Palestinians. We have also raised concerns with the Egyptian authorities, but there is no excuse or justification for terrorism. We utterly condemn the violent acts of Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. The firing of rockets towards civilian areas is unacceptable and must stop. I agree with the noble Lord that all parties should work together to agree a long-term sustainable plan to improve the situation with help from the international community, and we welcome efforts by those who are working to develop solutions that will ultimately lead to peace.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, Israel is like one of those dangerous animals which, when attacked, defends itself. It would surely be more sensible to talk to Hamas and suggest that it stops rockets being launched into Israel and tunnels to Israel being built. The Israelis must know where the rockets are located and where the tunnels begin because of the quality of their intelligence operations. That would surely be the better practice.
Baroness Goldie
The noble Lord will be aware of the Government’s long-standing position: Hamas’s military wing has been proscribed in the UK since 2001 and the UK has a policy of no contact with Hamas, including the political as well as the military wing. Our position is that it must renounce violence, recognise Israel and accept previously signed agreements.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we are expecting a grand American plan for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation from Mr Kushner and others. I gather that it has now been put off because of the failure of Netanyahu to form a new Government. Can the Minister assure us that the British have been fully briefed on what it will contain, that we have had a chance to provide our own input into what sounds like an immensely overoptimistic set of proposals for the Palestinians to accept, and that we are continuing to be engaged in discussions on this matter?
Baroness Goldie
We continue to encourage the US Administration to bring forward detailed proposals for a viable Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement that addresses the legitimate concerns of both parties. Insofar as further detail is concerned, since the state visit by President Trump is ongoing it would not be appropriate to comment on the nature of the conversations that are taking place. We discuss a wide range of topics with the US Administration, including the Middle East peace process, and we look forward to learning more about the US plans. Yesterday, the Foreign Secretary met with Mr Jared Kushner who, as your Lordships will be aware, is President Trump’s son-in-law and has been placed in charge of the peace plan. They discussed a range of important topics, including the Middle East.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
Noble Lords will be aware of the terrible state of the healthcare system in Gaza. This is partly because in Hamas-controlled Gaza much of the reconstruction material has been misused for tunnels and the like. One thing Her Majesty’s Government could do—perhaps my noble friend the Minister could state whether they are minded so to do—is to keep an eye on the misappropriation of international aid and ensure that it is used for the purpose for which it is sent.
Baroness Goldie
I thank my noble friend for that question. As he will be aware, the UK is one of the principal donors to the Palestinian Authority in respect of Gaza; at least, we direct help through agencies there to try to alleviate the conditions. We would take very seriously any suggestion or evidence that this funding was being misdirected or misused. If any evidence were available, the United Kingdom Government would want to know about that.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that the American cuts in funding to UNRWA were potentially very damaging and that the day was saved only by the British and other Governments making up the shortfall? Will the Minister confirm that, if the UNRWA money were to stop, affecting the valuable services that it provides in Gaza in both education and health, that would have a very damaging effect on the situation there and further prejudice the tensions in the region?
Baroness Goldie
All noble Lords will agree that it is important that everything possible is done to alleviate the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The noble Lord is correct that the role of UNRWA—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency—is extremely important. I cannot speak for the United States of America, but I can confirm that the UK is a long supporter of that agency and that we intend over the next few years to provide up to £80 million to support it. The noble Lord will be aware that this is in addition to the significant funds that we are already making available, including, as announced on 29 May by the Minister of State for the Middle East, new UK money of £1.6 million being given to the World Health Organization. This will address urgent gaps in trauma and emergency care in Gaza, including by establishing a new limb reconstruction unit which will help to provide lifesaving treatment to more than 380,000 people in Gaza.
Probation: Voluntary Sector
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the voluntary sector can contribute to an effective national probation service.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)
My Lords, voluntary organisations play an important role in helping offenders turn their lives around. We are determined to strengthen this role. In May, the Government set out our plans for future probation arrangements, including that the National Probation Service will directly commission specialist and voluntary sector organisations to deliver rehabilitation services. We are engaging closely with voluntary sector providers to ensure that our arrangements maximise their potential engagement.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer and welcome the proposal in the Strengthening Probation, Building Confidence consultation, which promises a clearer role for the voluntary sector. My concern, however, is that the consultation proposes ongoing mini-competitions and a mixed market for services. Can the Minister tell us how the Government will ensure that smaller charities are helped to spend less time competing for contracts and more time serving the community?
Lord Keen of Elie
My Lords, commissioning of interventions for each area will be driven by a regional probation director, who will have a special responsibility to make use of locally available services and to adapt provision to match local need. In addition, we intend to remove some of the barriers that have been in place for smaller voluntary organisations, such as the requirement to provide parent company guarantees, which these voluntary organisations could not meet.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, the National Probation Service has more than a quarter of a million people under supervision at any given time. A lack of resources and Chris Grayling’s reforms have not helped, as was clearly demonstrated by the National Audit Office. We welcomed the setting up of the National Probation Service, but we now have another problem about the extent of its workload. Is it not time to set up a thematic review to examine whether present resources are adequate to meet the implementation objectives of both the Prison Service and the National Probation Service? How do we involve the voluntary organisations in this critical exercise?
Lord Keen of Elie
My Lords, there is a determination to ensure that the voluntary sector is fully engaged in the future delivery of probation services. Indeed, although there are only 94 voluntary community or social enterprises delivering services in the current CRC supply chain, we know that there are many hundreds of such organisations that are either signposted by the present system or are available to be used, and we intend to go to them in so far as we can. As regards the future organisation of those services, we are in the process of gathering data on all staff across the probation system to inform our workforce planning for this new model.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, this House debated the Government’s Offender Rehabilitation Bill, which was an early example of Chris Grayling’s ideological approach to policy and his limitless capacity to get things wrong—in this case, at the cost of over £400 million. Now, a year after a devastating report from the Justice Select Committee, in a belated decision the Government are abolishing the community rehabilitation companies, but why are they insisting, in effect, that the role of the National Probation Service is to contract out much of the service to private companies?
Lord Keen of Elie
The mixed-market model that we have engaged in has proved effective in a number of respects, and we continue to believe that that is the way in which to deliver services. Indeed, I notice that the noble Lord’s suggestion might well have the unfortunate result of excluding much of the voluntary sector.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I ask my noble and learned friend how Her Majesty’s Government will ensure that the importance of family and other supportive relationships is recognised as the golden thread that runs through all probation processes, when they transfer responsibility for management of all offenders to the National Probation Service.
Lord Keen of Elie
My Lords, the support of family and other social networks is a critical factor in helping to reduce reoffending, and we want to build on that where possible. Over the past couple of years, we have been implementing the recommendation of my noble friend’s first report on male offenders, and we plan to act on his more recent report on female offenders.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, the consultation response that the Minister mentioned is long on thoughts and ideas but particularly short on any implementation plan. Can the Minister please tell the House when the director-general of the probation service will produce an implementation plan to give effect to all these ideas in the consultation response?
Lord Keen of Elie
My Lords, our plans regarding this matter are more developed in respect of Wales, where the model was originally considered. We are looking to transfer offender management functions from the community rehabilitation companies to the National Probation Service before the end of 2019 in Wales. Beyond that, it will go into 2020. That is the sort of timescale we will have in mind when it comes to the position of further probation reports.
Lord Tomlinson (Lab)
My Lords, a few minutes ago, the Minister referred to the great successes of this mixed-market model. Can he help people such as me by giving a couple of examples of these great successes? Can he then explain why it has been so necessary to introduce such proposals for major reform?
Lord Keen of Elie
My Lords, I am not sure I used the word “great”, but there have been successes so far as that model is concerned. Indeed, if we look at the statistics, we see that there has been an overall reduction, by a number of percentage points, in the reoffending rate for offenders managed by CRCs over the same offenders in 2011. In addition, we have seen that a proportion of CRCs have been consistently successful in reducing reoffending. However, we recognise that the model has not worked as we had hoped. In particular, it has not enabled us to engage with the voluntary sector in the way we had anticipated. We are desirous to achieve that objective.
Housing: Pensions and Deposits
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to allow individuals to use accrued pension savings to fund first time home deposits.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Buscombe) (Con)
My Lords, the Government have no plans to change access to accrued pension savings. Automatic enrolment has transformed pension participation, with over 10 million people enrolled in workplace schemes. We will build on these reforms. We are also committed to helping people realise their aspiration to own their own home. Since 2010, over half a million people have been helped to purchase a home through government-backed schemes including Help to Buy.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
When I read about this proposal, I thought it was ill-thought-out and damaging. Does the noble Baroness agree that people need to plan carefully for their retirement, to ensure they have an adequate income? If this idea ever came to fruition, it is likely that it would push up house prices and leave people worse off regarding their expected retirement income.
Baroness Buscombe
I entirely agree with the noble Lord that we must think carefully about how we encourage and support people to save for the long term and their retirement. That is why we are so pleased about the success of auto-enrolment. Our priority remains establishing long-term savings behaviour, so that people are enabled to save for greater security. Automatic enrolment has already reversed the decline in workplace pension savings seen in the decade prior to its introduction, and the number of first-time home buyers is at its highest level for 11 years.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)
My Lords, could the Minister clarify whether the average 35 year-old has put £35,000 into a pension pot, or whether the figure is much lower, as statistics showed a few years ago? It is very good news that we are not going to risk young people completely emptying their pension pots in a desperate attempt to get on to the housing ladder. Of course, this is another reason why more affordable housing is desperately needed.
Baroness Buscombe
I entirely agree with the noble Baroness that one of our key concerns is to ensure that we encourage this culture of young people saving for their retirement. Of course, we do not want to do anything which would expedite them getting into financial difficulty by accessing their pension pots early. We are very excited by young people’s level of uptake of the auto-enrolment pension scheme. Our ambition and aim is to do anything we can to support them and to build more affordable homes.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that the problem in the housing market is a shortage not of money, but of houses? If we do anything at all to put more money into the market before we have dealt with the problems of planning consents and got the houses built, we will only inflate the prices of houses even more.
Baroness Buscombe
I do agree. I am sorry that I am not the Housing Minister answering this Question, but it is important that we are committed to ensuring the housing market works for everyone. Of course, there is more to do. That is why we have announced an extra £17 billion in funding for Help to Buy since 2017 and reformed stamp duty so that 80% of first-time buyers will not pay tax. We are absolutely on a track that does not mean an increase in house prices. The important thing is that we focus on supporting first-time buyers. The number of first-time buyers is at an 11-year annual high.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit.
Baroness Sherlock
There is a first time for everything. When I read about this, like my noble friend Lord Kennedy I initially wondered whether it was April Fools’ Day. The Minister in charge of housing has a wheeze whereby young people should raid their pension pots to fund the deposit on a new house. I can immediately see three things wrong with this. First, frankly, most young people do not have enough money to put a deposit on a flat to rent—there is certainly not enough for fish and chips afterwards. Secondly, if they have enough money in their pension pots it should stay there, otherwise they will not have anything to retire on. Thirdly, as my new friend, the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, points out, this will drive up the cost of housing. Given all that, and given that the DWP has had a multi-million-pound advertising campaign to encourage younger people to save, what will happen to James Brokenshire?
Baroness Buscombe
My Lords, I am very grateful that the noble Baroness has formed a new friendship over this topical Question. In short, our focus in the Department for Work and Pensions is on ensuring we support young people in every way we can to save for the long-term, for their retirement and security. I have to say to noble Lords opposite that, if they feel as I do, perhaps it is not right that we should be giving so much oxygen to this idea in the House of Lords.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
On the question of the role of land in house prices going up, is not one of the requirements of a sensible policy that the land value increase does not all stay in the pockets of the people who are sitting on this land, which could be given planning permission? That would help the Exchequer in other aspects of public finance.
Baroness Buscombe
My Lords, as I said, I am not the Housing Minister, but I will say this. Clearly, we must be very careful about how we develop our policies in this area. The reality is that our schemes are working. We are building a record number of homes. The latest evaluation has found that there is no evidence of a significant impact on house prices overall. The Help to Buy scheme is a hugely important part of that. There is no question of us supporting any scheme that would mean excess profits in the wrong hands.
Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]
Wild Animals in Circuses (No. 2) Bill
Wednesday 5th June 2019
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019 View all Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 4 June 2019 - (4 Jun 2019)
Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 3) Bill [HL]
Wednesday 5th June 2019
(4 years, 10 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Kew Gardens (Leases) Act 2019 View all Kew Gardens (Leases) Act 2019 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 174-R-I Marshalled list for Report (PDF) - (3 Jun 2019)
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 1 would restrict the use of extended leases to residential properties on the Kew estate. This amendment follows up on our earlier debates, which have tried to ascertain the longer-term implications of providing longer-term leases of up to 150 years across the Kew estate. As it stands, this short Bill could enable any lease, whether commercial, scientific or residential, to be extended in this way, potentially creating welcome additional income for Kew but also increasing the risks that the special and much-loved site will lose its focus.
Throughout the earlier discussions the Minister constantly quoted the immediate priority, which is to extend the leases on the seven residential properties overlooking Kew Green. As has been said, this is estimated to bring in additional income of some £15 million. I think we all said, in our different ways, that we did not have a problem with this; it seemed to make perfect sense. If this were what the Bill proposed, it would have sailed through its scrutiny stages without amendment but it is not what the Bill says. Instead, it gives powers to the Secretary of State to grant new leases and extend existing leases across the estate for up to 150 years.
At earlier stages of the Bill, a number of noble Lords sought to understand the full implications of this new power. For example, what was the total number of future properties that might be considered for longer leases once the seven residential properties have been refurbished? Were there plans to develop the car park adjoining the river? Were there other residential properties on different parts of the estate in need of refurbishment and which could also benefit from longer leases? Were there sites within the boundaries of Kew which were being considered for commercial development as well? In his response in Committee, the Minister was able to say only that Kew does not have any immediate plans beyond those for the seven residential properties. But he went on to add:
“Obviously, the Bill does not stop future plans for any other property on the non-core estate”.—[Official Report, 21/5/19; col. 1878.]
However, he also acknowledged when asked that there was no clear distinction between core and non-core properties on the estate.
In the absence of further details about the longer-term plans of the trustees for other lease extensions, and taking on board the Minister’s repeated reassurances that the priority of the trustees is to create extra income from the initial seven residential properties, we are proposing this simple amendment to limit any extended leases to residential properties on the estate. It would seem to meet the objectives of the trustees while providing reassurance that there will not be long-term commercial lets on the estate, which might change the ethos and character of the site as a whole. I hope that noble Lords and the Minister will see the sense of this amendment and I beg to move.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
My Lords, the amendment is a little too restrictive on Kew, although I recall that at one time it had a plan, or at least a dream, to make available some of the properties for short-term accommodation for Kew’s partners when they needed to spend time in London and with Kew. However, to try to restrict the new power to residential property is going a bit too far.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I intervened in Committee and put to the Minister a series of questions to which I hoped he might give me the answers in writing. They have not come, so perhaps he might ask officials to consider the questions I asked during that debate.
The most important protection for the land at Kew Gardens has been the fact that leases could be granted for a maximum of 30 years. The moment you transform that system and change the arrangement such that you can grant leases of up to 150 years, you transform the discussion about the future of that land and its potential use by developers. Even though covenants and restrictions will be in place, developers will look seriously at the long-term potential of the use of the land.
The question for me is: what has been Parliament’s intention during the passage of the Bill? As I have understood it, it is to ensure that no commercial development takes place on the site and that residential development should be restricted to a very small proportion of the land. I am not convinced by that. Parliament is being naive in thinking that the position will remain the same for the next 150 years.
So last night, lying in bed at midnight—as happened on the previous occasion—I went through the documentation that the Minister has provided for us in the past week. That is the framework document, from which I want to cite a number of paragraphs in support of my case.
Paragraph 27.1 refers to a “light touch” annual review of the framework document. It then talks about three-yearly full reviews. What will happen at the end of three years, six years, nine years, 12 years, 15 years, 18 years or 21 years? At what stage do Ministers envisage being under pressure, because the Secretary of State retains powers in these areas, to change the arrangements for future development possibilities on that site?
Paragraph 28.2 confirms the sharing arrangements for developers’ gains—so in the framework document there is recognition that there will be developers’ gains in the future. I am sure developers will study that closely. It may be that, because the intention of Parliament is not altogether clear, lawyers pore over our debates. I am not a lawyer, but I am told that they often refer to parliamentary debates to try to identify what the intention of Parliament was when a particular Bill went through.
Paragraph 7.4 refers to a requirement on Kew,
“to maximise opportunities to increase income”.
Again, that is a pressure point on Kew to maximise income available from the site. In my view, it would be for the development of commercial and residential property.
Under paragraph 7.2, the Secretary of State can set conditions on grant-in-aid funding. In other words, they could pressure Kew to maximise alternative income streams when deciding on the grant-in-aid funding to be made available in any particular year.
Paragraph 21.1 emphasises the requirement for Kew to have regard to “efficiency, costs and resources”—again, that is a pressure.
In paragraphs 23.2 and 23.3, there is a requirement to avoid balances. Under the agreement as I understand it, Kew must not pursue a policy of having balances at the ends of years. In other words, it cannot save money in that way, which will in itself put pressure on resource availability—so much so that I believe that it will seek profits from the development of land on the site.
In paragraph 25.1, a process is set out for Defra’s approval of breaches of the MPM rules, guidance and advice, and in paragraph 9.2 there is a requirement on the Secretary of State to sign off land sales. This, of course, works both ways: it can put a block on sales, but on the other hand it could serve as a notice to future generations that in 2019 it was envisaged or foreseen that land sales would inevitably take place. The question is: what land? I am not suggesting for one moment that it will be land in the body of the site, but I believe that that site has rich future potential and that developers will look at it and argue that, on the periphery of the estate, particularly near the river, there is potential for substantial development.
In Committee, I pointed to a footage price for flats on the present market. Flats down there would sell, even in today’s market, at £1,500 per square foot. That property in the future, on the river at Kew, will fetch far more money than even today’s prices, because it will become prime property. Ministers have completely underestimated the pressure that will be put on the trustees and the people who will be running Kew in the future to maximise their profits through property development on that site. I heard nothing during the debate in Committee that in any way interferes with my view. I believe that that is what will happen, and what we have in the Bill offers insufficient protection, despite all the conditions that the Minister referred to in his responses on that previous occasion.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, I am most grateful to noble Lords for their contributions. I well understand that the noble Baroness’s amendment seeks to restrict the application of the Bill solely to residential properties. It is true that the properties currently in the contemplation of Kew following the Bill are those seven residential properties that are either currently occupied on one-year assured shorthold tenancies or are vacant and require substantial renovation work. That is not to say that these are the only opportunities for Kew, but these are the definite properties that could immediately benefit from the Bill.
I know that noble Lords want only the best for Kew—I absolutely understand what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is saying. In both what I believe I put on record about the protections and, if I am permitted, in suggesting what might follow on the next amendment, Parliament is very clear about the requirement to protect Kew. However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Eccles that restricting leases to residential properties only would have a significant adverse impact on Kew’s ability to benefit from the Bill. All noble Lords have said that we have great trust in the current trustees but we are worried about what might happen in the future. The current trustees and executive feel very strongly that to restrict the Bill will not be helpful to Kew in the future. I want, therefore, to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and other noble Lords by setting out in more detail further properties that Kew might, for example, plan for the future.
Other properties will be considered for the possibility of the grant of a longer lease when opportunities clearly present themselves; for instance, if buildings become vacant and surplus to requirements. As noble Lords know, the care and protection of Kew’s collections is one of the primary duties of Kew’s board of trustees. The board must ensure that its collections are well managed, widely accessible and secure, and provide an optimum environment for scientific collaboration and discovery. This statutory duty will entail developing contemporary world-class facilities for the collections and science research at Kew Gardens, to provide a platform for collaborative, discovery-driven, botanical science to find solutions to the urgent challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.
As these facilities are realised over the medium to long term, this could enable other buildings to be repurposed for a means appropriate to furthering Kew’s mission and statutory objectives. These other buildings could include office accommodation which becomes surplus to requirements or is in need of significant renovation. In such cases, Kew should be able to explore options that deliver the best possible return for Kew, whether for commercial or residential letting, and which can be reinvested to further its statutory functions.
