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New Member
Mr Speaker
I am now suspending the House briefly to allow the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.
Speaker’s Statement
Mr Speaker
Before we come to Question No. 1, I wish to inform the House about a change to our business today. At 5 o’clock, proceedings on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will be interrupted in order for the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to make a statement on covid-19, if there is anything left to say. The statement will last for up to one hour and proceedings on the Bill will then continue. If the programme motion on the Order Paper is agreed to by the House, the debate on the first group of amendments must finish at 6.30 pm. The debate on the remaining amendments must finish by 9 o’clock and the debate on Third Reading must finish by 10 pm.
It is very unusual, although not unprecedented, to interrupt the scheduled business of the House to allow for a statement in this way. Given the priority that I have put on ensuring that important statements are heard in this House first, or at least simultaneously, which I know is shared by Members across the House, I think it appropriate for the House to hear a statement given the significance of the subject matter.
Oral Answers to Questions
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)
May I congratulate the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) on taking her place and state my personal admiration for both her bravery and her sense of duty in putting herself forward to stand for that seat after the tragic loss of her sister?
MOD expenditure with UK industry and commerce already directly and indirectly supports more than 200,000 jobs across the United Kingdom. The investment of £88 billion in the equipment plan over the next four years, along with the changes we are making as part of the defence and security industrial strategy, will contribute to further economic growth and prosperity, including jobs across the United Kingdom.
Mark Menzies [V]
I was proud to welcome the Minister for exports, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), to BAE Systems in my constituency the week before last to visit the factory of the future. That followed hot on the footsteps of the Prime Minister’s visit back in March, so will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State outline what is being done to support our world-class defence manufacturing export success, and will he commit to the continuation of the Typhoon export programme?
Mr Wallace
The defence and security industrial strategy published in March set out how the Government will support defence and security exports. The UK Government and BAE are leading on the current opportunity in Finland and will continue to support industry in this campaign and future opportunities where they are present. Typhoon continues to benefit from ongoing investment, including Leonardo’s European Common Radar System Mark 2 radar and MBDA’s Meteor and SPEAR—Selective Precision Effects at Range—weapons. This increased capability delivered by the core programme will strengthen export prospects.
Karl MᶜCartney [V]
Lincolnshire has the privilege of being the historic home of many MOD bases and personnel. I am proud to have RAF Waddington in my constituency of Lincoln; as my right hon. Friend is aware, it houses and employs thousands of my constituents. Will he assure me not only that RAF Waddington will play an active role in our nation’s defence for many decades to come, but that he recognises that the recently announced changes at RAF Waddington are a concern for many Northrop Grumman personnel? What steps are being taken to preserve those with critical skills, both locally and nationally? Will he work with potential overseas buyers of RAF aircraft to secure technically skilled jobs and provide extensive employment for my constituents?
Mr Wallace
May I express my gratitude to the Northrop Grumman team who have worked on the E-3D Sentry over the years? Retiring old aircraft will inevitably impact the people who work on them. However, RAF Waddington, which I recently visited, remains firmly in our plans: as it becomes a national and international centre of excellence for remotely piloted air systems and for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, it will be a source of skilled employment for my hon. Friend’s constituents. We are investing in 16 Protector remotely piloted air systems. RAF Waddington will be the future home of the Red Arrows as well.
Scott Benton
I was delighted to see that last week His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge cut the steel for HMS Belfast, the third ship in the Royal Navy’s fleet of next-generation Type 26 anti-submarine frigates. All eight Type 26 frigates are being built by BAE Systems on the Clyde. Can the Secretary of State outline how many jobs that programme will support?
Mr Wallace
The Type 26 frigate programme consists of a total of eight ships, as my hon. Friend says, with work sustaining some 1,700 jobs at BAE Systems in Scotland alone and 4,000 jobs across the wider UK maritime supply chain until 2035.
Jacob Young
A crucial part of our defence system is MOD procurement, with military equipment provided by companies such as Typhoon International, which makes dry suits and lifejackets for military divers, and First Choice Labels in Kirkleatham, which kindly provided social distancing floor stickers to businesses during the pandemic. May I invite the Secretary of State to Teesside to visit these great local British businesses and see for himself the high-quality military equipment and supplies that we produce in Redcar and Cleveland?
Mr Wallace
I would be delighted to come over to Redcar to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. He highlights the real importance of the supply chain in any defence product. It is not always the big primes, although they often get the attention; it is all the little and medium-sized companies that string along behind that often supply the real detail behind the bids.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
I thank the Defence Secretary for his welcome to my hon. Friend the new Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater). I will ensure that his kind remarks are known to her.
The Prime Minister has promised an extra 10,000 jobs in defence each year for the next four years. Buying British is the best way to deliver that promise so that we design and build for ourselves in Britain: it strengthens our economy and it strengthens our sovereignty. The defence equipment budget is now £19 billion. What proportion goes not to Britain, but to US suppliers?
Mr Wallace
Many suppliers in this country may not be entirely UK in their country of ownership, but the Ajax, for example, is made in St Athan by General Dynamics, and Boxer is made in Shropshire by a combination of BAE and the German Rheinmetall. We often insist that a significant proportion of those projects are made in the UK: for example, over 65% of the Boxer vehicle’s components are UK-made, including the metal frame made in Stockport. That provides British jobs, even if sometimes the countries of ownership are international. It is important to have international components because, as hon. Members have mentioned in previous questions, we also want to sell abroad. If we shut everyone else out, we should not be surprised if they do not buy from us.
John Healey
The Defence Secretary ducks and dives to avoid the answer, but the highly authoritative Defence Analysis has the figures: 31% of Britain’s defence budget now goes to US suppliers, up from 10% only five years ago. Britain can make the best, but it requires the Government to give it backing. In the past month alone, the Defence Secretary has rejected the world-leading UK-built Brimstone missile and bought US instead. Is it not the truth that Ministers are making big promises to UK industry while the big money still goes abroad?
Mr Wallace
The truth is that the right hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand defence procurement or how things are manufactured. For example, 15% to 20% of the global components for all 3,000 of the F-35 aircraft—the rear part of the aeroplane—are made in Lancashire. Many of the highly complex, highly expensive defence projects are a collaboration. Typhoon is often championed on both sides of the House: that is an international collaboration between Spain, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. When the right hon. Gentleman mentions the word “supplier”, he is of course deliberately confusing that with the actual number of jobs and the ownership of their business. Let us ask the question: how many people are working on American companies’ business but based in the UK? He will find that most of them are here in this country.
Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Mr Wallace
The Government support families by providing successful wraparound childcare pilots, and in the last financial year awarded grants totalling £4.5 million from the MOD’s education support grant fund and its early years and childcare fund. Through Forces Help to Buy, we have helped around 24,100 personnel to buy a home or move as their families’ needs changed. The future accommodation model is looking at how we can support service families with more choices about how, where and with whom they live.
Andrew Lewer [V]
What is the Ministry of Defence doing to ensure that eligible personnel know that the continuity of education allowance—an important and necessary support for young people from military families, the vast majority of whom are a great asset to the schools they attend—is available to NCOs as well as to officers?
Mr Wallace
The CEA is available to all ranks, and we should encourage as many people as possible to take it up. It is used to achieve essential continuity of education for children, providing educational stability when personnel are assigned to service locations to meet the obligations of their service. Service personnel of all ranks may qualify, subject to their satisfying eligibility criteria, and they are encouraged to seek advice from the chain of command if they wish to take it up.
Steve Brine
Armed forces families are very much the backbone of our military, including those living at Worthy Down in my constituency, and it is only right that we do everything we can to guarantee that they and their loved ones enjoy the best possible quality of life as much as anybody else. Can the Secretary of State confirm that it is his mission to see that every service family can live in the modern, sustainable accommodation that they deserve?
Mr Wallace
It is my mission that they get the accommodation that they deserve. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation has recently awarded contracts up to the value of £2.1 billion to a number of market-leading suppliers to provide maintenance services across the UK estate for the next seven years. Those contracts will benefit from the increased investment announced in the integrated review to address the legacy of underinvestment across the estate, enabling improvements for our armed forces and their families.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP) [V]
May I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) on her election? This is the first Defence questions we have had since Armed Forces Day, when we normally thank not only the personnel but their families. As the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) mentioned, the families really are the backbone of serving personnel across the UK. We know that the Government provide £2,000 for the childcare subsidy, but families are often spending three times as much as that and sometimes even more, so I have a very simple question: will the Secretary of State increase the childcare subsidy available to personnel and their families?
Mr Wallace
First, we are going to increase spending on wraparound childcare to over £165 million a year for families with children up to 11 in primary school. That reflects the fact that most service personnel do not have a nine-to-five job, and it will help them considerably. In fact, where we have run the pilots, this has been incredibly popular. On the continuity allowance, one way to manage the disruption that families suffer is not necessarily by increasing that allowance but by increasing forces’ families ability to find a place they want to live, so that they can be settled and their children can attend the same school. That is a growing trend from when I served, and the 24,000 benefiting from Help to Buy is a really positive number. It shows that a number of people have now made the choice that when they deploy, they will go on their own, and their families and children will stay stable in one place.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
It is good to hear that there is going to be increased support, and we know from surveys that childcare costs, in particular, can be crippling for service families. May I move on to employment issues for the families of service personnel? At the minute, in the UK, helping the spouses of those who serve in the armed forces is largely left to the third sector. Canada, a fellow NATO country, has a thing called the spousal employment network, which is a very successful model, run in-house by the Government, to help the spouses of those who serve to find good-quality work that suits them. Will our Government look to bring this type of thing in-house, rather than leaving it to the third sector? Although that sector does a good job, the state should be taking on more of that responsibility.
Mr Wallace
The hon. Gentleman will know that we are working on a families’ strategy, and his suggestion is in exactly an area we are working on in that strategy. He is right; when I was serving in Germany in the BAOR—the British Army of the Rhine—where there was a much more settled, huge Army, there were lots of those organisations around, and I think they need some reinvigorating. Whether that is done entirely through the state or through a blend of non-governmental organisations, charities, volunteers and the state is something I would welcome being looked at, and I think there will be some solutions. What he says is totally in line with our policy and view that we have to do more for spouses to help them with their jobs if they move around.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)
We are always striving to improve transition, but it is a success story. In 2019-20, 84% of service leavers were employed within six months, which is higher than the UK employment rate of 76%. We offer support through the Career Transition Partnership. We have also introduced a national insurance holiday for employers of veterans and a guaranteed interview for those applying to the civil service. This acknowledges that veterans bring discipline and huge employability to the workplace.
Mary Glindon
The average unemployment rate across the general population in this country is 4.8%, whereas for veterans the rate is a very concerning 7%. Can the Minister say why the Armed Forces Bill does not include employment within its scope?
Leo Docherty
In contrast to what the hon. Lady says, in reality the statistics show that the picture is very positive. If we compare like for like, veterans are overwhelmingly in good employment, which reflects an overall demand in the civilian sector to take on veterans, especially in growing sectors such as a telecoms and construction, because of the magnificent skillsets they bring to those jobs.
Steve McCabe
I welcome the work of the Career Transition Partnership, but the Minister must be aware that some estimates suggest that unemployment among ex-service personnel aged 18 to 49 is double the national average. Has he asked his Department for Work and Pensions colleagues to consider the simple suggestion of the Centre for Social Justice to include an obligatory question on initial Jobcentre Plus registration: “Have you ever served in the UK armed forces?”?
Leo Docherty
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question. I am content—I have seen it for myself—that the DWP is now very much veteran-aware. I have been very impressed with its veteran-friendly approach; 10 days ago, I saw an armed forces champion in a DWP Jobcentre Plus office. Government’s joined-up response in ensuring that every Department makes itself aware of veterans is already bearing fruit.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)
The Ministry of Defence is determined to provide the best possible mental health support and care for members of the armed forces. We have introduced a 24-hour mental health helpline for service personnel and families in tandem with Combat Stress. We have also introduced HeadFIT, a training website for mental health, and, from September, all serving personnel will receive a mandatory annual briefing on mental health awareness. All of this must be underlined by a cultural shift in which it is okay to say that you are not okay.
Andrew Gwynne
I am grateful to the Minister for that answer and for the work that has been done, but he must also know that Government targets on mental healthcare have been missed for veterans across all services in England, including a wait of 37 days for face-to-face appointments through the transition, intervention and liaison service against a target of just 14. Will he now commit to reviewing these services to ensure that our serving personnel and veterans absolutely get the best standards of care, which they need and deserve?
Leo Docherty
We are committed to ensuring that veterans and service personnel receive a gold standard of care. I was with Op Courage clinicians last week and I was pleased to learn that wait times for those seeking high intensity treatment for high intensity and complex problems have decreased. I was also very encouraged to learn that veterans themselves are part of the mental health support in the form of peer support workers. We will always have more to do, but good progress is being made.
Mr Dhesi
The armed forces covenant states:
“Those injured in Service, whether physically or mentally, should be cared for in a way which reflects the Nation’s moral obligation to them”.
However, the Defence Committee’s 2019 report on mental health suggests that there was a 50% shortfall in both uniformed and civilian psychiatrists’ posts. Can the Minister set out an updated estimate, and what he is doing to ensure that staffing meets the demand from service communities?
Leo Docherty
We will always go after any gaps in provision, but I am confident that progress is being made. When it comes to delivering on our obligations on the covenant, which is to ensure that no serving personnel or veteran is disadvantaged in any way, I am very proud that we are right in the middle of taking forward the Armed Forces Bill.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
Government figures show that the number of service personnel being seen by the MOD’s specialist mental health services for initial assessment has fallen by 36% since 2013 to an all-time low. That is despite personnel being more willing to seek help for mental health issues. Will the Minister commit to reviewing all current mental health provision for our armed forces personnel?
Leo Docherty
I welcome that question because, as I mentioned, apart from the physical provision, we are seeking a cultural change and an institutional shift across all our armed forces, led by the chain of command, in which people feel comfortable asking for help. We are already seeing a tangible benefit in that regard. I saw some of that up close when I visited the Op Courage clinicians in St Pancras last week.
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)
The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)
The MOD recognises the valuable role played by some 140 museums around the country and currently supports 53 Army museums through the provision of curators and infrastructure costs.
Mr Holden
I thank the Minister for his recent visit to Stanhope in my constituency where he saw British manufacturing at its best in the tracked vehicles for the armed forces. The Durham Light Infantry Museum was sadly closed in 2016 by the Labour-led Durham County Council as a cost-cutting exercise. However, keeping the collection in storage has actually proved more expensive than keeping the museum open. The new joint administration is looking to reopen that museum. Will he work with me and meet my hon. Friends the Members for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) and for Sedgefield (Paul Howell), who are very keen on this new initiative, to see what the Ministry of Defence can do to get this museum reopened?
Jeremy Quin
I greatly enjoyed the visit to Stanhope. If there is an opportunity to meet again, I would be delighted to do so. The DLI has an extraordinary record of service, as did the 68th Regiment that preceded it. I am delighted to hear that the council is reviewing the fact that the regimental museum is currently closed. Using museums to inspire young people not only with what their forebears did, but with the ongoing service of local people in the armed forces, must surely be welcomed by all parties.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)
The 2020 spending review settlement for defence provided a cash increase of more than £24 billion over four years compared with last year’s budget. That represents an above inflation increase in capital and resource spending over the period, and exceeds the Government’s commitment to increase the defence budget by 0.5% above inflation in each year of this Parliament.
Dave Doogan
In the whole of NATO, only Luxembourg spends less on its personnel than the UK. In 2020, the MOD spent just 34% of its budget on personnel—half the figure that Belgium spends. Does the Secretary of State believe that it is the woeful lack of investment in our personnel that is driving the current recruitment challenges in our armed forces, or is it the chronic accommodation that he expects our service personnel to live in that is to blame? Soon, the size of the Army will be at its lowest since 1714. How does the MOD splashing £200 million on a new royal yacht help with these challenges in our armed forces?
Mr Wallace
I think the hon. Gentleman does not understand how we spend our money in the defence budget; that is 34% of a very large budget on armed forces that are expeditionary and require lots of capital equipment. Of course, the proportion that we spend on human beings compared with equipment will be less than a country such as Belgium, which potentially has a large personnel budget but very little capital budget. That simply explains the different proportion. It does not mean that we spend less. Our forces’ salaries, and terms and conditions, are comparably better than in most countries—not only in NATO, but across the world. It is just that we choose to buy things to put our people in, such as Boxers or aircraft; that is simply the reality of it.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)
The Government accept that the historic policy of prohibiting members of the LGBT community from serving in the armed forces was absolutely wrong. Work is under way to understand and acknowledge the wide-ranging impact of the pre-millennium practice of the ban. That will ensure that it is not only through the return of medals that the impacts of this historic policy are addressed. We will be announcing this work in due course.
Dan Carden
The ban on homosexuality in the armed forces is expected to have affected upwards of 20,000 veterans, who faced inhumane treatment, from medical examinations to imprisonment, and have lived a life of shame and fear. This historic injustice warrants an apology from the Prime Minister. I wonder if the Minister will seek that on behalf of the nation. These men and women have waited long enough. Will he set out a timetable for righting this historic wrong?
Leo Docherty
Addressing this injustice will be at the heart of the veterans strategy action update plan, which I will announce in the winter. I thank the hon. Member for his sustained interest in the issue. I cannot pre-empt the findings of this workstream, but I assure him that we will address this matter with compassion, humility and urgency.
Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
Royston Smith (Southampton, Itchen) (Con)
The Minister for the Armed Forces (James Heappey) [V]
Our armed forces continue to provide support to the Iraqi Government in tackling the threat posed by Daesh. The RAF has flown more than 8,700 sorties and released more than 4,300 precision weapons to target Daesh in Iraq and Syria. On the ground, we have trained in excess of 120,000 Iraqi and Kurdish personnel in everything from engineering to countering improvised explosive devices. We remain wholly committed to the coalition and supporting our ally Iraq in countering Daesh.
Mr Fysh [V]
Yeovil and the south-west are proud of the contribution we make to supplying our service personnel with the best possible equipment on their forward operations in risky environments, such as the fight against Daesh. We are also proud of the apprenticeships and skills that are sponsored through such industrial connections—for example, the 500 apprentices that Leonardo helicopters has recruited over the last decade. Will my hon. Friend confirm that this partnership will be at the forefront of his mind when making the choice of the next new medium helicopter?
James Heappey
My hon. Friend is right to raise the importance of rotary aviation in support of operations around the world. He knows from our exchange in the debate last week that I am not able to comment directly on the point that he makes, but I hope he knows that we always want to provide our armed forces with the very best equipment.
Royston Smith
British and American F-35s recently conducted operations from the UK’s aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth as part of Operation Shader to degrade the capabilities of Daesh. Will my hon. Friend, as much as he is able, update the House on the nature of those operations and their strategic importance?
James Heappey
In June 2021, UK F-35B aircraft carried out their first operational sorties in support of the counter-Daesh operations from HMS Queen Elizabeth in the eastern Mediterranean, providing a valuable contribution to Op Shader and the coalition effort. This activity has formed a key part of improving the UK’s carrier strike capability to operate closely with allies and our interoperability with the US and others. We are delighted with how those sorties have gone. The F-35B is a phenomenal aircraft launched from a magnificent aircraft carrier.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
What conclusions have our Ministers and strategists drawn from our use of military force from outside the borders of states such as Syria and Iraq that might help to prevent the re-emergence of Afghanistan as a base and a launchpad for international terrorism campaigns like those of Daesh and al-Qaeda following the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan?
James Heappey
My right hon. Friend knows from our previous exchanges on this matter that we have absolutely reserved the right to counter terrorist threats to the United Kingdom that may re-emerge in Afghanistan. He is absolutely right to point us towards an outside-in model such as that prosecuted from Cyprus in support of Operation Shader. That is very much in the thoughts of those who are planning for that eventuality in Afghanistan.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)
The capital costs of building the national flagship would accrue over a number of years and will be met from the defence budget.
Mr Jones
That is very interesting. I am not sure whether I should be asking this question of the Minister rather than the Prime Minister. Can he explain, then, what else in the defence budget will give to pay the £200 million that the Prime Minister announced, which I think he sprung not just on the nation but the Ministry of Defence?
Jeremy Quin
We are delighted to be playing our part in delivering this first-rate asset, which will be a tremendous boost to the UK and global Britain. We should recognise that we will have greater clarity on the costs and the profile of that when we have completed our market engagement. The prior information notice has just gone out. To put it in a helpful context for the right hon. Gentleman, over four years we are talking about an impact on the overall defence budget in the region of 0.1%. I would like to put that into perspective for him.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
With the National Audit Office having judged the defence equipment plan to be “unaffordable” for the fourth year in a row, the continuing well-publicised disaster and rising cost of the Ajax project, and the cancellation of Warrior, can the Minister explain why this vanity project has become a spending priority for the Ministry of Defence?
Jeremy Quin
I am delighted to help the hon. Gentleman on a few points. First, on the NAO report to which he refers, I believe that was done on the old numbers prior to a very fulsome provision to the Ministry of Defence of £24 billion being spent from the current levels. That has helped us to ensure that we can deliver the right priorities for this country in the future. On Ajax. I am pleased to reassure him that that is a firm price contract. As to Warrior, that is one example of the tough decisions we make to ensure that the budget comes in on balance, and we will continue to do so. That is the target of the Secretary of State and myself. We will continue to work on that and address all the priorities of the Ministry of Defence.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)
The Government are committed to creating the right conditions for a competitive and sustainable steel industry. We publish the future pipeline for steel requirements enabling UK steel manufacturers to better plan and bid for contracts.
Gill Furniss
The UK steel sector supports over 30,000 jobs, many of which are in Sheffield, my home town, and the Government have described the industry as “vital”. Can the Minister explain, therefore, why less than 30% of Type 26 frigate steel is being sold from the UK? Will he support Labour’s campaign to make, sell and buy more in Britain, starting with the steel procurement in his own Department?
Jeremy Quin
I will happily explain that to the hon. Lady. I believe I am right in saying that 50% by total value of the steel for the Type 26s will be coming from the UK, which is about 35% of the tonnage, or 1,400 tonnes per ship. She is correct on her figures, but it is 50% by value. The difference in why we are not able to do more in part reflects the nature of the steel industry in the UK. Unfortunately, not all of the type of specialist steel that is required for defence equipment can be sourced within the UK.
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)
The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)
I am proud that we are strengthening the armed forces covenant by enshrining it in law through the Armed Forces Bill and issuing statutory guidance for local authorities in the critical areas of housing, healthcare and education. This milestone Bill will deliver on our duty to our veterans and service people, as they have done on their part.
Kate Osborne
The Government claim that the Armed Forces Bill will enshrine the armed forces covenant into law, yet there is no responsibility for Government Departments, including the Ministry of Defence, to deliver the covenant. The limited focus on housing, healthcare and education risks creating a two-tier covenant that bakes in the existing postcode lottery on access to services. How will the Minister ensure that we eliminate the postcode lottery that our veterans face in accessing vital services?
Leo Docherty
That is the whole point of the statutory guidance: to ensure that there is a best practice template that every local authority can follow to ensure that veterans and service people in their locality are in no way disadvantaged.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
The armed forces covenant is the debt that this country owes to our servicemen and women who have served our country. One such group, whom I met last week, are the nuclear test veterans. They have suffered from cancers, blood disorders and rare diseases as a result of their service. They have been refused support, recognition, compensation and a medal for their service. Will the Minister for veterans today review the Government’s position on this issue and agree to meet the nuclear veterans?
Leo Docherty
Historic medallic recognition cases are a matter for the independent Advisory Military Sub-Committee. Last year, it considered the case of nuclear test programme veterans and concluded that it did not meet the necessary criteria. This was not the decision that the campaign groups the hon. Lady mentioned wanted or the families had hoped for. I fully sympathise that they would have wanted a medallic recognition for their loved ones, but it is right and proper that this is an independent process and therefore not for ministerial intervention.
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)
The Ministry of Defence is working to raise awareness of financial issues and planning among service personnel across all three services, because we recognise that financial literacy is a critical life skill.
Nick Fletcher
In October 2019, Danny Butcher, a former soldier and the brother of my constituent, Carrie Jones, sadly took his own life after getting involved in an online money-making scheme that plunged him into debt. He was by all accounts an outstanding member of society. He had toured overseas during his time in the British Army and was mentioned by his commanding officer in dispatches, yet after leaving the armed forces he was lured in by a property scheme that offered those involved the chance to get rich quickly.
Following a surgery with Ms Jones, I had the pleasure of discussing with the previous Minister for Defence People and Veterans, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), what could be done to provide members of the armed services who are about to be discharged with some financial education, the objective being for them not to be tricked by unscrupulous money-making schemes. In light of Danny Butcher’s death, what steps is the Minister’s Department currently taking to ensure that all those departing the forces have adequate financial literacy skills, so that they know how to spend their money wisely and become integrated fully in civilian life?
Leo Docherty
My thoughts are with the family of Danny Butcher. Every veteran suicide is an absolute tragedy and we must seek to learn lessons from this. We are working to ensure that all service leavers have adequate financial educational awareness, and we want to ensure that is the case across all three services, specifically with regard to debt, household financial management and mortgages. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important subject today.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)
As part of the carrier strike group deployment on 23 June, HMS Defender, during innocent passage through Ukrainian territory waters, was overflown by Russian combat aircraft and shadowed by Russian ships. No warning shots were fired and no bombs were dropped in her path; these assertions were Kremlin disinformation. The Royal Navy will always uphold international law. In the Mediterranean, the group’s ships and aircraft have bolstered NATO, conducted highly successful exercises, flown armed sorties against Daesh and been welcomed into port by many friends and allies, boosting Britain’s trade and diplomatic links. In the coming weeks, we will continue to build relations with our partners as we reach the middle east and the Indo-Pacific.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
We pay tribute to the total professionalism of the HMS Defender crew.
This is a profound moment for the more than 150,000 UK men and women who served in Afghanistan. I pay tribute to their service and their sacrifice, especially those of the 457 who have lost their lives. Where does this withdrawal leave the UK strategy of forward deployment in a region that sits between Russia, China and Iran—three of the main state-based threats identified in the integrated review—and how will the Government ensure that Afghanistan does not again become an operating base for terrorism directed against the west?
Mr Wallace
I join the right hon. Gentleman in his tribute to the men and women who fought, some of whom never came back, and contributed during the many years in Afghanistan. I have previously placed on the record the fact that in my view the United States leaving made it very difficult for us to continue that mission. It left many of us unable to continue that without a significant international uplift. That has not been forthcoming, and therefore we are in a position where we, too, are on the path of withdrawal, with all the risks that may leave in the future—in the next 10, 20 years—so we have to do our very best with what we have now. That means we will continue to work with the Afghan Government. We will continue to focus on the threats that emanate from Afghanistan and may grow towards the United Kingdom and our allies. We will do whatever we can. However, it is important, in forward presence, that we are always in such countries with the consent of those countries. There was a Doha peace agreement, and that means we have to consider what we are going to do next.
Mr Speaker
These are topicals—short and sweet. I call the Chair of the Select Committee.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I am pleased to welcome reports in the weekend papers that suggest that the aid budget may return to 0.7%. The utility of hard power without soft power invariably leads to failure, as sadly illustrated in Afghanistan, where the sudden exodus of NATO forces means that there is now a high risk of civil war, with the Taliban advancing and securing more districts by the day. I repeat my call for a formal inquiry so that we can understand how this NATO mission, endorsed by the UN, lasted two decades, has now ended in failure. We are now abandoning the country to the very insurgent organisation that we went in to defeat in the first place. This cannot be what we expected when we went in, and it is not the exit strategy that we anticipated. Our presence gave legitimacy to the Afghan authorities, and our exodus will be seen as a victory for the Taliban. Please let us have the inquiry.
Mr Speaker
Can I just remind people—Front Benchers as well, and Chairs of Select Committees—that if they want a long question, they should go in questions earlier? These are short and punchy questions, and we have to keep it that way to get the rest in.
Mr Wallace
I would say two things. First, my right hon. Friend, as I said earlier, has the means of his own salvation. He chairs the Select Committee, and if the Select Committee wishes to have an inquiry, I will be happy to make sure the Department services it.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
Mr Wallace
First, I would not like the hon. Lady to strengthen the wrong perception that a greater number of our armed forces personnel are rough-sleeping or a greater number suffer certain things; the numbers nearly always either reflect the national trend in wider society or, indeed, in some cases are significant lower. There are plenty of schemes that we encourage and support to get behind our veterans and get them back into work, and we are also working with a range of non-governmental organisations. Of course, I would be very happy to meet her to discuss issues in her own constituency and what more can be done to make sure that, if they are rough sleepers, veterans get the best support they can.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)
Let me put on record my thanks for the magnificent work done by my right hon. Friend and the Royal British Legion in Harlow. We are putting millions into that sector every year, which is the right thing to do. I would very much like to visit his constituency and see that up close.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab) [V]
Leo Docherty
No, I do not agree. The Armed Forces Bill and the statutory guidance focus on the critical areas of housing, healthcare and education. If we need to broaden that statutory guidance in future to include more areas—it is evergreen, much like the Ministry of Defence ministerial team—we will.
Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)
The Minister for Defence Procurement (Jeremy Quin)
I confirm our intention to acquire a new medium lift helicopter for the armed forces later this decade, and I assure my hon. Friend that all options will be considered to ensure the best outcome for our defence and security requirements, and indeed for the prosperity of the UK.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Leo Docherty
I absolutely give those thanks, and I commend the hon. Lady’s work in support of that group. If she would like to send me details of that individual case, I will consider it.
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)
Leo Docherty
I am delighted to confirm that we have enough people. They are highly motivated and well-trained, and when meeting new draft recruits to the senior service, as I did in HMS Raleigh last week, one gets a tremendous sense of confidence and excitement about the magnificent diversity of opportunity available for those joining the armed forces.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Leo Docherty
I am not entirely sure that that is the case—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman cares to write to me with the details, I will look at that. I confirm that we do everything we can, especially through the period of transition, to ensure that when people leave, they are housed.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
Mr Wallace
The hon. Gentleman has often raised this cause, and I entirely agree with him. That is why we are now in the middle of a consultation to waive those visa fees for service personnel who have served over 12 years. We think that is absolutely right, and no doubt he will contribute to that consultation.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
The Minister for the Armed Forces (James Heappey) [V]
Defence has collaborated with the Home Office on this issue for several years, providing a range of support, including surface vessels, surveillance aircraft and planning expertise. Most recently, Defence has provided planning support to catalyse operations for this summer, and we continue to work closely with the Home Office to identify where defence capability can most appropriately support Border Force to address this important issue.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) [V]
Jeremy Quin
No, I do not agree with that contention. This is a firm price contract. We are working closely with General Dynamics to ensure that it gets delivered, but as the hon. Gentleman would be the first to say—as we would all say in this House—the safety of our personnel must come first, which is why we paused those trials. As soon as we can get them going again, we will, but we will do so only if that can be done safely and appropriately.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Mr Wallace
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the real importance that we attach to Ukraine as a friend and a partner, and to reiterate the fact that the Royal Navy will always uphold international law and will not be deterred by bullying. The transit by HMS Defender was through Ukrainian waters; we do not recognise Russia’s claim on Crimea. Our Navy will continue to uphold the rule of law wherever she sails.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Mr Wallace
The right hon. Lady makes a really good suggestion. I have slight scars on my back from dealing with something called the naming committee of the Royal Navy, but I absolutely welcome her suggestion. We should absolutely think about how we name our ships and use them more to remind us of great events but also to inspire a future generation.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Mr Wallace
I will be delighted to ensure that either I or the Minister for Defence Procurement meets my hon. Friend.
Mr Speaker
I am suspending the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Programme) (No.2)
Monday 5th July 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 5 July 2021 - (5 Jul 2021)
Proceedings | Time for conclusion of proceedings |
|---|---|
New Clauses, new Schedules and amendments relating to Parts 1 to 4 and 10, other than any new Clauses relating to offences concerning pets or any new Clauses relating to voyeurism | 6.30pm on the day on which proceedings on Consideration are commenced |
New Clauses, new Schedules and amendments relating to Parts 5 to 9 and 11 to 13; any new Clauses relating to offences concerning pets; any new Clauses relating to voyeurism; remaining proceedings on Consideration | 9.00pm on that day |
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I do not want to take up too much time because the time we spend now eats into the time for the main debate. However, it is important to register that literally hundreds of new clauses and amendments have been tabled to the Bill. It is a 300-page Bill, which had two days for Second Reading. The fact that it has only one day on Report is an absolute abuse of this House.
We are supposed to carry out a job of scrutinising legislation and ensuring that it is fit for purpose, but we will have a matter of a few hours for Report. The Minister has no opportunity to engage in debate on all the new clauses to explain why the Government will accept or reject them. Surely the least this House should be able to expect is to have some proper free-flowing debate and some explanation from the Government of their position on each of the new clauses, which people have taken the time and trouble to table. It is an absolute disgrace and it is important that that point is registered before we start the debate because it is an abuse of this House.
Mr Speaker
I did allow that contribution—there was special dispensation—so that it could be put on the record.
Question put and agreed to.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Court Bill
Monday 5th July 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 5 July 2021 - (5 Jul 2021)
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab) [V]
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. Short title and chapter Extent of repeal Sexual Offences Act 1956 (c. 59) Sections 33 to 36 Street Offences Act 1959 (c. 57) The whole Act Sexual Offences Act 1967 (c. 60) Section 6 Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 (c. 16) Section 46 Sexual Offences Act 2003 (c. 42) Sections 51A to 56 Policing and Crime Act 2009 (c. 26) Section 14 and 16 to 19’
(Deputy) Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider the following:
New clause 2—Kerb-crawling—
‘(1) It is an offence for a person, from a motor vehicle while it is in a street or public place, or in a street or public place while in the immediate vicinity of a motor vehicle that they have just got out of, to engage in conduct which amounts to harassment in such manner or in such circumstances as to be likely to cause annoyance, alarm, distress, or nuisance to any other person.
(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to revocation of their driving licence, or a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale, or both.
(3) In this section “motor vehicle ” has the same meaning as in the Road Traffic Act 1972.
(4) In this section “street” has the meaning given by section 1(4) of the Street Offences Act 1959.’
New clause 23—Child criminal exploitation
‘At end of section 3 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (meaning of exploitation), insert—
“Child criminal exploitation
(7) Another person manipulates, deceives, coerces or controls the person to undertake activity which constitutes a criminal offence and the person is under the age of 18.’
This new clause introduces a statutory definition of child criminal exploitation.
New clause 24—Registered sex offenders: change of name or identity—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must commission a review of how registered sex offenders are able to change their name or other aspects of their identity without the knowledge of the police with the intention of subverting the purpose of their registration.
(2) The review must consult persons with expertise in this issue, including—
(a) representatives of police officers responsible for sex offender management,
(b) Her Majesty’s Passport Office, and
(c) the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.
(3) The scope of the review must include consideration of resources necessary for the long-term management of the issue of registered sex offenders changing their names or other aspects of their identity.
(4) The review must make recommendations for the long-term management of the issue of registered sex offenders changing their names or other aspects of their identity.
(5) The Secretary of State must report the findings of this review to Parliament within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed.’
This new clause would ensure that the Secretary of State must publish a review into how registered sex offenders are changing their names or other aspects of their identity and propose solutions for how the Government aims to tackle this issue.
New clause 26—Reporting of sexual offences: public awareness—
‘Within six months of the passage of this Act, the Secretary of State must draw up and implement a campaign to improve public awareness of the desirability of reporting sexual offences, with particular reference to offences which may not be reported because they are not considered sufficiently serious.’
New clause 27—Code of practice on dealing with sexual offending—
‘(1) Within six months of the passage of this Act, the Secretary of State must issue a code of practice on dealing with sexual offending.
(2) The code must be issued to—
(a) all police forces in England and Wales,
(b) all local authorities in England and Wales,
(c) the National Probation Service,
(d) the Victims Commissioner and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, and
(e) anyone else the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(3) The code must contain provision designed to—
(a) improve public awareness of the desirability of reporting sexual offences, with particular reference to non-contact sexual offences, and
(b) achieve any other purpose the Secretary of State considers appropriate to deal with sexual offending.
(4) Before issuing a code under this section the Secretary of State must—
(a) publish proposals,
(b) consult such persons as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate, and
(c) lay a copy of the code before Parliament.’
New clause 28—Domestic homicide reviews—
(1) Section 9 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 is amended as follows.
(2) For subsection (2) substitute—
“(2) The Secretary of State must in all cases which meet the circumstances set out in subsection (1) direct a specified person or body within subsection (4) to establish, or to participate in, a domestic homicide review.”
(3) After subsection (3) insert—
“(3ZA) The Secretary of State must by regulations set out—
(a) the type of data relating to domestic homicide reviews which must be recorded, including—
(i) the number of domestic homicide reviews taking place across England and Wales annually; and
(ii) the time taken to complete each individual domestic homicide review;
(b) that the data must be recorded centrally in a Home Office database; and
(c) that the data must be published annually.”’
This new clause seeks to modify the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 to force the Secretary of State to automatically direct a domestic homicide review in circumstances as outlined in Section 9 of the Act. The new clause also aims to improve data collection methodologies around domestic homicide reviews.
New clause 29—The right to protest—
‘(1) The Public Order Act 1986 Part II (Processions and Assemblies) is amended as follows.
(2) Before section 11 insert—
“10A The right to protest
(1) Everyone has the right to engage in peaceful protest, both alone and with others.
(2) Public authorities have a duty to—
(a) respect the right to protest;
(b) protect the right to protest; and
(c) facilitate the right to protest.
(3) A public authority may only interfere with the right to protest, including by placing restrictions upon its exercise, when it is necessary and proportionate to do so to protect national security or public safety, prevent disorder or crime, protect public health or the rights and freedoms of others.
(4) For the purposes of this section “public authority” has the same meaning as in section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998.”’
This new clause would introduce an express statutory right to protest, imposing both negative and positive obligations on public authorities whilst recognising that the right to protest may need to be limited to protect other legitimate public interests.
New clause 31—Offence of assaulting etc. retail worker—
‘(1) It is an offence for a person to assault, threaten or abuse another person—
(a) who is a retail worker, and
(b) who is engaged, at the time, in retail work.
(2) No offence is committed under subsection (1) unless the person who assaults, threatens or abuses knows or ought to know that the other person—
(a) who is a retail worker, and
(b) is engaged, at the time, in retail work.
(3) A person who commits an offence under subsection (1) is liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, a fine, or both.
(4) Evidence from a single source is sufficient to establish, for the purposes of this section—
(a) whether a person is a retail worker, and
(b) whether the person is engaged, at the time, in retail work.
(5) The offence under subsection (1) of threatening or abusing a retail worker is committed by a person only if the person—
(a) behaves in a threatening or abusive manner towards the worker, and
(b) intends by the behaviour to cause the worker or any other person fear or alarm or is reckless as to whether the behaviour would cause such fear or alarm.
(6) Subsection (5) applies to—
(a) behaviour of any kind including, in particular, things said or otherwise communicated as well as things done,
(b) behaviour consisting of—
(i) a single act, or
(ii) a course of conduct.
(7) Subsections (8) to (10) apply where, in proceedings for an offence under subsection (1), it is—
(a) specified in the complaint that the offence is aggravated by reason of the retail worker’s enforcing a statutory age restriction, and,
(b) proved that the offence is so aggravated.
(8) The offence is so aggravated if the behaviour constituting the offence occurred because of the enforcement of a statutory age restriction.
(9) Evidence from a single source is sufficient to prove that the offence is so aggravated.
(10) Where this section applies, the court must—
(a) state on conviction that the offence is so aggravated,
(b) record the conviction in a way that shows that the offence is so aggravated,
(c) take the aggravation into account in determining the appropriate sentence, and
(d) state—
(i) where the sentence imposed in respect of the offence is different from that which the court would have imposed if the offence were not so aggravated, the extent of and
the reasons for that difference, or
(ii) otherwise, the reasons for there being no such difference.
(11) In this section—
“enforcement”, in relation to a statutory age restriction, includes—
(a) seeking information as to a person’s age,
(b) considering information as to a person’s age,
(c) refusing to sell or supply goods or services,
for the purposes of complying with the restriction (and “enforcing” is to be construed accordingly),
“statutory age restriction” means a provision in an enactment making it an offence to sell or supply goods or services to a person under an age specified in that or another enactment.
(12) In this section, “retail worker”—
(a) means a person—
(i) whose usual place of work is retail premises, or
(ii) whose usual place of work is not retail premises but who does retail work,
(b) includes, in relation to a business that owns or occupies any premises in which the person works, a person who—
(i) is an employee of the business,
(ii) is an owner of the business, or
(iii) works in the premises under arrangements made between the business and another person for the provision of staff,
(c) also includes a person who delivers goods from retail premises.
(13) For the purposes of subsection (12), it is irrelevant whether or not the person receives payment for the work.
(14) In proceedings for an offence under subsection (1), it is not necessary for the prosecutor to prove that the person charged with the offence knew or ought to have known any matter falling within subsection (12)(b) in relation to the person against whom the offence is alleged to have been committed.
(15) In this section, “retail premises” means premises that are used wholly or mainly for the sale or supply of goods, on a retail basis, to members of the public.
(16) In this section, “retail work” means—
(a) in the case of a person whose usual place of work is retail premises, any work in those retail premises,
(b) in the case of a person whose usual place of work is not retail premises, work in connection with—
(i) the sale or supply of goods, on a retail basis, to members of the public, or
(ii) the sale or supply of services (including facilities for gambling) in respect of which a statutory age restriction applies,
(c) subject to subsection (17), in the case of a person who delivers goods from retail premises, work in connection with the sale or supply of goods, on a retail basis, to members of the public.
(17) A person who delivers goods from retail premises is doing retail work only during the period beginning when the person arrives at a place where delivery of goods is to be effected and ending when the person leaves that place (whether or not goods have been delivered).
(18) In this section, references to working in premises includes working on any land forming part of the premises.’
New clause 32—Assault due to enforcement of statutory age restriction—
‘(1) This section applies to an offence of common assault that is committed against a worker acting in the exercise of enforcing a statutory age restriction.
(2) This section applies where it is—
(a) specified in the complaint that the offence occurred because of the worker’s enforcing a statutory age restriction, and
(b) proved that the offence so occurred because of the enforcement of a statutory age restriction.
(3) A person guilty of an offence to which this section applies is liable on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or to a fine, or to both.
(4) In consequence of subsections (1) to (3), in section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (which provides for common assault to be summary offences punishable with imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months)—
(a) insert—
“(3) Subsection (1) is subject to section [Assault due to enforcement of statutory age restriction] of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (which makes provision for increased sentencing powers for offences of common assault committed against a worker acting in the exercise of enforcing statutory age restrictions).”
(5) In this section—
“enforcement”, in relation to a statutory age restriction, includes—
(a) seeking information as to a person’s age,
(b) considering information as to a person’s age,
(c) refusing to sell or supply goods or services,
for the purposes of complying with the restriction (and “enforcing” is to be construed accordingly),
“statutory age restriction” means a provision in an enactment making it an offence to sell or supply goods or services to a person under an age specified in that or another enactment.
(6) This section applies only in relation to offences committed on or after the day it comes into force.’
New clause 42—Offence of interference with access to or provision of abortion services—
‘(1) A person who is within a buffer zone and who interferes with any person’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate the provision of abortion services in that buffer zone is guilty of an offence
(2) A “buffer zone” means an area with a boundary which is 150 metres from any part of an abortion clinic or any access point to any building that contains an abortion clinic.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (1), “interferes with” means—
(a) seeks to influence; or
(b) persistently, continuously or repeatedly occupies; or
(c) impedes or threatens; or
(d) intimidates or harasses; or
(e) advises or persuades, attempts to advise or persuade, or otherwise expresses opinion; or
(f) informs or attempts to inform about abortion services by any means, including, without limitation, graphic, physical, verbal or written means; or
(g) sketches, photographs, records, stores, broadcasts, or transmits images, audio, likenesses or personal data of any person without express consent.
(4) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable—
(a) in the first instance—
(i) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, or
(ii) to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or
(iii) to both; and
(b) on further instances—
(i) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years, or to a fine, or to both; or
(ii) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or to a fine, or to both.
(5) Nothing in this section applies to—
(a) anything done in the course of providing, or facilitating the provision of, abortion services in an abortion clinic,
(b) the operation of a camera if its coverage of persons accessing or attempting to access an abortion clinic is incidental and the camera or footage is not used for any of the purposes listed in subsection (3), and
(c) a police officer acting properly in the course of their duties.’
This new clause would introduce areas around abortion clinics and hospitals (buffer zones) where interference with, and intimidation or harassment of, women accessing or people providing abortion services would be an offence.
New clause 43—Implementation of the Law Commission review of hate crime—
‘(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations implement any recommendations of the Law Commission which relate to hatred based on sex and gender characteristics following the conclusion of its review of hate crime legislation.
(2) The power conferred by subsection (1) includes—
(a) power to amend primary legislation; and
(b) power to amend or revoke subordinate legislation.
(3) A document containing a draft of regulations under subsection (1) must be laid before Parliament not later than six months after the publication of the Law Commission’s recommendations, and that draft must be in a form which would implement all those recommendations which relate to hatred based on sex and gender characteristics.
(4) Draft regulations under subsection (1) must be laid before Parliament not earlier than 90 days, but not later than 180 days, after the document referred to in subsection (3) was laid before Parliament.
(5) The draft regulations laid before Parliament under subsection (4) must be in the form in which they appeared in the document laid before Parliament under subsection (3), except that they may contain any changes which have been recommended by any committee of either House of Parliament which has reported on that document.
(6) A Minister must make a motion in each House of Parliament approving the draft regulations laid before Parliament under subsection (4) within 14 days of the date on which they were laid.
(7) Subject to subsection (8), if the draft regulations are approved by both Houses of Parliament, the Secretary of State must make them in the form of the draft which has been approved.
(8) If any amendments to the draft regulations are agreed to by both Houses of Parliament, the Secretary of State must make the regulations in the form of the draft as so amended.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to implement any recommendations made by the Law Commission’s review of hate crime which relate to hatred based on sex and gender characteristics. Draft regulations implementing the Commission’s recommendations would be subject to the super-affirmative scrutiny process (by subsections (3) to (5)), and would be amendable (under subsection (8)).
New clause 44—Commercial sexual exploitation—
‘(1) A person (A) who gives, offers, or promises payment to any person to engage in sexual activity with a person (B) is guilty of an offence.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1)—
(a) a “payment” includes money, a benefit, or any other consideration.
(b) an activity is sexual if a reasonable person would consider that—
(i) whatever its circumstances or any person’s purpose in relation to it, it is because of its nature sexual, or
(ii) because of its nature it may be sexual and because of its circumstances or the purpose of any person in relation to it (or both) it is sexual.
(c) no offence is committed by a person (A) unless the sexual activity with the other person (B) involves—
(i) the person (A) being in the other person (B)’s presence, and
(ii) the person (A) touching the other person (B), or
(iii) the person (B) touching themselves for the sexual gratification of the other person (A).
(d) it is immaterial whether the payment is given, offered, or promised by a person engaging in the sexual activity, or a third party.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both;
(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.’
This new clause criminalises buying sex and decriminalises anyone offering sexual services.
New clause 45—Commercial sexual exploitation by a third party—
‘(1) A person commits an offence if—
(a) the person (C) assists, facilitates, controls, or incites, by any means, another person (B) to engage in sexual activity with another person (A) in exchange for payment, anywhere in the world; and
(b) the circumstances are that—
(i) the person (C) knows or ought to know that the other person (B) is engaging in sexual activity for payment; and
(ii) the person (C) assists, facilitates, controls, or incites the other person (B) to engage in sexual activity with another person (A) with the intention of receiving payment.
(c) Subsection (1) of this section is to be construed in accordance with section [Commercial sexual exploitation].
(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both;
(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.’
This new clause criminalises pimping.
New clause 46—Advertising—
‘(1) A person commits an offence if the person causes or allows to be displayed or published, including digitally, any advertisement in respect of activity prohibited by sections [Commercial sexual exploitation] and [Commercial sexual exploitation by a third party] of this Act.
(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or both;
(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.’
This new clause criminalises those who benefit from the advertising of sexual services. This includes ‘pimping websites’.
New clause 47—Extra-territoriality—
‘(1) A person who is a UK national commits an offence under sections [Commercial sexual exploitation] to [Advertising] of this Act regardless of where the offence takes place.
(2) A person who is not a UK national commits an offence—
(a) under sections [Commercial sexual exploitation] to [Advertising] of this Act if any part of the offence takes place in the UK, and
(b) under section [Advertising] of this Act if any person in the UK pays money to any other person as a result or through the advertisement published or displayed.’
This new clause allows criminal prosecutions for acts contravening the relevant sections whether they occur within or outside the United Kingdom.
New clause 48—Immunity of victims—
‘(1) A person (B), by reason of their involvement as a victim of an offence under sections [Commercial sexual exploitation] to [Advertising] of this Act by another person (A) does not commit an offence by doing anything which (apart from this paragraph) would amount to—
(a) aiding, abetting, counselling, or procuring the commission of an offence under sections [Commercial sexual exploitation] to [Advertising] of this Act by the other person (A);
(b) conspiring with the other person (A) to commit an offence under sections [Commercial sexual exploitation] to [Advertising] of this Act; or
(c) an offence under Part 2 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 (encouraging or assisting offences) in relation to the commission of an offence under sections [Commercial sexual exploitation] to [Advertising]of this Act by the other person (A); or
(d) an offence under section [Advertising] of this Act.
(2) In this section it is immaterial whether the other person has been convicted of an offence.’
This new clause ensures that those subject to commercial sexual exploitation do not find themselves criminalised by having ‘assisted’ the person buying sexual services.
New clause 49—Power of Secretary of State to disregard convictions or cautions—
‘Section 92 of the Protection from Freedoms Act 2012 is replaced as follows.
“92 Power of Secretary of State to disregard convictions or cautions
(1) A person who has been convicted of, or cautioned for, an offence under—
(a) section 12 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (buggery),
(b) section 13 of that Act (gross indecency between men), or
(c) section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 or section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 (corresponding earlier offences), may apply to the Secretary of State for the conviction or caution to become a disregarded conviction or caution.
(2) A person who has been convicted of, or cautioned for, an offence under section 1 of the Street Offences Act 1959, may apply to the Secretary of State for the conviction or caution to become a disregarded conviction or caution.
(3) A conviction or caution becomes a disregarded conviction or caution when conditions A and B are met.
(4) For the purposes of subsection (1), condition A is that the Secretary of State decides that it appears that—
(a) the other person involved in the conduct constituting the offence consented to it and was aged 16 or over, and
(b) any such conduct now would not be an offence under section 71 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (sexual activity in a public lavatory).
(5) For the purposes of subsection (2), condition A is that the Secretary of State decides that it appears that any such conduct now would not be an offence under sections [Commercial sexual exploitation] and [Commercial sexual exploitation by a third party] of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2021.
(6) Condition B is that—
(a) the Secretary of State has given notice of the decision to the applicant under section 94(4)(b), and
(b) the period of 14 days beginning with the day on which the notice was given has ended.
(7) Sections 95 to 98 explain the effect of a conviction or caution becoming a disregarded conviction or caution.”’
This new clause permits those who as a result of exploitation have convictions for soliciting, to have their conviction disregarded.
New clause 50—Repeals—
‘The enactments specified in the following Table are repealed to the extent specified in column 2 of the Table.
TABLE
New clause 51—Review of crime against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must undertake a review of the prevention, investigation and prosecution of crime against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.
(2) The review must have particular regard to the prevention, investigation and prosecution of hate crime against those communities.
(3) A report of the review must be laid before Parliament within six months of the passage of this Act.’
New clause 52—Training for relevant public officials in relation to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, on this Act coming into force, publish and implement a strategy to provide training to—
(a) the Crown Prosecution Service,
(b) police forces,
(c) the judiciary, and
(d) such other public bodies as the Secretary of State considers appropriate on the investigation of crimes against people from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds.
(2) The strategy must include provision to improve the accessibility to people from those backgrounds of means of reporting crime against them.’
New clause 55—Amendment of criminal law in relation to termination of pregnancy—
‘(1) Sections 58 (administering drugs or using instruments to procure abortion) and 59 (procuring drugs, &c. to cause abortion) of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 are repealed.
(2) After section 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 insert—
“59A Non-consensual termination of pregnancy
(1) A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a) in relation to a woman (B) A commits any unlawful act involving the use or threat of force, or the administration of any substance capable of causing abortion,
(b) A believes that B is pregnant or is reckless as to whether she is pregnant, and
(c) A intends to cause B’s abortion or is reckless as to whether her abortion results.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1)—
(a) an act done by, or with the informed consent or assistance of B, or done in good faith by a registered medical practitioner, registered nurse or registered midwife, is not to be considered unlawful,
(b) but B is not to be treated as consenting to the administration of a substance unless she is aware of its nature as a substance capable of causing abortion.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (1) is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for life or for any shorter term.”
(3) No offence is committed under section 1 of the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 by—
(a) a woman who terminates her own pregnancy or who assists in or consents to such termination, or
(b) a registered medical practitioner, registered nurse or registered midwife acting in good faith.’
The new clause would decriminalise abortion and create a new offence of non-consensual termination of pregnancy, which would include the example where a woman’s abusive partner intentionally or recklessly caused her abortion through abusive behaviour.
New clause 56—Review of stop and search powers—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must undertake a review of police stop and search powers.
(2) The review must consider—
(a) the effectiveness of the use of those powers in the reduction of crime, and
(b) the impact of the use of the powers on policing in Black and minority ethnic communities.
(3) A report of the review must be laid before Parliament within six months of the passage of this Act.’
New clause 57—Public inquiry into the prevention, investigation and prosecution of crimes as they affect Black, Asian and minority ethnic people—
‘Within six months of the passage of this Act, the Secretary of State must cause an inquiry to be held under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the prevention, investigation and prosecution of crime as they affect Black, Asian and minority ethnic people.’
New clause 58—Extraction of information from electronic devices—
‘(1) Subject to Conditions A to D below, insofar as applicable, an authorised person may extract information stored on an electronic device from that device if—
(a) a user of the device has voluntarily provided the device to an authorised person, and
(b) that user has agreed to the extraction of specified information from the device by an authorised person.
(2) Condition A for the exercise of the power in subsection (1) is that it may be exercised only for the purposes of—
(a) preventing, detecting, investigating or prosecuting an offence,
(b) helping to locate a missing person, or
(c) protecting a child or an at-risk adult from neglect or physical, mental or emotional harm.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (2) an adult is an at-risk adult if the authorised person reasonably believes that the adult—
(a) is experiencing, or at risk of, neglect or physical, mental or emotional harm, and
(b) is unable to protect themselves against the neglect or harm or the risk of it.
(4) Condition B for the exercise of the power in subsection (1) is that the power may only be exercised if—
(a) the authorised person reasonably believes that information stored on the electronic device is relevant to a purpose within subsection (2) for which the authorised person may exercise the power, and
(b) the authorised person is satisfied that exercise of the power is strictly necessary and proportionate to achieve that purpose.
(5) For the purposes of subsection (4)(a), information is relevant for the purposes within subsection (2)(a) in circumstances where the information is relevant to a reasonable line of enquiry.
(6) Condition C as set out in subsection (7) applies if the authorised person thinks that, in exercising the power, there is a risk of obtaining information other than information necessary for a purpose within subsection (2) for which the authorised person may exercise the power.
(7) Condition C is that the authorised person must, to be satisfied that the exercise of the power in the circumstances set out in subsection (6) is strictly necessary and proportionate, be satisfied that there are no other less intrusive means available of obtaining the information sought by the authorised person which avoid that risk
(8) Condition D is that an authorised person must have regard to the code of practice for the time being in force under section [Code of practice] in accordance with section [Effect of code of practice] below.
(9) This section does not affect any power relating to the extraction or production of information, or any power to seize any item or obtain any information, conferred by or under an enactment.
(10) In this section and section [Application of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] to children and adults without capacity]—
“adult” means a person aged 18 or over;
“authorised person” means a person specified in subsection (1) of section [Application of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] to children and adults without capacity] (subject to subsection (2) of that section);
“child” means a person aged under 18;
“agreement” means that the user has confirmed explicitly and unambiguously in writing that they agree—
(a) to provide their device, and
(b) to the extraction of specified data from that device.
Such an explicit written confirmation can only constitute agreement for these purposes if, in accordance with the Code of Practice issued pursuant to section [Effect of code of practice], the user—
(i) has been provided with appropriate information and guidance about why the extraction is considered strictly necessary (including, where relevant, the identification of the reasonable line of enquiring relied upon);
(ii) has been provided with appropriate information as to (a) how the data will or will not be used in accordance with the authorised person’s legal obligations and (b) any potential
consequences arising from their decision;
(iii) has confirmed their agreement in the absence of any inappropriate pressure or coercion;
“electronic device” means any device on which information is capable of being stored electronically and includes any component of such a device;
“enactment” includes—
(a) an Act of the Scottish Parliament,
(b) an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru, and
(c) Northern Ireland legislation;
“information” includes moving or still images and sounds;
“offence” means an offence under the law of any part of the United Kingdom;
“user”, in relation to an electronic device, means a person who ordinarily uses the device.
(11) References in this section and sections [Application of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] to children and adults without capacity] to the extraction of information include its reproduction in any form.
(12) This section is subject to sections [Application of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] to children and adults without capacity] and [Application of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] where user has died etc].’
New clause 59—Application of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] to children and adults without capacity—
‘(1) A child is not to be treated for the purposes of subsection (1) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] as being capable of—
(a) voluntarily providing an electronic device to an authorised person for those purposes, or
(b) agreeing for those purposes to the extraction of information from the device by an authorised person.
(2) If a child is a user of an electronic device, a person who is not a user of the device but is listed in subsection (3) may—
(a) voluntarily provide the device to an authorised person for the purposes of subsection (1) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices], and
(b) agreement for those purposes to the extraction of information from the device by an authorised person.
(3) The persons mentioned in subsection (2) are—
(a) the child’s parent or guardian or, if the child is in the care of a relevant authority or voluntary organisation, a person representing that authority or organisation,
(b) a registered social worker, or
(c) if no person falling within paragraph (a) or (b) is available, any responsible person aged 18 or over other than an authorised person.
(4) The agreement of persons listed in subsection (3) further to subsection 2(b) should only be accepted where, if it is appropriate, the child has been consulted on whether such agreement should be provided and the authorised person is satisfied those views have been taken into account.
(5) An adult without capacity is not to be treated for the purposes of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] as being capable of—
(a) voluntarily providing an electronic device to an authorised person for those purposes, or
(b) agreeing for those purposes to the extraction of information from the device by an authorised person.
(6) If a user of an electronic device is an adult without capacity, a person who is not a user of the device but is listed in subsection (7) may—
(a) voluntarily provide the device to an authorised person for the purposes of subsection (1) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices], and
(b) agreement for those purposes to the extraction of information from the device by an authorised person.
(7) The persons mentioned in subsection (6) are—
(a) a parent or guardian of the adult without capacity,
(b) a registered social worker,
(c) a person who has a power of attorney in relation to the adult without capacity, or
(d) if no person falling within paragraph (a), (b) or (c) is available, any responsible person aged 18 other than an authorised person.
(8) The agreement of persons listed in subsection (7) further to subsection (6)(b) should only be accepted where, if it is appropriate, the adult without capacity has been consulted on whether such agreement should be provided and the authorised person is satisfied those views have been taken into account.
(9) Nothing in this section prevents any other user of an electronic device who is not a child or an adult without capacity from—
(a) voluntarily providing the device to an authorised person for the purposes of subsection (1) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices], or
(b) agreeing for those purposes to the extraction of information from the device by an authorised person.
(10) In this section and section [Application of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] where user has died etc]—
“adult without capacity” means an adult who, by reason of any impairment of their physical or mental condition, is incapable of making decisions for the purposes of subsection (1) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices];
“local authority”—
(a) in relation to England, means a county council, a district council for an area for which there is no county council, a London borough council or the Common Council of the City of London,
(b) in relation to Wales, means a county council or a county borough council, and
(c) in relation to Scotland, means a council constituted under section 2 of the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994;
“registered social worker” means a person registered as a social worker in a register maintained by—
(a) Social Work England,
(b) the Care Council for Wales,
(c) the Scottish Social Services Council, or
(d) the Northern Ireland Social Care Council;
“relevant authority”—
(a) in relation to England and Wales and Scotland, means a local authority;
(b) in relation to Northern Ireland, means an authority within the meaning of the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 (S.I. 1995/755 (N.I. 2));
“voluntary organisation”—
(a) in relation to England and Wales and Scotland, has the same meaning as in the Children Act 1989;
(b) in relation to Northern Ireland, has the same meaning as in the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995.
(11) Subsections (10) and (11) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] also contain definitions for the purposes of this section.’
New clause 60—Application of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] where user has died etc—
‘(1) If any of conditions A to C is met, an authorised person may exercise the power in subsection (1) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] to extract information stored on an electronic device from that device even though—
(a) the device has not been voluntarily provided to an authorised person by a user of the device, or
(b) no user of the device has agreed to the extraction of information from the device by an authorised person.
(2) Condition A is that—
(a) a person who was a user of the electronic device has died, and
(b) the person was a user of the device immediately before their death.
(3) Condition B is that—
(a) a user of the electronic device is a child or an adult without capacity, and
(b) an authorised person reasonably believes that the user’s life is at risk or there is a risk of serious harm to the user.
(4) Condition C is that—
(a) a person who was a user of the electronic device is missing,
(b) the person was a user of the device immediately before they went missing, and
(c) an authorised person reasonably believes that the person’s life is at risk or there is a risk of serious harm to the person.
(5) The exercise of the power in subsection (1) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] by virtue of this section is subject to subsections (2) to (8) of that section.
(6) Subsections (10) and (11) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] and subsection (9) of section [Application of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] to children and adults without capacity] contain definitions for the purposes of this section.’
New clause 61—Code of practice—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must prepare a code of practice containing guidance about the exercise of the power in subsection (1) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices].
(2) In preparing the code, the Secretary of State must consult—
(a) the Information Commissioner,
(b) the Scottish Ministers,
(c) the Welsh Government,
(d) the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland,
(e) the Victims Commissioner,
(f) the Domestic Abuse Commissioner,
(g) any regional Victims Champion including the London Victims Commissioner,
(h) persons who appear to the Secretary of State to represent the interests of victims, witnesses and other individuals likely to be affected by the use of the power granted in subsection (1) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices], and
(i) such other persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(3) After preparing the code, the Secretary of State must lay it before Parliament and publish it.
(4) The code is to be brought into force by regulations made by statutory instrument.
(5) The code must address, amongst other matters—
(a) the procedure by which an authorised person must obtain and record confirmation that a device has been provided voluntarily;
(b) the procedure by which an authorised person must obtain and record confirmation that agreement has been provided for the extraction of specified information, including the information which must be provided to the user about—
(i) how long the device will be retained;
(ii) what specific information is to be extracted from the device and why, including the identification of the reasonable line of enquiry to be pursued and the scope of information which will be extracted, reviewed and/or retained;
(iii) how the extracted information will be kept secure;
(iv) how the extracted information will or may be used in a criminal process;
(v) how they can be kept informed about who their information is to be shared with and the use of their information in the criminal process;
(vi) their right to refuse to agree to provide their device and/ or to the proposed extraction in whole or in part and the potential consequences of that refusal; and
(vii) the circumstances in which a further extraction may be required, and what will happen to the information after the case has been considered;
(c) the different types of extraction processes available, and the parameters which should be considered in defining the scope of any proposed extraction from a user’s device;
(d) the circumstances in which the extraction of information should and should not be considered strictly necessary and proportionate;
(e) the considerations to be taken into account in determining whether there are less intrusive alternatives available to extraction for the purposes of subsection (7) of section [Extraction of information from electronic devices];
(f) the process by which the authorised person should identify and delete data which is not responsive to a reasonable line of enquiry and/or has been assessed as not relevant to the purposes for which the extraction was conducted; and
(g) the records which must be maintained documenting for each extraction or proposed extraction, including—
(i) the specific information to be extracted;
(ii) the reasonable lines of enquiry pursued;
(iii) the basis upon which the extraction is considered strictly necessary, including any alternatives considered and why they were not pursued;
(iv) confirmation that appropriate information was provided to the user and, if applicable, agreement obtained;
(v) the reasons why the user was not willing to agree to a proposed extraction.
(6) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (4) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.
(7) After the code has come into force the Secretary of State may from time to time revise it.
(8) References in subsections (2) to (7) to the code include a revised code.’
New clause 62—Effect of code of practice—
‘(1) An authorised person must in the exercise of the power granted under section [Extraction of information from electronic devices] have regard to the code of practice issued under section [Code of practice] in deciding whether to exercise, or in the exercise of that power.
(2) A failure on the part of any person to comply with any provision of a code of practice for the time being in force under section [Code of practice] shall not of itself render him liable to any criminal or civil proceedings.
(3) A code of practice in force at any time under section [Code of practice] shall be admissible in evidence in any criminal or civil proceedings.
(4) In all criminal and civil proceedings any code in force under section [Code of practice] shall be admissible in evidence; and if any provision of the code appears to the court or tribunal conducting the proceedings to be relevant to any question arising in the proceedings it shall be taken into account in determining that question.’
New clause 63—Duties to collaborate and plan to prevent and reduce child criminal exploitation and safeguard affected children—
‘(1) The specified authorities for a local government area must collaborate with each other to prevent and reduce child criminal exploitation in the area and safeguard affected children.
(2) The duty imposed on the specified authorities for a local government area by subsection (1) includes a duty to plan together to exercise their functions so as to prevent and reduce child criminal exploitation in the area and safeguard affected children.
(3) In particular, the specified authorities for a local government area must—
(a) identify the kinds of child criminal exploitation that occur in the area,
(b) identify the causes of child criminal exploitation in the area, so far as it is possible to do so, and
(c) prepare and implement a strategy for exercising their functions to prevent and reduce child criminal exploitation and safeguard affected children in the area.
(4) In preparing a strategy under this section for a local government area, the specified authorities for the area must ensure that the following are consulted—
(a) each educational authority for the area;
(b) each prison authority for the area;
(c) each youth custody authority for the area.
(5) A strategy under this section for a local government area may specify an action to be carried out by—
(a) an educational authority for the area,
(b) a prison authority for the area, or
(c) a youth custody authority for the area.
(6) Once a strategy has been prepared under this section for a local government area, the specified authorities for the area must—
(a) keep the strategy under review, and
(b) every two years, prepare and implement a revised strategy.
(7) A strategy prepared under this section may be combined with a strategy prepared in accordance with section 7 (Duties to collaborate and plan to prevent and reduce serious violence) or section 8 (Powers to collaborate and plan to prevent and reduce serious violence).
(8) For the purposes of this section, “child criminal exploitation” means activity which would constitute an offence under section [Child criminal exploitation] of this Act.’
New clause 64—Scrutiny of timeliness of investigations of complaints against police and allegations of police misconduct—
‘(1) The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020 are amended by the insertion of the following regulation after regulation 19—
“Scrutiny of investigation timeliness
19A (1) A legally qualified person within the meaning of regulation 28(4)(a) and (6) shall be appointed to scrutinise the information provided pursuant to regulation 19.
(2) On each occasion where information is provided in writing under regulation 19(1) the legally qualified person appointed under paragraph (1) shall determine whether there is good and sufficient reason for the time—
(a) already taken; and
(b) realistically anticipated to be needed for completion of the investigation.
(3) In determining whether there is good and sufficient reason under paragraph (2) the legally qualified person may have regard to any relevant matter, and shall have particular regard to—
(a) whether the investigation has been efficient and effective;
(b) whether there has been unnecessary or unreasonable delay having regard to complexity and seriousness of the case;
(c) the impact upon the officer and others;
(d) any anticipated further delay;
(e) the public interest and affect upon confidence in the police disciplinary system; and
(f) representations made on behalf of any person entitled to receive a copy of the information provided under regulation 19.
(4) Unless the legally qualified person determines that there is good and sufficient reason under paragraph (2)(a) and (b) then—
(a) all investigation into possible misconduct or gross misconduct shall be terminated forthwith; and
(b) no disciplinary proceedings may be initiated in respect of the matters under investigation.
(5) Nothing in this provision shall have any effect in relation to any criminal investigation.”
(2) The Police (Complaints and Misconduct) Regulations 2020 are amended by the insertion of the following regulation after regulation 13—
“Scrutiny of investigation timeliness
13A (1) A legally qualified person within the meaning of regulation 28(4)(a) and (6) of the Police (Conduct) Regulations 2020 shall be appointed to scrutinise the information provided pursuant to regulation 13.
(2) On each occasion where information is provided in writing under regulation 13 paragraph (1) or (2) the legally qualified person appointed under paragraph (1) shall determine whether there is good and sufficient reason for the time—
(a) already taken; and
(b) realistically anticipated to be needed for completion of the investigation.
(3) In determining whether there is good and sufficient reason under paragraph (2) the legally qualified person may have regard to any relevant matter, and shall have particular regard to—
(a) whether the investigation has been efficient and effective;
(b) whether there has been unnecessary or unreasonable delay having regard to complexity and seriousness of the case;
(c) the impact upon the officer and others;
(d) any anticipated further delay;
(e) the public interest and affect upon confidence in the police disciplinary system; and
(f) representations made on behalf of any person entitled to receive a copy of the information provided under regulation 13.
(4) Unless the legally qualified person determines that there is good and sufficient reason under paragraph (2)(a) and (b) then—
(a) all investigation into possible misconduct or gross misconduct shall be terminated forthwith; and
(b) no disciplinary proceedings may be initiated in respect of the matters under investigation.
(5) Nothing in this provision shall have any effect in relation to any criminal investigation.”’
New clause 65—Public inquiry into the policing of protests—
‘Within six months of the passage of this Act, the Secretary of State must cause an inquiry to be held under the Inquiries Act 2005 into the prevention, investigation and prosecution of crime in relation to the policing of protests, including the use of force, use of kettling and use of police horses.’
New clause 66—Air weapons—
‘(1) Within three months of the date on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a report on the safety of air weapons.
(2) The report must include an assessment of the evidence submitted to the review of air weapons regulation announced on 10 October 2017.
(3) So far as possible without contravening any provision of legislation relating to data protection, the report must publish the evidence referred to in subsection (3).’
This new clause would require the government to publish a report on the safety of air weapons that includes the evidence gathered as part of the Air Weapons Review 2017.
New clause 67—Prohibition of air weapons on private land for those under the age of 18—
‘(1) Section 23 of the Firearms Act 1968 is amended in accordance with subsections (2) to (3).
(2) Omit subsection (1).
(3) Omit subsection (3).’
This new clause would amend the Firearms Act 1968 to prevent a person under the age of 18 from having an air gun on private land other than as part of a sporting club.
New clause 68—Sections 55 to 61: commencement—
‘(1) The Secretary of State may exercise the power in section 176(1) so as to bring sections 55 to 61 into force only if condition A and, thereafter, condition B are met.
(2) Condition A is that a general election has taken place subsequent to the passage of this Act.
(3) Condition B is that both Houses of Parliament have by resolution approved the coming into force of those sections.’
New clause 69—Time limits for prosecutions for common assault in domestic abuse cases—
‘(1) The Criminal Justice Act 1988 is amended as follows.
(2) At the end of section 39 add—
“(3) Subject to subsection (4) below, summary proceedings for an offence of common assault or battery involving domestic abuse may be brought within a period of six months from the date on which a report of the offence was made to the police.”
(4) No such proceedings shall be brought by virtue of this section more than two years after the commission of the offence.
(5) For the purposes of this section ‘domestic abuse’ has the same meaning as in section 1 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.”’
This new clause seeks to extend the existing six month time limit for common assault in cases of domestic abuse.
New clause 70—Police driving—
(1) When a vehicle is being used for a policing purpose, the driver may depart from the standard of the careful and competent driver (or cause another to do so), or depart from the direction of any mandatory road traffic sign, if and only if—
(a) driving the vehicle in accordance with road traffic regulations or relevant policy would be likely to hinder the use of that vehicle for the purpose for which it is being used,
(b) any such departure is reasonable in the circumstances as the responder reasonably believed them to be, and
(c) the departure was proportionate to the circumstances as the responder reasonably believed them to be.
(2) In deciding whether the departure was reasonable, the following should be taken into account, insofar as relevant—
(a) any training received by the driver;
(b) any applicable policy of the police force of which the driver is a member;
(c) that a driver reacting to circumstances as they occur may not be able to judge to a nicety the exact measure of any necessary action required;
(d) evidence of a driver having only done what the driver honestly and instinctively thought was necessary in the circumstances constitutes strong evidence that any departure from the relevant standard was reasonable.’
New clause 71—Intentional harassment, alarm or distress—
‘(1) Section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986 is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1)(a) leave out “, abusive or insulting” and insert “or abusive”.
(3) In subsection (1)(b) leave out “, abusive or insulting” and insert “or abusive”.’
New clause 72—Criminalising commercial squatting and squatting on land—
‘(1) Section 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 is amended as follows.
(2) In the heading, after “in”, leave out “a residential building” and insert “buildings and on land”.
(3) In subsection (1)(a) after “a”, leave out “residential”, and after “building”, insert “or on land”.
(4) In subsection (1)(c) after “building”, insert “or on the land”.
(5) In subsection (2) after “building”, add “or land”.
(6) Leave out subsection (3)(b) and insert “Land has the meaning defined in section 205(1)(ix) of the Law of Property Act 1925.
(7) In subsection (7) after “building”, insert “or land”.
(8) In subsection (8) (a) after “squatting in” leave out “a residential building” and insert “buildings and on land”.’
New clause 84—Non-crime hate incidents not to be recorded on the national police database etc—
‘Non-crime hate incidents are prohibited from being:
(1) recorded on the National Police Database;
(2) kept as a record by police forces against any individual’s name in any way; or
(3) included in any enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check.’
New clause 85—Code for policing of protest—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must produce a Code for the Policing of Protest (“the Code”).
(2) The Code must set out the how relevant police powers must be used and relevant police duties discharged in accordance with both the domestic law and international law obligations imposed under the right to protest, including—
(a) the duty to facilitate peaceful protest unless not to do so is in accordance with the relevant law, and
(b) the duty to refrain from interfering with peaceful protest except where to do so is in accordance with the relevant law.
(3) In this section—
(a) the “right to protest” includes all domestic and international law rights which provide for the right to protest, and
(b) references to “domestic and international law” include but are not limited to the European Convention of Human Rights and associated jurisprudence.
(4) Any person or organisation exercising a power or duty which relates to protest or public order must act in accordance with the Code.’
New clause 90—Offence of assaulting etc. a person providing a service to the public—
‘(1) It is an offence for a person to assault, threaten or abuse another person who is providing a service to the public.
(2) No offence is committed under subsection (1) unless the person who assaults, threatens or abuses knows or ought to know that the other person is providing a service to the public.
(3) A person who commits an offence under subsection (1) is liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, a fine, or both.
(4) Evidence from a single source is sufficient to establish, for the purposes of this section, whether a person is providing a service to the public.
(5) The offence under subsection (1) of threatening or abusing a person who is providing a service to the public (A) is committed by a person (B) only if B—
(a) behaves in a threatening or abusive manner towards A, and
(b) intends by the behaviour to cause A or any other person fear or alarm or is reckless as to whether the behaviour would cause such fear or alarm.
(6) Subsection (5) applies to—
(a) behaviour of any kind including, in particular, things said or otherwise communicated as well as things done,
(b) behaviour consisting of—
(i) a single act, or
(ii) a course of conduct.
(7) The Secretary of State must by regulations define “providing a service to the public” for the purposes of this section.’
New clause 91—Review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must conduct a review of the criminal offences in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
(2) In undertaking the review, the Secretary of State must consult—
(a) the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs;
(b) the Scottish Ministers;
(c) the Welsh Ministers;
(d) the Northern Ireland Department of Health, and
(e) any other person the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(3) The Secretary of State must, before the end of the period of 9 months beginning with the day on which this Act comes into force, lay before Parliament a report on the review, including any proposals for legislative change.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to undertake a review of the criminal offences set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
New clause 101—Training for relevant public officials in relation to the conduct of cases involving modern slavery and child criminal exploitation—
‘(1) The Secretary of State shall, on this Act coming into force, publish and implement a strategy to provide a framework for training on the investigation of cases involving modern slavery and child criminal exploitation complainants for—
(a) the Crown Prosecution Service;
(b) Police Forces;
(c) the Judiciary; and
(d) such other public bodies as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(2) The Secretary of State shall ensure that any judge who is asked to hear a trial where the accused’s charges include modern slavery offences and child criminal exploitation offences has attended and completed a training programme for such trials which has been accredited by the Judicial College and College of Policing or through a recognised training provider or non-governmental organisation.’
This new clause ensures that all criminal justice agencies shall attend a trained programme on modern slavery and child criminal exploitation from accredited Judicial College and College of Policing or a recognised training provider or non-governmental organisation.
New clause 102—Duty of local authorities to provide sites for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers—
‘(1) It is the duty of every local authority to exercise their powers under section 24 of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 (provision of caravan sites) so as to provide adequate accommodation for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers residing in or resorting to their area.
(2) The Minister may, if at any time it appears to them to be necessary to do so, give directions to any such local authority requiring them to provide such sites or additional sites for the accommodation of such numbers of caravans as may be specified in the directions.’
This new clause would reintroduce a statutory duty to require that local authorities provide authorised sites for the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community.
Amendment 25, in clause 1, page 2, line 3, after “workforce,” insert
“including the impact of working with traumatised survivors on officers’ wellbeing and morale,”.
This amendment aims to ensure the police covenant report, when addressing the health and well-being of members and formers members of the police workforce, also addresses the specific impact working with traumatised survivors, such as survivors of child sexual abuse, has on officers’ wellbeing and morale.
Government amendments 32 and 33.
Amendment 64, page 2, line 42, at end insert—
“(aa) members of the British Transport Police,
(ab) members of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary,
(ac) members of the Ministry of Defence police,”.
Government amendment 34.
Amendment 47, in clause 2, page 3, line 30, at end insert—
“(3) In section 3 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 (meaning of “emergency worker”), in paragraph (1)(e) omit “of a corresponding kind to those carried out by a prison officer”.”
This amendment would expand the definition of “emergency worker” to include all prison staff, not just prison officers and those carrying out functions of a corresponding kind to those of a prison officer.
Government amendments 35 to 39.
Amendment 97, page 7, line 38, leave out clause 7.
Amendment 73, in clause 7, page 7, line 40, after “violence”, insert—
“and safeguard children involved in serious violence”.
This amendment, together with amendments 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83 and 84 would ensure specified authorities involved in the ‘serious violence duty’ safeguard children at risk of or experiencing from harm.
Amendment 74, page 8, line 3, after “violence”, insert—
“and safeguard children involved in serious violence”.
See explanatory statement to amendment 73.
Amendment 75, page 8, line 9, at end insert—
“(d) safeguard children involved in serious violence in the area, and
(e) identify and safeguard children who are involved in serious violence in the area as a result of being a victim of modern slavery and trafficking offences under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.”.
See explanatory statement to amendment 73.
Amendment 87, page 8, line 9, at end insert—
“(d) prepare and implement an early help strategy to prevent violence and support child victims of violence and prevent hidden harm.”.
This amendment would add a duty on specified authorities to prepared and implement an early help strategy.
Amendment 88, page 8, line 15, at end insert—
“(d) any children’s social care authority for the area which is not a specified authority for the area.”.
This amendment would ensure that any children’s social care authority which was not already involved in the strategy would be consulted in the preparation of the strategy.
Amendment 76, page 8, line 35, leave out “from time to time” and insert “every two years,”.
This amendment would require the specified authorities for an area to prepare and implement a revised strategy every two years.
Amendment 77, page 8, line 35, at end insert—
“(7A) The local policing body for the area must provide an annual monitoring report for local safeguarding partners on actions undertaken as part of a strategy.”.
Amendment 98, page 9, line 4, leave out clause 8.
Amendment 78, in clause 8, page 9, line 6, after “violence”, insert—
“and safeguard children involved in serious violence”.
See explanatory statement to amendment 73.
Amendment 79, page 9, line 9, after “violence”, insert—
“and safeguard children involved in serious violence”.
See explanatory statement to amendment 73.
Amendment 80, page 9, line 14, after “violence”, insert—
“and safeguard children involved in serious violence”.
See explanatory statement to amendment 73.
Amendment 81, page 9, line 14, at end insert—
“(d) identify and safeguard children who are involved in serious violence in the area as a result of being a victim of modern slavery and trafficking offences under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.”
See explanatory statement to amendment 73.
Amendment 82, page 10, line 8, leave out “from time to time” and insert “every two years,”This amendment would require collaborating specified authorities for an area to prepare and implement a revised strategy every two years.
Amendment 99, page 10, line 31, leave out clause 9.
Amendment 83, in clause 9, page 10, line 34, after “violence”, insert—
“and safeguard children involved in serious violence”.
See explanatory statement to amendment 73.
Amendment 84, page 10, line 36, after “violence”, insert—
“and safeguard children involved in serious violence”.
See explanatory statement to amendment 73.
Amendment 100, page 11, line 28, leave out clause 10.
Amendment 101, page 12, line 4, leave out clause 11.
Amendment 102, page 12, line 18, leave out clause 12.
Amendment 86, in clause 12, page 12, line 37, at end insert—
“(5) In exercising their functions under this Chapter, specified authorities must have particular regard to reducing serious violence against women and girls, including street harassment, and reducing instances of hidden harm resulting from serious violence.”
Amendment 103, page 1, line 39, leave out clause 13.
Amendment 104, page 13, line 35, leave out clause 14.
Amendment 105, page 14, line 42, leave out clause 15.
Amendment 106, page 15, line 29, leave out clause 16.
Amendment 85, in clause 16, page 16, line 16, at end insert—
“(8) A local policing body must report annually on the requests made under this section, including information on the bodies the request were made to and the use of information provided.”
This amendment would require local policing bodies to report on requests for information made to specified authorities, educational authorities, prison authorities and youth custody authorities for the purpose of assisting with its functions under section 13.
Amendment 107, page 16, line 17, leave out clause 17.
Amendment 89, in clause 17, page 17, line 28, leave out “consult” and insert “receive the consent of”.
Amendment 108, page 16, line 38, leave out clause 18.
Amendment 90, in clause 18, page 17, line 7, leave out “consult” and insert “receive the consent of”.
Amendment 109, page 17, line 12, leave out clause 19.
Amendment 91, in clause 19, page 17, line 41, leave out “consult” and insert “receive the consent of”.
Amendment 110, page 18, line 40, leave out clause 20.
Amendment 111, page 19, line 5, leave out clause 21.
Amendment 92, in clause 21, page 19, line 11, leave out “consult” and insert “receive the consent of”.
Amendment 112, page 19, line 37, leave out clause 22.
Amendment 93, in clause 31, page 26, line 20, after “Ministers” insert “and receive their consent”.
Amendment 94, in clause 35, page 28, line 22, after “Ministers” insert “and receive their consent”.
Amendment 72, in clause 36, page 29, line 12, at end insert—
“(c) the user who has given agreement under subsection (1)(b) was offered free independent legal advice on issues relating to their human rights before that agreement was given.”
This amendment would ensure that users of electronic devices were offered free independent legal advice before information on their device could be accessed.
Amendment 115, page 29, line 26, at end insert—
“(7A) No information other than—
(a) information necessary for a purpose within subsection (2) for which the authorised person may exercise the power, or
(b) information necessary for a purpose within subsection (2) of section 39 (investigations of death) for which the authorised person may exercise the power in subsection (1) of that section may be retained, stored or copied.”
Amendment 117, in clause 40, page 34, line 8, at end insert—
“(6A) Scottish Ministers may prepare a code of practice containing guidance about the exercise in Scotland of the powers in sections 36(1) and 39(1) (“a Scottish code”).
(6B) In preparing a Scottish code, Scottish Ministers must consult any person Scottish Ministers consider appropriate.
(6C) After preparing a Scottish code, Scottish Ministers must lay it before the Scottish Parliament and publish it.
(6D) A Scottish code is to be brought into force by regulations made by statutory instrument by Scottish Ministers.
(6E) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (6D) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of the Scottish Parliament.
(6F) After a Scottish code has come into force Scottish Ministers may from time to time revise it.
(6G) References in subsections (6B) to (6F) to the Scottish code include a revised code, subject to subsection (6H).
(6H) The duty to consult in subsection (6B) does not apply in relation to the preparation of a revised code if Scottish Minsters consider that the proposed revisions are insubstantial.
(6I) If a Scottish code is in force—
(a) references in subsections (7) and (8) to “the code” apply in Scotland as if they referred to a Scottish code, and
(b) the code prepared and published by the Secretary of State shall not apply to the exercise of the applicable powers in Scotland.”
This amendment would allow Scottish Ministers, with approval from the Scottish Parliament, to draft a code of practice regarding the extraction of information from electronic devices that would apply in Scotland.
Amendment 116, in clause 41, page 35, line 23, at end insert—
“(7) The powers in section 36(1) and section 39(1) may not be exercised until regulations under this section are in force.”
This amendment would prevent the powers to extract data given by section 36(1) and section 39(1) from being exercised until regulations making provision about the exercise of the power in relation to confidential information (such as confidential journalistic material) are in force.
Amendment 51, in clause 45, page 37, line 12, leave out subsections (2) and (3) and insert—
“(2) In section 16—
(a) in subsection (2)(a), leave out “or (5)” and insert “, (5) or (5A)”;
(b) in subsection (4)(a), leave out “or (5)” and insert “, (5) or (5A)”.
(3) In section 17—
(a) in subsection (2)(a), leave out “or (5)” and insert “, (5) or (5A)”;
(b) in subsection (4)(a), leave out “or (5)” and insert “, (5) or (5A)”.
(4) In section 18—
(a) in subsection (2)(a), leave out “or (5)” and insert “, (5) or (5A)”;
(b) in subsection (4)(a), leave out “or (5)” and insert “, (5) or (5A)”.
(5) In section 19—
(a) in subsection (2)(a), leave out “or (5)” and insert “, (5) or (5A)”;
(b) in subsection (4)(a), leave out “or (5)” and insert “, (5) or (5A)”.
(6) In section 21, after subsection (5), insert—
“(5A) This subsection applies if A is regularly involved in caring for, training, supervising or being in sole charge of B and none of subsections (2) to (13) of this section otherwise applies.””
This amendment aims to ensure that all adults who are in a position of trust are subject to the child sexual abuse offences provided for by section 16 to 19 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, rather than simply extending the definition to those who coach, teach, train, supervise or instruct children in a sport or a religion.
Amendment 1, page 46, line 25, leave out clause 55.
This amendment, together with amendments 2 to 7, would remove Part 3 (Public order) From the Bill.
Amendment 52, in clause 55, page 46, line 28, leave out subsections (2) to (4) and insert—
“(2) After subsection (11) insert—
‘(12) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the meaning for the purposes of this section of “serious disruption to the life of the community”.
(13) Regulations under subsection (12) may, in particular—
(a) define any aspect of “serious disruption to the life of the community” for the purposes of this section;
(b) give examples of cases in which a public procession is or is not to be treated as resulting in serious disruption to the life of the community.
(14) Regulations under subsection (12)—
(a) are to be made by statutory instrument;
(b) may apply only in relation to public processions in England and Wales;
(c) may make incidental, supplementary, consequential, transitional, transitory or saving provision.
(15) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (12) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.’”
This amendment would remove the proposed new trigger, based on noise, for imposing conditions on public processions in England and Wales. The Secretary of State’s power to make regulations would be amended accordingly.
Amendment 2, page 47, line 42, leave out clause 56.
This amendment, together with amendments 2 to 7, would remove Part 3 (Public order) From the Bill.
Amendment 53, in clause 56, page 48, line 2, leave out paragraph (b).
This amendment, together with Amendments 54 and 55, would remove the proposed new trigger, based on noise
Amendment 56, page 48, line 17, leave out from beginning to end of line 20 and insert—
“(a) in the case of an assembly in England and Wales, such conditions as to the place at which the assembly may be (or continue to be) held, the time at which it is to start and/or conclude, its maximum duration, or the maximum number of persons who may constitute it, as appear to the officer necessary to prevent the disorder, damage, disruption, impact or intimidation mentioned in subsection (1);”
This amendment removes the proposed ability to impose any necessary conditions on public assemblies in England and Wales and replace it with the existing available conditions plus conditions concerning the time at which the public assembly must start and finish.
Amendment 54, page 48, line 19, leave out “, impact”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 53.
Amendment 55, page 48, line 28, leave out subsections (5) to (6) and insert—
“(5) After subsection (10A) (as inserted by section 57(11)) insert —
‘(11) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the meaning for the purposes of this section of “serious disruption to the life of the community”.
(12) Regulations under subsection (11) may, in particular—
(a) define any aspect of “serious disruption to the life of the community” for the purposes of this section;
(b) give examples of cases in which a public assembly is or is not to be treated as resulting in serious disruption to the life of the community.
(13) Regulations under subsection (11)—
(a) are to be made by statutory instrument;
(b) may apply only in relation to public processions in England and Wales;
(c) may make incidental, supplementary, consequential, transitional, transitory or saving provision.
(14) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (11) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.’”
See explanatory statement to Amendment 53.
Amendment 3, page 49, line 21, leave out clause 57.
This amendment, together with amendments 1, 2 and 3 to 7, would remove Part 3 (Public order) from the Bill.
Amendment 26, in clause 57, page 49, line 33, leave out from beginning to end of line 35 and insert—
“(a) in the case of a public procession in England and Wales, at the time the person fails to comply with the condition the person—
(i) knows that the condition has been imposed or has deliberately or recklessly avoided gaining knowledge that the condition has been imposed; and
(ii) knows or ought to know that their action or inaction amounts to a failure to comply with the condition.”
This amendment prevents a person who fails to comply with a condition on a public procession in England and Wales avoiding criminal liability by deliberately or recklessly avoiding knowledge of the relevant condition, without extending the criminal offence to cover persons who breach conditions accidentally.
Amendment 27, page 49, line 38, leave out subsection (6).
This amendment removes increases in sentences for non-violent offences by those who organise and attend public processions.
Amendment 28, page 50, line 33, leave out from beginning to end of line 35 and insert—
“(a) in the case of a public assembly in England and Wales, at the time the person fails to comply with the condition the person—
(i) knows that the condition has been imposed or has deliberately or recklessly avoided gaining knowledge that the condition has been imposed; and
(ii) knows or ought to know that their action or inaction amounts to a failure to comply with the condition.”
This amendment prevents a person who fails to comply with a condition on a public assembly in England and Wales avoiding criminal liability by deliberately or recklessly avoiding knowledge of the relevant condition, without extending the criminal offence to cover persons who breach conditions accidentally.
Amendment 29, page 50, line 38, leave out subsections (11) and (12).
This amendment removes increases in sentences for non-violence offences by those who organise and attend public assemblies.
Amendment 4, page 51, line 22, leave out clause 58.
This amendment, together with amendments 1 to 3 and 5 to 7, would remove Part 3 (Public order) from the Bill.
Amendment 5, page 52, line 36, leave out clause 59.
This amendment, together with amendments 1 to 4, 6 and 7, would remove Part 3 (Public order) from the Bill.
Amendment 6, page 53, line 17, leave out clause 60.
This amendment, together with amendments 1 to 5 and 7, would remove Part 3 (Public order) from the Bill.
Amendment 30, in clause 30, page 53, line 31, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
“(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) “serious harm” means—
(a) death, personal injury or disease,
(b) loss of, or damage to, property,
(c) serious distress, serious annoyance, serious inconvenience or serious loss of amenity, or
(d) being put at serious risk of suffering anything mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (c).”
This amendment removes the reference to the experience of a ‘person’ when defining what serious harm means in the context of ‘serious harm to the public or a section of the public’. It also requires the public to be put at significant risk of harm before criminal liability arises, to avoid the offence being excessively broad in its reach.
Amendment 31, in clause 60, page 53, line 37, at end insert—
“(3A) In determining whether a person had a reasonable excuse for the purposes of subsection (3) a court must have particular regard to the importance of the right to protest, including the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 and the right to freedom of association under Article 11 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the Human Rights Act 1998.”
This amendment ensures that the right to protest is given particular regard when a court considers whether a person has a reasonable excuse defence to a charge of public nuisance.
Amendment 7, page 54, line 18, leave out clause 61.
This amendment, together with amendments 1 to 6, would remove Part 3 (Public order) from the Bill.
Amendment 8, page 56, line 23, leave out clause 62.
Amendment 128, in clause 62, page 56, line 36, leave out line 36 and insert—
“(d) a constable, following a request of the occupier or a representative of the occupier,”.
This amendment, would provide that, as part of the conditions for the new offence of criminal trespass, only a police officer could request a person to leave land and only following a request by the occupier of the land.
Amendment 11, page 56, line 36, leave out
“the occupier, a representative of the occupier or”.
This amendment would remove the role of a private individual in triggering a criminal offence by requiring that a person would need to refuse a request to leave the land from a police officer before an offence under subsection (2) is committed.
Amendment 12, page 56, line 40, at end insert—
“(1A) A constable may only make a request under subsection 1(d) if a senior officer is reasonably satisfied that it is reasonable and proportionate to do so, after suitable consultations with relevant bodies, having particular regard to Convention rights and personal circumstances, including the best interests of any children residing on the land.”
This amendment would require a senior police officer to ensure an assessment of welfare needs has been considered and the request to leave the land is proportionate before any requests to leave the land are made and any powers under Part 4 are triggered.
Amendment 125, page 56, line 40, at end insert—
“(1A) A constable may only make a request under subsection (1)(d) where the constable has ascertained from the local authority within whose area the land is situated that there is a suitable pitch for P’s caravan or caravans on a relevant caravan site which is situated in the local authority’s area and that P has been informed of that.
(1B) For the purposes of this Section, “caravan”, “caravan site”, “relevant caravan site”, “relevant site manager” and “registered social landlord” have the same meanings as in section 62A(6) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.”
This amendment, taken with Amendment 128, would provide that a person only commits an offence where they are trespassing on land having been offered a suitable pitch at a caravan site in the local authority’s area.
Amendment 13, page 57, line 11, leave out
“or is likely to be caused”.
This amendment, together with Amendments 14 to 18, would limit the conditions for committing the offence to damage or disruption which has occurred rather than potential damage and disruption.
Amendment 14, page 57, leave out lines 13 to 15.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 13.
Amendment 15, page 57, line 17, leave out
“or is likely to be caused”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 13.
Amendment 16, page 57, line 18, leave out
“or likely to be carried on,”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 13.
Amendment 17, page 57, line 19, leave out
“or is likely to be caused”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 13.
Amendment 18, page 57, line 20, leave out
“or likely to be carried on,”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 13.
Amendment 19, page 57, line 22, leave out
“imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or”.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 20.
Amendment 20, page 57, line 24, leave out “, or both”.
This amendment, together with Amendment 19, would remove the penalty of a custodial sentence of imprisonment for up to three months for committing the offence, while keeping the penalty to a fine not exceeding level 4.
Amendment 127, page 58, line 25, leave out from beginning to end of line 28 and insert—
“(a) the use of threatening or abusive words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or;
(b) the display of any writing, sign, or other visible representation that is threatening or abusive;”.
This amendment removes ‘insulting words or behaviour’ from the definition of ‘offensive conduct’.
Amendment 21, page 58, line 42, leave out from beginning to end of line 19 on page 60.
This amendment would remove provisions that property belonging to the person committing the offence should be seized and forfeited by the police.
Amendment 129, page 59, line 7, at end insert
“, but does not include any property that is, or forms part of, P’s principal residence”.
This amendment would provide that a police officer does not have the power to seize a vehicle that is a person’s home.
Amendment 9, page 60, line 22, leave out clause 63.
Amendment 10, page 62, line 6, leave out clause 64.
Amendment 113, page 128, line 30, leave out clause 140.
Amendment 68, in clause 140, page 129, line 44, at end insert—
“(9A) If the order is made before regulations have been made under section 176(1)of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill for the coming into force of section 139 of that Act for all purposes and in relation to the whole of England and Wales, the court must, in every case where the prosecution makes an application under paragraph (b) of section 342A(1) for a serious violence reduction order to be made, set out in writing its reasons for making, or not making, such an order.”
This amendment would require the court, during any pilot of serious violence reduction orders, to set out in writing its reasons for making or not making such an order.
Government amendments 40 to 44.
Amendment 70, page 134, line 43, at end insert—
“(3A) Guidance under this section must include guidance on the intelligence, community information and risk factors that are to be considered before an application is made for the imposition of a serious violence reduction order.”
Government amendment 45.
Amendment 114, line 28, leave out clause 141.
Amendment 66, in clause 141, page 135, line 33, leave out “and (3)” and insert “(3) and (3A)”.
Amendment 65, page 135, line 42, at end insert—
“(3A)The report under subsection (3) must include—
(a) information on the ethnicity of people made subject to a serious violence reduction order;
(b) information on the number of people made subject to a serious violence reduction order where there is no evidence of their having handled a weapon, either in the incident resulting in the imposition of the order or previously;
(c) information on the number of people stopped by a police officer in the belief that they are subject to a serious violence reduction order, broken down by ethnicity (collected on the basis of self-identification by the person stopped), and including information on the number of times any one individual is stopped;
(d) analysis of the distribution of serious violence reduction orders in relation to the ethnic make-up of the population;
(e) an equality impact assessment including an assessment of the impact of the pilot on the groups mentioned in the equality statement produced before the pilot is commenced;
(f) analysis of data assessing the extent to which the pilot has reduced serious violent crime and reoffending by comparison with other areas;
(g) an assessment by the Sentencing Council of the proportionality of the distribution of the imposition of serious violence reduction orders;
(h) analysis of—
(i) the impact of the length of time for which a serious violence reduction order is imposed on reoffending, and
(ii) the extent to which the length of time for which a serious violence reduction order is imposed has harmful impacts on the life of the individual who is subject to it;
(i) an assessment of the impact of the imposition of serious violence reduction orders on the use of ‘stop and account’ in the pilot area or areas;
(j) feedback from Community Scrutiny Panels on scrutiny of body-worn video of all stops of people subject to, or believed to be subject to, a serious violence reduction order;
(k) analysis of any adverse impact of the imposition of serious violence reduction orders, undertaken on the basis of interviews with—
(i) people subject to a serious violence reduction order, and
(ii) organisations working with young people, in addition to any other information considered relevant by the person conducting the analysis;
(l) analysis of who is made subject to a serious violence reduction order, what evidence is relied on to justify the imposition of such orders, and whether there is any bias in the decision-making process;
(m) analysis of information on the reason for each breach of a serious violence reduction order;
(n) analysis of the extent to which searches made under the powers granted by this Part could have been carried out under other powers.
(3B) Statistical information collected for the purposes of section (3A) from different pilot areas must be collected and presented in a form which enables direct comparison between those areas.”
Amendment 67, page 135, line 42, at end insert—
“(3A) The condition in this subsection is that consultation on the report under subsection (3) has been undertaken with anyone the Secretary of State considers appropriate, including—
(a) representatives of the voluntary sector, and
(b) representatives of communities disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system.”
Amendment 69, page 136, line 2, at end insert—
“(4A) Regulations under section 176(1) which bring section 139 into force only for a specified purpose or in relation to a specified area—
(a) must include provision bringing into force section 342J of the Sentencing Code (Guidance); and
(b) must provide that section 139 may come into force for other specified purposes or in relation to specified areas only once guidance has been issued under section 342J of the Sentencing Code.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance on serious violence reduction orders before any pilot could commence.
Amendment 71, page 136, line 2, at end insert—
“(4A) The powers under section 342A(2) of the Sentencing Code are exercisable before the power in section 176(1) has been exercised so as to bring section 139 into force for all purposes and in relation to the whole of England and Wales only if every officer of any police force in an area in relation to which section 139 has been brought into force has completed the College of Policing two-day training on stop and search.”
This amendment would require all police officers in a pilot force area to have completed the College of Policing training on stop and search before the power to impose serious violence reduction orders could be used.
Amendment 22, in clause 149, page 151, line 14, at end insert—
“(1B) Unless there are exceptional reasons not to do so, a sexual harm prevention order must require the offender—
(a) to comply with a referral for assessment of suitability to participate in a treatment programme approved by the Secretary of State for the purpose of reducing the risk of sexual harm that a person may pose, and
(b) if assessed as suitable for such a programme, to participate in it.”
Amendment 23, page 153, line 34, at end insert—
“(1B) Unless there are exceptional reasons not to do so, a sexual harm prevention order must require the defendant—
(a) to comply with a referral for assessment of suitability to participate in a treatment programme approved by the Secretary of State for the purpose of reducing the risk of sexual harm that a person may pose, and
(b) if assessed as suitable for such a programme, to participate in it.”
Amendment 24, in clause 150, page 155, line 42, at end insert—
“(7A) Unless there are exceptional reasons not to do so, a sexual risk order must require the defendant—
(a) to comply with a referral for assessment of suitability to participate in a treatment programme approved by the Secretary of State for the purpose of reducing the risk of sexual harm that a person may pose, and
(b) if assessed as suitable for such a programme, to participate in it.”
Amendment 120, in schedule 4, page 201, line 31, leave out paragraphs 2 to 12 on page 203.
This amendment, together with Amendment 121, would leave out the paragraphs of Part 1 of Schedule 4 which reverse the current presumption against the grant of pre-charge bail.
Amendment 121, page 204, line 8, leave out paragraphs 14 to 16.
See explanatory statement to Amendment 120.
Amendment 118, page 212, line 27, at end insert—
“31A(1) Section 47ZG (Applicable bail period: subsequent extensions of limit by court) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (2), at the beginning, insert ‘Subject to subsection (10),’
(3) After subsection (9), insert—
‘(10) The court may not authorise an extension of the applicable bail period beyond the period of 24 months beginning with the person’s bail start date.’”
This amendment would restrict the period which a person could spend on pre-charge bail to a maximum of two years.
Amendment 119, page 212, line 28, leave out paragraph 32.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 118. Paragraph 32 of Schedule 4 would make provision for oral hearings in cases where a bail period was to extend beyond 24 months, which would be prevented by Amendment 118, so this amendment removes that paragraph.
Government amendment 46.
Amendment 95, in clause 176, page 194, line 12, after “33,” insert
“[Sections 55 to 61: commencement],”.
Amendment 96, page 194, line 26, at end insert
“(ka) section [Sections 55 to 61: commencement]”.
Ms Harman
Let me say at the outset that I completely agree with everything that the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has just said. We have not got enough time to properly debate the Bill and the many issues it engages.
I have four key issues, which are the subject of cross-party amendments and new clauses. One is to do with the crucial right to protest, which the Bill curtails. As Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I have tabled amendments on that. I hope that the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) will get an opportunity to speak about protecting and enhancing the right to protest. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) has also tabled a new clause on that, which has a great deal of support. Many other hon. Members will speak about the subject.
There are also concerns about the rights of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community. Again, as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I have tabled amendments on that and so have other Members, including the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers). My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) will speak about both issues from our Front Bench. I will therefore not speak specifically about the right to protest and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller rights, but I strongly support those from all parts of the House who will speak on those matters.
I will confine my comments to new clauses 1 and 2, which have support from across the House. They deal with the safety of women and girls on the street. Hon. Members will remember that, after the horrific killing of Sarah Everard, there was an outflowing on social media from young women and girls, even young schoolgirls, saying, “We are not safe walking on our streets at night. If we have to walk home in the dark after school, we will often find a man in a van kerb-crawling us with the window wound down, calling for us to get in the van, asking why we are not getting into the van, and following us home.” Often, they will take a longer route home, even though it takes more time, to go down busier streets, rather than the quickest route, where they feel less safe. Often, they will take a cab when they would really like to walk home, but just do not feel safe.
What has been shown is that this is not just a problem for some young girls and women; it is a problem for all. It is a universal, everyday experience. Sexually predatory men feel that they can harass and intimidate young girls and young women when they are on the street, especially after dark and if they are on their own. We simply have to decide whether we are going to protect and support the rights of men to do that, or whether we are going to say, “No, we support the rights of women and girls to be able to walk down our streets at night on their own, after dark in the winter, coming home from school, without being subjected to this sort of intimidation, menace and harassment.” I do not think we hear anybody arguing that in this day and age, women and girls should accept that. I remember that, back in the day when I, like everybody else, was subjected to it, if someone complained, people said, “But you should be flattered—you should be flattered that people find you attractive.” It is not flattering. It is menacing, it is unwarranted and it is unwanted, and we should not accept it.
I have tabled two new clauses. One is about kerb-crawling. Currently, it is a criminal offence to kerb-crawl a woman if someone is doing so to solicit her because they want to pay for sex. That was introduced many years ago to protect a neighbourhood from becoming a red light district and having endemic kerb-crawling, so we already have the basis in the law. What I am suggesting, with a lot of cross-party support, is that this should be a criminal offence without it being because the man is doing it to try to pay for sex; it is enough if he is kerb-crawling. He should not be able to do that. The punishment ought to be taking away his licence. If a man is going to lose his licence for his van or car, he will pretty soon alter his behaviour, which is exactly what he should be doing.
I also have a new clause on harassment in the street. At the moment, if a man harasses a woman and there is a course of conduct because he is generally stalking her, that is a criminal offence, but if he does it to a schoolgirl going home who he does not know and it is not a course of conduct but one-off conduct, she has no right of redress. I suggest expanding the stalking offence to include even a one-off, so we have two bespoke offences.
If we have two new crimes, women and girls will know that they do not have to put up with this and that they can complain, men will know that they are going to be called to account and end up in court if they do it, the police will know that they have to investigate it and prosecute it, and the courts will know how to deal with it. Then, we can end the shameful situation that women and girls find themselves in on the street.
The Government have said in Committee that they are in listening mode. That is welcome, but it does not go far enough. Women and girls want the Government not just to listen, but to act. It is about time that the concerns of women and girls were heard and acted on. If we do not support the new clauses and the Government do not accept them, they will be guilty of letting women and girls down. I hope that will not be the case. I press the Minister, who has been very generous with her time in meeting me, to say that this is the moment that we are going to change the law and make a new start.
Mr Speaker
I remind hon. Members that, if we do put a speaking limit on, it will be on the countdown clock, which will be visible on the screen. I am now going to appeal to everybody, without the time limit on, to please not force it. Let us be kind to each other—short and brief. Everybody, I believe, has a genuine contribution to make, so I really want to hear them.
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I will try to lead by example in that regard.
Part 1 of the Bill increases the penalty for assault on an emergency worker from 12 months to two years. Many other key workers are on the frontline, too. Indeed, shopworkers have borne the brunt of much of the abuse about mask wearing and social distancing in stores, on top of the existing problems associated with age verification for the purpose of alcoholic drinks purchases, drunken abusive behaviour, and of course shoplifting. Late-night shops are often run single-handedly, so the distress and trauma associated with assaults or threatening behaviour should not be underestimated. I am due to meet shortly with in-store workers from my local Tesco to see at first hand how this problem has affected staff in that setting. I hope the Minister can reassure me—either now or when she sums up at the end—that she is aware of the issue’s importance and that amendments may not be necessary to deliver the action we all believe is needed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his scrutiny and service not just on Report but in Committee. I can reassure him; I know how strongly he and other Members across the House, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers), feel about the matter. I reassure the House that we are not complacent about ensuring that the criminal law is fit for purpose. We are actively considering an amendment in the Lords if appropriate.
Mr Goodwill
I thank the Minister for that reassurance. The other two items I want to discuss were underlined by the points made by the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) about lining up with wokeism rather than with the hard-working people who find their lives disrupted in the workplace, when travelling to work or, indeed, in their communities. I commend the Government for the public order measures in part 3 and despair at amendments 1 to 7 tabled by several Lib Dem and Labour colleagues, which would completely remove that aspect of the Bill.
It is of course, a basic human right to be allowed to demonstrate one’s strongly held feelings. Indeed, I have been on demonstrations myself. I went on the countryside march, and I marched at the head of an opposition demonstration in Minsk, which had a slightly less jolly atmosphere. However, the Government must take action to prevent deliberate acts of vandalism or obstruction such as those associated with Extinction Rebellion and, I am sorry to say, Black Lives Matter. Yes, people have the right to demonstrate, but not in a way that prevents people from going about their lawful business: travelling to work, being taken to hospital by ambulance or, indeed, Members of Parliament being able to access this building to exercise our democratic mandate.
I am particularly pleased that we are taking action on single-personal protests. Over the spring bank holiday in May, local Labour councillor Theresa Norton sat in the middle of the street in the middle of Scarborough on the first weekend on which many of our hard-pressed tourism businesses were keen to make up some of the money they had lost during the pandemic. She caused a massive traffic jam, supposedly demonstrating in the cause of Extinction Rebellion. That sort of behaviour should not be allowed because it disrupts people’s lives and, I believe, actually antagonises people against such issues.
Finally, I am disappointed that the Labour and SNP Front-Bench teams are so out of touch with the genuine distress and disruption caused by illegal Traveller encampments. They seem to have some kind of rose-tinted view of traditional Romany lifestyles, but that is not the reality on the ground and the Government are right to take action. Communities have asked us to take action, and there is a clear choice to be made between supporting those communities or supporting people who lawlessly occupy land and cause havoc and destruction.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
This Bill contains some of the most controversial restrictions of our rights for many years. It is very long, and we have only a few hours to debate it, so I agree with the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that we should have had more time. During the pandemic, we have seen more than 400 regulations passed through statutory instruments with little or no scrutiny—necessary, but unprecedented. Now is the time to be reclaiming our rights, not restricting them further. This Bill will do little to tackle the real problems that British people face. It will not protect vulnerable children who are victims of criminal exploitation. It will not take dangerous weapons off our streets. It will not protect rape victims. It does nothing to tackle violence against women and girls.
Turning to part 1, we are pleased that, after almost three years of campaigning from the Police Federation, the Government have finally introduced the police covenant. I am reassured that the Government agreed with my amendment to include the whole policing family in the covenant, but why did the Government not accept amendments from my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) to support mental health when we know that suicide levels are increasing and that one in five officers has PTSD. Why did they not accept our simple suggestions for some independence and scrutiny to be included in the process? As currently drafted, the covenant could be little more than warm words—a wasted opportunity to stand with our police officers after all they have done for us.
Clause 2 relates to assaults against emergency workers. My hon. Friends the Members for Halifax (Holly Lynch) and for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) have campaigned for years to introduce a separate offence, with longer sentencing, for assaulting an emergency worker. Following years of increasing assaults against our most valued public servants, we are pleased that the Government have finally listened to the call, but why on earth will they not now commit to extending similar protections to the key workers who have done for so much for us, such as shop workers?
On Friday, I visited a Co-op in Croydon, where I heard about the violence and abuse that shop workers suffer and that, sadly, they feel has become part of the job. I met a man in his 70s in New Addington who runs a pet shop and was punched in the face by a customer. Of our 3 million retail workers, 300,000 were assaulted last year, yet only 6% of incidents led to prosecution. Abuse must not be part of the job.
The public agree with us: a survey published on Saturday shows that 89% back the new law. Industry agrees with us: the Co-op, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the British Retail Consortium have been campaigning on the issue for years. Yesterday, leaders of 100 brands, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, IKEA and Aldi, all published an open letter calling for greater protection for retail workers. MPs agree with us: the Select Committee on Home Affairs published a report last week, and the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) has corralled a very impressive number of Conservative MPs to support his new clause 90 on the same issue.
Tonight, the Government have a choice: do the right thing and back our retail and public service workers, or ignore the wishes of the public and give us another excuse. I hear the Minister saying that she is actively considering it, but she could commit to it tonight and give retail workers and our public servants the protections that they deserve.
Chapter 1 of part 2 introduces a duty to tackle and prevent serious violence. I have campaigned for years for the Government to tackle the growing epidemic of violent crime. Yesterday, I was at a vigil for a boy, just turned 16, who was brutally murdered in my constituency last week, in his own home, in front of his mother. Nothing is more important than keeping our children safe.
We have called for an evidence-based approach to tackling violence, and we support the intention of the serious violence duty to get every agency locally working together to tackle violence, but we have serious concerns on three fronts. First, there is no provision in the Bill to safeguard children and the Government have rejected calls for a new definition of child criminal exploitation. Secondly, we are very concerned about the data capture elements of chapter 1; the duty risks becoming an intelligence-gathering exercise with potentially ominous consequences. Thirdly, it must be made clear in the Bill that violence against women and girls counts as serious violence—it should not be an added extra. We want the serious violence duty to work, but we fear that, as currently drafted, it will not. I ask the Government to consider our amendments to protect children, to protect data and to protect women and girls.
Chapter 3 of part 2 relates to data extraction. We are asking the Government to protect victims, particularly victims of rape and sexual abuse, from painful and often necessary intrusion into their lives by the mining of their phone data. When we raised concerns in Committee, the Minister said:
“I…urge caution until the rape review is published, because there may be answers in that document.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 27 May 2021; c. 286.]
With respect to the Minister, the rape review has been published and its recommendations do not address the problems that we defined. One in five rape victims withdrew their complaints, at least in part because of disclosure and privacy concerns. The Secretary of State for Justice has apologised for failing rape victims, yet he is bringing forward legislation that would legitimise over-intrusion. The Government did not support our amendments in Committee to protect victims, but tonight they have a chance to think again.
Part 3 relates to public order. Over the past year, the police have had to enforce necessary but draconian covid regulations after little scrutiny and short notice. I have heard many times from the police that they have struggled to be the ones interpreting the law without the leadership from the Government that they needed. It is our job to define the law in a clear way so that the police are not the ones getting the blame for our lawmaking. That must be a firm lesson for us.
The public order powers in part 3 threaten the fundamental balance between the police and the people. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services called for a “modest reset” of the scales on public order legislation in its recent report. On any measure, a “modest reset” is not what this is. The new measures in the Bill target protesters for being too noisy and causing “serious unease” or “serious annoyance”. The vague terminology creates a very low threshold for police-imposed conditions and essentially rules out entirely—potentially—peaceful protest.
Mr Goodwill
Does the hon. Lady agree that when she talks about “the people”, that would include the people whose lives are disrupted, who cannot get to work, who experience all the points that I made in my remarks? They are the people as well and they want to get on with their lives.
Sarah Jones
I wonder where that stops and at what point we accept the right balance between the right to protest peacefully and the right of people to go about their business. The inspectorate called for a moderate reset and that is not what this is.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend not agree that without noise, protest will not achieve anything?
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; that is clearly the case. It is also really important to note that the police at no point have asked for these powers on the basis of noise. The Metropolitan police said that it did
“not request the legal change on noise”.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on public order told Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights that police chiefs had asked for a “lower, broader threshold” for imposing conditions, but not a law relating to noise. Inspector Matt Parr told the JCHR that he was not asked to look specifically at whether or not noise should be included. The point of protest is to capture attention. Protests are noisy. Sometimes they are annoying, but they are as fundamental to our democracy as our Parliament.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
Can the hon. Lady clarify whether or not she supports protests that cause serious disruptions to people going about their lawful business?
Sarah Jones
I will give to the hon. Gentleman, if he would like, a list of existing police powers and laws that do exactly that. There are many different laws from different pieces of legislation that I have here that do mean the police have the powers that they need to stop serious disruption. The increasing powers in the Bill are what we have a problem with, and where they could lead, because the definitions are so broad.
The Government published last week a draft definition of what they mean by “serious disruption”. It is very broad and it gives away a bit where all this came from in the first place, because top of the list of products and goods that are included in the legislation are time-sensitive products, including newspapers.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The hon. Lady is making a very good case on this point. Does she not agree that there is a serious danger of a chilling effect? The people who are referred to by Government Members will not stop protesting. We know that that is the case, but community groups who perhaps have a legitimate concern and want their voices to be heard will look at this and then exclude protest from their arsenal of options to move forward.
Sarah Jones
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that good point and I welcome the amendments that he has tabled to this section of the Bill. The Opposition want clauses 55 to 61 removed from the Bill and we want to protect our right to protest.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
When I spoke to my local police about these clauses, they were really concerned that policing by consensus will be replaced and drive protests into more conflict, and therefore, for them and for us, it is a negative step.
Sarah Jones
That is a very good point. The Peelian principles—the people are the police and the police are the people—are very important. I know the police value that careful balance between them and the public and where consent is and how powers are drawn. We strongly believe that these powers go too far.
Part 4 on unauthorised encampments represents an attack on the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities and their whole way of life. The police are clear that they do not want these powers. Martin Hewitt, head of National Police Chiefs’ Council, said in Committee that he strongly believes that
“the fundamental problem is insufficient provision of sites for Gypsy Travellers to occupy, and that that causes the relatively small percentage of unlawful encampments”.––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 15, Q20.]
The police already have extensive powers in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to move on unauthorised encampments. As at January 2020, just 3% of Gypsy and Traveller caravans in England were on unauthorised encampments. We know that there are high levels of prejudice and hate towards Gypsy Traveller communities. Even on this Bill Committee, one Member made an incredibly prejudiced and offensive remark. We have asked this of the Government before, and we will keep on asking: under the provisions in part 4, what would happen to a Traveller family in a single vehicle who are residing on a highway and have nowhere else to go?
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones). I will return to one of her points in a moment, but I shall start by focusing on the amendments tabled in my name—amendments 118 to 121.
In 2017, we reformed pre-charge bail—that is police bail in the jargon—to introduce time limits on how long suspects can be held on bail before being charged, and we introduced a general presumption against the use of pre-charge bail. These changes came after the terrible treatment—I reiterate, the terrible treatment—of some people, the most famous of whom, I guess, was Paul Gambaccini, in the spin-off from the Savile affair. Gambaccini’s career was destroyed by the effective presumption of guilt in the treatment of him.
Even with those 2017 reforms, we still see a large number of people on pre-charge bail today and, indeed, for excessive lengths of time. In 2019, the number on pre-charge bail was 84,000. In 2020, it was nearly 154,000. The effect of the 2017 legislation, therefore, was not to suppress pre-charge bail, so the logic behind the changes in the current Bill are flawed to start off with. Worse than that, the number of people held on pre-charge bail for more than 12 months is 2,344, which is itself an increase on the previous year. These are people for whom there is not enough evidence to charge—not to convict, but to charge, which is a much, much lower threshold.
Currently, I have a case where the National Crime Agency has kept an individual on bail for almost six years. That is six years of being unable to live anywhere but her home address; six years of being unable to see her family because her passport has been withheld; six years of being without a bank account; six years of being without a job or career; and six years of being unable to lead a normal life. When I took it up with the National Crime Agency, I got a letter in response, which, frankly, would have done justice to an episode of “Yes Minister.” The most interesting point in it was a comment making the point that investigations took a long time. It said: “Investigations of this length are not uncommon when dealing with complex cases.” Six years is not uncommon in a justice system where the presumption of innocence is paramount. That is the problem that I am addressing with my amendments. For someone who has not even been charged, the NCA’s actions in this case make a complete mockery of the principle of presumed innocent until proven guilty. By the way, as an aside—separate from the Bill—we cannot find out how many people the NCA has under these circumstances. It is not subject to freedom of information requests and we know nothing about its operations, yet it still does these things.
The Bill seeks to undo the 2017 reforms, eliminating the general presumption against pre-charge bail and amending time limits. Although reform is clearly needed, this is not the correct way to do it. As the Law Society has said, changes to pre-charge bail may lead to people being kept “in limbo” for long periods of time, impacting their civil liberties. I entirely agree. The Government, of course, argue that their proposed reforms have public backing, but the consultation responses were starkly skewed. Police and law enforcement agencies accounted for 65% of the responses, compared to the legal professions at a mere 3%. Nobody should take at face value the Government’s claim that that backing reflects the consultation; it reflects the interests of the agencies involved.
My amendments 118 and 119 would introduce a two-year absolute limit on the use of pre-charge bail, ensuring that agencies had time to investigate properly but promptly. We should remember that the test is the ability to charge, not the ability to convict. That is how far it has to get in two years; that is the primary aim.
Amendments 120 and 121 would prevent the Government from reversing the presumption against the use of pre-charge bail. That would prevent a return to the practice of bailing suspects for lengthy periods with strict and unacceptable curbs to their civil liberties.
I would like to pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), because clearly she got some pushback from the Government Benches. As it stands, the Bill actually does pose a grave threat to the fundamental right to protest that this country has had enshrined in our national fabric for, I think, some 800 years. The Bill does address real issues, but the Government want to have the power to arrest people who cause “serious annoyance” or “serious inconvenience”. These are incredibly vague terms, frankly. It is clearly a breach of the normal reasoning behind a demonstration when somebody glues themselves to a train with the direct intention of inconveniencing everybody else, but demonstrations do lead to inconvenience.
It is not just the leftie, liberal, legal fraternity that has been worried about the proposed power; there was a letter to the Home Secretary, elements of which were published in today’s edition of The Times, from a number of police chiefs, who are concerned that the effect of the provision is twofold. First, it puts the police in the position of making judgments that they should not be making; that should be specified by this House, not by the police chiefs themselves. Secondly, that puts them in a politicised position, and that is really problematic. We have an apolitical police and every law we write must be written on the presumption that it will be a Government very unlike ours who oversee us at some point in the future. What if, in 20 years’ time, we have an extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing Government, and this sort of vague provision is in place? I ask the Government to pay attention to the precision of this measure, so that we get it exactly right.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there is an incongruence in the Government saying they want to defend free speech in universities while effectively attacking the right of freedom of expression on our streets by criminalising activities that will cause serious unease?
Mr Speaker
Order. Just to say I really am up against the time. I want to hear a lot more free speech.
Mr Davis
I take your point, Mr Speaker. I will be finished in less than a minute.
I was the person who brought in the 10-minute rule Bill, the precursor to the Government’s Bill, but there is a balancing issue and the House must be precise about that balance.
Given Mr Speaker’s injunction, I will bring my comments to an end. The Bill does some important things, but it needs to get some things very much closer to right than they are now.
Mr Speaker
Before I bring in the SNP spokesperson, I must warn people that it is looking like speeches will have to be three minutes or a maximum of four minutes.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
I rise to speak to new clause 91 and amendment 117.
Amendment 117 simply says that the Scottish Government reserve the right to amend the code of conduct governing data extraction if the UK code of conduct is not suitable for our distinct policing service. I cannot imagine why the Government would not just accept that amendment, so I look forward to hearing that they have.
New clause 91 will instruct the Secretary of State to conduct a review of the criminal offences set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Let us face it: after 50 years, it is high time. That argument is gaining traction across party and with good reason. One of my colleagues will be saying more about that later in the debate, so I will simply say that my support for it is wholehearted. Our approach to drug misuse and addiction should be a public health approach, because that is what saves lives.
Mr Speaker, I understand that I have unlimited time, but I can reassure you that I will talk as briefly as I can to allow other speakers to make their contribution. I will look at three areas of the Bill.
I have said before that the curbs on the right to protest are draconian and contrary to international law—it is not just me saying that, of course—and I know colleagues will say more on that shortly, but people out there need to be aware of how the provisions will impact on them. I always use the example of the WASPI women, the Women Against State Pension Inequality. I do that because, whether it is anti-war protesters, the Black Lives Matter movement or those who are desperately worried about the environment, there is always a cohort in here ready to tell us what is wrong with those protesters: how “dangerous” they are and how we need to clamp down on them.
Now, nobody is going to tell me that the Women Against State Pension Inequality are a threat to any of us. The opposite is true. These are older women who should be retired by now, but they have had their retirement stolen from them by the UK Government. So many times we have all gone across the road to join thousands of WASPI women and their supporters from all across the UK, but because of the exclusion zone to be thrown up around Parliament they will be prevented from ever doing that again. We are to hear and see nobody unless they agree with us. That is just one tiny part of the curbs on the right to protest. It is not what we expect from the so-called bastion of democracy.
I want to turn briefly to serious violence reduction orders. Members might ask why, given that they apply only to England and Wales, but here is why. I was quite shocked to hear the Home Office attempt to make a comparison between serious violence reduction orders and the work of the hugely successful Scottish Government-backed Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. The Scottish VRU adopts a public health approach to violence. I urge hon. Members not to be fooled by attempted comparisons. The underlying principle—
Anne McLaughlin
I know that Mr Speaker is trying to create time for other people, but I will give way briefly.
Victoria Atkins
I just want to correct the hon. Lady. In the Bill Committee I was drawing a comparison not with the orders but with the serious violence duty, which I imagine she welcomes because we have looked carefully at the Glasgow model. We would argue that we are going further than the Scottish Government, because we are making the provision a legal duty. I hope she would support that in principle.
Anne McLaughlin
The underlying principle of the Violence Reduction Unit is that the causes of violence are deep-rooted and that we need a public health approach. These orders do not take a public health approach. In order to make a lasting improvement, numerous agencies have a role to play, including education, social services, health, justice and the third sector. Rather than creating barriers to education, housing and employment, the multiagency approach in Scotland actively removes them. The focus in Scotland has been on listening to the community, not dividing it. SVROs conform to outdated reactive practices. By the time one is issued, the damage has been done. The Government say they represent a public health approach, but a public health approach emphasises prevention. It is glaringly obvious when we think about it: fewer crimes create fewer victims, and that reduces demand on public services. Crime prevention is the public health model in action and that is not what these orders represent.
Finally, I support the amendments to delete part 4 of the Bill, on Travelling communities. That part of the Bill sickens me to my core. The Conservative hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) has been allowed by his party to get away with claiming that Travellers today are
“more likely to be seen leaving your garden shed at 3 o’clock in the morning…with your lawnmower”.––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 8 June 2021; c. 410.]
In other words, he is saying they are thieves. There can be no hiding from the fact that this is anything other than a full-on attack on the way of life of Gypsy Travellers. The Travelling community in Scotland are deeply concerned, as are all others across the UK.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I know that Mr Speaker has urged right hon. and hon. Members to take between three and a maximum of four minutes, so I shall just re-emphasise that.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall address part 3, on public order, having joined the inquiry by the all-party group on democracy and the constitution, which reported on this part of the Bill last week in the context of the march events at Clapham common and Bristol. We found not just a lack of justification for many of these proposed new powers but—of equal concern—a lack of understanding of the current law among the relevant police.
Everyone, including the local police, knew what was going to happen in every event, and yet the local activist organisers were not only ignored, but threatened with prosecution. What should have been a quiet, well-organised vigil for a slain innocent woman became an increasingly disorganised public order situation, with police using extreme, repressive techniques. As a result, public safety at that event was diminished—first, as a result of the police’s omission to engage in advance; secondly, because of their lack of preparedness, engagement and intelligence; and, finally, because of their overreaction on the day. That is why the Bill ought to set out the basic human rights position, along the lines of that which is in new clause 29.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that much of what we sadly saw at the vigil at Clapham common was a consequence of sloppily drafted covid regulations, which were given so little scrutiny by this House, let alone being understood by the police, whom we compel to enforce them?
Mr Djanogly
I thank my hon. Friend, because had I had five minutes in which to speak and that was exactly the case I was going to make. What he says was proven in our inquiry. Sadly, the time allowed today permits me to give only one example of concern on these new public order powers. Clause 55 provides powers to deal with non-violent serious disruption. First, that should be stated in the Bill, not in secondary legislation. Furthermore, I am concerned that it will provide excessive powers to prevent non-violent disruption to business, in circumstances where the business concerned may not be the focus of the protest. Again, this shifts the ground towards making a presumption of illegality. In practice, working out to what extent a business can be disrupted will only make the job of the police tougher, not easier, and it will certainly make it more political in nature.
For instance, if protest that has until now been kept away from residential areas will also be removed from business areas, where does it go? Presumably, it will go to a place where it cannot be heard, but, as has been said, noise and disruption are integral to protest. As many commentators have pointed out, in practice, the police will increasingly be put under pressure from businesses to impose conditions, and they will be put under pressure from demonstrators, who will then go ahead in any case, as they did at Clapham common and in Bristol.
This clause could well undermine public confidence in the police and reduce public safety. That is why our inquiry recommended the production of guidance to help both police and organisers to understand their respective powers and obligations—that is what is in new clause 85. More fundamentally, we also need to question whether it is still appropriate that police both condition protest and enforce their own conditions. To that end, I am drawn to having something like the Northern Ireland Parades Commission, which has power to place conditions on public processions, thus leaving the police with the enforcement role that they know how to do so well.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The Home Affairs Committee has considered many different aspects of this Bill and these amendments at different times and in different ways, but given the time I will focus on just a small number of areas.
I particularly want to address new clause 69, in my name. Its purpose is to get justice for victims of domestic abuse who are being timed out and take action against perpetrators who are being let off the hook. Many domestic abuse cases are prosecuted as common assault in a magistrates court where police and prosecutors may say that the threshold for the Crown court is not met. In these cases, there is a time limit on justice—most victims are not aware of this—of six months from the offence, even though in domestic abuse cases it may take many months, for good reason, for victims to feel able to go to the police. They may still be in an abusive relationship. They may be afraid. They may not be safe. They may have children and be worried about how to leave or where they will go. It may take them time to get the support that they feel they need to be able to talk to the police. There are so many reasons that are, in themselves, the essence of continuing crimes of domestic abuse. That is why the new clause increases the time limit so that there can be six months for the police to deal with the case from the point of reporting, rather than from the point of the offence itself.
Somebody I have talked to told me her story. She was assaulted while she was pregnant. She went to A&E but did not, at that stage, want to talk about what had happened. However, when the abuse continued after the baby was born, she left and gathered her courage to talk to the police, who started an investigation but before long told her that she had passed a time limit she never even knew existed and her ex would not be charged. There are many more such victims of domestic abuse who, for serious and obvious reasons, do not report it immediately, and the perpetrators go on to be free to commit more crimes.
Victoria Atkins
I thank the right hon. Lady for having raised her constituent’s case with me in previous meetings. We take this issue very seriously, and I can assure the House that we will return with a proposal at a later stage. I certainly do not rule out an amendment, if appropriate, in the Lords. This must be looked into and I am extremely grateful to her for raising it.
Yvette Cooper
I welcome the Minister’s statement. I am keen to pursue this and to work with her on it, as we have cross-party support. I really do want to see progress and I hope we can achieve that in the House of Lords.
This is, once again, about the blind spot where the legal system does not recognise the reality of violence against women and girls. There may be many reasons why a six-month time limit is appropriate for summary offences about altercations between acquaintances in the pub or tussles in the street, but it is not appropriate for domestic abuse—for the experience of violence against women and girls that is, too often, being missed out in the criminal justice system, where thousands of cases a year may be affected in this way. We have support for changes in this area from the domestic abuse commissioner of Refuge, Women’s Aid, the Centre for Women’s Justice, and West Yorkshire police.
On new clause 31, the Select Committee has conducted a detailed inquiry into violent abuse against shop workers. We have recommended a stand-alone offence because we need to strengthen the focus on this escalating offence and to have the police take it much more seriously. It is simply unacceptable that shop workers should face this escalating abuse over very many years. The new offence of assault against emergency workers has made a difference and increased prosecutions, and we need to increase prosecutions in other areas as well.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Will the right hon. Lady give way? [Interruption.]
Yvette Cooper
No, because I am very conscious of Madam Deputy Speaker’s coughing to remind me not to.
I also hope that the Government will accept amendments that provide greater safeguards for freedom to peacefully protest and strengthen the law on kerb-crawling, but I particularly hope that we will continue to work on much stronger protection for victims of domestic abuse and those who suffer from violence against women and girls.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I have five new clauses in this group. New clause 64 would ensure more timeliness of investigations of complaints against police officers and allegations of police misconduct. On new clause 70, at the moment a police officer has the power to tell somebody to stop their car, but not to shut off the engine. My new clause 70 would give them the power to shut off the engine as well, because not having the power to do that can put police officers in a dangerous position, and this would deal with that anomaly. New clause 71 would remove the word “insulting” from section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986. People should not be guilty of an offence for using insulting language, in my opinion. It would still keep threatening and abusive language as an offence, but the word “insulting” really should have no place in the law. New clause 72 would criminalise commercial squatting and squatting on land. The Bill addresses the issue of trespassers on land, but misses the opportunity to expand the current residential squatting offence to cover village halls, churches, pubs and so on, and is much needed in many local communities. New clause 84 would mean that non-crime hate incidents could not be recorded on the national police database. The police should be focusing their efforts on tackling crime, not non-crime incidents. I hope, by the way, that the Government will respond in detail with why they are not accepting my entirely reasonable new clauses, because I would be very interested to know why they cannot accept them.
I also want to talk about new clauses 31 and 90. As somebody who spent 12 years working for Asda before I became an MP, I feel very strongly about the issue of violence against shop workers. These are often very low-paid people who are expected by the Government, in effect, to enforce the law—whether it is on age restrictions or, in recent times, about covid rules and restrictions, face mask wearing and social distancing—and the only thanks that many of them have had for keeping the nation fed during the covid restrictions, and for going out to work every single day to make sure that happened, was to see the number of assaults on them double over that period. It is an absolute disgrace.
The Government say that the courts can already use this as an aggravating factor if necessary, but the law to charge people with assaulting an emergency worker was introduced even though that could already be used as an aggravating factor if necessary. New clause 90 is better because it covers not just shop workers, but all people who are on the frontline and providing a service to the public. I hope the other parties will reflect on that and support new clause 90.
Philip Davies
I am not going to give way, because so many people want to speak and there is not much time. I hope the right hon. Lady will forgive me.
New clause 90 is much better, and I hope hon. Members will support it. I will support new clause 31 as well, but new clause 90 is much better. These workers deserve our support. They have done so much for us over recent years. Surely the least that they can expect—the least that they can expect—from this House is for them to see that we are on their side, respect the job they have done and understand the terrible abuse they get, often, as I say, for very little reward, at the hands of their customers. We should be there to protect them.
This will just give the Crown Prosecution Service and the police an extra tool in their armoury to make sure that those who assault frontline workers and shop workers are brought to justice and to make sure that those shop workers and frontline workers get the justice they deserve. This House should be on their side, and I very much hope the Government, at this late stage, will reflect on this and accept new clause 90. It only uses the same wording as the Sentencing Council uses when it considers whether this should be an aggravating factor. It is well-used terminology to describe people who are providing a service to the public, including shop workers. This is a really important moment for the Government, and I hope that they will show they are on the side of our shop workers and frontline workers to whom we owe so much, particularly over the last 15 months.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
As we will have to suspend the debate for the statement at 5 o’clock, after the next speaker I am going to put on a time limit of four minutes just to help guide colleagues.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Because of the time available, I am going to speak to the amendments tabled in my name. First, I will focus on new clauses 26 and 27, which would encourage the public to report all cases of sexual offending, including low-level or non-contact sexual offending, and amendments 20 to 24, which would put in place early interventions for referrals to treatment services to stop sexual offending escalating. There is a great deal of evidence that those who commit low-level or non-contact sexual offences will take more risks if not stopped, and move to increasingly violent sexual crimes.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con) [V]
I speak to oppose new clauses 55 and 42, which I urge colleagues to vote against. New clause 55 is truly shocking on many counts. It would legalise abortions in this country right up to the moment of the birth of a child. No reason would need to be given. The current 24-week limit provision would go. The new clause would legalise sex-selective abortions: an abortion could be legally performed if someone chose to reject an unborn boy or girl. It would remove the requirement for abortions to be carried out by doctors, and the protection for women that abortions should take place on approved premises. It would remove the conscience clause: healthcare professionals could be required to conduct abortions contrary to their conscience or beliefs, or lose their job. It would sweep away current legal safeguards and protections not only for the unborn child, but many that protect women. The Abortion Act 1967 would, in effect, be void.
New clause 55 would be significantly more permissive than the Northern Ireland regulations introduced in 2020, and it would leave England and Wales with one of the most extreme abortion laws in the world. In Europe, the median gestational time limit for abortion is 12 weeks. Here, it is currently 24, with some exceptions. We should not be looking to increase it to 37 weeks—full term. Indeed, we should now be looking to lower it following medical advances over recent years regarding viability—the ability of a child to survive outside the womb at now 22 or even 21 weeks. The proposals are shocking: a viable human being could have his or her life ended up to the point of birth, with no one held accountable, and yet a day later similar actions against a child outside the womb would constitute murder. If, as has happened, the abortion procedure goes wrong, what then? Is the child to be left alone, crying and uncomforted, until it breathes its last? If new clause 55 were put to a vote, I am confident that it would be soundly defeated. The proposal has no place on the amendment paper. It has no place in this House. We are better than this. We are better than this as a Parliament. We are better than this as a country, and our constituents know it. Our inboxes have been flooded with calls to oppose new clause 55. I have had over 150 constituents email urging me to vote against new clause 55—not one constituent has asked me to support it. More than 800 medical professionals have today called for its withdrawal.
Reports indicate that only 1% of women want the current 24-week limit extended, with 70% wanting it lowered. It was lowered in 1990 from 28 weeks to 24 weeks as medical advances improved, and now is the time to reduce it further following greater such advancement. That is what we should be debating today, and I hope we soon will. Let today be a turning point in our approach towards the review of this country’s abortion laws. Let us determine to secure better protection for the unborn child and for women, not worse. New clause 55 has no place in a compassionate, civilised and humane society. If, as I now understand, the proposers tabled it as a probing amendment, then I hope, given the strength of opposition that has gathered in just a few days within and outside this House, they will never contemplate reintroducing it. We are better than this.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) [V]
It is an honour to speak in this debate after having served on the Bill Committee. While I am deeply worried about part 3 of the Bill, which undermines the right to protest, I will spend the short time I have on my amendments, which aim to improve the criminal justice response for victims and those at risk of sexual exploitation and all forms of abuse.
The 2019 national police wellbeing survey identified that 57% of police officers responding reported post-traumatic stress symptoms, which would warrant an evaluation for PTSD. A Police Federation survey of 18,000 members found that attending traumatic or distressing incidents was one of the top 10 reasons why respondents were having psychological difficulties at work. John Apter, chair of the Police Federation, stated in evidence to the Committee:
“The covenant gives us a great opportunity to put in place mandated levels of psychological support and training”.––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 20, Q30.]
My amendment 25 acts on those concerns and would ensure a clear focus within the police covenant on the impact of working with trauma, ensuring that the impact on officers’ wellbeing and morale is mitigated. We owe them that.
Turning to amendment 51, after years of campaigning with Baroness Grey-Thompson and the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) I welcome the measures in the Bill to extend the definition of positions of trust to include faith leaders and sports coaches, which is a vital step in improving safeguarding. However, the Bill still leaves children vulnerable to abuse from other adults in positions of trust, such as driving instructors, private tutors or counsellors. I urge Ministers to adopt my more comprehensive solution, which ensures that children across all activities and settings are protected from adults in positions of trust.
The Bill should do more to address child criminal exploitation. The Children’s Commissioner estimated that at least 27,000 children are at high risk of exploitation by gangs. Despite the scale of child criminal exploitation, there is a lack of shared understanding about what it is and the forms it takes. Questions are not consistently asked when children are identified as being associated with criminal activity. Children are arrested for crimes that they are being forced to commit, while the adults who exploit them are not brought to justice. My new clause 23 would introduce a statutory definition of “child criminal exploitation”. That would enable a shared understanding and a better multi-agency response, and it would support professionals to spot the signs of exploitation earlier and disrupt grooming.
Finally, I turn to new clause 24, which is supported by 41 Members across the House and to which the Minister gave a good hearing. I was astounded when I realised that registered sex offenders are changing their names without notifying the police, despite a legal requirement to do so. Current notification requirements leave the onus on the offender to report a change in their name. The result is that many slip under the radar of the police, with potentially devastating consequences. This serious safeguarding loophole leaves sex offenders free to get a new name, a new driving licence and a passport, and then to secure a new disclosure and barring service check, with which they can go on to gain jobs working with children and vulnerable people. Alarmingly, an FOI request by the Safeguarding Alliance, which I thank for its support on this matter, found that more than 900 registered sex offenders went missing between 2017 and 2020, and that was with only 16 of the 43 forces responding.
We cannot rely on sex offenders to inform the police themselves if they change their names. New clause 24 requires the Government to undertake a review into the problem and to propose solutions within a year of the Bill being passed. I hope that the strength of support for the clause will make the Minister consider working with me to get the changes we seek.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
I welcome this Bill, which backs the police to cut crime, building on our record of cutting crime, backing our front-line officers and reforming our justice system to make sure that criminals spend longer in jail. However, I will focus my comments on new clauses 55 and 42.
Having an abortion is a significant, irreversible and life-changing event for a woman, and I know that most women do not make the decision to abort lightly. Women who seek abortions need compassionate advice and support, but probing new clause 55, tabled by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), is at odds with the recognition that abortion is a difficult and heavy decision that requires support and compassion. Removing safeguards and legal provision around abortion devalues women’s experience of abortion and drives the focus away from quality healthcare.
The amendment’s proposal to decriminalise abortion would, in my view and in the view of numerous constituents in Hastings and Rye who have contacted me on the subject, introduce abortion on demand for any reason up to birth. Abortion would be available on demand for any reason. Evidence shows that after a few weeks, unborn babies are sentient beings in the womb. Who gives them a voice? We should ask ourselves what kind of a society we are that we would condone that.
Dame Diana Johnson
As I expressed in my short contribution, we need to get the facts straight here. Will the hon. Lady point to where the amendment says that there will be no safeguards around abortion? It talks about decriminalisation, not deregulation.
Sally-Ann Hart
The right hon. Lady points out that the amendment talks about decriminalisation, but it does not underline the safeguards. As 800 or so medical professionals said in an open letter to her,
“Your proposal to allow abortion up to birth in this country would be to attack the heart of the medical profession: our core duty to protect life whenever and wherever possible.
The British public prides itself on being a reasonable, humane and tolerant society. Such an extreme and radical abortion law has no place in the UK.”
Seventy per cent. of women favour a reduction in abortion time limits, and we see from recent history that abortion time limits align to the viability of a baby—the point at which a baby can survive inside or outside the womb. We should therefore seek to reduce the time limit, save for exceptions.
New clause 42, introduced by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), would impose censorship zones outside abortion clinics. That goes against the long-standing tradition in the UK that people are free to gather together to express their views. It also goes against this Government’s commitment to human rights and freedom of speech in our party manifesto. The right to protest is the cornerstone of our democracy.
Although I personally find it somewhat offensive and lacking in compassion for people to gather outside an abortion clinic, where women should be given space when accessing an abortion, what I find offensive may be different from what other people find offensive. If we ban speech or assembly because of the likelihood of causing offence, we will have to ban far more than demonstrations outside abortion clinics.
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that many abortion clinics are co-located with general hospitals, which could curtail the rights of trade unionists and health workers to demonstrate outside their own hospital?