One such opportunity is 47 Kew Green. This is currently an office building for marketing and commercial staff, albeit not fit for purpose as modern office accommodation and requiring significant renovation work. Should Kew identify alternative space for staff to move out of this building into more suitable accommodation, it would be faced with a choice of renovating the building itself or finding a suitable and sensitive lessee to take the building over and improve its condition. I should add that Kew is very clear that, even with renovation, this building would not be suitable as research facilities to further Kew’s purpose—investigation and research into the science of plants and fungi. Kew may not require the office building in the future, but, equally, preventing Kew leasing it out as a business premises would restrict it, even risking that building becoming obsolete. That is clearly one of the key aims that the Bill seeks to remedy.
Another possibility is Descanso House, a grade 2 listed Georgian building on the edge of the Kew Gardens site. It is not accessible to the public and is underutilised due to its condition. It is currently office accommodation for a small number of Kew staff, with a small office let to a Kew partner on a one-year lease. It is in urgent need of repairs. If alternative office accommodation could be found, this building could be considered for refurbishment, subject to listed building consent and in accordance with guidance in the Kew world heritage site plan.
To restrict the Bill to apply solely to the residential properties would not help Kew. On the basis that the protections are already in place, which I have set out at great length—and, if I may be permitted to say, I believe those protections will be considered in the next amendment—there is no reason to distinguish between residential and commercial leaseholds. From my experience of other large estates such as Kew, I would expect a mix of leasehold lets.
I will look into the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I recall committing to write on the specific issue of the car park. A copy of that letter should have been placed in the Library and sent to all noble Lords, but I will check. I know I signed the letter, so I am confident that—
Baroness Kramer (LD)
To reassure the Minister, I certainly received a copy of it; I believe my noble friend did as well. I do not know whether other noble Lords did, but it was an extremely reassuring letter.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I will look at Hansard again, because if the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, thinks that I have not attended to other matters, I of course shall.
On the question of the framework document, Kew is protected but it is absolutely essential that there is rigour in that document, given the use of public money, over the arrangements between the sponsoring department and Kew. All noble Lords would be displeased if there were not confidence that there was rigour in the custodianship of public money. I do not resile from the fact that it is important that there is this arrangement between Defra and Kew. From my experience, the relationship between the two is proper, but with a mutual respect that we understand absolutely the functions that the trustees and the executive undertake on our behalf.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The Minister has to accept that what we are discussing today in the Bill is on the basis of the framework document that we can now see. We do not know what the framework document will say in 15 years’ time, yet we are carrying the Bill today.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, with the greatest of respect, none of us can command the certainty of what our successors may do. We are here, doing what we can. That is why I am pleased that in the next amendment we will be discussing our protections, which I have already outlined in considerable detail. I have taken great care and attention when discussing this with the trustees and the executive, all of whom have the ultimate bona fides with regard to the future of Kew.
I believe that Parliament, in its scrutiny, is undertaking what is right: the Bill gives Kew the capacity to reduce its maintenance liabilities and running costs, which must be desirable. It generates additional income from property that will help Kew to achieve its core objectives—which is desirable—maintain its status as a UNESCO world heritage site, and to improve the quality of its estate. I do not mean to be facetious, but resources are not infinite. I do not yet know any noble Lord who truly thinks that we have infinite resources, however wonderful Kew is. Therefore this approach must be right. I go to Kew often, and there are buildings there which we are not looking after as well as any of us would wish. This is what Kew wishes us to do, because this is the way that will help it to fulfil its statutory functions.
I say in particular to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that, having spoken to those at Kew, I have given examples of buildings that they believe could be better suited to a commercial let but with all the current protections and what I believe we may well go on to. I therefore respectfully ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I very much welcome the steps the Minister has taken to listen to the concerns that have been raised around the Chamber in the earlier debates and again today. I know that he has done his best to answer all the issues that we have thrown at him over that period, and he has done so again today. It was helpful to hear the examples that he gave. I felt that in earlier debates there was a bit of a black hole, but he has populated that black hole with some credible examples. None of us wants buildings on the site left empty, obsolete or run down, and if there is a plan to deal with those in a constructive way, I think we would all want that to happen.
My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours was right to say that the lawyers will pore over these debates in years to come, so it has been helpful to have that on the record as Kew’s general intent. The Minister caveated his comments by pointing out that we will shortly have another debate. On the basis that there is more than one way to skin a cat—this was only one way and another is coming up—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Whitty
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, while moving Amendment 2, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Jones, I will also speak to Amendment 3—the two are clearly interdependent.
Your Lordships may recall that I expressed my attachment to Kew, its history, scientific excellence and amenity value, and to its aspect and its contribution, as my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, said, to that beautiful stretch of the Thames. None of us wishes to prejudice any of that. We want to preserve all those outcomes and benefits, but I recognise that to do so costs money. I was, like the Minister, responsible for Kew for a number of years, and understand that we need to increase the private money going into it. I recognise that the 31-year restriction on the lease was an inhibition on raising some of that money.
However, as my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lady Jones said, the Bill presented to us was very open-ended and was not restricted to the seven Kew Green properties but applied to any form of asset, building or land within the Kew estate. I therefore clearly felt, as did many other contributors to that debate, that we needed to place some restriction on how leases could be extended. I recognise the need for resources and to update some of the estate, but we need to be pretty firm in ensuring that such leases as are granted by virtue of this very short and apparently innocuous Bill are preserved and that Kew can continue to provide both scientific excellence and amenity value to our people—indeed, to the planet as a whole, because Kew’s contribution to botanical science is a very important element in biodiversity and climate change strategies.
As noble Lords will recall, in Committee I produced an amendment which I thought was pretty good and nailed the restrictions necessary. It referred to any such lease having to be,
“supportive of, or be compatible with the core botanical, scientific, environmental, educational and amenity activities of”,
Kew. I thought that was pretty clear, but since then, after consultation with lawyers—both mine and the department’s—it has become clear that that is too generalised and must be anchored in existing legislation to which future generations can refer. I therefore welcome the discussion that the Minister had and allowed his officials and Kew officials to have with me so that we could come up with a form of words which I hope meets all the concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours and others. There is concern in the community around Kew, in the scientific community and in the minds of those who use Kew for recreational purposes that if we allow any open-ended leases, there will be developer interest, with the disastrous effect that we have seen on other stretches of the Thames applied to this very special piece of ground.
I therefore accept the advice of the lawyers to a large extent and have attempted in my amendments to place restrictions on future leases in terms, on the one hand, of the universal World Heritage Site provisions, which are pretty clear and, on the other, under the National Heritage Act, which includes the six principles under which the trustees of Kew are supposed to operate, to which the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, referred at earlier stages. That pretty much covers the basis on which we must ensure that restrictions are placed on leases.
The amendments place the obligation on the Secretary of State, who would grant the leases, and therefore on the lessee, who would have to abide by the restrictions required by the Secretary of State. That may not be 100% watertight, but it is much more watertight than the original Bill and, I think, reflects many of the assurances which the Minister has tried to give us today and at earlier stages of the Bill. I think we can move forward with confidence and avoid the kind of intrusion on, and misuse of, the assets and land at Kew that some of us have feared. I beg to move.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I think that it would be helpful to your Lordships if I confirmed that the Government support both amendments.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I hesitate to intervene, particularly after what my noble friend on the Front Bench said. I assure the House that I will not inflict a Second Reading speech on noble Lords.
I proposed the Bill kindly taken up by the Government, which has become the Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 3) Bill. Therefore, in some senses, I am a guilty party. I apologise for the fact that, because the Bill was taken up at short notice, I could not be present either at Second Reading or in Committee. Having read the proceedings carefully, I express my thanks to all those noble Lords who have demonstrated their love for Kew and their concern for it and its importance as a world heritage site and a world scientific centre. The words used by Peers on all sides of the House have been wise and shown a duty of care. My noble friend on the Front Bench has been wise in negotiating and listening to come forward with a compromise, which I hope will satisfy the House.
I have been in the two buildings mentioned by my noble friend in the debate on the previous amendment. There is no doubt that they have a better longer-term purpose. Something was said about how people may construe the intentions of Parliament—indeed, those of all concerned. When I had the honour some years ago of being the leader of the local authority, I walked the grounds with Mr Deverell, the truly outstanding director of Kew. We discussed this problem and these propositions, which eventually led to the Bill. With the benefit of those private discussions over a number of years, I can assure the House that never at any stage was any intention expressed, either in private or in public, by those involved with Kew that would lead towards the kind of concerning developments rightly raised by some Members.
With that assurance, added to what I know of Kew’s intentions and the benefits that this Bill could secure for Kew, I will not trespass any further on the House’s patience. I apologise for not being present to support a Bill I proposed in my name and support wholeheartedly. I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. Let us hope that the Bill goes forward and becomes law, to the benefit of this great institution.
The Earl of Selborne (Con)
My Lords, it would clearly be helpful to add the amendment to the Bill. When I chaired the trustees, Ken Livingstone was the Mayor of London. We talked with him about resurrecting river access to Kew. Of course, it is no coincidence that palaces such as Kew, Hampton Court and Greenwich are where they are; it is because of their historical connections with the river. In a way, Kew has rather turned its back on the river. Perhaps this point is more appropriate to Amendment 1 than this one, but I can well imagine a situation in future where somebody might come up with an inspired proposal to lease a landing stage, perhaps somewhere where the car park is near the river, to facilitate a sustainable way of getting to Kew. That would almost certainly require Amendment 1 not to pass; indeed, it was not agreed. Secondly, that would require oversight to make sure that there was no adverse impact on the world heritage site or the universal values at Kew. We are right to give the trustees and Defra a degree of flexibility. It is very difficult to predict the bright ideas that might come up in future; it is not for us to try to second-guess them. However, the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, would be a very effective backstop.
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to thank the Minister for the very detailed letter he sent me on the car park, which I think other Members have seen. I had some underlying concerns that it might be a site for development because it is right on the river, but he was able to reassure me that all the protections that apply to Kew apply also to the car park property; even though it is outside the rigid wall of the garden’s limit, it is still an inherent part of the site.
Over the recess, I had the opportunity to speak to Richard Deverell, the director. I was delighted to find out that the car park is a major source of income for Kew, and that nothing would horrify him more than the thought that he might have to give it up. I feel, therefore, that this is an additional motive that sits alongside the protections.
As the Minister pointed out, there are so many levels of protection. The House has just heard from the noble Lord, Lord True, who was leader of Richmond Council, which, from a Conservative perspective, has always protected the character and significance of Kew and not allowed inappropriate development. I can say with confidence that that will be true of any Liberal Democrat administration, and, if I may be bold and daring, I suspect it would be true of any Labour or Green administration, or any other, that found itself elected in that part of the world. The site is valued so broadly that any proposed planning strategy that made Kew vulnerable in any way would put at risk the credibility of any council.
With all those protections in place—and acknowledging the extra effort from the Minister to reassure me on my one issue of concern, which I very much appreciate—it is with pleasure that we can work with these amendments, which strengthen the protection, and look forward to a stronger future.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, I add to the widespread support for the Bill. I served as Minister for Kew twice; once in the other place and once here. I have been a friend of Kew for over 30 years—indeed, I was there this morning. Over the years, in my different roles of member of the public and Minister, I have been in virtually every building on the site. I congratulate the Government, the Minister and those who brought forward the Bill to secure what will be, I think, an even better future for Kew.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, as the Minister said, Kew does not have access to unlimited resources, and I welcome the recognition of this by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I fully support his amendment, and am pleased that the Government have decided to accept it. Like my noble friend Lady Kramer, I am pleased we have had the opportunity for a contribution from the noble Lord, Lord True, given that this was his Bill in the first place. The amendment before us strengthens the Bill and I am pleased to support it.
Baroness Byford (Con)
My Lords, as somebody who is not based near Kew but who has really appreciated my visits there, I am delighted that this very small Bill will secure Kew’s future. I understand the questions raised about Clause 1, but, having looked at the amendments in this second group, I think they will reinforce it and give us a good balance. We will be able to look at future developments that may happen, because otherwise it will not be sustainable in the long term. The most important thing is the valuable work that goes on at Kew. With climate change and everything else that is coming along, Kew is a precious commodity that we need to keep in hand, without restricting it from developing in ways that we do not yet know will be possible in the future. I am delighted with this, and very supportive of it, as I have been throughout the passage of the Bill.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, I very much support Amendments 2 and 3 from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. Proposed new subsection (3)(b) refers to,
“the ability of the Board of Trustees … to carry out its functions under section 24 of the … Act”.
The first of these functions is to,
“carry out investigation and research into the science of plants and related subjects, and disseminate the results of the investigation and research”.
That is a very widely drawn function. It was drawn that way because, when the draftsman drew up the 1983 heritage Act, he discussed what Kew was doing and was looking for continuity. He was not looking for change.
The point I want to stress concerns the related subjects. In a period of climate change, biodiversity problems and environmental problems, the status of and the concentration on related subjects will change. Kew could help us, particularly with some of the points raised in the course of the Bill, if it gave its interpretation of its policy at a given moment in relation particularly to this first function, but indeed to all of them. The rest are a little easier to interpret. At the moment, in its annual report Kew states these functions, but says nowhere what it has concluded these functions mean it should be doing.
As has been said, completely correctly, Kew is constrained by its resources, particularly money, and by all sorts of history and agreements. It is in a context. If Kew wishes to explain how it sees that context, it should set it out. I hope that my noble friend, in his conversations under the Memorandum of Understanding or in any other way, will seek agreement from Kew that it will volunteer its own policy approach to the functions in Section 24.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I obviously support any amendment that in any way restricts potential future development, but I want to clarify how, in my view, these amendments will be interpreted. If a developer surfaces who wants to build a block of flats on the edge of the Thames, who can go through the planning hurdles and all the covenants and somehow satisfy all these restrictions, he is left with this final restriction:
“The Secretary of State may grant a lease in reliance on subsection (1) only if satisfied that the lease would not have an adverse impact on”,
paragraphs (a) and (b). Would a block of flats on the Thames have an adverse impact on,
“the outstanding universal value of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as a World Heritage Site”?
I can see lawyers on behalf of applicants going to an inquiry and saying, “We don’t think it will have any adverse effect. We are not in any way interfering with the heritage site. It might even enhance it, because it is a beautiful block of flats. It’s some of the finest accommodation in the country and fits nicely into the Kew Gardens arrangement”.
Secondly, in relation to,
“would not have an adverse impact on … the ability of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to carry out its functions under section 24 of the National Heritage Act 1983”,
I cannot see how building a beautiful block of flats on the side of the Thames could in any way have an adverse impact on the,
“ability of the Board of Trustees to carry out its functions under section 24 of the National Heritage Act 1983”.
In the future, lawyers may drive a coach and horses through those words. I still support them, because at least someone is trying to introduce some restrictions.
I am sure the Minister was very pleased when he had to deal with this amendment because his officials may well see the dangers in the amendment that I see. We support it because it is a little shift in the territory—at least lawyers in the future will have to argue their case before some kind of inquiry. That is my case. I support the amendment but with huge reservations.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I was pleased to add my name to these amendments and to hear the support that the Minister has now pledged for them. I am thankful to my noble friend Lord Whitty for the well-crafted words he put forward, which seem to be receiving widespread support around the Chamber.
In contrast to my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, I argue that it provides a double lock on future extended leases because, first, they must not endanger Kew’s status as a UNESCO world heritage site. UNESCO does not grant world heritage site status lightly; it looks at integrity, beauty and function. Before a block of flats was even built in the middle of Kew, UNESCO would have made its views very clear. Having looked at the UNESCO judgment on Kew, I was very impressed by the detail it went into before it made its final recommendation about world heritage status. I am pretty confident that it would intervene before anything that would be considered a scar on the site was allowed to be developed.
Secondly, the National Heritage Act 1983 states that development must not endanger research, education, open scientific access and public enjoyment of the site. The public enjoy visiting Kew because it is such a beautiful site. I think the comments we have made in the Chamber would be echoed and magnified if we asked the public what they thought should happen on that site. I am sure they would have very strong views and would be quite conservative about any proposed developments. I have more confidence than my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours that the provisions about UNESCO and the National Heritage Act provide the reassurance for which we are looking.
Of course, nothing is ever watertight—as we said in the previous debate, lawyers will pore over the wording, the intent of our discussions and so on—and we cannot legislate for the future or the difficult choices that the trustees and the Secretary of State may face. I accept that this is a compromise, but these amendments go as far as could reasonably be expected at this time. This is a good way forward and I am grateful that we have resolved this matter so effectively.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I am most grateful for all noble Lords’ contributions. I am struck that, as is so likely in your Lordships’ House, I am looking at two former Ministers responsible for Kew and behind me on the Government Benches are two former chairmen of Kew. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, asked: what is the worst that can happen? We have all worked tremendously hard to ensure that the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, set out the right position. I am very pleased that the Government support them.
The conditions centre on Kew’s status as a UNESCO world heritage site and the functions of the board of trustees of Kew as set out in primary legislation. I was struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said about the political composition of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Thinking back to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, I cannot imagine any local authority of any political complexion, given all the safeguards I know there are in the borough, allowing this theoretical block of flats getting into any sort of starting stall. The point about the local authority was precisely put. I regret that my noble friend Lord True, who earlier pioneered this Bill, has only now had an opportunity to demonstrate his expertise and experience of Kew and the sorts of properties that the Bill is designed to help remedy in order to provide important resources for Kew.
I share noble Lords’ aim to protect Kew when granting these leases, and I believe that the amendment provides a robust assurance in response to many of the points raised in debate in your Lordships’ House. As I have stated before, the strong and multilayered protections already in place, together with planning permissions appropriately tailored in accordance with listed status, ensure that only development in keeping with Kew Gardens and its status as a UNESCO world heritage site will be permitted.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for that, and for the discussions that he and his officials have had in reaching this point. I welcome the widespread support throughout the House for these amendments. The House, the Minister and his successors, the trustees and their successors all recognise the anxiety that my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours expressed, which these restrictions are intended to assuage; this will need constant vigilance both by them and by Parliament. I welcome the fact that Parliament has paid a lot of attention to Kew in the last few weeks and, as a result of the intervention by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, may look again at the more detailed provisions on the scientific contribution of Kew.
On a lighter note, there were two unexpected contributions to this debate: the first was from the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who envisaged the possibility of Richmond upon Thames becoming a Labour council, for which I am grateful; the second was from the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, about the river entrance, which took me back 70 years to when I was a small boy. What they used to call Isleworth Gate was already closed but, as a nine or 10 year-old, you could still get in and avoid the one old penny that you would have had to pay at the turnstiles—that gave me a great afternoon out in those days. I hope it did not contribute to Kew’s financial difficulties in later decades. Given the recognition both of Kew’s need for resources and of the need to ensure there are restrictions on what can be done under this Bill, I hope we will see a positive and united future for the scientific and amenity value of Kew Gardens. I beg to move.
Lord Whitty
“(3) The Secretary of State may grant a lease in reliance on subsection (1) only if satisfied that the lease would not have an adverse impact on—(a) the outstanding universal value of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as a World Heritage Site, or(b) the ability of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to carry out its functions under section 24 of the National Heritage Act 1983.(4) In subsection (3), “World Heritage Site” means a property appearing on the World Heritage List kept under article 11(2) of the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage adopted at Paris on 16 November 1972 (list of properties recognised by the World Heritage Committee as having outstanding universal value).”
European Parliament Elections: Non-UK EU Citizens
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat an Answer to an Urgent Question asked in the other place yesterday by my honourable friend Kevin Foster, Minister for the Constitution. The Answer is as follows:
“The Government took all the legal steps necessary to prepare for the European parliamentary elections and put in place all the necessary legislative and funding elements to enable returning officers to make their preparations. We worked with returning officers, the Electoral Commission and other agencies, such as the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers and the Association of Electoral Administrators, to support the smooth running of the polls. The Government are greatly appreciative of electoral administrators’ hard work inside and outside of election periods, which resulted in a higher turnout than for previous European parliamentary elections.
Electoral registration officers are under a statutory duty to ensure that people who are eligible to vote in elections have the opportunity to do so. For the recent European parliamentary elections—as for all previous such elections—this included making sure that EU citizens who are resident in the UK and registered to vote in local elections were made aware that they needed to complete a voter registration and declaration form, commonly referred to as a UC1 or EC6, so they could vote in the UK. The Electoral Commission supported EROs in this and encouraged them to take additional steps to raise awareness of this requirement locally, through social media channels and other means.
The UC1 form implements a requirement under EU law. EU Council Directive 93/109/EC requires all member states to send the details of any EU citizens’ declarations to the state they are a citizen of, “sufficiently in advance of polling day”, to ensure that an EU citizen does not vote twice in the same European parliamentary election. This is not a new requirement and has been in place for previous European parliamentary elections. Similar provision applies to UK citizens living in other EU member states. The UC1 form was accessible on the websites of the Electoral Commission, local authorities and Your Vote Matters.