Sally-Ann Hart
I acknowledge that that is the case. If we cannot have demonstrations, that sets a dangerous precedent, and I urge hon. Members to reject the new clause. Current laws provide wide-ranging powers for authorities to keep public order and protect women and the public from genuine harassment and intimidation. An extensive review undertaken by the Home Office in 2018 concluded that
“legislation already exists to restrict protest activities that cause harm to others.”
Most notably, under section 59 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, public space protection orders can be used. The UK’s first buffer zone around an abortion clinic was established in 2018 by Ealing Council, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton, using a public space protection order. It prevents protesters from gathering up to 100 metres from the clinic. Other local authority areas have brought in similar public space protection orders. In summary, I urge Members of the House to reject the new clause.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
I rise to speak to the new clauses in my name, and owing to time constraints I will focus my comments mainly on those. I would, however, like to give my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) the chance to intervene further.
Dame Diana Johnson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. When discussing these types of issues in this House, we must look carefully at what is actually in the amendments. We should not just say what we think is in the amendment; we should look at its actual drafting. This Bill is about the criminal law and justice system. It is not about safeguards or anything else to do with healthcare. My amendment is specifically about decriminalisation, as the Government have already done in Northern Ireland.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
Let me highlight the amendments and new clauses that I seek to support, including those on the right to protest in the names of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana). I support those amendments that seek to stand up against the discrimination and persecution of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, particularly those tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) and for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), and those that challenge wider inequalities in the criminal justice system, from class to age, race, sexuality, disability and gender, including the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe). I oppose the introduction of secure academies for 16 to 19-year-olds, which is essentially the expansion of child prisons, as reflected in the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum). I will also support any other amendment or new clause that seeks to remove or address the sinister nature of the Bill.
We can be under no illusion—this is yet another authoritarian clampdown on our civil liberties. The right to peaceful assembly and protest is a fundamental principle of any democracy, and the rich tradition of dissent in this country shows us that such actions can change the course of history. They are the reason that someone of my race, class and gender has the rights I have, and why I can stand here as a Member of this House. We must not forget that the struggles and protests being demonised by this Bill are seen as the milestones of progress in our society. The suffrage movement, for example, faced considerable state repression and police brutality.
My new clauses 56 and 57 call respectively for a review of stop-and-search powers and for a public inquiry into how the criminal justice system affects black, Asian and minority ethnic people. BAME people are more than nine times as likely to be stopped and searched by police, yet this Government think that it is okay just to plough ahead, exacerbating the situation further. Just last week, the United Nations released a report analysing racial justice in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and called on member states, including the UK, to end impunity for police officers who violate the human rights of black people. A 2019 report by the Women and Equalities Committee recognised that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are one of the most persecuted groups in Europe, yet the Government seek literally to persecute them further through the Bill.
We need a full public inquiry into the disproportionality that exists at every single level and junction of the criminal justice system. High prosecution rates, higher custody rates, longer-than-average custodial sentences, disproportionate representation in the prison system and deaths in custody—this is what under-represented communities have come to expect. We need answers, and then we need justice in order to move forward.
The Black Lives Matter movement and the protests that sprang from it sought to challenge these injustices—and what was the Government’s response to national calls to end institutional racism? It was to commission a report that said there was no institutional racism, and to introduce a policing Bill that will only further criminalise and brutalise these communities. If the Government were actually listening to what the BLM protesters said, they would not be bringing in a Bill like this.
Why not follow the example of the England football team, who have inspired us during Euro 2020 not only with their football prowess, but with their collective and principled bravery in taking the knee, representing the very best of us and our communities? To quote Gareth Southgate, it is about a
“duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice, while using the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate”.
He is a football manager—he does not work for this House, but he does much better than we do, day to day.
I know with all my heart that I am on the right side of history. I urge hon. Members to stand with me and stop the criminalisation of black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and of every single under-represented group that will be destroyed by legislation such as this.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Could the last two speakers stick to four minutes?
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will speak quickly about new clauses 42 and 55, which concern the regulation of abortion.
New clause 42, tabled by the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq), proposes the creation of censorship zones around abortion clinics. The intention behind it is to stop the harassment of women seeking abortion.
We already have laws against harassment which can be, and are, applied. We also already have public order laws that allow councils to impose restrictions regarding specific clinics that are experiencing any real public order difficulties, so the activity that the new clause proposes to criminalise is peaceful, passive, non-obstructive activity—less disruptive than the sort of protests that Opposition Members are so busy trying to defend today. I recognise the good faith behind the new clause, but in practice it is an attempt to criminalise the expression of an opinion. I cite the campaigner Peter Tatchell, who said today that it is an
“unjustifiable restriction on the right to free expression.”
I urge the House to vote it down.
New clause 55, tabled by the right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), would not criminalise anything; it would decriminalise something, namely abortion itself up to term. It would effectively legalise abortion on demand up to birth. She is keen that we pay attention to the text of her new clause, so I shall quote from it:
“No offence is committed…by…a woman who terminates her own pregnancy or who assists in or consents to such termination”.
The effect would be to legalise or to decriminalise abortion up to birth.
I am not arguing that the new clause is an attempt to deregulate abortion, although I believe that that might be the effect; my objection is to the principle. It says a very, very terrible thing about the value that we place on an unborn life if we simply say that it should be determined by whether or not the mother would like to keep it—by whether that baby is wanted or not. Let us think of that in terms of other lives—a newborn child, a disabled person or a vulnerable elderly person: when their family is unable to look after them, the community and the state step in. We should apply that principle in the case of a child in the womb, especially one that is still viable and could live outside the womb. I urge the House not to support new clause 55.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I will speak to amendment 1, which has cross-party support, and amendments 2 to 7, which would remove the provisions in the Bill that affect the right to protest.
In passing, I point out that a number of other issues are in play today, and goodness only knows what such a debate must look like to those looking in from the outside, but that is the consequence of the inadequacy of the time that has been made available to us. I will therefore limit my remarks strictly to the amendments that stand in my name.
Essentially the objection that many of us have to the proposals is that, first, the Government have got the balance badly wrong, and, secondly, their language in trying to strike that balance is among the vaguest and most imprecise I have ever seen as either a legal practitioner or a parliamentarian.
To ban protest on the basis that it would be noisy or cause serious annoyance may appeal to many parents of teenagers up and down the country, but we have to do rather better when fundamental issues of free speech are in play. Many years ago, it was said—the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) may have heard the same thing—that in Scots law, a breach of the peace was almost anything that two cops did not quite like the look of. It seems to me that what the Government want to do here, in regulating not the conduct of a few drunks on the high street on a Saturday night but the fundamental right to protest, is to take the law back to that imprecise state of affairs. The risk is that that serves only to pit the police against the protesters. It will not be the Home Secretary who makes a decision about what is noisy and causes serious annoyance, but police officers, often those on the ground at the time. That risks undermining the fundamental principle of policing by consent, which has always underpinned the way in which we police protest and, indeed, all behaviour in this country.
I remain of the view that the provisions will be ineffective and have a chilling effect. I do not believe for one second that, if the Bill becomes law, Extinction Rebellion will look at it and say, “Oh well, we can’t possibly go out and protest on the streets of the capital. We’d maybe better just go home and email our Members of Parliament.” Although I have heard some in the House say that even that is seriously annoying sometimes. The Bill will not stop Extinction Rebellion protesting.
However, communities throughout the country who face a challenge to hospitals, schools, traffic management and so on will look at the Bill and think, “Actually, it’s not safe for us to use our voice and to protest against what is being done to our community.” For that reason, as in so many other cases, I believe that this is a fundamentally mistaken provision. The only amendments we can seek to introduce are those that would excise it from the Bill, where they should never have been in the first place.
Steve Brine
I am listening to what the right hon. Gentleman says. He does not want Conservative Members to smear Opposition amendments, so in that spirit, I point out that the Bill does not ban protest. Is he not tempted by new clause 85, which my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) spoke about, and which provides for a code for the policing of protest?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I am sorry, but I will have to ask the right hon. Gentleman to take 30 seconds.
Mr Carmichael
And 30 seconds, because of the nature of the programme motion that the House has passed, is inadequate, so I am afraid I will pass the hon. Gentleman up on that. There might be some future point at which we can return to it. That shows the inadequacy of the way the Government are dealing with this. In the absence of any amendable propositions, I urge the House simply to take these provisions out of the Bill.
Debate interrupted.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I am going to suspend the House for one minute. After the statement, there will be a three-minute limit on speeches.
Covid-19 Update
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Before I call the Secretary of State, I would like to point out that a British Sign Language interpretation of the statement will be available to watch on parliamentlive.tv. I call Secretary Javid to make his statement—and I welcome him back to the Front Bench at the same time.
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Sajid Javid)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I am extremely grateful to you for accommodating the timing of this statement.
I would like to update the House on the pandemic and our road map to freedom. This morning, I joined some of the remarkable people who have been at the heart of the pandemic response at a service to mark the NHS’s 73th birthday at St Paul’s Cathedral. Together, we reflected on a year like no other for the NHS and for our country. I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House will join me in celebrating the decision by Her Majesty the Queen to award the NHS the George Cross. I can think of no more fitting tribute to the NHS. I know that everyone in this House—indeed, everyone in this country—will celebrate that award.
There is no greater demonstration of our high regard for the NHS than the manner in which we all stepped up to protect it. Now, it is thanks to the NHS and many others that we are vaccinating our way out of this pandemic and out of these restrictions. Eighty-six per cent. of UK adults have had at least one jab, and 64% have had two. We are reinforcing our vaccine wall of defence further still. I can tell the House that we are reducing the dose interval for under-40s from 12 weeks to eight, which will mean that every adult should have had the chance to be double-jabbed by mid-September.
And those vaccines are working. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows that eight in 10 adults have the covid-19 antibodies that are so important in helping our bodies to fight this disease. When we look at people aged over 50—the people who got the jab earlier in the programme—that figure rises to more than nine in 10. Allow me to set out why all this is so important.
Before we started putting jabs into arms, whenever we saw a rise in cases, it would inevitably be followed by a rise in hospitalisations and, tragically, a rise in deaths. Yet today, even though cases are heading upwards, in line with what we expected, hospitalisations are increasing at a much lower rate and deaths are at just 1% of the figure that we saw at the peak. Our vaccines are building a wall of protection against hospitalisation. And, jab by jab, brick by brick, that wall is getting higher.
For those people who sadly do find themselves having to go to hospital, we have better treatments than ever before. Last week on my visit to St Thomas’ Hospital, clinicians were telling me just how transformative dexamethasone has been in their effort to save lives. Taken together, the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths is being severely weakened. That means that we can start to learn to live with covid.
As we do that, it is important that we are straight with the British people. Cases of covid-19 are rising and will continue to rise significantly. We can reasonably expect that, by 19 July, the number of daily cases will be far higher than today. Against this backdrop, many people will be understandably cautious about easing restrictions. After many months of uncertainty, that is entirely natural. But we can now protect the NHS without having to go to the extraordinary lengths that we have had to in the past. That is not to say that this is going to be easy.
Of course, the pandemic is not over. The virus is still with us; it has not gone away. The risk of a dangerous new variant that evades vaccines remains real. We know that, with covid-19, the situation can change and it can change quickly, but we cannot put our lives on hold forever. My responsibility as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care includes helping us to turn and face the other challenges that we know we must also address, from mental health to social care to the challenges of long covid. I am also determined to get to work on busting the backlog—the backlog that has been caused by this pandemic and which we know will get a lot worse before it gets better.
As I set out to the House last week, I remain confident that we can move to step 4 in England on 19 July and that the Government will make their final decision on this on 12 July, so today I wish to set out further details of what step 4 will look like. In essence, our national response to covid will change from one of rules and regulations to one of guidance and good sense. We will revoke all social distancing guidance, including the 2 metre rule, except for in specific settings such as ports of entry and medical settings, where of course it would continue to make sense.
It will no longer be a legal requirement to wear face coverings in any setting, including public transport, although we will advise this as a voluntary measure for crowded and enclosed spaces. It will no longer be necessary to work from home. There will be no limits on the number of people we can meet. There will no limits on the number of people who can attend life events such as weddings and funerals, and there will be no restrictions on communal worship or singing.
We will remove legal requirements on how businesses operate. Capacity caps will all be lifted and there will no longer be any requirement to offer table service. All businesses that were forced to close their doors will be able to open them once again. And we will lift the cap on named care home visitors so that families can come together in the ways they choose to do so. Ministers will provide further statements this week on self-isolation for fully vaccinated people, including for international travel, and on restrictions in education settings, including the removal of bubbles and contact isolation in schools.
Today, I can also confirm to the House that we have completed our review of certification. While already a feature of international travel, we have concluded that we do not think using certification as a condition of entry is a way to go. For people who have not been offered a full course of vaccination and for businesses, we felt that the impact outweighed the public health benefits. Of course, businesses can use covid-status certification at their own discretion and, from step 4 onwards, the NHS covid pass will be accessible through the NHS app and other digital routes. This will be the main way that people can provide their covid status—a status that they will achieve once they have completed a full vaccine course, a recent negative test or some other proof of natural immunity.
Taken together, step 4 is the biggest step of all: a restoration of so many of the freedoms that make this country great. We know that, as a consequence, cases will rise, just as they have done at every step on our road map, but this time our wall of protection will help us.
While step 4 will be the moment to let go of many restrictions, we must hold on to those everyday, sensible decisions that can help make us all safe. The responsibility to combat covid-19 lies with each and every one of us. That means staying at home when you are asked to self-isolate. It means considering the guidance that we are setting out, and it means getting the jab—both doses. When you are offered it, please, please take the jabs. This is something that everyone can do to make a contribution towards this national effort. It may even mean, for some people, that they will get three jabs in a single year. Last week, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation provided interim advice on who to prioritise for a third dose, and our most vulnerable will be offered booster covid-19 jabs from September in time for the winter.
And preparing for the winter ahead is not just about covid, but flu as well. Because of the measures in place this winter, almost nobody in the UK has had flu for 18 months now. That is obviously a good thing but it does mean that immunity from flu is down. This winter’s flu campaign will be more important than ever, and we are currently looking at whether we can give people the covid-19 booster shot and the flu jab at the same time.
Step 4 is the next step in our country’s journey out of this pandemic. I know that, after so many difficult months, it is a step that many of us will look upon with a great deal of caution, but it is one that we will all take together, with a growing wall of defence against this virus—a wall that each and every one of us can help build higher. It is vital that each of us plays our part to protect ourselves and to protect others into better days ahead. I commend this statement to the House.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
I start by paying tribute to our NHS on its 73rd anniversary and thank again our extraordinary health and care workforce. The best birthday present they could have, of course, is a fair pay rise, not the proposed real-terms pay cut that is currently on offer.
We all want to see these restrictions end. Lockdowns are a sign of policy failure and I hope that, when the Secretary of State makes the final decision next week, it will be based on the data, the modelling and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advice, but let us be absolutely clear about what he is talking about today. When only 50% of the total population across England are fully vaccinated and another 17% are partially, his strategy, as he indeed was gracious enough to concede, accepts that infections will surge further and continue to rise steeply, and accepts that hospitalisations will continue to rise until they reach a peak—presumably later this summer. Some of those hospitalised will sadly die, and thousands upon thousands of mostly children and younger people, but others as well, will be left exposed to a virus mainly because they have no vaccination protection—we also know that even double-jabbed people can catch and transmit the virus—and many of them will be at risk of serious long-term chronic illness, the personal impact of which may be felt for years to come.
Even though vaccination may have broken the link with mortality, there are still questions about the link to morbidity. As part of the Secretary of State’s strategy of learning to live with covid, will he spell out today for the British public what that actually means? How many deaths does he consider are acceptable when we are living with covid? How many cases of long covid does he consider acceptable when we are living with covid? Given that we know that covid can escape and evolve when the virus circulates at high rates, what risk assessment has he done on the possibility of a new variant emerging? Will he publish it?
The Secretary of State says that every date for unlocking carries risk and that that is why we need to learn to live with covid, but we should not have to take a high-risk approach. We should be pushing down risk. Indeed, we mitigate risk across society all the time. We do not just accept other diseases; we take interventions to try to prevent them. Why is he therefore collapsing all mitigations completely when he knows that covid rates will continue to rise? He will be aware that Israel has reintroduced its mask mandate because of the delta variant, so why is he planning to bin ours? Masks do not restrict freedoms in a pandemic when so much virus is circulating. They ensure that everyone who goes to the shops or who takes public transport can do so safely, because wearing a mask protects others. If nobody is masked, covid risk increases and we are all less safe. He must understand that those in the shielding community are particularly anxious. Why should they feel shut out of public transport and shops because he has abandoned the mask mandate? That is no definition of freedom that I recognise.
Who else suffers when masks are removed? It is those working in shops, those who drive the buses, those who drive taxis and those who work in hospitality—it is the low-paid workers who have also been without access to decent sick pay. Many of them live in overcrowded accommodation. It is those who have been savagely, disproportionately impacted by the virus from day one and now the Secretary of State is asking them to bear the brunt of the increased risk again. Will he explain why he thinks abandoning masks is a sensible proposal to follow?
Given that people will still need to isolate, as the Secretary of State recognised, and that test and trace will still be in operation, will he accept that living with the virus will mean that, more so than ever, those who are sick will need to isolate themselves from the rest of society? Will he therefore ensure that they are paid proper sick pay and isolation support to do it? Does he agree that it has been a monstrous failure of the past 15 months that isolation support has not been in place?
Now, masks are effective because we know that the virus is airborne. The Secretary of State could therefore further mitigate covid risks by insisting on ventilation standards in premises and crowded buildings. He could offer grants for air filtration systems. Instead, all we get is more Government advice. Ventilation in buildings and grants to support air filtration systems do not restrict anyone’s freedoms. Indeed, they would probably help get back into school some of those 400,000 children who have been off school because of covid.
Yesterday, the Secretary of State said that he believed the best way to protect the nation’s health was to lift all restrictions. I know he boasts of his student years at Harvard studying pandemics, but I think he may well have missed the tutorial on infectious disease control because widespread transmission will not make us healthier. We are not out of the woods yet. We want to see lockdown end, but we need those lifesaving mitigations in place. We need sick pay, local contact tracing, continued mask wearing on public transport and ventilation in buildings and schools to prevent further illness. I hope, when the right hon. Gentleman returns next week, he has put those measures in place.
Sajid Javid
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. First, I think he started by asking for reassurance on whether the final decision on go or no go for 19 July, which we will make on 12 July, will be informed by the very best expert data. Of course it will be, just as every decision has been informed in that way. I am only about a week into the job, but I must say that I am incredibly impressed by our scientists, medical advisers and Public health England. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to all they have been doing.
Turning to the right hon. Gentleman’s second point about the link between cases and hospitalisation and death, that is absolutely central to the next step we are taking. Case numbers are high. As I said, they will go significantly higher and we need to be ready for that, but what is far more important is how many people are ending up in hospital and how many, sadly, are dying. That is where the vaccines have worked, alongside the treatments we now have that we did not have a year or so ago. That has meant that the link between cases and deaths has been severely weakened. The last time we had 25,000 new cases a day, we had around 500 deaths a day. The level now is a thirtieth of that. I know the right hon. Gentleman will welcome that and understand that there is no absolutely risk-free way to move forward, but we need to start returning things back towards normal and learning to live with covid.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about masks. Again, we have taken the best public health advice. He will know from what I have said that, although we will remove all legal requirements for anyone to wear a mask in any setting, we expect people to behave sensibly and think about others around them. The guidance will be there. If one is on public transport—let us say on a very crowded tube—it would be sensible to wear a mask, not least to show respect for others. However, if you are the only person in a carriage late at night on the east coast main line, then you can choose much more easily not to wear a mask because there is hardly anyone else around. We expect and trust people to make sensible decisions. That is the way we should move ahead.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about compensation and sick pay. He knows that many measures are in place and we will continue to keep them under review.
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con)
I support the approach the Secretary of State is taking for the simple reason that two doses of the vaccine work against the delta variant, but with 350,000 new cases daily across the world the battle against this pandemic is far from over. Does he agree that if we want to prevent another lockdown in the run-up to winter, apart from the booster jab programme the most important thing we can do is to improve the way test and trace works? In Korea, they managed to use it to stop any lockdowns. Here, it failed to stop three lockdowns. The head of test and trace told my Health and Social Care Committee that between 20% and 40% of people were not isolating when they were asked to. With his fresh eyes in the job, will he ask officials for new advice on what we can do to improve test and trace to stop further lockdowns?
Sajid Javid
First, may I thank my right hon. Friend for his support for the measures? He speaks with great experience and I want to thank him for that. Regarding test, trace and isolate, he is right. There are many successes over the past year that we can be proud of, but there are also many improvements that can be made. I have already asked for such advice and I look forward to talking to him about that in future.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP) [V]
This pandemic is very far from over, so, with cases soaring across the UK, I am surprised that the Health Secretary is planning to end all covid measures. The delta variant, which was allowed into the UK due to the failure of border quarantine, is twice as infectious as the original, and is infecting younger age groups, including children. It also shows significant vaccine escape, with only 33% protection against infection from the first dose. While receiving two doses of either vaccine dramatically reduces hospitalisation, the numbers are rising and only half the population are fully vaccinated. That means that the other half are not, and many will not have that opportunity until near the end of September.
The Secretary of State talks about the percentage of adults who are fully vaccinated, but he must know that that is not how herd immunity works. It is achieved by reducing the number of susceptible people in the whole population to stop onward spread of the virus. The UK Government’s failure to lock down last September allowed the alpha variant to emerge in the south-east of England and spread across the UK and, indeed, the rest of the world. If the Health Secretary is going to just let it rip, how does he plan to avoid generating yet another UK variant with even greater vaccine resistance?
With more than 150,000 people dead, why has the Secretary of State returned to the false narrative that covid is just like flu? Is it just wishful thinking? Why is he planning to end even simple measures such as mask wearing? He has suggested that people need to learn to live with it, but appears to be completely ignoring the risk of long covid, which is already affecting more than a million people, including children. How does he plan to avoid soaring cases of long covid in unvaccinated young adults and children? Does he consider them to be collateral damage, or just a price worth paying?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Lady started off well, but her contribution completely degenerated into political point-scoring. She should know much better than to engage in scaremongering among the Scottish people and the British people. She has no respect for what is happening, as we try to treat this whole issue with a degree of respect and seriousness. She used the phrase, “Let it rip”. If anything, the only part of the UK where cases could be described as “ripping” is in Scotland where the case rate is higher than in any other part of the UK. In fact, it has seven of the 10 highest hotspots in Europe in terms of its number of cases, and she should reflect on that.
The hon. Lady claimed that I had suggested that covid is like flu. I have never said that. It would be complete nonsense for anyone to suggest that covid is like flu. She should think about the millions of people across the world affected by this and the thousands of people who have died in the UK. How dare she even raise that—it is as if she is suggesting that it is like flu. In the same way that we have had to learn to live with flu, even though, sadly, in some years, we have had 20,000 deaths from flu, we will have to learn to live with covid. The hon. Lady should reflect on what she has said and stop playing political football with this serious issue.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his role and say to him in public—I hope that I have also said it to him in private—that, when he was Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, he was one of the few Ministers who understood the plight of residential leaseholders, and I thank him for that, and I hope that he will do as well in this job. May I put it to him that, as well as the recognition of the National Health Service, it would be a good idea if we found some way of recognising the role of teachers and their assistants in schools who have done so much to keep the young people of this country in education and occupied, even though remotely. Many people have contributed to that. May I also say to him that, despite the occasional political remarks that any of us may make, I hope he will work with the other nations of the United Kingdom and around the world so that we can defeat the impact of this condition together.
Sajid Javid
I thank the Father of the House for his kind comments. He may have heard me say earlier that the Education Secretary will talk much more tomorrow about the action we will be taking around schools and educational settings, including the removal of the bubble requirement from 19 July. He made an excellent point about working not just across the United Kingdom—despite what the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) said a moment ago there is great co-operation between us, which will continue—but internationally, both through our leadership of the G7 and the COVAX alliance.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]
The Secretary of State will be aware that, compared with the rest of the population, double vaccination provides a much reduced level of protection for clinically extremely vulnerable people with compromised immune systems. He will also be aware that pregnant women in their third trimester are considered clinically vulnerable. Many people in such groups are anxious about what today’s announcements mean for them. Will he confirm what advice is being published for the clinically extremely valuable? Specifically, will he consider allowing pregnant women to have their second jab after 21 days?
Sajid Javid
There will, of course, be people who are sadly more vulnerable to this virus who will be concerned about step 4. I entirely understand that caution and anxiety, and we will publish further guidance along the lines that the hon. Lady mentioned. As for her question on second doses for pregnant women, I will have to take advice on that.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I warn colleagues that this statement will finish at 6 o’clock due to the need to get back to the debate on the Bill, so I urge colleagues to be brief.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The majority of my constituents will welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, but NHS Digital data shows that the case rate in the council area is 591 per 100,000. That is considerably ahead of the national average and is causing inevitable concern, particularly among elderly and vulnerable groups. I have full confidence in the local NHS, the council and other officials dealing with the situation, but if it continues to worsen, will my right hon. Friend meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici) to discuss whether additional support and resources are required?
Sajid Javid
I of course understand the importance of my hon. Friend’s question. As I said in my statement, I believe that the case rate nationally, including in his constituency, will worsen, but the hospitalisation and death rates are far more important. He will have heard what I said earlier, but I am more than happy to meet him on any occasion to discuss such issues further.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for the central Government approach to drive the vaccine roll-out across all of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—better together, as always. The approach outlined by Government seems sensible. Will the Secretary of State outline what discussions have taken place with his Health counterpart in Northern Ireland to ensure that Northern Ireland moves forward cautiously and carefully at a similar pace, bearing in mind our level of transmission, in tandem with the need to be wise and wary?
Sajid Javid
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks about the vaccine. As he says, it is a successful UK-wide programme, and the take up of vaccinations in Northern Ireland is just as high as in any other part of the UK. I am working closely with my counterpart in Northern Ireland. We have already had two discussions in a week, and we will be speaking and co-ordinating on a regular basis. Things are working well.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, which will be greeted with a sense of relief across the country due to the profound challenges that people have faced during the lockdowns. This success is, of course, possible only because of the vaccine roll-out, so will he keep up the pressure to ensure that as many people as possible are vaccinated? While doing that, will he also focus on the significant catch-up required to deal with other health conditions? I am thinking particularly of mental health and cancer.
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is right to raise that matter. He points out—certain Members of this House sometimes miss this—that the pandemic has caused many other non-covid health problems, and he mentions two of the most important. We are seeing plenty of evidence of increased mental health problems, and departmental officials think that at least some 40,000 people who would have come forward for cancer referrals in a normal year have not done so. That is a reminder of why it is important for us to move back towards freedom and to learn to live with covid.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC) [V]
The Welsh Government have suggested that an easing of Welsh restrictions is unlikely before 19 July, and any divergence in the rules applicable on either side of the border will raise questions of enforcement. The responsibility for enforcing social distancing rules on trains lies with the British Transport police, so what discussions has the Health Secretary had with the Secretary of State for Transport and, indeed, the Welsh Government regarding the status of restrictions on cross-border rail travel?
Sajid Javid
It is understandable that there has been a difference in approach between Wales and England, and clearly that will continue, but we will continue to co-ordinate. I know that my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), co-ordinated on a regular basis with his Welsh counterpart, and when it comes to transport, my Welsh counterpart and I will work carefully with the Secretary of State for Transport.
Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
It is hugely significant and welcome that the link between cases and hospitalisation seems to have been broken by the vaccine. I would like to echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) has just said. Can my right hon. Friend assure me, notwithstanding the risks he has pointed out such as potential variants and increased cases, that the NHS will have the focus and the resources to continue to bear down on the backlog of cases such as cancer, which is scaring my constituents and everyone else?
Sajid Javid
Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. The backlog is already at 5 million, and as I have said today, it is unfortunately going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I think we can all understand why, but today’s announcement will certainly have helped in our march to clear the backlog. My hon. Friend will know that the Government have given significant additional funding, in the billions, to help with that, but there will be a lot more to come in dealing with the priorities, especially cancer.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
All the warm words from the Secretary of State towards the NHS at the top of his statement were completely demolished by his attitude towards a breast cancer surgeon when he said that she should know better. The reality is that she does know better, and he should apologise to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) for those absolutely outrageous comments. And to use the escalation of cases in Scotland as a political tool is absolutely disgraceful. I want to talk about the—
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con) [V]
I apologise for any discourtesy to the House in not being able to be there in person. The Prime Minister has confirmed that there will be contingency measures in place for winter, and even if they are not legal restrictions, they will have an effect on business. Can the Secretary of State confirm what they are, and publish the details so that Members can scrutinise them at the earliest opportunity?
Sajid Javid
I believe that my right hon. Friend is referring to our keeping in place contingency measures, particularly for local authorities—the so-called No. 3 regulations—at least until the end of September in case those powers are needed in the event of a local break-out. Of course, there is no intention at this point that those powers will be used, but we believe it is necessary to have powers in place just in case. He will have heard me talking earlier about the risk that still exists from new variants. That is the plan, but I would be happy to discuss that with him further.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]
Can the Secretary of State explain why, when other public health and safety measures are not left up to individuals to decide, he thinks that that is an appropriate approach to covid? Failing to mandate mask-wearing in stuffy crowded places such as public transport, where people are often pressed together for much longer than 15 minutes, risks high costs, and allowing people to choose whether or not to put others at risk is both reckless and unfair. If the freedom to pelt down the motorway at 100 mph is restricted because it poses risks to others, why, with millions still unvaccinated, with some immunosuppressed and with the risk of long covid rising, does the Health Secretary not apply the same logic to mask-wearing?
Sajid Javid
I understand where the hon. Lady is coming from, but the important thing is that we have to learn to live with covid, which means that we have at some point to confront and start removing the restrictions that have been necessary until now. Now is the best time to do that, because of the defence that has been built by the vaccine.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
We will never again sacrifice free enterprise, freedom of association and freedom of worship in order to manage hospital admissions, will we?
Sajid Javid
I take it from that that my right hon. Friend is pleased with today’s announcements.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Some have suggested that removing all restrictions in the way that the Secretary of State has announced will create factories for new variants in parts of our communities. What advice has he received from experts about the potential for new variants? What contingencies has he planned for containing such an outbreak if one were to occur?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Gentleman will have heard in my statement that no course of action that we take now is without risk, and I think he understands that. There is still a pandemic—as I said, it is not over—so we will of course continue first to monitor for new variants, and to have border restrictions and some test, trace and isolate procedures in place. Those measures, taken together with the success of the vaccine programme, are the best answer to his question.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) [V]
One headteacher in my constituency tells a tale of losing more than 2,700 days of education, having 390 children sent home and zero transmission among pupils in school. So will my right hon. Friend assure me that swift action will be taken to ensure that children can get back to school and headteachers can get back to teaching as soon as possible, without the damage the current situation is creating?
Sajid Javid
Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. The Education Secretary will be saying more later this week, but I can confirm to my hon. Friend that on 19 July it is our plan to remove bubbles and end the requirement for early years settings, schools and colleges to carry out contact tracing routinely. I will have more to say on how we intend to exempt under-18s who are close contacts from the requirement to self-isolate.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Given that masks help to reduce the spread of not just covid, but all kinds of respiratory diseases, is it not important to avoid mixed messages and encourage everyone to continue that kind of practice and the likes of good hand hygiene as a relatively routine part of a new normal, to stop coughs and sneezes from spreading diseases?
Sajid Javid
I think the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that people should have the freedom to wear a mask if they wish, but it should not be mandatory—it should not be mandated by law. There are countries—I lived in Singapore for three years—where people would wear masks if they were feeling unwell, out of respect for others. If people choose to do that here, that will be a good thing, but it will not be a requirement from the Government. As I said, in certain settings—crowded places such the tube in London—many people would choose to wear masks, despite its not being a legal requirement.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con) [V]
The immunosuppressed want to know what the plan is for them. Will they be allowed tests for spike antibody levels on the NHS? Will they be able to get a booster before September if their antibody tests show that they have no protection, despite being vaccinated?
Sajid Javid
My right hon. Friend asks an important question and we are still considering what more we can do to give more confidence to the immunosuppressed, and we will be saying more on this shortly.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab) [V]
Until recently, Ministers were saying that decisions would be based on the link between infection and hospitalisation, but although the link has been weakened, it has not been broken. Hospitalisations are up 20% in the last week, and they have doubled in a month. We all want to unlock the economy, but surely we should maintain barriers to infection where we can. The Secretary of State has said that wearing masks would be a good thing, so will he accept that requiring them on public transport, in essential shops and in similar locations would make sense and would reassure people?
Sajid Javid
No one is suggesting that because of the vaccines, the link between cases and hospitalisation has been completely broken. What I have said, and this is a fact based on the evidence we are seeing, is that it has been significantly weakened. That is clear from the data we are getting on a daily basis. If we look at England, with a case rate of 25,000, I think less than 2,000 people are currently with covid in hospital. That is far lower than we saw before when we had such a high case rate.
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his statement setting out the way forward. In the 150 years since the foundation of Cheadle’s Together Trust, it has championed and cared for people from 18 to 30 years old with disabilities. When I met its dedicated team last week, it was clear that having navigated the challenges of covid, it was preparing for the future. As the Government look to set out a new vision for health and social care, can the Secretary of State reassure voluntary and third-sector bodies such as the Together Trust that they will have their invaluable contribution recognised and be included as equal partners in its design?
Sajid Javid
I am very happy to give my hon. Friend that assurance. The Cheadle Together Trust and many other third-party and voluntary organisations across the country really stepped up during the pandemic when the country most needed them. We will continue to work with them, and I think that, at a suitable moment, we should give them the recognition they deserve.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
It is a dereliction of duty by the Secretary of State for Health to tell people to live with the virus while denying people the basic financial and other support they need. In two weeks’ time, with restrictions lifted, there could be over 60,000 cases per day, and the Government say this will surge further. Huge numbers are denied the self-isolation payment and tens of thousands of people each day will be forced to isolate on statutory sick pay of just £96 per week. I ask the Secretary of State: could he live on £96 per week?
Sajid Javid
It is right that we provide support, including financial support, for those who are isolating and finding things difficult. We will continue to do so, and we will keep that under review.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to the story over the weekend about three batches of AstraZeneca vaccines affecting 5 million people and their prospects of travelling to the EU. I must declare an interest in that I have vaccinated many people with this batch and, indeed, had the batch myself. Can the Secretary of State confirm that this is purely a bureaucratic issue and that the vaccines are exactly the same, and will he update the House about what talks he has had with the EU to resolve this problem?
Sajid Javid
I thank my hon. Friend for the work that he has personally been doing during the pandemic. I can tell him that all doses used in the UK have been subject to very rigorous safety and quality checks, including individual batch testing and physical site inspections, and this is all done by the medical regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab) [V]
Given that Americans and other Europeans have already been free to travel again for some time, and given that we were promised a vaccine dividend, when can the millions of British families who are separated from loved ones abroad or who simply want a foreign holiday expect to get back the same freedoms that other Europeans and Americans already enjoy?
Sajid Javid
I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that that will happen very soon, and the Secretary of State for Transport will have more to say on this very shortly.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Last week, I said that I wanted to see from the new Secretary of State
“a change in policy as much as a change in tone.”—[Official Report, 28 June 2021; Vol. 698, c. 60.]
We have had that today, or at least an indication of it for next Monday, and I am grateful. Will my right hon. Friend give us an insight into his thinking about the future of test and trace? Surely it cannot continue as now, with contacts of contacts—even if they are double-vaccinated—being forced into isolation for 10 days at a time, with all the knock-on effects that that has on society and the economy.
Sajid Javid
I will be making a statement to Parliament on just that issue. I think I will probably make it tomorrow.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) [V]
Last December, Professor Sir Michael Marmot revealed that the high and unequal covid death toll across England was down to historic structural inequalities that successive Conservative Governments have allowed to go unchecked. Last week, he quantified that, showing that Greater Manchester had a 25% higher covid death toll because of those structural socioeconomic inequalities. When will the Health Secretary deliver on the Prime Minister’s promise to me in January to implement Sir Michael’s recommendations to address those inequalities in my constituency and others, and ensure that we build back fairer?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Lady raises an important issue. We have seen, sadly, that through the pandemic, because of various inequalities up and down the country, some people have suffered a lot more than others. It is an important point, and we need to do more—we all collectively need to learn from this. I give her the assurance that I know that Public Health England and the chief medical officer are looking into it and will report to Ministers shortly.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, but may I ask for clarity? On the legal requirement to wear face coverings, including on public transport, he stated that
“we will advise this as a voluntary measure for crowded and enclosed spaces.”
Should that be “crowded enclosed spaces”? Does he intend to put out guidance? What will he do to ensure that private operators cannot mandate it outside that guidance?
Sajid Javid
I can tell my hon. Friend that the guidance is really asking people to use their common sense. If there are many other people around them, particularly if those people might be more vulnerable—older people, let us say, or groups who for some reason may be unvaccinated—we are really just saying, “Use your common sense.” I think that everyone in Britain will do just that. In private settings, it will be up to private businesses—shops, for example—to decide what they wish to do.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. We will suspend the House for one minute to make arrangements for the next business.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill
Monday 5th July 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 5 July 2021 - (5 Jul 2021)
18:30 - The House divided: - Ayes: 233 / Noes: 350 - Question accordingly negatived.
18:42 - The House divided: - Ayes: 81 / Noes: 358 - Question accordingly negatived.
18:50 - The House divided: - Ayes: 273 / Noes: 354 - Question accordingly negatived.
18:57 - The House divided: - Ayes: 265 / Noes: 358 - Question accordingly negatived.
21:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 220 / Noes: 366 - Question accordingly negatived.
21:10 - The House divided: - Ayes: 229 / Noes: 355 - Question accordingly negatived.
21:18 - The House divided: - Ayes: 227 / Noes: 356 - Question accordingly negatived.
21:26 - The House divided: - Ayes: 232 / Noes: 354 - Question accordingly negatived.
22:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 365 / Noes: 265 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), albeit after rather a long break. I declare my interest as a barrister.
I am pleased to contribute to the debate on Report. During and since my election campaign, and particularly during the recent election campaign for our new police and crime commissioner, I have had the opportunity to speak to many constituents in Derbyshire Dales about law and order generally. I am a firm believer in listening to my constituents: they are hard-working and law-abiding, and I respect what they are telling me. They tell me that they want to feel safe and feel protected in their own homes and in the areas in which they live. There is much to offer them in this excellent Bill.
Two aspects of the Bill particularly interest my constituents. First, they want to see tougher sentences for convicted criminals, and this Bill delivers that. I particularly support two proposals: tougher community sentences doubling the time for which offenders will be subject to overnight curfews, rising from 12 months to two years; and the ending of the automatic early release of dangerous criminals. I am pleased to say that the Bill firmly delivers on what my constituents are requesting—tougher sentences—and I wholeheartedly support it.
Secondly, I receive a lot of correspondence from constituents whose lives are disrupted by unauthorised and illegal encampments that cause alarm and distress to local residents. This Government are the first of many Governments to have the courage to address these long-standing issues. I welcome the provisions that will give the police the power to seize vehicles and arrest or fine trespassers who are intent on residing on private or public land without permission while ensuring that they will not be able to return for 12 months. This is long overdue. I have many constituents who write to me regularly in towns such as Matlock, Bakewell and Ashbourne whose lives have been very badly affected by illegal encampments, and this must stop. It is of course very important to make sure that local authorities fulfil their statutory duty to provide permanent sites for groups such as Travellers so that they can stay within the law and enjoy their traditional life, but illegal encampments must stop.
I commend the huge breadth of provisions in this Bill. I am so pleased that the Government have had the courage to address so many different areas in such a relatively short space of time.
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) [V]
Although I have grave concerns about many aspects of this Bill, I will limit my remarks to the amendments in my name, those of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), and new clause 102.
This Bill needlessly criminalises Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. It will turn civil offences into criminal ones and punish littering and inconvenience with prison and homelessness. The Bill does not target a problem; it targets minority and ethnic communities. It is driven by hatred and division and will serve only to fuel hatred and division. Only last month, the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) demonstrated this by saying:
“The Travellers I am talking about are more likely to be seen leaving your garden shed at 3 o’clock in the morning, probably with your lawnmower and half of your tools.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 8 June 2021; c. 410.]
Those words racially stereotype Travellers and paint an entire community as criminals. They were racist and repugnant and show the bigotry that this Bill promotes.
On top of this, the draconian powers included in the Bill are being pushed upon police despite their insistence that they do not want or need them. The National Police Chiefs Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners have said that
“trespass is a civil offence and our view is that it should remain so”,
while 93.7% of police bodies support increased site provision as the solution to unauthorised encampments. Both the police and the travelling communities are in agreement on this. I urge the Government to listen and to support new clause 102 and the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby. The Government should be focused on improving society for everyone, yet they have become fixated on attacking an already much persecuted minority at the expense of many and to the benefit of none. In doing so, they are ignoring ready-made solutions. Organisations such as Friends, Families and Travellers have called for increased and improved site provision while highlighting the value of negotiated stopping, because the reality is that if Travellers cannot stop with authorisation, then they must stop without it.
I tabled my amendments because I believe that it is the role of politicians to protect minorities, not persecute them. New clause 51 seeks to address the racism that GRT communities face every day by forcing the Government to review the prevention, investigation and prosecution of crimes against these communities, while new clause 52 would require the Government to provide proper training for the relevant public bodies. Although valuable amendments to this dystopic Bill will undoubtedly fall today, I would like to reassure my constituents that the fight against legislation is not the end—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I have to bring the hon. Lady’s remarks to a close because we are running very short of time.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]
I wish to address new clauses 55 and 42 and, if time permits, new clause 90. Hon. Members will agree that clarity is crucial when talking about the proper functioning of the House, particularly when we cover immensely sensitive subjects such as abortion and the ending of human life. I want to clarify something that was earlier in dispute, which is whether the decriminalisation of abortion, as sought by new clause 55, also means its deregulation and the loss of all legal safeguards. Changing the law means changing regulations. The central and implacable legal fact of new clause 55 is that repealing the relevant sections of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and relevant offences under the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929, will immediately undo all the safeguards provided by the Abortion Act 1967.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) so soberly and succinctly stated in the first part of this debate, new clause 55 would sweep away all current legal safeguards and protections, not only for the unborn child, but many that protect women. The 1967 Act would, in effect, be void, leaving England and Wales with one of the most extreme abortion laws in the world.
Let me briefly remind Members what those safeguards involve. They are not obstructions by opponents of abortion; they are crucial and vital protections against clear and present dangers. The safeguards prevent abortion simply on the basis of sex and because the baby will be born a girl, or indeed a boy. They ensure that the freedom of health professionals to conscientiously object is protected, and they prevent abortion right up until birth, even though many premature babies are born and survive and thrive, every week.
The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) failed to explain how any of those serious threats to our society and culture would remain illegal. Never once has she denied that her new clause would allow abortion up to birth—something many of my constituents have rallied against in recent days, as is true of constituents across the country. I have received more emails and calls about new clause 55 than I have about any other measure since I was elected to the House 11 years ago. The right hon. Lady may argue that abortion will remain regulated by different medical bodies in the country, but those bodies cannot make legislation. They cannot pass laws or send the crucial messages that our current abortion law sends, namely that sex selective abortion is wrong, that conscientious objection is valid, and that abortion without any time limit would be a gross injustice in a humane society. Abortion under the regulation of changeable medical bodies that issue only guidelines and never laws can never be recommended.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
I am grateful to contribute to this debate. On Second Reading I highlighted that the Bill, large as it is, contains about five clauses that apply to Northern Ireland, and we are supportive of them. Considering that we just heard from the Health and Social Care Secretary, who outlined our roadmap to freedom, I am disappointed that after Committee, the Bill is not in a better place when it comes to protest. For a party that prides itself on libertarian values and freedom in our country to curtail protests because they are noisy, inconvenient or impact on those around them, shows that the right balance has not yet been struck.
I wish to speak in favour of new clauses 44 to 50, tabled by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). Indeed, I commend her for tabling them. The law has operated successfully in Northern Ireland for four years. Those important provisions were brought forward by my colleague in the other place, Lord Morrow. They are working in Northern Ireland, and I hope that after the conclusion of Report, they are brought forward again. I encourage the Minister to look at those provisions. I understand she is engaging with the right hon. Lady, and I hope we can pick up this conversation again.
I have mentioned to the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North that I have considered some ire, having signed her new clauses on human trafficking and sexual exploitation, given the amendment that rests in new clause 55; she knows that I could never support new clause 55. I do see the dichotomy between bringing forward—[Interruption.] I wave back, Madam Deputy Speaker. New clauses 44 to 50 would take away the power from the powerful in support of the most vulnerable, and that is why I struggle with new clause 55: it would do the reverse.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Will my hon. Friend give way? [Interruption.]
Gavin Robinson
I really shouldn’t, because Madam Deputy Speaker is waving too much at me.
I have given careful consideration to new clause 42. In principle, I am prepared to support the notion of buffer zones, but not as currently drafted. I know that that is not exactly where all my colleagues are, so I do not wish to abuse my position as spokesman, because my colleagues are not comfortable at all. There should be a discussion. I do not think that new clause 42 strikes the balance. If it was moved, I could not support it this evening.
This is such a massive Bill, in that it is going to impact on every facet of life. I fear that the Public Bill Committee has not had the desired effect and that it is not right yet, but we will consider the new clauses and amendments as they are brought forward this evening.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
This Bill removes our fundamental right to peaceful protest. How? By putting power in the hands of the police to stop protests—not, as before, on the grounds of causing serious damage or unlawful behaviour, but instead on the grounds that it may cause “serious unease” or “distress” to bystanders. Those found guilty of even risking causing “serious annoyance” or “inconvenience” can get imprisoned for up to 10 years or face unlimited fines. This amounts to the removal of the right to peaceful protest as enshrined in our Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights.
We saw a taste of what that means in practice at the Clapham vigil and the Bristol protests in March. The parliamentary report into Clapham and Bristol, which was published last week and mentioned by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), found that the Metropolitan police told the Clapham vigil organisers that the vigil was illegal, when it was not, and that they faced thousands of pounds in fines, which they did not. The organisers withdrew and the vigil was disorganised, and then, at 6.30 pm, the police physically intervened to disperse the gathering, thereby increasing the public health risk of covid. In Bristol, yes, proportionate use of force by the police was justified, but batoning and blading protesters with shields on the ground certainly was not.
We have had a glimpse of what poorly drafted law can look like in practice. Instead, we must protect the right to peaceful protest by deleting clauses 55 to 61, which stop it, and introducing my new clause 85: a code that sets out the police’s duty to facilitate the right to peaceful protest, to return them to Robert Peel’s founding principle:
“The police are the public and the public are the police.”
This Bill is before us because people want to protest against climate change, as, by 2025, the 1.5°C Paris limit will be breached. Peaceful protesters—whether suffragettes or economic, social or environmental campaigners—enrich and inform our democracy between elections. This is essential to our fundamental values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
The Bill is an act of political treason. It is bad at its core. It will be seen in China, Russia and elsewhere as a green light to crush democracy and the right to peaceful protest, with unaccountable police power. The good people in this country should not rest until it is overturned and our rights reinstated, so that democracy can live, breathe and thrive again.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
In the time available to me, I would like to speak in support of two amendments and comment on one.
New clause 24 in the name of the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) calls for
“a review of how registered sex offenders are able to change their name or other aspects of their identity without the knowledge of the police”.
The UK has some of the toughest measures in the world to manage sex offenders, yet the system is being exploited and flouted by thousands of convicted offenders, if the figures are to be believed. More than 16,000 offenders in the last five years have not told the police of their whereabouts under their notification requirements, and it is estimated that around 900 have gone missing altogether. Some of them could possibly have changed their names. The amendment would review how sex offenders are able to change their names or identity, and ensure that the system is amended so that police are always made aware. I hope the Minister will respond to the amendment in her comments.
I will turn to two amendments on the issue of abortion. This debate has made it clear that the current position, and the inconsistency between the situations in Northern Ireland and in England and Wales, is very difficult to explain other than by the fact that in England and Wales, our law is underpinned by an Act of Parliament passed 50 years before women were even allowed to be part of the legislative process. There has been almost no change to the abortion laws in more than 50 years. It may be that the tradition of leaving these issues to Back-Bench Bills no longer works and the Government need to think more creatively.
Mrs Miller
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not give way—Madam Deputy Speaker would have my guts for garters.
The Government need to consider how we modernise the set of laws that this place has changed for Northern Ireland but has not had the opportunity to do so in a thoughtful way for England and Wales. The strong feeling on both sides of the House shows that there is an argument for thinking about this further, particularly with the two specific amendments.
I will turn to new clause 42. The Bill already recognises that protests should not stop others going about their daily business. Frankly, new clause 42 does similarly for individuals who want to access abortion advice and services. I hope that the Minister will reflect on the amendment in her summing up.
I do not support new clause 55 by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) because of the expansiveness in the way it is drawn. I have deep sympathy, however, and support her in her wish to see abortion decriminalised for women in England and Wales, as has been done in Northern Ireland. We in this House have to take the opportunity to have a thoughtful and thorough debate and to have it in the very near future.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I rise to speak as co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group. There is an awful lot that I would like to say about this Bill, but unfortunately I have to restrict my comments to amendment 47.
The amendment seeks to correct an anomaly in the legislation brought by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in his Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018, whereby the only members of prison staff included in the protected category of emergency workers are prison officers and some healthcare workers, while other prison workers, such as teachers or instructors, are not protected. That is simply unfair and increases the risks for those staff: it effectively paints a target on their backs because prisoners are well aware of the law and know that the penalties for attacking a prison officer are way more severe than those for attacking the teacher who might be standing next to them.
The 2019 “Safe Inside” survey conducted by the Joint Unions in Prisons Alliance showed that all prison staff—not just prison officers, but prison educators and teachers as well—are subjected to shocking levels of violence and are routinely exposed to harmful drugs. More than a quarter of staff reported having been a victim of physical violence in the last 12 months. Of those, 14% said that they had been assaulted more than 10 times in that period.
The youth estate, for example, often houses children who are locked up hundreds of miles from family and support. The resulting strain on mental health is a contributing factor towards violence against staff. Of course, in Wales, as education is devolved, things run differently so the Bill’s impact will be felt differently, which is something my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) will raise later.
Here is one horrific example from an educator in a young offender institution:
“I turned to press the radio and as I did so I felt the young offender’s arms around my neck and he put me in a headlock and began to strangle me, I managed to say “Assistance” on the radio, but before I could say my location, he had my arm above my head to stop me calling for help, he dragged me down to the ground, he continued to strangle me with his left arm and he hit me repeatedly in the head with the other. As he was doing so, he said he had mental health issues. It felt like longer but, I think the officers arrived in approximately five minutes after the incident began and physically removed him from me.”
No teacher, educator or instructor should be expected to work in an environment where terrifying assaults like those are not treated with the same severity as those against prison officers. For that reason, I urge all Members to show those brave front-line public servants that we prioritise their safety as emergency workers, too.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call Steve Brine, who has 90 seconds.
Steve Brine
There is much in this Bill that I welcome—I have spoken before about driving offences reform—but of course parts of it are controversial. That is what happens with legislation: some people do not agree with parts of it. However, on balance, it is a Bill worth backing, and that is why I did so on Second Reading.
New clause 90 seems entirely logical to me. I have been well lobbied on the subject, and I hope to hear something from the Minister. Being able to do their job without abuse is surely the least that our shop workers can expect.
On protest, we should be careful not to be misled about what is in the Bill and what is not. I actually agree with some of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said. The parts of the Bill on protest are not right just yet, and I predict that they will have a challenging time in the other place. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on that. Surely new clause 85, in respect of a code for the policing of protest, is worth a look.
I think that new clause 55, in the name of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), is poorly drafted. I saw a tsunami of contacts this weekend from constituents who are against it. I wish it were going to a vote, if only so that I could vote against it and the House could show its will on the subject.
Finally, I oppose new clauses 51 and 52 in respect of illegal Traveller encampments. My constituents have an illegal encampment on the Cattle Market car park in the centre of Winchester just today, which is inconveniencing their lives. I oppose those two new clauses.
Victoria Atkins
This Bill delivers on our promise to the British people to keep them safe and to crack down on criminals. This Bill backs the police, recognising the unique and enormous sacrifices they and their families make to protect us all. This Bill imposes a legal duty on local councils, the police, health services, schools and prisons to work together to prevent serious violence in their neighbourhoods.
This Bill balances the rights of protestors to demonstrate with the rights of residents to access hospitals, to go to work, to let their children sleep at night. And, despite some of the claims from the Opposition, this Bill includes measures that will help to protect women and girls, but that go further than that and protect the whole of society from some of the most dangerous offenders that are sentenced. This includes managing sex offenders before and after conviction and, importantly, providing clarity on the extraction of data from victims’ phones, in line with the rape review that the Government published only a few weeks ago.
Let me briefly address the Government amendments in this group. In Committee, I undertook to consider further whether the reporting duty in respect of the police covenant should be extended to apply to the British Transport police, the Ministry of Defence police and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. Having reflected further, we agree. We want the wider policing family to be included in the covenant, and amendment 34 does exactly that, covering not only these three forces but the National Crime Agency. They do essential work for us, and we want them and their families to be looked after.
Government amendments 35 to 45 standardise the traffic offences in clauses 4 and 5, and clauses in relation to serious violence reduction orders, for the British Transport police—again, consistency in how we deal with these important matters.
Let me turn to the non-Government amendments. I will not be able to deal with them all, but I will pick out the ones that have been talked about most frequently. First, I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and many other Members across the House for raising the issue of sexual harassment, not just in the context of this Bill but in our wider work.
The murders that, sadly, we have heard so much about in this Chamber—the murders of Nicole Smallman, Bibaa Henry, Sarah Everard and PCSO Julia James—have caused millions of women and girls to share their own experiences and fears of walking in our towns and cities. We have also heard girls’ stories about their experiences at school through the social media platform Everyone’s Invited.
We are listening to women and girls. In March, we reopened the survey on violence against women and girls and received more than 180,000 responses in terms of the survey as a whole. Each of those responses is helping to shape our work developing this vital strategy. We therefore recognise the shocking extent of street harassment and the strength of feeling concerning the need for a new offence.
While it is the case that there are already offences available to address sexual harassment behaviour, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham, whom I have met recently to discuss this, can rest assured that we remain open-minded on this issue and are continuing to examine the case for a bespoke offence. As part of the commitment, the new strategy on tackling violence against women and girls will focus on the need to educate and to change cultural attitudes. A new offence can do so much, but we need to go further than that, and that is our intention.
As I announced in Committee, I am pleased that as part of the cross-government work and work across agencies, the College of Policing intends to develop advice for police forces to assist them to use existing offences in the most effective way to address reports of sexual harassment, and the CPS will be updating its guidance to include specific material on sexual harassment.
Moving on, new clauses 26 and 27 have been tabled by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson)—indeed my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) has spoken to me about this—and they come out of the very tragic circumstances of the rape and murder of Libby Squire. As a constituency MP near the Humber, I very much join both the right hon. Lady and my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Libby and her family.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree with me and my constituent Lisa Squire that it is vitally important that non-contact sexual offences are promptly reported so that the provisions can work?
Victoria Atkins
I completely agree with my hon. Friend and, indeed, his constituent, Mrs Squire. We need please to get the message out from this Chamber to encourage victims, where non-contact sexual offences are being committed, and where they are able to and where they feel able to, to report those offences to the police, so that these escalating behaviours can create a pattern that the police can review. That is why I have great sympathy with the new clauses that the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North has tabled. I am pleased to reassure her that we are very much taking the point on board when it comes to developing the strategy.
In terms of other matters relating to sex offenders, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke have pressed upon me the need for a review of how registered sex offenders can change their name without the police’s knowledge. We have some of the toughest rules in the world for the management of sex offenders, but we recognise those concerns.
We do not want any loopholes that can be exploited by sex offenders to enable offending and to evade detection by the changing of names. Indeed, only last week I met the Master of the Rolls and my counterpart Lord Wolfson in the Ministry of Justice to discuss this critical issue. I am pleased to advise the House that we are conducting a time-limited review of the enrolled and unenrolled processes for changing names to better understand the scale and nature of the issue, whether current processes are being or could be exploited to facilitate further offending and, if so, how that can be addressed.
Colleagues have expressed understandable concern regarding the treatment of key workers, particularly those who keep our shops and supermarkets open and stocked, those who keep our buses and trains running, and key workers such as refuse collectors, park staff, teachers and others who perform a vital duty at any time, but particularly in the very difficult 18 months we have all experienced. We are very conscious that when our constituents are serving the public and delivering key services, they must feel safe doing so. No one should feel unsafe in their workplace. We therefore all feel anguish about some of the stories we have heard in relation to retail and other workers over the past year.
The Lord Chancellor and, indeed, the Government, completely understand the sentiments behind the new clauses tabled by the Leader of the Opposition and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers), and I hope that Members have heard the indication that we gave earlier in the debate. There is a range of existing laws, with significant penalties, that cover assaults and abuse of all public-facing workers. Sentencing guidelines already require the courts to consider as an aggravating factor, meriting an increased sentence, an offence that has been committed against a person serving the public. However, I make it clear that we want to assure my hon. Friend and Members of all parties that we are not complacent about the matter and that we are actively considering tabling an amendment, if appropriate, in the Lords.
Our genuine concerns about the new clauses relate to technical issues with some of the drafting. There is vagueness about the nature of the assault offence. It overlaps with existing offences and there seems to be reference to Scottish provisions, which we believe to be unnecessary. I say to the House in an open-hearted, open-handed way that we are looking at the matter and that we want to work not only with hon. Members with but the retail sector to improve the reporting of those offences and the police response.
I turn now to the public order provisions. There has been much debate about those measures. Some of it has been informed by fact, but some has been informed by misunderstanding. The measures have been developed in consultation with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Metropolitan police to improve the police’s ability to better manage highly disruptive protests. Such protests have brought parts of London in particular, but also elsewhere, to a standstill. There have been instances of ambulances being obstructed. Protesters have disrupted the distribution of national newspapers and, given that we are discussing freedom of expression and freedom of speech, I hope that colleagues will understand why we are so concerned to ensure that newspapers can be produced.
Protests have prevented hard-working people from getting to work and drawn thousands of police officers away from the local communities they serve.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
As the Member for Cities of London and Westminster—Westminster experiences 500 protests every year—I ask my hon. Friend whether she agrees that the human rights of protesters are absolutely important but so are those of local people who live just yards from this place?
Victoria Atkins
That sums up the balancing exercise that the Government are drawing on the advice of the independent police inspectorate. The Bill does not stop the freedom to demonstrate; it balances it with the rights and liberties of others. The existing laws are 35 years old. We want to update them and also implement the recommendations of the independent Law Commission.
It will continue to be the case that the police attach conditions to only a small proportion of protests. To put that in context, in a three-month period earlier this year, the assessment of the National Police Chiefs’ Council was that of more than 2,500 protests, no more than a dozen had conditions attached to them: 12 out of 2,500.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Victoria Atkins
I will not because I genuinely have other matters to address.
In deciding whether to attach conditions, including in respect of the generation of noise, the police will continue, as they do now, to take into consideration protesters’ freedom of speech and assembly.
I move on now to unauthorised encampments. Similarly, there seems to be misunderstanding about what the Bill is attempting to do. It is not an attack on the nomadic lifestyle. Proposed new section 60C(4) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 sets out conditions applicable if
“significant damage… significant disruption”
or
“significant distress has been caused or is likely to be caused”.
Victoria Atkins
I have one more minute.
We are trying to tackle harmful behaviour, and Opposition Members need to ask themselves just how much damage, disruption and distress is acceptable for their constituents to bear.
I will quickly deal with the extraction of information. This is an important part of the Bill, because we want to ensure that strong privacy safeguards are in place when dealing with people’s sensitive personal information. This Bill, coupled with the rape review, is an absolutely critical part of that effort.
Mindful that the House will want to vote on these matters, I will conclude. We promised our constituents that we would take measures to make our society safer and to crack down on crime. As my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) set out, that is the promise we all made to our constituents. We are delivering on promises made to the electorate and standing up for the decent members of society who do not commit the sorts of crimes that we in this Chamber have sadly had to hear about. I therefore have no hesitation in commending the Bill to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I understand that the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) does not wish to press new clause 90 to a Division.
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)
Having received commitments from the Government that they will bring forward measures to tackle this issue during the passage of the Bill, I do not wish to press the new clause.
New Clause 91
Review of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971
(1) The Secretary of State must conduct a review of the criminal offences in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
(2) In undertaking the review, the Secretary of State must consult—
(a) the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs;
(b) the Scottish Ministers;
(c) the Welsh Ministers;
(d) the Northern Ireland Department of Health, and
(e) any other person the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(3) The Secretary of State must, before the end of the period of 9 months beginning with the day on which this Act comes into force, lay before Parliament a report on the review, including any proposals for legislative change.—(Anne McLaughlin.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to undertake a review of the criminal offences set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
Brought up.
Question put, That the clause be added to the Bill.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
We come to group two. After I have called the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) to move new clause 3, there will be a four-minute limit on Back-Bench contributions.
New Clause 3
Restriction on evidence or questions about complainant's sexual history
‘(1) Section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1)—
(a) starting in paragraph (b) omit “in cross examination, by or on behalf of any accused at the trial,”;
(b) at end insert “with anyone other than the defendant”.
(3) In subsection (2)—
(a) for “an accused” substitute “a party to the trial”;
(b) in paragraph (a) omit “or (5)”.
(4) For subsection (3) substitute—
“(3) This subsection applies if the evidence or question relates to a relevant issue in the case and that issue is not an issue of consent.”
(5) For subsection (5) substitute—
“(a) For the purposes of subsection (3) no evidence may be adduced or question asked unless the judge determines in accordance with the procedures in this subsection that the question or evidence has significant probative value that is not substantially outweighed by the danger of prejudice to the proper administration of justice.
(b) In determining that question the judge shall take into account—
(i) the interests of justice, including the right of the accused to make a full answer and defence;
(ii) the need to preserve the integrity of the trial process by removing from the fact-finding process any discriminatory belief or bias;
(iii) the risk that the evidence may unduly arouse sentiments of prejudice, sympathy or hostility in the jury;
(iv) the potential threat to the complainant’s personal dignity and right to privacy;
(v) the complainant’s right to personal security and to the full protection and benefit of the law;
(vi) the provisions of the Victims Code;
and any other factor that the judge considers relevant.”
(6) In subsection (6), for “subsections (3) and (5)” substitute “subsection (3)”.’
This new clause excludes the admission in evidence of any sexual behaviour of the complainant with a third party, whether by the prosecution or the defence, to show consent, whilst leaving it admissible if it is relevant to any other issue in the case. It sets out the additional requirement that to be admitted the material must be more probative than prejudicial and sets out the considerations the judge must have in regard to considering that extra requirement.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
With this it will be convenient to consider the following: RTA Section 170(4A) Failing to stop and give particulars after accident involving actual or potential serious or fatal injury or to report accident On indictment 14 years Obligatory Obligatory 6-11
New clause 4—Definition of “issue of consent”—
‘(1) Section 42 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 is amended as follows.
(2) For paragraph (b) substitute—
“(b) “issue of consent” means any issue where the complainant in fact consented to the conduct constituting the offence with which the defendant is charged and any issue where the accused reasonably believed that the complainant so consented;”’
This new clause re-defines “issue of consent” for the purposes of section 41, including in the definition the defendant’s reasonable belief in consent, and thus removing it as a reason for the inclusion of a complainant’s sexual history or behaviour.
New clause 5—Admission of evidence or questions about complainant’s sexual history—
‘(1) The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 43 insert—
“43A In any trial or contested hearing to which section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 applies, if no pre-trial application in accordance with Part 36 of the Criminal Procedure Rules has been made, or if such application has been made and refused in whole or in part, no further application may be made during the course of the trial or before its commencement to call such evidence or ask such question, and no judge may allow such application or admit any such questions or evidence.”’
This new clause would have the effect that no section 41 evidence or questions could be admitted by a judge at trial unless there had been an application before trial in accordance with the practice directions; and the amendment would ban applications from being made immediately before or during the trial.
New clause 6—Complainant’s right of representation and appeal on an application to adduce evidence or questions on sexual conduct—
‘(1) The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 43 insert—
“43A In any trial to which section 41 applies, where notice is given that there will be an application under Part 36 of the Criminal Procedure Rules for leave to ask questions or to adduce evidence as to any sexual behaviour of the complainant—
(1) The complainant may not be compelled to give evidence at any hearing on the application.
(2) The complainant will be entitled to be served with the application and to be legally represented (with the assistance of legal aid if financially eligible) as “a party” within the meaning of the Criminal Procedure Rules in responding in writing to the application and in presenting their case at any hearing on the application.
(3) If the application succeeds in whole or in part, the complainant will have a right to appeal for a rehearing of the application to the Court of Appeal on notice within 7 days of the judgement being delivered.
(4) On any such appeal, the Court of Appeal will rehear the application in full and may grant or refuse it in whole or in part.
(5) The Secretary of State may, by regulation, set out rules of procedure relating to any hearing or appeal under this section.”’
This new clause would give the complainant a right of representation, with legal aid if they are financially eligible, to oppose any application to admit section 41 material about them. This new clause would also give complainants a right of appeal to the Court of Appeal if the application is allowed in whole or in part. The new clause also provides that the complainant is not compellable as witness at the application.
New clause 7—Collection of and reporting to Parliament on data and information relating to proceedings involving rape and sexual assault—
‘(1) The Secretary of State shall collect and report to Parliament annually the following data and information—
(a) The time taken in every case of rape or sexual assault for the case to progress from complaint to charge, from charge to pre-trial plea and management hearing; and from then until trial.
(b) The number of applications to ask questions or adduce evidence of any sexual behaviour of the complainant under section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 (“the 1999 Act”) made in the Magistrates and Crown Courts of England and Wales, irrespective of whether a trial was subsequently held.
(c) The number of cases which involved questions on or evidence of any sexual behaviour of the complainant in all rape, sexual abuse and other trials or contested hearings in the Magistrates and Crown courts in England and Wales, irrespective of whether an application was made to admit such questions or evidence in advance of the trial or hearing.
(d) In cases to which section 41 of the 1999 Act applies—
(i) whether Part 36 of the Criminal Procedure Rules was followed in each application and if it was not, how it was not;
(ii) the questions proposed to be asked;
(iii) the evidence proposed to be called;
(iv) whether the prosecution opposed the application and if so the content of their representations;
(v) whether evidence was called to support or oppose the application;
(vi) whether the application was allowed in whole or in part and a copy of the judgement made on the application;
and
(vii) any other material which might assist in an assessment of the frequency, basis and nature of applications for the use of such questions or evidence and the likely impact on any parties to any trial and the trial outcome.
(2) The data and information to be collected under subsection (1) shall include—
(a) all the material from any pre-trial application;
(b) the questions in fact asked and the evidence in fact called about any sexual behaviour of the complainant in the trial;
(c) any application at the start or during the course of the trial to vary or alter any judgement given in any earlier application or any further application to admit such questions or evidence;
(d) whether any material not previously authorised was used in the trial;
(e) whether the prosecution objected; and
(f) any ruling made or action taken by the judge on the further conduct of the trial as a consequence of the admission of questions or evidence under section 41 of the 1999 Act.
(3) The data and information to be collected under this section shall be collected from the date of Royal Assent to this Bill.’
This new clause requires the Secretary of State to collect and report to Parliament data and information on trial delay and section 41 matters.
New clause 8—Training for relevant public officials in relation to the conduct of cases of serious sexual offences—
‘(1) The Secretary of State shall, on this Act coming into force, publish and implement a strategy to provide training on the investigation of rape and alleged rape complainants, and the admissibility and cross-examination of complainants on their sexual history to—
(a) the Crown Prosecution Service;
(b) Police Forces;
(c) the Judiciary; and
(d) such other public bodies as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(2) The Secretary of State shall ensure that any judge who is asked to hear a trial where the accused is charged with rape or any other serious sexual offence has attended and completed a training programme for such trials which has been accredited by the Judicial College.’
This new clause ensures that all criminal justice agencies shall be trained and that no judge can hear a sexual offence trial of any kind unless they have attended the Judicial College serious sexual offence course.
New clause 9—Requirement for a pre-sentence report when sentencing a primary carer—
‘(1) Section 30 of the Sentencing Act 2020 is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (3) insert—
“(3A)A court must make inquiries to establish whether the offender is a primary carer for a child.
(3B) If the court establishes that the offender is a primary carer for a child, unless there are exceptional circumstances before sentencing the offender the court must obtain a pre-sentence report containing information to enable the court to make an assessment of the impact of a custodial sentence on the child.”
(3) After subsection (4) insert—
“(5) In this section—
(e) “child” means a person under the age of 18; and
(f) “primary carer” means a person who has primary or substantial care responsibilities for a child.”’
This new clause amends section 30 of the Sentencing Act 2020 to make clear the requirement for a sentencing judge to have a copy of a pre-sentence report, considering the impact of a custodial sentence on the dependent child, when sentencing a primary carer of a child.
New clause 10—Duty of the court to state how it has considered the consequences for the child when sentencing—
‘(1) Section 52 of the Sentencing Act 2020 is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (9) insert—
“Offenders who are primary carers
(10) A court sentencing a primary carer for a child must state how the best interests of the child were considered in determining the sentence (including, if appropriate, consideration of the views of the child).
(11) A court sentencing a pregnant woman must state how the best interests of the baby were considered in determining the sentence.
(12) In this section—
(a) “child” means a person under the age of 18; and
(b) “primary carer” means a person who has primary or substantial care
responsibilities for a child.”’
This new clause amends section 52 of the Sentencing Act 2020 to require a sentencing judge to state how the best interests of a child were considered when sentencing a primary carer of a dependent child.
New clause 11—Welfare of child to be a distinct consideration when sentencing a primary carer—
‘(1) After section 227 of the Sentencing Act 2020, insert—
“227A Restrictions on imposing imprisonment on a primary carer
(1) This section applies where a court is considering imposing a custodial sentence on—
(a) a primary carer for a child, or
(b) a pregnant woman.
(2) The sentencing court must—
(a) consider the impact of a custodial sentence on the child or unborn child, and
(b) presume (subject to victim impact and any other sentencing considerations) that a non-custodial sentence is in the best interests of the child or unborn child.
(3) In this section—
(a) “child” means a person under the age of 18, and
(b) “primary carer” means a person who has primary or substantial care responsibilities for a child.”’
This new clause would create a requirement for a sentencing judge to consider the impact of a custodial sentence on a child when sentencing a primary carer of a dependent child.
New clause 12—Welfare of child to be a distinct consideration when determining bail for a primary carer—
‘(1) Section 4 of the Bail Act 1976 is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (9) insert—
“(10) Where a court determines whether to grant bail in criminal proceedings to a person to whom this section applies who is a primary carer for a child or pregnant, the court must—
(a) consider the impact of not granting bail on the child or unborn child; and
(b) presume (subject to victim impact or other relevant considerations) that it is in the best interests of the child or unborn child for bail to be granted.
(11) In this section—
(a) “child” means a person under the age of 18, and
(b) “primary carer” means a person who has primary or substantial care responsibilities for a child.”’
This new clause would impose a requirement for the judge to consider the impact of not granting bail on a child when determining, in criminal proceedings, whether to grant bail to a primary carer of a dependent child.
New clause 13—Data collection in relation to prisoners who are primary carers—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must collect and publish annual data identifying—
(a) how many prisoners are the primary carers of a child,
(b) how many children have a primary carer in custody, and
(c) the ages of those children.
(2) In this section—
(a) “child” means a person under the age of 18, and
(b) “primary carer” means a person who has primary or substantial
care responsibilities for a child.’
This new clause would impose a requirement on the Secretary of State to collect and publish data on the number of prisoners who are the primary carers of a child and the number of children who have a primary carer in custody.
New clause 17—Maximum sentences for causing or allowing a child or vulnerable adult to suffer serious injury or death—
‘(1) Section 5 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 is amended as follows—
(a) in subsection (7), for “a term not exceeding 14 years” substitute “life”, and
(b) in subsection (8), for “10” substitute “14”.
(2) Schedule 19 of the Sentencing Act 2020 is amended by the insertion of the following after paragraph 20—
“Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004
20A An offence to which section 5(7) of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 applies.”’
This new clause seeks to increase sentencing levels under section 5 of the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act 2004 (causing or allowing a child or vulnerable adult to suffer serious injury or death) by raising the death offence to life imprisonment, and the “serious injury” offence to 14 years.
New clause 18—Custody for own protection or own welfare—
‘(1) The Bail Act 1976 is amended as follows.
(2) In Part 1 of Schedule 1 (Defendants accused or convicted of imprisonable offences) omit paragraph 3.
(3) In Part 1A of Schedule 1 (Defendants accused or convicted of imprisonable offences to which Part 1 does not apply) omit paragraph 5.
(4) In Part 2 of Schedule 1 (Defendants accused or convicted of non-imprisonable offences) omit paragraph 3.’
This new clause would repeal the power of the criminal courts to remand a defendant into custody for their own protection (or in the case of a child, for their own welfare) pending trial or sentence.
New clause 19—Justice impact assessment for Wales—
‘(1) Within six months of the passage of this Act, the Secretary of State must issue a justice impact assessment for any provision of this Act, or regulations made under this Act, which impacts on matters which are devolved to the Welsh Parliament / Senedd Cymru.
(2) The Secretary of State must, within one month of the date on which they are made, issue a justice impact assessment for any regulations made under this Act which are not included in the assessment required under subsection (1) which impact on matters which are devolved to the Welsh Parliament / Senedd Cymru.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to issue an assessment of the impact of the Bill on devolved policy and services in Wales within six months of it passing, and to issue such an assessment of any further changes to regulations under the Bill within one month of making them.
New clause 20—Failing to stop or report accidents involving actual or potential serious or fatal injury—
‘(1) After subsection 170(4) of the Road Traffic Act 1988, insert—
“(4A) A person who fails to comply with subsections 170(2) or 170(3) when he knew that the accident had caused serious or fatal personal injury, or where he ought reasonably to have realised that it might have done so, is guilty of an offence.”
(2) In Part 1 of Schedule 2 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (prosecution and punishment of offences: offences under the Traffic Acts), after the entry relating to an offence under RTA subsection 170(4), insert the following—
(3) After subsection 34(3)(d) of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, insert—
“(e) section 4A (failing to stop and give particulars after accident involving actual or potential serious or fatal injury or to report accident)”’.
This new clause creates a new offence of failing to stop or report accidents where the driver knew that the accident had caused serious or fatal injury, or where he ought reasonably to have realised that it might have done so, with a maximum sentence of 14 years custody.
New clause 21—Definition of “exceptional hardship”
‘In the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, after subsection 35(4), insert—
“(4A) (a) In subsection (4)(b) above, the hardship that would be caused by an offender’s disqualification should be regarded as exceptional if and only if it is significantly greater than the hardship that would arise for a large majority of other drivers if the same disqualification were imposed on them.
(b) In assessing whether the hardship arising from the offender’s disqualification would be exceptional, a court may take account of—
(i) any circumstances relating to the offender’s economic circumstances or location of residence that would make it exceptionally hard for him to access key services such as grocery shops and postal, banking and healthcare facilities,
(ii) any hardship that would be incurred by the offender’s family or others who are disabled and who depend on the offender to provide care for them, and
(iii) any other circumstance which it believes would make the hardship genuinely exceptional.”’
This new clause provides a definition of “exceptional hardship” for the purpose of RTOA ss35(4)(b). It requires that a court should only regard hardship as “exceptional” if it is significantly greater than the hardship that would arise for a large majority of other drivers if the same disqualification were imposed on them.
New clause 22—Special measures access for eligible witnesses—
‘(1) The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 19(2), omit paragraphs (a) and (b) and insert—
“(a) inform the witness of the special measures which are available to them by virtue of this Act; and
(b) give a direction under this section providing for whichever measure or measures as the witness may decide they wish to be applied to apply to evidence given by the witness.
Provided that a direction under paragraph (b) shall ensure that the measure or measures provided for do not inhibit the evidence of the witness being effectively tested by a party to the proceedings.”
(3) Omit section 19(3).’
This new clause would mean that once witnesses are determined as eligible for special measures they will be informed of all provisions and able to decide which option best suits them, rather than relying on the court to decide which measures would best improve the quality of evidence.
New clause 25—Restriction on evidence or questions about mental health counselling or treatment records relating to complainant or witness—
‘(1) The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 43 insert—
“43A Restriction on evidence or questions about mental health counselling or treatment records relating to complainant or witness
(1) If at a trial a person is charged with a sexual offence, then, except with the leave of the court—
(a) no evidence may be adduced, and
(b) no question may be asked in cross examination, by or on behalf of any accused at the trial, about any records made in relation to any mental health counselling or treatment which may have been undertaken by a complainant or witness.
(2) The records made include those made by—
(a) a counsellor,
(b) a therapist,
(c) an Independent Sexual Violence Adviser (ISVA), and
(d) any victim support services.
(3) The court may give leave in relation to any evidence or question only on an application made by or on behalf of a party to the trial, and may not give such leave unless it is satisfied that—
(a) the evidence or question relates to a relevant issue in the case which will include a specific instance (or specific instances) of alleged sexual behaviour on the part of the complainant,
(b) the evidence or question has significant probative value that is not substantially outweighed by the danger of prejudice to the proper administration of justice, and
(c) a refusal of leave might have the result of rendering unsafe a conclusion of the jury or (as the case may be) the court on any relevant issue in the case.
(4) For the purposes of making a determination under paragraph (3)(b) the judge shall take into account—
(a) the interests of justice, including the right of the accused to make a full answer and defence;
(b) the need to preserve the integrity of the trial process by removing from the fact-finding process any discriminatory belief or bias;
(c) the risk that the evidence may unduly arouse sentiments of prejudice, sympathy or hostility in the jury;
(d) the potential threat to the personal dignity and right to privacy of the complainant or witness;
(e) the complainant’s or witness’s right to personal security and to the full protection and benefit of the law;
(f) the provisions of the Victims Code; and
(g) any other factor that the judge considers relevant.
(5) Where this section applies in relation to a trial by virtue of the fact that one or more of a number of persons charged in the proceedings is or are charged with a sexual offence—
(a) it shall cease to apply in relation to the trial if the prosecutor decides not to proceed with the case against that person or those persons in respect of that charge; but
(b) it shall not cease to do so in the event of that person or those persons pleading guilty to, or being convicted of, that charge.
(6) Nothing in this section authorises any evidence to be adduced or any question to be asked which cannot be adduced or asked apart from this section.
(7) In relation to evidence or questions under this section, if no pre-trial application in accordance with Part 36 of the Criminal Procedure Rules has been made, or if such application has been made and refused in whole or in part, no further application may be made during the course of the trial or before its commencement to call such evidence or ask such question, and no judge may allow such application or admit any such questions or evidence.”’
This new clause would restrict evidence or questions about mental health counselling or treatment records relating to complainant or witness unless a defined threshold is met.
New clause 54—Equality Impact Analyses of provisions of this Act—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must review the equality impact of the provisions of this Act in accordance with this section and lay a report of that review before the House of Commons within six months of the passage of this Act.
(2) A review under this section must consider the impact of those provisions on—
(a) households at different levels of income,
(b) people with protected characteristics (within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010),
(c) the Government’s compliance with the public sector equality duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010, and
(d) equality in different parts of the United Kingdom and different regions of England.
(3) A review under this section must include a separate analysis of each section of the Act, and must also consider the cumulative impact of the Act as a whole.’
New clause 73—Unduly lenient sentences: time limit—
‘(1) The Criminal Justice Act 1988 is amended as follows.
(2) In Schedule 3, paragraph 1, after “within” leave out “28” and insert “56”.’
New clause 74—Reviews of sentencing: assaulting an emergency worker—
‘(1) Schedule 1 to the Criminal Justice Act 1988 (Reviews of Sentencing) Order 2006 (descriptions of cases to which Part IV of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 is to apply) is amended as follows.
(2) In paragraph 2, after sub-paragraph (i) insert—
“(ia) an offence under section 1 of the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018.’
New clause 75—No automatic early release for prisoners who assault prison staff whilst in jail—
‘(1) The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is amended as follows.
(2) In Section 244, after subsection (1A) insert—
“(1B) Subsection (1) does not apply if the prisoner has assaulted a member of prison staff whilst in prison and instead the prisoner must not be released until the end of his original sentence.’
New clause 76—Dangerous driving: increased penalties—
‘(1) Part 1 of Schedule 2 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (prosecution and punishment of offences: offences under the Traffic Acts) is amended as follows.
(2) In the entry relating to section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (dangerous driving), in column (4) (punishment), under (b) for “2 years” substitute “5 years”.’
New clause 77—Limitation of use of fixed-term recalls—
‘(1) Section 255A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Further release after recall: introductory) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection 4, insert—
“(4A) A person is not suitable for automatic release if—
(a) he is an extended sentence prisoner or a specified offence prisoner;
(b) in a case where paragraph (a) does not apply, he was recalled under section 254 before the normal entitlement date (having been released before that date under section 246 or 248); or
(c) in a case where neither of the preceding paragraphs applies, he has, during the same term of imprisonment, already been released under section 255B(1)(b) or (2) or section 255C(2).”’
New clause 78—Open prisons: murderers—
‘No prisoner serving a sentence for murder can be moved to a Category D prison.’
New clause 79—Resettlement licence: murderers—
‘No prisoner serving a sentence for murder will be eligible for resettlement licence.’
New clause 80—Open prisons: serious offenders—
‘No prisoner serving a sentence for an indictable only offence can be moved to a Category D prison.’
New clause 81—Open prisons: deportees—
‘No prisoner serving a sentence for which he is liable for deportation can be moved to a Category D prison.’
New clause 82—Resettlement licence: deportees—
‘No prisoner serving a sentence for which he is liable for deportation can be eligible for resettlement licence.’
New clause 83—No difference in sentencing between using a knife in a murder in a home compared to taking a knife to murder someone—
‘(1) The Sentencing Act 2020 is amended as follows.
(2) In Schedule 21 (Determination of minimum term in relation to mandatory life sentence for murder etc), after sub-paragraph 4(2), insert—
“(3) Sub-paragraph (2) above applies where the knife or weapon is taken to the scene from anywhere within the same premises.”’
New clause 86—Review of domestic homicide—
‘(1) Within 18 months of the commencement of this Act, the Secretary of State must commission a review and publish a report on the effectiveness of current legislation and sentencing policy surrounding domestic abuse, with a particular view to making policy recommendations to increase sentences for domestic homicide, and reduce the gap in sentence length between domestic homicide and other homicides.
(2) A review under subsection (1) must be conducted by a person who meets the criteria for qualification for appointment to the Supreme Court, as set out in section 25 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.
(3) A review under subsection (1) must consider—
(a) trends in the incidences and types of domestic abuse, with a focus on domestic homicide,
(b) sentencing policy as it applies to domestic abuse, with a focus on domestic homicide,
(c) current sentencing guidelines as they relate to domestic abuse, with a focus on domestic homicide, and
(d) the creation of new defences and/or mitigating circumstances to protect victims of domestic abuse who commit offences as a consequence of that abuse.
(4) For the purposes of subsection (1) domestic homicide is to be defined as circumstances in which the death of a person aged 16 or over has, or appears to have, resulted from violence, abuse or neglect by a person to whom they were related or with whom they were, or had been, in an intimate personal relationship, or a member of the same household as themselves.
(5) The Secretary of State must lay a copy of the report before Parliament.
(6) A Minister of the Crown must, not later than 3 months after the report has been laid before Parliament, make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to the report.’
This new clause compels the Government to commission a review and publish a report on the effectiveness of current legislation and sentencing policy surrounding domestic abuse, with a particular focus on increasing sentences for domestic homicide. The review would also consider the creation of new protections to assist victims of domestic abuse who commit domestic homicide.
New clause 87—Maximum sentence for publishing the identity of a sexual offences complainant—
‘(1) Section 5 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1), leave out “and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale”.
(3) After subsection (1), insert the following subsection—
“(1A) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or both, or
(b) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding twelve months, or a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or both.”’
This new clause would give courts the power to hand down custodial sentences of up to 2 years to those convicted of naming a sexual offences complainant.
New clause 88—Law Commission consideration of the use of complainants’ sexual history in rape trials—
‘The Secretary of State must seek advice and information from the Law Commission under section (3)(1)(e) of the Law Commissions Act 1965 with proposals for the reform or amendment of the law relating to the use of complainants’ sexual history in rape trials.’
This new clause would compel the Government to seek a Law Commission review on the use of complainants’ sexual history in rape trials.
New clause 89—Minimum sentence for an offence under section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003—
‘(1) This section applies where—
(a) an individual is convicted of an offence under section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and
(b) the offence was committed after the commencement of this section and at a time when the individual was aged 18 or over.
(2) The court shall impose an appropriate custodial sentence (or order for detention) for a term of at least the required minimum term (with or without a fine) unless the court is of the opinion that there are exceptional circumstances relating to the offence or to the offender which justify its not doing so.
(3) In this section “appropriate custodial sentence (or order for detention)” means—
(a) in the case of an offender who is aged 18 or over when convicted, a sentence of imprisonment, and
(b) in the case of an offender who is aged under 18 at that time, a sentence of detention under section 91 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000.
(4) In this section “the required minimum term” means seven years.’
This new clause creates a statutory minimum sentence for rape of 7 years. A court must impose at least the statutory minimum unless it is of the opinion there are exceptional circumstances relating to the offence or to the offender which justify not doing so.
New clause 92—Sentencing escalator—
‘(1) Any person convicted of the same criminal offence on a second or subsequent occasion must receive—
(a) a longer custodial sentence than his longest previous custodial sentence for the same offence if a custodial sentence has previously been given; or
(b) a more severe sentence than his highest previous non-custodial sentence for the same offence if a custodial sentence has not already been given for a previous offence unless the court is of the opinion that there are exceptional circumstances which—
(i) relate to the offence or to the offender, and
(ii) justify not doing so.
(2) Where the sentencing options available for the current offence do not permit the court to increase the sentence under the provisions of subsection (1), the court must impose the maximum sentence available to it, unless the court is of the opinion that there are exceptional circumstances which—
(a) relate to the offence or to the offender, and
(b) justify not doing so.
(3) In determining a sentence under subsection (1), a court is not bound by Section 59 (Sentencing guidelines: general duty of court) or Section 60 (Sentencing guidelines: determination of sentence) of the Sentencing Act 2020.’
New clause 93—Effect of remand on bail on time served in prison (amendment of Criminal Justice Act 2003)
‘(1) The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1B)(c) of section 237 (Meaning of “fixed-term prisoner” etc), leave out “or section 240A”.
(3) In the italic heading before section 240 (Crediting of periods of remand in custody: terms of imprisonment and detention), after “custody”, leave out “or on bail subject to certain types of condition”.
(4) Omit section 240A (Time remanded on bail to count towards time served: terms of imprisonment and detention).’
This new clause, together with NC94 would remove tagged curfew from time on remand on bail which is deducted from time served in prison.
New clause 94—Effect of remand on bail time served in prison (amendment of Sentencing Act 2020—
‘Sections 325 (Time on bail under certain conditions: declaration by court) and 326 Section 325: interpretation) of the Sentencing Act 2020 are omitted.’
This new clause, together with NC93 would remove tagged curfew from time on remand on bail which is deducted from time served in prison.
New clause 95—Magistrates’ sentencing powers—
‘The following statutory provisions shall, notwithstanding any commencement provision in any Act, come into force—
(1) Section 154 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (General limit on magistrates’ court’s power to impose imprisonment).
(2) Section 282 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Increase in maximum term that may be imposed on summary conviction of offence triable either way).
(3) Paragraphs 24 and 25 of Part 5 of Schedule 22 of the Sentencing Act 2020 (Increase in magistrates’ court‘s power to impose imprisonment).’
This new clause would bring into force provisions which would increase magistrates’ sentencing powers from a maximum of 6 to a maximum of 12 months for one offence.
New clause 96—Power of police to stop vehicles—
‘(1) Section 163 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1), after “vehicle” in the second place in which it occurs, insert “, and switch off the engine,”.’
This new clause to the Road Traffic Act 1988 would require a person to switch off their engine after being stopped by a constable in uniform or a traffic officer, and make it an offence not to do so.
New clause 97—Video recorded cross-examination or re-examination of complainants in respect of sexual offences and modern slavery offences—
‘(1) Section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 comes into force in relation to proceedings to which subsection (2) applies on the day on which this Act is passed.
(2) This subsection applies where a witness is eligible for assistance by virtue of section 17(4) of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 (complainants in respect of a sexual offence or modern slavery offence who are witnesses in proceedings relating to that offence, or that offence and any other offences).
(3) This section has effect notwithstanding section 68(3) of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.’
This new clause would bring section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which provides for the cross-examination of vulnerable witnesses to be recorded rather than undertaken in court, fully into force for victims of sexual offences and modern slavery offences.
Amendment 50, in clause 102, page 87, line 41, at end insert—
“(bb) the abduction, sexual assault, and murder of a person”.
This amendment would ensure those found guilty of abduction, sexual assault, and murder receive a Whole Life Order as a starting sentence.
Amendment 48, in clause 110, page 99, line 41, at beginning insert—
‘(1) In subsection (3) of section 239 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (the Parole Board), after 3(b) insert—
“(c) the views of the victim or victims of the crime to which the case relates”’.
This amendment would amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to ensure victims/survivors are consulted in parole decisions which will affect them.
Amendment 49, page 99, line 41, at beginning insert—
‘(1) In subsection (4) of section 239 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (the Parole Board), at end insert “, including the views of the victim or victims of the crime to which the case relates.”’
This amendment would amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to ensure victims/survivors are consulted in parole decisions which will affect them.
Amendment 63, page 127, line 33, leave out clause 139.
Amendment 122, in clause 139, page 127, line 43, at end insert—
“(8) A secure 16 to 19 Academy will be subject to annual inspection by—
(a) Ofsted;
(b) Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons; and
(c) Care Quality Commission.”
This amendment would make secure 16 to 19 academies subject to annual inspection by Ofsted, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, and the Care Quality Commission.
Amendment 123, page 128, line 25, at the end insert—
“(5) The Secretary of State must, within six months of this Act coming into force, prepare and publish a report on the progress made towards opening the first 16 to 19 academies and must lay a copy before Parliament.
(6) A Minister of the Crown must, not later than four weeks after the report required by subsection (5) has been laid before Parliament, make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to the report.
(7) The Secretary of State must, within one year of the opening of the first 16 to 19 academy, prepare and publish an impact assessment on the effectiveness of 16 to 19 academies and must lay a copy before Parliament.
(8) A Minister of the Crown must, not later than four weeks after the impact assessment required by subsection (7) has been laid before Parliament, make a motion in the House of Commons in relation to the impact assessment.”
This amendment would ensure the Secretary of State lay a report and update Parliament on progress made towards opening secure academy facilities and lay an impact assessment before Parliament and provide a debate on the impact assessment.
Amendment 124, in clause 169, page 191, line 37, at end insert—
“(4) The Secretary of State may exercise the power in section 176(1) so as to bring this section (and part 3 of Schedule 19) into force only if the condition in subsection (5) is met.
(5) The condition in this subsection is that a review of the impact of the expansion of audio and video links in criminal proceedings has been conducted in accordance with subsection (6).
(6) The review mentioned in subsection (5) must—
(a) collect evidence of the impact of live audio and video links on—
(i) sentencing and remand decisions,
(ii) the effective participation of defendants,
(iii) the experience of victims and witnesses,
(iv) the cost to the wider justice system, including costs borne by the police and prison systems; and
(b) be undertaken by a person who is independent of the Secretary of State.
(7) The review mentioned in subsection (5) may also consider any other matter which the person conducting the review considers relevant.”
This amendment would ensure that the expansion in the use of audio and video links will not be undertaken until an independent review of its impact has been undertaken.
New clause 14—Offence of buying a pet for cash etc—
‘(1) A person “P” must not pay for a pet except—
(a) by a cheque which under section 81A of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 is not transferable, or
(b) by an electronic transfer of funds (authorised by credit or debit card or otherwise).
(2) The Secretary of State may by order amend subsection (1) to permit other methods of payment.
(3) In this section paying includes paying in kind (with goods or services).
(4) If P pays for a pet in breach of subsection (1), P is guilty of an offence.
(5) If P is guilty of an offence under this section, P is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.
(6) For the purposes of this section, “pet” means and animal which—
(a) provides companionship to any human being,
(b) provides assistance to any human being, or
(c) provides assistance to any human being in the course of their work.’
New clause 15—Offence of failing to scan a microchip—
‘(1) When a relevant animal is presented for a consultation with a veterinary surgeon (or registered veterinary nurse), the veterinary surgeon (or veterinary nurse) must—
(a) scan the microchip of the relevant animal,
(b) check that the microchip number is registered on a database by a database operator which meets current conditions set out in law,
(c) check that the person accompanying the relevant animal is either the registered keeper of the relevant animal or has, to the satisfaction of the veterinary surgeon (or veterinary nurse), the permission of the registered keeper of the relevant animal to accompany that animal, and
(d) if the condition in paragraph (c) is not met, report to the police the fact that the relevant animal is not accompanied by the registered keeper or a person authorised by the registered keeper.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), a “relevant animal” means an animal which is required by law to be microchipped.
(3) If a veterinary surgeon (or veterinary nurse) is in breach of subsection (1), they are guilty of an offence.
(4) If a veterinary surgeon (or veterinary nurse) is guilty of an offence under this section, they are liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.’
New clause 16—Offence of pet theft—
‘(1) The Animal Welfare Act 2006 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 2 (“protected animal”) insert—
“2A Definition of pet
A protected animal is a “pet” for the purposes of this Act if it—
(a) provides companionship to any human being,
(b) provides assistance to any human being, or
(c) provides assistance to any human being in the course of their work.”
(3) After section 8 (fighting etc.) insert—
“8A Pet theft
A person commits an offence if they dishonestly appropriate a pet belonging to another person.”
(4) In section 32 (imprisonment or fine) before subsection (1) insert—
“(A1) A person guilty of an offence under section 8A (pet theft) shall be liable—
(a) on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks, or a fine, or both;
(b) on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years, or to a fine, or both.
(A2) When the court is considering for the purposes of sentencing the seriousness of an offence under section 8A it must consider the following as aggravating factors (that is to say, a factor that increases the seriousness of the offence)—
(a) the theft caused fear, alarm or distress to the pet, the owner of the pet or another person associated with the pet;
(b) the theft was for the purposes of commercial gain.”
(5) In section 34(10) (disqualification) after “8,” insert “8A,”.’
New clause 98—Offence of pet theft—
‘(1) The Animal Welfare Act 2006 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 2 (“protected animal”) insert—
“(2A) Definition of pet A protected animal is a “pet” for the purposes of this Act if it provides companionship or assistance to any human being.”
(3) After section 8 (fighting etc.) insert—
“8A Pet theft
A person commits an offence if they dishonestly appropriate a pet belonging to another person with the intention of permanently depriving that other person of it.”
(4) In section 32 (imprisonment or fine) before subsection (1) insert—
“(A1) A person guilty of an offence under section 8A (pet theft) shall be
liable—
(a) on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks, or a fine, or to both;
(b) on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 4 years, or to a fine, or to both.
(A2) When the court is considering for the purposes of sentencing the seriousness of an offence under section 8A it must consider the following as aggravating factors (that is to say, a factor that increases the seriousness of the offence)—
(a) the theft caused fear, alarm or distress to the pet, the owner or the pet or another person associated with the pet;
(b) the theft was for the purposes of commercial gain.”
(5) In section 34(10) (disqualification) after “8,” insert “8A,”.’
New clause 99—Offence of pet theft (Scotland)—
‘(1) The Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 17 (protected animals) insert—
“17A Definition of pet
A protected animal is a “pet” for the purposes of this Act if it provides companionship or assistance to any human being.”
(3) After section 23 (animal fights) insert—
“23A Pet theft
A person commits an offence if they dishonestly appropriate a pet belonging to another person with the intention of permanently depriving that other person of it.”
(4) In section 40 (disqualification orders) after subsection (13)(b) insert—
“(ba) an offence under section 23A,”.
(5) In section 46 (penalties for offences) after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) A person guilty of an offence under section 23A (pet theft) shall be liable—
(a) on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks, or a fine, or to both;
(b) on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 4 years, or to a fine, or to both.
(1B) When the court is considering for the purposes of sentencing the seriousness of an offence under section 23A it must consider the following as aggravating factors (that is to say, a factor that increases the seriousness of the offence)—
(a) that theft caused fear, alarm or distress to the pet, the owner or the pet or another person associated with the pet;
(b) the theft was for the purposes of commercial gain.”
(6) In Schedule 1 (powers of inspectors and constables for Part 2) after paragraph 4(5)(a) insert—
“(aa) an offence under section 23A,”.’
New clause 100—Offence of pet theft: consequential amendments—
‘(1) The Police and Criminal Evidence Act is amended as follows.
(2) In section 17(1)(c)(v) (entry for purposes of arrest, etc in connection with offences relating to the prevention of harm to animals), for “and 8(1) and (2)” substitute “8(1) and (2) and 8A”.’
New clause 30—Voyeurism: breastfeeding—
‘(1) Section 67A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (Voyeurism: additional offences) is amended as set out in subsection (2).
(2) After subsection (2), insert—
“(2A) A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a) A records an image of another person (B) while B is breastfeeding;
(b) A does so with the intention that A or another person (C) will look at the image for a purpose mentioned in subsection (3), and
(c) A does so—
(i) without B’s consent, and
(ii) without reasonably believing that B consents.”’
Ms Harman
New clause 3 would deal with a problem that the Government have acknowledged: that on the question of rape, the justice system lets women down and lets men off the hook. There are many problems that contribute to that, but one that the Government have rightly identified is that the process focuses on the complainant rather than on the defendant. The investigation becomes an investigation of the complainant—her mobile phone, what she was doing, her attitudes—and not of the suspect. The trial becomes the trial of the complainant, not of the defendant, in one very material way: the use by the defendant of the complainant’s previous sexual history by bringing it into evidence.
It has been acknowledged since as long ago as 1999 that the complainant’s previous sexual history is not the issue, and it is wrong for the defendant to try to use it to deter her from supporting a prosecution for fear that all her dirty washing will be washed in public, in open court, or that it will undermine her standing and credibility in the eyes of the jury. That was supposed to be outlawed in 1999, but it has become clear that a loophole was left when we changed the law.
In a third of all rape cases now, one way or another, the defendant brings into court the complainant’s previous sexual history. When the Victims’ Commissioner was a police and crime commissioner, she conducted research that showed that in one third of rape trials observed, the previous sexual history of the complainant was brought into evidence. That research is backed up by work done by the Criminal Bar Association.
The Victims’ Commissioner gives the example of a complainant who had her parents in court to support her. They did not know that she had had an abortion, but the defendant brought that into evidence in order to undermine her and throw off her ability to give her evidence—there were her parents, sitting in court, and they did not even know that she had had an abortion. Another report was of a case in which the jury were told, “This is a woman who has had adulterous affairs,” thereby trying to undermine her. Of course, that is not relevant to the issue of whether or not a rape has been committed, so we need to tighten up the law.
I have drafted a perfectly good, watertight clause to tighten up the law so that where the question of previous sexual history is relevant, especially if it is with the same partner in respect of whom the rape is alleged, it is allowed in evidence with the permission of the judge, but where it is not relevant, it is not. However, our Front Bench and the Government in their rape review have said that they are minded to send it to the Law Commission to look at. I would have preferred the Government to legislate in the Bill, which is after all the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, but they have decided not to do that; they say that they will refer to the Law Commission the whole question of the focus on the complainant, so I make two requests in that respect.
First, I think that the Law Commission should sit with an independent reference group. I have a great deal of respect for the Law Commission, but quite frankly we cannot leave it to get on with it on its own. We need an expert, independent reference group that is steeped in understanding of the issue and that can help the Law Commission. I suggest that Rape Crisis England & Wales should be on that group, and so should the Victims’ Commissioner.
My second request is that there should be a time limit on the Law Commission’s work. The Law Commission goes into things very deeply, but we do not want this to go on and on for years—it has been a problem for years, so we do not want it to go into the long grass with a never-ending Law Commission investigation. We want the findings to be ready for when the Government are thinking of bringing forward their victims Bill, which they will consult on shortly and which arises out of the violence against women and girls consultation. If we are not going to accept this today, and the Government are not, let us have the Law Commission looking at it, with an independent reference group and with a time limit. Then, the Government will have done more than just apologise to rape victims for justice not being done; they will make sure that in future justice is done.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
We now go to the Chair of the Justice Committee, Sir Robert Neill, and the four-minute time limit comes into force for Back Benchers at this point.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) [V]
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and to talk on these important matters. Although I understand the motives behind the series of amendments standing in her name, I must start by disagreeing with the fundamental approach in some respects. I think it is right that this does go to the Law Commission, because these are potentially very important changes and they affect, inevitably, the balance that must be achieved in a criminal trial between the proper protection of the interests of any witness and the right of any defendant to have a fair trial in which all relevant issues—I stress that—are ventilated. Frequently, the issue of consent would not be relevant to the defence, but there are circumstances in which it is and we should not be making substantive changes here without very careful consideration. The same applies in respect of a number of the other amendments that the right hon. and learned Lady and others have tabled. Again, I understand the reasoning, but, for example, changing the definition of “consent” in relation to recklessness would make a significant change to the substantive criminal law in this area, and that should not be undertaken via an addition to an already large Bill, with limited scrutiny.
There are significant arguments to be considered on both sides, and the Law Commission is the right route for all of these matters. In my experience, and that of the Select Committee, the Law Commission is well able to move swiftly given the resources and the support to do so. I hope that we can leave this on the basis of having a proper look at what are very significant matters, affecting not just the question of the protection of victims, but the right of any defendant to a proper airing of the evidence. Although I am clear that there are still areas where complainants in such cases do not receive the treatment that they should, the position both in the courts and in the investigation of such offences is very much improved from where it was. We can always continue to do more, but inevitably now cases of this kind are tried by highly experienced and senior judges. My experience of having both prosecuted and defended in many such cases is that the courts are robust and swift in dealing with such matters and in rejecting inappropriate applications to stray beyond the relevant issues.
In the time available, may I also touch on some of the other amendments? I would be troubled at anything that fetters the discretion of the courts in relation to minimum sentences. At the end of the day, all aggravating features can properly be set before the courts. The Government and this House have increased maximum sentences in a number of areas, and I have a concern in principle at the imposition of minimum sentences, which have the potential in certain circumstances to tie the hands of the courts. There is an amendment on the representation of families of the deceased at inquests in certain circumstances. I do not think this Bill is the right place for that, but I strongly commend to the Lord Chancellor, whom I am glad to see on the Treasury Bench, the Justice Committee’s report on this, and I hope that in his response we will be given a constructive way forward to deal with those matters.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Select Committee.
This Bill presented the Government with an opportunity to enact measures that would end violence against women and girls, but I am afraid that they blew it, instead filling the Bill with divisive nonsense such as locking up protestors who cause “annoyance.” Today the Government have a final opportunity to support Labour’s proposals—to show the public it cares about violence against women and girls, and wants to create a criminal justice system that works for them.
Mr Lammy
I will just make some progress, if I may.
I think most people would be appalled to learn that rapists can be sentenced to as little as four years in prison—for one of the most heinous crimes imaginable. We presented the Government with research that showed that our sentences for rape were lower than other common law jurisdictions. The Australian Law Reform Commission said that its national penalty range was 12 years to life; in the state of Victoria, rape carries a standard sentence of 10 years; and in India the minimum sentence has just gone up to 10 years.
Mr Goodwill
I wonder if the shadow Secretary of State has forgotten that when he was a Minister in the Department for Constitutional Affairs, Labour voted for rapists to serve less of their sentence in prison. In fact, section 244 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 now requires all prisoners to be released after just 50% of their sentence is served. Prior to that point, those sentenced to four years or more had to serve more than two thirds of their sentence.
Mr Lammy
I think the right hon. Gentleman is misreading what we did in office. The point is that today, he has an opportunity to vote for a minimum sentence. The question is: is he going to take it?
The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) helpfully indicated that 68% of those found guilty of rape are sentenced to more than seven years in prison, which means that about a third of rapists receive only four to seven years. How can that be right? My question to the Lord Chancellor is a simple one: does he believe that a rapist should ever conceivably receive a sentence of only four years in prison? The Government explained that one of their reasons for rejecting our amendment was because they did not agree with statutory minimum sentences, yet clause 100 of this Bill creates a statutory minimum sentence for repeat offenders of certain crimes, including drug offences and burglaries. Why does the Lord Chancellor feel that those crimes are serious enough to warrant a minimum sentence, but rape is not? A recent poll showed that almost 80% of the public would support our proposal, with only 7% opposed. I call on the Lord Chancellor to show that he believes the same.
The Government’s rape review specifically recognises that one of the reasons that almost half of victims of rape withdraw is the fear of giving evidence in court. We know that the pre-recording of evidence is hugely important in limiting the distress of already traumatised victims, and that rolling out section 28 would allow more rape victims to see justice done quicker. Why, then, are the Government re-piloting something that has already been piloted twice? The lack of ambition is staggering. This is typical, frankly, of a Department that is obsessed with endless reviews and utterly averse to radical action. The Government have already failed far too many victims of these horrific crimes; hopefully that will change tonight.
Following the tragic death of Sarah Everard, the Opposition tabled an amendment that would extend whole-life orders to someone guilty of a murder, abduction and sexual assault of a stranger. A whole-life order is a commitment that the offender will never be released from prison again. The Opposition believe that, for this crime, a whole-life order is the only appropriate sentence. Amendment 50 would mean that anyone found guilty of the murder, abduction and sexual assault of another person—crimes that are so reprehensible—would spend the rest of their lives in prison. I do not feel that that is a difficult point and I hope the Secretary of State will agree.
The Victims’ Commissioner and Domestic Abuse Commissioner have called out the culture of misogyny throughout the criminal justice system that is clearly demonstrated in the response to domestic homicides. A quick scan through recent data powerfully illustrates that point: according to a report by the Femicide Census, 62% of women killed by men were killed by a current or former partner, and 70% of all murders of a woman by a man took place either in a shared home or in the victim’s home.
Yet we know that there is a serious anomaly in the sentencing of homicide cases that results in murderers who kill in the home being treated far more leniently than those who kill outside the home. As Carol Gould put it so poignantly,
“Why should a life taken in the home by someone you know be valued less than a life taken by a stranger in the streets?”
It is clear to the Opposition that it should not, and that is why we have tabled new clause 86, which would require the Lord Chancellor to commission an independent review into that aspect of sentencing. In this country, a woman is killed by a man on average every three days. From 2017 to 2019, there were 357 domestic homicides. The perpetrators of those despicable crimes cannot expect to benefit from this sentencing anomaly any longer.
As the law currently stands, complainants of serious sexual offences are granted lifelong anonymity. Although in some cases, identifying a complainant could result in an offender being prosecuted for contempt of court, they will, more often than not, receive only a fine. During questions on this last month, I raised the case of Phillip Leece to show just how devastating revealing the identity of the complainant can be. For naming and humiliating his victim online, he received a pathetic fine of only £120. At the time, the Lord Chancellor seemed to agree with me that the law in this area must be strengthened. New clause 87 would do just that by giving judges the power to sentence offenders for up to two years. In Committee, the Minister indicated that the Government took that point seriously, but went on to vote against the Opposition’s new clause. The Government accept that work has to be done in this area, so let us see tonight what the action is.
May I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for raising the important issue of the use of sexual history in rape trials? The Opposition wholeheartedly agree that no victim of a sexual offence should have to feel victimised twice by experiencing a hugely traumatic experience in the courtroom. The last thing we want is for an alleged victim of rape to face the ordeal of their sexual history being discussed in court unless the strictest of criteria are met. If section 41 is not being used as intended, it is only right that it is reviewed and, if necessary, strengthened. That is the purpose of new clause 88, which would compel the Government to seek the advice of the Law Commission as to whether section 41 is fit for purpose. Yet again, this is too important an issue to be kicked into the long grass, and I would appreciate assurances that any review will be completed before a victims Bill comes before the House.
Amendment 124 would ensure that any expansion in the use of audio and video links in courts will not undermine access to justice or the efficiency of our justice system. As the Lord Chancellor will appreciate, the move towards jury members being able to sit remotely is a seismic shift that could have profound consequences. It is concerning therefore that the Government seem content to introduce clause 168 without any evidence base or consultation. In Committee, the Opposition tabled several amendments that would provide safeguards to clause 168, but the Government rejected them on the basis that they were unnecessary. The hypothetical benefits of remote juries are limited, but it is crucial that those limited benefits are not introduced at the expense of access to justice and the right to a fair trial. Amendment 124 would ensure that the expansion of audio and video links is not implemented until an independent review has been undertaken.
Pets are a much loved and integral part of all families, and certainly of our family—I am thinking of my dog, Silver, as I say that. They bring us support, comfort and happiness, and I am smiling already thinking of my beautiful dog at home. During the pandemic, the number of dog thefts has skyrocketed, and we are now at a point where at least five dogs are stolen in England every day. That is why the Opposition have tabled new clause 98. Pet owners up and down the country would be horrified to learn that while the law of theft caters for certain offences—for example, the theft of a bicycle, of scrap metal and of wild mushrooms—that is not the case for the theft of pets, and this must change.
I am pleased to see that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) has tabled new clause 16, which is in effect a carbon copy of the new clause that we tabled in Committee. I am pleased to have the support of a Spurs supporter and a long-standing Member of the House, but I think we could do better. Since Committee, concerns have been raised about the two-year maximum tariff and we have listened to those concerns. As the Lord Chancellor will know, many of these thefts are being conducted not by petty criminals but by highly organised criminal gangs working across borders, and we are concerned that a two-year maximum penalty would not act as a sufficient deterrent to those people, so we have raised it to four years in our new clause 48. I hope that the Lord Chancellor can hear that the official Opposition are attempting to be reasonable, and that he will support some of the new clauses that we have put forward tonight.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), particularly as he referred to my new clauses—although not all of them, it has to be said. He referred to one of them, but there are two more. The new clauses are very clear, and I shall speak to them this evening. New clause 14 would require the cash sale of pets to be banned so that the only way for people to do those sales would be by cheque or bank transfer. That would mean that pet sellers could be tracked and the owners identified. This has become too easy a business.
New clause 15 would make it compulsory for pets that have to be microchipped to be scanned as well by vets, to check that the microchip number is registered on an approved database and that it confirms the correct registered keeper. New clause 16 would make the offence of pet theft a specific category of crime, as the right hon. Member for Tottenham said, carrying a much more significant set of fines and even incarceration.
Mr Steve Baker
Of course I share my right hon. Friend’s sentiment, but I was a bit concerned when I read his new clause about microchips. Is it really going to end up creating offences for vets? I would have thought they already had enough on their plates in often difficult and emotional circumstances.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
That may be the case, but the reality is that, by law, dogs must be microchipped. It makes no sense to microchip a dog, only for some vets not to scan them. That would mean that people who had stolen dogs could simply take them to the vet of their choice, knowing that they would not be scanned. The point is that if we have an offence, we must follow it through. Those pets must be scanned; otherwise, they will get stolen and sold without redress.
Those were the three areas that were raised with me, and many of my colleagues and friends who have signed these new clauses have also faced the same concerns. There has been a staggering welling up of anger, concern and worry about what might happen to people’s pets. There are some who will not go on walks with their dogs at the moment for fear of what might happen. It is important for the Government to recognise that this is a major concern.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is championing a noble cause that many of us feel very strongly about. Has he received the assurances that I have no doubt he has requested from the Government that they share our serious concern and that they intend to act, if not tonight then certainly in due course, on precisely the issues he has raised?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. The truth is that I have had a lot of discussions with my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor about this, and I feel that he is very sympathetic. I am sure that he can speak for himself, but I hope that he will give an undertaking that the Government will return to this matter in this Bill, at least by the time it is in the other place, and make whatever changes are necessary to the laws and regulations in terms of criminal justice. I have a high hope that that will be the case, but I will leave it to my right hon. and learned Friend to make his position clear when he gets to his feet.
Steve Brine
I want to back up my right hon. Friend, having put my name to these amendments. The reason that this measure needs to be in this Bill is that we have seen such a huge rise in the number of pet owners during the pandemic. I have not seen the amount of casework on this issue in 11 years that I have seen in recent months.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is right, and that is the point I was trying to make earlier. There has been a huge upwelling of anger and concern about the theft of dogs in particular, but pets in general. These three new clauses highlight that particular issue. It is not a simple thing or something that can be ignored, and it is quite interesting to look at what has happened to prosecutions.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I have absolutely no problem with interventions, but it may be that we can get everybody in if people still stick to four minutes, even if they take interventions.
Sir John Hayes
Politics is about values. It always has been, actually, but in the modern age too many politicians —perhaps timid of inspiring or of their capacity to do so, or frightened of causing contumely—have retreated into a drear, dull, mechanistic discourse. Tonight, this Bill and these amendments are a chance to break free of that—a chance to change—because the Government are at last responding to the will of the people who, for a very long time, have believed that the criminal justice system was not weighted in favour of victims or law and order, but too heavily weighted in favour of making excuses for those who commit crime.
The world is a dangerous place. In fact, unimpeded, evil men and women will impose their cruel will upon the innocent. C. S. Lewis said that in living the reality of human imperfections,
“the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.”
Law-abiding Britons do their everyday part in keeping the fire of social solidarity burning bright, yet too many with power appear to have forgotten how to tackle the evil that seeks to snuff out civilised order. Instead, those who see crime as an ill to be treated have held too much sway for too long. Evil too often receives a slap on the wrist, a stern telling off, and the public’s desire for retributive justice goes unheeded.
We must never forget, as was said earlier, that we serve here at the pleasure of our constituents. Public order and faith in the rule of law depend on popular confidence in the justice system—a confidence that must be earned. People’s sense of right and wrong has changed little over the decades. In 1990, four out of five Britons thought sentencing was too lenient. Today, four out of five Britons think the same. With the number of custodial sentences for sexual offences, theft and criminal damage all falling, it is time for this place to listen. Our constituents despair of having violent deviants freed to hurt again, of seeing non-custodial sentences for yobs and thugs, and of halfway automatic release for some of the most violent people in our society. Many gentle, peaceful people are appalled at all of this. Soft sentencing allows rapists, paedophiles and violent offenders to walk free having served only half their sentence. Given the pain of victims, that is an insult to decency.
This Bill, in seeking to ensure that the most despicable criminals face their just deserts behind bars, is welcome. That may shock the liberal establishment, filled by doubts and fuelled by guilt, but it is much yearned for by the silent majority of Britons and it is long overdue. Shame on those who wish to use the Bill for narrow ends. However, I will not go into the amendments on abortion because you would not let me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but you know what I mean.
Disraeli said:
“Justice is truth in action.”
That is not a relative individual truth but an extension of absolute virtue that people intuitively understand and to which this Bill gives life. Amendments to tackle the wicked scourge of pet theft affirm that truth, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) made clear.
The Bill before us today begins to signal that the Government are no longer distracted by the plight of the guilty. It proudly declares that we are devoted to the cause of the innocent and to the pursuit of justice. We must never be timid about being fierce in defence of the gentle, for in being so we stand for the majority of law-abiding Britons. I commend the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), which, in laying down the truth that I have described, further reinforce a good Bill. It is a start: the beginning of a fightback on behalf of the silent majority.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for his support.
I have 16 new clauses in this group that deal with issues such as extending the time limits for appealing unduly lenient sentences, including for assaulting an emergency worker, under the unduly lenient sentence scheme; limiting the use of fixed-term recalls, ensuring that there is no difference in sentencing between using a knife in a murder in a home compared with taking a knife to murder someone elsewhere; and a sentencing escalator ensuring that people who repeatedly commit the same offence must get a more severe penalty each time they do so, which has a huge amount of support from the public. I hope that the Secretary of State will write to me with his response to each of my new clauses.
In the limited time available, I want to focus on new clause 75, which would ensure that there was no automatic early release of prisoners who assault prison staff while in jail. I would like to see an end to all automatic early release, as alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings. However, as it seems that the Government are not quite with us on that just yet, my new clause would send a clear message to those who assault hard-working and dedicated prison officers and other staff in our prisons that they would have to serve the whole of their sentence in prison if they indulged in that kind of activity rather than, as at the moment, so many people being automatically released halfway through. If jailed criminals attack a prison officer, surely they should lose their right to automatic early release and serve their sentence in full.
Far too many prison officers are being assaulted. They do a very difficult job and we are not giving them sufficient support. We should be doing our bit to prevent these assaults from happening. Clearly, if people knew that they would have to serve the entirety of their sentence in prison, that would be a good deterrent. At the moment, they can assault prison officers and prison staff with near impunity because they know they are still going to be released halfway through their sentence. The number of extra days—I repeat, days—that are given to people when they commit the offence of assaulting a prison officer is derisory. We owe a duty of care to prison officers and should make sure that they are as well protected as possible when they are doing their public service.
That also ties in with the spirit of what the Government have been trying to achieve on attacks on emergency workers. I certainly agree with what the Government are doing in this Bill and I look forward to the Secretary of State bringing forward his proposals to deal with attacks on shopworkers when the Bill goes to another place. I think that showing we are on the side of prison officers, hard-working public servants, in this way would be a very welcome step forward. I imagine that most common-sense members of the public would be surprised to know that this is not the case already, to be perfectly honest.
I have not had any indication from the Government that they are planning to accept my new clause 75. I would love to hear from the Secretary of State why he thinks it is perfectly reasonable for criminals who assault a prison officer not to have their automatic early release stopped and why he thinks it is absolutely fine for them still be released early from their prison sentences. I am pretty sure that lots of prison officers would like to know the same, too. I would like to hear from him on that when he winds up, but I would prefer to hear that he was accepting my new clause 75, which I think the vast majority of people in this House would like to see, prison officers would like to see and the public would like to see.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op) [V]
This is a Bill that shows us that the Government have yet to understand the value of debate and discussion. As a result, they are missing out on some key amendments, many tabled for discussion in this debate and many for the earlier debate, that could have made the Bill a moment of progress on issues that many of us agree on. Instead, by the way in which the Attorney General, the Lord Chancellor and the Government are approaching the Bill, we see exactly where their priorities lie. Every single time proposals have been put forward to keep women safe, they get kicked into the long grass, with the suggestion that they go to the Law Commission. Yet the Government think it is simple and easy to define what is “annoying” when we all know that is a very difficult one. In the last few weeks alone, we have seen the value of deciding what the difference between protest and harassment is. Surely that should be something that went to the Law Commission.
Instead, in my short time this evening, I want to challenge the way in which the Government are approaching amendments that have come from across the House and which bring us many ideas on how we can improve confidence in our criminal justice system. I want to put on record my support for the amendments tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who has been a diligent activist for human rights all her life and whose ideas about rape should not be let go again. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) spoke courageously to identify an anomaly in our law, where the women in Northern Ireland now enjoy better reproductive rights than women in England, Wales and Scotland. The amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) to help to support our children and keep our children safe are vital. There is cross-party support for action against assault on retail workers and for action to address pet offences, which have been coming up in the pandemic.
I urge the Government to listen to the message coming so clearly from women across the country about new clause 30, which has been tabled in my name but has been part of the work I have been doing with my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith). I pay tribute to his constituent, Julia Cooper, a valiant woman who was simply feeding her baby in a park when a man decided it was acceptable to take photos of her breastfeeding without her consent. When she sought the support of the law, the law said it was perfectly legal for the man to do what he was doing. Take a moment to think about that. We can simply and easily decide that we want to protect statues, but on that most natural and beautiful thing for a mother to do to feed her child the Government are saying no to protecting those women. Again, they are kicking the issue into the long grass.
I served on the upskirting Bill. At the time, we raised concerns that, frankly, it only went below the knee, but we now need to make sure that the law ensures full coverage. I urge Ministers tonight: whether it is in the other place or now, please do not leave the women of this country feeling that you do not understand the lives they lead. We have the lowest rates of breastfeeding in Europe and it is not hard to understand why, if women feel they are going to be shamed or attacked in public.
As someone that this has happened to myself, I ask the Minister to think about what he would feel if it was happening to a member of his family: if somebody was taking photos or a video for their own gratification and he could not stop them. By resisting new clause 30 and saying that this has to go back to the Law Commission, when it is clear what could be done to make it a criminal offence, he is sending a very clear message to women, as he has done on rape, as he has done on domestic homicide reviews, as he has done on child protection, that their concerns are complicated and difficult, but statues and protests are not. I ask him to think again about the message that he is sending and to say, “We will make laws in this place that will support everyone to lead their lives without fear”, because it is fear that someone will feel if they think that somebody is following them with a camera when they just want to feed their baby. Minister, let us not just stick up for the unborn children; let us stick up for those who are newly born, too.
Sarah Champion [V]
In my time as an MP, I have worked with too many victims and survivors who have been utterly let down by the criminal justice system. Their cases compel me to use this Bill as a vehicle to deliver long overdue changes for them. In the past year alone, I have had two survivors from Rotherham contact me to say that their abuser has been moved to an open prison and is therefore eligible for day release without their notification. That is despite the fact that both victims were signed up to the victim contact scheme and should have been able to provide evidence to the Parole Board in advance of the decisions being made.
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)
In our home, pets are not property; they are members of the family. There is Geoffrey the tortoise, whose sole aim in life seems to be to find the most obscure and inaccessible corner of the room to sit in for the day. The back of the fireplace is his perennial favourite, and crawling in there to retrieve him has become an evening ritual in our house. We then have Florence, Vera and Coco. They are alpacas, although someone who happened to wander into their paddock with a handful of carrots could be forgiven for thinking they were dealing with a shoal of piranhas. Then there is the newest member, Sergeant Wilson the donkey, whose mission is to eat the world—even if it does involve getting his head stuck in the fence while trying to reach for the raspberry canes.
Many of my constituents have been in touch with me to express their concerns about pet theft over the pandemic, so I started a Rushcliffe pet theft survey to listen to people’s views: 96% of people told me that they were worried about pet theft; 30% said that they had been, or knew someone who had been personally affected by it; and 90% have taken extra precautions to ensure that their pet is not stolen. There was varying support for different measures to help to tackle pet theft: 44% wanted tougher sentences; 22% wanted to create a separate offence; 17% wanted more regulation on pet selling; and 15% wanted more support from the police. So I am pleased that the pet theft taskforce will be addressing all those points and considering the issue in its entirety, including causes, prevention, reporting, enforcement and prosecution.
There are a number of fundamental issues to think through. Should we be thinking of pet theft as theft at all, or is it close to abduction? So many contributions here tonight have talked about pets as members of the family. What about the animal cruelty element? At present, if someone causes an animal to suffer in the course of stealing it from the owner, they can be prosecuted under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. But are not all acts of wrenching a pet away from the family who love and care for it an act of animal cruelty? What about sentencing? We already have a maximum term of seven years, yet it rarely seems to be used in the case of pet theft.
So I welcome the opportunity to debate these issues tonight, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and other right hon. and hon. Members for the amendments they have tabled that have enabled us to discuss the matter. I will not be supporting any at this stage because I think we need to see the result of the pet theft taskforce first, so that we have the data that we need to make the best decisions and ensure that we have strongest tools we need to deal with the people who want to steal our pets. I look forward to seeing the results in a couple of weeks’ time and to Ministers taking strong action to implement the taskforce’s recommendations in this Bill in the autumn. We owe it to our pets to make sure that we get this right.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab) [V]
I wish to speak to new clauses 20 and 21 in my name, which refer to specific penalties for two road crimes.
Every year in this country, 1,700 people are killed and 26,000 seriously injured on our roads. It is the biggest killer of young people between the ages of five and 29 and there has been a feeling not just in this House, but particularly among the families of road crime victims that the penalties for road traffic offences often do not fit the crimes and that road crime is not treated like real crime.
The Government promised a full review of road traffic offences and penalties in 2014, but that has yet to happen. The Bill introduces small but welcome changes to the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving and a new offence of causing injury by careless driving, but it leaves a number of serious flaws in our traffic laws in place and my amendments would address two of the most glaring ones.
First, on the failure to stop and report an accident—more commonly known as hit and run—for which the maximum sentence is currently only six months, just one of the many cases raised by road safety and motoring organisations to Members of this House was that of the Cornish postman Ryan Saltern. He was killed by a hit-and-run driver, who received just a four-month sentence and a 12-month driving ban. My new clause 20 proposes a maximum sentence of 14 years where a driver fails to stop and exchange details or report the collision to the police in cases where they knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that a serious or fatal injury had occurred, or might have occurred.
New clause 21 addresses the issue of exceptional hardship. This is a plea that road criminals can often make to avoid losing their licence. From 2011 to 2020, there were 83,581 cases where drivers were let off a driving ban by pleading exceptional hardship. When Christopher Gard hit and killed cyclist Lee Martin in 2015, it was the ninth time in six years that he had been caught using a mobile phone while driving. He had been convicted and fined six times and sent on two driver retraining courses. He should have been disqualified, but magistrates had repeatedly accepted his plea that a ban would cause him exceptional hardship. He kept his licence, and Lee Martin was killed.
Courts have accepted a range of problems, such as not being able to do the school run or damage to a relationship, as exceptional, and as a plea against disqualification that has brought this cause into disrepute. My new clause requires that a court should regard hardship as exceptional if, and only if, it is significantly greater than the hardship that would arise if the same qualification were imposed on a large majority of other drivers. It is vital that the Government fulfil their seven-year promise of a full review of traffic offences. In the meantime, these are two modest improvements to two of the most egregious areas, where most reasonable people agree that all too often, the punishment does not fit the crime. I do not intend to push the amendments to a vote, but I hope the Government will accept them, if not here, then in the other place.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
Keeping people safe and secure is a priority for any Government, particularly this one. That is why I am delighted to speak in this important debate. I am fortunate to live in Devon, which enjoys the second lowest crime rate in the country. Crime continues to fall, in no small part thanks to the excellent work of the Devon and Cornwall police, and our excellent police and crime commissioner, Alison Hernandez. However, even in my remote rural constituency, concerns about an increase in pet theft are growing. As a dog owner, indeed a pet lover, I can only imagine the distress of losing my four-legged best friend. This is not the first time I have raised this issue in the House, and I am delighted that the cross-Government pet theft taskforce has been launched, better to understand and tackle the issue.
While crime may be low in Devon and Cornwall, in the past three years there have been 256 reports of dog theft, yet just two people have been charged. I am pleased that the maximum sentence for dog theft is already seven years, but that is no deterrent if no one is prosecuted. Understanding that disjoint is vital, and I hope that the taskforce will come up with a solution to increase prosecution rates and deter further canine crimes. Locally, our police and crime commissioner has highlighted issues regarding how dog thefts are reported. Classing such thefts as merely theft of property is a contributory factor to low prosecution rates, but there are many others. Unfortunately, the taskforce will not report until later this summer, but I am delighted that its policy recommendations may be made in the Lords, before the Bill returns to the Commons, to ensure that it adequately reflects what is truly needed. We are a nation of animal lovers, and it is vital that our animal companions are as safe and secure as their owners.
We are also a nation of shopkeepers. Some of the reports I have heard about the abuse received by retail workers, particularly during the pandemic, are horrifying. It is unacceptable that key workers, who have gone to work throughout the pandemic to ensure that we could access the items we needed, have been treated in this way. I warmly welcome our review into this area, which found that not reporting offences, and wider concerns about how the police handled those reports, were and are important issues that need addressing. I understand that Lords amendments may be considered, if required, to ensure that such offences are treated with the seriousness they rightly deserve.
I support the detailed analysis of such issues by the Ministry of Justice, to ensure that amendments, if needed, are tabled when the data are fully available, rather than being like many of the knee-jerk Opposition amendments, which frequently are poorly thought through, and in many cases seek to reduce sentences for those who commit crimes, rather than ensure that criminals see the justice they deserve.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]
The Government say that this Bill will empower the police and courts to take more action against crime. However, much of it continues the failed approach of successive Governments. Legislating for longer and longer custodial sentences without any evidence that they deter people from committing crimes shows ignorance of the real drivers of crime. At its best, the Bill will be ineffective; at its worst, it is an assault on human rights and democracy.
There are some good elements of the Bill. Trauma-informed services, the strengthening of rehabilitation and the police covenant are all things that we Liberal Democrats support, but we argue that there is a need to go even further. It is a great shame that constructive debate about those important measures, which should really be at the centre of the Bill, is undermined by the elements of the Bill that are extremely concerning: serious violence reduction orders, which hand over stop-and-search powers; the increases in mandatory sentences that tie judges’ hands and do not even work to prevent crime; the proposals to criminalise trespass on unauthorised encampments, which discriminate against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities; and the new restrictions on the right to protest, which are nothing short of an assault on our civil liberties.
Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)
I will speak briefly to new clause 98 on pet theft, but let me first say in general terms that I approve of the increased sentences that this Bill will introduce, including extending whole-life orders to premeditated murder of a child, ending the automatic early release of dangerous criminals, and increasing the maximum penalty for criminal damage of a memorial. I think that those measures will be widely welcomed by the public.
On new clause 98 specifically and the other new clauses regarding pet theft, I am very much sympathetic to what they seek to achieve. We have heard warm stories about the companionship that pets bring and the important role that they play in people’s lives. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) pointed out, there has been a lot of organised criminality around the reported rise in pet theft, and I have seen videos posted in local community Facebook groups that show groups of suspicious-looking men looking for dogs. Constituents have written to me to say how scared or worried they are when they go out to walk their dog during the day.
As I understand it, we saw the price of some breeds rise by up to 89% in the first lockdown, and Google searches for “buy a puppy” increased by 166% between March and August, after the start of the first lockdown, which may be one of the contributory factors to that increased criminality. I commend Nottinghamshire police for the appointment of Chief Inspector Amy Styles-Jones as a dog theft lead. I think it may be the first police force that has taken that step and it could be a model for others to follow. It will provide some reassurance to the public.
We should remember that pet theft is already an offence under the Theft Act 1968, for which there is a maximum sentence of seven years. As others have pointed out, there are further offences under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 if an animal suffers. If I have understood it correctly, new clause 98, as currently drafted, would introduce a lower sentence not exceeding four years. I am therefore not sure whether that would be progress.
I also believe that legislating now would ignore the work of the pet theft taskforce, which was launched in May. It will try to understand the factors behind the perceived rise in pet theft, recommend measures to tackle that and seek to learn the lessons from related specific thefts, including of mobile phones and metal.
We have heard some powerful arguments for tackling the issue. There is more to be done and primary legislation might well be necessary, but I would first like to see the outcome of the taskforce’s review and, if measures are necessary, for that to be backed up with appropriate sentencing.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
New clause 19 would require the Government to issue impact assessments on the Bill’s effect on devolved policy and services in Wales. I am grateful for the support of Labour and SNP colleagues. My other amendments would require Welsh ministerial consent for the Secretary of State to exert direct control over devolved areas such as health and education in Wales.
The justice system in Wales is just that—a system. Changes to currently reserved England and Wales matters could have profound policy and cost implications for devolved services in Wales, for example, the Senedd’s powers on substance misuse, mental health, education, social services and more. Section 110A of the Government of Wales Act 2006, as inserted by section 11 of the Wales Act 2017, requires that all Welsh legislation include an assessment of any impact on the reserved justice system. There is no reciprocal requirement.
However, there is a growing divergence between the policies of the Ministry of Justice and those of the Welsh Government. In my view, the current arrangements are neither adequate nor sustainable. Indeed, the Minister told me in Committee:
“I accept that the Welsh Government take a wider view of those provisions that relate to devolved matters. I hope that we will be able to reach a common understanding on these issues, but it may well be that we have to accept that the UK and Welsh Governments have a different understanding of those measures in the Bill that engage the legislative consent process.”
There are sufficient differences to require specific assessments. Indeed, the Bill may well undermine Welsh legislation and policy, for example, the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 and the race equality action plan. A requirement for a Welsh-specific impact assessment could reveal such problems or dispel our concerns, but how will the people of Wales know unless we assess?
In Committee, the Minister also claimed that
“there should be no change to the current arrangements, which serve the people of Wales and England well.”—[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 24 June 2021; c. 807.]
Wales has the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe. Black people are six times more likely to be imprisoned than their white counterparts. Nearly half of Welsh children who are imprisoned are detained in England, far from their homes. There is a chronic lack of community provision for women. Apparently, that is serving the “people of Wales well”.
Recently, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, formerly the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, led the Commission on Justice in Wales. He concluded:
“Justice should be determined and delivered in Wales so that it aligns with its distinct and developing social, health and education policy and services and the growing body of Welsh law.”
For me, the sensible solution would be, as with Scotland and Northern Ireland, to devolve justice.
However, in the meantime, we need to know the effects in Wales of changes to the law of England and Wales, through proper justice impact assessments.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
I would like to speak to new clause 54 relating to equality impact assessments. Today, I will raise a part of the Bill that, although it has been mentioned, has never been considered in the light of what I am about to say. The proposed legislation will put a maximum 10-year sentence in place for those people who damage or attack statues, inserting into British law a significantly higher penalty for attacking a statue, which begs the question why. Why would a person be given a much more significant penalty for attacking a stone or iron statue compared with damaging a stone wall or an iron gate, especially because in their physical form, they are identical? Neither is alive. They cannot be injured or have their feelings hurt and they are made of the same elements, yet for one, there is much more of a significance. I simply ask why. It is because we recognise that statues symbolise the historical, cultural and social feelings of our nation and thus protecting feelings linked to such sensitivity is essential to preserve civil order. It is because, as the Justice Secretary told the Commons, this Bill ensures that
“our courts have sufficient sentencing powers to punish the emotional harm caused by this type of offending”.—[Official Report, 9 March 2021; Vol. 690, c. 38WS.]
Yes, people can go out and debate, discuss, disagree and even respectfully and vehemently oppose any historical figure, but when they defame or vandalise in a mob-like fashion statues of people like Winston Churchill who mean so much to millions of Britons who hold his efforts during the second world war so close to their hearts, that does threaten the cohesive nature of our nation. We cannot pretend that a western liberal democracy like Britain does not consider feelings when it comes to such situations while at the same time today passing a law through Parliament giving such importance to protecting statues based upon commemorative feelings.
As a Muslim, for me and millions of Muslims across this country and a quarter of the world’s population who are Muslim too, with each day and each breath there is not a single thing in the world that we commemorate and honour more than our beloved Prophet, Mohammed, peace be upon him. But when bigots and racists defame, slander or abuse our Prophet, peace be upon him, just like some people do the likes of Churchill, the emotional harm caused upon our hearts is unbearable, because for 2 billion Muslims, he is the leader we commemorate in our hearts and honour in our lives, and he forms the basis of our identity and our very existence. In fact, the noted playwright George Bernard Shaw said about the Prophet, peace be upon him:
“He was by far the most remarkable man that ever set foot on this earth. He preached a religion, founded a state…laid down a moral code, initiated numerous social and political reforms, established a powerful and dynamic society to practice and represent his teachings and completely revolutionised the worlds of human thought and behaviour for all times to come.”
To those who say it is just a cartoon, I will not say, “It’s only a statue”, because I understand the strength of British feeling when it comes to our history, our culture and our identity. It is not just a cartoon and they are not just statues. They represent, symbolise and mean so much more to us as human beings.
In conclusion, while this law would now protect civil order and emotional harm when it comes to secular and political figures such as Oliver Cromwell and Churchill and does not necessarily put other figures that many people in modern Britain hold close to their hearts, such as Jesus, the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, Moses, Ram, Buddha, Guru Nanak and many others, it does show that we recognise that there is such a thing as emotional harm. Finally, we must ask ourselves: when striking the careful balance to protect such emotional harms, can there and should there be a hierarchy of sentiments?
Bob Blackman [V]
I am pleased to make a contribution on this very long, complex and deeply important Bill. Obviously, the ambition of the Bill is to put communities before crime and the omnibus of reforms in this legislation will undoubtedly make our country a much safer place to live, work and play. I commend my colleagues from the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice for their deep commitment to the safety and security of our citizens.
It is quite right that we are considering extending whole life orders for the premeditated murder of a child as well as ending the automatic early release of dangerous criminals. In fact, by extending that position and increasing the tariff people will serve as their prison sentence, we are more than exceeding many of the principles laid out in the amendments before the House. One of the concerns I have about putting in minimum sentences for particular offences is the risk that the judiciary may interpret those as being not only the minimum, but possibly the guidance for the maximum sentence that should be applied. It is right that violent criminals should be punished and retained in prison for the duration of their sentences. Equally, it is right that if they attack prison warders or any other servant in their prisons, their right to automatic release should end. I think that is vital.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
With apologies to the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe), who is about to speak, I am afraid that I have to reduce the time limit to three minutes. I will be a little lenient with the hon. Member, but it will certainly be three minutes after her. I call Claudia Webbe.
Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am gravely concerned by this legislation, which, frankly, would not look out of place in the world’s most authoritarian regimes. The fact that this legislation could introduce, for damaging a statue, a sentence that is twice the length of that for sexual assault reveals how utterly unserious this Government are about tackling gendered violence.
The legislation will have a disproportionate effect on African, African-Caribbean, Asian and minority ethnic communities. We know that black people already disproportionately suffer from police use of force in the UK, are more likely to be charged and are over-represented in the prison population. Human rights group Liberty has expressed concern about the provision to widen stop-and-search powers because they are used against communities of colour, especially black men, at staggeringly disproportionate rates. According to Roma rights group Friends of Romano Lav, the legislation will also have a devastating effect on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. This Bill therefore threatens to severely exacerbate an already unequal two-tier justice system in which UK residents are treated differently because of their background or the colour of their skin.
It is for that and many other equality reasons that I tabled new clause 54, which would introduce a statutory requirement for the equality impact analysis that is currently missing from the Bill. That would compel the Secretary of State to review the equality impact of the Bill and publish a full report to the House of Commons within six months. The review would include racial and ethnic disparities, income inequality, gender inequities, people with protected characteristics, public sector equality and regional inequality.
Given existing legislation, it is shocking that the Government do not already feel compelled to produce such a report. An equality impact analysis would ensure that it was not possible to ignore the severe inequalities in how the criminal justice system treats different groups of UK residents, and that would lay the groundwork for a fairer and more equitable criminal justice system. It is especially alarming that the Bill gives even more powers to the police to crack down on peaceful protests. Organised peaceful resistance is a force for change and deserving of our full support.
I sincerely hope that new clause 54, as well as all the amendments and new clauses I have highlighted and the many others that there has not been time to mention, will be adopted to curtail this deeply concerning, authoritarian Bill. I will end with this, Madam Deputy Speaker: if the Bill cannot be made considerably more equal, more transparent and more respectful of our democratic rights, it must not be brought into law. If it passes into law unchanged, I fear for the future of our civic life.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
I am very pleased to speak to new clause 18 in the name of the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), with whom I co-chair the all-party group on women in the penal system. The new clause seeks to amend the Bail Act 1976 so that prisons are not used as the care of last resort for vulnerable people. At present, courts can remand an adult into prison for their own protection without them having been convicted or sentenced, or when a criminal charge they face is unlikely to—or, in some cases, cannot—result in a prison sentence. I am afraid it is quite wrong for prisons to be used for secure protection in that way. If we believe in civil liberties and we believe that vulnerable people require support and not incarceration, the power must be repealed.
I will look for comfort from my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor, who I am sure shares my sentiments and does not wish prison to be used in that way. Some of us might argue that, too often, vulnerable people who have been failed by the state end up in prison in any case. The new clause would repeal the power of criminal courts to remand a defendant in custody for their own protection. That, I would add, is entirely consistent with the direction of travel of Government policy in this area. I can attest to the fact that when I was Minister for mental health, we invested heavily in places of safety so that people undergoing a mental health crisis were not remanded in custody for their own protection. We also had the Mental Health Act review by Sir Simon Wessely, who has explicitly recommended the removal of the power.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Robert Buckland)
May I reassure my hon. Friend that we are conducting a review into this issue and will report by the end of the year? I pay tribute to the work she did as a Minister jointly with me on mental health issues. She did a lot, particularly about those in custody, and she has been heard.
Jackie Doyle-Price
I am grateful for that contribution, but I am like a dog with a bone on this issue, because I do care that we are putting vulnerable people in the wrong place and, by doing so, doing them harm.
There is a real point that I would like to make about this provision. The advice I received from the Howard League is that it is most often used in respect of women with a mental health crisis. I am also advised of a case of a victim of trafficking who was remanded in custody for their own protection. This is another example of women not getting a fair crack of the whip when it comes to criminal justice. It is not really for the criminal justice system to absorb the consequences of failure by other areas of the state. It is up to local authorities to ensure adequate refuge provision for women in a vulnerable position and, of course, the NHS to ensure that there are enough facilities for crises. We have invested in places of safety, and we must make sure we do better on this. As we look at the wide variety of criminal justice issues—we have heard a lot today about violence against women and girls—I make a plea again to my right hon. and learned Friend that we make laws that centre women. When we talk about gender-neutral legislation, that is another way of centring men. Women have a unique set of vulnerabilities because of their biology, and we must make sure we do everything in our law to protect them. We have heard a lot about that in today’s debate. We have had a lot of commitments from the Government to take this more seriously, but I look forward to some positive work, and I know the Government are listening.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, particularly having served on the Bill Committee. Law and order matters enormously to my constituents, as it probably does to all our constituents. One thing I hear all the time, from not just residents, but the police, is frustration with the sentencing system, because people want a system that puts victims and communities first. They want to see a criminal justice system that works for the law-abiding majority. It continues to concern me and local residents that some of the most violent offenders have been serving only half their sentence, so I strongly welcome clauses 105, 106 and 107, which will result in some of the worst offenders staying in prison for longer—violent offenders and child sex offenders. I also welcome clause 102, which introduces whole-life orders for the premeditated murder of a child. I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) in wanting to see us get to a place eventually where no one is released midway through their sentence, be it halfway, or after two thirds or three quarters; a sentence should mean a sentence.
Given that I am short on time, I wish to cover one other thing that matters enormously to me and to many people across Burnley and Padiham—rape prosecutions. I am talking about new clause 89. We would all agree that rape prosecutions are at an unacceptable level. I have seen cases of constituents being failed by not just the police, but the CPS. However, this is not an issue that legislation alone will fix; it needs a fundamental change in how the police, the CPS and victims’ support all work together to support people who make a complaint —to support victims—and to ensure that we get a successful prosecution. The law needs to be firmly on the side of victims, and for too long it has not been.