On 5 April, the Electoral Commission published guidance for local returning officers and EROs on the upcoming European parliamentary elections. In it, the Electoral Commission reminded EROs to prepare and issue UC1 forms to EU citizens on the electoral register. On 3 May, the Electoral Commission published guidance advising EU citizens to avoid registering to vote using unofficial registration sites. The guidance further stated:
‘Any EU citizen who wants to vote in the European Parliamentary election in the UK must also print, complete and return a declaration form stating that they will only vote in the UK’.
The guidance also included a link to the Your Vote Matters website, where the form could be downloaded”.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I join the noble Lord in thanking returning officers and electoral staff for all that they do, and obviously I make my usual declaration as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Does the noble Lord accept that this is a very unsatisfactory situation where people were denied their right to vote? Is it not another example of why we urgently need to review, amend and update all the laws on elections, electoral registration, campaigning and, of course, the functions and purpose of the Electoral Commission?
Lord Young of Cookham
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his response. I am sorry if anybody who had done the right thing was thereafter denied the right to vote. As he knows, the Electoral Commission will undertake its normal inquiry into this election, as with any other election, and of course we will reflect on the results.
On the noble Lord’s general point, I repeat what I have said on an earlier occasion—probably in response to a question from him—that we have an analogue system in a digital age. We are taking some steps: for example, imprints on digital communications; and the Electoral Commission is issuing statutory guidance to distinguish between candidate expenditure and national expenditure. But I repeat my acceptance of an offer that he made earlier to have an all-party meeting with the Minister for the Constitution to see whether we can find a consensual way forward to make sure that we have an electoral system fit for the digital age and fit for purpose.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, given that the Prime Minister dithered for four weeks between the agreement to extend the Article 50 process, on 11 April, and the official go-ahead for the EP elections, on 7 May, should not the Government take the principal blame for the foreshortened period and the consequent problems that were left in the hands of the electoral authorities? This was also, of course, the main cause of the difficulties with postal votes for UK citizens overseas. Does the Minister accept that this major democratic deficit would not have occurred if the Government had accepted the recommendations made by the Electoral Commission four years ago as a result of difficulties with the previous European parliamentary elections?
As the Minister has just said, and as he has repeated on a number of occasions, we are now faced with a legislative hiatus. Would this not be a good opportunity not just, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, to look at the overall problems with electoral law but particularly to look at the problems that occurred with the last referendum so that we can get it into a better shape before we have the next one this autumn?
Lord Young of Cookham
The noble Lord raises a number of points, and I shall try to deal with all of them. We were working with the Electoral Commission on streamlining the process following its recommendations after the last European elections, but given the result of the 2016 referendum it was not the Government’s policy to take the reforms forward because our policy was to leave the European Union before the end of March 2019 and therefore before the next election was due.
On his accusations of dithering, I think I can rebut those. On 5 April, when it was clear that we would not be leaving the EU as planned, the Electoral Commission issued guidance that EROs should identify all EU citizens on the local government register and send them the UC1 declaration form accompanied by relevant information about what to do if they wanted to vote for a UK MEP. It also asked the EROs to take additional steps to raise the profile of this requirement. Perhaps I could write to the noble Lord about the arrangements for postal votes.
On the noble Lord’s final point, were there to be another referendum later this year, as he implied, he will know that there would be primary legislation to bring that into effect, and he would have the opportunity to propose any amendments that he wished to the current regime.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, the Minister may well want to write to me with the answers to some of these questions. I declare an interest as someone who has had a residence in Brussels for the last 40 years, although of course I have been able to vote in only the last couple of elections. I think there is a misunderstanding about what this directive says. The Minister stated that all member states are required to,
“send the details of any EU citizens’ declarations to the state they are a citizen of, ‘sufficiently in advance of polling day’”.
What is the definition of “sufficiently in advance”, and how many declarations did we send to other member states? Could he write saying how many declarations were received from each member state for the elections in 2014 and 2019? Could he also tell us what use they were put to? When I filled in my declaration in Belgium, I was not asked for an address in the United Kingdom, so how is this used to check that people have not voted twice? As a further complication, being a joint citizen of the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom, this year I registered myself in Brussels as a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. How, in any way, could the Republic of Ireland know this, since I am not eligible to vote in the Republic of Ireland as it has different regulations? I just ask—
The Countess of Mar (CB)
My Lords, does the noble Lord appreciate that Urgent Questions should be treated in the same way as Oral Questions? Members should ask two questions, briefly.
Lord Balfe
I apologise. There are a number of points, but I will leave it at that.
Lord Young of Cookham
At the beginning of his questions, my noble friend generously suggested that I might write to him. It is an offer which I accept with alacrity.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, could the Minister resist any temptation to spend too much time, energy and public money on dealing with all these questions? Of course, the simple way to avoid all the difficulties that Members have identified with these elections would have been to observe the decision of the British people in 2016 to hold no more of them. Can he help the House, at least in one respect, to avoid any further waste of money? There was a reference in his Statement to the fact that full funding was provided to returning officers for all their needs; I am sure that is the case. Can he tell us precisely what the cost to the taxpayer has been for holding these totally unnecessary elections; or, if he does not have the information available now, can he put it in the Library?
Lord Young of Cookham
I agree with the noble Lord that, had the other place agreed the withdrawal agreement that was put before it, we could have avoided these elections. It so happens that I have in front of me some information relating to his question. The cost of the last European elections was £109 million, but that was shared with local elections. The amount of money set aside this time, when they did not coincide with local elections, was £159 million.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, would it not help to calm those who were understandably upset by recent events if this House used much of the time we have at the moment, while we are treading water, to take the moral high ground and pass legislation giving full rights to EU nationals living in this country?
Lord Young of Cookham
I believe that was part of the agreement reached by the Prime Minister, which she put to the other place. I hope that however this matter is resolved, what my noble friend has suggested will indeed be the case.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
My Lords, was part of the problem the fact that some of the electoral advice given to the various returning officers was not accurate? Many local authorities used discounted mailing, rather than Royal Mail. This made a massive difference to the number of days that posted items took to reach those eligible to vote. Should that not be put right in instructions from the Home Office to the electoral returning officers?
Lord Young of Cookham
As I said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, the Electoral Commission will carry out its normal review and inquiry into the European elections. It will certainly look at the issue raised by the noble Lord that some of the forms do not reach the people eligible. The Government will of course take notice of any recommendations made.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will recall that, at the weekend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer suggested that the Conservative leadership election makes it now practically impossible for us to leave in good order on 31 October. Mr Michael Gove, as a candidate for that leadership, has also suggested that we might take rather longer. This begins to open up the prospect that we could indeed have the 2020 local elections before we get to the point of deciding whether we finally leave. We need to make absolutely sure that the position of EU citizens resident in Britain and their right to vote is clarified before we come to the next round of elections in which they are entitled to participate. Can he ensure that the Electoral Commission has that fully in mind?
Lord Young of Cookham
Is the noble Lord suggesting that there is a scenario where we have another round of European elections?
Lord Young of Cookham
Yes, indeed, we will take account of any recommendations made by the Electoral Commission regarding what has recently happened and implement them before 2020.
Illegal Seaborne Migration
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer given by my right honourable friend the Immigration Minister to an Urgent Question in the other place. The Statement is as follows:
“The English Channel is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Every crossing attempted by migrants, often in unsuitable and very small boats, is life-threatening for those on board. These attempts not only represent a hazard to other vessels but threaten the safety of the Border Force, coastguard and lifeboat crews who come to their rescue. The Government are committed to preventing migrant crossings in small boats. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary declared a major incident in December last year, and our heightened response remains in place.
In January, the Home Secretary met his counterpart Monsieur Castaner and agreed a joint action plan to tackle seaborne arrivals. He will be speaking to him again later this week. The joint action plan builds on the extensive work we have undertaken in partnership with France over the past few years, including under the 2018 Sandhurst treaty. It demonstrates the strength and depth of our bilateral relationship and both countries’ enduring determination to secure our shared border and prevent illegal migration through France. Through measures such as increased surveillance and co-ordination of our joint response via the joint information centre, the plan enhances our robust border security.
The solution is not all about increased surveillance in the UK, but also about preventing vessels leaving France in the first place. We have recently delivered drones and other surveillance equipment to France, enabling its law enforcement officers to intercept and disrupt attempted crossings. We continue to look at a range of tactical options that work on both land and sea. Those attempting to cross should be aware that their efforts will be in vain. Since January, more than 30 people who arrived illegally in the UK in small boats have been returned to France and other member states under the Dublin regulation. We have many more in the pipeline for return.
Finally, we are tackling the organised crime gangs who are exploiting vulnerable and desperate individuals. Only yesterday, a French court sentenced two men to prison for helping migrants to make the treacherous journey across the channel. The summer months and settled weather will present us with further challenges, but we will continue to work co-operatively with France to secure our borders and seek to prevent further crossings taking place”.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, can the Minister set out for the House what further action the Government plan to take with our French partners to deal with the criminal gangs that are exploiting these vulnerable people? Of the people who arrive here and are picked up by the authorities having crossed the Channel, how many of them are making asylum applications and what is the timescale now for concluding those applications? Finally, what do the Government expect the commanding officers and crew of ships using this busy seaway to do on sighting small, unsuitable craft attempting to cross the Channel?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord for his questions. Most of the people who cross the Channel do claim asylum and the vast majority of them are Iranian men. He asked what work the UK is doing with the French to address this problem further. I referred to the joint action plan in the Statement. In more detail, it includes: over £6 million, or €7 million, of investment in new security equipment; increased CCTV coverage of beaches and ports; air surveillance, shared intelligence and a mutual commitment to conduct returns as quickly as possible under international and domestic laws. Just over half of that investment will come from the £44.5 million already allocated under the Sandhurst treaty agreement on UK-France co-operation, signed by the PM and President Macron in January 2018. In addition, there is £3.2 million of new funding for equipment and measures to tackle illegal migration by small boats, such as CCTV, night goggles and number plate recognition capability, which I think noble Lords would agree will help the UK and France to crack down on illegal activity.
To answer a further question asked by the noble Lord on determining asylum claims, we try to do that within six months. He asked a final question—
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
It was about what those on large vessels should do when they sight these boats.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The prime objective of the boats which find people in the English Channel is to save lives at sea. That is always the prime objective.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, the Statement describes how dangerous the Channel crossing is and says that 30 people have been returned to France and other member states under the Dublin regulation. How many asylum seekers have been allowed to remain in the UK and what is the UK doing to provide safe routes for these people, so that they do not have to risk their lives crossing the Channel? What do the Government intend to do if the UK is no longer a member of the EU, no longer party to the Dublin regulation and no longer able to return asylum seekers to other member states?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I do not have the actual number for how many asylum claims have been successful but, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, most of the people who arrive claim asylum and we attempt to determine those claims within six months. On the Dublin regulation, clearly we will meet our obligations on asylum for people who claim it in this country. Returns under Dublin actually make up a relatively small proportion of the people who we go on to return, but we will continue to work with the French and other European partners on returns. In terms of safe routes, at the heart of this issue is that people should claim asylum in the first safe country where they arrive and not make dangerous journeys across the Channel, which is of course one of the most congested shipping lanes in the world. It is an incredibly dangerous place in which to be in a small boat.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, I happen to know this part of the Kent coast very well and, as a former Excise Minister, have some knowledge of two of the cutters recently deployed in the Channel. I have two questions for the Minister. First, the people of Folkestone and the surrounding towns and villages are well known for their hospitality to refugees. The churches have played a particularly important part in recent times. However, the reality in this part of Kent is that social services and the health service are extremely stretched. What additional assistance is being given to social services and the health service in order for them to cope with the impact of people rescued from the seas in this way? They have real needs, and the social services and the health service are stretched.
Secondly, the tasks we ask of the men and women who do such excellent service on the cutters are difficult and dangerous. What additional help is being given in relation to their welfare and training to enable them to do this?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I recognise exactly the point made by the noble Lord about the welcome that refugees and asylum seekers have had and how welcoming organisations such as the Church have been. Starting with the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Church has been very generous in terms of community sponsorship schemes for new arrivals, for which we commend it. Throughout our debates, we have been clear—and I think that Parliament has recognised it—that in respect of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, for example, we will ask local authorities to take only the number that they have the capacity to hold. In places such as those talked about the noble Lord—for instance, Folkestone—the national redistribution scheme has been in place for some time, because it cannot be incumbent on one single local authority to take all the new arrivals. Local authorities have been very generous to this end.
Lord Swinfen (Con)
My Lords, what proportion of these people are Christians and what is being done to help them?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
As I said earlier, the vast majority of the individuals who have attempted to cross the Channel have declared themselves as Iranian. Some who have gone on to claim asylum have declared their conversion to Christianity. Therefore, I assume that they would have been Muslims converting to Christianity, but I cannot say for definite. However, a number of asylum claims have been based on conversion to Christianity.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, the Minister has identified Iranians crossing the Channel as refugees. The situation for Iranian citizens is dire, which is due in greater part to sanctions targeting Iran. Are sanctions imposed to achieve policy change? If so, is destituting Iranians helping to achieve this, rather than impacting the leadership?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Viscount is straying into territory that is perhaps not in my purview; however, I am not seeking to evade the question other than to say that I recognise the point he makes and it is clear that a lot of arrivals in the country at the moment are Iranians.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, I feel sympathy for the Minister because it is quite clear that our system is not working. We declared an emergency about this situation last year and it has not got any better; if anything, it has actually got worse. Clearly, we have to work closely with the French, but we should have enough ships and assets ourselves to ensure that we can tighten up the Channel—I would call it the English Channel rather than the short straits; I do not recognise the term used in the Question. It is clear that we need to stop these boats when they set off from the French coast. We are allowed to operate our ships, drones and other things there. We can do that and stop them before they get across. Clearly, they think that they can get away with it, otherwise they would not keep coming. They keep coming and putting themselves at risk because the system is not working.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord will recollect what I said to his noble friend Lord Kennedy about the bilateral effort we are making with the French. He is absolutely right that people should be stopped before they get into a boat—in fact, stopped upstream even before that—because they are making such dangerous journeys. It is not only the ships; intelligence, surveillance and sharing of information through the CCIC is very helpful in this. He is right, it is a pressure and we have to deal with it.
National Minimum Wage Naming Scheme
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Henley) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat, in the form of a Statement, the Answer given yesterday in another place to an Urgent Question which asked my honourable friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to make a statement on the suspension of the national minimum wage naming scheme. The Statement is as follows:
“Enforcement of the national minimum wage and the national living wage is a priority for the Government, and we take tough action against the minority of employers who underpay. Last year, employers were ordered to repay over 220,000 UK workers a record £24.4 million of arrears. We have more than doubled the budget for minimum wage compliance and enforcement since 2015, and it is now at a record high of £27.4 million.
As part of our enforcement approach, we name employers who have breached the legislation, which raises awareness of national minimum wage enforcement and deters others who may be tempted to break the law. To date, the Government have named almost 2,000 employers who have underpaid the national minimum wage. The Government are reviewing the naming scheme to ensure that it continues effectively to support minimum wage compliance. This is in response to a recommendation made by the director of labour market enforcement, Professor Sir David Metcalf, last year.
In December 2018 we accepted both of the director’s recommendations relating to the naming scheme, specifically to review the scheme’s effectiveness and to consider how to provide further information under the scheme in future. The Government have sought to learn from other naming schemes and other regulatory approaches. We have also discussed the evidence with the director of labour market enforcement and have conducted further analysis to understand the impact that any changes to the scheme would have on the number of employers named.
Naming and shaming remains an important part of our enforcement toolkit, and the review will be concluded in the coming weeks. Any changes to the scheme will be communicated through the national minimum wage enforcement policy documents”.
That concludes the Statement.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement. I am still a bit confused, however. He went on at length about the value the Government place on the scheme, but has it actually been suspended during this review, or not? Will he confirm, for the record, that the review the Government are carrying out is actually on the effectiveness of the naming and shaming scheme, not on the scheme itself, that the scheme has not been suspended or dropped, and that naming and shaming will continue until such time as a firm decision has been reached by the Government on the current review? Will he also confirm that, although it is true that the director of labour market enforcement called for an evaluation of the naming scheme, this was only one of 37 recommendations made in the excellent 2018 report? What is happening to the other very important recommendations, including the one to which he referred which called for greater use of, and more publicity for, prosecutions, undertakings and orders, so as to alter employers’ behaviour by raising their risk of being caught and increasing the penalties for breaching the law?
Lord Henley
My Lords, naming and shaming is just one of a number of different actions that can be taken, alongside self-correction by employers, the civil penalties that are available, and the criminal proceedings and resulting fines. As the noble Lord said, and as I made clear in the Statement, we will review the naming and shaming scheme and he will have to await further announcements on that. As my honourable friend Kelly Tolhurst made clear yesterday, she considers that it has been effective, but it is obviously quite a draconian measure to use against employers and we should be wary about the effect it might have on them. I think it is quite right that the Government should consider how to operate this in the future: that is what we are doing and I ask the noble Lord to be patient about this and about the other recommendations made by Sir David. In due course, announcements will be made.
Lord Fox (LD)
I join the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, in thanking the Minister for repeating the Statement. I am confused by his answer and the debate in Hansard yesterday in the other place, where no one seemed to be calling out naming and shaming as an issue. Can we get to the nub of what exact problem the Government are seeking to fix here in cherry picking this one recommendation and putting it up for review? Can the Minister tease out that information by telling us what terms of reference this review will have? Is it to make naming and shaming more effective or to find a way of not having naming and shaming? Finally, the last sentence of the Statement says that this will be made public through the national minimum wage enforcement policy document. That is not good enough. Given the nature of this and the interest from both Houses, a Statement from the Minister on what this review comes up with will be important. Will he undertake to do that?
Lord Henley
My Lords, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, the noble Lord will have to be patient and wait for the full announcement. Sir David made his comments and my right honourable friend took them on board. We want to review the effectiveness of naming and shaming. My honourable friend made it clear yesterday that:
“It is absolutely right for me, as the Minister responsible, to evaluate the scheme and make sure that any naming and shaming scheme is meaningful, adds value, acts as a tool to aid employers to make sure that they are able to comply with the national minimum wage legislation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/6/19; col. 49.]
We want to make sure that that legislation is effective. This is just one tool among many. As I made clear, there is also self-correction by employers and the possibility of civil fines and, as has happened on occasion, prosecuting in the criminal courts. We want to see how effective this is and whether it should be looked at again. That is what my honourable friend and right honourable friend are proposing to do.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)
My Lords, I am quite sure that it is my fault, but I remain confused. Has the naming and shaming scheme been suspended?
Lord Henley
I would not want to use the word “suspended”. My honourable friend made it clear in her Statement yesterday that naming and shaming was still there and available, but that while we were reviewing the scheme we were not using it. We want to look at the effectiveness of that scheme, as my honourable friend said, and decide how it can be made use of most effectively as one of the tools in ensuring that the minimum wage legislation, which goes back a long way—it was introduced by the party opposite, extended by the coalition Government and had further increases under the Conservative Government—all works well. It belongs to all of us.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has asked us to be patient. Does he have any idea at all when this review might be completed so that we can have more definite information? Having spoken recently to Sir David Metcalf, who was an original member of the Low Pay Commission—we served together 20 years ago—at the 20th anniversary of the minimum wage, I know that he is quite clearly looking at the whole range of possibilities to make sure that implementation takes place. Without wanting to sound too critical, if you divide £24.4 million of arrears among 220,000 UK workers, if my maths is right that is about £110.90 each. I accept that that is a lot for people on minimum wage, but implementing the whole area is more important than worrying about this one issue. I hope that we get some very speedy action on the whole range of implementation of underpayment, rather than just the naming and shaming issue.
Lord Henley
My Lords, I cannot be any more precise on the timing of when the Government will make a further announcement. I have got things wrong in the past when I have said that things will be published “later in the spring”, and one had to be quite flexible about how one defined the spring. I will say only that we hope that there will be something later in the summer.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, can the Minister name how many of the 239 companies that were named and shamed previously are not paying the national minimum wage?
Lord Henley
My Lords, again, I cannot answer that. However, one would hope that naming and shaming has been effective, and that we will know that in due course. As I made clear in some of my earlier responses, one also has to understand that naming and shaming is quite a draconian power and can have a major effect on any individual company. We therefore want to look at just how useful it is as part of the overall toolkit that is available to ensure that we can get all employers to meet the minimum wage.