James Daly (Bury North) (Con)
I rise to speak to new clauses 89 and 97. Having spent 16 years in the criminal courts, I speak with some experience of how cases are proceeded with. My right hon. and learned Friend is here as Lord Chancellor and his responsibility is the courts system. So his responsibility is the imposition of appropriate sentencing powers for judges, to reflect public confidence in the justice system and the serious nature of offending. In line with his and his Department’s responsibilities, he has clearly done that. There is an increase in sentences for the most serious sexual offences, as has been outlined by my hon. Friends already, and he must be commended for that. I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) on prosecutions, and we have spent a lot of time discussing this, in the Justice Committee and elsewhere. In the past year, 52,000 reported a rape to the police but only 1.6% of those led on to a charge or a summons. That is clearly not acceptable. When we are debating this section of the legislation, we must always remember that the justice system can work only if it is linked up with the police, the Courts Service and the probation service working together. Perhaps sometimes the disjointed nature of ministerial responsibilities for various parts of the system does not help in terms of conviction rates.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
As somebody who has worked in this joined-up or not so joined-up system, may I ask the hon. Gentleman why he thinks that in the past five years there has been quite such a drop? Does he think it may be not just joined-upness or the lack of it, but a resources issue?
James Daly
I am very glad that the hon. Lady raises that issue. When the Director of Public Prosecutions gave evidence to the Justice Committee on 15 June, he was very clear that his predecessors had failed: they had not put in place the policies and actions necessary to increase rape prosecutions. Clearly, that includes the Leader of the Opposition, who I have to say has an inglorious reputation for leadership of the Crown Prosecution Service during that period. I certainly will not accept any lectures from the Labour party concerning—
James Daly
No, I will not.
I am rather curious. We have heard comments from Opposition Members that they support heavier sentences and further action being taken, quite rightly, to protect the victims of serious sexual violence, so why in Committee did they vote against what was then clause 106—the clause that will abolish the automatic halfway release for certain serious violent or sexual offenders? We have a Leader of the Opposition with a terrible record of leading the CPS, and we have an Opposition who have recently voted against more serious sentences and more deterrent sentences.
James Daly
I have been absolutely amazed by the comments of some Opposition Members that deterrent sentences do not work. The point of the Bill—and the point of the responsibilities that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor has—is to increase sentences and increase public confidence in the justice system. That is exactly what he is doing.
James Daly
No.
I support the Bill. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend and thank him for bringing forward legislation to ensure that rapists are not released early in their sentences. That is what the public want, that is what we were elected on a manifesto to deliver, and that is what we are doing.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I am delighted to speak in this debate and to speak in favour of new clause 17, which is tabled in my name. I am delighted that many hon. Members on both sides have expressed their support for it.
I will not move the new clause this evening, because I am lucky to have had conversations with the Lord Chancellor, who I am delighted to see is in his place, about the nature of this particular crime. This crime is, I would argue, almost unique in that it is a complete betrayal. It is a complete betrayal because it is not just by a person, but by the parent of a child at its most vulnerable stage. It is a complete betrayal because it is a failure—yes, of those parents, but actually of our entire society—to protect the most vulnerable. It is a complete betrayal because it allows a crime to continue when it should have stopped days before, and in this case days are lifetimes.
I am talking, of course, about the terrible abuse of children like Tony Hudgell—children who, like Tony, are in the early stages of life. They are not able to give evidence to a court, because they are in their 40th or 50th day of life. They could not possibly stand up in a court and give testimony, and they could not possibly point the finger at their abuser, so they find themselves in the invidious position of not being able to get the full weight of the law brought against their aggressor, because they are too young, too innocent, too silent to be able to bring that action.
The Lord Chancellor has spoken to me privately—I hope that he will not mind my raising it publicly—about how we share the same horror of these crimes and these offences, but at the moment the law does not allow the same sentencing. I only ask that in the next few months, before the Bill gets to the Lords and the change comes that we all hope for, he looks at this legislation and realises that there is a small lacuna—a gap—in which the sentencing could be corrected. It does not require a complete redrafting of the law, but a small swish of his pen, as his quill hits the vellum to change the sentences and match them appropriately to the crimes—crimes that would have reached the same sentence had the child been able to point the finger and identify the criminal.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Other hon. Members have spoken eloquently about some of the amendments and new clauses that I strongly support: to protect shop workers from abuse; to protect people from harassment outside abortion clinics, as has happened in my constituency; and to protect the ability to meaningfully protest. I therefore want to confine my brief remarks to new clause 30, which is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). It is the same as a new clause that was tabled in Committee in her name and my own. I do not need to speak for long because she covered the issues very well in her excellent speech.
I want to pay tribute to my constituent Julia Cooper, who first approached me a few months ago to tell me about her experience at Sale Water Park, which is adjacent to my constituency. She had been out with a friend and was breastfeeding her baby when a stranger put on a telephoto lens and started taking photographs of her in the park without permission. She confronted the individual, but he refused to delete the pictures. She complained to the park authorities and then to the police, and was told that there was nothing that they could do. I was shocked for two reasons. First, I was shocked that a stranger would actually take long lens photos of someone breastfeeding without their consent. Secondly, I was equally shocked that the police said that there was nothing in the law that they could do to tackle the issue.
When I raised this issue previously in Women and Equalities questions in the Chamber, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), said:
“This is unacceptable and we will deal with it.”—[Official Report, 26 May 2021; Vol. 696, c. 364.]
It is therefore disappointing, having raised the issue in Committee and tabling the new clause today, that the Government seem to be kicking this into the long grass with a review by the Law Commission. This is a pretty simple issue that could be dealt with quickly and effectively today through new clause 30. We should accept the new clause, because the number of people who have contacted Julia, other campaigners and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow are testament to the number of times that this has happened around the country. It is now happening every week.
We ought to be taking action now. We should not be kicking this issue into the long grass. If this new clause is pushed to a vote this evening, and I hope that it may be, I urge hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber to support it. If not, I do hope that the Lords will look at this issue and perhaps bring forward something similar when it is dealt with there. It is shocking and disgraceful behaviour, and we could take action today—now—to stop it.
Mr Steve Baker
I want to address new clause 76, which offers the Government an opportunity to save lives. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is not in his place, but I have let him know that I will mention him. On this occasion, he has been a bit soft. I think that is probably the first time that I have said that and it will probably be the last time that I do. The reason that I say it is that in his new clause 76, he proposes increasing the penalty for dangerous driving from two years’ to five years’ imprisonment. I have only had a cursory search and the Justice Secretary will probably correct me if I am wrong, but the problem with my hon. Friend’s suggestion is that the maximum penalty for possession of class A drugs is seven years and for possession of firearms 10 years.
I will touch on this matter briefly, because I am not sure whether it has been through the courts. I had occasion, through very nearly becoming a victim of a dangerous driver evading the police, to have various conversations with police drivers, and they seem to be of the opinion that miscreants know the various penalties for dangerous driving, possession of drugs and the possession of firearms, and they will evade the police and drive at enormous speed simply to make sure that they are not caught with firearms or drugs in the car, so there is a problem with the structure of incentives around dangerous driving. Elsewhere, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley tabled an amendment relating to a requirement to turn off the engine, but the point is that if police officers seek to stop someone who knows they are in possession of firearms or drugs, which would earn them a sentence greater than that for dangerous driving, then off they might well go. That can be a very dangerous thing indeed. I should not mention the speeds involved, but I know that people will find ways, with very high-performance cars, of outrunning the police.
My suggestion to the Government is to take advantage of this Bill and the section relating to driving offences, inspired by new clause 76, and do something to make sure that an offence is introduced for which the penalty, if someone refuses to stop for the police and then drives in an evasive manner, committing dangerous driving offences, is sufficient to deter even people who might have firearms or class A drugs in the vehicle. I encourage Ministers to consult police officers who drive with that in mind. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to raise this issue with my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
I welcome the Government’s recognition that we are facing a crisis in policing, the criminal justice system and the courts, because even before the pandemic, their austerity cuts over the past decade have brought the justice system to its knees, with the Ministry of Justice losing a quarter of its budget. I support new clauses 89, 97, 28, 31 and 32.
The Government voted against Labour’s proposals to increase minimum sentences for rapists and against toughening sentences for domestic abusers and murderers, but this Bill is full of divisive nonsense such as locking up protesters who cause annoyance or damage statues of slave owners for longer than those who rape women. This should have been a watershed moment to change the criminal justice system so that it works for women, not to try to divide the country.
The Conservatives’ Bill is not tough on crime. It is tough on the freedoms, rights and civil liberties that we all enjoy. The tragic death of Sarah Everard instigated a national demand for action to tackle violence against women. The last thing that the Government should be doing is rushing through poorly thought-out measures to impose disproportionate controls on freedoms of expression and the right to protest. Now is the time to unite the country and put in place long overdue protections for women against unacceptable violence, including action against domestic homicide, rape and street harassment, as well as tackling the misogynistic attitudes that underpin the abuse of women.
Just a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister was forced to apologise to rape victims for the record low conviction and prosecution rates under his watch. That is a stain on our country, and I hope that all Members across the House agree that action must be taken to make it easier for rape victims from the moment they report the crime through to the conclusion of their case and beyond. I urge all Ministers to support Labour’s amendment that would help to make it easier for victims of rape and sexual assault to give evidence.
The Crown court backlog is now at a record high of 60,000 cases. Victims face wait times of up to four years, and many give up before the process has begun because they cannot face the extensive distress and trauma. Nearly 300 courts across England and Wales have been closed during the past decade of Tory rule, and there are 27,000 fewer sitting days than in 2016. According to Citizens Advice, the backlog of individual tribunal cases is likely to reach more than half a million by spring unless swift action is taken and serious funding committed.
The Bill is an opportunity to rebalance the scales of justice to ensure access for ordinary people and to tackle the systemic barriers and record backlog in our creaking and hollowed-out justice system. I call on Members across the House to support the amendments that the Labour party has tabled to help tackle some of the most difficult challenges faced by our criminal justice system.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
It is something of a surprise to me that, as a great many people have suddenly removed their names from the list, the Members whom I had hoped to call—the hon. Members for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham)—are not here. [Interruption.] I appreciate the offer of help from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), but we will go straight to the Lord Chancellor.
Robert Buckland
The debate today has been stimulating and thought-provoking as Report stage merits. I would, however, challenge some of the narrative that we have heard from the Labour party, although in many respects we have shared the common goal of trying to reduce the threat and infliction of violence and abuse against women and girls. I think back to what we did with the Domestic Abuse Bill, and I see the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) in her place. She was a champion of that Bill, and I am grateful to her; I always will be.
Let us just remind ourselves of how far we have come in the past 10 or 11 years. I was delighted to take part in a cross-party campaign to reform the law on stalking, which this Government have further strengthened through increases in maximum sentences. When I look back at the upskirting legislation, I am proud of the work that was led by this Government. We also brought in the offence of coercive control for the first time, to cover a wide range of criminal behaviour committed, in the main, against women and girls. Revenge porn has been outlawed. The rough sex defence has been ended, and we have already acted to end automatic early release for serious violent and sexual offenders. This Bill brings forward further welcome measures to protect the public, to build on our work to better protect women and girls, to increase sentences for the most serious sexual and violent offenders, and to support the police in their vital work in keeping our streets safe.
Matt Vickers
Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm his commitment to bring forward measures in the Bill to do justice for our retail workers and those who serve the public?
Robert Buckland
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I look forward to working with him and other colleagues on bringing forward measures that will deal with the need to protect our valiant retail workers, who have given us so much in this pandemic and who serve our country with distinction.
I note that my hon. Friend has been joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly), who, in a brief but excellent speech, made the most of his considerable experience as a criminal solicitor. He was right to say that when it comes to the dramatic drop in rape convictions—I readily acknowledge that; I have acknowledged it frankly and fully and set out plans to do something about it—the complexities surrounding the reasons for it are deep. Only those who have spent many years looking at these issues, and those who have experienced the ordeal of the investigative and trial process, can really give the strongest testimony about what needs to be done. Of course we recognise the devastating effect of sexual violence and the lifelong impact that it has on victims and survivors.
I listened with interest to the submissions made by the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), about new clause 89. I have to say—I will pick him up on this—that he was wrong to say that in clause 100, the Government were introducing minimum sentences for the first time. What we are doing there is tightening up the criterion by which the courts apply minimum sentences for certain repeat offences. The existence of a minimum term for only one offence is, I think, only evidenced in one aspect of the law, relating to the possession of a firearm.
Our concern about the Labour party’s proposals is that they do not reflect the reality of what has been happening with regard to rape sentencing. There has, over the past 10 years, been a welcome increase of 15% in the average length of sentences for rape, with two thirds of offenders now receiving a custodial sentence of over seven years. In fact, the average is nine years and nine and a half months, which reflects the evolution of sentencing guidelines and the welcome changes that have been made. We are working, in the rape review, to ensure that we can drive forward more early guilty pleas so that victims and survivors do not have to go through the ordeal of the trial process.
My genuine concern about Labour’s proposal is that it cuts across a lot of what Labour says needs to be done with the process and a lot of the work that we have set out in our rape review. What we should now be looking at is the number and proportion of prosecutions, and the overall outcome of ensuring that we increase convictions. That has to be the real focus of Government. That is what I have set out in the rape review, and that is what we will drive forward.
I noted with interest amendment 50 about the potential further expansion of the imposition of a whole-life order. We sympathise with the concerns that underpin the amendment, but the risk it poses is that it starts to create further anomalies and issues with regard to the ladder of sentencing that exists under schedule 21. There would be a dramatic difference between the murder of one person with evidence of a sexual assault, which would have a whole-life order starting point, and a murder in the absence of that assault, for which the starting point would be dramatically different at only 15 years. That is the sort of discrepancy that I am sure the Labour party would not want to seek, which is why I have been working to review the whole framework of homicide, and particularly domestic homicide.
It is important that when we seek to change schedule 21 in any way, we do not create further anomalies. Let us not forget that we are talking about starting points, which means that the judge has the discretion to move either up or down according to the evidence in each case.
I have undertaken to look in a broader way at domestic homicide sentencing in particular. In addressing the new clauses set out by the Labour party on a review of sentencing on domestic homicide, I just want to give assurance that, indeed, that work is under way—well under way. We are analysing recent cases to see what effect the current law and guidance are having, including explicitly looking at how cases involving a weapon are sentenced. I will update the House with more details as that progresses. I can also inform the House that I intend to appoint an independent expert to oversee the next stage of the review, which will consider initial findings and then make recommendations, and I will come back to the House and confirm the arrangements.
Jess Phillips
Just by happenstance, I wrote to the Justice Secretary this morning on this exact matter. Could he place in the Library of the House of Commons the terms of reference for the review that he is doing into domestic homicide? I spoke this morning with four of the families whose daughters have been murdered, and they are still without detail on that issue.
Robert Buckland
The hon. Lady would be interested to see the note that I have here—it says, “Remember the families.” I am grateful to her for reminding me of that, and, of course, I will undertake to put a suitably phrased letter in the Library of the House. I hope that assures hon. Members that I am taking the necessary steps. I absolutely recognise the importance of those concerns.
I listened with care to the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who charted her own deeply distressing recent experience of when a photograph was entirely inappropriately taken of her without her consent and in circumstances that all of us would deeply deprecate and deplore. We all want to do something about this, which is why, some time ago, we asked the Law Commission to review the law around the taking, making and sharing of intimate images without consent to identify whether there are gaps in the scope of protection that is already offered to victims.
Importantly, we and the Law Commission are looking at whether recording and sharing images of events such as breastfeeding should be captured as intimate imagery for the purposes of any reformed criminal law. It has completed a public consultation and is developing final recommendations for the Government. It is certainly my intention to act. I want to make sure that the law is resilient and comprehensive and that, when it is drafted, we do not inadvertently create loopholes that people could take advantage of. I gently remind the hon. Lady that the public nuisance reforms are precisely those of the Law Commission, and it is in that tradition of careful consideration that we have already undertaken and started this work.
I am grateful to all hon. Members for their continued dedication to improving the way in which the system handles sexual offences cases, and that dedication is clearly behind the amendments concerning the use of evidence, including section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991. However, we have to remind ourselves that section 41 already provides a very comprehensive prohibition on the defence adducing any evidence or any questions relating to previous sexual behaviour. The hon. Lady is right to refer to our undertaking in the rape review action plan to ask the Law Commission to examine the law, guidance and practice relating to the use of evidence in prosecutions. The Law Commission will be very happy to meet the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) about her concerns to take on board the proper observations she makes. Let us not forget that the wider issue about rape myths will also be part of its work.
On the issue of penalties for those who disclose the identity of anonymous complainants, I think we can go one better. There are a number of other offences—modern-day slavery and female genital mutilation come to mind—where anonymity is a legal requirement. When we redraft the legislation, it is essential that we cover all offences where anonymity is a requirement and also assess the interplay between the criminal offence and contempt of court. As a Law Officer, I police that particular divide regularly. Clearly, the Law Officers already have the power to pursue wrongdoers for contempt of court where serious wrongdoing has been evidenced. I am grateful that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General has invited the Law Commission to undertake a thorough review of the law in this area with a view to strengthening it so as to meet the ambitions of all of us in this House.
I am grateful, as ever, to the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for her steadfast and consistent work in the support of victims. We already, through the victims code, have a number of entitlements relating to parole. A root-and-branch review of the Parole Board is ongoing. The observations and concerns that she has outlined are being fully embraced by that, and further work will be done on victims law.
On pet theft, it is vital that the underlying seriousness of this type of criminality is fully reflected by the law. That is why, since its launch on 8 May, the pet theft taskforce has been working to look at the wider issues. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for his work on this. As a pet owner myself, I understand the depth of feeling that exists. I am able to say in the strongest terms that we will act to drive out this pernicious crime. His new clauses address some of the issues at the heart of where we will take action. I give him, and others, the assurance that it is our intention to make any necessary changes to this Bill in the Lords before it returns to the Commons once we have finalised the detail of exactly what is needed, using a range of powers, including primary legislation. The effect of these changes will, I believe, help to achieve what he and other hon. and right hon. Members are seeking to achieve today.
On road traffic, I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) and for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory), who are working hard to raise awareness about these important issues. I can assure them, and the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), that my ministerial colleagues at the Department for Transport are working to explore options with my officials about how these offences will work in the wider context. I take on board the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) about the particular context in which people seek to evade the law and evade responsibility. While we have the common law offence of perverting the course of justice available, more work needs to be done to identify that class of driver who manipulates the system and evades responsibility in a way that clearly outrages the community and offends the wider public.
On the matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), we both share a passion for the issue, and I have been proud to spearhead reforms on child cruelty in the past. I will work with him and, as he knows, we are looking at the issue more widely. Indeed, we hope to bring concrete reform forward as soon as possible.
As time reaches the witching hour, I simply say that tonight is an opportunity for hon. Members to unite in common cause to strengthen the fight against crime and to make our communities safer. The opportunity is there. The gauntlet is laid down to Labour Members. I ask them to take it up.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Before I call the Home Secretary, it is obvious that there is very little time left for this part of the proceedings, so there will be a time limit on Back-Bench speeches of three minutes. However, I urge even greater brevity.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The Bill delivers on our promise to the British people to keep them safe. It backs our police with improved powers and more support for officers and their families in recognition of the unique and enormous sacrifices that they make. It introduces tougher sentences for the worst offenders and modernises the criminal justice system with an overhaul of the courts and tribunal processes.
The long-overdue police covenant represents our promise to the police and their families that we will do everything we can to honour and support them. That includes much more support for their health and wellbeing. As the House knows, the Bill requires the Home Secretary to report annually to Parliament on the covenant, and this will now cover the whole policing family.
We rely on the police for our public safety and protection. We have relied on them more than usual during the covid pandemic to enforce new laws and, of course, to keep us safe. The overwhelming majority of the country has responded with profound gratitude, but a thuggish minority has responded with abuse and violence. In the year from December 2019 to 2020, there was a big increase in assaults on police officers. Assaults on constables without injury increased by 21%—just over 25,000. Assaults on constables with injury went up by 2%, but that is still over 11,000 cases. It is despicable and it cannot and should not be tolerated, so the Bill doubles the maximum penalty for assaulting emergency workers, including those heroic NHS workers, to two years. Serious violence reduction orders will also give the police targeted stop-and-search powers for convicted knife and weapon carriers.
The police will be able to take a more proactive approach to managing protests. That is not about stifling freedom of expression. The right to protest peacefully is a cornerstone of our democracy, but there is a balance to be struck between the rights of the protester and the rights of others to go about their daily lives. The current legislation that the police use to manage protests, the Public Order Act 1986, was enacted over 30 years ago. Tactics such as blocking emergency vehicles, gluing oneself to a train, blocking airport runways and preventing the distribution of newspapers are unacceptable and illegitimate. They will be treated as such. By attempting to strike out those clauses, Labour has proved that it is on the side of the disruptive minority and not the hard-working majority.
Victims and witnesses need to know that they are safe, and of course the Bill reforms the pre-charge bail regime, which will bring much-needed reassurance, including in high-harm cases such as domestic abuse. People convicted of serious crimes will receive tougher sentences and spend longer in prison. Automatic halfway release from prison will end for another cohort of serious sexual and violent offenders. A whole life tariff order will be the starting point for the premediated murder of a child. The Government’s comprehensive rape review is soon to be followed by a comprehensive strategy to tackle violence against women and girls, and domestic abuse. These problems are complex and widespread, so we need to do much more to combat them. The Bill strengthens the management of sex offenders by, for example, enabling the courts to impose electronic monitoring requirements and behavioural change courses. There are new powers to manage terrorism risk offenders.
The Bill provides more agile and appropriate management of children in the justice system—something that we should never overlook—so that judges and magistrates can make decisions in the best interest of the child and the public. Secure schools will be trialled with a focus on excellent education, wellbeing and purposeful activity.
Because of covid, temporary provisions were made to allow people to participate in and follow court proceedings by video and audio technology. Those have worked well and will be made permanent. We will also make the courts more accessible for people with disabilities.
Our first responsibility as a Government is to keep the public safe. The vital provisions in the Bill will strengthen public safety and update the law. They will mean that the police can manage new and emerging threats and that the criminal justice system works for the British people, keeping our citizens and our communities safe.
As we prepare to vote, I urge Labour Members to ask themselves whose side they are on. The public whom they serve will notice. The measures are emphatically on the side of the police and the law-abiding majority of the British people, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
I thank the Bill team, the Clerks and House staff and the Library staff for facilitating debate in the House. It is a great shame that a Bill that could have commanded wide support ended up being so divisive. Indeed, Labour Members, working with other parties, campaigned for elements of the Bill: on increasing sentences for causing death by dangerous driving; on reform of the disclosure and barring service; and on sexual offences perpetrated by those in positions of trust. Some elements of the review by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) have been included, though far too few. We also welcome the introduction of a police covenant, and great credit must go to the shadow Policing Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), for securing the concession to include non-Home Office police forces. That important change will make a difference. We will hold the Government to account on the implementation of the covenant, to make sure it really does make a significant difference to frontline officers.
On behalf of the Opposition, I have tabled amendments in relation to the Hillsborough disaster, in the light of the collapse of the trial of three men on 26 May. Those proposals are based on the detailed work of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), and reflect her Public Advocate Bill, together with the work of the former Member for Leigh, with the introduction of a duty of candour and equality of arms for families in inquests. We think today, first and foremost, of the Hillsborough families and their remarkable courage and determination in seeking justice over decades. We owe a duty to seek to ensure that what happened to them can never happen again. The Opposition offer their full support to achieving that, which is the purpose of placing the proposals on the record. I hope that work can now be done to move things forward, with there no longer being an ongoing trial.
Sadly, this Bill has been made a divisive Bill, because of provisions put into it that are unconscionable and because of provisions not put into it that would have addressed the priorities of the British people, by dealing with the reasons why so many women and girls feel unsafe on our streets. This Bill showed a warped sense of priorities; it does more to protect statues than it does to protect women. It is a Bill that destroys the fine British tradition of protecting the right to protest. It allows the noise generated by persons taking part as a reason to curtail protest and criminalises people—mark this—who break a condition they “ought” to have known existed. Our laws of protest have always been a balance, and the way this proposed law disturbs it is wrong. I declare an interest: as a trade unionist, I refer to my relevant entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests on support from the Unite union and the GMB. Whether it is our trade unions or another group that wants to make its views known loudly in the streets, we limit their ability to do so at our peril.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I will not, because we are very short of time. Media reports even suggest that the National Police Chiefs Council, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services and the Metropolitan police have all stated that they did not request these noise clauses to be added to the Bill. Today, there is a piece in The Times where senior former police officers have written warning that this Bill is “dangerous” and has
“harmful implications for the ability of police officers to enforce the law and for the health of our democracy.”
Isn’t the truth that the mask has slipped? Ministers are not acting on legitimate concerns about keeping people safe; they are trying to clamp down on people’s legitimate and democratic right to protest. I wonder what it is about the appalling record of this Government that makes them so concerned about people organising protest against them. That the Government attack our democratic traditions in this way, limiting the rights of those whose beliefs are inconvenient to them, is dangerous and to their shame. The unauthorised encampments section of the Bill, clearly targeted at Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, will potentially breach the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act 2010. When Friends, Families and Travellers researched the consultation responses the Government received, it found that 84% of police responses did not support the criminalisation of unauthorised encampments. It is unconscionable and unworkable.
This Bill is also a missed opportunity. There should be wider measures to protect the pandemic heroes, extending the protections to shop workers as well as other frontline workers. I wrote this weekend, with the general secretary of Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers that during the pandemic we united as a country to clap for our frontline workers, such as shop workers. Now is the time to deliver on this. Instead the Government MPs voted against that today. [Interruption.] Well, it is true because the amendment was down today and MPs have voted it down. The Bill also continues to ignore the disproportionality that exists from start to finish in the criminal justice system. Black people have bravely stepped forward to share their testimony of structural racism and the impact it still has. This Government seem to want to deny that structural racism even exists. Meanwhile, while communities up and down the country suffer the consequences of antisocial behaviour, this Government prefer to waste more than £200 million on a pointless yacht. Labour would invest that money in tackling crime.
When it comes to addressing the appalling issue of violence against women and girls, this is an empty Bill. Labour even published a Green Paper with suggestions for the Government to act: a rape survivors support plan, victims having the right to support, cases of rape and serious sexual violence fast-tracked, and a Minister with specific responsibility for driving change. That 1.6% of reported rapes lead to a charge is a national scandal. The Lord Chancellor offered an apology, but not the resources we need, and the Prime Minister shamefully dismissed concerns as “jabber”.
This Bill was an opportunity to show that addressing violence against women and girls was a priority for this Government, but they have failed. Women and girls who feel unsafe on our streets should have been a priority in this Bill. It should have delivered on inadequate sentences for rape, stalking, and domestic homicide. It should have addressed unacceptable and intimidating street harassment. It should have delivered properly resourced domestic abuse services.
Whether it is our frontline workers, those who have suffered as a consequence of disproportionality, or victims of antisocial behaviour, we on these Benches will continue to campaign for them and put victims first.
Sir Robert Neill [V]
This is an important Bill, and this debate is a reminder that an effective criminal justice system is all about balance—balance between the individual and the state, between the victim and the accused, and between the need to protect society with condign punishment where necessary and the duty to rehabilitate those who can genuinely turn their lives around. Despite some mischaracterisation, the Bill does achieve that.
Perhaps the Bill is also a reminder that an effective criminal justice system requires a holistic and calm approach that lasts beyond the lifetime of any one Parliament. We need to fund the system right the way through, ensuring that the police have enough funding and powers to do their job, that the courts have enough resource, powers and flexibility to achieve justice in a way that is credible and consistent, as our judges invariably endeavour to do, and that the Prison and Probation Service has the resources not only to keep dangerous people safe, but to support those who wish to make a better life for themselves having paid their debt to society. All three are important.
Not all reform necessarily requires primary legislation. Much of the objectives that have been talked about in this debate can be achieved through other means, such as policy initiatives and better use of laws we already have—I can think of several that have been touched on in this debate—and better use of the sentencing powers that already exist, which with support our judiciary is prepared to do. That is why the work of the Sentencing Council is so important. It is worth reminding right hon. and hon. Members that, on the House’s behalf, the Justice Committee is a statutory consultee in the work of the Sentencing Council, something which we take incredibly seriously. There is a power for elected representatives here to have an input into the process, and we ought to make full and proper use of it. The Committee is determined to do so.
I have a final word about the importance of the Law Commission, which has been mentioned much today. The Lord Chancellor has been firm in his support for it, and it is critical that the Law Commission continues to be properly and fully resourced. Its budgets are not large, and there has been no attempt to reduce them under the current Administration. There was once an ill-advised attempt to do so, but I am sure that there will not be another. We must ensure that the Law Commission continues to have the resources so that we have an objective, independent, authoritative voice to guide us in reforming desperately important elements of our law, criminal and civil, which will have a bearing on society beyond the lifetime of this Parliament and many more besides. The Law Commission’s long-term approach is vital, too, and I commend it to the House.
Anne McLaughlin
I was disappointed that 44 of the 66 speakers did not get in on Second Reading, and particularly disappointed that nobody from the SNP other than myself was able to speak. I kept my remarks to around five minutes to allow them and others to get in, but unfortunately that did not happen. However, I will be much briefer this time, partly because there is only so much time you can spend banging your head off a brick wall and also because, over the past few months, myself and colleagues have spoken at length on this topic and will continue to do so.
Let me reiterate the main issues for the SNP. The Bill will not achieve what the Government say they want to achieve. It will seriously curtail the right to protest, and it will disgracefully criminalise the way of life of Gypsy Travellers. I remind hon. Members that on Wednesday at 1 o’clock Gypsy Travellers will be spending two hours across the road from this place. They have invited us all to join them to hear more about their way of life, and how the Bill will impact on those lives.
The Bill is likely to have a disproportionately negative impact on ethnic minority communities and women. It will allow the ridiculous and unjust possibility of a tougher jail sentence for someone who topples over a statue than for someone who does the same thing to a living human being or animal. I assure the people of Scotland that this Bill would never happen in an independent Scotland. If there is a single person on these islands who is still wondering why we campaign for independence, I encourage them to read this Bill.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) [V]
This Bill is so pernicious in parts that it chillingly removes some of our most precious freedoms. Indeed, on press freedom, the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 already allows for the identification of journalistic source information via a judicial process when that is required by the police. The Bill appears not only to relax, but to ride a coach and horses through the legal process, with no clear protection or processes for journalistic whistleblowers, and by extending the people who can access the information not only to police officers and constables, but to employees of the Court of Common Council of the City of London, and immigration officers.
The Bill is littered with instances of racial and other forms of discrimination, from the biased operation of serious violence reduction orders, to attacks on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities through the criminalisation of their way of life. Then there are the Bill’s provisions on our right to protest. The Home Secretary will have unfettered powers to define what constitutes “serious disruption”, and protesters who simply cause a “serious annoyance”, which is not defined, can be subject to jail sentences of up to 10 years. Worryingly, Amnesty International has said:
“The Bill also gives Ministers further enhanced powers to issue further legally binding regulations around these highly subjective and vague thresholds, which raises the prospect that the current or any future government may misuse these powers to stifle criticism and views that it might find uncomfortable.”
I will finish with a warning. History is littered with examples of democracies sliding blindly into authoritarianism. It usually happens by stealth: undermining the judiciary one day, threatening the existence of public broadcasters the next, rigging electoral rules to make it much more difficult for Opposition parties to win elections and, of course, silencing dissent by restricting the right to protest. It all sounds chillingly familiar, does it not? If the Government believe in democracy, and I truly hope they do, let them prove it tonight. Drop the Bill, otherwise I will have no option but to determine that tonight, whether intentionally or accidentally, the Government begin their stealthy descent into authoritarianism.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
It is fair to say that in this Parliament the Government have a strong majority, but they need to use it wisely and responsibly. I commend the Minister and the Lord Chancellor, both of whom have demonstrated this afternoon and evening a willingness to listen on some issues. They have given commitments that there will be resolutions in the other place. Earlier I expressed my disappointment that the Committee process did not get the Bill into the shape I believe it needed to be.
There are still profound concerns, not just for those who are likely to offer opposition, but for those, including myself, who have recognised and expounded on issues with what some of the Bill’s provisions say and with how they have been articulated. Even though the Minister indicated that perhaps there are some misconceptions or misperceptions about what it entails, sadly the House has not had the opportunity to consider the Bill in full. Time has been limited this afternoon and we are the worse for it, but I suspect that the other place will have much longer on the Bill and we may see significant opportunities for change.
I encourage Ministers to consider positively new clauses 44 to 50, which sought to mirror the provisions on human trafficking and sexual exploitation that already apply in Northern Ireland. I do hope that they will give them earnest consideration. We secured their passage in Northern Ireland some four years ago; they are important legislative changes.
On the basis of the four or five aspects of the Bill that apply in Northern Ireland—those on obtaining information from electronic devices, on assisting with samples and recovery of remains, on sexual offences and on some mutual recognition provisions across the United Kingdom —we will support Third Reading, while recognising that we have reservations to which no doubt we will return on another occasion.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I support all the comments that my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) made, particularly those about the right to legitimate protest, but I draw the House’s attention particularly to my amendments about air weapon safety, which I did not have the opportunity to speak to on Report.
As the Minister understands, I have been pursuing the issue for a number of years, following the tragic damage done to my young constituent by an air weapon. It caused life-changing injuries, and I have worked with many other hon. Members whose constituents have died because of those weapons. I will pursue the issue of the prohibition of air weapons on private land for those under the age of 18.
I would particularly like the Government to consider publishing the evidence that they have collected with regard to the air weapons review, following my Adjournment debate a few years ago. We need to understand how the Government have used the evidence to come to their conclusions, particularly with regard to the law as it operates in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and to the licensing of these dangerous weapons.
I hope that I will be able to pursue the issue with the Government in the coming months and years. I think there are hundreds of families across the country who would support us in looking at it more seriously again.
Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con) [V]
Having served on the Bill Committee for this landmark legislation, I wholeheartedly support how the Bill embeds the police covenant into law, a commitment that I made to my constituents of Blyth Valley back in 2019. The covenant is pivotal to ensuring that our police are supported and that they rightly receive the recognition and enhanced protection that they deserve in keeping us all safe. It is a hugely positive step that echoes the Government’s commitment to protect police officers and their families.
My promise to my constituency to do all I can to reduce crime and create safe communities is paramount. Blyth Valley has seen high levels of antisocial behaviour over recent years. On occasion, tragically, it has led to the loss of life. Only recently, a constituent and father of two was violently attacked on his way home. I would like to thank the Northumbria police in my constituency for all the work they have done in the wake of this shocking incident. Much to the horror of my constituents, the offenders were all teenagers aged between 16 and 18. Due to their actions, so many lives have been ruined. It is vital that we give our police every tool they need to protect both themselves and our communities. As well as strengthening police stop-and-search powers and targeting those people who are convicted of knife crime and weapon offences, we will reinforce the custody of young offenders.
Another part of the Bill that I particularly welcome is the increase in the maximum penalty for anyone who assaults or commits an offence against an emergency worker from 12 months to two years. I worked for the NHS for almost 25 years, but I am sure that everyone in this House will agree that any form of attack or assault against an emergency worker is unacceptable and should not be tolerated. Our emergency services have gone above and beyond over the past year during the pandemic to protect and save lives. They deserve to be treated with the utmost respect. Their bravery, selflessness, professionalism and unflinching diligence does not go unnoticed. I welcome the fact that the Bill will seek to ensure that everyone who commits an offence against such workers will be penalised.
Debate interrupted (Programme Order, this day).
The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair (Standing Order No. 83E), That the Bill be now read the Third time.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I will now suspend the House for two minutes to make arrangements for the next item of business.
Business without Debate
Delegated Legislation
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
With the leave of the House, we shall take motions 4 and 5 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Sports Grounds and Sporting Events
That the draft Birmingham Commonwealth Games (Compensation for Enforcement Action) Regulations 2021, which were laid before this House on 17 May, be approved.
Constitutional Law
That the draft Scotland Act 2016 (Social Security) (Consequential Provision) (Miscellaneous Amendment) Regulations 2021, which were laid before this House on 17 May, be approved.—(Michael Tomlinson.)
Question agreed to.
Business of the House (8 JULY)
Sentencing Regime for 17-year-olds
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I rise to outline in detail a quite tragic incident that took place in Ipswich—an incident that really shook the town and caused great upset and hurt. I hope it can spur some reform with regards to the criminal justice system.
Richard Day was a constituent of mine. I only had the opportunity to represent him for a short time. I did not know Richard Day—I had not met him—but having met his brother and a lot of people who did know him and were touched by him, it is very clear that Richard Day was an incredibly popular man who touched the lives of a huge number of Ipswich residents. He was a 45-year-old man with three brothers. He was an engineer with UK Power Networks. He had just completed four years of training. He was incredibly passionate about what he did. He was a season ticket holder at Ipswich Town football club. He was passionate about his town, he was passionate about his family and he was passionate about his friends. In the words of his brother Krissy, “He would give you the shirt off his back.” That was the kind of man he was. He would have done anything for anyone. He was the sort of man who deserved only good things to happen to him and only good things to happen to those who were closest to him.
On 22 February 2020, Richard went to see Ipswich play Oxford in a football game. Ipswich lost one-nil, which has happened a fair bit over the last few years, but I think he had probably got a bit used to it, so he was in good spirits, despite the fact that Ipswich lost that game. He went to the Cock & Pye pub. He met up with his brother Krissy and his younger brother. His younger brother was involved in a music band, and he went somewhere else in town to see his brother playing. For the first time in a long time, all four brothers were together on that night, Saturday 22 February.
Richard was the eldest brother, and not only did he provide invaluable support to each one of his three brothers, but he cared for his mother, who had health problems. He did everything he could to support her. After the gig, he walked home to watch, I believe, a boxing fight that was taking place that night. It was before midnight, and he walked up St Matthew’s Street, which is a pretty prominent street in Ipswich. It is a street that I myself have walked along when I have walked up to where I live after going to a bar or a restaurant.
Earlier that day, Andrea Cristea, who had a youth detention order and was awaiting sentencing for a violent crime, was going about his business, frankly, pretty determined for trouble—pretty determined to cause a lot of damage to someone and a lot of grief to someone. Unfortunately, that person was Richard Day. Richard Day was set upon by this individual. He was attacked violently. There was a punch thrown to the neck, which would end up being the lethal blow.
We could say, “Well, it got a bit out of hand; it was something that happened,” but far from offering assistance when Richard Day lay on the ground dying, Andrea Cristea went through his pockets, stole his wallet and was seen standing over my constituent—as he was dying—laughing. This happened in the town that I represent, it happened before midnight, and it happened in a prominent place. Clearly, this has caused immense upset to the family of Richard Day, all of his friends and everyone who knew him, but it also shook the town and, frankly, I do not really think that we have recovered from it.
I was very thankful to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for visiting Ipswich in March 2020. I spoke to her about this incident, which had caused great nervousness in the town. Frankly, there have been many antisocial behaviour problems in the town that I represent, and when something like this happens, it causes great unease. I was grateful to the Home Secretary for visiting Ipswich, talking to residents and talking to the local police force. That is the effect of what happened on the family and the town.
On 26 April 2021, a judge issued the sentence for Mr Cristea. He got four years in a youth offenders institute, but of course he will be let out automatically halfway through, so it is pointless calling it four years. It is not four years; it is two years. This individual had already served a significant amount of time on remand, so we are looking at him being released incredibly soon and presumably back on the streets of Ipswich. I have spoken to people with a wide range of views on law and order issues, but not a single person in the town I have spoken to about this particular sentence believes that it is appropriate or that it delivers justice. They believe it is far from that.
I wrote to the Attorney General to ask whether they could review the case in the Court of Appeal. I knew it was a long shot, and in some senses the family felt that the judge’s hands were tied because a lot of it was to do with the Sentencing Council guidelines, but we thought we would give it a try. We were unsuccessful, and I understand the reasons why we were unsuccessful. I am grateful for the letter I received from the Solicitor General, who sent me the letter and discussed it with me offline as well, to explain her immense sympathy with the family, but also why she felt she was in the position that she was in.
There are several consequences that I can think of now. There are the consequences for the family. Their belief is that no justice has been served. As the family of the victim, their confidence in the criminal justice system has been shaken as a result of this. They are so far away from feeling like justice has been served. They believe this pitiful sentence is almost an insult. What kind of deterrent does it provide to anybody else potentially involved in this kind of illicit behaviour, when somebody who behaves like this can get away with it?
There is also the consequence for public safety. As I said before, this particular individual, who had committed multiple crimes before he ended up in the offenders institution where he currently is, could well be back out on the streets of Ipswich again. How can we guarantee that he will not do something similar again? The judge said that he took public safety into account, but that an extended sentence would not help the situation. I find that hard to believe.
Why did I apply for this Adjournment debate, which is only my third Adjournment debate? First, I did so because I wanted to put on record the remarkable man I have learned about and the contribution that he made to his family and to his town, and the fact that he should never be forgotten. I also did it because of the sense of anger felt not just by his family but by pretty much everyone in the town, and hopefully to try to spur some of us to think about the consequences of this and about how unhealthy it is that so many people’s confidence in the criminal justice system is so shaken by a sentence such as this. It is a sentence that we can all look at and know it is wrong.
I simply do not think it is enough to abdicate responsibility and say, “Oh well, it’s the Sentencing Council, it is this and it is that.” Ultimately, people look to their elected representatives to put in place a law and order system that they can have confidence and faith in and that they believe delivers justice. So I believe that this House and this Government need to look at the system and take appropriate action to ensure that sentences such as this are not issued in the way that they are.
It was manslaughter that Mr Cristea was found guilty of, but for me it was an incredibly sinister kind of manslaughter. He has shown no contrition whatsoever for the damage he has done or for the life he took away that will never ever be forgotten by the family of Mr Day. He was 16 when the incident took place and 17 when he was sentenced. It seems wrong that, if he had been over 18, he probably would have got something like nine years and there is such a dramatic difference if you are a 17-year-old as opposed to if you are an 18-year-old—almost more, I believe, than the difference if you are a 12-year-old and if you are a 17-year-old. I understand that the Government are looking at a sliding scale in relation to murder, but not in relation to manslaughter, which is what we are talking about today, and which is what caused such immense destruction to the life of Richard Day.
I am very serious about the point about public safety. I do not know what the plan is for Mr Cristea when he comes out of where he is at the moment. My view is that I do not want him to step foot in the town that I represent ever again. I believe that he is an appalling man, and I believe he could do further damage. I would like an assurance that he will not be back in the town that I represent. I do not know what his nationality is. I understand he is not a British national, but I may be wrong. I do not know whether he has been able to apply for settled status while he has been in the criminal justice system. If he has done, I find this ludicrous, and I would think there is a very reasonable argument to be made for deportation. I see very few redeeming features in this individual. I think he has had nothing but a negative impact on our country and our town. At the very least, if we cannot look at his sentence, it would be some comfort to know that he is going to be deported.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
May I commend the hon. Gentleman on bringing this matter to the House tonight? He has done his constituents proud. His dutiful attention is on record, and we thank him for it. Does he not agree that the automatic halving of sentences should not apply to cases involving manslaughter, and that we in this House have a duty to the families of victims to ensure that changes are made to legislation in every area of the UK? Legislation may enable his constituent’s killer to serve only 10 months after sentencing, and it is absolutely right that he should be getting more.
Tom Hunt
I absolutely agree with the hon. Member, who I am very honoured has made an intervention in the second out of three Adjournment debates. I do not think he has intervened in all of them.
The Government have made some very good moves. They have ended automatic release for those found guilty of some of the most serious offences. If someone gets sentenced to 25 years in prison, no longer are they let out automatically halfway through, so there have been some moves in the right direction, but I agree: I think we need to go further. I am perhaps quite old-fashioned, but I like things to be what they are called on the tin, so that if someone gets four years, they get four years; if they get two years, they get two years; if they get nine years, they get nine years. Unless there is exceptional behaviour and a very good reason for early release, they should not get early release. Do not call it four years if it is not four years.
There is a wider point here about the extent to which we as elected representatives can shape these issues, because I think the public should have input into our law and order. I do not think we should be scared of trying to have an influence. I will conclude now, because I would like the Minister to have time to reply. I guess I wanted to have this debate as I wanted to put on record Richard Day, the man that he is and how he will be remembered. He will always be remembered. I am not just saying this. He was loved—much loved—by a very large number of people in the town. He was a typical Ipswich man: good, honest, good values, and patient with his football team. He deserves for there to be a legacy. That involves us remembering him, but also being determined that other families do not have to go through the pain that his family have gone through. That is how I would like to leave this debate, and I would be very grateful if the Minister outlined to me what steps will be taken to strengthen our criminal justice system to ensure that people such as Mr Cristea pay a much, much higher price for the unbearable pain they have inflicted.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Chris Philp)
I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) for securing this evening’s Adjournment debate. Let me thank him also for the very moving and powerful speech that he has just made, paying very eloquent tribute to his constituent, Richard Day, who was so tragically killed just over a year ago. It was clear from my hon. Friend’s description what a loved character Richard Day was around Ipswich. It is fitting, as my hon. Friend said, that he is recalled so fondly in this Chamber in Parliament.
The case that my hon. Friend has described to the House obviously raises a number of issues, particularly touching on how children or people under the age of 18 get sentenced, the unduly lenient sentence scheme and various other issues that he mentioned. As he said, the way that people are sentenced under the age of 18 is different from the way that adults are sentenced, reflecting the fact that they are less mature when the offence is committed.
Despite that, however, there are a number of options that judges have available to them to make sure that, where appropriate for serious offences, there are a full range of options available that they can use at their discretion. For example, a section 250 sentence can be given for serious or grave offences. There are special sentences of detention for terrorist offenders of particular concern. People under 18 can get extended determinate sentences for serious sexual, violent or terrorist offences where the court considers them to be dangerous. They serve a longer sentence and serve at least two thirds of that in prison, and more if the parole board thinks it is not safe to release them. They can be given a discretionary life sentence where the offender poses a significant risk. And, of course, for murder there is a mandatory life sentence. Judges, in sentencing someone even under the age of 18, have all those options available under current law if they choose to use them.
We have gone further to protect the public against offenders of all kinds in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which passed its Third Reading less than half an hour ago. That contains many measures to protect our constituents, for example ensuring that serious and dangerous offenders spend two thirds of their sentence in prison, not half—exactly as my hon. Friend called for in his speech. In fact, those provisions apply to offenders under the age of 18 as well, where they receive a standard determinate sentence of over seven years for a serious sexual violent offence, to make sure that they are kept off the streets for longer to protect the public and to make sure the sentence served in prison better reflects the sentence handed down by the court. I hope that my hon. Friend will welcome that. Of course, he voted for that just half an hour ago—at least I assume he voted for it half an hour ago.
Chris Philp
My hon. Friend is nodding. He did vote for it.
We have those measures to ensure that serious and violent offenders will spend longer in prison, both adults and, in those circumstances, those under 18. We are also making changes, which my hon. Friend touched on, to the sentences handed down for those under 18 for cases of murder. I know the case was manslaughter, which I will come to in a minute, but for murder, rather than having a standard 12-year starting point for children, we are now going to introduce a sliding scale in the Bill that has just passed Third Reading in the Commons. It will reflect the seriousness of the underlying offence. It will use, as a starting point, the sentence that an adult would have got for the same offence. It will vary, depending on the seriousness of the offence, but it will also have a sliding scale based on age. Instead of someone who was 17 when the offence was committed getting a significant discount, as happens at the moment, it will be only a 10% discount, which addresses some of the issues that my hon. Friend raised. It goes down to 66% of the adult sentence when people are aged 14 to 16, and then to 50% for the lower age ranges. That will ensure that people who are just under the age of 18 will have a longer sentence than is the case at the moment, so that is a very important change.
We are also, in the Bill, reducing the opportunities for people who committed murder as a child to have their minimum term reviewed—it will be less frequently once they cross the age of 18. All the measures that we in this House supported just half an hour ago will serve to stiffen sentences for people under the age of 18 who commit very serious offences, including murder, compared with the situation today. That is moving in the direction that my hon. Friend mentioned because our constituents want to see such very serious offences properly punished with longer custodial sentences and more of those sentences served in prison. That will protect the public and build public confidence in the system.
My hon. Friend asked some specific questions about this case. Obviously there is a limit to what I can say about individual cases. He asked about licence conditions following release. That is a matter for the Probation Service. I can see that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), is with us; he has ministerial responsibility for that area. I think we can ensure that this case is drawn to the attention of the Probation Service. The victim’s family will have the right to make representations to the Probation Service as it considers the conditions it might set. We can certainly ensure that the family have that opportunity in this case so that they can make their views known.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich asked about the possibility that the accused in this case—or, now, the person who has been convicted of this offence—may not have British nationality. He asked whether they might be subject to deportation proceedings if that is the case. Under section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007, anyone who receives a custodial sentence of more than a year is considered for deportation. Therefore if the defendant or accused—the convicted, in this case—is not a British national, because the sentence here was more than one year, they will be eligible for mandatory consideration. That will happen automatically, as a matter of routine, not because I am standing here saying that it will happen. Obviously, we can ensure that that is not overlooked administratively, although I am sure that it will not be in any event.
My hon. Friend correctly observed that this new sliding scale, which we legislated for just half an hour ago, applies to murder but does not apply to manslaughter. He asked whether it is equitable that the sliding scale applies to one offence but not the other. It is an interesting point, although not one that I had considered prior to him raising it just now. I will therefore take that point away and consider whether the sliding scale that we have legislated for regarding murder should also apply to manslaughter. After having looked at it and thought about whether there are any legal or other considerations to take into account, I will get back to my hon. Friend. On the face of it, the point is worthy of proper thought, so I will take it away and look at it properly.
I again thank my hon. Friend for raising this extremely serious case. I extend my condolences to Richard Day’s family. He was taken from them so suddenly and so brutally, and it is fitting that he has received the tribute that he has tonight from his own constituency MP.
This Government are committed to ensuring that serious offenders spend longer in prison. We have been legislating today to ensure that more of the sentence is spent in prison. I have listened carefully to what my hon. Friend said and there are some points to take away. This Government stand on the side of victims. We stand on the side of those who have suffered as a result of crime. Our commitment is being enshrined in legislation this very day, but where we need to go further, we most certainly will.
Question put and agreed to.
Members Eligible for a Proxy Vote
Member eligible for proxy vote | Nominated proxy |
|---|---|
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Imran Ahmad Khan (Wakefield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sarah Atherton (Wrexham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Suella Braverman (Fareham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
James Brokenshire (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudon) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Sir Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Con) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP) | Ian Paisley |
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con) | Mr William Wragg |
Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Theo Clarke (Stafford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Brendan Clarke-Smith (Bassetlaw) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Virginia Crosbie (Ynys Môn) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mims Davies (Mid Sussex) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP) | Ian Paisley |
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Ms Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Colum Eastwood (Foyle) (SDLP) | Liz Saville Roberts |
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind) | Stuart Andrew |
Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind) | Stuart Andrew |
Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ms Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP) | Ian Paisley |
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Kate Griffiths (Burton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Grundy (Leigh) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP) | Liz Saville Roberts |
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
James Heappey (Wells) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John Howell (Henley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jeremy Hunt (South West Surrey) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Mr Alister Jack (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
David Johnston (Wantage) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC) | Liz Saville Roberts |
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP) | Ian Paisley |
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba) | Neale Hanvey |
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John McNally (Falkirk) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alan Mak (Havant) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) | Richard Thomson |
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jill Mortimer (Hartlepool) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
John Nicolson (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con) | Peter Aldous |
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Anum Qaisar-Javed (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Nicola Richards (West Bromwich East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP) | Ian Paisley |
Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Royston Smith (Southampton, Itchen) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Sir Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op) | Chris Elmore |
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Mr Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
David Warburton (Somerset and Frome) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mrs Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
John Whittingdale (Malden) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC) | Liz Saville Roberts |
Gavin Williamson (Montgomeryshire) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) | Wendy Chamberlain |
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP) | Ian Paisley |
Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab) | Bell Ribeiro-Addy |
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP) | Richard Thomson |
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con) | Stuart Andrew |
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab) | Chris Elmore |
Draft Market Surveillance (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
I remind hon. Members to sit in the places that are clearly marked. Masks should be worn unless you are speaking or exempt.
The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Market Surveillance (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2021.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. Members will appreciate the importance of protecting consumers through our robust and effective product safety and legal metrology systems, which are among the strongest in the world. The legislation will form part of our UK framework, maintaining consumer confidence that the goods they buy are safe.
The regulations implement in Northern Ireland the EU regulation on market surveillance and compliance of products 2019/1020, which comes into effect from 16 July; I will refer to the regulation as MSC. MSC replaces the market surveillance provisions for Northern Ireland in the predecessor regulation on accreditation and market surveillance, known as RAMS. It is included in annex 2 to the Northern Ireland protocol and accordingly the market surveillance and compliance of products regulation replaces that obligation under the protocol.
The statutory instrument that we are debating today implements a uniform set of regulatory powers to be available to market surveillance authorities that operate within Northern Ireland. It results in a few minor operational changes and a number of new traceability requirements for businesses placing products on the Northern Ireland market. This is necessary to avoid gaps and inconsistencies in regulatory powers when the RAMS provisions are repealed in Northern Ireland on 16 July. It is worth noting that RAMS, as it now forms part of our domestic law, continues to apply in Great Britain. However, the approach to enforcement is very similar in both regulations. It is risk based and proportionate.
The SI will ensure that consumers in Northern Ireland continue to be protected from potentially unsafe and non-compliant products, whether they are toys, cosmetics, lifts or machinery, via the UK’s robust product safety framework. The aim of the SI is to give market surveillance authorities the necessary regulatory powers to ensure that products are safe and compliant in Northern Ireland, as well as enabling them to take action as needed when unsafe or non-compliant products are discovered. It will also provide effective, appropriate and proportionate sanctions for breaches of those regulations.
Market surveillance authorities will monitor and, where appropriate, enforce the requirements of product safety law as outlined in the SI. If I may consider these areas in a little more detail, a range of regulatory powers are already available to market surveillance authorities across the current suite of product legislation, but they are not consistent. Through the SI, MSC will introduce a uniform set of regulatory powers consolidating and simplifying the powers already available to market surveillance authorities, making them expressly available in respect of a range of products to the extent that they are needed.
The powers set out in the SI are drawn from existing goods legislation, including the Consumer Rights Act 2015, the Health and Safety at Work (Northern Ireland) Order 1978 and the Consumer Protection Act 1987. That means that market surveillance authorities will have consistent access to the regulatory tools they already use and are familiar with, such as compliance and recall notices.
Sanctions for market surveillance offences are not new. The SI seeks to ensure that offences remain available to market surveillance authorities and contains offences relating to obstructing an investigation, for breaches of MSC and in respect of the withdrawal of products and recall notices. The offences under the SI will be heard in a magistrates court and will give rise to a maximum fine of up to level 5, which is currently £5,000, or up to level 3, which is £1,000, on a standard scale depending on the offence. There will be no provision for imprisonment. The offences available are expected to result in prosecutions in rare circumstances and only where necessary to protect consumers from non-safe products or address persistent or deliberate non-compliance. The inclusion of criminal offences within the legislation is consistent with existing UK-wide sanctions regimes for products and I can confirm that penalties for such offences are at the lower end of the range of penalties within that regime.
I would like to draw attention to a new requirement in article 4 of MSC. It requires businesses in some product sectors to have a person responsible for compliance established in the EU or Northern Ireland in order to place those products on the market in Northern Ireland or the EU. This person can be a manufacturer, an importer, an authorised representative or a fulfilment service. The requirement in article 4 is directly applicable and the SI provides enforcement mechanisms for a breach of that requirement. Most businesses supplying customers in Northern Ireland or the EU already have the appropriate arrangements in place.
On 11 June, my Department published guidance for businesses and market surveillance authorities on the operation of article 4. That will hopefully have answered the majority of questions that business may have had. My officials will continue to assist business organisations to ensure that MSC does not place a disproportionate burden on trade into Northern Ireland for those businesses that do not already have a person responsible for compliance, while ensuring that the product safety framework itself remains robust and effective. My Department will also offer training on MSC to all market surveillance authorities to support consistent understanding of its application across the regulatory landscape.
In summary, the regulations will implement a new aspect of market surveillance legislation, as required under the protocol, and ensure that there are no regulatory gaps in the area of product safety. It will ensure that consumers in Northern Ireland remain protected from potentially unsafe and non-compliant products, resulting in the maintenance throughout the UK of a cohesive and effective regulatory regime for manufactured products that will protect all UK customers, including those in Northern Ireland. I urge the Committee to approve the regulations.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Rees. I thank the Minister for setting out what the regulations do, and I shall not attempt to repeat what she said.
The regulations introduce enforcement powers and offences that are necessary to give effect to the EU market surveillance regulation in Northern Ireland. As the explanatory memorandum says, they provide “for an effective” and
“proportionate…penalty regime for breaches of the Regulation.”
The EU’s new market surveillance regulation, which comes into effect on 16 July, is designed to provide greater protection to consumers in the face of the challenges posed by e-commerce. The intention is that, by extending compliance checks for products sold online, consumers can be assured that the products that they order online meet EU harmonised standards for health and safety. By virtue of the Northern Ireland protocol to the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement, the market surveillance regulation is directly applicable in Northern Ireland, although certain provisions of the regulation require implementation in domestic legislation, which is what the regulations are designed to do.
Labour will not oppose the regulations, which are designed to provide greater protection to consumers in Northern Ireland and are required to meet the UK’s legal commitments under the EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol. However, I want to raise a small number of important issues on which I would welcome the Minister’s assurances.
First, it is clear that the implementation of the EU market surveillance regulation in Northern Ireland will have an impact on British businesses, especially those that sell their products online from Great Britain directly to consumers in Northern Ireland. As the Minister said, GB business will need an economic operator established in Northern Ireland for compliance activities if they want to sell goods into Northern Ireland. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) set out the situation very well in a debate on another statutory instrument when he said:
“Brexit was sold as being an end to red tape—nobody said it would be replaced with all this red, white and blue tape that we are debating today.”—[Official Report, Fifth Delegated Legislation Committee, 24 June 2021; c. 5.]
Given the additional obligations on British businesses that want to continue to sell their goods across this United Kingdom, will the Minister assure us that the Government will continue to provide all advice and guidance necessary to ensure that all British businesses are prepared for this new obligation when the regulation comes into force in less than two weeks? Targeted support might be required, and we will be watching carefully to ensure that businesses are not adversely affected by the changes after 16 July. Unfortunately, businesses have been affected adversely by an increase in bureaucracy and red tape, and in their complexity, as a consequence of the withdrawal agreement.
Secondly, the Government have suggested in guidance that the enforcement of the market surveillance regulation in Northern Ireland will be
“proportionate, risk-based and intelligence-led”,
minimising disruption to businesses. They go on to suggest that regulatory checks on goods entering Northern Ireland will continue to take place by exception, and only when there is a high level of risk. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy says that goods going into Northern Ireland from Great Britain have a low risk profile and therefore will not be routinely subject to inspection, but given current tensions over the Northern Ireland protocol and uncertainties about its implementation, will the Minister clarify the extent to which that approach has been agreed with the European Union? Is there an agreement that goods arriving into Great Britain will not be routinely subject to regulatory checks?
We are in a bizarre situation when I have to even ask this question, but is the application of the market surveillance regulation in Northern Ireland a protocol commitment that the Government support, or a matter that they wish to reopen with the European Union? Businesses and consumers throughout the United Kingdom need and deserve clarity.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
I thank the Committee for its consideration of the regulations and the hon. Member for her comments.
The measures amend the previous regulations from annex 2 of the protocol, so this is not a new set of frameworks. In a risk-based sense, as the hon. Member highlighted, they ensure that Northern Ireland regulators have the correct powers to deal with unsafe or non-compliant goods in a co-ordinated and coherent way. The regulations make that easier to deliver, and build on the existing product regime with which regulators and businesses are already familiar. They will provide continued robust protection for all UK consumers, ensuring that products are safe and compliant.
This uniform set of powers is designed to fit within existing product legislation that applies throughout the UK and includes criminal offences that can used by market surveillance authorities when required, although we expect those occasions to be very rare. The Government continue to engage closely with businesses and regulators regarding the introduction of the market surveillance regulation. We have published guidance for both and will continue to support them in the coming months. On that basis, I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Local Elections (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Order 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
Before we begin, I remind Members that we have moved to 1 metre social distancing. Members should continue to sit only in places that are clearly marked, and to wear masks when they are not speaking. The Hansard reporters would be grateful if Members could send their speaking notes to hansardnotes@ parliament.uk.
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Robin Walker)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Local Elections (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Order 2021.
This statutory instrument is about providing increased transparency in relation to the imprints on printed election campaign material. Imprints are the details that must by law be shown on campaign material at elections to show who is responsible for the production of the material. They help to ensure that there is transparency about who is campaigning—increasing strength and public trust in the democratic process—and that voters are informed about who is behind an electoral campaign. The printed material imprint regime in Northern Ireland is currently slightly different from, and not as comprehensive as, the rules on printed imprints in place in Great Britain.
The order is part of a wider package of measures that will ensure that there is a comprehensive paper imprint regime for candidates and parties in all elections in Northern Ireland. The current imprint regime in Northern Ireland is slightly different from and not quite as comprehensive as that in place in Great Britain, or for referendums across the whole of the UK. We do not believe that people in Northern Ireland deserve any less transparency for elections than those in the rest of the UK.
The order will not deliver the comprehensive cover that we are seeking on its own; it is one of two SIs needed to create a coherent regime. The pair of SIs consist of today’s order and a separate commencement order, which will be timed to come into force together. Together they will ensure that the paper imprint regime in Northern Ireland covers parties and candidates in all elections.
This order makes provision in relation to material printed for a specific candidate in local elections. The commencement order will bring into force other measures already on the statute book but not yet commenced for Northern Ireland, which will cover candidates in parliamentary and Assembly elections, and material in relation to parties in all Northern Ireland elections. Those changes will increase transparency and provide greater clarity for voters in relation to who is campaigning for, and supporting, candidates and parties in elections in Northern Ireland. I am sure that hon. Members will agree how important transparency is for our democratic process.
Let me explain why we are taking these steps now. The existing imprint regime in Northern Ireland has never been problematic, and I understand anecdotally that it is already common practice for this information to be included on Northern Ireland material. However, in recent years the Electoral Commission has highlighted the discrepancy between the legal regimes in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. We undertook to introduce the change when the legislative timetable allowed. It is important to understand that the principle underpinning the measure is ensuring greater transparency for voters. We accept that the Northern Ireland regime should be no less comprehensive than that of Great Britain. All voters, whether in Great Britain or Northern Ireland, should know the origin of election campaign material, who is printing it and on behalf of whom they are doing so.
I will therefore explain what we are changing. The existing regime for Northern Ireland provides that only the name and address of the printer must be included on Northern Ireland election material for candidates. That differs from the regime for Great Britain, which covers material for candidates and parties, and specifies that in addition to the name and address of the printer it must also include the name and address of the promoter of the material and the name and address of any person on behalf of whom the material is being published and who is not the promoter.
The promoter of the material is whoever caused the material to be published. That may be the candidate themselves, their agent or, in the case of a party, the party treasurer, another officer of the party or the party itself, as outlined in the Electoral Commission’s guidance on imprints. The format that imprints should take across the UK is subject to Electoral Commission guidelines. Although the commission does not take a view on the font of the imprint, that essential information should be clear and legible, so that it can be seen by potential voters. Although the commission provides guidance on those matters, it does not enforce the rules. Any concerns about non-compliance with the imprint regime should, as is the case currently, be reported to the police. I should mention that the penalties for non-compliance will not change, and the offender is liable on summary conviction for a fine of up to £5,000.
Members may have concerns that the addition of an address to election material could lead to the intimidation of a candidate, printer or promoter. It is, of course, vital for our democracy that individuals are able to engage in campaigning and elections without fear of intimidation. I want to be clear that a candidate, for example, is under no obligation to print their home address on any election material. The Electoral Commission provides guidance that the address provided does not need to be a home address. It may be a business address or even a PO box. The changes will therefore not risk intimidation for any candidate, and the existing law provides that printers must also include the details on election material that they produce.
Transparency and clarity are vital for our democratic system, and it is paramount that voters understand who is responsible for the production of electoral material for individuals and parties. I am happy to tell the Committee that the proposal to close the gap between the Northern Ireland and Great Britain paper imprints regimes is fully supported and welcomed by the Electoral Commission. I should also say that, as the measures in some respects relate to the publication of personal data, we have, as Members would expect, consulted the Information Commissioner’s Office, which has approved the draft order.
Members may be aware that when the order was debated in the Lords Committee last week there was universal agreement on the matter, and a strong feeling that these are important changes for ensuring that the people of Northern Ireland have the same level of transparency and clarity in elections as people in the rest of the UK.
Finally, it is of course the case that much of the election material now seen by voters does not take the slightly old-fashioned form of printed material. We will rightly be asked how the order addresses the transparency of the sources of political campaigning online and through digital media. The short answer is that it does not, and it was not intended to. The Government have consulted on digital imprints and have made clear our intention to introduce UK-wide legislation to address that issue. The SI is a measure to bring the Northern Ireland paper imprints regime into line with that of Great Britain. Digital imprints are a separate issue and will be subject to separate legislation contained in the Elections Bill, which I am pleased to confirm has been introduced to Parliament today.
As I have said, in order to provide a coherent regime for all Northern Ireland elections, changes to the paper imprint regime in Northern Ireland will be implemented by the order, which makes provision for election material for candidates in local elections. A separate commencement order will bring into force the rest of the provisions. We intend that the commencement order will be timed so that it comes into force on the same day as this SI. I hope that Members on both sides will agree that bringing the paper imprint regime in Northern Ireland into line with the more comprehensive one in Great Britain is a sensible and important step towards modernising elections in Northern Ireland, and I hope that they will support the order, which I commend to the Committee.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
We are very happy to support the SI, on the basis that, as the Minister outlined, it will bring greater transparency in relation to election material in Northern Ireland, and bring the regime into alignment with the rest of the UK. Given the assurances that he made on digital literature, I am happy to leave it there and offer our full support.
Financial Assistance to Industry
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Chair
Before we begin, I remind Members to observe social distancing and to sit only in places that are clearly marked. I also remind them that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Committee. Hansard would be most grateful if Members sent their speaking notes by email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk.
We are debating for up to 90 minutes the content of the resolution that the House of Commons itself will be asked to pass without debate once the text of the resolution has been reported from this Committee.
The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
I beg to move,
That this House authorises the Secretary of State to undertake to pay, and to pay by way of financial assistance under section 8 of the Industrial Development Act 1982, grants to businesses to support the development of an electric vehicle supply chain in the UK, up to a limit of £388 million over four years.
The Prime Minister’s 10-point plan sets out our ambition to accelerate the shift to zero-emission vehicles. That will play an important role in driving down carbon dioxide emissions for net zero and improving the air quality in our cities and towns.
The UK is home to a successful automotive sector, which has one of the highest productivity levels of the major European automotive-producing nations. Currently, 149,000 people are employed in automotive manufacturing, with an estimated 278,000 jobs supported by the sector in the wider economy. Those jobs are spread across the UK, mostly outside London and the south-east, with significant clusters of activity in the west midlands, the north-east and Wales.
Globally, the automotive sector is going through a once-in-a-lifetime transformation and significant investment will be required to support the shift to electric vehicles. The UK needs to establish supply chains to source critical components and to continue to develop the new technology to deliver the transition. Investing in such areas offers a huge opportunity for the creation of new highly skilled jobs as we build back better following the significant challenges that the pandemic has posed for the automotive industry. There is significant opportunity for the UK to capture a share of the investment needed to make that happen, building on existing strengths in automotive research, development and manufacturing, and on wider capabilities such as chemicals, materials processing and refining, and electronics.
Without the new investment, there is a real risk that the sector will fall into decline, causing irreversible loss of jobs and activity in our industrial heartland. To maintain and grow our automotive sector, our aim is to create an internationally competitive electric-vehicle supply chain right here in the UK. Government have developed the automotive transformation fund, which supports both R&D and capital investment to focus on the commercialisation of strategically important technologies to enable production at scale. Securing investment in battery manufacturing and gigafactories is a priority, but the fund also targets investment in the upstream battery supply chain, motors, drives, power electronics and fuel cells.
The specific technologies and processes being targeted are based on extensive research into the vehicle value change, coupled with an analysis of UK strengths, capabilities and market trends. Demand for those key components is increasing rapidly as the transition to electric vehicles accelerates. Increasing production capacity will therefore help UK-based vehicle manufacturers to secure the supplies that they need. The ability to source from suppliers in the UK is also central to enabling UK businesses to meet the rules-of-origin requirements and to continue to benefit from tariff-free exports under the UK’s free trade agreements with important export markets. That will safeguard existing jobs in the automotive supply chain and create new ones, helping our established incumbent businesses to transform and attracting new investors.
Securing such investment will take concerted effort in the face of global competition. That is why the Government and their delivery partner, the Advanced Propulsion Centre, engage proactively with potential investors through the automotive transformation fund. Engagement is backed by extensive research into the UK’s competitive strengths and an understanding of key considerations for investors. The team also provides support and information on, for example, site availability, planning and energy supply; facilitates contact with other relevant stakeholders; and makes introductions to other businesses. We speak to vehicle manufacturers to better understand their requirements and which aspects of their supply chain they would most like to onshore. We use that information to inform our targeting and discussions with investors.
The automotive transformation fund is critical to our efforts to support the transformation of the automotive sector to a zero-emissions future. We are determined to ensure that the UK continues to be one of the most competitive locations in the world for automotive manufacturing. I commend the motion to the Committee.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I thank the Minister for her opening remarks; I think it is very positive that two women are leading this debate. She gave a helpful and comprehensive introduction to the Government’s proposals and intentions, and to the role of the Advanced Propulsion Centre in this important endeavour.
The motion authorises support for the development of an electric vehicle supply chain to be delivered through the automotive transformation fund. This is part of the significant transformation of the automotive sector that we need as it makes its transition to zero-emission vehicles. We understand that this programme will support late-stage capital and R&D investments in the UK in strategically important technologies. The Minister outlined quite a lot of these, but it is important that this should cover a much wider area of technologies than batteries, including cells, battery management systems, electric machines, drives, integrated power, electronics, fuel cells and so on.
The Government’s intent is a step in the right direction, but the Opposition feel that we should be more ambitious and match it with other necessary support. It is correct to be ambitious on the importance of phasing out petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030—indeed, we called on the Government to do that—but high ambition must be matched by support from Government, as well as support for consumers and workers to navigate this transition successfully.
Domestic battery production is absolutely key to securing the future of the industry, which is why Britishvolt’s plans and Nissan’s expansion and announcement ofits gigafactory in Sunderland are very welcome. I pay tribute to local MPs, including my hon. Friends the Members for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), for the work they have done in support of Nissan. We certainly hope for further announcements from other companies.
Perhaps I should declare a small interest: I have been driving an electric vehicle for three years. We must do what we can when investing in electric vehicles to bring the price point down, to make electric vehicles more accessible more quickly for hundreds of thousands or millions more, so that it will start to be the transformation that we need. I pay tribute to the work of Hounslow Council and other councils across the country for putting more charging points on our streets, making shifting to electric vehicles a much more practical and realistic option for many busy families.