The Countess of Mar (CB)
My Lords, for many years, gangmasters have taken people out of cities to work in rural communities and have been known to pay them below the minimum wage. Are they regarded as employers or is the farmer who uses these men and women regarded as the employer, and if so, how many farmers have been named and shamed?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot answer the noble Countess’s question, but if I have any further information, I will certainly write to her. However, as I made clear in the Statement, we have increased the resources available to HMRC, more or less doubling them. I am told that last year it completed some 3,000 investigations and issued £17 million in financial penalties to more than 1,000 non-compliant employers. Obviously, more can be done, and we will do as much as we can to make sure that where there is legislation—which has had all-party support—it is effective with regard to the employers concerned.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, I am a patient person, and I was glad that my patience has resulted in getting a statement out of the Minister which he was perhaps reluctant to make. His noble friend asked whether this scheme had been suspended. He ducked that question and said that it had not been suspended, but I took from him—I would be grateful if he could confirm it—that the scheme in its present form is not being used until the results of the review have been published. We do not know when that will be but we hope it will be imminent. Given that most of the 37 recommendations in the very good report we have referred to assume that the scheme will continue, are the Government really considering suspending it completely?
Lord Henley
I will not prejudge that review. We have made it quite clear that we believe the scheme is effective, but, as I have made clear, on occasion it can be quite a draconian power. We want to look at how the scheme works, whether it is good, and whether it is, as I put it, a useful tool to have in the box to deal with this issue.
Sure Start
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat an Answer to an Urgent Question given earlier today in another place. The Statement is as follows:
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Government welcome the recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on the health effects of Sure Start. It is crucial that in our pursuit of better outcomes for children and families and in making spending decisions, we are guided by high-quality evidence, and this report gives us more of that.
The report shows very clearly that children in disadvantaged areas benefit most from services; indeed, those in the richest 30% of neighbourhoods saw practically no impact at all. The policy framework we have in place reflects this evidence. In 2013, the Government introduced a new core purpose for children’s centres, focusing on families in the greatest need of support. While we have seen local authorities remodel services, there are now more children’s centres than at any time prior to 2008, and in fact since Tony Blair was Prime Minister. This is at a time when government is making record investment in childcare, with more than 700,000 of the most disadvantaged two year-olds having benefited from 15 hours’ free childcare since its introduction in 2013.
In addition, under the Government’s healthy child programme, children and families now receive five mandatory health visitor checks in the early years. The statutory framework also contains important protections so that outcomes for children and families, particularly the most disadvantaged, will not be adversely affected by the proposed changes to children’s centre provision.
The IFS also concludes that policymakers must,
‘consider which types of services and models of provision could most effectively help this group’.
The Government agree, and indeed we already have work under way to do exactly this. As part of our £8.5 million early years local government programme, we announced in April that the Early Intervention Foundation will look at children’s centres and other delivery models to find out what works well, so that local authorities have more evidence to help them continue to make the best decisions for their communities”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. The IFS research demonstrates the critical role that Sure Start plays in children’s health as well as in their general development. The key findings are that the Sure Start programme begun by a Labour Government 20 years ago had a big, positive effect on children’s health, reducing the hospitalisation of children from disadvantaged areas by the time they finish primary school. Indeed, by age 11 Sure Start prevents about 5,500 hospitalisations each year, at an estimated saving to the NHS of £5 million.
Surprisingly, the Statement says that the Government welcome the report, although it is not clear why. Even more surprisingly, it asserts that there are now more children’s centres than at any time prior to 2008. How can that be? Last year, the Government’s own figures admitted that more than 500 Sure Start centres had closed. We know that it is many more than that. How does the Minister justify that astounding claim?
With the upcoming spending review, the IFS calls on the Government to review the impact of Sure Start and decide how the programme will be used. We thoroughly endorse that call, and I ask the Minister: will the Government commit to responding to the report’s recommendations before the Summer Recess, because children in disadvantaged communities cannot wait while the Tory party continues its self-indulgent navel gazing?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord’s question about the exact number of children’s centres, as at the current state, there are 2,353 main children’s centres and a further 700 linked sites open to families and children. The important part of this issue is that all noble Lords share our concern to help improve the chances of disadvantaged children in our society. We have taken a slightly different approach through the introduction of the offers for two year-olds, three year-olds and four year-olds, where we are providing free childcare for hundreds of thousands of young children.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement and, like him, I welcome the report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The report indeed shows that children in disadvantaged areas benefit most from Sure Start centres. The IFS report is not about childcare, nor indeed about children’s centres; it is about Sure Start centres and is entitled, The Health Effects of Sure Start.
The unique feature of Sure Start centres is that they offer a range of services to parents and children. The evidence is clear that Sure Start centres contribute significantly to improving the life chances of families in the most deprived communities—for example, as we have heard, by reducing the hospitalisation of young children by more than 5,000 a year and saving millions to the NHS. Sure Start centres also offer mental health support to young parents.
Why are the Government only now asking the Early Intervention Foundation to look at children’s centres and other models of delivery? We already know that more than 1,000 centres have been closed and that Sure Start centres are of greatest support to children in deprived areas. So why are the Government kicking the evidence-collection can down the road? The Minister must know that cuts to local authority budgets have inevitably impacted disproportionately on the most disadvantaged young children.
I have two questions for the Minister. Will the Government take a holistic view of the needs of families, and will they ensure that the early years pupil premium, frozen since its introduction five years ago, is increased in line with the pupil premium?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
First, on funding generally, it is important to remind noble Lords of the opening comments in the IFS report executive summary, which state that we are now,
“one of the highest spenders on the under-5s in Europe”,
having lagged behind in the 1990s. So a great deal of progress has been made. We do take a holistic view, which is why we have put so much emphasis on supporting disadvantaged families with healthcare; that has enabled those families to get into work, which we know is one of the clearest ways to improve their prospects and quality of life.
The noble Lord asked about increasing the pupil premium. That will be a matter for the spending review, but we have done a lot in this area, including on the pupil premium that he mentioned. The introduction of the three year-old and four year-old offers gives 30 hours to families for the first time in history, and 340,000 children will benefit from that.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)
My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister comment on the need for Sure Start centres to be accessible? Clearly, if they are well targeted, they bring great help to children born in a disadvantaged area. Many of those areas are rural, however, and while it is one thing to provide accessible Sure Start help in closely populated urban areas, it is quite another to do so in rural areas, as I know my noble friend understands.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
The noble Baroness is quite right that the provision of services in rural areas is much more difficult. Again, we have taken the education route, which is why we have looked at the provision of childcare for the two year-old offer, from which nearly 750,000 children in the country have benefited. The take-up of that offer has gone up nearly every year since its introduction; we are now at a level of 72%.
Higher Education and Research Act 2017 (Further Implementation etc.) Regulations 2019
Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 29 April be approved.
Relevant document: 49th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak to these regulations. I welcome the opportunity to debate them; they are the final major set related to the implementation of the higher education elements of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, otherwise known as HERA.
The main purpose of the regulations is to make consequential amendments to existing legislation, a standard procedure after any primary legislation has passed. The majority of these amendments replace references to now defunct bodies or repealed legislation. They also reflect the diversification of higher education providers and the wide range of providers registered with and regulated by the OfS.
Further, they reflect the movement from a funding-based system with quasi-regulatory elements to a formal regulatory system based on registration. Some of the cross-references in other enactments relate to the quasi-regulation of higher education institutions by HEFCE, and others to the receipt of or eligibility for funding; the amendments reflect this nuance to preserve the original intention of such provisions.
Let me take a step back. As I mentioned during the debate on 20 May on the Higher Education (Monetary Penalties and Refusal to Renew an Access and Participation Plan) (England) Regulations 2019, we have made great progress since HERA came into law. Noble Lords may recall that HERA abolished the Higher Education Funding Council for England, otherwise known as HEFCE, and the director of the Office for Fair Access, more commonly known as OFFA. As mentioned earlier, a new regulator—the Office for Students, or the OfS—was created to oversee and monitor activities, including in relation to fair access and the participation of English HE providers registered with it.
The OfS currently regulates registered higher education providers under transitional arrangements; the new regulatory regime will be fully operational from August this year. In addition to retaining existing HEFCE and OFFA functions for the transitional period, the OfS has gradually begun to exercise its functions under HERA, and so has greater responsibility for a wide scope of higher education providers—not just universities, but some further education colleges, sixth-form colleges and alternative providers.
HERA gave the Office for Students the power to create a new single register of higher education providers. Registration with the OfS is the only route for providers to be eligible for teaching and research grant funding or to access student support funding, through charging fees for courses that attract student loans. Registration is now a requirement for an institution to obtain degree -awarding powers or the right to call itself a university. Since its formation on January 1 2018, and as of 23 May this year, the OfS has registered 357 higher education providers to exacting standards, including all English universities.
The HERA reforms to the system of regulating higher education were wide-ranging. This means that a number of changes to the statute book are needed to reflect the reforms introduced and to ensure the smooth running of existing legislation. That brings us to why we are here today.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, this is a relatively uncontroversial SI that goes through the entire statute book, as the Minister set out, working out what consequential amendments need to be made as a result of the Higher Education Act 2017.
We have no issue with the changes that cross out references to HEFCE, individual research councils and definitions of a university in previous legislation, replacing them with references to the OfS, UKRI and the definitions set out in the 2017 Act, nor indeed with those that make the OfS an official government regulator, subject to the Regulators’ Code or those that allow a university’s charitable status to be regulated by the OfS rather than by the Charity Commission.
The Minister talked about data sharing and I have a question about that which has caused some concern. There has been confirmation from the HESA, that it distributes information on sexual orientation and religion, on a named basis, to the OfS and the Department for Education. This information has been provided by students as part of equality monitoring, but surely such a named database of religion or sexual orientation should not sit anywhere at state level. What plans are there to change this and for how many individuals does the department hold that information?
Parts on the pension scheme have also raised concerns. They ensure that university staff, mainly from post-1992 universities, remain eligible for the teachers’ pension scheme and the local government pension scheme. In September 2018, the Treasury recommended that employer contributions to the teachers’ pension scheme needed to increase from 16.48% to 23.6% of an individual’s salary to meet the expected future costs of paying pensions. The Government have recommended that the Treasury should pay an extra £830 million to schools to cover their additional pension contributions, and £80 million for colleges and other publicly funded training organisations.
Universities, however, will have to find the money themselves. That will affect universities created after 1992 that are not part of the main pension scheme for universities, which will have to find millions more from their squeezed budgets to pay staff. These are universities that rely more on tuition fees and have less of an ability to generate additional income.
The Liberal Democrat former Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, has said of this:
“For universities this is simply a spending cut, as the money for these contributions will have to be found from elsewhere. This does seem an arbitrary way of squeezing the independent schools sector and the university sector for what is essentially just an accounting change”.
Why are the Government footing the bill for schools and colleges, but not for universities? How will the Government ensure that these extra costs for universities will not have an adverse effect on students?
During the passage of the 2017 Act through Parliament, Peers across the House were united about the need for the Government better to recognise the importance of international students to our universities and wider economy, so do the Government acknowledge that anything that undermines the financial sustainability of our universities will inevitably lead to fewer overseas students coming to this country? Surely this pension decision will be a factor in challenging university finances.
The Augar review recommends that the Government adjust the teaching grant attached to each subject more accurately to reflect its perceived “value” to students and taxpayers. Given that a key aim of the Higher Education and Research Act is to improve student choice, do the Government consider that such a policy would undermine this principle? Following the Augar Statement yesterday, perhaps we may ask again: if fees are reduced to £7,500 how will this funding be replaced? How will the Government ensure that disadvantaged students at all universities can benefit from any replacement, instead of it being targeted at those in higher-tariff institutions?
I also want to ask the Minister about a couple of curiosities, which may prove that I have read these instruments. In Part 4, Regulation 43 amends paragraph 2 of Schedule 3 to the Charities Act 2011 to read:
“Any of the following if it is a relevant higher education provider”,
and names the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London, Durham, Newcastle and Manchester. It then amends paragraph 3 and names King’s College, London and Queen Mary University of London. Is there any doubt that these are relevant higher education providers? What is the reason for separating King’s and Queen Mary? What about other universities? Are they not relevant higher education providers? This may be my ignorance about the way the legislation is written, but it seems curious.
Paragraph 11A of Schedule 3 to the Charities Act 2011 is amended to read:
“A relevant higher education provider … does not include (a) any college in the university of Oxford; (b) any college or hall in the university of Cambridge or Durham”.
Why is Oxford separated from Cambridge and Durham? There are, or used to be, halls in Oxford as well as at Cambridge and Durham. Will the Minister explain why Oxford has been separated in that paragraph? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)
My Lords, many noble Lords will remember that, as the Minister reminded us, the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 established a regulator with unparalleled and unprecedented powers. One of those powers is effectively to set its own budget by deciding what to charge universities for its services and activities. During the debates in this House, noble Lords pressed very hard for the Government to ensure that the Office for Students was subject to the Regulators’ Code, so I am delighted to see that it is being placed on a statutory basis. How, though, is the Office for Students expected to demonstrate that it is behaving in accordance with the Regulators’ Code? What sort of information does it provide to the Government on that basis and what sort of information does it provide to the public on that basis?
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I guess the Minister is really asking the House to accept that these regulations are tidying-up amendments. I am grateful to him for his explanation of this statutory instrument, which, as he said, is a consequence of HERA 2017. The majority of the amendments are consequential and replace references to now-defunct bodies or repealed legislation. They include HEFCE and the Office for Fair Access, or OFFA.
Looking at registration under these regulations, under the Act a new regulator was created, the Office for Students, to oversee and monitor the activities, including in relation to fair access and participation, of English higher education providers that register with it. The OfS currently regulates registered HE providers under transitional arrangements which were due to end on 31 July. Will the Minister advise the House whether the new regulatory regime is on schedule to be to be fully operational by then? In addition to retaining existing HEFCE and OFFA functions for the transitional period, the OfS has gradually begun to exercise its functions under the Act, including the power to create a new single register of higher education providers. OfS registration affects the HE provision that institutions can provide, specifically access to public grant funding, the fee levels they can charge and the levels of support students can receive. Indeed, institutions that are not registered cannot access OfS or UK Research and Innovation public grant funding or charge above the basic fee amount.
I understand that since January 2018, the OfS has registered more than 300 higher education providers. However, last month, it was reported that 19 colleges offering higher education courses were still waiting to be registered with the OfS, only months from a new term when student recruitment should be well under way. Against this backdrop, Student Finance England was advising that to ensure funding is received in time for courses commencing in autumn 2019, new students should complete and submit their applications by 24 May. That seems a rather strange process and period of delay for making the system work. Does the Minister agree that the fact that it has taken almost a year to complete this process suggests that there might be room for some improvement?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for acknowledging that these regulations are mainly technical. I am pleased that these are the final regulations that have come out of the Higher Education and Research Act. It was a major Bill to go through this House and I thank all noble Lords who were involved.
A good number of questions arose. Before I get into answering them, I would like to pick up on what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said. He is quite right: the whole House acknowledges—and we would like to confirm—that what is important is to uphold and improve the quality of our first-class universities and, in so doing, to ensure we give the best choice to students, including international students, and that they get best value for money. That is behind everything we are doing in relation to the regulations and the Act itself, and—I will touch on this in a moment—is the basis for the Augar review, the independent review that has just reported. As I said yesterday and will say again in a moment, we will look very carefully at all 53 recommendations and will report back at the spending review, but not before. I say this not, perhaps, to reassure but to reiterate the point I made yesterday.
I will get straight into answering some of the questions raised: first, from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, on pension schemes. The department ran a consultation, as she may know, on the impact of increased employer contributions on all TPS employers—including state schools, further and higher education providers and independent schools—for 2019-20. The department has decided to fund schools to the tune of £830 million and further education providers to the tune of £80 million—and not universities—in 2019-20, with costs beyond that year to be agreed at the spending review. This decision was based on the strongly positive response to our consultation proposal and the fact that schools and further education providers are most directly funded by government grants. I will read Hansard tomorrow to look again at the detailed remarks that the noble Baroness made. I will check her questions against my answer and, if I am not satisfied, I will write; I am sure that she will press me if she is not satisfied.
The point the noble Baroness raised on data is important and, again, she had some detailed questions. Although I would like to write to give her some information in answer to her question about our plans for changes, I emphasise that these regulations do not extend access to data; they simply update the bodies between which data may be shared, replacing HEFCE with the OfS and HEFCE-funded higher education providers with OfS-registered higher education providers.
I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, to her place. I was sorry that she was not present yesterday. I thank her, particularly, for her role in the production of the Augar review. I am sure she has read Hansard in detail for yesterday’s exchanges. She asked how the OfS will demonstrate that it complies with the Regulators’ Code. The OfS, as she may know, is required to report annually on the performance of its functions. This report is sent to the Secretary of State and laid before Parliament.
The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, asked why the Charities Act amendments in Part 4 were drafted in this way; she had a number of detailed, interesting questions. I am sure that I will not be able to answer them all, particularly the points raised about the differences between Oxford, Cambridge or Durham. Again, I will need to read Hansard. What I can tell her is that the Charities Act amendments reflect the existing drafting in the Charities Act, which lists certain specific institutions. The term “relevant higher education provider” is used to ensure that a provider is registered with the OfS. If the provider is removed from the OfS register, it will no longer be a relevant higher education provider. But I want to go further and say that deregistration by the OfS can happen only under very narrow circumstances, including: serious breach of registration conditions by a provider; where the provider requests that it is deregistered; or where a provider stops providing higher education in England.
I shall say a bit more about the Augar review, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. As I said yesterday, I am not able to give an opinion on what, if any, recommendations we will take forward. I said yesterday, and repeat again, that we need to look at the 53 recommendations “in the round”—that was the expression that I used yesterday—since many of them are interactive. For example, the proposal to reduce tuition fees from £9,250 to £7,500 needs to be taken into account along with the proposal to extend the payback period from 30 years to 40 years and the further proposals for changes to the in-study interest rates and beyond. These are matters that I am simply not prepared to comment on or make a judgment on.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
Does the Minister accept—I think this is overwhelmingly the view of those who have looked at the Augar review—that the proposed financial changes are regressive rather than progressive? That is an important point, particularly in respect of the 40-year payback period it recommends.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
Again, I am not prepared to say whether they are progressive or regressive; we are looking at the 53 recommendations, and we will decide by the spending review what we want to do.
I shall go a little further. The noble Lord mentioned the teaching grant. As I said yesterday, the question of—to use his words—making up the teaching grant is again something that we need to look at in the round. It is all interrelated. If the proposed reduction to £7,500 leaves a make-up to be made, we will need to look at that with a great deal of care. As I said at the beginning, it is important to ensure the financial sustainability of our very best universities, making sure that the quality is there, the choice for students is there and that it is affordable—I think that that is incredibly important.
I think that I have covered all the questions. As I said earlier, I shall read Hansard in particular depth on this occasion because of the detail of the questions, and I shall certainly write a letter if I have not covered everything.
Renewable Energy
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Cameron of Dillington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to (1) harness the potential of tidal ranges to generate renewable energy, and (2) encourage the private sector to invest in this area.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I have put down this Question for debate because I believe that, in our uncertain world, it is imperative that the UK plays to its strengths, and in energy one of its real strengths is the range of its tides. Whereas at somewhere such as Gibraltar the tidal range is only about one metre, it can be eight metres in the Solway Firth or higher than 15 metres in the Bristol Channel. We also have tidal races around our shores and between our islands which flow at great speeds and with considerable power.
Of course, tidal power output is classed as intermittent, but it is a guaranteed and predictable supply. We know now how much power we can produce from a given site between the hours of, say, 6 am and 8 pm on today’s date in 2121. I say 2121 because, if we build a tidal lagoon now, we know that it will still be producing electricity, almost for free, in over 100 years’ time. We will be like the Norwegians, who get their current electricity for almost nothing because they harnessed their natural hydropower advantage many years ago.
Tidal power is our natural advantage, and we must harness it as soon as we can. Our territorial waters include around half of the European tidal resource. We have tidal races in the Solway Firth and the Severn Bore, with speeds of six and 15 miles per hour respectively. We have 11 out of 60 of the world’s top tidal bores and we must harness them. We also have tidal races between our islands, such as in the Pentland Firth or the infamous Gulf of Corryvreckan. Research in Shetland and Orkney has shown that anchored floating barges with large turbines underneath are an effective way of tapping into these races, albeit with each barge providing only up to five megawatts. But together, and from the north to the south of the country, they could create an attractive and constant supply, as could the Deep Green slow-current kite system being trialled by Minesto off north Wales.