However, if we really want to win the race on EV production, the Opposition strongly believe that the Government need to step up far more actively. We are not the only ones. The Faraday Institution says the UK will need not only one or two but up to seven gigafactories by 2040. Professor David Greenwood, professor of advanced propulsion systems and chief executive officer of the Warwick Manufacturing Group’s high-value manufacturing catapult at the University of Warwick, told the Environmental Audit Committee earlier this month that
“if the UK is able to secure the supply chain for its own battery supply, there are tens of billions of pounds worth of value per year to be generated in the UK.”
In its recent report, “Full Throttle: Driving Automotive Competitiveness”, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders asks for the Government to have a target for the production of 60 GWh of battery supply within the UK, which it suggests will support capacity to produce up to 1 million electric vehicles domestically. This kind of thinking and forward capacity building is what we need to make, buy and sell more in and from the UK.
When we look at what Governments in Germany, France, China and the US are doing, we can see that the global race for gigafactories is well and truly on. Germany, Sweden, Poland and Hungary are also developing battery manufacturing capability. The German Government, for example, are providing €1 billion, while France is investing €700 million as part of a Franco-German project to establish European battery cell production. The issue is particularly pressing for us in the UK because of the rules of origin that will be in place by 2027. We have heard surprisingly little, however, about the Government’s vision of how we will become global leaders in the automotive manufacturing and industry of the future. Will the Minister take this opportunity to tell us how we will match up to our ambitions and catch up with other countries?
We welcome the Government’s automotive transform- ation fund, Mr Dowd, but forgive us for being a little impatient and for calling on the Government to be willing to go further and faster. Some £500 million of funding for R&D and capital expenditure was allocated to the ATF over the next four years but the motion references £388 million for the capital funding allocation. Will the Minister clarify when the remaining expenditure will be brought forward? Will that be through another motion?
The £388 million to support battery manufacturing is a start, but I worry that it is not enough. That is why we have said that the Government should commit to helping to finance with further investment the creation of further additional gigafactories and their associated supply chains by 2025. That investment would signal the UK’s commitment to the industry and demonstrate that the Government recognised the urgency of acting now.
Labour has also set out why, alongside that, we must make electric vehicle ownership affordable. We have called for interest-free loans for new and used electric vehicles for those on low to middle incomes, removing the upfront cost barrier and trialling a national scrappage scheme. We would also make it easier for people to drive an electric vehicle wherever they live, accelerating the important roll-out of charging points on streets and targeting areas currently left out, such as Yorkshire, the north-west and many parts of the west midlands. We need an electric vehicle revolution in every part of the country to boost the car manufacturing industry, create jobs and make only zero-emission vehicles the option for all. For that, we need a strong domestic battery supply chain to remain competitive, build our position as a leading electric vehicle producer and sell to the world. We cannot afford to be in the slow lane. If the batteries are not made here, the danger is that the cars will not be either. We need to back our ambition with the policies that will fulfil that ambition.
The Climate Change Committee tells us that for a smooth transition to 2030, 48% of new sales need to be electric by 2023. To reach that level, we come back to the point that electric vehicles must be affordable for lower income families. That is why the Government should not be cutting the plug-in grant. On supply chains, the intended investment from the fund in the development of electric vehicle supply chain in the UK is important. That development requires strategic interventions—something on which the Government do not have the best track record.
We saw the cost of Government inaction at the historic Orb steelworks in Newport East. Orb was the UK’s only producer of high quality non-oriented electric steels—the steel used to build electric motors. But in 2020, it was mothballed and subsequently closed despite determined campaigning. The Government declined to support investment to keep the plant going, but it could have been an integral part of a new UK supply chain for electric vehicles. The Sindex consultancy has estimated that the decision to let the Orb close will cost the UK economy more than £1 billion over the next decade—pretty devastating, by all accounts. As a country, we cannot continue to make such huge strategic mistakes when it comes to our steel and manufacturing sectors.
Will the Minister also clarify the following final points? The 10-point plan, published last November, commits up to £1 billion to support the electrification of UK vehicles and their supply chains, but only £500 million is being announced in this Parliament. The industry is rightly asking when the next £500 million is planned, because there is a lead time for big investments and the ability to plan ahead to invest well. Will any of the support that has been announced be tied to companies’ investment in skills and human capital, so that that growth is more sustainable as we upskill our workforce and create local jobs? What is the social return, in terms of skills and employment, on these grants expected to be? What expectation do the Government have about how SMEs will get access to some of this support through supply chains, including BAME-led and women-led businesses that are often excluded?
This is an important strategic agenda and a vital step in accelerating the shift to zero-emission vehicles that we need to see. The areas I have raised are in the interest of being constructive, because Labour wants to ensure that everyone in the country can benefit from the electric vehicle revolution, instead of baking in unfairness. While it is right that the Government have said that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will end, they are wrong to impose a massive transition on our manufacturers from Whitehall without integrated and full support. It is also important to think about the vehicles that small businesses rely on, such as light vans and small vans, and how they will also make the transition.
We do not want our automotive sector to lose out in the race to be a world leader in the electric vehicle market. Labour would back our manufacturers and our communities with proud histories in the industry, but we must not let history write that the Government were asleep at the wheel. They need to do more, and we will not stop calling for that.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
May I thank the hon. Lady for her valuable contribution to the debate? On her last point, I completely agree on women-led businesses and how we make sure that we maximise all that latent potential. The green jobs taskforce, which has been running over the last few months, is about to publish its recommendations, and an area that I have discussed with its members at some length is the fact that they are not maximising the use of all the human capital available to them in terms of women. I hope very much that they will be able to put forward suggestions on how they will look to expand their staffing groups to make sure that they do, because I think there is room for much improvement in many sectors. I look forward to reading the report shortly.
To answer the point the hon. Lady made, the Prime Minister set out his 10-point plan last year with the £1 billion investment for the automotive transformation fund, of which £500 million is so far in the system—if that is the right way to describe it—and will set out in due course how the second half of that committed fund will roll out. We are committed to the continued success of the UK automotive sector. We are the fifth largest European car producer and we have one of the highest productivity levels among major European automotive-producing nations.
Investment in the automotive sector was £7.2 billion in 2019, which is nearly 22% of UK manufacturing investment, and I was thrilled to see Nissan’s commitment just last week to its move to electric vehicles and the work it is doing. It wants to stay because it knows—I speak as a north-east MP who is entirely biased—that its north-east workforce is fantastic, and the company would not in any way want to move away from that. On a personal level—I apologise—I was thrilled by that announcement, because many of my constituents work at Nissan, and this will expand not only that workforce and the vehicles they produce but the wider supply chain through the battery factory. It is very exciting news.
The automotive transformation fund will continue to be a really important programme to help us with the steadfast commitment that we have made to support the sector through its transition to electrification, and the intervention that we are discussing today will help to lay the foundations for that competitive and sustainable industry. We will continue to show our support as a Government to the automotive sector as it builds back better following the disruption caused by the covid pandemic last year, giving businesses the confidence to invest and innovate, creating skilled, well-paid gender-balanced—I hope—jobs across the country, and enabling our green industrial revolution to make progress at pace.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Climate Change Governance and Reporting) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Chair
Before we begin, I remind Members to observe social distancing and to sit only in the places that are clearly marked. I also remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that face coverings should be worn in Committee unless Members are speaking or they are exempt. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could send their speaking notes to hansardnotes@ parliament.uk.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Climate Change Governance and Reporting) Regulations 2021.
The draft regulations were laid before the House on 8 June. This House is leading the way on ensuring that climate change is tackled with our pension system. We are the first country in the G7 to legislate to reach net zero by 2050. We are leading the way on the environmental, social and governance reforms that will transform the way pensions are invested, and with the Pension Schemes Act 2021, which the House passed earlier this year, we have made massive strides. The key stride that we have made is that we have put what is called the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosure—the TCFD; a catchy title, I accept—into legislation. We are the first country in the entire world to do so, which is something that this Parliament and this country should be exceptionally proud of.
We did that because climate change is the defining issue of our time. Our response will determine not only the future health and prosperity of our world; it is also a major systemic financial risk and threat to the long-term sustainability of UK private pensions. That matters because we are talking about £2 trillion-worth of assets under management. All occupational pension schemes, irrespective of their size, structure or investment strategy, are exposed to climate-related risks. Those risks present a significant threat to the retirement outcomes of millions of savers and all our constituents.
It is therefore vital that we ensure that pension schemes, and their governance, are as robust as possible to withstand those risks in both the short and the longer term. The draft regulations deliver on the commitments set out in the Government’s green finance strategy, requiring large asset owners to disclose in line with the recommendations of the TCFD by 2022. The measures will see the UK become the first country in the world in which trustees of occupational pension schemes are statutorily required to consider, assess and report on the financial risks of climate change within their portfolios.
The draft regulations impose requirements on trustees of larger occupational pension schemes, authorised master trusts and, once established, authorised collective money purchase schemes—known as collective defined contribution schemes—to identify, assess and then manage climate-related risks and opportunities. That includes requirements relating to governance, strategy and risk management, and requirements to select and calculate climate-related metrics and to set and measure performance against targets. Trustees will be required both to meet the climate change governance requirements, which underpin the recommendations of the TCFD, and to report on how they have done so in line with the taskforce recommendations.
The largest schemes and authorised schemes will be captured from 1 October 2021. We have made massive efforts to ensure that this is in play and in law prior to COP26 in Glasgow. From 1 October 2022, the draft regulations will apply to more than 70% of pension assets and more than 80% of pension members. The impact of the draft regulations will be significant and transformative. By the end of 2023, the risks and opportunities that climate change poses to £1.33 trillion-worth of pension savings will be assessed and published for all to see. Critically, that develops a system of accountability that we have never had before, and trustees will be required to show how climate change is likely to affect their portfolio.
With respect, this is the most transformational piece of legislation because it puts the consumer back in charge of how their pension is spent, so I commend the draft regulations very strongly to the Committee.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I would like to start by reflecting on the existential threat of climate change and the climate emergency. We are facing the most serious threat to humanity that we have ever seen. If allowed to carry on unchecked, the rate of temperature increase will dramatically change the world and will unleash a series of geological and environmental processes that will take us on an unsustainable trajectory to massive change to the climate.
So far, the Government’s response has been weak. The Prime Minister’s words have not been backed up by action on the scale that the emergency requires. The Government’s 10-point plan has failed to meet the scale of ambition needed. The Government are veering significantly off course to meet their legally binding 2050 net zero target. Quite simply, it is not good enough, yet it is all the more important in the year of COP26. The world is looking to the UK to show global leadership, but we must start at home if we are to do anything. We need credible action to increase the pace if we are to achieve the substantial majority of our emissions reductions by the end of this decade. That requires leadership, both at home and on the world stage.
A Labour Government will replace the Government’s piecemeal approach with a green new deal—a comprehensive plan for the transition to a low-carbon economy. Last week, after our questioning, it emerged that the Chancellor’s final report into the net zero review will be further delayed. The report was first due to be published in autumn 2020, and then in spring 2021. It has still not been published.
To show even further the scale of the slippage, last week the UK’s independent adviser on tackling climate change, the Climate Change Committee, which is headed by Lord Deben, a former Conservative Minister, revealed that the Treasury has not fully achieved a single one of the Committee’s 2020 recommendations. That is the context in which we are working.
I must move on to the scope for tackling climate change through pensions. It is worth noting—the Minister hinted at this—that it is a £1 trillion industry, with enormous potential to make real and lasting change and to protect us from the worst effects of climate change. Even on a tiny scale, a single pension has the ability—if invested properly—to take an amount of carbon out of the air equivalent to several cars being taken off the road. One individual person’s pension can make a difference. Imagine that scaled up across thousands or even millions of pensions. There is real potential to do some real good. The industry itself recognises that. The Path, a fund that advises on environmentally friendly investing, recently told the Financial Times that investing only a small amount in a more sustainable way could make a huge difference.
I want to reflect on the Pension Schemes Act and climate change, and putting those two parts together. When the Bill was introduced, instead of a net zero provision we saw no mention of net zero—a gaping hole that had to be dealt with on Second Reading. The Minister put a rather favourable gloss on that. The Government introduced amendments in Committee, which had to be strengthened through cross-party agreement and negotiation to ensure that trustees or managers had to take account of the Paris agreement and domestic targets such as net zero. Climate change was then mentioned for the first time in domestic pensions legislation. We should all be proud of that, but there is so much more to do.
I would like to stress that the Act could have gone a lot further. It could have been more ambitious but, sadly, the Government voted against the Labour amendment to allow regulators to mandate occupational schemes to develop an investment strategy aligned with net zero. Instead, we have this much less assertive statutory instrument in its place. Clearly, there remains a wide gap between the Government’s rhetoric and their actions on climate change, both in pensions and across a much wider field of policy.
Turning to the SI, I accept that it takes some steps forward. It sets out a duty on trustees and comes forward with a range of technical measures that are worthy in themselves. The SI has been consulted on and has wide-ranging support in the pensions industry and among stakeholders. However, many pensions firms and stakeholders want to go a lot further. To mention a few well-known names, Scottish Widows, Aviva, Nest, the BT pension scheme and some local government pension schemes have all signed up to Make My Money Matter, the green pensions charter that wishes to take things a lot further. It is clear that there is the will to do that among many players in the industry, who I have not been able to reference.
We have seen positive initiatives developed in other related sectors. I note, for example, that Mark Carney, the former Bank of England Governor, last week announced a taskforce on scaling voluntary carbon markets. I hope that colleagues will follow its progress and show the keen interest that it deserves.
Although the SI is worthy and necessary, I want to ask the Minister a series of questions that I hope he will respond to. First, does he really think that the Government are doing anywhere near enough to tackle climate change?
Matt Rodda
I hope he will address that question more formally later. Secondly, what more can we do together on a cross-party basis to help the pensions sector tackle this enormous problem? Thirdly, will he write to me to set out the Government’s next steps? It is all well and good dealing with the regulations coming from the Act, but there is much more to do.
To sum up, the country, and indeed the world, faces an enormous challenge. Government policy is failing to address that and, as their own former Minister said only last week in the Climate Change Committee, the Government are seriously off track. The official Opposition have challenged and pressed for more action, some of which has been forthcoming. Today’s SI is helpful, but we need to see much more.
Guy Opperman
I am surprised and rather disappointed by the hon. Gentleman’s speech, because today we should be celebrating how this country is leading the way in the world. I will not go on to half-past 6, although I am tempted to, but part of his speech featured the words, “the world is looking for the UK to show global leadership.” Being the first country in the world to introduce TCFD shows great global leadership. Being the first country in the G7 to legislate for net zero shows global leadership. Leading the way in the implementation and application of ESG shows global leadership. On that basis, I utterly reject what he says.
The hon. Gentleman then asked whether we were doing enough to combat climate change. The answer is that there is always more to do. No one disputes that. But this country, and particularly the Department for Work and Pensions, led by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and a fantastic team of officials, is doing everything we can.
I want to deal briefly with a Labour amendment to the Pension Schemes Bill. I have great respect for the shadow Secretary of State and for his predecessor, the shadow Minister for Pensions. The shadow Minister for Pensions and I disagreed on nothing whatever except for the one amendment that he tabled, which was misguided and exceptionally foolish, and I told him so very robustly, and I told the shadow Secretary of State. Why? Because it would have induced immediate divestment. The hon. Member for Reading East has to grasp this: who does he think will formulate, produce, create and then actually deliver carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, the fuel cells that we need, and tidal power? It will not be Government. It will not be an organisation in BEIS, however worthy BEIS might be. It will be industry, and industry needs the support of capital and investors.
The moment we introduce mandatory net zero in the circumstances of that amendment, it would inevitably result in immediate divestment. All that would happen is that the pension scheme trustees will divest out of these particular stocks and into, say, tech stocks. Even if that was a good idea, which it is not in the prevailing circumstances, here is the problem: they do not then support the people who will be creating these things. So, yes, we need to continue with stewardship and voting in the many different ways that we are already doing, and TCFD is part of that, and continue to work with these organisations to ensure that they have the capacity to create the engines of change that we all want. I wholeheartedly reject that approach.
I mean no disrespect, but I will not write to the hon. Gentleman. I am happy to sit down with him and explain the individual parts of the SI, but I do not think there is much point in my writing to him until he accepts the fundamental principles. If he still stands by the argument that divestment is the way ahead, I suggest he goes away and speaks to the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association and all the member organisations, who so comprehensively identified that that was a disastrous approach to fiduciary duty and trustee empowerment. There are companies and pension schemes that are genuinely navigating their way with net zero pledges by a particular time, but they are doing that once they have looked at their portfolios and worked with the companies they are investing in. We cannot suddenly mandate that everybody will do it by this particular date in this particular way, because the consequences of such actions will be foolhardy.
I believe there is genuine leadership. I want to thank the team behind TCFD: the Secretary of State, who has supported the process throughout; Mark Carney, whom I met in January last year prior to the pandemic; the special advisers; the various policy officials; the Bill team; and my private office. There are too many to thank, but I will mention Thérèse, Lauren Thomas, Lisa Rumbold, David Farrar, Matthew McPherson and George Greville Williams, who all deserve great credit for all that they have done to explain, articulate, draft and drive forward this piece of legislation, which is game changing, and the first in the world in place prior to COP. I respectfully commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Justice
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Robert Buckland
In March 2019, the national criminal justice board commissioned the first ever end-to-end review of how the criminal justice system handles rape cases. The rape review report and action plan outlines how we will act on its findings to deliver much needed improvements, building confidence in the system and encouraging more victims to come forward. That will enable cases that are better prepared from the start, more prosecutions of rapes, greater encouragement of early guilty pleas, and fair and timely trials. This has been a collaborative effort between the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Attorney General’s Office—I am grateful to the Solicitor General for being here today—the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, which is something that we believe will be crucial to its long-term success. Alongside the action plan, a Government social research report outlining the underlying primary research in detail is also being published. I have laid that report before the House.
[Official Report, 21 June 2021, Vol. 697, c. 589.]
Letter of correction from the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Robert Buckland).
An error has been identified in my statement.
The correct statement should have been:
Robert Buckland
In March 2019, the national criminal justice board commissioned the first ever end-to-end review of how the criminal justice system handles rape cases. The rape review report and action plan outlines how we will act on its findings to deliver much needed improvements, building confidence in the system and encouraging more victims to come forward. That will enable cases that are better prepared from the start, more prosecutions of rapes, greater encouragement of early guilty pleas, and fair and timely trials. This has been a collaborative effort between the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Attorney General’s Office—I am grateful to the Solicitor General for being here today—the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, which is something that we believe will be crucial to its long-term success. Alongside the action plan, a Government social research report outlining the underlying primary research in detail is also being published. This report has been published on gov.uk and I will place a copy in the Library of the House.
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Hedgehogs
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Derek Twigg (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to the normal practice in order to support the new hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate. There will also be suspensions between each debate. I remind Members participating physically and virtually that they must arrive for the start of debates in Westminster Hall and Members are expected to remain for the entire debate.
I also remind Members participating virtually that they must leave their camera on for the duration of the debate, and that they will be visible at all times, both to each other and to us in the Boothroyd Room. If Members attending virtually have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall Clerks’ email address, which is westminsterhallclerks@parliament.uk. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room. I should also like to remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall.
Members who are not on the call list but wish to intervene can do so only from the horseshoe. I remind Members that those on the call list have priority for spaces on the horseshoe. Those wishing to intervene should not prevent a Member from the call list from speaking.
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petition 550379, relating to the protection of hedgehogs.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the petition creator and all those who signed it for giving us this important opportunity to address this issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), who is sorry not to be able to be with us today, has talked about the incredible contribution made by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, which is based in his constituency.
The last time we had the pleasure of a debate on hedgehogs in Parliament was almost six years ago, in November 2015. During that debate, the former Member for Penrith and The Border, the right hon. Rory Stewart, gave a fantastic, impassioned speech on hedgehogs from the Dispatch Box, and the former MP for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport called for the hedgehog to be made the UK’s national animal. Although I have a great appreciation for hedgehogs, and despite this country’s love for them, I agree with Mr Stewart that choosing an animal that rolls into a ball at any sign of danger and sleeps for half the year would not necessarily portray the image that we want as a nation. Before that debate in 2015, the last time Parliament debated the issue was in 1566, when, in true Tudor fashion, it discussed a bounty on hedgehogs, so this is only the second debate on the subject since 1566, and I am honoured to introduce it.
We have come a long way in how we treat hedgehogs in this country. Thankfully, we have moved past the idea that hedgehogs are a pest that prey on resting cows and need to be exterminated. We now have a greater understanding of the great British hedgehog. Their image is now used in election campaigns or to teach children the green cross code to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive”. They are now a much-loved part of the British countryside, and although they are not particularly cuddly, these prickly creatures have come to occupy a very special place in the hearts of people not just in my constituency but right across the UK.
Despite their relatively new-found popularity, however, the British hedgehog is facing a number of varied and complex threats. Before the debate, I had the pleasure of meeting representatives from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, who told me that since 2000 we have lost half of our rural hedgehogs and a third of our urban ones. Sadly, they were recently added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list for Britain as vulnerable, which means that they have an appreciable risk of extinction in the next 10 years.
As I have said, the problems that hedgehogs face are numerous. It is difficult to point to one factor as the sole reason for the population’s decline. That is partly a reflection on how varied their habitats can be. Modern farming practices have been blamed, including the use of pesticides that kill hedgehogs’ prey or potentially poison the hedgehogs themselves. A loss of habitat has similarly been pointed at—modern agricultural practices use larger fields and fewer hedgerows—and of course there are questions about the impact of climate change on hedgehogs’ hibernating habits.
Hedgehogs are protected from some methods of killing and collection under schedule 6 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The petition asks for that protection to be increased to schedule 5, which would offer protection from all intentional killing, injuring or taking, and prohibits them from being sold. The Government’s response to the petition states that they have not previously moved hedgehogs into schedule 5 because they have no evidence that hedgehogs are being intentionally killed. I am sure we are all grateful for that and I hope that people would not do something as cruel.
However, there is a problem of hedgehogs being sold. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of people owning hedgehogs as pets, although that is the African pygmy hedgehog, not the variety native in the UK. The sale of those cute little creatures—although they are not as cute as the great British hedgehog—is not necessarily the problem. The problem arises when people start to snatch the hedgehogs they find at the bottom of their garden and sell them on for £300 a pop. That threatens population numbers and creates biosecurity risks. Moving hedgehogs to schedule 5 would prevent it.
I would welcome other measures to help hedgehog numbers bounce back. I know from speaking to Anne Purchase-Walker, who runs HoggyStockton Rescue, that a large number of hedgehogs fall victim to weed strimmers. Greater awareness by people using them and a quick check of the grass before starting to cut would go a long way. Similarly, developers creating less robust fencing and walling, and hedgehog highways that link up green spaces so that hedgehogs can better forage for food, would also be welcome.
The Government are not deaf to the issue. I was pleased to see in their response to the petition that they are committed to taking action to recover threatened native species, and they are exploring the use of powers in the Environment Bill to strengthen commitments to improve the status of this threatened species. The petition’s request to move hedgehogs to schedule 5 would go some way to help the numbers bounce back. However, we welcome any policy that would help protect this much-loved animal and I would happily look at what the Government can propose.
One thing, however, is clear: we need to act now. Losing half the rural population in two decades shows that the decline is rapid and the situation is critical. There is no point letting the situation get worse before we step in and try to halt the decline. Intervention now will make this task easier and cheaper, and ensure that our prickly little friends still take pride of place in Britain’s countryside.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on speaking so eloquently on behalf of the petitioners. A remarkable number of people signed the petition, started by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. That shows how much people in the UK really care about hedgehogs and protecting the nature around us. As I went to the Library to print out my speech, I was accosted by one of the staff who found out it was about hedgehogs; she insisted on showing me a photograph of the hedgehogs in her garden.
The issue is everywhere. In fact, the hedgehog has been voted Britain’s most popular wild mammal in several surveys over the years. As we heard, since 2000 hedgehog numbers in the UK have declined by half in rural areas and by a third in urban ones. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the main reasons for the decline are the destruction of their shelters and habitats, increased levels of traffic, poorly planned roads and the use of pesticides. Those are all things that we can and should work to prevent. The hedgehog has been listed as vulnerable to extinction in the UK, conceivably within the next decade if nothing is done to reverse the decline.
I recently visited Sandra Lowe, who lives in Woodside in my constituency. Sandra operates a hedgehog rescue called Hope for Hedgehogs. When people bring hedgehogs to her, she works tirelessly to ensure that they are properly treated. She works with local vets to ensure they get the right medication and does everything that she can to keep them. For the little ones, that involves getting up three times during the night to feed them the appropriate food. It certainly is a labour of love, and thankfully there are people who will help her with that. Sandra funds the endeavour entirely by herself, and she says it costs around £50 for each hedgehog to be treated and released. The organisation is entirely self-funded, which is why I am supporting her efforts to obtain funding to create a hog hospital, so that she can treat hedgehogs properly.
A lot of people, such as Sandra, are doing amazing work to help protect hedgehogs, but it is not enough to rely on the work of volunteers. The Government must commit to protecting our wildlife. Most of all, we know that Sandra and all the other volunteers want to see the prevention of injury, damage and deaths of hedgehogs as the priority. That is the important thing. Real consideration for nature and wildlife must be at the core of our planning decisions and many other decisions.
I and many others, including the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, are concerned by the proposed changes to the status of many of our widespread species in the United Kingdom, including hedgehogs. The Joint Nature Conservation Committee review will provide recommendations to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. As far as I understand it from Sandra and others, the upcoming review seeks to change the eligibility criteria of the hedgehog, currently listed on schedule 6, if that is the recommendation. Sandra tells me the review proposes that statutory nature conservation bodies will retain protected status only for species that are in imminent danger of extinction in Great Britain. That is clearly too low a bar to set, and I hope the Government will be much more ambitious. The effect of the proposed changes could be that rather than increasing protection for hedgehogs, as called for in the petition, their current lower level of protection could be removed. Sandra tells me that she has concerns about the impact of the quinquennial review, so I hope that the Minister will be able to assure me and Sandra that there will be increased protection and no diminution of it.
The Government’s national planning policy framework has a chapter on conserving and enhancing the natural environment. It opens by setting out how planning policies and decisions should contribute to and enhance the natural and local environment. Priority species are defined in the NPPF as those included in England’s biodiversity list, which is published by the Secretary of State under section 41 of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006. As I have set out, the list currently includes hedgehogs.
With some narrow exemptions, the Environment Bill of 2021-22 contains provisions intended to make it mandatory for housing and development to achieve at least a 10% net gain in value for biodiversity, and a requirement that habitats for wildlife must be left in a measurably better state than before the development. Many of us know that although we can see the words on the page when it comes to planning policy guidance, we need to see the impact on the ground. We are seeing too many hedgerows lost as well as other biodiversity losses, even now. In today’s debate, we are calling on the Government to increase the protection offered to the hedgehog under the Wildlife and Countryside Act by moving it to schedule 5 as a first step in helping to protect our precious wildlife.
Derek Twigg (in the Chair)
Just to let Members know, I intend for the Opposition spokesperson and the Minister to start winding up at no later than 5.40 pm. Given the great deal of interest and the number of speakers, please keep your contributions to around four and a half minutes, which will ensure that everybody gets in. I ask for your indulgence in that.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank all the people who signed the petition.
From the emails that I received from constituents about the debate, I was deeply worried to learn of the disastrous decline in hedgehog numbers. Both my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) and the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) have referred to the numbers: we have lost half of all hedgehogs in rural areas, and a third in urban ones. As we have heard, this much-loved animal has recently been added to the IUCN red list and designated as vulnerable, with an appreciable risk of extinction within 10 years. There is a need for urgent action, and I want to press the Minister to enhance protection for hedgehogs, as called for in the petition.
Planning rules need to be changed to require the presence of hedgehogs to be taken into consideration when deciding whether to grant permission for development. Will the Minister also provide reassurance that the quinquennial review of schedules 5 and 8 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act will not lead to any weakening of protections? Most important of all, I urge the Government to include hedgehog habitats in their extensive programme of nature recovery. There can be no doubt that decline in habitats is a key driver in the loss of hedgehogs. We need the biodiversity net gain provisions of the Environment Bill to be implemented so that a new income stream is created for protecting wildlife habitats, and I want to see councils also encouraged to include hedgehog recovery strategies in their local nature recovery strategies, which the Bill will require them to establish.
Of course, I note the efforts by Natural England and DEFRA to create a national nature recovery network, which is a further, crucial opportunity to alleviate the pressure on the vulnerable creatures that we are debating today. Connected wildlife corridors can make a huge difference to the recovery of the species. I hope the voice of today’s petitioners will be heard by Ministers, particularly as they design and implement this country’s new system of farm support. There can be little doubt that some modern farming practices have made survival more difficult for this country’s favourite prickly mammal. The environmental land management schemes, which will replace the European Union’s common agricultural policy, should aim to secure and restore hedgerows and habitats to give our hedgehogs a bit of a Brexit dividend.
As we have heard, in 1566 this Parliament put a bounty on hedgehogs, which apparently led to the death of as many as 2 million in the period up to 1800. I really hope that today’s debate has a much more positive outcome. The Government have a stronger commitment to nature recovery than any of their predecessors ever before. When they set what I hope will be a really ambitious 2030 target for species conservation, I urge them to ensure that a thriving hedgehog population is included in that as a very important goal.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and a pleasure to speak up for the hedgehog.
Although I represent a largely urban constituency, the hedgehog is equally at home among our parks, gardens and untidy corners of the countryside, and many residents of Hull West and Hessle welcome its presence. I want to pay tribute to the fantastic work of Carolyn Harman of Hessle Hedgehog Rescue in providing care for sick and injured animals and advice on making the area hedgehog-friendly. Sadly, as mentioned by hon. Members already, hedgehog numbers continue to decline. The People’s Trust for Endangered Species surveys, conducted by citizen scientists, demonstrate that hedgehog numbers have fallen by around 50% in the past 20 years, so there is no doubt that urgent action needs to be taken, and the petition reflects that urgency.
The Government’s response to the petition stated that they have,
“not previously moved to protect this species under Schedule 5”—
to the Wildlife and Countryside Act—
“as it is not clear that such protection would be of benefit to the species, in so far that: we have no evidence that intentionally killing, taking or injuring hedgehogs is currently an issue; and it would not address the main threat of habitat loss.”
That appears to refer to the protections found in section 9(1). Although the petition mentioned only schedule 5, I assume it also refers to the protections under section 9(4), which include protections for habitat from intentional disturbance and damage.
The Minister may not be aware of this, but I am proud to be the butterfly conservation species champion for the brimstone butterfly, which is the flagship species of Hull’s Butterfly City project. She may also be interested to know that the marsh fritillary, the heath fritillary, the large blue and the swallowtail, which is the UK’s largest butterfly, are also included in schedule 5 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act. I assure the Minister that the main threat to all those butterfly species is habitat loss, and they are also included in section 9(4) of the Act. Every other mammal that is considered vulnerable to extinction in the UK is listed in schedule 7: the hazel dormouse, two species of bat, and the Orkney vole.
Even a layperson who is familiar with the behaviour of hedgehogs can imagine how the provisions in section 9(5) would protect them; detailed knowledge of hedgehogs’ habitat requirements is not necessary. Many people know that hedgehogs like the shelter of a nice compost heap, or being tucked up beneath the garden shed. In fact, hedgehogs can journey up to 2 km per night and can build several nests across their home range, so it is clear how protection of hedgehogs’ nesting sites from disturbance or harm, as well as protection of hedgehogs themselves from disturbance or harm, would be of benefit.
The hedgehog and other wildlife can also be helped through changes to the planning law. Biodiversity can be built into housing and commercial developments in many ways, such as hedgehog highways, wildlife corridors, and swift boxes and other bird boxes built into buildings. There are already fantastic examples, backed up by research, of the benefits of these innovations. It just requires the will from Government to make them mandatory.
The petition is timely because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) mentioned, the Wildlife and Countryside Act is undergoing its five-yearly review of the species included. However, I am extremely concerned to hear that the terms of this year’s review have been changed and that, contrary to what a reasonable person might expect given the well documented decline in biodiversity across the board, this is likely to result in fewer species under protection, not more. Under the new standards, an animal or plant species would be protected if only it were in imminent danger of extinction, so dozens of species face losing vital safeguards, and action to protect a species would come only when it was in crisis, which might be too late. That cannot be right.
I understand that over 30 conservation groups have written to Ministers voicing their concerns. I would welcome the Minister taking the opportunity today to explain why it was felt that the standards needed changing and how the Government expect the changes to halt the decline in species numbers. Although I welcome the assurances given in response to the petition relating to forthcoming legislation, given the changes to the way that the 1981 Act is being reviewed, it is difficult to have confidence that the final detail will measure up to the promises. The hedgehog needs increased and meaningful protections now, not fuzzy—or even prickly—assurances about its future.
Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg.
I follow a fellow parliamentary species champion, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), but I am perhaps the most topical species champion today, because I am the species champion for the hedgehog. Indeed, as the Minister knows, because she is committed to these issues, I have been, probably not biting her ankles, but prickling them over this issue for some time now, and I intend to carry on doing so. Six years have passed since this House last debated the hedgehog. I very much hope that we will not need to debate it again soon, but I also hope that, if a debate is necessary, it will not take another six years.
It is a national tragedy that we have lost so much of our wildlife. If we look across the range of species that have suffered catastrophic declines in recent years, the picture is profoundly disturbing and worrying. The hedgehog’s decline goes back further than the last 20 years, though. In the 1950s, there were nearly as many hedgehogs as people in the United Kingdom; today the hedgehog population is only a tiny fraction of our population, with perhaps only 1.5 million hedgehogs surviving. We have to turn the situation around, not just for hedgehogs but for all the species that have suffered such declines, and we must start doing it now, because we cannot allow numbers to continue to go down.
There is a variety of reasons why these declines have happened. It is true that there has been habitat loss. Sadly, over the years too many hedgehogs have died on our roads, although I have to say that it is relatively rare to see a dead hedgehog on our roads nowadays. Of course, we see rather a lot of dead badgers on our roads, but that remains a subject of debate. I am not here today to point a finger at the badger, although are issues around the competition between species for ever-diminishing habitats. I am here to argue for tangible Government measures to address the issue.
There has been a lot of debate about the specific review taking place this year. There is genuine cause for concern there, which I hope the Minister will address in her remarks, because none of us wants a formal reduction of protection for species. She knows my concerns about the way the quinquennial review approaches creatures such as the hedgehog, and I hope she will be able to set everybody’s mind at rest.
I hope the Minister recognises from the scale of this petition the genuine public concern. I echo the words of congratulation to the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, to Hedgehog Street, which has done a fantastic job in promoting the need for action, and to all those groups around the country doing so much to protect hedgehogs, to rescue hedgehogs that are in danger, to rescue baby hedgehogs that may not survive the winter, and to look after those that have been injured. I pay tribute to the team at the Wildlife Aid Foundation, just outside my constituency in Leatherhead, who do a fantastic job. I have been down there on many occasions to see the work they are doing with hedgehogs that have run into difficulties in life..
That work and all those different projects all around the country are valuable, but there is a bigger-picture issue to solve here. It was brought home to me this week by a message I received from one of the hedgehog groups distraught that, just down the road from where it is based, a developer starting to clear a site ahead of development had killed a significant number of hedgehogs just by clearing the undergrowth alongside a roadway to make way for that development. In accordance with the law, we in this country do a lot of work before we develop sites, such as checking for bats and newts, but I want the Government think differently, because searching for an individual species on a development site is not the right way forward. We need an holistic approach to nature on a development site. Of course, we still need to develop for the future—we need to provide housing for the future—but we should do that with care. One thing I hope for from the Government in the next few months is a plan to turn the current system into one of holistic analysis of what wildlife is on a site and what needs to be protected, so that we do not simply bulldoze a roadside or cut down a hedgerow with no regard at all for any animals inside it. All too often, hedgehogs are inside it. That change is urgently needed.
The Minister will be aware that I tabled an amendment to the Environment Bill to move the hedgehog into schedule 5 protection. I did not push that amendment to a Division because I understand that the legislative framework is not right for today’s world. It is focused particularly on human intent against animals, and nobody is seriously suggesting that everybody wants to kill hedgehogs. However, I expect quid pro quo from the Minister, which is a proper, urgent review of the legislative framework to address things such as the circumstance I just described, where a developer does not have to look holistically for the full range of species on a site but can just make sure that there are no bats or newts and everything else just gets bulldozed out of the way. That cannot be right, and I very much hope that she will change that.
I ask two other things of Ministers. The first involves habitats for hedgehogs and other species. One reason why we have seen the decline in numbers has been the disappearance of hedgerows. I very much hope that the implementation of the Agriculture Act 2020 and the new agriculture support framework will genuinely encourage farmers to put back some of those lost habitats. CPRE is in the process of launching a timely campaign to get more hedgerows planted in this country, and I hope the Government take that on board and ensure that the support they provide to farmers encourages them not only to have wider margins at the sides of existing fields, which is to be welcomed, but to start replanting hedgerows for the future, because they are vital habitats.
My final request to the Minister is this. It is important for species that travel long distances to be able to do so. Colleagues have mentioned hedgehog highways and developers being encouraged to put holes in fences. That is very good and should continue to be encouraged, but we also need, in areas of open country where there are development threats, to make sure that corridors exist for wildlife—not only hedgehogs but other species—so that we do not lock away one bit of habitat from another, losing the movement between the two and so ultimately the species decline and die. That also has to change.
Those are my three requests to the Minister. We need to ensure that we have proper planning for highways between different habitats, and that we look at supporting the recovery of hedgerows. We particularly need protections for species such as the hedgehog in law, to prevent developers from simply ripping up a site with no regard for what is there. If the Minister delivers all that, she will be able to take pride in the fact that she has played a big part in turning the tide on the tragic decline of hedgehog numbers.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is, as always, a pleasure to speak in the debate. As is often said in this Chamber, conservation is not a hobby for me; it is a duty that I take a very seriously.
I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), and I wholeheartedly endorse his request to retain hedgerows and enhance field edges. That is something that I do on the land where I have the opportunity to have some input. I am blessed to live on the family farm, with my son living on the farm up a very long laneway. It gives me a chance to see where the hedgerows are and to ensure that the edges of the lanes are well kept. During lockdown, the ability to wander through the beautiful countryside surrounding my home as I read my briefings and did my daily Bible readings, was one of things that kept me sane. It made me appreciate what I have outside my window that little bit more. I have a real passion to ensure that my grandchildren will have the same ability to enjoy nature when they reach my age, so retaining hedgerows and field edges is something that I wholeheartedly endorse.
Hedgehogs are under extreme pressure. The right hon. Gentleman referred to badgers, and the information that I have is hedgehogs are a bit of a delicacy for badgers, which are renowned for feasting on hedgehogs more than they probably should. One part of this fight for our countryside is the declining number of hedgehogs. Ulster Wildlife has an entire section on its website about how to help hedgehogs due to their decline, and it states:
“Hedgehogs are in trouble—they have declined by 30% in the last 10 years alone and there are now thought to be fewer than one million left in the UK. Whether you live in town or country, you can help to look after these much-loved creatures by providing food, water and shelter.”
Ulster Wildlife’s useful site outlines ways to help and provides links where people can donate and adopt a hedgehog. When my boys were at school, they did a project on hedgehogs, and I sincerely hope that there are still school projects to raise awareness of just how vital these little creatures are to our ecosystem.
My constituents in Strangford who signed the petition outlined the dire straits in which our population of hedgehogs find themselves. Since 2000, hedgehog numbers in the UK have declined by half in rural areas and by a third in urban ones. I very rarely see any of them about now, even with our taking a direct interest in trying to retain the habitat for them. For that reason, BHPS is asking for hedgehogs to be moved from schedule 6 to the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to schedule 5, to allow them greater protection. I would support that.
My constituents are concerned that the 2021 review seeks to change the eligibility criteria affecting hedgehogs. It is proposed that the country-based statutory nature conservation bodies will retain protected status only for species that are in imminent danger of extinction in Great Britain. I would suggest that the hedgehog is very clearly in such danger. The shift in focus will give preferential consideration to GB red-listed species as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, but the IUCN guidance specifically identifies the automatic use of red-list categories in policy as an “inappropriate use” of the red list, so that is the wrong bar to set. We need to get it right, so I look to the Minister with respect, as I often do, and ask her to respond, which I know she will.
The effect of the proposed change would be that rather than increasing protection for hedgehogs, as called for in the petition, their current, minor level of protection will be removed altogether. The change will make it legal to sell hedgehogs; worse still, they will lose protection from killing and injury. I just cannot believe that that is possible.
The petition makes it clear that hedgehogs have widespread support and are in need of enhanced protection. The hedgehog has been voted Britain’s most popular wild mammal in several surveys. In the BBC’s wildlife survey in 2013, it won 42% of the vote. In 2016, the hedgehog won more than twice the votes of the second-placed animal in the Royal Society of Biology’s survey. Clearly, hedgehogs are a favourite of the general public, so removing hedgehogs’ legal protection would be widely viewed as inappropriate and an extremely perverse response to a parliamentary petition backed by more than 100,000 voters.
Will the Minister reflect on this well thought-out flag that has been raised? We need to do something, and we are all saying that we must do the right thing. We need to enhance protection and to fund a breeding programme to release hedgehogs into safe places throughout the countryside. I look to the Minister to outline that very plan of action.
Derek Twigg (in the Chair)
I remind Members to wear masks while in this room, if they are not speaking, please.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con) [V]
My right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) remarked on the fact that we see far fewer hedgehogs dead on the roads now. Perversely, that is not a good sign; it is a bad sign, because the reason is that there are so many fewer hedgehogs than there used to be. It is hard to find one now, and yet when I was a lad, we could go out every night into the garden and there would be one, two or three hedgehogs snuffling around. The change has been absolutely dramatic.
I understand that the Government want to wait for the findings of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee review before taking any action, but we cannot wait much longer. The People’s Trust for Endangered Species has indicated clearly that the hedgehog is vulnerable to extinction. Hedgehogs are on the red list for British mammals. This is an animal that, as my right hon. Friend said, we used to have almost as many of as there were people in the United Kingdom. Now their number has dwindled to insignificance.
The Government say in their policy papers that they want
“to recover our threatened native species”.
One of the reasons for not accepting today’s recommendation is that—to quote from the Government comment—
“it would not address the main threat of habitat loss”.
No, it would not, and that is the main threat. It is because of current Government planning policy that habitat loss is worsening. The national planning policy framework states that policies
“should contribute to and enhance the natural and local environment”.
That is hogwash—possibly hedgehogwash. We are not enhancing our natural and local environments or our agricultural environment. Every time that farm fields are built over, hedgerows go, headlands go and the fields themselves with crops in go. Those are the habitats not just for hedgehogs, but for literally thousands of birds, mammals, butterflies and insects—the insects upon which hedgehogs feed. It is because of that loss of habitat that we have lost so many hedgehogs. The hedgerows, the meadowlands and the rough pasture that we are told hedgehogs in the wild live on are going. That is why the numbers are decreasing so dramatically in rural areas.
I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister is in her place to answer the debate, but I rather wish that we had a Planning Minister sitting listening to this as well, and perhaps responding. We have to get to grips with the fact that we are building over agricultural land. “We are protecting the green belt,” we are told. Yes, we are protecting the green belt, but agricultural land is being built over in the south of England in particular to an extent that is positively dangerous to food production and our wildlife. That has got to stop.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Twigg. It is also a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), with whom I have co-operated over many years on issues of animal husbandry, and all hon. Members who have spoken so passionately about hedgehogs.
Across the royal town of Sutton Coldfield, many Suttonians wish to see greater protection for our local hedgehog population. That is reflected in the huge number of people who have asked me to attend the debate and speak in it today—185 people from Sutton Coldfield signed the petition that we are debating.
I pay tribute to Snuffles Hedgehog Rescue, based in Four Oaks in my constituency. Claire and her partner Matt have been rescuing and looking after local hedgehogs for eight years, once they built up their knowledge and expertise after rescuing a hedgehog they found that needed help. Since 2013, they have built up a local network of volunteers, including people who help to clean the facilities, provide foster care for hedgehogs as they recover, and rehome hedgehogs in a safe environment.
In December last year, I supported a new clause in the Environment Bill, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) referred to, that would have added the hedgehog to the list of protected animals under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. It would create a legal imperative to search for hedgehogs in building developments and to mitigate the impact on their habitats, as we do for bats, for example. I am glad to have the opportunity today to speak briefly in favour of this greater protection for our hedgehogs. We know that there is significant public support for additional safeguards. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, surveys show time and again just how loved hedgehogs are by British people. They have been voted Britain’s most popular wild mammal in several surveys, including the BBC’s 2013 wildlife survey.
Over the past two decades, hedgehog numbers across the UK have plummeted by 50% in rural areas and 30% in urban areas. I support the British Hedgehog Preservation Society’s campaign for hedgehogs to be moved from schedule 6 to schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, to allow them greater protection, notwithstanding the legitimate reservations that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell has mentioned.
I have been concerned, as others have, to read that the seventh quinquennial review of schedules 5 and 8 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 could introduce changes that would affect the status of many of our native species, including hedgehogs. I understand that the review seeks to change the eligibility criteria of the hedgehog, currently listed in schedule 6. It is proposed that the country-based statutory nature conservation bodies will retain protected status only for species that are in imminent danger of extinction in the United Kingdom. I echo the words of the hon. Member for Strangford; the effect of the proposed changes could mean that, rather than increasing protection for hedgehogs, as my constituents have asked, the level of protection that they currently enjoy could be removed altogether.
Hedgehogs are currently protected under schedule 6 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, as well as the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996. This makes it illegal to kill or capture them using certain methods and prohibits cruelty and mistreatment. However, this legislation does not address many of the reasons why hedgehogs have declined over the past 20 years. I believe we need to take further action to help conserve wild hedgehog populations. Listing hedgehogs under schedule 5 of the 1981 Act would allow them greater protection. This would ensure that their nesting sites, as well as the hedgehogs themselves, are protected from disturbance or harm, and would offer hedgehogs the same protection as hazel dormice, red squirrels, water vole, otters and all our bat species.
This Government have a strong track record when it comes to environmental issues, including our commitment to net zero. Our world-leading Environment Bill will set a new and ambitious framework for environmental governance, to address environmental challenges including biodiversity loss and climate change. We have committed to leaving the environment in a better space than we inherited it. I therefore cannot understand why, in all these changes we are making, Ministers are not considering strengthening our protection for hedgehogs. I look forward to listening to this very accomplished Minister explain what plans the Government have in that respect.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) on initiating this debate.
I welcome this discussion, as the protection of hedgehogs is a topic that I hold close to my heart. As some of my Twitter followers may have seen, we recently welcomed a new tenant to the Halfon household. Horace the hedgehog moved into our garden earlier this year and has very much made himself at home. Given these modern times, although we have called him Horace, he clearly is a he/him or she/her hedgehog. He has even been brave enough to approach the back door to try to watch Netflix through the window, particularly “Sons of Anarchy”. He has risen to dizzying heights of fame on our social media page, and I have had individuals write to my office to ask whether Horace will be making an appearance in upcoming Zoom meetings.
I thank the numerous individuals who kindly wrote to me with advice on how to care for Horace and to ask me to provide an update on his recent escapades. The interest in looking after these wonderful animals shows just how much the public love hedgehogs. I may spend months writing a speech on education, and a few people might notice, but when it comes to Horace the hedgehog, literally thousands of people have written to me, commented or whatever it may be.
I am led to believe that Horace may have found himself a partner. We have purchased a proper hedgehog house, and there may be some hoglets on the way. Since Horace’s appearance, I am pleased to say that the slug plague in my garden has vanished. I understand that hedgehogs roll them into what is called slug con carne.
In 2013, hedgehogs were voted Britain’s favourite wild animal. Despite the public’s immense love for these small and spiny creatures, their existence hangs in the balance, as has been said many times in this debate. I was deeply saddened to learn that, since 2000, hedgehog numbers in the UK have declined by half in rural areas and a third in urban ones. The speed of the decline is akin to dropping off a cliff. In July 2020, the British hedgehog became officially classified as vulnerable to extinction, when it was added, as has been highlighted, to the red list for British mammals. That is extraordinarily depressing. That is why we have to do all we can to ensure that these special creatures are protected. We need to eliminate the risk of them disappearing from the UK forever. I strongly favour our children being educated at school about mammals on the red list, and particularly about hedgehogs, because it is important that we learn about these animals and how to look after them.
Some of my Harlow residents have written to me to ask that the Government act to move hedgehogs to schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to allow them greater protection. I would be hugely grateful if the Minister outlined what measures will be taken to preserve and enhance the UK’s hedgehog population.
Since the arrival of Horace the hedgehog in my garden, I have taken great care to educate myself on what steps individuals can take to look after hedgehogs. I say to members of the public that I have learned that if a hedgehog pays a visit to their garden, they should please be sure to leave out a bowl of water and allow areas of their garden to remain wild. Hedgehogs use piles of leaf litter and logs to build their nests. Horace used a plastic bag—not from my garden, I should stress—to cover the leaves that he used as his home before we gave him the hedgehog house.
We should all adopt hedgehog-friendly habits. Horace has changed my understanding and helped me develop a real love for hedgehogs. I hope this debate will ensure that the preservation of that species becomes a real priority. This is only the second debate on hedgehogs in many hundreds of years. I hope it will lead to a sea change so that hedgehogs are no longer a potentially extinct mammal but flourish once again up and down our streets in Britain, not just in Harlow but across the country.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) for introducing the petition. It is an honour to be in the room with a true hedgehog champion—my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), who has done so much to further the cause through parliamentary debate.
As we have heard many times, the hedgehog has been voted the most popular British wild mammal. But the numbers we have also heard are truly shocking. None of us could fail to be extremely worried that we are down to potentially our last million hedgehogs. To read that they are vulnerable to extinction would have been unheard of when I was growing up. A decrease of over 50% in the last 20 years is something that we should all sit up and notice. But why? Essentially, lockdown has focused our minds. It has made us re-evaluate much of our lives, and I am glad, because the environment has taken centre stage more than ever before. That has heightened our understanding of the delicately constructed ecosystems on which all our society is built.
This debate is calling for hedgehog protections to be increased by moving their status in schedule 6 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to schedule 5. However, as we have heard, the seventh quinquennial review of schedules 5 and 8 to the Act potentially provides DEFRA with recommendations to make major changes to those schedules. The 2021 review seeks to change the eligibility criteria for hedgehogs, currently listed in schedule 6. It proposes that the country-based statutory nature conservation bodies should retain protected status only of species that are in imminent danger of extinction in Great Britain. That shift in focus preferably considers Great Britain red-listed species, as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The effect of the proposed change could mean that, rather than increasing protections for hedgehogs, their current minor level of protection might be further removed.
That is the nub of why so many of us are concerned. We simply cannot allow that to happen. Already we have heard that the species is in significant decline. It is affected by many things—the loss of hedgerows as habitat and traffic accidents. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) pointed out, the numbers would of course be down on the road, because the numbers are significantly down in the country. The decline in food, through the increased use of pesticides, is also a material reason why the numbers have decreased. We must do everything we possibly can to increase their chances of survival, not diminish them.
I want to quickly mention Hedgehog Haven in North Walsham, a wonderful local organisation run by my constituent Marian Grimes. She has told me many times that Government action to uphold our collective custodial responsibility is owed to those animals. We can do that. As a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I know from the report that we released in the past week that we have to do more for our domestic ecosystems. Our Chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), even highlighted that hedgehogs’ health and their quantity are one of the best indicators of a healthy micro-environment.
While the Government continue to do the work that they can, which we welcome, I hope this debate will be the start of a step change in the long-term prospects for the hedgehog population. The Joint Nature Conservation Committee’s review must strengthen the protective legislation for hedgehogs. I go back to the Environmental Audit Committee’s findings on biodiversity from the past week or so: we have to do more, whether through planning or agriculture legislation. We have to keep doing everything we can to protect nature. A very good starting point would be enhancing protection for our population of hedgehogs.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab) [V]
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I thank the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) for presenting and introducing the debate in such a passionate manner.
Clearly, this topic matters to many people across the UK and to Members from across the House. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and others highlighted, the hedgehog has been voted the most popular wild mammal in the UK, and I wish the campaign for a hedgehog hospital, which they have highlighted, every success. I also commend the work of the Hedgehog Preservation Society and hedgehog rescues—which have some fantastic names, such as Snuffles Hedgehog Rescue, which the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) mentioned. Clearly, volunteers and groups up and down the country are working to turn the tide on decline.
We have heard about how people can make their gardens better habitats for hedgehogs. Simple interventions can make a big difference. We heard memories and stories about the wonderful hedgehog, from the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), sharing the regular sightings when there were as many hedgehogs as people in the UK, to the latest household member of the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), Horace. We heard about the decline and what issues may be causing it, from habitat destruction to pesticides and other issues. We heard about the incredible lives that hedgehogs have, with my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) explaining that they can travel up to 2 km a night, which is extraordinary.
Before I directly address the prickly situation of hedgehogs, I will discuss the Department’s answer to the petition, which I read with great interest. Ministers have rightly framed their response to the plight of hedgehogs in relation to the wider issues of species abundance targets, even if they have yet to propose what those targets will be. We absolutely need biodiversity targets, and they should be ambitious. We should not only halt the decline of hedgehogs and other nature; we should reverse it. Ministers seem to agree. The Secretary of State said that he wants not only to stem the tide of the loss of nature but to turn it around and leave the environment in a better state than we found it. I hope the Minister will use this debate to outline why, in the other place, the Government’s proposals for species abundance targets committed only to
“further the objective of halting a decline in the abundance of species”,
and what that means for hedgehogs. We need more than a halt to the decline; we should be aiming for a dramatic incline in species abundance and trying to reverse the trend for hedgehogs.
Our hedgehog population is threatened, and in response to the petition, the Department says that it is reviewing the species that will be protected as part of the regular five-year review. As highlighted by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), this year the rules have changed. Animals will be automatically added to the protection list only if they are critically endangered, and will be eligible to be added only if they are endangered in the first place. What assurance can the Minister give that hedgehogs will receive the protections they deserve? Hedgehogs fit neither requirement outlined above, but their numbers have rapidly declined—by 50% in rural areas and a third in urban areas over the past 20 years. As the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) asked, what will be done to keep the weaker protections they currently have?
It is fantastic that the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) is the species champion for hedgehogs. He reported on the steep decline since 1950, with hedgehog numbers falling from 30 million to 1.5 million. That is a shocking figure. The need for an holistic approach to nature and development is clear. Will the Minister address what conversations are occurring across Government to protect nature under new planning laws? I agree with the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) that the decline means that we need to protect hedgehog habitats, making considerations in planning, and that we should actively intervene to restore habitats as part of what we do to create nature corridors and in the restoration of hedgerows. We also need to continue to make space for hedgehogs with methods such as creating tunnels, hedgehog highways and hedgehog houses in our urban areas.
The England trees action plan commits to a mere 12% of woodland coverage by the middle of the century, which is 7% less than the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation of 19%. As well as being weak on woodland coverage, the document contains only four references to hedgerows. I would be grateful if the Minister set out what the Department will do specifically to encourage the creation of more of these habitats, which are so beneficial to hedgehogs. In addition to habitat restoration, there is a wider point to make about species abundance targets—a strange approach to biodiversity that is indifferent to the steep decline of the population. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle passionately highlighted, we should not have to wait for a species to become endangered before extending protections to it.
Therefore, I ask the Minister whether her Department has any plans to reverse its approach, in order to ensure that the rhetoric on protecting species abundance matches the reality. If we are aiming for abundance, raising the threshold for species protection is a step in the wrong direction, certainly when species have faced such dramatic reductions in numbers. Will she support the beloved prickly mammal that our country is so passionate about in the upcoming review?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
It is a great pleasure to serve under you today, Mr Twigg—I do not think that I have had the pleasure before, so it is very nice to see you in the Chair. Indeed, it is a pleasure to see all hon. Members and Friends here for this debate.
First of all, I must thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) for introducing the debate and for making a very clear case, as he always does in these petition debates. He referred to the debate in 2015, and I think a number of hon. Friends and Members were probably at that debate. I do not know if you were there, Mr Twigg, but I must say that it was one of the best debates I have ever attended in Parliament—and it was about hedgehogs. It was responded to by my then right hon. Friend for Penrith and The Border, and it has stayed in my mind.
Today’s debate has demonstrated, with the number of speakers we have had and the number of people who have signed the petition, just how heartfelt this whole issue of hedgehogs is—they are wonderful creatures. We have had wonderful references to all sorts of hedgehog charities and organisations, and I thank them all. We had Hessle Hog House, Hedgehog Street, the Wildlife Aid Foundation and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, which arranged the petition and does so much good work. It is based in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), who could not be here today but wanted to ensure that we thanked it for all the work it does in his constituency. We have also had Snuffles Hedgehog Rescue, and we must not forget Horace the film buff hedgehog—I am sorry that he is outdoing my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) when it comes to his other debates, but that just goes to show the strength of feeling.
This Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that our native species thrive, as we take action to address the declines that we are all so sad about. We—and I as the Minister—are deeply concerned about the findings of the red list for British mammals, published in 2020 by the Mammal Society, which has classed hedgehogs as vulnerable.
I am a great fan of hedgehogs, not least from reading all my children Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, the amazing Beatrix Potter book. As a Back Bencher, I worked with others, and we secured a reference in the national planning policy framework for hedgehog highways—that reference is in there now. Only today, I made a speech on green infrastructure to the Town and Country Planning Association, and I referenced hedgehog highways again.
Theresa Villiers
I warmly congratulate the Minister on that success. Now she has a real opportunity in her current role, because she will be signing off on environmental land management schemes. A good, simple scheme to promote hedgerows is great for farmers and even better for hedgehogs. I hope that we will see that in the ELM scheme.
Rebecca Pow
I thank my right hon. Friend very much for that intervention; she is obviously passionate about this issue and indeed worked in the Department. I am sure she knows that we have just announced the details of our sustainable farming initiative and the ELM scheme is very much about habitats, bringing nature back and being able to produce food sustainably, and there will be an emphasis on wildlife corridors and particularly river corridors. All these things will benefit our native wildlife and particularly hedgehogs. So my right hon. Friend is right, and I shall be taking advantage of the opportunity; indeed, I have been speaking up for hedgehogs.
I must mention West Hatch Animal Centre, which is just over the hill from where I live. It does absolutely brilliant work when hedgehogs are orphaned. I have been up there, and the centre has all these baby hedgehogs that are underweight and cannot get through the winter. The centre takes them on and literally drip-feeds them with pipettes to keep them alive. I was then very honoured that my garden was vetted and was deemed acceptable—I garden for wildlife—to receive some of these, now fattened-up, hedgehogs. I had some released in my garden. I was in Parliament one day, and the centre said, “You have to have a hedgehog house.” I thought, “What is that?” So I googled, “What is a hedgehog house?” I then had to build one in order to receive a hedgehog, which we duly did.
Mr Mitchell
In the royal town of Sutton Coldfield, we make hedgehog boxes. If the Minister would like one for her garden, it would be my pleasure to ensure that one is delivered to her at Westminster.
Rebecca Pow
That is the kind of offer I would find hard to refuse. Interestingly, we went to all the effort of making the house, then releasing the hedgehog into it, but I do not think that the hedgehog ever lived in it again. I think my garden was much more suited to it than the house. That is not to say that the boxes from Sutton Coldfield will not be a great deal better than those from Taunton Deane.
On the serious points, as we look to conserve and protect our native hedgehogs we have to consider the reasons for their decline. The main threat to the hedgehog is habitat loss, as many hon. Members referenced, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and the hon. Members for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Habitat change has been due to such things as agricultural intensification and deterioration in the actual habitat, and that has affected so much of our other wildlife as well.
Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 focuses on deliberate harm against species. Although I agree with the sentiment behind the proposal of my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) to ensure that we protect our hedgehogs, it is not clear that the species is being threatened in that way. Therefore, that protection under the Act would not address the main challenges that the species faces, although I was interested to hear about the potential collecting and selling of hedgehogs. If there is evidence of that from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, I would certainly like to see it, because that has not been flagged to me and it would concern me.
I must go on to the points made by so many Members, particularly my right hon. Friends the Members for Chipping Barnet and for Epsom and Ewell, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and the hon. Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Blaydon, about schedule 6 of the 1981 Act, under which the hedgehog is listed. The schedule makes it an offence to kill or take listed animals by certain methods, such as types of traps and snares.
The quinquennial review process, which many have referred to, reviews schedules 5 and 8 of the Act, and the JNCC will make recommendations with regard to those lists. As I have highlighted to a number of Members, no changes to species protection have yet been recommended to us, nor have any decisions been made. Proposals for change will be formally consulted on later this year, and the Government will then consider the recommendations and advice provided by the JNCC before making any decisions.
Chris Grayling
Given that the Minister accepted in the debate on the Environment Bill—I am grateful for that—that the current legislative framework is really no longer fit for purpose in today’s world, would it not be better to set aside the quinquennial review and just get on with replacing the system? Carrying on with what we have at the moment will just cause confusion and uncertainty. It would be better to say, “This doesn’t work anymore,” and do something different.
Rebecca Pow
I hear what my right hon. Friend says. We have discussed this at length, and I thank him for that. As I have said previously, it is a priority for us to provide the legislative protections and policy interventions needed for our wildlife, including of course declines in hedgehogs. I am determined that we will get this right, and my right hon. Friend will know that we have recently announced a Green Paper towards that ambition. My Department will begin a review of species legislation, with a view to enhancing and modernising it, and we intend to publish the Green Paper and seek views later in the year. I absolutely agree that we need a better approach to addressing threats to a range of species, and that is what the Green Paper will focus on.
Furthermore, the Environment Bill will strengthen our commitment to such species as hedgehogs. We have amended it to require a new, holistic, legally binding target to be set for species abundance by 2030. The aim of that is to halt the decline in nature. That is a really strong commitment, the like of which we have never seen before. It demonstrates that the Government are determined that we will get this right. Indeed, we have to get it right, and I agree with various Members who have spoken, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), who was very forceful. The matter is urgent and we need to get on with it.
We are taking action through a range of measures that I honestly believe will help. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet referred to the net gain provisions in the Bill, which will mean that every single new development will have to put back 10% more nature than was there at the start. I know that many developers will put back more than that, and that will help hedgehog habitats. Through the Bill, we are also introducing local nature recovery strategies, which have been referred to. Those will help to identify local biodiversity priorities in order to improve the co-ordination of the whole conservation effort, but at scale, and they will be beneficial to species such as hedgehogs.
Liz Twist
On paper, all these things are great, but it is essential that we have the resources to enforce the requirements, which need to be very specific. Too many times we have seen hedgerows ripped out, even where there is supposed to be protection. How will the Minister ensure that the requirements are effective?
Rebecca Pow
I thank the hon. Lady for that, but one cannot rip hedgerows out now. We have a portfolio—a toolbox—of measures that will combine to improve our nature and put back our declining species. The local nature recovery strategies are key to that and will be used on the ground by local authorities. That will give them the opportunity to determine—it is like a mapping system—what they want where, where there is good nature, where it could be better or where they would rather just focus on industry. All of those things will build together, and local authorities will be able to make hedgehogs a priority if they so wish. I am confident that we have a very good framework in the Environment Bill.
We also have our new Agriculture Act 2020, and we have left the common agricultural policy. We now have schemes to ensure that our land use will deliver environmental benefits—through the sustainable farming incentive, the local nature recovery scheme and our much bigger landscape recovery scheme, which will link whole areas and potentially have the corridors that our wildlife needs to move about. Those schemes—sustainable farming, in particular—will be able to create and preserve woodlands, heathlands, species-rich grassland and a range of habitats that will benefit hedgehogs, in particular.
Serious points were made about planning. DEFRA is in close consultation with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, particularly on the issue of sustainable development. Hedgehog highways, swift boxes, ponds and all of the things that we are flagging really need to go into our future developments, together with sustainable urban drainage and all of the things that affect our water quality and flooding. It should all knit together.
There is obviously huge interest in hedgehog protection. I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate and made such very strong cases.
Rebecca Pow
I think I have time to give way to the hon. Member for Strangford, because he is always so polite.
Jim Shannon
A number of people, including myself, have put forward the planning issue, to which the Minister referred. Is it possible, before anyone does any work on any site or development, to ask them to remove any hedgehogs and to relocate them? The Minister said that many farms would wish to accept hedgehogs. Is that possible?
Rebecca Pow
That is an interesting suggestion. In the Environment Bill, we are bringing in new measures for strategies for certain wider groups of species and wildlife to look after habitats and deal with wildlife issues on a more comprehensive scale, rather than in the itsy-bitsy way that we do now, which often frustrates developments as well, because they are held up. Under biodiversity net gain and the nature that has to be put back by developers, they will be conscious that they have to look at things such as the hedgehog population, just as we do now with dormice and so on.
On that note, I will wind up. I hope that I have outlined that the Government have a real desire, and I believe the framework, to protect nature and biodiversity on a national scale, and that we are committed to reviewing species legislation so that we get it right. We give the assurance that we will be looking after our absolutely much-loved and indeed revered hedgehogs.
Matt Vickers
As ever, enthusiasm, energy and passion from the Minister. She is passionate about our wildlife and our nature, and there is a commitment there to work to further the interests of hedgehogs. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), I hope we will not be having this debate in a few years’ time. I also hope that there will be some robust population growth.
My right hon. Friends the Members for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), for Epsom and Ewell and for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) talked about the need for a wider, cross-Government look at the issue. It would be good to get Planning Ministers to look at it—it needs to be in every thought, in every Department.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) with Horace the hedgehog and his sluggy con carne showed that, wherever we go, a hedgehog raises a smile, as it does in Blaydon, Chipping Barnet, North Norfolk and Sheffield. Local champions across the country, in every corner of the UK, including Northern Ireland, do fantastic work to support our hedgehogs. It was a hugely successful debate, and I thank the Minister and Members for their thoughts.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered e-petition 550379, relating to the protection of hedgehogs.
Breed Specific Legislation
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Ian Paisley (in the Chair)
Thank you, colleagues, for attending. As you know, there are now hybrid arrangements in place. Suffice it to say that Members who are attending physically—all of us—should clean our spaces before we leave the room. I also remind Members that Mr Speaker has asked that masks be worn. I suggested before the debate that there will be Divisions at some point. If that is the case, we will adjourn until five minutes after the last vote.
It is my pleasure to call Elliot Colburn to move the motion.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petition 300561, relating to breed specific legislation.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. The prayer of the petition states:
“Breed Specific Legislation fails to achieve what Parliament intended, to protect the public. It focuses on specific breeds, which fails to appreciate a dog is not aggressive purely on the basis of its breed. It allows seizure of other breeds, but the rules are not applied homogeneously by councils. We need a system that focuses on the aggressive behaviour of dogs, and the failure of owners to control their dog, rather than the way a dog looks. Reconsider a licensing system. The framework must be applied by local authorities the same, whereas currently some destroy dogs with no court order. It must be much more strictly controlled than it is currently. The system needs to be fairer for all, dogs and humans. We are touched by cases of people committing suicide over the current system.”
When it closed, the petition had reached 118,641 signatures, including 163 from my constituency of Carshalton and Wallington. As a dog owner and an animal lover, I feel strongly that there are no bad dogs, only bad owners. I have owned breeds that have had a terribly unfair reputation, such as Staffordshire bull terriers. In reality, they have the sweetest temperament and make great pets, as anyone who has owned one will say.
However, certain dog breeds are banned, purely based on their breed, under breed-specific legislation. In the UK, BSL takes the form of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, which bans the breeding, sale and exchange of four breeds of dog: the pit bull terrier, the Japanese Tosa, the Dogo Argentino and the Fila Brasileiro. However, the law allows a person to keep an individual dog where a court has considered that it does not present a danger to public safety. The court will consider the temperament of the dog, whether the intended keeper is a fit and proper person, and other matters such as the suitability of the accommodation. Dogs placed on the index of exempted dogs may be kept by the owner under strict conditions, including that the dog is neutered, microchipped and kept on a lead and muzzle in public.
The Dangerous Dogs Act came in response to a spate of dog attacks, which it obviously intended to try to reduce. However, judging on the evidence and the discussions that I have been having since the petition reached 100,000 signatures, it is fair to say that the Act was not necessarily based on evidence or science in any great detail. It was really quite a knee-jerk reaction at the time. The aftermath of the Act has suggested that, actually, it may not have worked as intended. All major animal welfare organisations, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Blue Cross and Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, as well as the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report of 2018, have expressed concern about breed-specific legislation, and I thank them for providing me with briefings prior to the debate.
The data suggest that the Act has, indeed, failed to achieve its intended purpose. The four breeds covered by the Act account for only a small fraction of legal cases brought under the Dangerous Dogs Act. Between 1992 and 2019, only 8% of cases involved those four breeds. At the same time, the number of hospital admissions since the Act was introduced has risen from 3,079 in 1999 to 8,859 in 2020—a 188% increase. Campaigners have also pointed to other areas where the legislation falls down. It fails to tackle the issue of irresponsible owners because the focus is on the breed, which detracts from the real problem of poor animal husbandry, welfare and training of a dog.
Every tragic fatality in the UK involving a dog attack has also involved some element of neglect. The law unfairly targets good dogs. It fails to recognise that any breed can be dangerous in the wrong hands and any large dog can cause horrific injuries. It produces a crime where the burden of proof is on a defendant to prove that their dog is not a banned breed. This leaves owners with the almost impossible task of proving a negative, which also seems contradictory to the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
In particular, the Act seems to fail in regard to the pit bull, because that breed is not recognised by the Kennel Club or other dog organisations in the United Kingdom, and therefore the seizure of these breeds has been very patchy and differently applied across the UK. Resemblance to an American pit bull seems to be the primary reason that this is happening. It is an injustice when a dog is held to be this type of dog when, in fact, it is a cross between, for example, a Staffordshire bull terrier and a Labrador—a common cross to be seized because of its resemblance to a pit bull.
There is also the issue of cost. The cost racked up for the taxpayer for kennelling seized dogs is tens of millions of pounds per year. Even when exempted, a dog cannot be transferred or left with others. It must remain muzzled in public, even when in a private car, and must be walked on a lead, even if there is no evidence that it is a danger to a human. That leads to stress for both the dog and the owner. Owners of seized dogs have reported high levels of stress, both for them and for their dog, because they are not sure if the dog will ever be seized again.
There have even been cases of a dog choking while it has been muzzled and the owner being prosecuted for removing the muzzle to save the dog’s life. Sadly, the law does not recognise the need of necessity, so such a dog would be liable to be seized and destroyed, even though it would have died had the muzzle not been removed. In my opinion, that cannot be fair.
There are also issues with the enforcement of the legislation. Evidence from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, the RSPCA and Blue Cross, and that submitted to the 2018 EFRA Committee inquiry, suggests that the application of the law is often a postcode lottery, with different police forces and local authorities taking very varied approaches. However, there are a number of common themes.
Well-behaved dogs suffer at the hands of this law because often the seizing itself is a traumatic experience, which is handled brutally and heavy-handedly. The dog is then held in kennels for many months, which has an adverse effect on its temperament, and many good-natured dogs have been reported as being returned to owners with serious behavioural issues, the most common being separation anxiety. There has been photographic and video evidence of the injuries and severe malnutrition that dogs kept by the police have suffered, but when information about the kennel that they were kept in is requested, no legal information is forthcoming to allow dog owners to bring forward any prosecutions or legal challenges.