There are also possibilities for barrages, especially where they provide other services such as transport links that enhance their cost-benefit analysis. Morecambe Bay is a very good example here, giving access and a much-needed economic boost from the M6 to Barrow-in-Furness in west Cumbria.
To me, the most compelling solution for harnessing our tidal power are large offshore tidal lagoons. Any site with a depth of between five and 10 metres and a tidal range in excess of five metres can produce guaranteed power. They are better than a barrage across a bay, because you can have turbines all round and not just on one side. This means they are almost half the price per output of power. They are different from the Swansea Bay barrage and other shore-to-shore barrages. They can be any shape—oblong, square, round or rectangular —and curve in any direction to follow exactly the required underwater contours for producing maximum return on investment. For instance, a 16 square kilometre lagoon planned for the Solway Firth would produce 350 megawatts.
There are about 20 ideal sites around the UK coastline. I invite your Lordships to imagine a wall of water in the Severn estuary that is about the height of this Chamber and several miles long. That is the sort of power that the Severn can produce four times a day. One lagoon in Bridgwater Bay alone, right next door to Hinkley Point, could produce 1,900 megawatts.
The advantages of these lagoons are many. First, unlike coal-fired, gas or nuclear power stations, they do not have to be shut down for repairs. If a turbine needs servicing, it is only one of 20 or 30. It is lifted out for maintenance and the effect on output is minimal as the rest just keep turning. Secondly, they do not upset shipping traffic in any serious way, because they sit at the side of any shipping channel in waters normally too shallow for large ships. Thirdly, their environmental effect makes only peripheral difference to the course of the tide, migratory fish, wading birds and so on. They have the support of the RSPB, Friends of the Earth, the WWF and other environmental NGOs.
There are numerous sites for these lagoons in the UK, from north to south. With a seven-hour tidal difference between Bristol and Solway, and with the tides being used on both the flood and the ebb, that gives an almost consistent baseload power for England, even before we tap into the Scottish tidal ranges. Tidal lagoons could provide three times the capacity of Hinkley Point.
However, the UK supply chain desperately needs government engagement now. What the industry is seeking from the Government is enough support to allow for an initial project currently planned for the Solway Firth at a contract for difference strike price of £82 per megawatt hour for 25 years. The latest wind auction costs were at £57 per megawatt hour, to which one has to add £20 to deliver predictable power, so £77 for wind compared to £82 for a first-of-its-kind tidal power project compares very favourably, and is certainly much better than nuclear. Just remember the huge costs of the early wind farm contracts before its industry costs began to fall. The same rapid drop in costs would almost certainly happen to tidal power as the skills develop. Think, too, of the export potential of those skills; Canada, Alaska, Argentina, Chile and France all have suitable estuaries.
It is thought that, after this pilot project, subsequent tidal lagoons could have a strike price of £60 per megawatt hour, or even less, which brings the technology well into line with offshore wind schemes, and clearly well below the latest nuclear strike price. However—and this is important—even with the pilot project in Solway, if you take the mid-case forecast for wholesale electricity prices, it is likely that for the final decade of the support contract, the Treasury would actually make money from the Solway project. Then, after the first 25 years, for the following 100 years, the cost of the electricity would be minimal. Think of the benefit of that to UK industry, particularly in comparison with the relative short-termism of the more expensive nuclear options.
Above all, what we need from today’s debate is a clear signal from the Government that they would in principle support a value-for-money tidal lagoon proposition, or at least negotiate seriously with the main players. This would allow the businesses concerned to move forward and begin to create this exciting new industry here in the UK. As I said, we have the tidal strength in the UK—more than any other country in the world—and we must play to our strengths and harness our tidal power now.
Lord Giddens (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Giddins, listed on the speakers’ list was unable to get here this evening, so I, the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, am here in his stead. I say that only for the integrity of Hansard. I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, on securing this debate and introducing it so accurately and passionately. I certainly endorse that passion and his combative position.
A huge struggle is going on around climate change, and ecological issues more generally, across the world today. The battle lines look utterly different from the situation in which the Paris Agreement was forged only a short while ago. On the one hand, the leaders of some of the world’s largest states, such as the US and Brazil, treat the goal of reducing carbon emissions with some scorn and are busy translating their rhetoric into action.
Far out on the other side, we find the climate emergency movement, which, as every noble Lord knows, has rapidly achieved global scope. The IPCC’s recent special report has lent impetus to its cause. It suggests that global warming beyond 1.5 degrees centigrade would pose serious threats to the continuity of human life on this earth. I am on the climate emergency side of this debate. We are nowhere near achieving the goals that would maintain the level proposed by the IPCC. Anyone who wants to see what lies on the other side should look at David Wallace-Wells’s book The Uninhabitable Earth. There are dystopias waiting.
All this might seem miles away from our local disputes over the Hendry report on the Swansea tidal lagoon project, but it is not. This country rightly aspires to be a leader in curbing carbon emissions and has a good claim to being such. Successive Administrations, to their credit, have kept and further developed the framework set out by the Blair and Brown Governments. However, acceptance of the implications of the IPCC’s findings changes the relationship between investment, both public and private, and risk. There is a new urgency to the transfer to renewable energy. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on this huge change in the renewable energy landscape. I hope he will agree that current initiatives must be combined with longer-term thinking about what a fully sustainable economy would look like.
The grounds given for rejecting the Hendry report proved contentious. Some have questioned the figures given by the Minister in the other place at the time, especially the comparisons with nuclear energy. Perhaps the Minister might want to comment on that. However, it is good to see that the demise of the Hendry proposals has prompted further initiatives. The plans for Dragon Energy Island in Swansea Bay have a different guise and essentially take the form of a public/private partnership. Thousands of homes would be built on floating platforms, receiving their energy from tidal power. Contracts would be set up by the local council and other public bodies to purchase electricity over specified periods. The project is designed to be long-term, and clients will be encouraged to take out long-term contracts based on buying electricity at a set price.
It is claimed that there is huge support among the wider public for this scheme and it will be good to hear the Minister’s views on how the project might be taken forward. Perhaps, if he is willing, my noble friend Lord Grantchester could comment on reports that Mr Corbyn has given a commitment to push ahead with the tidal lagoon project should Labour come to power. Has any thought been given to the sources of such funding, or is it just a vague promise?
The Government often talk about the UK being a leader in this and that. Is tidal energy not exactly one area where the rhetoric can be translated into reality, with the appropriate mix of government seedbed investment and private sector involvement? We have to look internationally. Does the Minister think there are lessons to be learned from the Sihwa Lake tidal power station in South Korea, perhaps currently the world’s leader? The electricity generated by that plant every year is the equivalent of 862,000 barrels of oil—a saving of over 315,000 tonnes of CO2, equivalent to the annual emissions of 100,000 cars.
China is planning huge investment in tidal energy schemes. How far are the Government actively tracking these? In harnessing tidal power, China is likely to move as fast as it has in other areas of renewable energy. After all, China became by far the world’s largest producer of solar panels and wind turbines in less than two decades from start to finish. China’s tidal energy project on Xiushan Island, installed in 2016 with amazing rapidity, as always happens in China, has claimed a world record, having generated over 800 megawatt hours of power since that time, all supplied continuously to the grid. We are relying, very controversially, on Chinese as well as French expertise in building Hinkley Point. Do we want the same to happen with tidal power? I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that point.
Baroness Maddock (LD)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, on securing this debate. I feel somewhat intimidated by the two previous speakers, who have a lot of expertise in the area we are discussing, but this is a very important and timely debate about technology that we hope will reduce the UK’s carbon footprint and therefore contribute towards the sustainability of our globe.
As has already been said, around half of Europe’s potential wave and tidal resource is thought to be in the United Kingdom. It is estimated that this resource could generate up to 20% of the UK’s current electricity demands. Yet no large-scale tidal lagoons or wave technology projects have been developed here in the UK, and over the years, UK Governments have been very timid in their support of this source of sustainable energy. They have also missed a great opportunity to support cutting-edge tidal energy projects. This is despite the fact that the UK is in a very advantageous position to establish a natural lead market for marine energy technologies, both wave and tidal. There are favourable natural conditions here in the UK. Globally, the UK is leading on planned power projects and there are a number of major industrial players in this sector. In addition, the United Kingdom has several world-class testing facilities and a variety of public funding mechanisms —the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was talking about how we could use those to promote lagoons.
Despite this, the Government have continued to reject various projects. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, has already talked about the scheme in Swansea: as early as 2013, a government department rejected that scheme as “not cost effective”. Again, as the noble Lord pointed out, the Government did not listen to the Charles Hendry report of 2017 either, despite the fact that the report said that this was,
“an … opportunity where the UK can … aspire to be the global leader”.
The Government concluded that the scheme was not value for money. As the noble Lord also pointed out, there are some queries about the costs. We also heard clearly from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, that the costs are actually fairly comparable and that nuclear is not cheaper than what was proposed. However, if we consider that easy-to-reach oil and gas will start to run out, that global energy demand is rising and that the commitment to tackle climate change gets stronger and stronger, surely the case for wave and tidal power also becomes stronger and stronger.
I found the Library briefing for this debate extremely helpful. One thing stood out for me from it, which was the title of one of the links:
“UK missing opportunity as it swims against tidal energy”.
It invited me into reading the article from Professional Engineering of February this year, which turned out to be very interesting. It highlighted the recent success of a single floating turbine off the coast of Orkney and said that in 12 months, it,
“generated over 3GWh—more than the whole Scottish wave and tidal sector managed in the 12 years up to 2016. It supplied energy for the equivalent of 830 households, weathering the worst winter storms … in the process”.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned that there was also positive news about tidal turbines in the Pentland Firth between Orkney and the mainland, indicating a generation of 8 gigawatts. Yet the Government seem determined to miss the chance to help the UK take the lead in the tidal and wave energy sector. This parallels the stance taken on onshore wind in the 1970s, where it is now quite clear that we missed the chance to take the lead. Denmark and Germany stole a march on us—we also heard about China from the noble Lord, Lord Giddens—and in 1981, the first large-scale wind turbine in Orkney came from Denmark. We ended up being a net importer of onshore wind technology.
Given this situation, it is not surprising that my Liberal Democrat colleague in another place, Alistair Carmichael, the MP for Orkney and Shetland, questioned the Energy Minister, Claire Perry, in March this year about the importance of financial support for the sector. He asked for assurance that financial support for marine renewable energy would be fully recognised in the forthcoming White Paper. Her response was not totally negative but there was no commitment. I was also interested in another exchange in the Commons in April this year when Dr Alan Whitehead, the Labour MP for Southampton, Test, whom I have worked with over a number of years on these issues, questioned Chris Skidmore, the Minister for Universities, Research and Innovation. He asked the Minister to acknowledge that marine and tidal power had been almost strangled at birth by government indifference and even active hostility. Having prepared for this debate and followed energy matters over the course of my parliamentary career—more than 25 years in both Houses now—I believe there is a lot of truth in Dr Whitehead’s observation.
With climate change at the top of the agenda for not only politicians but the general public, as we have seen over recent weeks, along with our commitment in the Paris Agreement to decarbonise and the need to support cutting-edge British technology—whether we are in or out of Europe—the Government need to seriously re-examine their record on a lack of support for marine and renewable energy. It is 10 years since the Climate Change Act became law and on 2 May this year, the Committee on Climate Change stated that now is the time to set a more ambitious goal for reducing UK greenhouse gas emissions. It recommended ending our contribution to global warming within 30 years and reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, in line with the UK’s commitment under the Paris Agreement. Surely the time has come for the UK Government to embrace the role of wave and tidal renewable energy, to enable us to contribute to this zero target by 2050.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for initiating this important debate. It is important because it has to be worth exploring any form of power generation that harnesses natural resources to provide baseload power, so long as any potential harm to the environment can be mitigated. I was particularly interested to hear more about offshore tidal lagoons: £82 per megawatt hour for 25 years is more than competitive for a nascent technology. The trick has always been to develop a technology that is scalable and commercially viable.
Tidal power has been of particular interest to me because for 40 years, I have lived in the hope that Wales will be the first country to discover how to harness the power of the sea to generate our power. After all, we have the largest tidal range in the world bar one: the Bay of Fundy in Canada—I have always wanted that to be a Trivial Pursuit question. We have been talking about this for so long without coming to a resolution. Maybe that is just the way of the modern world; in the 1950s, it took less than five years to move from a few lightbulbs powered by nascent nuclear fission technology to the first output from a commercial-scale nuclear power facility.
In 1978, I wrote a dissertation as part of my IB at Atlantic College on the costs and benefits of generating power in the Severn estuary. Sadly, my younger self threw it out, not realising its future potential as a resource, but I remember concluding even then that the environmental impact of the proposed barrage did not seem to justify either the amount of power that it would generate or the cost of its construction. In time, the latter might have been mitigated if turbines had been integrated within the structure of the Second Severn Crossing, or the Prince of Wales Bridge as it is now called. We were also in an era when North Sea gas reserves were lulling us all into a false sense of energy security.
In common with many, I was disappointed that the Government did not follow the recommendations of the Hendry review. I was disappointed for Swansea given the regeneration that a large infrastructure project of this nature would inspire, as well as jobs in the supply chain, tourism and scientific innovation. However, even I recognised that the required subsidy of £305 per megawatt hour meant that it probably did not make a lot of commercial sense initially. But it could have provided proof of concept. As the Hendry report indicated, promising innovations and technological advances could have been made as part of a tidal lagoon programme that might have helped drive costs down. As it is, it joins the long list of potential investments that have been described as Wales’ artists’ impressions.
However, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned, exciting new technology which can operate in slow-current water is being trialled by Minesto off the coast of Holyhead in north Wales. This “deep green” system operates a tethered kite-shaped turbine, its 12-metre wing carrying a turbine, generator and control system attached to a concrete cable between 80 and 120 metres long, and flies on the hydrodynamic lift provided by slow tidal currents.
The company believes that, in time, the power generated from this site alone could power more than 60,000 households. It is quick to install. The company began installation in May 2018 and, in October, successfully generated electricity. All this was achieved with private capital and only €13 million of investment from the European regional investment fund through the Welsh European Funding Office. It is an encouraging development. In comparison, in 2003, with the support of the then DTI, The Engineering Business Ltd designed, built and installed the world’s first full-scale tidal stream generator, a 150-kilowatt Stingray generator, in Yell Sound in the Shetlands. It had no significant environmental impact, but the power it produced was surprisingly intermittent, the cost of the technology was high, and installation and maintenance difficult. It was also generating power in an area where demand was low and the cost of transmitting it to the grid high. The project was terminated. Technology has indeed moved on.
How do we encourage the private sector to invest in renewable energy? It is estimated that the UK has reached the point where huge new investment in power generation is needed, up to £350 billion by 2030, to keep the power system in a fit state—not just in terms of low-carbon technologies.
The problem is one of trust and timescale. In most commodity markets, scarcity of supply drives up prices, which in turn attracts capital investment to generate increased profits. This has not happened either here or in the rest of Europe, where power stocks are one of the worst-performing sectors. Distrust between the political and industrial communities has not encouraged investment in a field where the period between the emergence of a new technology and its commercial exploitation can be measured in decades. Set against a political cycle of four to five years, this is not surprising.
The Energy Act 2013 introduced CfDs, the long-term guaranteed price for output that was designed to find a strike price sufficiently attractive to potential investors to finance low-carbon new build but low enough to be acceptable to government and consumers. In the case of new nuclear and tidal, this has manifestly not been enough.
The Government need to take that leap of faith by supporting the new schemes that have followed on from Swansea, which promise greater efficiencies and lower costs than the original. The same will be true of battery technology, small modular nuclear reactors and even an Iceland interconnector. To do that, we need strong leadership from government, common sense from the Green movement and confidence among the scientific community that they be allowed to operate in a healthy, supportive environment. While we cannot take the politics out of energy, the current buzzword is compromise. Without that, we shall never produce the mix of technologies that is necessary to meet our energy needs.
The Lord Bishop of Salisbury
My Lords, this debate has already become something of a no-brainer. Quite a lot of what I wanted to say has been said, so there is no point in repeating it, but I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for asking the Question which has generated the debate.
The context is one in which we see a climate emergency, an increasing number of councils across the country responding to it and the other place in Parliament recognising that. Whatever we think of Extinction Rebellion, it has raised the public profile and urgency of the climate change debate and the environmental awareness of what is required of us as legislators. It cannot be business as usual. We need new thinking and new ways of doing things to meet the challenge of being carbon neutral or carbon zero by 2050 or sooner.
For obvious reasons, this country is a great maritime nation. We have been reminded of this today, with the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings in which many of our fathers would have taken part. Earlier today, I was at the annual service for Trinity House. It was founded in the early 16th century as a guild of mariners to bring good order where there were inexperienced and unregulated seamen endangering life and cargo. It was probably also a good move for defence and profitability.
Sometimes, people behave badly and need good governance. It is increasingly clear that our continuing dependence on fossil fuels is people behaving badly. Good law and good governance also encourage good behaviour, and in this case we need to encourage new thinking and a change in behaviour. We know the rich resources that are around the UK; they have already been rehearsed. The task for government is to create a stable and predictable framework for investment, and to move from experimental to developmental to commercial, so that the UK can make the most of its innovative marine technologies and grow opportunity and business in a global market.
Christiana Figueres, who chaired the Paris climate change talks, said at the conference in San Francisco in September that we are moving faster than we could have predicted, and what is making the difference is climate leadership, market forces and digital technology. However, this is not just a technical problem, whether scientific, economic or political. We need to make space and opportunity for the best minds, the biggest hearts and the greatest souls to exercise leadership. That is partly about vision and spirit, but also about regulation and investment. There is growing concern about our slipping back and accepting a rather modest pace of change in relation to renewable energy. It is an area that needs investment—private and public partnership—which will pay dividends in jobs and the economy, and realise the potential of energy that will be renewable and is sustainable.
The question for Her Majesty’s Government, asked by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is a no-brainer. The response needs to be substantial, determined and transformative.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, on securing this debate, because the subject has always been of great interest to me. It must have been nearly 50 years ago, when I was a young engineer, that I worked on the Severn barrage project. It was in the days when big projects were great fun. We built the Thames barrier—I did not build it, but others did—big airports in the middle of the countryside and the Severn barrage. I remember people at the time saying, “We might need 500 million tonnes of rock, but we can knock down a few Welsh hillsides and put them in the sea; that will be all right”. Somehow, we have to build a piece of concrete, presumably, that will take all the turbines that the noble Lord mentioned—he is quite right—get them out there and sink them as a big caissons, a bit like the D-day ones 20 or 30 years on. We will have a nice road and railway across the middle and that will be fine.
As the noble Lord said, the benefit of tidal power is that you can predict when the tides will flow. We looked at Morecambe Bay and the Severn and found that, because there was a difference of three hours between the tides—there is always a difference of three hours, I am told—we could get a consistent output of power, presumably with suitable connections between the two. We are a long way from that but you can predict it, which makes it very different from wind turbines, which have a really good place in our energy mix now but you cannot predict them as well. So I am a great believer in tidal generation. Where I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is that I think the technology, as many noble Lords have said, has moved forward to underwater turbines, either fixed to the seabed or on pontoons. The Devon and Cornwall local enterprise partnership is looking at pontoons for putting a windmill in the air and turbines underneath, moored offshore. That seems the best of both worlds and a technology we should be looking at to harness the tides. We must harness them.
Many noble Lords have talked about good locations and there are many of them. I am sure it can be done. My worry about barrages goes back to my time spent looking at this project. We ended up getting worried about quite a few things. In the Severn, birds are obviously very important—not just at Slimbridge but in quite a few other places. They are in other places, too. Silting would be a serious problem in the Severn, not just if there were a barrage across the middle, but even if it were something like that at Swansea Bay. You can never tell, without doing a great deal of work, how much the silting will change. Will it get better or worse, and how much maintenance dredging would you have to do if you wanted to keep shipping? Of course, the Port of Bristol has always been very much against the Severn barrage, as noble Lords will understand, for very good reasons.
There was also a proposal, I think, as part of Boris Johnson’s idea of building an airport in the Thames estuary, to put a bridge or a dam across the Thames, not only to be able to get across by road or rail but also to generate electricity. The tidal range is much less on the Thames than on the Severn, but the silting problem would have been just as bad, and it is bad enough there anyway. What not everybody seems to appreciate is that you have to find all the rock—it is mostly rock, I think—to build such barrages. To take the example of Swansea Bay that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned briefly, one proposal was to get the rock from the east side of the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall, where I live, from an old quarry. All the rock would have gone out by sea, quite a few jobs would have been created locally and there would have been very little extra traffic. The environmental fuss that was made, rightly or wrongly, about taking a comparatively small amount of rock to build this, compared with going all the way across the Severn, was quite surprising to me.