The law does not tackle public safety effectively and is damaging for dogs and their families in many ways. There are reports of children being traumatised by watching their best friends being dragged away by the police. Scientific studies have shown that young people often form incredibly strong bonds with a family dog, sometimes stronger than with their siblings. Removing an innocent dog from the home can have an incredibly negative effect on a child.
Some owners have been misled as to the nature of the seizing of their dogs and have signed a document that was not properly explained to them. The dog has consequently been destroyed, only for the owner to claim that they were not aware that that was what they were agreeing to. There have been many accusations that the police have wilfully misled owners in order to get a dog destroyed. On some occasions, a dog has even been destroyed without a court order or the informed consent of the owner.
When a dog is seized, it is not allowed to have familiar objects around it, such as favourite toys. It is an incredibly stressful situation for a dog to be seized and put in a kennel, so to further add insult to injury by denying it something familiar seems to me to be cruel. Tragically, there have been cases, as is referred to in the prayer of this petition, of people committing suicide because they could not afford to apply to have their dog exempted. The experience of having the dog removed and not knowing whether it will ever come back has led them to make the decision to take their own life. No one should be put in that position. There should be adequate signposting so that those people are put in contact with the myriad charitable organisations that might be able to help, but the evidence is that it is not forthcoming.
I appreciate that the Government set out strongly in their response to the petition why they do not want to repeal this legislation, which has the support of the police, and frankly I see the political difficulty in doing so. If changes are made to the Dangerous Dogs Act and an attack follows, the political fallout would be severe. Even if there were little to no evidence that the attack was related to the decision, it would not look good.
However, the petitioners—particularly the lead petitioner, Gavin, who I had the pleasure of speaking to before the debate—have suggested a number of options to improve the legislation, not all of which would need primary legislative change. I hope the Minister will take some of them back to the Department. I know that Lord Goldsmith has primary oversight of the enforcement of the legislation, so if the Minister is willing to take some of the suggestions back to see what can be done, that would be very welcome indeed.
The suggestions include reversing the burden of proof and requiring the prosecution to prove that the dog is a banned breed, rather than the other way round. The petitioners suggest ensuring that the law requires dogs to be released in a timely fashion, and enforcing a strict time limit. They suggest ensuring that owners are fully informed of the process and that the police do not accept an agreement for destruction at the point of seizure. The police should ensure that the owner has received any advice that they want and is fully informed of their rights. The petitioners suggest ensuring that those assessing the behaviour of dogs are independent of the police.
The petitioners suggest ensuring that the ownership of seized dogs remains with the owner, who must be informed of all material aspects of the dog’s care requirements, veterinary treatment and so on. They suggest removing the requirement that a dog seized for reason of breed and not for anything it has done must be detained while its case is considered. That is a waste of public funds and causes unnecessary stress to the dogs and the owners. The dog should be able to remain at home if there is no evidence that it is a danger and there is no reason to believe that the owners would not co-operate with the authorities to ensure that reasonable arrangements are put in place.
The petitioners suggest that there should be an assurance that dogs detained for reason of their conduct have their cases heard and considered with the option of putting in place compulsory training and behavioural work. There should not be a jump straight to destruction. They call on the police to use the principle that the aim should be to keep as many dogs alive as possible within the limits of public safety; they should not be minded towards automatic destruction. The petitioners suggest prioritising the hearing of cases so that no dog has to remain in a cage for an inordinate period. They suggest working with an organisation to establish a facility where dogs can be detained, staffed by experts in canine welfare and behaviour, with complete transparency. That would reduce costs far below their current levels, and it should be partly funded by charitable donations.
I appreciate that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has received some new research from the University of Middlesex, which is currently being peer reviewed, so the Minister will want to wait for that to happen before she tells us what it says. I hope the Government will consider some of the suggestions that the charities, campaign groups and petitioners have made. The EFRA Committee inquiry was also pretty damning of the legislation. Those suggestions would improve it, even if primary legislation is not introduced.
Owning a dog is one of the most joyous and rewarding things that I have ever done, and I am sure many people would say the same. Dogs can bring such happiness into the lives of families but, like any animal, they can turn if they are in the wrong hands. The data tell us that breed is a poor indicator of the likelihood of violence. A dog is only as good or bad as the person who owns it. The legislation should reflect that, but it is clear that it is currently littered with issues. I hope the Government will commit to reviewing the evidence further and making improvements to the application of the Act.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for not just leading this important debate, but setting out the issues so clearly and fully. I suspect we may have read the same briefing notes, so he might recognise some of my statistics.
It is essential to our democracy that we here in Westminster make sure we are debating the issues that really matter to people. I thank the 118,641 people who signed the petition, including 127 from my constituency—not quite as many as from Carshalton. When I was a member of the Petitions Committee, I always enjoyed leading debates on issues such as this, not least because I am told that they are some of the most-watched debates in Parliament—they are often in the top 10 each year. I reflect that at the time I was doing that, I had absolutely no inkling that I might be recalled to the Front Bench at some point. I have therefore reread some of those debates with some trepidation, in case I said things within my brief that I might later regret. I issue that warning to the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, but I am sure that members of the Petitions Committee are always suitably mindful, because we never know what the future holds.
The dangerous dogs legislation is, of course, routinely cited as an example of Parliament acting in haste in response to events.
Daniel Zeichner
As I was saying, the Dangerous Dogs Act is frequently cited as a piece of legislation whereby Parliament acted in haste in relation to events—events I remember well, although I suspect that they may have been before the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington was with us. It was a long time ago. If there is any repenting, it has certainly been leisurely, and that is the force of the petition.
We need to get on with updating and revising the law. I am sorry that there are not more Members involved in the debate, but I do not think it is a reflection on the seriousness or importance of the issue. There are some pretty significant things happening in the main Chamber, and the announcements affect every citizen in the country, so it is not surprising that Members are focused on that today.
The issue of dangerous dogs is very sensitive. Labour thinks that we should start by making safety our top priority, but without unnecessarily punishing responsible dog owners or doing unnecessary harm to dogs that are not necessarily a risk. In our view and that of many people, the breed-specific legislation that we are discussing has fallen well short of what it was supposed to do. The time has come for reform, and we need DEFRA to lead the way.
I will start with the issue of safety. Whether it is about postal workers suffering from bites or dog walkers feeling intimidated by other dogs, let us not underplay the problem. I am very happy with dogs now, but as a child I was not. I remember my fear, day after day, when I was doing my paper round. A black Labrador would suddenly appear, give chase and jump up at me. It was not a real danger, but I have to say that it blighted every morning for me for years. Some children are not happy in that situation, which should be respected, just as I still respect dogs when I am out canvassing, quite frankly. They are our best friends, but there is a risk. That is what we as legislators have to find a way to help manage.
Looking at the evidence, the Dangerous Dogs Act is not quite fit for purpose, and it is time to have a further look. It was a swift and possibly panicky response to some particularly tragic events 30 years ago and to a very strong public reaction at the time, so we can see why Parliament acted quickly. Whether it acted entirely accurately, however, is now for us to judge. I will make a minor political point: we note that it was a Conservative Government at the time, and we feel the legislation was a touch reactive. We would like the Government to be a bit more proactive now, and we hope we can do better.
As the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington outlined earlier, section 1 introduced the approach known as breed-specific legislation. I, too, will have a go at pronouncing the four types of dogs to which it applied: the pit bull terrier, the Japanese Tosa, the Fila Brasileiro and the Dogo Argentino. Of course, the aim was to limit the number of those dogs and hopefully, in turn, to improve safety by reducing the number of bites. As the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington has outlined, however, that is not the way it has turned out.
It is sometimes slightly dangerous to take just a few statistics and assume cause and effect, but the fact that there has not been a reduction in the number of dog bites raises questions about the effectiveness of the legislation. Between March 2005 and February 2015, the number of hospital admissions in England due to dog bites increased by 76%, from 4,110 to 7,273. In 2020, the figure reached 8,875. We are told by people who are able to calculate such things that, between 2009 and 2018, the healthcare costs for dog bites totalled £174,188,443. That is very precise, but it is fair to say it is a considerable sum. There is no robust scientific evidence to suggest that the banned dog breeds are more likely to be involved in instances of dog bitings or fatalities than any other breed or type of dog. Again, as the hon. Gentleman said, between 1992 and 2019 only 8% of dangerously out of control dog cases involved banned breeds. The legislation simply is not working; it is not stopping dog bites.
Of course, the animal welfare consequences are sad, as has been outlined. Dogs that do not necessarily pose a risk are being seized and placed in kennels. There is something self-fulfilling about that, because, as the hon. Gentleman also outlined, the physical and mental stress caused can mean that dogs then begin to act out and show aggressive behaviour, which might not have happened had they been kept with their original families.
The law does not allow animal charities and rehoming organisations, such as Blue Cross, Dogs Trust and the RSPCA, to rehome prohibited dog types to new owners. That does not take into account the individual dog’s behaviour, which then means that the only option is to euthanise. One wonders what vets feel about having to go through with that; they are people who have given their lives to protect and help animals, but have to put down perfectly healthy and friendly dogs. As the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee put it:
“Defra’s position is both illogical and inherently unfair. Whether a dog is euthanised or not can depend entirely on whether it ‘looks like’ a Pit Bull Terrier.”
That is a loose criterion for something so serious.
Breed-specific legislation does not stop dog bites, is bad for animal welfare, and because they cannot be rehomed in a controlled environment thousands of dogs are being put to sleep. The question of aggression in dogs is complicated, but I am told that there is a consensus forming in the scientific community that the breed of a dog is not a reliable predictor of aggressive behaviour. According to the latest data from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, over 200 leading behaviour experts were consulted and found that socialisation is considered the most critical factor; 86% said that how a dog is brought up by its owner is the most important reason why some dogs are more aggressive towards people than others. That rather chimes with my experience back on my paper round, as the indifference of those who kept the dog always seemed to me to be part of the problem—it comes as no surprise to me. Moreover, 73% of the experts consulted said that it is a dog’s upbringing by the breeder before they are sold that determines behaviour. There are a range of factors here and I am afraid that the rather kneejerk response of the Dangerous Dogs Act does not seem to take those factors into account.
Labour has long been clear that the Dangerous Dogs Act needs reform; it was rushed in the first place and it is now seriously out of date. Will the Minister commit to commission an independent review of this legislation, in line with the recommendations made in the EFRA Committee’s report on the issue? As I have already outlined, the petitioners quite clearly feel that the breed-specific ban does not work. If the Minister and DEFRA are insistent that some such ban is needed, will she please outline why and present the evidence in such a review? Some legal breeds can pose just as great a risk to public safety as illegal breeds, yet there are no legislative restrictions on their ownership. That inconsistency undermines the logic of the legislation, so will she tell us why some breeds are banned and other breeds that are known to be dangerous are not?
As we get on to the world-beating animal welfare legislation that we have been promised so often, will the Department engage with those with experience from other countries, and with local authorities and police forces that have considerable practical experience, to develop a deeper understanding of different dog control models and successful approaches that could be used in the UK as part of the review? Also, will the Minister tell us whether she will investigate the possibility of a new dog control Act as part of such a review?
Although we believe that legislative change is the most necessary reform, we also think there is quite a lot more that can be done to educate people about the risks. It is clear that young children are most at risk of serious dog attacks and suffer horrific injuries, too. We think we need better childhood education on staying safe around dogs, to stop avoidable incidents, and that it needs to be consistent across the country. Will the Minister commit to commissioning a childhood education plan from experts and charities to determine the most effective education measures and how they can be implemented consistently across the country? Will she ensure that DEFRA supports a roll-out of such a plan, if it is developed, to help to ensure that fewer children are seriously hurt in dog attacks?
We absolutely recognise that most dog owners are responsible and do everything they can to stop their dog acting aggressively and to protect people around them. Even the most responsible owners, however, can do with a helping hand. Will the Minister therefore consider introducing a targeted awareness campaign to inform dog owners and the general public about responsible ownership and safe interactions? Also, will she consult colleagues to ensure that sentencing guidelines are observed properly in the courts and that consistently robust sanctions under existing legislation are being applied across the country?
In conclusion, we are convinced that arguments that DEFRA has used in the past to maintain breed-specific legislation are not backed up by robust evidence. They do not stop dog bites and, sadly, they lead to hundreds of family-friendly pets being euthanised unnecessarily after being seized and kept in kennels for months. The Dangerous Dogs Act was a knee-jerk piece of legislation responding quickly to public concern about specific incidents. This has become a well-worn phrase but, once again, we need to be led by the science and by evidence.
That is why Labour is clear: we need a review of breed-specific legislation and of the Dangerous Dogs Act as soon as possible. The Labour party has a proud record on animal welfare. We will always do what we can to protect our pets, but we are also always determined to keep people safe. It is an important balance to strike, and it is not being struck right now. The situation needs to be re-examined, and I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to signal that she agrees and that the necessary leadership will be forthcoming.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for introducing the debate. I thank all those who petitioned and have made suggestions on how the law can be improved in this important area.
I also thank the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner): I agree that safety is our top priority. He made a characteristically thoughtful speech in which he mentioned how as a boy his morning used to be blighted by a dog on his paper round. I am sure that many of us, while enjoying the company of dogs, have sometimes been frightened by them. It is important that we take the issue of dog attacks extremely seriously. We must crack down on irresponsible dog ownership.
I understand the strength of feeling on all sides of the debate. Of course the behaviour of any dog—any animal—depends on several factors, including the training, the actions of the owner and the environment in which it lives. Hon. Members recognise that we have to balance the views of people who wish to repeal breed-specific legislation with our responsibility to ensure that the public are properly protected from dog attacks.
In this country, however, pit bull types have traditionally been bred for dog fighting, to accentuate their aggressive tendencies. That is not the fault of the dog, of course; people have chosen to do that. Data gathered about fatal dog attacks from 2005 onwards showed that pit bulls have been involved in about one in six of the incidents. That is despite the prohibitions that we have in place, which in themselves have significantly suppressed the number of pit bull types in the UK.
The Metropolitan police tell us that nearly 20% of the dogs found to be dangerously out of control in the area that they police were pit bull types. We have a very small pit bull population that contributes disproportionately to sometimes tragic incidents. That is why we remain concerned that lifting the restrictions, which might result in an increase in the breeding and ownership of pit bulls, could in itself lead to more tragedy.
Despite the general prohibition on those types of dogs, individual prohibited dogs may be kept by their keepers if a court determines that the dog is not a danger to the public. In conducting the assessment, the court will consider the temperament of the dog, its past behaviour, whether the proposed keeper is a fit and proper person and any other relevant circumstances, such as whether the dog will be kept in a suitable environment.
If the court considers that the criteria may be met, the dog can be listed on the index of exempted dogs and kept under strict conditions, including being neutered and being kept on a lead and muzzled in public. We have 3,700 dogs on the index, nearly all of which are pit bulls. None of the pit bulls involved in the fatalities I referred to were registered on that index. The difficulty, of course, is with the animals not on the index.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington raised concerns that dogs being seized and typed as pit bulls are not actually pit bulls, and that the typing is being done inconsistently. I recognise that pit bull terriers are cross breeds, which is why we refer to them as a type rather than a breed. Identification of prohibited-type dogs is made by dog legislation officers, who are police officers specially trained for the purpose. The same standard is used by all those officers to identify a pit bull type. I have that standard here and I am very happy to share it with my hon. Friend—it is based on the American Dog Breeders Association standard of confirmation. A dog has to exhibit a substantial number of the physical characteristics listed before it will be considered more a pit bull type than any other type of dog.
In relation to rehoming, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Cambridge, current legislation permits the transfer of keepership when the existing keeper has died or is seriously ill. Case law has also confirmed that in some cases, a person with a pre-existing relationship with the dog can apply to put it on the index. If we were to make any changes such as on rehoming, we should consider the signals that might send about the acceptability of those types of dogs, which are owned illegally unless they are on the index.
I recognise that breed-specific legislation does not address the issue of dog attacks more widely. We have legislation in place to address that: section 3 of the Dangerous Dogs Act makes it an offence to allow a dog of any breed or type to be “dangerously out of control” in any place. There are significant penalties available to the courts on that.
We recognise that more needs to be done to support responsible dog ownership, to prevent attacks in the first place. That is why we commissioned research, in collaboration with Middlesex University, to look at responsible ownership across all breeds of dog. The research identifies and examines the factors that might cause dog attacks and how to promote responsible dog ownership. The report is still being peer reviewed, but we will publish it in the next couple of months. I am unable, therefore, to share it now, but I would like to share some parts of it with the House, because it is important and the hon. Member for Cambridge asked for further evidence, so it is right that I explain that the Government are seeking to look into this important matter fully.
The report will make recommendations on improving the recording of dog attack incidents so that we have a proper evidence base, as more data in this area is badly needed. We will develop a more consistent approach to enforcement. We will support preventive initiatives, such as the rather wonderfully named LEAD—local environmental awareness on dogs, which is a police-led initiative, partly in Sutton I am glad to say. We will also work on improving the quality and availability of dog training and dog awareness courses. I heard what the hon. Gentleman said about education and children being important in this space. That is an important step forward.
The recommendations in the Middlesex University report will provide the basis to consider further reform in this area. I look forward to future discussions on this important subject. It is very important that we proceed with caution on the basis of robust data.
Ian Paisley (in the Chair)
There are a few minutes left—almost an hour—so if Mr Colburn like to make some final remarks, I think we could find some time.
Elliot Colburn
I thank the petitioners once again for taking the time to sign the petition and for triggering this debate. In particular, I thank the lead petitioner Gavin for his time on Friday, when he talked me through why he started the petition and why he thinks it is so important. I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), for his contribution and the Minister for her response.
The petitioners will welcome the fact that the review should form a basis for further work to look into reviewing the evidence, which might improve the application of this Act if primary legislation is not forthcoming. I totally agree with both the shadow Minister and the Minister that safety must be the priority. The law must be effectively and evenly applied. It was mentioned many times that the Act was an example of where Parliament acted hastily. It was enacted a year before I was born, so even if it was a Conservative Government, I hope I escape some blame. It is right that the law should be effective and evenly applied.
Question put and agreed to.
That this House has considered e-petition 300561, relating to breed specific legislation.
Written Statement
Emissions Trading Scheme: VAT
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
The Government are announcing today that legislation will be introduced at the earliest opportunity to allow a VAT zero rate to apply to trades in UK emissions trading scheme allowances within the VAT Terminal Markets Order (S11973/173) (TMO).
A UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS) replaced the UK’s participation in the EU ETS on 1 January 2021. The scheme has been established to increase the climate ambition of the UK’s carbon pricing policy, while mitigating the risk of carbon leakage through free allowances.
Market participants can bid for UK ETS allowances on the UK auction platform or can acquire futures contracts in UK ETS allowances on the secondary market.
The TMO permits VAT zero rating for transactions on terminal commodity markets. It is seen as an important VAT trade facilitation measure by those involved in trading commodity futures contracts, where often on these markets there are very substantial volumes of transactions over short periods of time. The zero-rating relief provided by the TMO avoids the administrative and cash flow burdens of accounting for VAT and should have no effect on the VAT amount collected at the final stage of consumption.
I can confirm today the treatment will be provided from the time when these important trades commenced in May.
[HCWS148]
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
My Lords, the hybrid Grand Committee will now begin. Some Members are here in person, others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. I ask Members in the Room to respect social distancing. If the capacity of the Committee Room is exceeded or other safety requirements are breached, I will immediately adjourn the Committee. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for five minutes.
European Union and European Atomic Energy Community (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
That the Grand Committee do consider the European Union and European Atomic Energy Community (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2021.
Relevant document: 7th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments (special attention drawn to the instrument).
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con) [V]
My Lords, this draft order was laid on 17 May 2021. It confers immunity and privileges on the European Union delegation to the United Kingdom and the European Atomic Energy Community. This order is required to implement the agreement that we have reached with the European Union, which is broadly in line with global practice, but includes important provisions to ensure that immunities and privileges do not impede the proper administration of justice.
Before I go into more detail, I will provide some context. On 31 January 2020, the United Kingdom left the European Union. Accordingly, the EU opened a delegation to the UK to replace the European Commission representation. This delegation represents the interests of the EU and co-ordinates among the member states. This Government are clear that we want a relationship with the European Union based on friendly co-operation. The delegation plays an important role in that regard, including in the implementation of the trade and co-operation agreement.
I turn to the details of the draft order. The order is necessary for the EU delegation to function effectively. It confers legal capacity and immunities and privileges on the EU delegation, its head and, indeed, staff. It is customary to grant immunities and privileges to diplomatic missions and international organisations to enable them to function. This order does so in respect of the EU delegation in terms broadly similar to those offered by other Governments to the EU delegations globally, but it also includes important provisions to ensure that immunities and privileges do not impede the proper administration of justice.
The order categorises staff at the EU delegation as either diplomatic agents or staff members, and contains provisions in respect of their family members. Staff notified to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office as diplomatic agents would be immune from civil, criminal and administrative jurisdiction, including any measure of enforcement. They would also have inviolability of their residence, baggage, official papers and documents. They would have inviolability of the person only in respect of their official acts. There would be no immunity or inviolability in respect of road traffic accidents or offences, irrespective of circumstance, for any diplomatic agent.
For staff members, the order accords immunity from the criminal, civil and administrative jurisdiction of the UK only in respect of their official roles. Staff members also receive inviolability of their official papers and documents and inviolability of the person only in respect of their official acts. Again, there is a complete carve-out from this immunity and inviolability for any alleged road traffic accidents and offences. Certain fiscal exemptions are also provided for the delegation in the exercise of its function and for staff. These include exemptions from direct taxes on assets, property, income and the delegation’s operations, and an exemption from council tax. Further, the order sets out provisions by which the UK may request that these immunities and privileges be waived.
To conclude, this order implements the agreement reached with the European Union in respect of its delegation in London, in line with global practice. It enables the delegation to conduct its activities in the UK, but with important protections for the effective administration of justice. The delegation plays an important role in the UK-EU relationship of a partnership based on friendly co-operation. I beg to move.
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD) [V]
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for his exposition of this order and his customary clarity; I thank him for that. I have read the order through and I am satisfied that it fulfils the purposes for which it will be made. In particular, I endorse what the Minister said about the importance of good relations with diplomatic staff throughout Europe, and I hope that that will be the case.
My own experience of diplomatic immunity goes back many years. I recall claiming diplomatic immunity on behalf of a gentleman who produced magnificent letters, which were supposed to be for Her Majesty’s Government, seeking immunity. Our problem was twofold: first, he was not accredited to the Court of St James and, secondly, the president of the state—which will be nameless—had suffered a coup, and the last we knew of him was that he was a taxi driver in New York, and was unable to give evidence. That was my experience at the time, and I would be interested to know whether ambassadors are still accredited to the Court of St James—I do hope so.
To be rather more serious, of course we are all very concerned about the case of Harry Dunn, and the Minister has pointed out that there is a carve-out in this order for road traffic offences. Does this include causing death by dangerous driving? That is the very important issue in the Harry Dunn case. The person who knocked him down, Anne Sacoolas, claimed diplomatic immunity and departed this country, but her claim has since been questioned. That gives rise to a further question, which perhaps the Minister can answer: how does a diplomat satisfactorily establish that he can claim diplomatic immunity when that is the case? It seems that Anne Sacoolas got away with it.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I too appreciate the Minister’s introduction of this instrument, which is relatively self-explanatory. Like him, I believe that, outside the EU, we all want to use the opportunities this provides to make Britain a successful nation. But to do so, we will need to foster strong ties with our closest allies in Europe, and I hope that this instrument can play a small part in that endeavour.
As the Minister said, the legislation before the Committee will give immunity to certain representatives and staff from the EU and EAEC in the UK, following the recent agreement. Although this is welcome, the Government’s approach to this issue in recent months has been unnecessarily reckless. The Committee will recall the reports, back in January, that the Government would not grant full diplomatic status to the EU. In fact, we had a substantial debate in this Committee in February when we dealt with the Bank for International Settlements SI—again giving immunities. It is rather shameful that this Government took so long to ensure that our relationships with the EU were put on a proper and formal footing.
In February, of course, we addressed some of the technical issues of immunity, not least the road traffic offences issue referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. I welcome some of the explanations given then, but there is an important point to consider in relation to the issue raised by the noble Lord, which is exactly how somebody claims diplomatic immunity and the process to ensure that such a case could not possibly happen again.
There are a couple of other technical issues on this. First, the Minister said that the instrument was laid on 17 May, and the commencement clause says that it
“comes into force on the day after … it is made, or the day on which the Agreement enters into force … whichever is the later.”
I assume that the agreement is in force and therefore that the powers in the statutory instrument will commence, but I hope the Minister can clarify the precise date on which these immunities will be brought in.
Secondly, the Explanatory Memorandum states that Scotland will pass its own legislation due to devolved competence. When does the Minister expect that legislation to be completed?
Finally, the Government have confirmed that, as part of this agreement, information on the EU will be provided regularly. Can the Minister explain exactly what information will be contained in this and what the process is? I welcome the statutory instrument and the Minister’s introduction to it.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con) [V]
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Thomas and Lord Collins, for their support for this order. In doing so, I recognise the clear interest in your Lordships’ House in the status of those who are to represent the EU at the Court of St James—I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, that that is very much the case.
To further qualify the comment I have just made and to further reassure both noble Lords, I note that the establishment agreement sets out that the EU head of delegation will be treated in a manner like any head of mission to the Court of St James. This will include the designation as ambassador. An agrément process will be undertaken and is very much under way, and we are working through the formal presentation of the credentials to Her Majesty the Queen. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, in particular—who I know gives very strict scrutiny to the letter of the law—is reassured in that respect.
Both noble Lords raised the immunities and inviolability not being extended to all circumstances. They will be mindful that I will not wish to extend my comments too far because of the nature of and sensitivity around the Harry Dunn case, but I assure them both that, as I said in introducing the order, the UK firmly expects those enjoying immunities and privileges here to comply with UK laws and regulations. However, should a staff member, or, indeed, a family member, commit a serious offence or a series of minor offences, the UK may request the EU to waive immunity.
Specifically on inviolability not been given in all circumstances, that is also to ensure that there is no repeat of the tragic Harry Dunn case, where we have restricted the application of inviolability solely to the exercise of staff members’ official duties. I hope that that clarifies that element.
On the order becoming operational, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Collins, who asked a specific question about Scotland, that the Scottish Government intend to lay the Scottish order in August, with the expectation that this will then be sent to the October Privy Council. We have notified the European Union of this timetable as well.
With that, I hope I have addressed the specific questions. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Collins, in particular—and, although the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, has not joined the debate I assure her through the noble Lord, Lord Thomas—that your Lordships’ strength of feeling has been communicated to colleagues in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and to my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary. I too am pleased that we have reached a positive outcome on this important issue of representation of the delegation of the EU to the Court of St James. With that, I commend the order to the Committee.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 2.55 pm. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.
Health Security (EU Exit) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Bethell
That the Grand Committee do consider the Health Security (EU Exit) Regulations 2021.
Relevant document: 6th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, the sharing of information and co-ordination of health protection activity between all parts of the UK and with our international partners is absolutely critical to the prevention of and response to serious cross-border health threats. Covid-19 is a good example. There are others today; there will be more in the future.
These regulations will ensure that this essential co-ordination is maintained following our departure from the EU. They enable us to deliver high levels of human health protection across the whole of the UK. They modify retained EU law on health security to establish a stand-alone UK-wide regime. But these regulations are not alone: they form part of broader, ongoing work to improve our health security capabilities.
This work has included the establishment of the new UK Health Security Agency—UKHSA. The UKHSA combines key elements of Public Health England and NHS Test and Trace, including the Joint Biosecurity Centre. The role of UKHSA will be absolutely critical. It will be our permanent standing capacity to plan for, prevent and respond to threats to health. It will deploy the full weight of our analytic and genomic capability on infectious diseases. It will work with partners around the world to lead the UK’s global contribution to health security.
These regulations will support the UKHSA and the other UK public health agencies—Public Health Wales, Public Health Scotland and the Public Health Agency of Northern Ireland—in quickly identifying and responding to a wide range of health issues. They will ensure that we maintain a robust and consistent UK-wide approach to health security that allows us to work effectively with our international partners, including by linking into international surveillance systems.
On our international collaboration and leadership, I remind noble Lords that last month the G7 committed to working towards adopting a standardised minimum health dataset for patients’ health information. This included: working through the International Patient Summary standard; developing internationally shared principles for enabling patient access to health data; and promoting the use of open standards for health data. This highly technical work will have huge practical dividends.
I will say a word about implementation. Noble Lords will know that the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement—TCA—was announced on 24 December 2020. These regulations will help us meet the TCA’s health security arrangements. The TCA provides a strong basis for the UK and EU to continue to co-operate on health security. It includes a commitment to inform each other when new public health threats are identified in either the UK or the EU. It gives ad hoc UK access to the EU’s database for sharing alerts: the Early Warning and Response System—EWRS. It provides for the UK to attend the EU Health Security Committee in support of response co-ordination, and a commitment to co-operation between the UK and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control—ECDC.
It is because of these arrangements that the UK was given access to the EWRS for Covid-19 from January 2021. Our current access avoids any disruption in the flow of public health data during the pandemic. The UK has also continued to attend meetings of the EU’s Health Security Committee—HSC.
I will say something about the substance of the regulations and why these amendments are being made to retained EU law by this instrument. While a member state, the UK was required by EU law to co-ordinate and share certain types of information on health protection with the EU; to give a recent example, early alerts on newly identified threats. As health protection is predominately a devolved competence in the UK, to meet these obligations effectively the four UK nations had to co-ordinate and share the required information with PHE, the UK’s focal point for communication with the EU.
However, following the end of the transition period, this retained EU law relating to health security no longer operates effectively to set rules for such co-ordination on a UK-wide basis. Therefore, these regulations modify and transfer functions previously carried out by the EU to a new UK health protection committee and to the UKHSA, working in co-operation with Public Health Wales, Public Health Scotland and Northern Ireland’s Public Health Agency.
Let me give some examples: first, on early alerting and the EWRS. The importance of early alerting was amply illustrated by Covid-19. Speed of action is absolutely critical. It is imperative that when a threat is identified, information is shared rapidly to enable the quick implementation of control measures that will reduce transmission rates in the general population and protect individuals. To ensure that we have a robust early alerting system in the UK, these regulations require the UK’s public health agencies to notify the UK’s focal point within 24 hours of any new threats that have been identified. For the purpose of these regulations, PHE is designated as the UK’s focal point, with this function soon to transfer to the UKHSA. In this role, the UKHSA will be responsible for receiving alert notifications of serious cross-border threats to health from the different parts of the UK, then working jointly with them to conduct rapid risk assessments and put in place co-ordinated response measures as necessary.
To meet our obligations under the TCA, the UKHSA must also notify the EU of any threats occurring in the UK which may present a risk to EU member states. In return, the EU will notify the UK of any emerging threat in Europe which may present a risk to us. If the UK and the EU agree it would be beneficial for the UK to have access to the EWRS for any threat, the UKHSA will be responsible for uploading and receiving related surveillance information.
Secondly, I will say a word about UK-wide surveillance. It is critical that we continue to conduct UK-wide epidemiological surveillance on known communicable diseases. Therefore, these regulations make provision for the UK’s four public health agencies to conduct surveillance on a shared list of communicable diseases and related special health matters. This is vital for improving our understanding of the prevalence of infectious diseases across the whole of the UK.
Thirdly, on co-ordination across the union, these regulations require the UK Government, the devolved Administrations and the UK’s public health agencies to consult each other with a view to co-ordinating their respective monitoring and early warning of, and their response to, serious cross-border health threats. They must inform each other of any substantial revisions to preparedness and response planning.
Fourthly and finally, on governance, to support the implementation and functioning of these regulations, we are establishing the UK health protection committee. The committee will have representation from all parts of the UK and will function to provide advice on the list of communicable diseases and related special health matters that are subject to UK-wide surveillance, and the associated operational procedures.
As health security is an area of devolved competence, we have obtained formal consent for the regulations from the DAs. On this point, I pay tribute to the spirit of collaboration across the devolved Administrations. For example, just last week I had a hugely productive call on the life sciences vision with Minister Ivan McKee, Minister Maree Todd, Minister Robin Swann, Minister Paul Frew and Minister Eluned Morgan—the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely. I thank them for their collaboration. In parallel, we are working together with the DAs to develop a common framework, which will strengthen UK-wide governance arrangements on the prevention and control of serious cross-border health risks.
These regulations are critical. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his full explanation of these regulations. The need for them is self-evident in the post-Brexit situation and I welcome the intent behind them.
Of course, also behind the regulations is the need for the continuation of effective co-ordination between the UK and the EU. The implementation of the health security part of the trade and co-operation agreement is meant to support effective future working and information sharing; it also enables the UK to request early access to the EU Early Warning and Response System in respect of a serious cross-border health threat.
We debate these regulations at a time when the EU has proposed legislation to ensure that it is nimbler in responding to serious cross-border threats to health in future, including the declaration of an EU emergency situation, an enhanced mandate for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and a reinforced mandate for the European Medicines Agency to enhance its role in crisis preparedness and management for medicinal products and medical devices.
I have no doubt that a more effective EU response to a serious cross-border threat to health that also affects the UK is to be welcomed, but it will work only if we are in full co-operation mode with the EU. The Minister has been reassuring on this but I would like further assurances on our arrangements. He made mention of the UK health protection committee, which is a governance organisation in respect of the UK Government and the devolved Administrations, and the UK Health Security Agency. Can he give some information about when he expects the agency to be up and running? What is happening in the interim?
I also want to ask the Minister about the specific arrangements in place in respect of Northern Ireland. I know that we are to debate regulations on the placing of medicinal products and medical devices on the Northern Ireland market due to the terms of the protocol. Are there any particular implications for Northern Ireland in respect of these regulations?
Finally, I refer to Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report on this SI. Although the committee did not report this instrument to the House, it did comment on the Explanatory Memorandum, stating:
“Although the Explanatory Memorandum (EM) provided is full of information on future EU-relations, it does perhaps overestimate the average reader’s knowledge of the UK’s plans”—
well, quite. I understand that the committee asked a number of questions to which the Minister’s department has provided answers. However, the committee made this point:
“Because of the pandemic, coordination of health surveillance is more important than usually, and an EM needs to make it absolutely clear to the House what it is being asked to agree to.”
Can the Minister assure me that his department has taken note of these comments in respect of further regulations?
Lord Lansley (Con) [V]
My Lords, I am pleased to contribute to this short debate. I thank my noble friend the Minister for introducing the regulations, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, quite rightly said, are self-evidently necessary in these circumstances. I have no reservations about introducing them but I want to take this opportunity to explore a number of issues, including how my noble friend anticipates our relationship with the European Union developing in future.
First, the question of where the common frameworks are concerned inside the United Kingdom is fairly straightforward. However, I am not entirely sure how the UK health protection committee will coincide with, or work directly with, the four Chief Medical Officers; perhaps my noble friend can tell me. Certainly in England, the Chief Medical Officer appears to have a different future role in relation to health security than was formerly the case for his predecessors.
So far as the relationship with the European Union is concerned, my noble friend felt that the TCA created a full process for co-ordination. I am afraid I do not agree with him. I think the TCA creates a bare-bones relationship with the European Union for the future. I am not even sure that what is in the TCA has yet been in any sense implemented, since it includes a memorandum of understanding between us and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and I see no evidence of that being negotiated. Perhaps my noble friend can tell me whether that is the case. One has recently been concluded between the ECDC and Mexico, but not with us.
When one looks at the ECDC, which was established in the wake of SARS in 2004 to enable the European Union to be prepared for a future pandemic, I am afraid one is not impressed. It retreated from its media functions with anything other than national authorities and health professionals—it retreated from public communication—and it needs radically to change its approach. Indeed, as an organisation, it is hamstrung by the simple fact that under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union it is dependent on the activities of national authorities. It complements the work of national authorities but in no sense co-ordinates or controls them. For example, by 3 April last year, four European Union member states had failed to supply the ECDC with the necessary data for surveillance purposes. So unless and until the ECDC is in a position to inspect and secure data surveillance in all EU member states, I am not sure that it has the necessary powers and control.
The European Commission, albeit producing reports explaining how well it has done, freely acknowledges this in the way in which it is approaching the development of a European health union, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, suggested. We may no sooner have this in force later this year, and start to create a relationship between the health security committee and the ECDC, than we find that the European Union has created a health emergency preparedness and response authority, which it anticipates should be operational in 2022. There may be a European Union chief epidemiological officer. There may be a major manoeuvre on the part of the European Commission, proposing to legislate for a European health union. It may well move from competence being entirely for national authorities on major cross-border health threats to an EU competence shared with national authorities. That may make a considerable difference. However, when it comes to us co-operating with the European Union on cross-border health threats, it means that we have to be prepared for much more substantial activity on its part and a much more complex relationship with a range of European Union actors.
I shall mention one final thing. In all this, nobody appears to have referred to the role of the World Health Organization’s regional office for Europe. I am reminded that there are 27 member states of the European Union, but 53 participating states—at the last count, but I think it might have gone up to 55—in the World Health Organization’s region for Europe. A number of those states, such as us, Switzerland, those in the western Balkans and so on, will be integral in responding to a cross-border health threat of the kind we have experienced during the pandemic. If, as we wish, and I think the European Union wishes, there is to be enhanced global health security, there is no alternative to us reforming the World Health Organization and, in the process, vesting greater potential in its regional structures. Those have been poor in the past but could be much more effective in future. They take responsibility in relation to all the countries likely to be affected rather than, as in the case of the European Union, only just over half of them in Europe. I hope my noble friend will be able to say something about the Government’s plans for strengthening the WHO in Europe.
Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, I largely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said just now.
These regulations, which support and are aligned to the common framework, revoke and restate with modifications retained EU law on health security. The regulations ensure that EU law continues to function effectively following the end of the transition period, and provide a legislative regime for epidemiological surveillance and response to serious cross-border health threats, whether at risk of extending beyond the UK to an EU member state or as may otherwise necessitate a co-ordinated response within the UK to ensure a high level of human health protection. Will the current variant now coming to the UK be dealt with by these regulations?
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. It is essential that, when dealing with future health risks, the UK is equipped to effectively share knowledge, data and skills within our borders and internationally. I support the calls from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for clarity over the role of the WHO’s regions—in our case, Europe. I also support his calls for WHO reform, but hope that we and the other member nations will remember that it is the members of the WHO, not the WHO itself, who maintain its power and direction. Too often, the WHO has been the whipping boy, as though the members have no role at all.
The past 18 months have shown how global health threats can shut down the entire world. By leaving the EU, the UK has lost unconditional access to the EU’s Early Warning and Response System. The trade and co-operation agreement states that the UK may be granted access to EWRS on an ad hoc basis via written request. Can the Minister clarify how these requests will be overseen and managed? Are there any plans to negotiate a more consistent and collaborative relationship? It is important that Parliament and public health professionals more widely can see the detail of how this will work before it comes into force.
This SI creates a new body within the health protection committee. How have these plans and new structures been influenced by the learning process of the past 18 months, during which we have been exposed to be woefully unprepared for the health threat that the pandemic has given us? We have had huge issues with data sharing. How will this new framework and committee help us not to repeat those same mistakes?
The Minister said it is vital that the UK has excellent surveillance provisions, and we on these Benches agree, so it is good news that the four nations that make up the United Kingdom are working together on this. It is self-evident that this co-operation is vital to make it work. As we know from Covid, viruses do not recognise boundaries, whether those of devolved states or European countries. I echo the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about Northern Ireland, given the sensitivities of the Northern Ireland protocol. There seems to be something of a war of words on other matters; it would be awful if there was a war of words on these important health issues.
Our directors of public health are the unsung heroes of the pandemic, yet there has been confusion regarding the structural change of the UK Health Security Agency. It is not clear how much influence directors of public health will have. What they need now is clarity of communication and leadership around the new roles and responsibilities. That is vital as we shift into the endemic phase of Covid-19 management, when we are likely to be very reliant on these directors of public health and their small teams in local authority areas. Alongside this legislation, we need long-term funding boosts for health protection capacity in local councils and our public health budgets, so that our directors of public health are supported in the wonderful but often invisible work they do.
It certainly felt as though their work was invisible to Ministers and Public Health England during the first half of the pandemic—and this is not just about the pandemic. I am reminded of the Salisbury poisonings and how the exceptional director of public health in that area worked locally and nationally to try to resolve a really difficult and unpleasant situation; the BBC’s drama was able to show people on the ground exactly the work that public health colleagues do. Can the Minister confirm that we will be seeing a proper increase in their budgets in this year’s spending review? Otherwise, we will once again have to say that this Government’s words and figures do not agree. It would be awful if large numbers of expensive consultants again had to be contracted at the centre to manage a crisis when we have teams of experts on the ground in our local communities. They cannot magic essential resources to be available 365 days of the year out of thin air.
Finally, contact tracing will continue to be a vital part of public health work in the future. Can the Minister confirm that the Government are still committed to ensuring that we have an effective test and trace system to manage outbreaks of this disease as well as other incidents to do with environmental health locally and to prepare for the possibility of malign forces at work, as with the Salisbury poisonings? Given reports last week that care providers are still failing to get the data that they need, what action are the Government taking to improve this? How will the UK Health Security Agency provide the overarching leadership that is so desperately needed to strengthen partnership at a local, regional, and national level?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, we debate these regulations today on the 73rd anniversary of the National Health Service. I am sure that all noble Lords take great pleasure in seeing the George Cross awarded to recognise NHS staff past and present across all disciplines and all four nations; it is indeed a worthy honour.
I thank the Minister for outlining the focus and intent of these regulations, which are certainly welcomed. We welcome the focus on co-ordinating data-sharing, epidemiological surveillance and a four-nations approach to the prevention and control of serious cross-border health threats. It is certainly important to see the devolved nations’ public health agencies working in a close, collaborative relationship, which is what we hope to see following the adoption of these regulations. It is worth noting that, throughout the course of the pandemic, we have seen considerable regulatory divergence and differing communication issues between the devolved Administrations and the UK Government, particularly at a political level. As we well know, and as has been referenced in this debate, global health—in fact all—threats do not recognise borders. They do not fit that neatly.
The First Minister for Wales, Mark Drakeford, has consistently asked for a “regular, reliable rhythm” to meetings between the devolved Governments and the UK Government. Can the Minister assure us that this will become the norm? I noted his complimentary comments about the collaborative nature of his recent discussions, and I certainly wish to be assured that that will continue.
According to the Government, the UK Health Security Agency will undertake functions in five core areas in relation to future infectious disease threats. It will also
“act to strengthen health protection capability from top to bottom”
and place a “strong focus” on reducing inequalities in the way that different communities experience, and are impacted by, infectious diseases or environmental hazards. However, there is still very little information about how this will work, and it remains unclear how it will address the wider socioeconomic determinants of health. Perhaps the Minister can help us here.
To be more specific, the UK lost its elimination status for measles in 2016 and that was not about an external threat. That was about the internal competence—or otherwise—of the Government in handling public health issues. Does the Minister share my concern that the decision to subsume Public Health England into a security-focused agency may result in large areas of public health being neglected amid a focus on future pandemics?
What emphasis will be given to tackling the wider determinants of health, which have had a huge impact on the UK’s very poor outcome with Covid? Does the Minister agree that the Government cannot afford to ignore non-communicable diseases, including cancer, the wider health of the UK and those social inequalities, such as cramped housing and unequal access to care, which have exacerbated the experiences of many throughout the pandemic?
One of the big problems as we went into the pandemic was that the health of the population was poor at the outset, and in many cases getting worse. The improvement in life expectancy had stalled from 2012 onwards. Can the Minister confirm whether the agency will deal with this? One of the major failures of the UK’s response to Covid has been the inability of people to isolate. How will the agency address people in precarious occupations in the informal economy—those who do not have access to paid leave in order to self-isolate—and people who live in multigenerational homes?
We welcome the investment in tackling future infectious diseases but remain concerned that at the same time there has been disinvestment in UK Research and Innovation research funding. UKRI has warned of a £120 million hole in its budget following recent cuts. Does the Minister share my concern that this shortfall threatens to undermine overseas scientific projects seeking to understand how we can better mitigate against zoonotic diseases such as Covid-19? Will the Government commit to bringing forward their commitment to increase research and development spending to 2.4% of GDP by 2027?
Like my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, I refer the Minister to the comments of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on the Explanatory Memorandum, which, it said
“does perhaps overestimate the average reader’s knowledge of the UK’s plans.”
I hope the Minister will be able to assure the Committee that the department will ensure that the Explanatory Memorandum will be explicitly clear on what Parliament is being asked to agree going forward.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I am enormously grateful for noble Lords’ perceptive comments and the questions that they raised. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said so persuasively, these regulations are vital to maintaining UK-wide collaboration on health security and put in place the necessary mechanisms to allow us to engage effectively with our international partners on infectious diseases and other cross-border threats to health.
I am grateful for the demanding and analytical questions asked by all noble Lords on closer co-operation with the EU. I reassure my noble friend Lord Lansley that the regulations will ensure that implementation of the health security chapter of the TCA is effective and complete through the establishment of a robust UK-wide regime that can share the information required to meet our TCA obligations.
As to my noble friend’s comments on EU performance and future plans, we will have to wait to see where it is coming from. In the meantime, I reassure him that we were prompt to request access to the EU’s Early Warning and Response System in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic and that the EU was equally swift to grant that access. We are committed to continuing such positive co-operation on monitoring serious cross-border health threats where it is in our mutual interest and to maximising the benefits of TCA provisions. These regulations set the foundation for us to do exactly that.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked about the timing of the UKHSA/PHE transfer. The MoU between PHE, UKHSA and the ECDC is currently being negotiated. On the noble Lord’s questions on the TCA, the health security arrangements contained within the UK-EU TCA provide for continued collaboration between our world-leading scientists and technical experts and the ECDC, including on Covid-19 as we continue to tackle the pandemic. We are working with the ECDC to consider how we can best support the continuation of this co-operation and collaboration between our respective experts in future, including through the conclusion of an MoU.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Lansley asked about the WHO. Both the UK and the EU recognise the importance of continuing to work together to protect our citizens from infectious diseases and other cross-border threats to health. We already work together in multilateral groups and organisations, including the Global Health Security Initiative, and this agreement ensures that this will continue where it is in our mutual interest. These regulations address the threats arising from infectious disease and non-infectious threats, such as chemical and environmental hazards. This is in line with existing national policies and the International Health Regulations—IHR—2005.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked about the involvement of local health teams. I confirm that the UKHSA design will incorporate effective co-ordination with local authority health protection teams. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, that engagement with the DAs is extremely frequent and during the pandemic has been happening on a weekly basis, at least. We are committed to maintaining that very close co-ordination, which is supplemented with weekly meetings among the four CMOs that I understand are extremely productive.
I completely agree with the noble Baroness that this country was hard hit because of the bad health of our population. That is why we are bringing forward plans for the Office for Health Promotion, where the relevant parts of PHE will be rolled into an extremely effective and energetic organisation which will be focused on the country’s underlying health conditions, under the clinical oversight of the CMO. We will unveil plans for that office shortly.
I emphasise that the passage of this instrument is critical in the prevention and control of serious cross-border threats to health in order to maintain a high level of human health protection across all parts of the UK. The regulations act on our intentions to strengthen domestic capability in health security and they are also imperative in helping us meet our obligations under the TCA with the EU. I hope very much that I have been able to answer the questions raised by noble Lords, and with that in mind I commend these regulations to the Committee.
Coronavirus Act 2020 (Early Expiry) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bethell
That the Grand Committee do consider the Coronavirus Act 2020 (Early Expiry) Regulations 2021.
Relevant document: 1st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, the one-year status report of the Coronavirus Act, which was laid in Parliament on 22 March, recommended the expiry of 12 provisions, and the suspension of a further two provisions and two parts of a third provision. I am sure noble Lords will join me in recognising that this is testament to the hard work and sacrifice that has helped us to get to this point. The regulations were laid under the draft affirmative procedure to allow noble Lords this opportunity to scrutinise the Act, as we have always committed to.
Having helped bring this Act through Parliament last year, I am enormously pleased to speak in support of this draft statutory instrument. Taking steps towards returning to normal and being able to switch off some of the temporary emergency powers in this Act is very much in line with the direction our country is moving in and fulfils the commitments the Government made from the Dispatch Box at the time.
The Coronavirus Act was introduced to enable the Government to support and protect as many people as possible during the pandemic. It has been, and continues to be, an essential tool in our toolkit, helping to mitigate transmission in our communities, enabling crucial financial support, and protecting and supporting the NHS and other public services. Ultimately, it has helped to save lives.
The Act ensures that the NHS has the capacity to deal with peaks of the virus by allowing the temporary registration of nurses and other healthcare professionals. It protects critical societal functions—for example, providing courts with the ability to use video technology—and allows us to provide effective support packages to individuals and businesses, such as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the Self-employment Income Support Scheme.
Now to the matter in hand. The Government conducted in-depth assessment of all the Act’s provisions as part of the one-year review. Today we are debating 12 provisions that we propose to expire early. I thank colleagues in the devolved Administrations for their engagement, support and consent in expiring the relevant provisions that apply to them. Eleven of these powers will be expired for all the nations they extend to—for example, Sections 8 and 9, which across all four nations were never needed thanks to the extraordinary alternative arrangements put in place. I firmly believe that this highlights our desire to remain aligned as a United Kingdom as we move to the next phase of our response.
On the specific provisions, we are expiring Sections 8 and 9, which facilitated emergency volunteering leave and compensation leave for emergency volunteers. Thanks to the fantastic effort by the NHS, these provisions were not needed. Other measures, such as NHS Professionals, other agency and bank staff, and the Bring Back Staff scheme, have been more appropriate to address the need for trained clinical staff.
Section 15 allowed local authorities to ease some responsibilities under the Care Act so that they could continue to meet the most urgent and acute needs in the face of Covid-19 by streamlining assessment and charging for care retrospectively. In England, only eight authorities used these powers—and none since 20 June 2020. There is strong support for expiring the provision, as the social care workforce has remained resilient under pressure and able to continue to deliver its duties. Expiry of this provision shows just how much progress we have made through the resilience of the health and care system.
We are also expiring Section 24, which allowed biometric data held for national security purposes to be retained for additional time; five provisions that required information for businesses and people involved in the food supply chain; Section 71, which allowed a single Treasury Minister to sign on behalf of all Treasury Commissioners; Section 79, which extended arrangements for business improvement districts; and Section 84, which allowed for the postponement of General Synod elections. We also suspended a further three provisions in the Act when, on 21 April, the Coronavirus Act 2020 (Suspension: Temporary Judicial Commissioners, Urgent Warrants, and Disposal of Bodies) Regulations 2021 came into force.
I have always been clear that these powers should not be in place any longer than needed. That is the approach we have sought throughout. All powers in the Act have been kept under continuous and close review. The powers we are debating are not required anymore; we have taken steps to remove them through this instrument.
The Government recognise the vital importance of parliamentary scrutiny. We heard and responded to the calls from this House, and we built rigorous checks and balances into the very fabric of the Act. Arrangements to facilitate accountability and transparency include conducting two-monthly status reports on the non-devolved provisions, as well as a one-year status report. Under Section 98 of the Act, the temporary provisions are also subject to a six-monthly review and renewal vote in the House of Commons. The first and second of these were held on 30 September 2020 and 25 March 2021 respectively, in which Parliament agreed to the continuation of the temporary provisions in the Act. We will lay a report covering the next six-monthly review before the end of September. The third six-monthly debate and renewal vote will take place shortly after; this will provide the opportunity, as previously, to debate the provisions in detail and consider their continued application based on the latest evidence.
The remaining provisions in the Act serve three core purposes: shoring up capacity in the health and care system; ensuring the delivery of essential public services, such as enabling virtual court proceedings; and providing financial and other support to businesses and individuals. While the period of the pandemic remains, so does the need for the Act. However, the six-monthly review process concluding in September will assess each of the temporary provisions rigorously, and we will expire all those deemed no longer necessary and proportionate to the response.
People and businesses need certainty. They, and we, want to see restrictions being lifted. This is the direction we are looking towards, and this is the direction we are taking. We have come a long way, and we should look ahead to the next six months as a chance to focus on the positives, on recovery and on reaching the next milestone in our road map. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of these regulations. Clearly it is a good thing that the provisions are no longer considered necessary.
I want to ask the Minister about the impact where the provisions were in fact used. First, the Church of England measures allowed the postponement of the dissolution of the General Synod to 31 July 2021 and the continuation of members of the synod in office. Would the Minister care to tell me what impact that had on the running of the affairs of the Church of England? As a Minister of the Crown in a country where the Church of England is the established Church and Her Majesty the Queen is its Supreme Governor, I am sure he is on top of this matter.
I also want to ask the Minister about the Care Act provisions, which, as he explained, enabled local authorities to relax some duties on them, enabling them basically to prioritise the most serious and urgent cases by not conducting a full needs assessment or delaying some assessments. Eight local authorities used these powers between April and June 2020 but none did so after then, as the Minister said. Has he made any assessment of the impact of the use of those powers by those eight authorities? Also, have we learned anything? For instance, have we found a way potentially to streamline the assessment process?
Of course, the care sector has been under considerable pressure for some years. The pandemic brought huge challenges with it, and we still await a plan for its long-term sustainability. In joining my noble friend in congratulating the NHS on the hugely deserved award of the GC today, I am sure that we should also acknowledge the tremendous efforts of so many in the care sector in these past 15 months.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, at the one-year review of the Act, we pushed for it not to be reviewed. It would have been really useful to understand why there has been such a delay. I remind the Minister that we were concerned over some of the civil liberties issues in the Act, such as on policing, protests and fines—we know the fines did not hold up when applied in practice—and over transparencies. We have raised repeated concerns about the transparency on the dashboard. We were also concerned about people not understanding the rules. Famously, where guidance versus the law happened, it was interesting to watch the Government having to retreat very fast when they realised that they were telling people in Greater Manchester that something was covered by the law, yet the people in Greater Manchester were clearly able to show that it was guidance.
There are also concerns about the enormous blank-cheque powers that this legislation has provided. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, for saying earlier that the expiry of these provisions was announced on 25 March. His exact words then were:
“We made a promise to Parliament that we would not keep any provision in place for longer than was necessary, and we have made good on that promise.”—[Official Report, 25/3/21; col. 985.]
It has been 14 weeks since the Government decided that they did not need the provisions, and they have not yet removed them. They are still in place until this SI comes into force.
We also had particular concerns about the provision of social care. Part 1 of Schedule 12 and Section 15 enabled local authorities to divert resources to care and support from other duties. This was used eight times and not since 29 June 2020. We were really concerned about this provision because those who needed support for care suddenly found it was removed. The parents of disabled children who needed 24-hour care had found that their entire support mechanisms were removed from them. On the Disabled Children’s Partnership website today, one mother has been saying that the lack of that support has meant that she and her husband have had no more than two hours of consecutive sleep in over a year, because they have had to try to manage it. They are both utterly exhausted and extremely concerned that they might be making mistakes. That is because of the loss of this diversion support. What is particularly worrying is that most local authorities have not yet reinstated it.
Because we still do not know when this SI will come in, it is a little difficult to approve it until we also know the exact details about the level of Covid in our communities and its effect on the NHS. The Prime Minister famously talked about “data, not dates”, but the dialogue in recent weeks has become entirely the other way around, with cheery communications about the mask mandate being about to go. It is very noticeable that people have taken that as a signal that they can stop wearing masks already. Yet just over a year ago in June, when we lifted that first lockdown, cases were down to around 1,000 a day. This last week, it was around 25,000 new cases per day with hospitalizations increasing, even if at a lower rate, and certainly—thank goodness—ICU occupancy at a lower rate. However, GPs, doctors and nurses in hospitals all report that the NHS is nowhere near going back to being normal.
Today on LBC, a member of ICU staff at a hospital called in to say: “They can keep the medal and just get everyone to keep wearing masks, if they truly care about NHS staff”. I am with her on that one. Also today Chloe Smith, the Constitution Minister, said that some people more susceptible to infection than others may wish to carry on using a face mask. She cited her recent cancer, saying that she sympathises with those who want to carry on taking precautions.
As the Minister knows from my repeated raising of this issue, for some people this is not a matter of choice. That is so for at least 1 million people in the country: the clinically extremely vulnerable. Current government guidance to the CEV, which came out on 21 June, says:
“We are also advising clinically extremely vulnerable people to … follow the practical steps described below to minimise your risk of exposure … close contact with friends and family will be a personal choice, but you are encouraged to exercise caution”.
They were advised to work from home but, if they could not, to get their employer to make their workspace Covid-safe—I am paraphrasing because the guidance goes on at some length—and otherwise to get advice from professionals. It also says that the furlough scheme will end in September.
In addition, from 1 April there was no longer any SSP for clinically extremely vulnerable people who could not work from home. It is really important that provision is made to avoid clinically extremely vulnerable people having to go to work. Will the Government now take this up? Losing the mask mandate and lifting regulations mean that this group in our society and their immediate carers are put at risk.
I also note that the clinically extremely vulnerable advice says that pupils should be back in schools but the Department for Education lifted the mask mandate for schools some time ago. These children are still at high risk of Covid, which could indeed—
Baroness Penn (Con)
I remind the noble Baroness that the speaking limit for Back-Benchers is five minutes.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, implied, no issue is more important to the process of the easing of restrictions nor more conducive to ensuring public support than consistency in the application or expiry of regulations. In referring to Section 15 of the Coronavirus Act on local authorities, I will cite one example which is so important to the motivation behind this SI, which I support. Without consistency in interpreting the rules and guidance relating to the road map out of lockdown, we are in danger of creating a public backlash.
The approach taken by Bath and North East Somerset Council makes little sense in the context of holding graduation ceremonies at the University of Bath—ceremonies which generate so much revenue and create numerous service and supply jobs in the town; and which, with appropriate controls confirmed only last Thursday, led the university authorities to announce that they could deliver safe, socially distanced experiences in line with all the restrictions currently in place. On Friday, with only a few weeks’ notice, they were arbitrarily cancelled with nothing in their place. This last-minute decision, apparently to stop people coming to Bath, leaves many students and families who have already booked non-refundable accommodation stranded. Some are already quarantined in town.
The recent decision by the director of public health of Bath and North East Somerset Council—made despite the UK government guidance allowing for distanced graduation ceremonies, which have been safely carried out by Cambridge and other universities across the UK—makes no sense.
I have a son who is graduating this year from that university, but his experience pales into insignificance when considered alongside that of Wasif Anam, who on Saturday wrote, when adding his name to a petition presented to the university and the council:
“I came here all the way from Bangladesh along with my parents only for this reason. They have had to go through so much trouble with all the paperwork and all and we’ve had to spend over £3000 just on hotel quarantine. It’s a once in a lifetime occasion for all the graduates. They can’t just postpone it like that 3 weeks before the event. Should’ve at least informed us 2 months ago if they were planning to take such a big decision.”
Other students wrote:
“The graduation would be carried out within the strictest of Covid guidelines. I feel if this event cannot go ahead then the council must consider that tourism is a risk therefore need to close all tourist attractions in the city to make this decision fair and equal.”
Inevitably, the mental health of students has been kicked down the road for too long this past year. They have been asked to make sacrifices for the vulnerable and elderly in society, which they have done with remarkable understanding, particularly since they are the least likely to suffer from Covid. Many have been asymptomatic yet have correctly isolated during 18 months in which their university experience has been decimated by Covid. Many are emerging into one of the toughest employment markets on record, with exams and interviews on Zoom, overseas study years cancelled, and undergraduate sporting and social events deleted from their experience and exchanged for the scant comfort and isolation of their digs—while the financial costs they face have remained high.
Worse, the cancellation of graduations conflicts with government guidelines. With 60,000 people in Wembley on consecutive nights this week and bars full, it is tough and unacceptable to give only three weeks’ notice to all students, particularly international students such as Wasif Anam, who bear the cost and the pain, which are neither shared with the rest of the population nor consistently applied.
Here, unusually, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, as a seasoned local government leader who is sensitive to the relationship—in his case between Sheffield City Council and the university, where significant advance notice was given to students, as well as virtual graduation ceremonies—to speak to his colleagues who control Bath and North East Somerset Council. I also ask the equally excellent and experienced politician, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, who is respected across the House, to talk to her colleagues and ask them to think again.
I ask my noble friend the Minister to ensure that there is consistency in the easing of restrictions in the statutory instrument before us, for without consistency how can we expect public support to remain strong—especially the support of the young people of this country, including the thousands of schoolchildren who are isolating at the moment? We need to be resolute as we emerge from this crisis together—and always in step. It is right to move to personal responsibility but we must look to government and local authorities to provide leadership and consistency if we are to win public confidence.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, although I welcome the early expiry of 12 temporary provisions, it is concerning that these were the only sections removed from the Coronavirus Act. Despite the Government claiming that, as part of the one-year review of the Act in March, they had combed the legislation to ensure that what remained was necessary or proportionate, and that there was robust justification for retaining all the provisions, no details were divulged, no criteria published, and no cost-benefit analysis made available. It is worrying if this was it.
When MPs voted to extend the wide-ranging powers for another six months to the end of September, the then Health Secretary stressed that legislation had been a crucial part of the Government’s strategy. Indeed, legislation has almost become a substitute for strategy, and what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, described as a “bewildering flurry” brought in in haste. I note that it is harder to remove than install provisions. There seems no hurry to get rid of them. Matt Hancock also said that, although the Act was essential,
“we have always said that we will only retain powers as long as they are necessary.”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/3/21; col. 1115.]
Are these remaining powers necessary now? With a new Secretary of State for Health, can the Minister explain whether there is any reason why, after 19 July, any element of the Coronavirus Act will be retained? Will the new review date of 30 September be brought forward? If not, why not?
It is interesting to look at these 12 specific provisions because they tell of a mindset in drawing up the original legislation: one of a worst-case scenario, deploying the precautionary principle and therefore making laws that would perhaps have been better suited to informal arrangements. Sections 8 and 9 on emergency volunteering were intended to come into force should the delivery of health services be at risk because of the pandemic. Despite significant workforce pressure, the NHS never faced that crisis, but I know many qualified former health workers who volunteered but were never called upon. They were demoralised and felt demobilised. Maybe it is worth looking to them again for the huge backlog in the NHS. The point I am making is that the voluntary instinct was not utilised enough.
Looking at Sections 25 to 29 on food supply, it was assumed that draconian powers would be needed to force those connected with the food supply to share information, when in reality the food industry collaborated and shared data voluntarily. The law assumed the worst, and perhaps politicians should have mobilised positive solidarity rather than using the law as a coercive tool.
One reason why I mentioned the change of personnel at the Department of Health is because, despite the Minister telling me last week that the different tone and messaging on regulations has been driven by data, it feels more like a philosophical shift in emphasis from coercion to trust. The former Health Secretary spoke about the laws with a certain inflexible zealotry, once infamously responding to the Derbyshire police’s over-the-top fining of two women for merely meeting for a walk and a coffee with the quip that
“every time you try to flex the rules that could be fatal”.
This seems rather different from the new position, to quote Sajid Javid:
“We owe it to the British people … to restore their freedoms as quickly as we possibly can”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/6/21; col. 46.]
Hear, hear to that. Indeed, the Secretary of State noted in an article this weekend not only the economic costs of continuing lockdown measures but the health costs—a helpful antidote to those who seem sometimes oblivious to the non-Covid harms caused by the virus. I accept the moving account given by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, of those non-measurable harms that will potentially last far longer than the virus itself.
I also note the damage that has been wreaked on democracy over the past 16 months, during which freedom has been treated as a privilege, not a right. We cannot assume that democratic norms will simply spring back to the pre-March 2020 level once 19 July happens. History tells us to be wary of the dangerous precedent set. Considering the lack of scrutiny and abuse of the legislative process, which has had enormous negative consequences for every aspect of our public and private lives, we need to avoid complacency. Following on from the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on civil liberties, that is why it is the responsibility of everyone in this House and in the other place to use even such rubber-stamping exercises as this in this Room to demand that every emergency measure brought in since March is expired and deemed as unnecessary as those in the regulations we are discussing. It is time to move on.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con) [V]
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I thank my noble friend for setting out the early expiry regulations, which I support. As we have heard, these regulations provide for the early expiry of 12 temporary provisions. I note that nine of them are devolved matters and that the Secretary of State has obtained the necessary consent on behalf of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These regulations are multifaceted, applying to matters as diverse as the retention of DNA and fingerprints, food safety, emergency volunteering and General Synod elections. As we note the lack of need for emergency volunteers in these expiring regulations, I note the great resilience of our NHS and its staff as we mark its 73-year anniversary and its merited award of the George Cross by Her Majesty yesterday. Like many others, I hope that the efforts of NHS and care staff are recognised by the pay review process.
The varied nature of these regulations also illustrates the broad canvas that my noble friend is expected to cover—indeed, does cover—every day in this House. I commend him for his Trojan work effort. On that subject, I wish to stretch his reach and possibly his patience a little further. These regulations do not renew the provisions relating to tenancies, so there are limited opportunities to raise these matters. I have given my noble friend advance notice that I would raise this issue, but if he does not have all the detail to hand, I would appreciate a response in writing.
Until the end of May 2021, there were restrictions, quite justifiably, on the eviction of tenants unable to pay their rent because of the Covid pandemic. This meant that for many tenants housing rent arrears were piling up. The debt was still due but could not be enforced in that period, quite understandably. That came to an end at the end of May. Thus, from the start of June, the possibility of eviction arises again. This will not mean that the tenant has the money to pay the rent, so the landlord enforcing the provision will not necessarily—probably will not—get the rent. It prejudices the tenant in a dreadful way, and it undermines the landlord/tenant market in general. This is only going to get worse as we enter the summer now that evictions can happen again.
This problem has been highlighted on many occasions in your Lordships’ House, as well as in the other place. I have done so, and many others have too, including, outside your Lordships’ House, the National Residential Landlords Association, which has pressed for interest-free hardship loans for tenants to pay-off their Covid-related rent arrears. This would help landlords and tenants and would help preserve the important landlord and tenant market so essential to the country’s housing needs. I press this upon my noble friend.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, after the sacrifices and deaths of the past 16 months, the Government must not throw away the hard-earned actions of the British public. Ideology over epidemiology will not beat the virus. As we move into the endemic phase, as worldwide vaccination rates are low, new variants will emerge, as will resistance to vaccines, and the shadow of long Covid is hanging over many people. That means that some mitigation and proportionate measures will still be needed. This is not about just personal responsibility. It has to be tied in with social responsibility. This virus is not about “I”, it is about “we” as a society, and therefore there has to be government action as well as personal responsibility.
Therefore, it is not honest to—the Government are not being honest with the British people when they—talk about “irreversible” change or “freedom day”. Rather, we will need to have “mitigation day”, and unforeseen issues will arise. For some time, the country will have to balance personal freedoms with social measures; this is the context in which we should address these SIs and the next phase of the lifting of restrictions.
Regulation 2(2) sets out an extension to the retention of DNA and fingerprints until September 2021. Can the Minister tell us how many DNA samples and fingerprints will be retained? How many individuals, and cases, will that affect? What evidence is there that these need to be retained until September 2021?
I note that there is still no date on the front of this statutory instrument. When do the Government intend for it to come into force? I assume that there will have to be at least one amendment, since under paragraph 15.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum the former Secretary of State’s signature is on the SI. As I have said, we need to ensure as we go forward that epidemiology, not ideology, is at the forefront. I suggest three areas to the Government and the Minister where forward thinking rather than emergency legislation will be needed.
The first is on face coverings. I take the example of Israel, which is ahead of us on vaccinations and stopped the use of face coverings—but, within five days, face coverings had to be reintroduced. What epidemiological evidence do the Government have that, in not using face coverings, this country will somehow be different from Israel and people here will be safer? What epidemiological evidence is there for that?
The Government have allocated £37 billion to test and trace. Localised tracing will be vital as vaccine leakage potentially arises with new variants. To do that, you need to know where people are, where they have been and who they have been with or near. What evidence is there that stopping people pinging in to pubs, bars, et cetera, will improve the test and trace system in this country? What evidence is there for that? Again, ideology will not win against the virus. Good scientific evidence will help us to be safer. Why is this issue potentially being brought forward by the Government?
These Benches have talked for a long time about support for isolation—again, a mitigation issue. What evidence has arisen from the pilots that have been done on isolation and isolation support? Do the Minister and the Government now accept that isolation payments will probably have to be increased, both to encourage people to come forward and get tested, particularly locally, and to self-isolate for the whole period of their isolation?
Long Covid will be with us for a long time, so vaccination is not just about saving people from death, as vital as that is. It is also about ensuring that many young people do not face the spectre of long Covid and disability, and all that will do to their lives for quite a long period of time. Can the Minister tell us about the latest evidence on long Covid, in particular as regards “freedom day”?
All these issues matter in the endemic phase. Given the other issues that are around, the Government cannot continue to say that we are safe because of the vaccine. It is important for the Government to mitigate, and to put in place proportionate restrictions. I hope that the Minister and Government will listen to this rather than be driven by ideology.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I thank the Minister for introducing the regulations and explaining the reasons for them. We certainly welcome this statutory instrument, which removes provisions that enabled local authorities to divert resources to care and support from other duties as stipulated in the Care Act 2014.
As has been acknowledged in the debate, the pandemic has been exceptionally difficult for everybody, while the most vulnerable have seen disproportionately high death rates and a profound impact on the level and quality of their care. With regard to that, I join my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath in paying tribute to those in the care sector, both paid and unpaid.
According to the guidance issued to local authorities, the easements were meant to be activated only when they were necessary to ensure safety. They were intended to be temporary, kept under review and used as narrowly as possible. An open letter of 19 March 2021, signed by at least 27 disabled people’s organisations, highlighted concerns. It said:
“At such a strained and worrying time for everyone, this unnecessary power that no Council is even using hangs over the heads of disabled people, causing only anxiety.”
Many of the people most vulnerable to the virus simultaneously faced a reduction in essential care and support. By the middle of 2020, seven in 10 people with learning disabilities had had their social care cut or significantly reduced, and 79% of family members were forced to take on further unpaid caring duties in the face of cuts. Just eight of the 151 English councils with social services responsibility made use of the easements during the first wave, and only two of these—Derbyshire and Solihull—used it to cease meeting needs that they were required to meet. According to the CQC, by July, all had stopped.
We continue to know of the loss and long-term closure of day care centres, group activities, travel training and at-home support. There is also little clarity on how local authorities will catch up on reduced assessments or deal with retroactive demands for payment. The catch-all phrase “cancelled because of Covid” remains, and there are concerns that this so-called explanation will continue to linger. Does the Minister accept that the social care easements do not appear to have eased the burden for anybody?
Of course, there is a much bigger issue here: the chronic underfunding and devaluing of the social care sector, of which the fleeting emergence of the social care easements was but a symptom. We have been waiting almost two years to see the clear plan for social care that the Prime Minister claimed to have prepared, and all we heard in the Queen’s Speech was just nine words. Does the Minister agree that a better future for our country cannot be built after Covid-19 without transforming social care? We need the Government to make a firm commitment to reforming and presenting plans to Parliament as soon as possible.
Looking forward, the emergency Coronavirus Act gave Ministers sweeping powers, many of which have yet to be used. The priority must be to use the Act and other regulations related to health protection to bring us out of restrictions safely, support the NHS in recovering from the crisis, ensure that there are measures in place to restart the economy effectively, and enable those who need to self-isolate in future to do so. Nobody wants these regulations in place for any longer than is needed but we have to make sure that this is the last lockdown.