We have to recognise that, in the state we are in now, when we are all very good at protesting at things and opposing things—I am quite good at that myself sometimes—we have to think about the best way of avoiding too much disruption. I suspect that with something like the Severn barrage or Morecambe Bay, you would end up getting the rock from somewhere like Sweden or Norway, or perhaps the Outer Hebrides, with lots of rock to ship. We may have moved on and I hope we can therefore direct more attention to the new technologies, as I call them, of underwater turbines, than we do at the moment. I know that the La Rance barrage in France works well, but that was built a long time ago. It may be therefore that the technology of barrages is being overtaken by the technology of underwater turbines, such as those on board barges or on the seabed.
The noble Lord said that once one is built, there is no maintenance. I slightly disagree with him there. Turbines, whether in barrages or on the seabed, need maintenance. The sea is a pretty hostile environment and there is not much you can do about that. You have to find a way of maintaining them easily, whether off a barge, a roadway or whatever. The way that the offshore industry—not just oil but windmills as well—has taken the technology forward will mean that that will get easier and therefore cheaper in the future. But it still needs doing.
The addition from the barrage point of view was mainly the cost of dredging. If you are trying to keep a shipping lane open or dealing with the changes that happen when the tide comes in and out or goes around, it will need dredging. We have all read about the River Nile and the Aswan Dam, which is completely different because it brings silt down from the middle of Africa. It may have seemed a wonderful scheme 50 years ago, but now it is almost full of silt. The same could happen in the Bristol Channel and in many other rivers. There is a great deal of silt in there and one never knows quite what will happen to the silt and how it will affect it.
I support the need to get much more energy for our country out of tidal movement. There are many places where we could do it; we should be encouraging the research and development of things that sit on the seabed, on barges or wherever they may be. I have a friend who has been dealing with the trials on the Pentland Firth. Amazingly, he has only a 15-minute window during which he can drop things on the seabed before the tide starts rushing in the other direction. They are doing it, so it works—it just needs a bit more development. I would therefore argue against any more lagoons of any size, which will cause more problems in the future. Together, I hope we can get the sum total of a great deal more tidal energy than we have at the moment.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, on his forensic and deep analysis in opening the debate, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, who gave us that very exact background on the subject.
I have an interest in that I live in Cornwall—in fact, the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Berkeley, do as well. If the Minister is down our way some time and goes to the north coast, where the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, lives—I live nearer the south coast—and visits Newquay or any of the other beaches along there he will see surfers at all times of year. I think the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, is actually an accomplished surfer. I see him shaking his head—the rest of my speech will be true, rather than fake news. The Minister will see through the surfers the power of wave. I know this debate is more about tidal energy than wave, but we see it in practical action.
The background that many noble Lords have mentioned is the need to decarbonise our economy, as is laid out in the Government’s Clean Growth Strategy, with which I am sure the Minister is totally au fait. I was particularly struck when the Committee on Climate Change presented its report at the beginning of last month on meeting the zero-carbon target in the UK by 2050. What struck me in the presentation by Chris Stark, its chief executive, was his point that, for the UK to meet that target—we hope the Government will accept that recommendation, although I know that the Minister will not be able to do so today—we have to do everything concurrently. In the past, even I have thought of going down the power sector route first, transport second, heating third and land use and agriculture fourth. We have to do that all together, as I have said in the House before.
Even I think on occasion that we have solved the power sector, so we need to get on with the rest of it—particularly heating, which is difficult. But the fact is that we have not yet solved the power sector. Last year, I think that only 49.6% of our electricity was generated by low-carbon, non-fossil fuel sources, which includes nuclear. We still have the real challenge of getting past that first base in decarbonising our economy. Even in that area, we have a big issue with nuclear at the moment, which is one of the low-carbon technologies. Nuclear power is fundamental to the Government’s clean growth strategy; we have Hinkley C, which I visited about a year ago to see how it was developing. However, we now know that further projects there, whether they are supposed to be delivered by Hitachi or Toshiba, are not going to happen. I cannot see a way that they will happen. Indeed, even if those companies were able to deliver, through finance or public support, we know that the National Infrastructure Commission has now said that there should be no more than one nuclear power station in connection with that programme. We therefore have a challenge: how do we reach decarbonisation just of the power and energy sector in time for us to meet those decarbonisation targets?
I welcome the Government’s continued emphasis on offshore wind—I wish they would get on with onshore wind as well, which is even cheaper, but they are not doing that. We have to look at other sources as well. As many speakers have said, our marine energy resource is larger off our shores than almost anywhere else in the world. The question therefore comes back to exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, is asking: how do we get that to happen?
There are other benefits to some of these schemes. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about some of the issues with barrages. I certainly have never advocated, and never will, the full Severn barrage, which would be ecologically and commercially the wrong thing to do. However, we have much more subtle and sensitive ways to achieve this now, such as through other forms of tidal lagoon and tidal stream. Even on tidal lagoons, we have potential benefits such as flood control and leisure, and maybe other smaller benefits. We know from other renewable technologies that we have to get them going, and test and adjust them to make sure that ecologically they are right—we need to be sensitive about that to make sure that they are right as regards water movement, silting, and so on. However, we know that, on the whole, those factors can be overcome, and that as time goes on those cost curves come down. We have proved that in other renewable technologies—not so much in low-carbon nuclear, where the cost curve has tended to go the other way—but there must be that potential with regard to the shores of the United Kingdom and tidal and wave energy.
I say that costs can come down, which is why it is so important for the Government to enable this country to get to first base to start to see how these technologies work. We on these Benches are as concerned about value to the taxpayer as anybody else, but we know that we can achieve lower prices if we roll these out.
My question for the Minister is exactly the same as that asked by almost every other Member of the House so far. We have a fantastic resource, which we know in our hearts can be successful in the future and provide us with the leadership that my noble friend pointed out we did not get on wind turbines. How do we make it happen?
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for bringing forward this debate on tidal power as we approach the anniversary of the Government’s disappointing response to the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon proposals that would have developed this new renewable technology. The Government are due to produce their energy White Paper this summer, and this debate has been a good opportunity to remind them of the potential of tidal ranges and to seek their constructive response.
The Statement a year ago repeated the message of the Government’s dismal record on renewable energy. As on previous occasions, the Government left tidal technologies on standstill for two years without dialogue or communication, while other technologies were developing, only to issue the announcement to reject the scheme. At the time, there was widespread criticism of the Government’s interpretation of the scheme. This was a pathfinder project, where value for money needs appreciation beyond a strict cost-benefit analysis of the specific scheme. As the debate has highlighted, there is now a new potential renewable technology to add to the mix of future energy sources, a first and only in class, where the UK has unique features of leadership. It could have enhanced the development of energy storage from the quasi storage feature of many tidal lagoon schemes, as well as having implications for flood management. Tidal lagoon technologies come somewhere between tidal stream and tidal range alternatives, and this location in the Severn Estuary could have been the catalyst for a developing industry, with many leading skills in the area.
What thoughts are there now concerning overlapping benefits for the steelworks nearby at Port Talbot and the wider Welsh economy? How would the planned joint venture with the German thyssenkrupp have looked if this venture had gone ahead? The Welsh Government had been prepared to put funding into the project, with the prospect of creating 2,000 new jobs, providing power to 155,000 properties, which equates to around 11% of Welsh domestic electricity consumption.
Further long-term damage to the investment community may result from the effect of the Government’s handling. Once again, the Government’s disdain for renewables will lead investors to opportunities overseas, towards projects such as the Sihwa Lake tidal power plant in South Korea. Marine renewables could go abroad, taking jobs and investment elsewhere.
With last year’s announcement, are the Government cutting the tidal range sector out of the UK’s energy future? What are the Government’s views on other projects? I was grateful to receive other engineering plans for the Severn Estuary, such as the Abberton-Minehead barrage, and last month, a glimmer of hope appeared with the alternative plans for Dragon Energy Island, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Giddens, featuring a floating island in impounded water off the coast of Swansea, with plans for modular commercial and residential buildings used primarily to generate tidal energy. It may be too soon for the Minister to be aware of the detail of this important proposal. However, the scheme could capitalise on the work and skills already present at Swansea Bay to retrieve the position following the Government’s disappointing decision last year. If the Minister has any assessment yet, it would be helpful if he could come forward with it today.
There are at least other promising signs, such as the tidal project on Merseyside. It was encouraging to see the launch of the next phase of plans to harness the tidal power of the River Mersey and Liverpool Bay earlier this month. The project could ultimately generate one gigawatt of electricity: up to four times the energy of all the wind turbines in Liverpool Bay. This would generate power for up to 1 million homes, equivalent to 500 football stadiums—a good measure of achievement on Merseyside. From designers, architects and technicians to marine contractors and construction workers, the project will create much-needed skilled jobs for the region. In leading the proposals, the city region’s mayor, Steve Rotheram, has demonstrated the exact transformational potential that devolution can produce, and the Government should provide leadership as the scheme makes further progress.
With another scheme still in its infancy, the Government must also show direction for the tidal power gateway across Morecambe Bay. The plan, similar to those already mentioned, but built as part of a road link, could create thousands of new jobs and generate energy for 2 million homes, meeting up to 7% of the north-west’s power requirement. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned other examples, and I was interested to learn more from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield.
While issuing those challenges to the Minister, I recognise that, as is the case with any new energy source, there are issues to be faced with tidal power. Any construction of tidal projects must minimise the impact on wildlife and the natural environment. Of particular significance will be the effect on distinct local estuary ecology, with impacts on migrating fish and birds that the creation of a new habitat could not mitigate. My noble friend Lord Berkeley mentioned the dangers of silting.
Of course, attention must be given to the effect on the public purse, which must be used wisely to generate maximum and widespread benefit. In the 2017 Autumn Budget, the Government set a moratorium on new low-carbon subsidies regulated by the discredited levy control framework, with the new control for low-carbon levies. This has raised concern that projects such as this and other new low-carbon energy developments could all be set at a standstill until they can proceed without any government support. Can the Minister clarify what the new control for low-carbon levies will mean for such projects, whether tidal or wave, or even other technologies such as geothermal? Will the new control persist at least until after the already committed expenditure on future CfD auctions has been made? Does the new control set the framework for the Government’s answer to the challenge of today’s debate?
This debate has laid out clear strategic benefits for the UK to develop tidal power. Within the renewables stable of technologies, it has clear advantages of regular, reliable consistency, even with the varying intermittencies as tides rise and fall. Only the Government can lead by providing support to nascent technologies and the necessary funds to fill the gaps. The UK has geographical advantages to exploit this resource, so that tidal power can contribute to and play an important role in the UK’s future energy mix—with the potential for global exports, as the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, noted.
The Government can address that today and, in the forthcoming energy White Paper, set out clearly their intentions by introducing new policy support mechanisms for wave and tidal stream technologies and embrace the new thinking proposed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, set out the challenge of meeting the new IPCC parameters and the decarbonisation targets. Against the background of the challenges to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, accelerating climate change, the challenge to meet zero net carbon emissions by 2050 and diminishing biodiversity, the Government are clearly missing the target.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Henley) (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for introducing this debate and emphasising that what we in this country should be doing is playing to our strengths. He mentioned that, unlike a lot of other countries, we have an awful lot of tides, just as we have an awful lot of wind, and that we should certainly make use of them. I hope that I will be able to set out what we are doing, what we feel we can support and what the constraints will be in the short time available to me.
I was very pleased that, in the main, everyone—excluding the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, and the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester—took a relatively positive line on what we were doing. I think that we have a pretty good story to tell in this country. Over the past 30 or 40 years, under a variety of different Governments, we have reduced our emissions. My colleagues and I have said on many occasions that we have reduced them by more than 40% while seeing the economy grow. We want to continue that process.
I make clear in the presence of my noble friend Lord Deben that we will be responding to his committee’s report, with its challenging targets, in due course. My noble friend and other noble Lords would not expect me to presume on my right honourable friend the Secretary of State by responding at this stage. We have been set challenging targets. We will want to make progress towards them. We will want to continue to provide leadership for the world, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, who talked about the failings of Brazil and America to acknowledge that there is any problem at all. Again, I remind the House that we are anxious that we should get the opportunity to host COP26 next year, and support from all sides of the House would create a very positive approach.
Living where we do, we obviously want a diverse electricity system that provides homes and businesses with secure, affordable and clean power. However—we keep coming back to this—we want that power at a cost that is both acceptable and supports continued growth. On many occasions, noble Lords have talked about the fact that costs come down. We have seen that with wind, solar and tidal; I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for his comments there.
There is some doubt about whether one will see costs come down in quite the same way for a technology that is not exactly new and, as the noble Lord reminded us, is largely about pumping a lot of concrete and rock into the ground; after all, concrete is not the most carbon-friendly material. One cannot see technology reducing costs there in the same way as it has done for wind and solar. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, we must play to our strengths; we will do so for wind because we are a very windy spot. To do that, we obviously need to continue to bring down the costs of all forms of low-carbon generation; I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Bloomfield for mentioning how many there are. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, we have not seen the same cost reduction in areas such as nuclear as we are seeing with solar and wind.
I have some criticism of the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, for taking a rather negative approach to what the Government are and have been doing. We are investing a great deal of public funds—some £900 million—in innovation, including a further £177 million to reduce further the cost of renewables and up to £100 million in leading-edge carbon capture and storage and industrial innovation. That is to drive down the costs there and, as I said, we have seen remarkable cost reductions over the year. We have seen low-carbon generation rise from 54% in the third quarter of 2017 to a record high of 56% in the third quarter of 2018, due to that increased renewables generation.
It has been a record-breaking year. I will give noble Lords some figures, although I will probably be able to give even better ones in a few weeks’ time. We have gone a whole fortnight without any coal-fired generation, which we aim to get rid of. This is in a country where, some 70 years ago, a Labour politician said:
“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish”.
Anyway, we are getting rid of the use of coal to generate electricity; as I said, we have just gone another fortnight without using any. Last year, there were nearly 1,800 coal-free hours over 10 weeks in total—so we are making progress.
I will deal with one or two individual issues. Since all noble Lords mentioned Swansea Bay, it is right that I address both that and the programme for six tidal lagoons proposed by Tidal Lagoon Power Ltd. I repeated the Statement made by my right honourable friend in another place on costs. We made it quite clear that the costs of that particular programme did not meet our requirements for value for money. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, had some queries about that, as did other noble Lords, but we published a summary of our value for money analysis. The figures were clear; even the developer himself conceded that the project required a CFD strike price three times that of onshore wind.
Further, that issue was looked at by both the Welsh Affairs Select Committee and the BEIS Select Committee, which published details of the additional requests from the Swansea Bay developers over and above a 35-year CFD at £92.50 per megawatt hour. It was expensive. That fact was echoed by the National Infrastructure Commission in its national infrastructure assessment, published last July, which stated that,
“tidal lagoon power will remain an expensive technology in the future. The extra benefits which arise from its predictability are not enough to offset its higher capital costs. And it will never be a large-scale solution: an entire fleet of tidal lagoons would only meet up to 10 per cent of current electricity demand in the UK”.
I appreciate that other tidal projects are being looked at. For example, the Mersey and the Solway—in my part of the world—were mentioned. Officials and Ministers in the department have had several meetings with those promoting such things. We will continue to hold meetings and talk to developers. For example, the Solway Firth tidal lagoon project is at much too early a stage of development: to date, the engineering details have not been finalised and the developers have not yet applied for the consents and licences that would be required to develop the site. Obviously, we will continue to look at that project, take an interest and make a decision in due course on whether the project is good.
As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, mentioned, it is important to take environmental considerations into account, but there has been no detailed monitoring at this stage. For example, no seabed surveys have been undertaken on the sites; I am thinking in particular of the one in the Solway. So at this stage we must proceed carefully before going further.
Other noble Lords, of which the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was the first, mentioned the possibility of tidal stream energy. Again, that should be looked at. The Government have provided long-standing and targeted support for the development of both wave and tidal stream energy. Since 2003, we have provided £175 million of innovation funding in the wave and tidal sectors; we have provided almost £80 million of that since 2010.
That has supported many firsts, including the wold’s first megawatt-scale tidal stream turbine, SeaGen, which was deployed in Strangford Lough in 2008. There has been much mention of Orkney, including by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock. I visited Orkney last year and met her colleague, Alistair Carmichael, and saw some projects that are being tried out there, with government money going into them. The world’s first pre-commercial array, the 6 megawatt MeyGen project off Caithness, received £10 million from BEIS innovation funding and is supported under the renewables scheme.
There have been some successful small-scale tidal stream tests over recent years. They are still at an early stage of development but they might be at the point where, as with wind, the price could come down—although I suspect that, for some of the bigger tidal barrages, the prospects are possibly less good. However, it must still be viewed in the context of the falling costs of other forms of low-carbon generation such as offshore wind. At the moment, their costs are five times that of offshore wind. I assure noble Lords that officials, Ministers and my right honourable friend Claire Perry will continue to engage with the sector to better understand its cost-reduction potential.
Finally, I reiterate that we will publish the energy White Paper in the summer, which will build on my right honourable friend’s strategy address in November of last year, setting out four guiding principles for electricity policy and addressing the challenges arising from the radical transformation of the energy system over the coming decades. It will take a long-term view of the energy system, out to 2050, and show just how we can deliver our climate change goals and the aims of the industrial strategy. At that point, or sooner, I hope that my right honourable friend will be able to respond to my noble friend Lord Deben and his climate change committee report.
I appreciate that my time is up. I hope that I have given a partially positive view of what the Government can do. There will be more we can do and further developments in all forms of renewable energy. Tidal may be part of that, and all forms of tidal—whether by barrage or otherwise—will be looked at.
Lord Grantchester
I appreciate that the Minister is under tight time constraints, but as the energy White Paper approaches, could he give us a detailed answer on how the control of low-carbon levies will operate?
Lord Henley
The noble Lord will have to be patient and wait for the White Paper. No doubt we will respond and he will have an answer in due course.
Heritage Rail: Young People
(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Faulkner of Worcester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heritage Rail, Engaging the Next Generation: Young People and Heritage Railways.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, first, I express my appreciation to all noble Lords, and the right reverend Prelate, who have put their names down to speak in this debate, especially those who took part in the inquiry carried out by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heritage Rail. I declare an interest as a vice-chair of that group, and as president of the Heritage Railway Association. The HRA is a remarkable organisation whose 300-strong membership includes no fewer than 156 operational railways. These stretch for 562 miles—almost the same distance as from London to Mallaig on the north-west coast of Scotland. There are also 460 heritage railway stations, a similar number to those managed by Northern Rail.
From the pioneers on the Talyllyn Railway in 1953, and the first standard-gauge heritage railway, the Bluebell, in 1960, heritage railways have come a long way. They attract 13 million visitors a year, employ around 4,000 staff and depend on 22,000 volunteers. Railways were Britain’s gift to the world, starting with Trevithick’s locomotive of 1804, and the first railways in other countries were built by British engineers such as the Stephensons—father and son—and Brunel. The first steam locomotives in France, Germany, America and many other countries were made in Britain. This contributes to the strong interest of visitors from other countries in the origins of their own railway systems.
The economic benefits of railways and tramways spill over into the wider communities, with research suggesting that local economies benefit by almost three times the turnover of the railway or tramway. That in turn suggests that heritage rail is worth as much as £400 million to the UK economy.
Rail enthusiasts, of course, have their own agendas and itineraries, but the location and nature of many railways also appeal strongly to visitors to the UK. Heritage rail’s full contribution to Britain’s inbound tourism economy is not easy to measure, but there is no doubt that it is as significant as that of many of the UK’s other international attractions such as Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Edinburgh Castle and others.
Heritage railways also support local economies through employment and spending on supplies. Many operate in rural areas where alternative employment is limited and the opportunities for jobs in engineering non-existent. They also provide valuable skills training, often in areas where employment opportunities, particularly for skilled workers, are low. They provide entry level jobs for a wide range of skills and disciplines. For younger staff and volunteers, they offer a valuable training ground for subsequent jobs on the mainline network.
Recognising this, and following the publication of the all-party group report, the HRA has introduced a new annual award for outstanding young volunteers, which I have the privilege of sponsoring. Earlier this year, the first awards were made to seven exceptional young people working on heritage railways around Great Britain and Northern Ireland. For students, a steam railway offers a living example to support so much of the school curriculum, particularly the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths, but also history, geography, economics and geology.
For older volunteers, steam railways offer an active and productive activity for people who might otherwise have a sedentary lifestyle. They unite people from a wide range of backgrounds and a wide geographical area, supporting social cohesion. I commend to your Lordships Nicholas Whittaker’s comment in his book Platform Souls: The Trainspotter as 20th-Century Hero:
“Trainspotting has always been a democracy, embracing all men, from right scruffs to Right Honourables.”
Heritage railways bring big environmental benefits through the green corridors that they provide, with their own flora and fauna. Perhaps surprisingly in view of this, heritage rail in the UK is unsubsidised. Other than modest grants, for which bidding is often competitive, the industry pays its own way.
Heritage rail travel in the UK is not limited to the sector’s own track. The country’s mainline network owners understand the historic and commercial benefits of steam-hauled trains, carrying passengers in heritage carriages on substantial journeys across some of the country’s most spectacular scenery, using iconic locomotives such as “Flying Scotsman”. Other heritage railways provide public transport services or sustainable tourist transport, especially at destinations where car-free access is a benefit, such as national parks.
Britain is the only country in the world that has passed legislation specifically to ensure that we secure the preservation of evidence which is significant to the nation’s railway history. No other industry in the UK is viewed in this way, and I am happy again in this House to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, for his willingness back in 2013 to listen to me and other noble Lords and agree that the statutory powers contained in the Railway Heritage Act 1996 to designate artefacts and archives would be maintained following the abolition of the Railway Heritage Committee.
Those of us involved in railway heritage have a duty to ensure that what is important to Britain’s railway history is preserved and made available for present and future generations to enjoy. We do this in a variety of ways. The most important is to maintain world-class railway museums which tell the complete railways story, from their effect on social, business and industrial life through to demonstrating the very latest developments in modern railway operations. The National Railway Museum York, part of the Science Museum Group—I declare a former interest as a recently retired trustee and deputy chair—is the very best example, and maintains the proud tradition of free entry. Another member of the family is the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, which contains the world’s oldest surviving railway station at Liverpool Road, dating from 1830.
Only people over 50 now have any memory of steam working on the BR network, but subsequent generations are just as engaged and knowledgeable about the steam railway as we were. We need that to continue to ensure an adequate succession of younger volunteers who can acquire the skills and continue the operation of this precious legacy of heritage railways for future generations to enjoy. It is not easy. Regulation is more stringent than when the movement started, and safety, quite rightly, is more closely managed and overseen than in the past. The cost of materials rises as Britain’s industrial base shrinks, and in some cases the future supply of basic raw materials such as coal is in doubt—as we heard in a recent debate—and is the subject of the APPG’s current inquiry.
The last thing the movement needs is obsolete legislation that hinders the recruitment and retention of that next generation of volunteers to carry the torch forward. Yet that is the position with the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920, a piece of legislation introduced following the establishment of the International Labour Organization in 1919—an era when, of course, no heritage railways existed and working conditions were vastly more dangerous than they are today. The concept of employment was deemed to include volunteers by the Education (Work Experience) Act 1973, which disapplied the 1920 Act in the case of children undertaking work experience. But this does not address the situation where a young person wants to volunteer for work on the railway on a long-term basis and is not linked to a work experience scheme.
Counsel’s opinion, taken by the HRA, confirms that this prohibition on working on railways extends to ancillary activities, effectively barring under-16s from enjoying the experience of working on a steam railway. The experience of member railways is that this period between the ages of 14 and 16 is crucial for many youngsters in deciding the activities, interests and career choices they want to follow as they grow up. Losing them at this early stage leaves the movement with insufficient young volunteers of 16 or over.
The issue has been discussed with Ministers and officials, and back in July 2017 I introduced a Private Member’s Bill, the Heritage Railways and Tramways (Voluntary Work) Bill, which would have resolved the issue. As it was so far down the list, it is unlikely, even in this extraordinarily long Session, to make progress. But assuming that the Government are unwilling to support primary legislation, I ask the Minister whether they would be prepared to consider secondary legislation under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which I understand from the HRA’s legal team would achieve the desired result. That Act makes express provision for the 1920 Act to be amended by statutory instrument by the Secretary of State and so enables the removal of the prohibition on the engagement of young volunteers in the activity of heritage railways. I make this request to the Minister today: will he please help us to resolve this anachronism and, in the first instance, use his good offices to convene a meeting with the Heritage Railway Association and myself that involves his department, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Transport? Between us, we can resolve this issue.
Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, on initiating this debate and thank the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heritage Rail for producing its report. I shall concentrate my remarks on the heritage railway that I know best—the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway, which is run almost entirely by volunteers. I declare an interest as a very small shareholder in the GWSR. The railway runs from Cheltenham Racecourse for nearly 15 miles along a picturesque route through Gotherington, Winchcombe, Hayles Abbey Halt and Toddington, and now all the way to Broadway. It runs through the Greet tunnel, which, at 693 yards, is the second-longest tunnel on a British heritage railway. It also crosses the Stanway viaduct, which has 15 arches and is 42 feet above the valley floor.
Having served on the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill Select Committee, I have seen documentation of protests back in the day opposing this and other railways. Petitioners claimed that railways would spoil the countryside and that the noise would be intolerable. It was ever thus, right up to the current day. The HS2 committee sat for four days a week over several months and heard from more than 800 petitioners. I enjoyed the moment when a distinguished former military officer took the stand and told us, “My Lords, my Lady, we don’t want these things rattling past our homes”. We were fortunate to have access to advice from Rupert Thornely-Taylor, one of the most experienced sound specialists in the world. We called him to give evidence and I asked him, “Are these trains really going to rattle?” He thought for a moment and then replied, “Lord Jones, if they rattle, they are in desperate need of maintenance”. The truth is that HS2 trains will simply go whoosh.
The noble Lord who initiated this debate knows the GWSR well as he graciously opened the Broadway extension on 30 March—my birthday—last year. The herculean efforts in completing the extension were acknowledged in February when the GWSR was awarded the Heritage Railway Association’s annual award for large groups. In the latest annual report, the chairman of GWSR, Richard Johnson, recalls that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, suggested that Broadway would become a very attractive destination but doubts that even he would have envisaged quite how attractive.
The Broadway extension has been a great success, attracting many more visitors to the railway. The GWSR employs seven staff and has more than 900 volunteers. It takes more than 50 volunteers to run the railway on a three-train day. The latest annual report tells us that all scheduled services were run over the past year, a remarkable achievement, and that more than 125 volunteers help each day with the Santa specials held on 11 days during December.
Local passenger services ended in 1960 and the line was officially closed in 1976. In 1979, the track was lifted and many buildings were demolished. Between 1976 and 1984, local people and railway enthusiasts—volunteers—initially tried to save the line. Then they raised money and bought 15 miles of track bed and the remaining associated buildings. They were granted a light rail order permitting them to rebuild the line between Broadway and Cheltenham. Track-laying began and public services started, initially over 700 yards of track. Between 1984 and 2016, volunteers steadily restored the line, building stations and signal boxes and replacing lost signals and other infrastructure. Despite major landslips, the track was gradually extended to 12 miles in length and comprised three main stations and one halt. During this period, work began on the major extension to Broadway with the line ending at Laverton.
The GWSR has five resident engines: the Churchward 28XX class 2-8-0, No. 2807, the oldest GWR locomotive in working order and the third-oldest in existence; the Churchward 42XX class 2-8-0, No. 4270; the Bulleid Merchant Navy class 4-6-2, No. 35006; the Hawksworth Modified Hall class 4-6-0, No. 7903; and the Collett Manor class 4-6-0, No. 7820, “Dinmore Manor”. The last two were rescued from Barry scrapyard.
On 25 to 27 May this year, GWSR held a festival of steam and welcomed three other engines: Mackintosh 0-4-4T, No. 419, in Perth blue from the Scottish Railway Preservation Society; B1 class 4-6-0, No. 1264, in LNER lined black from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway; and, making a return visit, GWR King class 4-6-0, No. 6023, “King Edward II” from the Didcot Railway Centre. The festival attracted large numbers of enthusiasts and was a great success.
Since 2016, the railway has experienced tremendous growth, which has enabled the volunteers to rebuild Hayles Abbey Halt and Broadway station, wherever possible in the style of the original stations. Volunteers include carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, upholsterers, electrical engineers, painters, mechanics, health and safety professionals, accountants et cetera, as well as many with experience in IT, social media, administration, catering and so it goes on.
I told GWSR about this debate and asked whether it had any advice on engaging the younger generation. I received a helpful reply from Ian Stewart, the volunteer resources director. He wrote:
“GWSR works hard to attract younger volunteers. One-third of the 17 who attended our latest induction course were between 18 and 25. That is healthy, as with two-thirds of our current volunteer force over 60 we clearly need to build the next generation of enthusiasts. We concentrate on attracting youngsters over 18. Once fully trained, they can make a significant contribution to our many departments. Interest from volunteers under 18 is directed towards the youth group, which is carefully run to maintain and strengthen their interest so that they will join one of the departments once over 18. We are guided by current legislation affecting young persons, and also the clear legal responsibilities we have towards all our volunteers. We are content with the current structure”.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has already raised some legal issues, so I shall ask about another issue on which GWSR would like some clarification. With decarbonisation targets necessary to halt climate change, whatever President Trump may say, what are the Government’s plans for heritage railways that use coal to power steam locomotives? Will there be exemptions for these historic railways, or what else might they do to help meet these targets? If the Minister cannot say today, perhaps he will write to me.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner on securing this debate and on the work he has done with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heritage Rail. It is vital to keep interest going in this area, and tonight many of us will concentrate on the problems related to volunteering.
Years ago when I worked on the Channel Tunnel, we tried to get volunteers in France and the UK to help to make life better for everybody, and I was very struck by the difference in attitude towards volunteering between the British and French people. Here, I think we do very well. We could do better but we have a long tradition of volunteering in many businesses and sectors and occasionally in industries. In France, there was nothing. They said, “We’re not going to volunteer because, if it’s worth doing, the state will provide”. We can comment on that but that is the way it is, and we should be very grateful for what we are able to do in this country.
I was also struck by the summing up of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, at the end of the previous debate on energy. He said that very soon we will not be burning any more coal. I nearly stood up and said, “Except on the heritage railways if you know what’s good for you”. It is really important that we have a continuous supply of coal, as the noble Lord, Lord Jones, has just said. However, I will not talk about that tonight.
I declare an interest as the patron of the Helston Railway in Cornwall, which claims to be the southernmost railway in this country—a claim that I do not think anyone is competing with. When it comes to volunteering and business, this is probably one of the few sectors where this combination is to be found. Each heritage railway is a charity and a business, and it has lots of volunteers—not all its workers are volunteers but a large proportion of them are—and it is a very safety-conscious sector, as it has to be. It is probably unique in that. We know that if the volunteers have to be paid, most railways will close, but how will we keep them coming? If we do not, we will not have many heritage railways.
My noble friend mentioned that getting people to volunteer in their formative years and giving them practical experience is very important in this day and age. It is also very important that people study science, technology, engineering and mathematics rather than going off to do media studies, which an awful lot of them seem to want to do these days. It is a great start to a career in many fields, including the mainline railway, and it needs to be done during school age because that is when children’s friends do it and talk about it. Working on the railways provides a kind of pipeline of skills and I am sure that it leads to a sustainable future. As I said, lots of volunteers go on to work on the national railway system.
Looking at the age profile of many people in the transport sector, the situation with the mainline railways is getting better. They have even discovered the need to have women, which is a great step forward. There need to be many more but at least a start has been made. In the trucking industry, people tend to be older and that industry will have problems. Whether people who have worked on heritage railways as trainees or volunteers would move on to drive trucks is a debate that we can have, but we are lucky in the railway sector because, once people have learned the joys of working on trains, it is more likely that they will go on to work for the national railways.
Therefore, I am really pleased that the HRA is pushing the question of volunteers—a point mentioned by my noble friend Lord Faulkner. My understanding is much the same as his—that the HRA has been informed by counsel that the engagement of children as volunteers on the heritage railways is contrary to the provisions of Section 1 of the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920. It is appropriate to ask, “What about the men?”, although I suppose they are covered by “Young Persons”, but I find it interesting that women were singled out in 1920. The Act states:
“No child shall be employed in any industrial undertaking”.
The definition of an industrial undertaking includes railways. Whatever we think, that is what it says. As my noble friend said, the 1920 Act was amended by Parliament to make provision for formal work experience through the Education (Work Experience) Act 1973. Formal work experience is therefore allowed for those under school leaving age, while simply volunteering is not. Many people would prefer, for various reasons, just to volunteer. Section 558 of the Education Act 1996 states that,
“any person who is not over compulsory school age shall be deemed to be a child”.
I do not know whether that is stating the obvious but it is not very helpful.
I have been advised that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions should be able simply by statutory instrument, as my noble friend said, and without resort to primary legislation, to exclude heritage railways and tramways from the requirements of the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920. Again, it is believed that this can be done through powers vested in the Secretary of State by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. I would be very grateful if the Minister could confirm that. If he says that that is not true, then, as my noble friend has already asked, what other solutions does he have?
In conclusion, it is good to recall that when the right honourable Margaret Thatcher was Secretary of State for Education, she responded to demands for practical work experience within the school curriculum by introducing legislation to amend the application of the 1920 law to permit work experience in industry—I repeat, in industry—as part of the curriculum for students in the last two years of compulsory education. I am sure all noble Lords will agree that that is an important need: to give students, or young people, some practical experience of what life is like in industry. There seems to be some support for a change in the law. The Department for Education has not found a legislative route to allow such a change; maybe we should try a different route and a different department. Perhaps the Minister could advise us. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner on the number of attempts he has made in this place and many others, including through the National Citizen Service Bill, but his amendments have not been accepted.
The Office of Rail and Road is the safety authority for all railways; I think we can all agree that it does a very good job in making sure this industry is safe. It supports the change of law, and assured us in 2016 that enforcement action under this 96 year-old legislation would not be in the public interest; that is some comfort, but we need more. I hope that when the Minister responds he will be able to give us lots of comfort.
The Lord Bishop of Leeds
My Lords, while congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, on securing this debate, I must confess to some surprise at standing to speak in it. I have little knowledge or experience of heritage railways, despite having had such a beast going through the village where I was for eight years a vicar in Rothley in Leicestershire and now having several in the diocese of Leeds. I am not proud of my ignorance, but engineering never quite got me; I guess I was more of a media studies man. I fully accept that this probably makes me a rarity among clergy in the Church of England, but I do see the import of this report and fully endorse what this debate seeks to achieve.
Heritage railways seem to hit two nails on the head in a changing Britain where social capital and the development of skills in young people need some investment at all levels. The two nails are volunteering and skills development in team contexts. We know from history and experience that, if you want to get commitment out of children and young people that will shape their adult engagement in the wider world, you need to start them young. Volunteering in a fairly selfish age has to become part of the DNA of people when they are very young, so raising the lower age limit for young people to develop as volunteers—learning skills in basic civil engineering, teamwork, track-laying and so on—is not something to be celebrated. We know that teenage volunteers often train for roles such as assistant guards, station assistants and locomotive cleaners, gaining skills and experience that will shape them for the future.
The culture of safety, as has been mentioned, is essential, but also beneficial to those growing up in it. These young people get to work with the public, learn timekeeping, and learn craft skills including woodwork, painting, metalwork, hedging, land management and so on. Given a school system that often wants to measure results in a limited way, surely these learnings have to be gained outside formal education; such railway environments offer something unique. Young people need to start before they get into GCSEs, exams and the pressures that we all know about. Under-16s have an opportunity here to gain practical and human skills through volunteering in a safety-conscious environment that has purpose and gives satisfaction. Working in teams across all age groups teaches responsibility and helps maturity.
The Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920 was surely once useful and necessary, but it is not the right instrument for today’s world. Our young people do not now need to be protected from industrial exploitation as they did in the past. Surely it is time to lift the current uncertainty over the implementation of this law so that young people can continue to access and benefit from the kind of life experience that heritage railways are uniquely placed to offer.
In Thomas Comes to Breakfast, Thomas the Tank Engine comes out of the repair shop and is not happy. He says, “It’s nice to feel mended again, but they took so many of my old parts away and put new ones in, that I’m not sure whether I’m really me or another engine”. Imagine being the teenager who has the opportunity to cause Thomas the Tank Engine such serious existential angst. We need to encourage our young people.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I am not just being pleasant, polite and traditional when I say thank you to my noble friend for introducing this debate; his commitment to heritage railways is second to none. I also want to thank very much indeed Chris Austin, who is described variously as secretary or clerk to our committee and known to so many people for his encyclopaedic knowledge of the railway. He has had a lifetime in the industry in one way or another and, more than anyone else, has been responsible for our reports. I have been in a lot of all-party groups over the years but I am very proud of the work this one has done and in particular of two very substantial reports, copies of which I have here. They are substantial pieces of work and are Chris Austin’s work more than most, and those involved in heritage railways. They have been brought to the attention of the Government without a Civil Service secretariat, something we associate with most reports that are presented to Parliament. Thanks to Chris are massively in order.
The specific subject of today’s debate is young people and heritage railways, but that really cannot be discussed except in the context of our previous Report on the Value of Heritage Railways, which highlighted the value that such railways present to many local economies up and down the country. They are continually bringing benefits—and not just economic benefits—to their areas and, of course, they are expanding all the time. I can barely believe how this industry or sector has expanded in, as my noble friend said, a matter of just 60 years, beginning with the Talyllyn railway—literally a very small railway that is half the gauge of a standard gauge railway. At the time, that seemed about as much as could be managed, but the sector went on to take on standard gauge lines. I remember going to Bridgnorth shortly after the line was closed and, if anyone had said to me then—with the weeds growing, the saplings coming through and the dilapidated buildings—that that would be a thriving railway line now, I would have said, “I would love to believe you, but I can’t really get my head round that”.
Today, as we have heard, there are more than 100 heritage railway lines, involving at least 22,000 volunteers and 3,500 or possibly 4,000 full-time equivalent employees. Many of them have a turnover in excess of £1 million a year, with a total benefit to local economies estimated at £250 million. In addition, most trains on these lines run on time and at no cost to the public purse, in contrast to those of a number of train operating companies.
Our report emphasises the importance of young people to the future of the sector. There is perhaps an image of heritage railways as being about people of roughly my age with a nostalgia for steam playing at trains in a kind of amateur way, chuffing up and down a few miles of track and being drivers and guards and all the rest of it. Well, there may be a bit of that, but it is far more significant. I pray in aid the range of skills that you will see functioning on an average heritage railway today, where the volunteers may include engineers, plumbers, planners, electricians, accountants, surveyors, carpenters, lawyers—all people giving of their professional skills in their spare time. They are not just maintaining existing railways but for ever opening new extensions and new lines. It is an ever-expanding industry. The relevance of that to young people in particular—and we could all give examples from the railways that we are familiar with—is that 16 and 17 year-old youngsters, working alongside professionals such as those that I have described, derive tremendous benefit, which may quite possibly include economic benefit for themselves and employability benefits later on. It is almost like a traditional apprenticeship where they are working with senior people with skills.
Perhaps I should declare my own specific interest in this at the moment as I am—you will be excited to know—president of the Telford Steam Railway; I happen to have some brochures with me, if anyone would like to come along. That railway is only a small line, but it has a turnover of £1 million a year and has big ambitions. Due to various rules and regulations—some of which emanated from the EU, I am afraid—the coal-powered station has closed down and we now have a redundant branch line, but we are hoping to run passenger trains on it. However, that is a diversion. I simply wanted to say that there are examples from that railway of youngsters benefiting. One young chap who worked with a skilled engineer now has an apprenticeship with Network Rail. Two youngsters who worked as guards on our railway went on to be guards for a couple of train operating companies. So there is an obvious benefit to young people who can acquire skills.
Of course, those may not be just economic skills. As the right reverend Prelate has already mentioned, heritage railways can also prepare people with all the advantages that we recognise from volunteering, such as turning up on time, involvement in collegiate activity and developing confidence. If you have been working on a heritage railway, and then you start an apprenticeship with Network Rail, on the uncertain first few days, weeks and months at work, you have a basis for discussions with the people who are now your colleagues. People get a lot of confidence from that.
I emphasise again that the skills required for heritage rail are not all rail-specific, by any means. If your interest happens to be catering, you can find an outlet at most heritage railways. The same applies if it is retail, marketing or even journalism—pretty much every heritage railway produces quite an impressive magazine. There are a whole range of non-rail-specific skills, talents and potential careers available to our young people through heritage rail. It brings not just economic benefits but social benefits as well.
I hope the value of this report is that it will draw to the Government’s attention the significance of our heritage railways. They are not an amateurish operation by elderly people who are more or less just chuffing up and down a line. They are professional organisations and are professionally run, although without pay in most cases, with young people coming on within them. I hope that the Government will listen to what we are saying and act on it, helping in the numerous ways they can.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Grocott. Like him, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner on securing this debate and on the work he has done in this field over the years. I also take this opportunity to welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds. All too often, these debates are fairly exclusive; I find we are apt to be known as the verbal gricers of the railway industry. Bishops and railways go together quite well, of course. Bishop Eric Treacy was a well-known figure during my time in the railway industry. There was only one line of the right reverend Prelate’s speech with which I might disagree at some future stage. He said that young people do not need protection under the 1920 Act. Of course, he is right as far as the railway industry is concerned, but if this House ever gets around to debating the fast-food industry, I might take issue with him on that point. However, I commend his speech and his contribution today.
Looking back at the history of the railways, particularly in the context of this debate, it is a sobering thought that the youngest former cleaner who embarked on his first shift on a locomotive and left the depot on the British Rail standard gauge would now be approaching 70 years of age—an ominous warning to all of us of the passage of time. However, the attraction of the railway industry, particularly the heritage railways and steam locomotives, is one that includes all generations.
The “Flying Scotsman” locomotive is currently on tour. There has been some adverse publicity about the thousands of people who have gone to see it, some of whom got a bit closer to the lineside than they should have done because of the attraction of this particular locomotive. I visited the East Lancashire Railway with my grandson towards the end of last year, when the “Flying Scotsman” was there. My grandson is now 15 and if he remembers his grandfather for anything, I hope it is for getting him on the footplate of the “Flying Scotsman” on the East Lancashire Railway.
As my noble friend Lord Grocott said, people do not volunteer for just the locomotive department. There are various other jobs in the railway industry and he reminded us of some of them. On the mainline railway, there are still many hundreds of signal boxes. Of course, the intention is to concentrate mainline signalling on 10 or 12 regional operating centres in the years to come, but there are still lots of manual signal boxes on the mainline railway. Certainly as far as the heritage railways are concerned, operating those signal boxes will continue for many years to come.
The debate is first and foremost about attracting young people to the railway industry, and not just because of steam locomotives, as I have indicated; there are lots of other valuable jobs that they can do and to which they can contribute. Like previous speakers, I will for a moment be somewhat parochial. Towards the end of last year, I visited the Tyseley Locomotive Works just outside Birmingham. I talked there to some of the people who operate the works and the locomotive department. Subsequently its chairman, Mr Michael Whitehouse, contacted me about attracting young people to what is a working locomotive maintenance and operational depot—possibly one of the few left, certainly alongside British Rail. I quote from his letter:
“We already run an apprentice scheme for three students in conjunction with Bournville and South Birmingham colleges. We intend to introduce further training schemes and are already in dialogue with the Office of Rail and Road to establish a training scheme for railway operational staff”.
He says that they are anxious,
“to expand and upgrade our facilities to meet the significantly increasing demand for repairing heritage steam locomotives”.
I hope the Minister will be able to convince his colleagues in the Department for Transport of the need for a ministerial visit to the Tyseley works so that they can see their operational nature, and that any application made to the ERDF, for example, is sympathetically supported by the Minister’s department as well as the DfT.
I would like to draw your Lordships’ attention to another aspect of heritage railways—the need for connectivity between the heritage railway and the main line. If we are to attract young people and to train perhaps young would-be managers in the mainline system, they would certainly find that connectivity between the heritage railway and the main line attractive. It would be enormously useful.
Network Rail has lots of problems, some of which come in for considerable criticism in your Lordships’ House, as well as in the other place. Without adding to its burden, we should point out that occasionally Network Rail shows itself to be both expensive and uninterested in its connection with the heritage railway system. I will give your Lordships an example. Recently, the Swanage Railway was not a consultee on proposed changes involving its main line connection near Wareham, even though this was re-signalled to rejoin the railway with a grant from Dorset County Council. Network Rail is something of a Goliath as far as the heritage railway sector is concerned, but the voluntary sector faces heavy expenditure for track and signalling alterations. I wonder whether the Minister could take back the message that it would certainly be extremely helpful if heritage railways were made a statutory consultee where this sort of work, which might well affect their own operations, is concerned. At the moment, it is very much a matter of whether Network Rail consults them. In the case of Swanage Railway, it did not.
I referred to the fact that there are many jobs that young people could do in the sector, as did my noble friend Lord Grocott. We have heard about the plea and desire to look again at the regulations and the 1920 Act. Of course, it is all very well for the Office of Rail and Road to say that it does not anticipate taking any action under this statute—I welcome that news—but if a young person is injured I am not sure whether the legal profession would take the same laid-back view of its responsibilities. It would be useful if the legislation was withdrawn.
Referring to some of the other work that takes place in the railway industry, I have mentioned signal boxes previously and bored your Lordships with stories of my own involvement. I will try not to do so again on this occasion.
Lord Snape
Well, all right, just this once I will be led astray.
One of the signal boxes in which I used to work, just outside Stockport, is still there—I will not go into the details of why, but it still operates as a mainline signal box. When it was necessary to modernise it, yet still retain the lever frame installed by the London and North Western Railway in 1888, locking fitters had to be brought in from India to do the work because we have largely lost these skills. If we could retain those skills through the heritage railway sector, that would be invaluable. This is probably an apocryphal story—fake news, as a distinguished visitor to our country might say—but I am told that after six months of modernising the signal boxes in my home town of Stockport, they were delighted to get back to India.
Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)
My Lords, I must declare an interest as a member of the APPG who took part in the inquiry. I am delighted to follow what has been a united front and I certainly give credit to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, for leading us through this debate and for all the work he has done with heritage railways so far. I wondered how far we would become tourists ourselves this evening, and we have been to the Talyllyn Railway, the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway, and railways in Helston, Telford, East Lancashire and Swanage. My noble friend gave us a tour de force on the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway, including details of all the steam locomotives. As I said, we have had a united front.
The report produced is unlike many reports because although heritage railways are not averse to money—particularly not to accepting it for capital projects—the report is not about money. Heritage railways have an immense involvement in tourism, which makes this an interest for the Minister. Several are in conurbations but several others are quite remote. Some of those who are able to participate travel great distances to volunteer on heritage railways; for some, it is only a few miles because they are not far from the conurbations.
The report is about the involvement of young people and volunteering. Volunteers need renewing and it is important to catch them young. There is much in the report but our real concern is about the 1920 Act, which has become a serious impediment for heritage railways by discouraging young people, particularly 14 and 15 year-olds, from volunteering. We do not want another Beeching for a lack of sufficient volunteers. The lawyers have had a look at the Act and we can take another look. It was passed in 1920; at that time, the school-leaving age was 14. So does the Act apply today, as if the school-leaving age was 14, or is it some later time? That may be an open point.
I should like to cite my own experience at this point. I had always been interested in railways and was one of the trainspotters. When I got involved with the Talyllyn Railway, there were several people from the West Riding helping on it. I went as a 15 year-old to the Talyllyn on several weekends. In particular, I went at that age on the Dolgoch slip when the earth had moved away from the track and it was unsafe for the whole line to be used. Groups of amateurs and volunteers turned up and I, at 15, was one of those who helped to build a great piece of concrete to keep that track in place. I enjoyed that group activity. I had no idea, by the way, that I was breaking the law as a 15 year-old taking part in that activity. However, it gave me the thought: was being a civil engineer in later life something I might do? I gave it serious thought. It did not happen, but it shows that it is one of the things that can happen for youngsters when they take part in such work. The work they do as a volunteer can be a precursor to work later in life.
I am pleased that a DCMS Minister will be responding to the debate. He may not like the idea of new primary legislation, although June and July 2019 would not be a bad time to give us the job of producing a new Act of Parliament. If that cannot be done, surely an order-making power can be rooted out so that we can get rid of this impediment, because even though people are saying, “No one’s going to bother about it if people of 14 and 15 do these things”, it quite clearly is an impediment. Who knows in litigious times whether it could be real? I hope the Minister can look at that.
It is interesting that DCMS and the Minister deal with other leisure pursuits, particularly sport. Volunteering on heritage rail seems similar to being involved in heritage buildings, rambling, youth hostelling—all these things. There are many types of leisure-time activity. Some involve much physical activity, while others are quite sedentary, such as collecting stamps, coins and even railway tickets. I want to mention sporting activity. The document 2010 to 2015 Government Policy: Sports Participation states:
“To make sure as many people as possible are playing sport, the government is … funding … to help community sports grow, including helping 14- to 25-year-olds to keep playing sport throughout their lives”.
I do not want to detract from people being involved in sport or from the Government supporting that, but I do not see why they should not put people who are interested in heritage railways in the same position as they put those who are excited about sport.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to those already expressed to my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester, both on securing this debate and on the comprehensive and informative report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heritage Rail. My noble friend was instrumental in establishing the APPG and then in ensuring that it became an active and meaningful parliamentary group on behalf of heritage railways.
As my noble friend said, he is also president of the Heritage Railway Association. He does not do things by halves. When he becomes involved—and he has had and continues to have a range of interests and campaigning issues—he becomes involved big time, and he has a very impressive success rate in achieving and delivering the desired objectives. He just does not do being a passenger or passive supporter. I say that with some personal knowledge as I have shared an office with my noble friend ever since I became a Member of this House 15 years ago.
I also congratulate all the other parliamentarians associated with the report, a number of whom have spoken today—indeed, all those who are Members of this House. In addition, as my noble friend Lord Grocott said, the work of Chris Austin, described in the APPG report as the clerk, cannot be underestimated. A retired senior career railwayman, Chris is involved with the West Somerset Heritage Railway and has co-authored with my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester a couple of well-received books on recent railway history, covering all the political machinations prior to and since the Beeching cuts.
The railway preservation movement in Britain—and the world—had its beginnings in 1951, when a group of enthusiasts, led by, among others, the author and co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association, Tom Rolt, saved the narrow gauge Talyllyn Railway in mid-Wales from almost certain closure. The Talyllyn project was the first railway preservation scheme in the world, and since then the railway preservation movement in Britain has grown from strength to strength. The first standard gauge preserved railway, formerly operated by British Railways, started running as a private company in 1960: it was and is the Bluebell Railway in Sussex.
Today, the number of preserved or heritage railways in Britain runs well into three figures, thanks to the work of dedicated volunteers and paid staff who provide a memorable attraction for millions of visitors each year and a stimulus to the nation’s tourist economy. I am pleased to have it confirmed tonight that, like other great shows, the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway has finally made it to Broadway. There is even, I believe, one such preserved railway in the Channel Islands, on Alderney. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited in 1854 and became the first passengers on what was normally a freight-only line.
A moment ago I mentioned volunteers and paid staff. Heritage railways employ more than 3,000 full-time equivalent staff and some 22,000 volunteers. The majority of volunteers are in the 55-plus age group. The number of volunteers under 18 is around 5%, with the number of young female volunteers under 1%. About 800 volunteers are under 16. On this point, the APPG report says:
“The current number of young volunteers … is not adequate to ensure the continuation of the present level of heritage railway activity in the long term”.
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of the end of main line steam on British Rail, so those under 60 years of age today will not have personal memories of our national railway network in the steam era. Heritage railways are concerned that, with the inevitable loss over time of older employees and volunteers, engineering and other skills associated with the era of steam motive power are being and will be lost.
Attracting and training young volunteers, both male and female, is an issue that heritage railways are seeking to address, and some innovative and successful schemes have already been introduced. It is a less difficult development for the larger heritage railways to deliver than it is for smaller ones run entirely by volunteers. This issue is, of course, a key part of the APPG report that we are discussing. There is clear evidence, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley said, that the training, knowledge and experience acquired by young people who are volunteers on heritage railways can lead to regular employment and a career in the national railway system.
However, heritage railways need some help in delivering a number of the recommendations in the report, and one in particular. At the end of his interesting and informative speech, my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester made reference, as did the APPG report and other speakers in this debate, to the Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920 and the significant constraint it places on recruiting young volunteers under 16. My noble friend asked the Government for some help in removing that constraint. The APPG report states that this constraint in legislation, which predates the creation and rapid development of working railway heritage lines and the large number of volunteers involved, not only prevents young volunteers under 16,
“benefiting from the experiences their parents and grandparents had, but risks losing them altogether to railways, as they find another outlet for their interests at a crucial stage in their lives and when exploring future employment”.
There have been previous debates on this specific point. One was in the other place on 15 March 2017, with earlier ones in this House on 7 December and 22 November 2016. On the latter date, the Minister, speaking for the Government, said he agreed that there should be no barriers to young people volunteering their time to support heritage railways. In the debate the following month, the Minister said that his officials had already made contact with the Office of Rail and Road and that the matter was now with that body.
In the debate in the other place on 15 March 2017, the government Minister said that, like the noble Lord the Minister, he too did not want there to be any barrier to young people volunteering their time on heritage railways or in other appropriate environments. The Commons Minister went on to say:
“There is a clear benefit to young people in being able to take part in such volunteering activities: it gives them practical and social skills, develops a sense of community and social engagement, and equips them with a formative degree of knowledge of safety and risk management”.
I am sure we are all agreed on that. The Commons Minister also referred to his department having spoken with the Office of Rail and Road, which had apparently confirmed that,
“there is a long-standing role for those under school leaving age to work on such systems in the heritage sector”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/17; col. 482.]
The Commons Minister then referred to a series of presumably then pending meetings with the ORR.
However, subject to the Minister in his response persuading the House otherwise, not a lot seems to have happened on this issue over the last two and a quarter years. While the ORR under its current leadership may have no intention of enforcing the 1920 Act, a private third party might—as might the ORR under different leadership. In addition, the attitude of insurers to claims in this situation could become unhelpful, which adds further to the uncertainty and risks of recruiting volunteers under 16 for those managing a heritage railway.
On the face of it, the amount of discussion by government in the past seems to have been in inverse proportion to the amount of action by government now. I hope that the Minister, on behalf of the government departments involved, will be able to show that that is not the case and that a helpful response will be forthcoming to my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester’s request for government help on this issue—a request that of course is also one of the recommendations in the APPG report itself.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for tabling this debate on such an interesting area of our national heritage. I can honestly say that I have greatly enjoyed this debate, because I have agreed with every speaker tonight. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions.
I enjoyed the stories of all noble Lords’ local railways, particularly the description by the noble Lord, Lord Jones, of his local heritage railway and the engines that run on it, because that is my local heritage railway as well. Perhaps it is just that, as my daughter was delighted to tell me the other day, I was described on Twitter as “Lord of the nerds”. The noble Lord is definitely on the right on end, not the right scruff end, of the trainspotter continuum.
I enjoyed the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, even managed to bring Brexit into this debate, but I am certainly not going down that branch line. He also talked about the variety of skills involved—as did many other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Snape. I absolutely agree with this. It is not just the specific skills to do with things such as boilers and engines but, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, outlined, many different skills—including timekeeping and timetabling, which he did not mention; in heritage railways, they tend to stick to the timetable—which give a structure to young people which they sometimes do not have. They can take those skills, as he said, on to employment. The noble Lord, Lord Snape, agreed from his experience of this, and I will certainly take back to the relevant department his remarks about the statutory consultation.
We should therefore celebrate what our railway heritage involves and ensure, as every noble Lord said, that the next generation is endowed with the skills and the passion to protect this legacy for future generations. I too record my thanks to the heritage rail APPG and especially to Chris Austin, who has also been mentioned.
Many noble Lords mentioned that heritage railways are major contributors to the visitor economy, attracting around 13 million visitors and bringing in an estimated £250 million to the economy annually—although the figure quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, was £400 million. This has created an increasing amount of paid jobs as well as volunteering, with more than 3,000 people now employed on heritage railways. Of course that is dwarfed, as has been said, by the 22,000 wonderful volunteers who give their time and expertise for free to ensure the continued success of the heritage railways. However, many of them are retired, older people who will physically not be able to continue this work indefinitely, as much as they may wish to. We therefore have to ensure that we are enabling young people to take up the mantle to ensure the future sustainability of the heritage asset we have.
Therefore, as encouraged in the APPG report, I was pleased to see the introduction last year of a level 3 apprenticeship for heritage engineering technicians, which includes an option to acquire technical skills for the restoration and repair of locomotive steam engines. In only a few months since it was made available, 25 young people have elected to take up this apprenticeship, and I hope that many more will follow in their footsteps.
The APPG report outlines in its first recommendation the importance of involving young people in railways; the right reverend Prelate mentioned this, understandably, as did several other noble Lords. My department’s long-term Taking Part survey supports this and shows that if people visit heritage sites while they are of school age, they are more likely to visit as adults. Heritage railway museums are doing well on that score. An impressive 45,000 education group visits were made to the National Railway Museum in York and Locomotion in Shildon in 2018-19—which are part of the Science Museum Group, which is the most-visited group of museums in the UK by education groups. Both those museums offer a schools programme with strong curriculum links and a focus on STEM skills. It would of course be remiss of me as a Culture Minister, especially in this debate, not to be quite clear that we also value the benefits of STEAM subjects.
The need to encourage and increase the uptake of STEM skills has been clearly identified and prioritised by government over the last few years. The Government’s national Year of Engineering campaign in 2018 was designed to increase awareness and understanding among young people aged seven to 16 of what engineers do, and to showcase the many different routes into engineering careers. The National Railway Museum—which, as I said, is part of the DCMS-supported national museums network, the Science Museum Group—contributed to the Year of Engineering campaign through its Future Engineers initiative, a half-term programme which attracted nearly 30,000 visitors. Notably, 47% of the engineers involved in the Future Engineers programme were female. In light of the recommendation in the APPG report to “demystify” railway jargon to encourage young women’s involvement, promoting positive female role models in the sector seems a helpful step in this direction.
Virtually every noble Lord mentioned the Employment of Women, Young Persons and Children Act 1920, and it is apparent in the APPG report, as the noble Lords, Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Berkeley, explained very clearly, that the interpretation of the Act presents a barrier to encouraging under-16s into volunteering opportunities on heritage railways, of which we all approve. Of course we want young people to have access to as broad a range of volunteering opportunities as possible. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred to some remarks I made three years ago. We should strive to build on the momentum created by the Year of Engineering to encourage enthusiasm for heritage railways.
Of course, it is paramount that we ensure the health and safety of all young people in employment, whether in a paid or voluntary capacity, but that is not incompatible with young people volunteering on a heritage railway. There are clear and multiple benefits in doing so. Rather, we must ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place.
As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, referred to my comments. I said at the time that it was left for the Office of Rail and Road. He also referred to the comments of the Commons Minister. I should make the point that, very shortly after, he lost his seat, but I do not think it was connected with those remarks. I am encouraged to hear from noble Lords that a potential solution has been found to the issue through the use of a statutory instrument under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. My officials are currently seeking confirmation from the Department for Work and Pensions, whose responsibility this is, together with the Health and Safety Executive. I confirm to the noble Lord that I am very happy to convene a meeting to take that forward with the Department for Transport and the DWP. Indeed, I warned the DWP Minister this morning that that might be a likely outcome.
The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, mentioned that the APPG report was almost unique in not mentioning money, but money is important. The UK’s largest heritage funder, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, has awarded more than £163 million to more than 450 rail-related projects, such as the Boiler and Engineering Skills Training Trust to address disappearing skills, and to the Welsh Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways for its heritage skills training programme.
Briefly, because I do not have very long, I wanted to mention coal, which the noble Lord, Lord Jones, mentioned. Obviously, we appreciate the need to reduce public health risks, but we are working carefully to consider how we might achieve a successful balance between enhancing environmental and public health protection and ensuring that the UK’s heritage vehicle industry—and, indeed, heritage houses that burn coal in grates—continues to thrive. My officials are meeting counterparts at Defra next week to discuss this, and Defra Ministers have previously publicly stated:
“The proposals in the consultation on domestic burning would not prevent heritage railways purchasing the fuels they need”.
We will progress the issues around the 1920 Act, I hope, although, as I say, we must ensure that health and safety is right, so the DWP will be involved. I think that is a better way forward and more likely to succeed than primary legislation.
We fully recognise the enormous benefits that heritage railways bring to the UK’s economy and tourism industry. We welcome the contributions of organisations such as the Heritage Railway Association and wish them every success. We stand ready to support them in securing the sustainability of this industry for future generations.