It seems that guidance and reliance on personal choice are set to be the order of the day, with the final stage of the four-step plan out of lockdown imminent. This is despite coronavirus cases rising to their highest level since January. Does the Minister share my concern that letting cases rise with no corresponding actions means further pressure on the NHS, more sickness and more disruption to education, and risks a new variant emerging with a selection advantage?
The new Health Secretary used the weekend press to emphasise that we must learn to live with the virus as we have done with flu. Can the Minister advise the Committee what level of mortality and cases of long Covid he considers acceptable? Will he outline the measures that the Government will introduce, such as ventilation support for buildings and sick pay for isolation, to push cases down? As we know, coronavirus does not impact people and communities equally. What support will be in place for the most deprived areas, where cases are highest and vaccination rates lowest?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I am enormously grateful to noble Lords for their thoughtful and perceptive comments. I will try to answer some of the points made in this important debate directly.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked about the synod. I assure him that this provision allowed Her Majesty the Queen, by Order in Council and at the request of the most reverend Primates the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, to postpone the dissolution of the synod of the Church of England and so to postpone the election that had been due to take place in the summer of 2020. The Church of England agreed that the provision had served its purpose and may be expired, with elections being held online this year.
For the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, and the other noble Lords who asked about the Care Act, I will spend a moment providing some reassurance on the easements that we are expiring. The Care Act easements were a temporary measure to help local authorities to continue to meet urgent needs in the face of Covid when they were expecting extraordinary pressures. Following our review of the provision in March 2021, which included consultations with stakeholders across the adult care sector, the decision was made to expire the provisions as they had not been used since 29 June 2020. I emphasise that point to any noble Lords who may be unclear on it: the provisions have not been used since then.
There was strong support to expire the provision from groups representing people with care and support needs. Local authorities were in a better position in terms of planning, support and the use of mutual aid than they were when the easements provision was first introduced. No local authorities have operated easements since 29 June. Only eight local authorities out of 151 operated easements before then. A report by ADASS showed that local authorities used easements in very limited ways, such as using streamlined templates for assessments, conducting virtual assessments and postponing reviews and rescheduling them to a later date. No council moved from Care Act eligibility to a human rights threshold.
I want to address the anecdotes raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. Let me be absolutely clear that no support was necessarily removed as a result of these easements. The department has worked with Think Local Act Personal—TLAP—and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services to understand the impact on individuals. Across this research, there have been no concerns that the councils that enacted easements ceased to support people, nor data to suggest that any groups were adversely affected by the easements.
However, we noted that, due to poor communications, some people reported feeling that they were impacted by easements even in areas where easements were not operated. We have commissioned research via the National Institute for Health Research to explore the impact of easements on individuals. The outcome of this research will be published over the next year. Anyone who feels that they have not had the care and support they should have had should first place a complaint with their local authority.
I will now move on to the impact of Section 24 and the regulations made on it, since that was raised by a number of noble Lords. On 29 April 2021, the independent Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner published a statement on the regulations made under Section 24. It sets out that almost 1,500 individual biometric profiles have had their ordinary statutory retention deadline extended as a result of the regulations, thereby protecting against the loss of biometrics of individuals assessed as presenting a risk to national security. The commissioner commented that he is
“satisfied that the section 24 power has been used in a responsible and proportionate manner and only when scarcity of resources or time limitations meant that the biometrics of individuals assessed as presenting a real risk to national security might otherwise have been lost.”
He also stated that he has
“seen nothing to indicate that the police have applied the provisions in anything other than the manner intended: necessarily, temporarily and proportionately.”
Section 24 is a regulation-making power; no further regulations are being made under it. This is because the mitigations put in place by CT policing mean that it is confident that, despite the ongoing effects of the pandemic, no extension will be required.
On the question asked by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, I express massive sympathy for all those missing out on important rites of passage, such as graduation, and other important events in the calendar, particularly for our young people. There cannot be a noble Lord in this proceeding who does not have an anecdote of this nature from their own friends and family group. We look forward to the day when we can change these arrangements; that day is drawing closer every moment.
I will say a word about tenants and residential tenancy to my noble friend Lord Bourne. On 12 May, a statutory instrument was laid that extended longer notice periods for residential tenancies until 30 September. My noble friend asked about the possibility of further financial support for tenants; I will take his questions back to the department and write to him accordingly.
In response to question from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, about when the regulations will come into force, I assure him that they will come into force as soon as possible, once approved by both Houses of Parliament, and will be signed by a different Minister in the department.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked about provisions for CEV individuals. I assure her that these have not been publicly announced and that the Secretary of State’s statement, which will occur in another place shortly, will provide some information on that.
On my noble friend Lord Moynihan’s point about Wembley, these events are part of the events research programme, which is why they are allowed to have large crowds. They are essential to our understanding of Covid transmission.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, asked whether we can go further and faster with the expiry of the Act. I can confirm that the next six-monthly review of the Act will take place in September; we are certainly assessing the remaining powers with this in mind. It is too early for me to make further proclamations on the decisions to be taken in September or in advance of the next review date for step 4 of the road map. Noble Lords will have listened to my Statement last week on the review of the data. We have to be cautious in our journey along the road map but we have reason to be optimistic about the future. More and more people are receiving the vaccine and giving us greater protection.
I thank everyone for participating in this debate and for their sacrifices throughout the pandemic.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
The Grand Committee stands adjourned until 4.55 pm. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.
Occupational Pension Schemes (Climate Change Governance and Reporting) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Stedman-Scott
That the Grand Committee do consider the Occupational Pension Schemes (Climate Change Governance and Reporting) Regulations 2021.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)
My Lords, the draft Occupational Pension Schemes (Climate Change Governance and Reporting) Regulations 2021 were laid before this House on 8 June. I am pleased to introduce this instrument. Subject to approval, these regulations will deliver a key commitment set out in Government’s Green Finance Strategy for
“large asset owners to disclose in line with the TCFD”—
the international, industry-led Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures—
“recommendations by 2022”.
These measures will see the UK become the first country in the world in which trustees of occupational pension schemes are statutorily required to consider, assess and report on the financial risks of climate change within their portfolios.
The regulations impose requirements on trustees of larger occupational pension schemes, authorised master trust schemes and, once established, authorised collective money purchase schemes for the identification, assessment and management of climate-related risks and opportunities. This includes requirements relating to governance, strategy and risk management as well as requirements to select and calculate climate-related metrics and to set and measure performance against targets.
Trustees will be required to meet these climate change governance requirements, which underpin the recommendations of the TCFD, and to report on how they have done so in line with the task force’s recommendations. Details of steps that should be taken to meet the requirements are included in the statutory guidance to which trustees must have regard. The regulations also confer compliance powers on the Pensions Regulator to enforce the new requirements.
Among other requirements, trustees will need to report on the risks that affect their portfolio, on how their investment strategy—and, in the case of defined benefit schemes, their funding strategy—would respond to different temperature rise scenarios, which will include consideration of the strength of the employer covenant, on the emissions attributable to their assets, their emissions intensity and their performance against targets that trustees have set.
The largest schemes and authorised schemes will be captured from 1 October 2021. From 1 October 2022, the regulations will apply to more than 70% of pension assets and more than 80% of pension members. The Government have committed to review the effectiveness of these regulations and statutory guidance in 2023. This will include the identification of any barriers, gaps and inconsistencies, as well as an assessment of whether the regulations remain appropriate and whether they should be extended to smaller schemes. I am satisfied that the Occupational Pension Schemes (Climate Change Governance and Reporting) Regulations 2021 are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. Our response will determine the future health and prosperity of our world. It is a major systemic financial risk and a threat to the long-term sustainability of UK private pensions. That is why it is vital that we act now. With almost £2 trillion in assets under management, all occupational pension schemes are exposed to climate-related risks, and such risks present a significant threat to the retirement outcomes of millions of savers. This threat presents itself through the risks to investments of a warmer planet and those associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy, for which all investors must be prepared. If we do not take steps now to address the risks climate change will bring shocks and long-term sustained damage to our economy. It is therefore vital that we ensure that pension scheme governance is as robust as possible to withstand these risks in both the short and long term.
It is for this reason that the Government have sought to prioritise climate change risks and opportunities in this instrument over the broader risks associated with environmental, social and governance considerations. Climate change is unique in the severity of investment risks associated with its impact and the pervasiveness of such risks. It is also for this reason that the Government have wasted no time in consulting on these regulations and bringing them before the Committee for debate.
The instrument provides that trustees of schemes with £5 billion or more in relevant assets and all authorised master trusts will be required to meet the governance requirements from 1 October this year and to produce and publish climate risk disclosures within seven months of their scheme year end. By adopting a phased approach, which sees the requirements fall on the largest schemes first, we expect such schemes to utilise their governance expertise and capacity to set an industry standard to those with at least £1 billion in relevant assets, who will have to meet the same requirements from 1 October 2022.
The instrument requires trustees to put in place processes of governance and risk management to assess the impact of climate change on their investment strategy and, where applicable, their funding strategy. It also requires trustees to conduct scenario analysis, calculate climate-related metrics and to set and measure performance against targets. These activities are all about trustee action, and details of steps that should be taken to meet these requirements are included in statutory guidance to which trustees must have regard. They go way beyond disclosure alone and therefore do not materially overlap in intent or effect with existing ESG policy disclosure requirements.
Activities required by these regulations that rely on data from other participants in the investment chain, such as scenario analysis, calculating metrics and reporting against targets, must be carried out by trustees
“as far as they are able”,
which means that trustees should take all such steps that are reasonable and proportionate in the particular circumstances, taking into account the costs, or likely costs, to the scheme and the time required to be spent. Nevertheless, impacts from climate change are already being felt. Trustees must act now and should not wait for perfect data to emerge before taking action to manage climate-related risks and opportunities. There is more than enough data to begin work with.
Let me be clear: these measures do not direct trustee decisions or seek to increase pressure for blanket divestment of pension schemes from high-carbon sectors. It is not for the Government to direct trustees to sell or buy certain assets, and these proposals do not create any expectation that schemes must divest or invest in a given way. I reiterate that these measures require trustees to identify, manage and assess climate-related risks. Ultimately, trustees retain primacy in any investment decisions they make following that assessment, whether it be the targets they set out or their wider investment strategy.
The effects of this instrument will be significant and transformative. By the end of 2023, the risks and opportunities climate change poses to £1.33 trillion-worth of pension savings will be assessed and published for all to see. Critically, this develops a system of accountability that we have never had before, and trustees will be required to show how climate change is likely to affect their portfolio.
To conclude, these measures cement the UK’s leadership in green finance. We were the first major economy to pass a net-zero emissions law, and now these measures on climate change risk and pensions are the first of their kind globally. I am sure noble Lords will agree that it is only right that pension scheme trustees take action to address climate change-related risks and protect the retirement savings of hard-working people. I commend this instrument to the Committee, and I beg to move.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am in favour of these regulations and I take this opportunity to thank and congratulate the Minister and her colleagues, to whom she has given much of the credit, on the work they have done on climate change. I will pass on the opportunity to say something more generally about the Government’s record on the issue, but here we are on the right track. This is not the end of the journey, of course, because there is always further to go.
Today, it is appropriate to pay tribute to all the work that was done in the Lords during the passage of the Pensions Scheme Bill. I was frustrated in my wish to take part, but no matter. The level of expertise as well as of concern about the issue was outstanding. I have thought of naming names, but having gone back and reread the debates it was interesting that there was clearly a collective effort in the House and behind the scenes. Those who took part know who they are, not least those taking part in today’s debate, and they are owed a sincere vote of thanks.
The adoption of these requirements is one element in a wider push to ensure that the effects of climate change become routinely considered in business and investment decisions. The adoption of these recommendations would also help a range of institutions better demonstrate responsibility and foresight in their consideration of climate issues. That will lead to smarter and more efficient allocation of capital and help smooth the transition to a more sustainable, low-carbon economy.
We must therefore welcome the recent move by the FCA to consult on a climate-related financial disclosure regime for asset managers, life insurers, and, not least in this context, FCA-regulated pension providers. That will be consistent with the recommendations of the task force on climate-related financial disclosure. The FCA states that its proposals aim to increase transparency and enable clients and consumers to make considered choices while remaining proportionate for firms. These proposals will need to be considered carefully as the term “proportionate” can hide a multitude of problems, but let us see.
One issue that arose during the passage of the Bill was the Government’s claim that their intention was to ensure effective governance of climate change risk but not to direct trustees’ or managers’ investments. The Minister reiterated that point in her remarks. This was specifically with reference to the proposed requirement that the governance of schemes align with the Paris Agreement’s objective of global warming of well under 2 degrees Celsius. During those debates, the Minister expressed the view that this could be tantamount to directing schemes’ investment, which the Government had ruled out. I have some difficulty here because my understanding is that progress towards the Paris target is now legally binding, not a matter of personal preference. The distinction being made is, in practice, without a difference. Ultimately this is going to affect investment decisions, or we will fail in the objective of combating climate change.
Another issue that arose in the debates on climate change during the passage of the Bill was use of the words “may” and “must”. I am pleased to report that in the regulations “must” is in the lead with 50 occurrences compared with 30 for “may”, but I am unclear what this means in practice. As a rough generalisation, it appears that “may” is used more in the context of enforcement, which means that discretion of some sort is being exercised by the appropriate regulator. It would be good if we had the possibility—at an appropriate stage, not now—for interested parties to discuss how this discretion will be exercised, which bodies will have enforcement taken against them, which will not, and what criteria are to be applied in making that choice.
Lastly, this is just to demonstrate that I am paying attention. Can the Minister assure us that the loss of a hyphen in the term “ear-marked scheme” between where that is defined in the Occupational Pension Schemes (Requirement to obtain Audited Accounts and a Statement from the Auditor) Regulations 1996 and these regulations is of no significance?
Baroness Janke (LD) [V]
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Davies, I very much support this statutory instrument and welcome the measures that the regulations introduce. As has been said, the statutory instrument introduces new requirements for trustees of certain occupational pension schemes to make sure that these schemes are conducted with respect to the effects of climate change. Also, there is a requirement for reports to be published and powers given to the Pensions Regulator to ensure compliance.
These measures were widely supported during the passage of the pensions Bill; I echo the thanks of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, to the team who put so much work into them. They are much-awaited first steps, however, and we hope that they will have a far-reaching effect throughout the industry and the financial sector. Trustees and fund managers will need to become very knowledgeable about the financial risks of climate change and matters relating to it, and more particularly about the targets in the Paris Agreement. As a former trustee I must say that, for many, there will be a steep learning curve in being able to manage the requirements of these regulations. There is a reference to respondents who expressed concerns on the availability of data, key to climate change, in the notes on the consultation—the data will, of course, be important. The Minister said that there is plenty of data; there is, but the analysis of it will be demanding.
Trustees and fund managers will need a range of information to discharge these duties. What information will be made available about, for example, the eligibility of companies for investment? Has any progress been made about disclosure requirements on companies for current greenhouse gas emissions, and the projected impact of their business plans, assets and activities on future emission levels? Are there plans, for example, to create a register of low and zero-carbon investment opportunities at all levels of the investment chain, making it easier for everyone—from asset managers to pension fund managers and individuals—to understand the green options available and provide opportunities to promote and invest in innovation and creativity in green industry and commerce?
The finance sector needs to operate within a framework that steers resources into climate-friendly investments and away from climate-negative activities; for example, avoiding support for investments that may become stranded assets through activities such as opening new oil and gas fields or coal mines, which cannot operate in the long term and therefore will not deliver returns to investors if the net-zero target is to be met. This requires a series of actions by government and financial sector regulators, ensuring better flows of information about climate risks and green investment opportunities for investors, lenders, insurers and other stakeholders, while providing the impetus for the financial sector to play its part in driving the action that reflects risks and opportunities in combating climate change and creating a low-carbon economy. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I welcome this important instrument. I thank the Minister for her introduction and the other noble Lords for their contributions.
The Explanatory Memorandum notes the evidence suggesting
“that we are currently on track to see 3°C of warming by the end of the century.”
That level of warming would cause changes that fundamentally shift how the planet behaves, including the breakdown of the global ocean circulation system, rainforests turning to savannah, ice sheets disintegrating, the spread of deserts and the collapse of farmable land. This could result in mass migration, famine, war and death. It could not be more serious.
As the Minister reminded us, climate change is expected to have a significant impact on pension schemes and their almost £2 trillion in UK assets due to both the physical and transition risks. It is good that we are starting to see action taken within the industry, such as Aviva announcing that its auto-enrolment default funds will aim to achieve net zero by 2050—that is some £32 billion of capital—or the BT pension scheme setting a goal of net zero by 2035 for its whole portfolio of about £55 billion. There is lots of good practice emerging in public sector DB schemes.
With the climate emergency getting ever more serious, today’s action is long overdue, so it is good that the Pension Schemes Act from which this SI derives addresses climate risk. Pensions Minister Guy Opperman described the proposals as “world-leading”, and the Minister today noted that the UK is set to become the first major economy to require climate risks to be specifically considered and reported on—but I gently say to the Minister that the grandstanding is a little ungracious and that no reference was made to the fact that the Bill was made greener only by cross-party working in our House.
When the Pension Schemes Bill was introduced as a Lords starter, rather than net-zero provisions there were zero climate provisions in the legislation—a gaping hole we highlighted at Second Reading. The Government then introduced amendments in Committee but they had to be strengthened through cross-party negotiation, led by my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to ensure that trustees and managers had to take account of the Paris Agreement and domestic targets such as net zero. As a result of that work, “climate change” was mentioned in domestic pensions legislation for the first time. We are really pleased with this achievement.
Turning to the detail of the instrument, I have a number of questions—the Minister would be disappointed if I did not, but none of them should be very unexpected, so I hope she will be ready and able to answer them. First, the Pensions Regulator will put requirements on trustees to drive change among investment managers. But the regulator has acknowledged that without standardised and enforced data throughout the investment supply chain, trustees would find it difficult to access the good-quality data they will need to produce the qualitative and quantitative outputs required by the new governance and reporting requirements.
There is an issue because the two regulators, TPR and the FCA, are not fully aligned in time, and TCFD disclosures aligned to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures are not currently required throughout the investment chain. As my noble friend Lord Davies mentioned, the FCA is currently consulting on proposals to introduce climate-related financial disclosure rules and guidance for asset managers, life insurers, FCA-regulated pension providers and issuers of standard listed equity shares; to require firms to reveal how they will take climate-related risks into account in managing investments on behalf of clients; and to produce a baseline set of disclosures in respect of their products and portfolios. But the FCA proposals will not be released until 2022, so we do not know how they will align with the TPR requirements.
In his Mansion House speech on 1 July, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the sustainability disclosure requirements to be introduced for businesses and financial products. The Treasury has said that these are intended to bring together and streamline existing climate reporting requirements and that the Government will work with the FCA to create a new sustainable investment label—a quality stamp.
Here come two important questions on this issue. First, can the Minister clarify how these sustainability disclosure requirements will interact with the rules for trustees arising from these regulations on reporting on climate risk? Secondly, can trustees rely on an FCA quality stamp as a reliable and acceptable source of data for meeting their disclosure requirements under these regulations?
Next, a word about scope. The Minister mentioned that these new governance requirements will apply initially to trustees of schemes with relevant assets of £5 billion or more, then from October next year they will bring into scope trustees of schemes with relevant assets of £1 billion or more. TPR estimated that the first phase would capture 102 pension schemes, or roughly 42% of all UK pension assets. The second phase would capture an estimated 351 schemes. The provisions would then, by the end of phase 2, cover approximately 71% of all UK pensions assets.
Here comes the third question: what, if anything, will be done to manage climate risk for the other 29% of pension assets? Will there be any requirements on them at all, or any action in relation to them? Some respondents to the TPR consultation argued that the DWP should commit now to bringing more schemes into scope in 2024. I get that they want a review, but why did the Government reject that commitment in principle to bring more schemes in? Also, what support will be given to trustees to help them meet these new obligations?
I have two final quick questions. One is on cost. The annual net direct cost to business is suggested as £6.2 million—roughly £12,000 for a scheme in year 1 and about £10,800 thereafter. Is the intention to provide any transitional funding, or will the Government monitor these costs so that they can decide whether help is needed for smaller schemes when they are brought into scope? Finally, will there be a central collection and monitoring process to review information from all industry reports to get a broad picture of the progress that schemes are making?
These changes are very welcome, but we still have a long way to go to ensure that the pensions industry and the Government manage climate risk better and reach net zero by 2050. I congratulate all those who worked so hard to get this instrument before us today. I hope that the example of the pensions Bill, where cross-party pressure in this House led the Government to a better place, is one that will set a trend for the future. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I sincerely thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Janke and Lady Sherlock, for their positive and direct questions on these regulations. I also start with an apology: it was remiss of me not to acknowledge the excellent cross-party work that got the pensions Bill on to the statute book. It was a very good example of how the House works well together. I hope that it will continue.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that I am very happy to meet and to hold discussions on discretion. My office will seek to organise that.
I will try to deal with some of the questions raised. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, asked about the UK’s statutory commitment to net zero, and said that it needs to be reflected in pension scheme policies. The UK signed up to the Paris Agreement and to net zero, and to making the necessary changes in taxation, spending and regulation to achieve that target. We are making the changes to achieve that. We have not signed up to mandating every organisation and household to set net-zero targets, but we are encouraging organisations to commit to net zero in a way that works for them and to publish a plan to do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, also asked what TPR’s strategy will be to ensure compliance with these new measures. TPR must issue a mandatory penalty in cases where the TCFD report is not published on a publicly available website that is accessible free of charge, as required by the regulations. In all other cases where TPR believes requirements are not being met, it has a range of enforcement options, including the discretion to issue a penalty notice. TPR also has the opportunity to publish the names and details of any breaches, which can be a powerful deterrent. TPR today published its consultation and compliance penalties. The consultation will be up for response until 31 August.
On to the homework set for me by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, on the issue of the hyphen. I will go away and find out. I will write to the noble Lord and place a copy in the Library.
The noble Baroness, Lady Janke, asked about the register of green investment options. Again, I will need to write to her on that issue.
The noble Baroness also asked about the status of the statutory guidance, and asked why there is also non-statutory guidance. In complying with the requirements in this instrument, trustees are required by new Sections 41A and 41B of the Pensions Act 1995 to have regard to statutory guidance prepared by the Secretary of State. This requirement does not apply to the trustee knowledge and understanding provisions, which will be made under different powers; the guidance accompanying those provisions is therefore not statutory guidance but is intended as best practice. Trustees are not required to have regard to it but they are encouraged to do so. Trustees of other schemes may also find the statutory guidance helpful when implementing climate change risk governance and reporting on a voluntary basis.
The noble Baroness, Lady Janke, talked about the lack of available data and reporting standards. The present data coverage does not prevent schemes taking steps to assess their exposure to climate risks, and the quality is improving. Our TCFD reporting requirements, as well as the requirements of others—including the Financial Conduct Authority and BEIS—will accelerate this progress significantly.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether trustees will be reliant on data from others to do proper analysis. She also asked whether the same requirements are being applied across the investment chain. The Government have already announced their intention to make TCFD-aligned disclosures mandatory across the economy by 2025, with a significant portion of mandatory requirements in place by 2023. This will produce regulatory alignment through the investment chain, which will capture asset managers, workplace personal pension schemes, UK-registered large private companies, insurance companies and banks by the end of 2023. This will increase the flow of data, which is vital for trustees to embed effective climate risk governance. The DWP has worked closely as part of a cross-government task force to ensure consistent climate-related financial disclosures up the investment chain.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said that lots of schemes have not taken action. Actually, 85% of DC pension savers are in a scheme that has set a net-zero target.
The noble Baroness asked why we have limited the threshold for being in scope at £1 billion. All savers have the right to benefit from effective governance and the reporting of climate change risk, regardless of the size of the scheme, but the Government do not wish to impose disproportionate burdens on trustees. Schemes with £1 billion or more in assets have the resources in place to allow them to implement and report on the range of governance and assessment measures set out in the regulations to a high standard, with a high probability of overall benefit to the members. The largest schemes can set an industry benchmark, drive demand for products, improve data flow and, ultimately, drive down costs for smaller schemes seeking to do TCFD reporting in future. The Government have committed to reviewing the effectiveness of the TCFD requirements in the regulations and statutory guidance in 2023. This will assess whether the regulations remain appropriate and whether they should be extended to smaller schemes.
The noble Baroness also asked what smaller schemes not in scope should be doing to manage their climate risk. Trustees do not need statutory requirements to begin meaningful action. They have a fiduciary duty to protect their members’ interests, and everyone should act now. As well as the statutory guidance, the DWP played a key role in producing and publishing the Pensions Climate Risk Industry Group guidance, which is a useful resource for all trustees whether they are in the scope of the new requirements or are just starting out.
The noble Baroness talked about the requirements announced in the Chancellor’s Mansion House speech. We will write to her on those.
Of course, the important issue of cost was discussed; indeed, it was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. We will monitor and review the cost, including in terms of what support is needed by trustees to fulfil their obligations.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, said that too many trustees do not have the necessary skills and asked what we are doing about it. Subject to the approval of this instrument, we intend to make regulations requiring trustees to have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the identification, assessment and management of climate-related risks and opportunities to enable them to exercise their functions properly. Those regulations were published in draft alongside our consultation response in June.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, reminded us that this is just the start. It is. I am sure that we will work together to put these regulations into action and review them as time goes on.
I conclude by reiterating the effect of this instrument. It will ensure that the largest occupational pension schemes, as well as authorised master trusts and authorised collective defined contribution schemes, have measures in place to identify, assess and manage climate-related risks and opportunities. The better management of climate risk will be in our interests, whether as pension savers or as pension takers and whether our interests are financial, environmental or social. I commend this instrument to the Committee.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
My Lords, that completes the business before the Grand Committee this afternoon. I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.
House of Lords
Arrangement of Business
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the Hybrid Sitting of the House will now begin. Some Members are here in the Chamber while others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. I ask all Members to respect social distancing and wear face coverings while in the Chamber except when speaking. If the capacity of the Chamber is exceeded, I will immediately adjourn the House.
Oral Questions will now commence. Please can those asking supplementary questions keep them no longer than 30 seconds and confined to two points? I ask that Ministers’ answers are also brief.
Covid-19: Work-related Cases
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord McKenzie of Luton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by the Trades Union Congress RIDDOR, Covid and underreporting, published on 23 May; and what steps they plan to take in response to the finding that work-related cases of COVID-19 leading to deaths have been underreported.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)
RIDDOR requires responsible persons, usually employers in relation to employees, to report certain Covid-19 cases to the relevant enforcing authority. Over 33,000 cases have been reported since 10 April 2020. Not all cases of Covid-19 involving employees are reportable, only those where there is reasonable evidence that an occupational exposure at work led to infection. The Health and Safety Executive has reviewed the TUC report and is considering what, if any, additional action is required.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab) [V]
My Lords, RIDDOR should play an important role in collecting data on work-related injury and death as well as dangerous occurrences. It is not an optional arrangement. The mechanism requires a layer of accountability on employers and is a public record of works relating to offices and fatalities. However, matters are not proceeding as they should; it is not working well. There are various accounts of underreporting. I think the Minister has just accepted that this underreporting has been around for some time, and perhaps we can be told why action has not been taken previously. I welcome the news that the HSE is going to get involved and look further at this issue.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
Given the complex system in which transmission of the virus occurs, it is extremely difficult to accurately identify the actual transmission point for any individual, and no one system—for example, RIDDOR—enables this attribution to be made.
Baroness Eaton (Con) [V]
What contribution does RIDDOR make in understanding workplace transmission?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
RIDDOR provides an important source of intelligence about occupational exposure to coronavirus in the workplace but is not the only source of intelligence that the HSE relies on. In addition to RIDDOR in the reporting of occupational cases of Covid-19, Public Health England is the lead government body for monitoring infection rates and the scale and spread of infections more widely, both in the community and in workplace settings. The HSE has worked and will continue to work closely with Public Health England throughout the pandemic.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that underreporting may be a consequence of HSE advice? Regulation 9 requires a case of Covid in the workforce to be reported if
“attributed to an occupational exposure”.
The HSE advice is that employers
“do not need to conduct extensive enquiries in seeking to determine whether a COVID-19 infection is work-related. The judgement should be made on the basis of the information available.”
That advice surely misleads. The regulation requires some investigation, at least into whether the worker, her colleagues or the safety rep attributes Covid to work.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
The Health and Safety Executive guidance, with advice from the Government Legal Department, does not exclude the reporting of cases of workers whose job involves dealing with the public. RIDDOR places a duty to report on the employer, and they must make a judgment based on the information they have. The Health and Safety Executive has never publicly stated that Regulation 9(b) or its supporting guidance has been misapplied.
Baroness Janke (LD) [V]
Does the Minister recognise that the severe cuts to the HSE have led to fewer inspections and, as a result, more underreporting? What plan do the Government have to reinstate the HSE budget?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
I am pleased to say that the Health and Safety Executive has had additional funding throughout the year along with enormous staff increases. This will continue to be worked on, and the HSE and the DWP continue to review and revise the resourcing arrangements as necessary.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, may I press the Minister a little further on her previous reply? The TUC report found that there was likely to have been significant underreporting in the number of work-related Covid deaths, arguing that it was just not credible that only 2.5% of working-age Covid deaths were down to occupational exposure. Does she believe that funding cuts of 46% to the HSE over the past decade, notwithstanding the short-term fix of a one-off payment, have impacted on reporting under RIDDOR as well as affecting the process of investigation?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
There have been cuts to the budget in the past. That has been rectified and an increased budget has been put in place, as has an increased resourcing budget. As of the end of April, it had 2,670 staff. There has been an extra £14.2 million available to the HSE on top of its regular government funding. Additional funding has enabled it to continue to inspect significantly more workplaces.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the extra funding for the HSE. I hope that noble Lords will recognise the difficulty, with a widespread pandemic, of identifying whether a particular infection is caused in one setting or another. Therefore, I would be grateful if my noble friend might give a little more information on the role that the HSE has played during the pandemic.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
The HSE has been really busy and proactive during the pandemic in three key areas: regulating, by targeting businesses and organisations, to prevent workplace transmission; working with other government departments, developing, assisting and promulgating policy guidance and research; and providing other workplace regulatory functions, including market surveillance to ensure a safe supply chain.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab) [V]
My Lords, Covid-19 infections in food factories could be more than 30 times underreported. The HSE said that the figure lacked credibility. In transport, there were 608 Covid deaths among workers and only 10 notifications during a similar period, a rate of just 1%. These are shocking figures. Second only to Romania, we have had the highest level of cuts to inspectors since 2010, and many of these industries have extremely poor sickness absence pay. This lets employers off the hook and the Government are complicit in this appalling level of underreporting. What further action will the Government take to deal with this?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
I will need to look to my noble friend Lady Vere, sitting to my left, to get some information about transport and Covid reporting there; she will like me for that. Given the number of Covid clusters among food and drink manufacturing workers towards the end of 2020, the HSE organised a series of proactive high-risk sector inspections to be carried out. Inspectors carried out 531 site visits and 58 remote inspections, 62 of which resulted in written correspondence. Inspection topics included ensuring that, in the organisation of work, changing and welfare areas allowed for social distancing proportionate to the situation.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, following on from the questions of the noble Baronesses, Lady Janke and Lady Wilcox, will the Minister acknowledge that of 52,000 proactive site visits over Covid, only 12,000 were conducted by trained inspectors? This is less than a quarter: the rest were handled by outsourced contractors. Will she acknowledge that ventilation was not on the script of those outsourced contractors? Given what we know about aerosol transmission and our increasing understanding of the problem of ventilation, does she agree that this is yet another example of where outsourcing to less experienced, skilled and trained staff has really damaged the quality of service that people have received?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
I ask the noble Baroness to allow me to go back to the department to talk about her outsourcing points. I would be very surprised if we outsourced to people who were not up to the job, but I will write to her.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Historical Railways Estate
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Faulkner of Worcester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the management of the Historical Railways Estate by Highways England; and in particular, whether that management is consistent with the Government’s policies (1) to reverse the Beeching rail cuts, and (2) to promote active travel.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and remind the House of my railway interests declared in the register.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, the management of the historic railways estate is kept under constant review and there is an independent quarterly audit. Checks are made to ensure that proposals do not prejudice the reopening of railway lines, and Highways England has regular discussions with the devolved Administrations, local authorities and other stakeholders.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will agree that the most significant and expensive obstacle to fulfilling the Government’s plans to reverse the Beeching cuts of the 1960s and 1970s is restoring the infrastructure—track bed and bridges particularly—that was so short-sightedly destroyed after lines were closed. No doubt she has read the article and leader in Saturday’s Times. Can she confirm that Highways England has now reduced to 69 its hitlist of 134 structures to be destroyed? Will she instruct it to consult not just with local authorities but with cycling and walking groups and heritage railways, before it goes ahead with any more of the cultural vandalism that we have already seen?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am really happy to reassure the noble Lord that Highways England already does exactly what he asked me to make sure that it does. It consults with local authorities, parish councils, people who run active travel schemes and, of course, heritage railway providers, whether or not the railway is actually built. Of the 3,250 railway properties, some will require work that is in excess of maintenance: that might include infilling, but of course infilling can be reversed.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, the Historical Railways Estate seems to be the perfect body to take forward the Government’s stated policy to reverse the Beeching cuts and promote active travel. However, it does not have a budget from Highways England for changes to the system in terms of active travel. Does it have a budget for reversing the Beeching cuts?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I am afraid I am not aware of the body the noble Baroness has just referenced. There are all sorts of budgets around. Obviously there is £500 million in the Restoring Your Railway fund and up to £2 billion in terms of cycling and walking. It is important to understand that, where particular railway properties fall into either of these schemes, their ownership can be transferred to the scheme’s promoters and therefore they can be maintained in future.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, in his foreword to the White Paper Great British Railways, the Secretary of State said that
“we now propose … ending the fragmentation of the past and bringing the network under single national leadership.”
Chapter 3 begins:
“Great British Railways will bring together the whole system”.
Can my noble friend confirm that responsibility for the Historical Railways Estate will be taken back from Highways England and given to Great British Railways?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his suggestion, which I note with great interest. However, no decisions have been put to Ministers about a transfer of some or all of the Historical Railways Estate to Great British Railways. There would need to be a power in the rail Bill and, although this might be contemplated, no decision has yet been made on that matter.
Lord Dubs (Lab) [V]
My Lords, do we not need a clear indication for every line that was vandalised by Beeching as to whether it is feasible to restore the services on it? Is that not the minimum we need? And, while we are on this, can I make a plea to restore the line from Penrith to Keswick in the Lake District? It is pretty well there; it requires just the odd bridge to be replaced and we could do that pretty quickly. It would be great for tourism and great for the environment.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I hear what the noble Lord has to say. Of course, it is not quite that simple, because some schemes which were taken out by Beeching will not be replaced because of population changes and all sorts of different reasons. But, of course, we do welcome ideas and I note his intervention on the Penrith line. But it is the case that, even where we want to restore the railway, the infrastructure in place needs to be substantially rebuilt to meet modern safety standards.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
Highways England states that it is not funded to enable cycling and walking projects. But if local authorities are not able to take on a property, Highways England is responsible for making it safe, which sometimes costs a great deal of money. Can the Minister reassure us that the Government will consider the proposal to ensure that Highways England can use that money instead as a proper part of a partnership with local authorities in order to create proper cycling and walking projects?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I say to the noble Baroness that we would run the risk there of sharing responsibilities across two very disparate organisations that have different priorities. In my view, local authorities should be prioritising cycling and walking projects. They are able to take over these structures—Highways England would welcome them with open arms—such that they can put them within their active travel plans and make them useful for the future.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I declare my interest as president of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. Will my noble friend accept that opening up the extension to Whitby has ensured the increasing popularity of that railway? Will the Government ensure that future extensions are looked on favourably to ensure that it remains the most popular and most visited attraction in North Yorkshire?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My noble friend is well aware that the Restoring Your Railway fund is available, and that any proposals put forward are given a fair hearing.
Lord Rosser (Lab) [V]
Attempts are being made to progress some of these Highways England demolition and infilling schemes under permitted development powers, which avoid the need for explanation and the challenges and objections that often accompany normal planning processes—including the need to seek permission from local councils. How is a declared policy of reopening former railway lines or encouraging walking and cycling tracks over disused railway lines consistent with Highways England blocking or severing potential routes by demolishing or filling in currently disused railway structures through a back-door process using permitted development powers, which stifles challenges and objections from local communities and organisations?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I would like to reassure your Lordships’ House that those structures that are potentially going to be infilled over the next five years—again, I say “potentially”—or be subject to other action, are fewer than 2.6% of all assets. Permitted development orders exist to prevent an emergency from occurring. Therefore, Highways England uses permitted development orders only where there is an emergency situation. I reassure noble Lords that to date Highways England has usually managed to get planning permission for any changes.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con) [V]
My Lords, can the Minister comment on whether Highways England, which manages the Historical Railways Estate, should be excluded from using permitted development rights to infill bridges or other structures in the estate, so as to ensure that it actively engages with local authorities and other organisations on the future of assets that run through an area, so that these can be considered for cycling or other schemes ahead of any works?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My noble friend has once again raised the issue of permitted development orders. I restate that they are used only in emergency circumstances. I would just like to remind noble Lords that a couple of decades ago, at the Clifton Hall/Black Harry tunnel in Salford, the shaft collapsed, a house was demolished and the residents were killed in their beds. This is a serious issue we are talking about here: sometimes there are emergency circumstances when permitted development orders are required. But, as I have said, in the majority of cases they are not required, and planning permission is sought and given.
Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, given the concerns noble Lords have raised on this Question, and the fact that the Minister said it is very important that there is local involvement, surely the answer is to require all such changes to these structures to be the subject of a full planning application.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
Well, I think I have now answered that question three times, but I will give it another go. There is a full planning application except in cases where there is likely to be an emergency.
Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD) [V]
The Minister knows of my interest in the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway, which was extended from Toddington to Broadway in 2018. Can she assure me that no legacy structures on the current route, or possible future extensions from Broadway to Honeybourne and beyond, are under threat of demolition or infilling? Is she making any progress on the burning issue of securing affordable stocks of lump coal, which makes steam engines work? Without that, the whole network could end.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
I will have to write to the noble Lord on the availability of lump coal and certainly on his specific request about a certain line and whether there are any structures on it. I am afraid I sadly do not have the information and I will have to write.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Covid-19: Broadband
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the pandemic on (1) access to, and (2) the affordability of, broadband internet services.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, the Covid-19 crisis has shown the integral role digital connectivity plays in our lives. Thanks to the Government, 97% of the UK can now access superfast broadband and over 40% of premises can access gigabit-capable networks—up from 18% at the start of the pandemic. We also recognise the importance of affordable broadband. That is why we have worked with BT, Virgin Media and others to ensure that they offer social tariffs for households in receipt of universal credit and other means-tested benefits.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I note the Minister’s reply, but data poverty and digital exclusion, as the Good Things Foundation and ParentZone have shown, is widespread. Research from Citizens Advice suggests:
“2.5 million people are behind on their broadband bills, with 700,000 of these falling into the red during Covid”.
The existing variation in broadband deals across the market leads to confusion and low take-up among those who need support the most. Will the Government commit to requiring all providers to offer an affordable social tariff for low-income families, as recommended by the Lords Covid-19 Select Committee?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government are working in different areas to address affordability, and I am sure that the noble Lord has seen the recent Ofcom report on this issue. Some 99% of households can access an affordable tariff, but the take-up of that is much lower than we would hope, and Ofcom has recommended more proactive marketing of those tariffs.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab) [V]
My Lords, the pandemic has accelerated the embedded use of broadband for work, learning and leisure, and yet 9 million people are still on the wrong side of the digital divide. It is estimated that 3% of schoolchildren were prevented from accessing learning during lockdowns. Many of these people live in social housing. What efforts are being made to ensure that all registered social landlords include broadband access in the rent and that such an element is then included in housing benefit?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The issues relating to being on the wrong side of the digital divide, as the noble Lord described it, are more complex than simply the tariff or how rent might be set up: they include digital skills and confidence, on which this Government are working very actively, as set out in our tech-savvy nation report.
Lord Ravensdale (CB)
My Lords, regions like the Midlands have both a strong regional partnership in place, focused on digital connectivity, and gaps in national digital rollout, which are stifling the economy. Will the Government prioritise region-wide action to accelerate digital connectivity, and will they work with the Midlands Engine to deliver on levelling up digital for the region—its local authorities, businesses and communities?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I hope that the noble Lord acknowledges the huge progress that has been made in the rollout. We are working closely with local authorities and pan-regional stakeholders, such as the Midlands Engine. The West Midlands is an absolute beacon in the area of 5G test beds and trials.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, would my noble friend agree that the Government need to investigate and promote all connectivity technologies—fibre as well as 5G, 6G, open RAN and low-earth orbit satellites? Would she confirm that it cannot be the case that those not currently able to access superfast fibre also find themselves unable to access 5G—because these connectivity technologies will enable the economy that we need, the society that we want and the digital inclusion that everyone has a right to rely on?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right, and we are investigating all the areas that he alluded to, particularly for the last 100,000 people who will not currently be reached through either the commercial rollout or our Project Gigabit plans.
Lord Patel (CB) [V]
My Lords, the issue with children from deprived backgrounds was not just that they could not get access to broadband but that they did not have the equipment. What plans do the Government have to make both the equipment and the broadband availability free of charge to deprived households?
Baroness Barran (Con)
During the pandemic, schools have been able to request free mobile data uplifts for disadvantaged families, and those will remain in place until the end of this month. Over 1.5 million laptops and tablets have been delivered to schools, trusts, local authorities and further education providers, and the Government are investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab) [V]
My Lords, if media reports are to be believed, the Government seem likely to extend their advice for people to work from home beyond 19 July. We agree that progress has been made in improving access to, and the affordability of, broadband in the recent past, but too many people still find their productivity compromised by variable speeds, temporary outages and other reliability issues. For the self-employed and freelancers, this acts as a serious inhibition to their business development. If home or hybrid working is to continue, what steps are the Government and regulators taking to ensure that services are up to scratch and to enable these businesses to grow? Can the Government back, and give a guarantee on, the further development of social tariffs?
Baroness Barran (Con)
There are two sides to the coin that the noble Lord has mentioned: of course he is absolutely right that self-employed people need access to the best-quality broadband, but, equally, the ability to work from home opens business opportunities in parts of the country that might not otherwise have experienced them. I mentioned the increase in coverage from 18% of the country at the beginning of the pandemic to over 40% today—it will be 60% by year end.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB) [V]
The noble Baroness said herself that the take-up of social tariffs was low. Does she think that the Government should indulge in an advertising campaign to promote the use of these social tariffs, where they are applicable? Having listened to those who mentioned—and having already been aware of—the importance of children having access, could the noble Baroness tell the House how many households have had their broadband stopped because of a failure to pay? How many of those households included school-age children?
Baroness Barran (Con)
On social tariffs, I repeat what I said earlier: Ofcom is absolutely clear that the providers of those tariffs need to proactively market them. However, government is working and meeting with them regularly and encouraging them to do so. Figures are available for the number of households that have been cut off—it is an extremely low number—but I am not aware that it includes details on children. I will write to the noble Baroness with the detail, if it exists.
Lord Hain (Lab) [V]
My Lords, could the Government fund local authorities to establish high-quality broadband hubs with work stations in each community for those citizens, whether school pupils, students or people working from home, who have either terrible or no online access—or, equally importantly, very cramped living conditions—making it impossible to study or work properly? Otherwise, the gaping digital divide, revealed by evidence to the Lords Covid-19 Committee, of which I am a member, will massively accelerate existing inequalities.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government have an incredibly ambitious and currently very successful programme of rolling out broadband across the country. The quickest way to get everyone, particularly those on the wrong side of the digital divide, included is for that programme to progress—both the commercial aspects and the £5 billion that we are putting into Project Gigabit to make sure that rural communities also have good access.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, for the avoidance of doubt, could the Minister outline what plans the Government have to monitor the effectiveness of social tariffs offered by broadband providers?
Baroness Barran (Con)
It is within the role of Ofcom to monitor that effectiveness.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]
The Minister said earlier that 100,000 homes would miss out on broadband access under the current plans. Does this mean that they will not even achieve the USO of 10 megabits per second, let alone the real target of a gigabit-enabled economy? Can she say when we will reach 100% coverage?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I will clarify what I meant to say, and I apologise if I was not clear. The commercial rollout, Project Gigabit and the rural voucher and other schemes that we have announced will reach all but 0.3% of the country, which is about 100,000 homes. We are not intending that those homes should not get coverage, but that is where some of the technological innovations that my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond referred to will come in.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed. We now come to the fourth Oral Question.
Health: Dementia
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Couttie
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the national average waiting time for a referral to a memory service following a suspected dementia diagnosis; and how this has changed since January 2020.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, data on wait times for referrals is not collected for memory services. However, NHS Digital does collect data on new memory assessment referrals, which saw 2,136 people referred to a memory service in May 2021—a 17% increase compared to April 2021. This compared to 2,896 new referrals made in January 2020. The Government take referrals extremely seriously: they have made £17 million available this financial year to NHS England and NHS Improvement to support memory services and increase diagnoses.
Baroness Couttie (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his Answer and declare my interest: my brother is a trustee of Dementia UK, an organisation which recently produced a report, Facing It Alone—which I hope my noble friend has read—highlighting the challenges faced by families and health professionals when tackling dementia. What steps are the Government considering to address the gap in diagnosis and access to post-diagnostic support, such as increasing the number of admiral nurses and the amount of primary care, as called for by Dementia UK? Will he also consider facilitating a meeting between the appropriate Minister in the other place and Dementia UK to discuss what more can be done to meet the requirements of these vulnerable people?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the role of admiral nurses and the model developed by Dementia UK; it is indeed a very valuable contribution. The dementia team at the department met with Paul Edwards, director of clinical services at Dementia UK, in April 2021, to discuss how we could work together more closely. I am happy to follow up on that meeting with any recommendations that Dementia UK might have for how we can focus on this important area.
Baroness Crawley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, is it not the case that there are just not enough diagnostic consultants and memory service nurses to reduce the waiting list that the noble Baroness, Lady Couttie, referred to? Given the number of people with dementia who, sadly, have passed away during Covid, when will the Government change the law to enshrine the rights of care home residents to have family visits?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the focus on diagnosis is critically important. That is why Challenge on Dementia 2020 set a target of two-thirds of people living with dementia receiving a formal diagnosis. At the end of May 2021, DDRs were 68.8%, compared with 61.7% at the end of April. We are working hard to get these numbers back up, and the £17 million fund which I referred to is one contribution to that. But the noble Baroness is entirely right that this is an important area, and we are focused on it.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, during Pride month, the Alzheimer’s Society and Opening Doors London did a lot to highlight the experiences of LGBT people with dementia. Does the Minister agree that when the Secretary of State for Health insists on wearing a rainbow badge, it is unacceptable for people to turn up to services only to be misgendered or to have their family relationships ignored or undermined, and that there should be a process of sorting out training for staff so that people are dealt with appropriately?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I take seriously the testimony of the noble Baroness. I am not aware of the specific concerns that she describes, nor am I completely up to speed on the precise arrangements of the training, but I would be glad to correspond with her on this matter.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)
My Lords, while virtual assessments were vital during the pandemic, without further diagnostics many led to a diagnosis of unspecified dementia. An accurate diagnosis of dementia subtype is critical to good management, especially in complex cases. Given the backlog, there will understandably be a temptation to deprioritise those who have a preliminary diagnosis from a virtual assessment, but this would be a false economy. How can the Minister ensure that those with a provisional diagnosis will be invited back for a comprehensive assessment after the pandemic has finished, and for imaging and other diagnostics where necessary?
Lord Bethell (Con)
Few people are as enthusiastic as I am about the benefits of digital medicine and virtual consultations, but I completely acknowledge my noble friend’s point: this is one area where we absolutely must have face-to-face assessment. The diagnostic tests and assessments she describes play a critical role, and those whose conditional assessment was done virtually must be cascaded into a face-to-face assessment, as she says. That is why we have put the funds in place to ensure that this backlog is caught up with.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, not only are there deep concerns about the sharp drop in memory clinic referrals during the pandemic; the Alzheimer’s Society also has very real fears that the virtual assessments currently taking the place of attendance at memory clinics run the risk of exacerbating inequalities in treatment and excluding large cohorts of patients. What is the Government’s overall strategy for ensuring that vital day care and hospital services are reopened and that the backlogs in referrals are addressed, for providing the rehabilitation that people with dementia need to counteract the effects on their cognitive and physical function, and for providing support for their mental health and well-being?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, guidance to help enhance best practice in dementia assessment and diagnosis was recently updated and published to support a personalised approach and choice in the delivery of remote consultation or face-to-face diagnosis. The guidance was developed in collaboration with stakeholders, including those with lived experience, and through the Dementia Change Action Network. I completely acknowledge the point that the noble Baroness makes. We are working as hard as we can to get the kind of face-to-face assessments she describes. They play an essential role in what we do.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, the 2019 national memory service audit carried out by NHS London reported that a quarter of English dementia services were unable to provide or refer on for carer psychoeducation. Knowing the struggles that my stepmother had over a decade ago getting recognition, let alone support, as my father’s dementia worsened, these figures remained stubbornly low. Can the Minister say when early support will automatically be available for all carers of those diagnosed with dementia?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the role of carers in the kinds of situations the noble Baroness describes. We are doing an enormous amount to supply training for carers in all facets of their delivery, including support in caring for those with dementia. I am not sure that I can make the guarantee that she seeks right now, but I reassure her that this is one area of our investment in carers that we take extremely seriously.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]
My Lords, while these patients are waiting for appointments, could some way be found to encourage relatives and close friends to help those with early dementia by having frequent conversations with them and helping them learn by heart poems they used to be able to recite in earlier years? That might also prove helpful to those relatives and friends, because loss of memory tends to affect us all as we grow older.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My noble friend makes a very touching and constructive point, because social engagement and involvement in the community keep older people sharp and their brains engaged and help stave off the ravages of age and the diminution of mental faculties. We all have a role to play in supporting the elderly and those with mental challenges. My noble friend is entirely right to call on the entire community to step up to that role.
Lord Blunkett (Lab) [V]
I draw attention to my declaration in the register as a dementia champion. The corollary of the question that has just been put is that reduced contact, reduced socialisation and reduced activity accelerate the onset of dementia. Of course, that has been happening over the past 16 months. Will the Minister commit to investing in the voluntary and charitable sector in this area so that it too can play its part in supporting families and helping it to reaccelerate back into social action?
Lord Bethell (Con)
I accept the noble Lord’s point. The corollary is right: there are those who have not had the engagement they once had, and it is fair to assume that that has accelerated their decline. The role of charities and communities in trying to provide that back-up support is critical. That is why we have provided £515,000 to the Alzheimer’s Society to support its Dementia Connect programme.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I am very glad to hear the response from the Minister on virtual consultations, but can I press him to urge an immediate reinstatement of face-to-face memory services and recognise that for those with cognitive and sensory impairments, Zoom is especially disorientating—it is for me, let alone anyone else? Will he also urge GP surgeries to open fully face to face—they are not at present—as doctors often spot signs of dementia when patients access services for other reasons? I think that would help.
Lord Bethell (Con)
I completely accept the noble Baroness’s point. It is clear that the benefits of digital do not play out for the elderly and those who face dementia and other similar conditions in the same way as they do for younger people and those accustomed to and familiar with Zoom and other digital services. She is entirely right that the symptoms and features of dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are sometimes picked up only through face-to-face engagement. That is why we are working hard to reopen GP surgeries and to ensure that such appointments can take place.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Birmingham Commonwealth Games (Compensation for Enforcement Action) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Barran
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 17 and 19 May be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 30 June.
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
My Lords, the Hybrid Sitting of the House will now resume. I ask all Members to respect social distancing.
The next business is the fifth day of Committee on the Environment Bill. I shall call Members to speak in the order listed. During the debate on each group, I invite Members, including Members in the Chamber, to email the clerk if they wish to speak after the Minister. I shall call Members to speak in order of request. The groupings are binding. Participants who might wish to press an amendment other than the lead amendment in the group to a Division must give notice in debate or by emailing the clerk. Leave should be given to withdraw amendments. In putting the Question, I shall collect voices in the Chamber only. If a Member taking part remotely wants their voice accounted for, if the Question is put, they must make this clear when speaking on the group.
Environment Bill
Monday 5th July 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Environment Act 2021 View all Environment Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 16-VI(Rev) Sixth marshalled list for Committee - (5 Jul 2021)
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, even after a five-day interval and in a debate truncated by a perhaps now unnecessary withdrawal of a number of noble Lords. For the convenience of the Committee, I remind everyone that we are speaking about amendments that are all about the long-awaited and much-delayed bottle deposit scheme for England, an area in which we are notably world leading in foot dragging.
I shall give a few statistics. Ten other countries in Europe are operating these schemes, with bottle-recycling success rates running from an outstanding 98.5% in Germany, where of course they have had lots of practice since they started in 2003. Even down at the bottom of the pack, Estonia has a very respectable—certainly by our standards—83.7% bottle return rate. That is why Amendment 133, which sets a deadline for implementation, is so important, and I would have attached my name to it had there been space. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that it should be earlier still; it could have been delivered years ago, but January 2023 is practical. It certainly should not be left outside the term of this current Government—assuming of course that they continue for that long.
I want to speak in support of all the amendments in this group, with the partial exception of Amendment 134B, which would exempt small brewers. That is not because I do not think we need to consider such small producers, but rather that Amendment 134A in the names of the same noble Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is broader and more useful, covering all kinds of producers. There clearly needs to be some easy and simple way for start-up businesses, such as brewers or soft drink or juice producers, to access the scheme. One route might be to require larger companies to allow smaller companies to piggyback on their schemes.
I will focus my contribution on Amendment 134, which appears in my name. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for her expression of support for the amendment. As with the earlier amendment on nappies, I declare the support from the aluminium industry association, Alupro, in preparing and discussing this amendment. I am sure that many noble Lords are aware that, for all the UK’s inadequate performance on recycling, it does relatively well in recycling aluminium compared to other materials, for reasons including the value of the material, with aluminium packaging recycling reaching its highest ever rate in 2020, with 68% of the material placed on the market being recycled. That includes 82% of all aluminium beverage cans. Of course, this is a material that can be recycled indefinitely, unlike most plastic.
We should not forget that the best option, at the top of the waste pyramid, is to reduce packaging materials and have no container at all, followed then by reusing packaging. But for recycling, aluminium is a good choice. Alupro put it to me—and I see the force of the argument—that a scheme with a flat deposit amount for all containers, regardless of the size of the material, would lead to switching from multipacks of aluminium cans to larger format plastic bottles, due to the cumulative cost of the deposit fee on multipacks. For example, a 20p flat deposit fee would add £4.80 to a 24-pack of cans, yet the deposit fee for the same volume of liquid in four plastic bottles would be just 80p. A 2019 poll of consumers found that a 20p flat deposit fee would encourage more than 60% of individuals to switch to large PET bottles at the expense of aluminium.
Alupro commissioned the research consultancy London Economics to look at consumer behaviour and the differential impacts of a flat or variable rate scheme. It found that the variable rate, as used in the successful Nordic schemes, would deliver significantly higher return rates in the first two years, while a flat-rate deposit would increase the amount of plastic sold and could lead to higher amounts of product wastage and increased portion sizes, which has an obvious impact on public health. It would also have a dramatic impact on the aluminium packaging sector, meaning up to 4.7 billion fewer cans, a very significant loss of revenue, and somewhere between 24% to 73% reduction in demand for aluminium cans in large multipacks. This is an industry with a case, and the practical sense of the bottle deposit varying according to the size of container is evident. Having seen such variable schemes in operation in various parts of Europe, with the scanning of bar-codes expected anyway to be part of the scheme, I think it presents no practical difficulties.
I know that the Minister, in the letter that he kindly sent to noble Lords on Friday afternoon, said—I paraphrase—“Let’s leave it to regulation and the implementation stage”. But why? Why not set out the basic ground rules now, in the Bill, to make sure that the scheme we get is fit for purpose and to give manufacturers time to prepare for implementation of the scheme as speedily as possible? That is what the very important Amendment 133, with which we started this group, seeks to attain.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as stated in the register. I am pleased, as always, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, although I regret that the mover of the lead amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, spoke five days ago; I had to look up Hansard to remember what she said. I have some sympathy with her Amendment 133, and agree that deposit return schemes should be introduced as soon as possible. I also believe that it is crucially important to get them right. It is worrying that Scotland has rushed ahead with its own scheme in an area where we definitely need UK-wide compatibility.
I support Amendment 133A in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and others, that the scheme should, at a minimum, apply to PET, glass, aluminium and steel containers of volumes under 3 litres. I was a non-executive director of Lotte Chemical, at Wilton, on Teesside, for nine years, until the end of 2019, when the company was taken over by Alpek Polyester. It holds a 70% to 75% market share in the UK and Ireland as the leading supplier of polyethylene terephthalate. The plastics tax is likely to disadvantage PET producers in favour of glass and aluminium producers, with the unintended consequence that producers will switch from PET to glass and aluminium containers, which have a carbon footprint four or five times higher than PET.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, proposed exemptions from the plastics tax in her Amendment 141. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, expressed concern that the deposit return scheme might lead producers to switch from aluminium or glass to plastics. My concern is the reverse: besides the much lower carbon footprint associated with PET, does the noble Baroness really want to go back to the days when we cut our feet on discarded glass bottles on the beach?
The answer is not to penalise PET but to introduce a deposit return scheme as good as Germany’s, where 98% of PET bottles are collected for recycling. We have a long way to go. Germany is not often held up as an example of a unitary state with centralised powers, but the successful German deposit return scheme is a national scheme applied in all the Länder identically. If the United Kingdom is to prosper and global Britain is to succeed as we expect and hope, it follows that the leaders of our devolved authorities might be less impatient and more willing to work together to agree the details of one national scheme across the whole United Kingdom.
I will speak to Amendments 134A, 134B and 138A tabled in my name and the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for whose support I am most grateful. These amendments take account of the needs of small producers, including small brewers, within the proposed deposit return scheme and recognise that the proposed measures will introduce significant, disproportionate costs and regulatory burdens for small businesses. I strongly support a deposit scheme such as that proposed in the Bill in principle, because it would help to tackle our waste and littering problems, but I ask my noble friend, is he mindful of the burdens on small businesses introduced by the Bill that may make it difficult for them to compete against much larger producers?
Many small brewers have had great difficulties surviving through the pandemic. With pubs closed, the only way that they could keep their products on sale has been to sell them in bottles and cans. It is very expensive for small brewers to make the necessary changes to packaging and labelling. It is likely that the four large brewers, which hold 88% of the beer market, will absorb the cost within their profit margin, thereby driving small challengers and craft beer manufacturers out of the market. Besides this, the costs and difficulties of participation in the scheme seem disproportionate for small brewers.
The fact that Scotland is ahead of the rest of the country is another problem. Brewers sell beer through wholesalers that sell in both England and Scotland. The brewers do not know how much beer their wholesalers sell in each part of the UK, yet the Scottish Government, in the operation of their scheme, have suggested that brewers will have to provide vast swathes of information that they do not currently possess. It is important that any deposit scheme adopted is completely interoperable with the Scottish one. Can my noble friend confirm that we will have, in effect, an identical scheme operating across the whole country? Is it not a problem that the Scottish scheme does not require recyclable products to be clearly labelled as such? There may well be unintended consequences if the schemes are not completely aligned.
Can my noble friend also say whether the Government accept the need for public education about the new scheme, which will be necessary to change public behaviour towards recycling? Does he agree that there is at least a strong case for exempting small breweries producing less than 900,000 pints a year from the new requirements? Indeed, the Government’s better regulation framework states that the default position
“is to exempt small and micro-businesses from … new regulatory”
requirements. While the Government have proposed in the recent consultation to allow small retailers to apply for exemptions under the deposit schemes, the same exception has not been extended to small producers.
In both the extended producer responsibility and the plastic packaging tax, the Government have included a de minimis threshold. In other areas, such as nutritional information, those with fewer than 10 full-time equivalent staff and a turnover of below £2 million are exempt. Therefore, I have tabled these amendments and ask my noble friend to consider how the Bill will support our small producers in a similar way to small retailers.
Under the proposed deposit scheme, small producers will have to redesign their labels to incorporate bar codes and logos at significant cost. They will have to pay a producer fee per container, which could cost the beer industry alone £200 million a year—the equivalent of a 6% increase in beer duty. They will have to collect and provide a great deal of additional information, which could lead to a delay of six weeks or more before they can bring new products to market and will impact innovative small brewers that produce seasonal and one-off beers.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel) (Lab)
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Lucas, have withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Carrington.
Lord Carrington (CB)
My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 134 proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She has put the case for a variable rate dependent on container size most forcefully. There is nothing I can add without repetition, so I would like the Minister to comment on the reason given by the Minister, Rebecca Pow, in the other place. When she gave evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee, Rebecca Pow, who is the Minister responsible for the DRS, said that the department was inclined to introduce a variable rate of deposit.
However, Defra currently wants to leave it to the scheme administrator to make the ultimate decision. The concern is that the administrator may not assess the need for a variable deposit independently and impartially, as it will be run by the industry itself, with all its vested interest to take into account. Can the Minister assure us of the independence of the administrator and how the appointment process for the administrator will work? A variable rate should be mandated in the legislation at this stage to avoid these potential problems.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 133A, to which I have put my name, which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and is also supported by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. This amendment is about what is known as an all-in deposit scheme, which means it catches as many items as possible. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is absolutely right that our priority ought to be to reduce waste in the first place and so, if we are going to reduce waste, we need a comprehensive deposit scheme. We must stand back and look at what we are trying to do, which is to protect the environment. The bigger and wider the deposit scheme, the more chance we have of keeping the environment in the state in which we would like it to be.
However, I know this causes an awful lot of worry for those who have set up return or deposit schemes at the moment, have invested money in them and do not want to change. It is the nature of industry that there will always be vested interests, but I hope that my noble friend will stand back from them and say that this is needed in the interests of the environment.
My noble friend Lord Trenchard rightly mentioned that any scheme must be pretty much the same across the whole United Kingdom. However, I challenge him on one thing. He said that Scotland had rushed ahead; no, I think that England is the laggard. Why should Scotland have to wait until England finally gets its house in order and its act together? Scotland has once again led the way, and it is time that England got on and followed suit.
Getting a UK comprehensive plan will be very important. There was a consultation on an all-in deposit scheme in 2019, which was overwhelmingly endorsed as the right way forward. All I ask my noble friend the Minister is that, when he introduces a scheme, he keeps it as simple as possible; I ask him please to use the KISS principle with this if he is going to get us to participate in this scheme and make it work in the best way possible.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 133 and 133A because the DRS is one of the most important parts of this Bill. It will have a seismic effect on consumer behaviour, improve our environment and strengthen the circular economy. I and many noble Lords have already spoken about the blight of litter. Two-thirds of roadside litter is estimated to be made up of drinks containers.
The scheme is so important that it needs to be wider in scope and swifter in implementation. The present target of late 2024 at the earliest is far too slow for such an important measure. It was first announced by Michael Gove in October 2017; the initial consultation promised implementation at the start of 2023; now we are told it will be the end of 2024 at the earliest. This chronology means that the present target for the much-anticipated DRS will mean at least six and a half years before implementation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said.
I know this scheme is complicated, but it is so important that all speed is needed to implement it. I ask the Minister to listen to the words of his colleague Michael Gove who, in praising this scheme in his 2019 speech at Kew Gardens, cautioned:
“Time is running out to make the difference we need; to repair the damage we as a species have done to the planet we have plundered.”
Does the Minister agree with the Environmental Audit Committee, which described the 2024 target as “disappointing”?
I also support Amendment 134 as the Government need to ensure that the scope of the scheme is as wide as possible, as the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said. They need to embrace the all-in scheme; I can see why the on-the-go 750-millilitre criterion has been posited as an option, but a recent survey of stakeholders in the beverage container sector, which includes supermarkets, manufacturers and consumers, shows 69% support all-in while a mere 15% support on-the-go. To quote Michael Gove’s Kew Gardens speech again,
“I believe an ‘all-in’ model will give consumers the greatest possible incentive to recycle.”
The UK’s recycling record has been dire in recent years. This is an opportunity for us to slack off that shocking record and lead the world in recycling.
It is not hard to understand why all-in is the preference of so many. It allies simplicity and maximum benefit for the environment, and goes to the heart of the circular economy. Studies estimate that an all-in scheme will recycle 3.2 times as many drinks containers as an on-the-go one. The Minister knows only too well the limitations of kerbside collections. Recycling centres have problems separating out the wide variety of materials, and often there are problems finding ways to use the recycled material effectively. I ask the Minister to listen to manufacturers, which say that the specially designed reverse vending machines in the scheme must be much more effective at separating different materials and consequently creating a much higher quality of material for recycling. As a result, the use of recycled material will increase. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, reverse vending machines are proving effective in other countries; obviously, the more types of materials and sizes of drinks containers included in the scheme, the more material will be recycled.
The extra materials covered by the amendment would allow clarity for both manufacturers and consumers and conformity with other nations in the UK. The cut-off point of 750 millilitres for drinks containers could distort the market in unthought-of ways. It could encourage consumers to buy bigger bottles of unhealthy fizzy beverages to cover the deposit’s charge, and manufacturers could invent methods to avoid the scheme. A distortion in the market leads to all kinds of unintended consequences. I will give an example from Germany: the exclusion of milk products from such a deposit scheme resulted in soft drinks companies introducing milk protein into their drinks to make sure they were excluded from the scheme. As a result, Germans who were lactose intolerant suddenly could not buy or drink soft drinks. Surely it would be better to make this deposit scheme as simple and wide-ranging as possible to avoid such a distortion.
One of the aims of the Bill is to dazzle the COP 26 with our world-leading environmental legislation. What better way to do that than by the Government putting a DRS on the face of the Bill which would be quick to take effect and wide-ranging in its impact? It would be a statement to the world that Britain intends to reduce its carbon emissions and litter problem and become a recycling superpower.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, we very much agree with what the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, said about the potential of this deposit return scheme to show us to be a global frontrunner as we move towards a more circular economy. We also very much support the opening amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, which highlights the laggard nature of the Government in bringing forward this DRS, with the latest consultation showing that it will not come in until the end of 2024. We absolutely agree with her that the Government ought to get on with this by next year as an initial step.
We agree with almost all noble Lords that this must be an all-in scheme. There are costs to that, which the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, highlighted; another is the cost to local councils, as with an all-in system you remove aluminium, which is one of their most valuable recycling assets. However, we very much believe that the benefits outweigh those costs. We must resist those voices saying not to go down the all-in route. The Government’s impact assessment shows that there are very strong benefits to all-in, in the amount of recycling and the impact on cutting littering. That is important, but for me the issue mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, about consistency with Scotland is the strongest case for all-in. We know where the Scots are going with their DRS; we feel very strongly that, to get the maximum benefits from DRS, there should be consistency with Scotland.
On that basis, although I listened to the very articulate arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on the case for a differential rate for sizes, I am not sure I want that put in the Bill at this stage, as there is an issue about ensuring that consistency with Scotland is uppermost in our mind. I therefore wish the Government to look at that again but do not support that going in the Bill at this stage, although I understand and accept the arguments she made. I hope the Government will look at them carefully. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)
My Lords, deposit return schemes are another important reform introduced by the Bill to maximise our resource productivity. It was heartening to hear support across the House for their introduction.
This Government are determined to crack down on the waste and carelessness that destroy our natural environment. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was right to point out in her opening speech that in our manifesto we committed to introduce a deposit return scheme this Parliament. We remain absolutely committed to delivering on that commitment. I thank her for Amendments 133 and 133A. We are currently analysing responses to our consultation from environmental NGOs, businesses and trade organisations on the deposit return scheme, which consulted on implementation timelines for 2024, the scheme design and the exact responsibilities of a deposit management organisation. This also included proposals on the size of containers and materials to be included. We will publish our response as soon as possible.
I appreciate that noble Lords are keen to see the introduction of a DRS for drinks containers introduced as soon as possible—so am I. But realistically, particularly following the impact of the pandemic, we need to make sure we balance this anticipation with the needs of businesses, which will need time to adapt their processes to a DRS. The impact assessment for this measure identified that the net costs to businesses were likely to be £266 million a year, so we need to make sure that we fully consider the time needed for them to adapt.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
My Lords, I have received requests to speak after the Minister, from the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Marlesford.
Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am grateful to be allowed to intervene—briefly, I was withdrawn from speaking in this group—and I would like to support what the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, has said about the concerns of small breweries. I was to some extent heartened by the Minister’s response that there is provision for making special arrangements in the regulations, but I would just like to ask him whether he recalls, five or 10 years ago, the rather serious activities of the major brewers in kicking out and treating badly many small pub landlords, which ended up with a lot of fuss. In the end, a Pubs Code Adjudicator was appointed to try to protect the independent landlords and, to some extent, the beers that they supplied. We have to remember that the big brewers are not charities. It is really important for the growth of the industry and the variety that the new brewers provide that there is a real, solid protection for the small brewers when it comes to the deposit return schemes. I hope that the Minister can confirm that.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I remember well the scandal of five to 10 years ago. Indeed, there were a number of people in my own former constituency who were affected, and I was very much involved in the all-party group that called for the Pubs Code Adjudicator, so I very much note his comments. I hope that the noble Lord was reassured by the reassurances that I provided in relation to small businesses and our attempts to insulate them as far as possible from any avoidable cost.
Lord Marlesford (Con) [V]
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister recollect that, in the state of Oregon in the United States, where the returnable container schemes were pioneered many years ago, the key to success was that when the affluent discarded them, the less affluent picked them up and returned them?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I was not aware of the example from Oregon, but there are plenty examples from around the world of people at the very bottom of the economic ladder deriving livelihoods from being involved at one level or another in the recycling sector. That is certainly the case. I thank my noble friend for his comments.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in support of our amendments. As I said in my opening remarks, there is already considerable evidence from Europe that deposit return schemes drive up recycling levels of bottles and cans and thereby cut back on litter and landfill. That point was echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, among others. The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, rightly highlighted the success of Germany and the fact that it has been organised on a unitary basis across the German state—there are lessons to be learned from that.
The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, latterly put the question about the affluent and the less affluent. It is true that, once you put a small value on an empty bottle, people will be less inclined casually to throw it away, and even if some individual cannot be bothered to collect the deposit, there will always be others who will pick it up for that reason. However you go about it, it will undoubtedly reduce levels of litter and drive up recycling.
I agree, of course, with the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and others that what we need is an all-in scheme for it to be really successful.
There is no reason why this scheme cannot be operational by 1 January 2023. Indeed, there could be perverse consequences if Scotland had such a scheme ahead of other nations. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said that England has become a world leader in foot-dragging, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said that England is becoming a laggard, and I agree with both of those sentiments. I think that we all agree that a united scheme across the four nations is the way to go, but we cannot expect Scotland to hang around while we make our minds up about this, so we have to move at pace and move together.
I thought the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made a sensible point about deposit fees having to vary with the size of the container. I understand some of the complexities around that, but we need to make sure that we are not incentivising a switch to plastic that might otherwise occur.
The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, raised the issue of small producers and small breweries, and I agree that there need to be arrangements for start-ups and new businesses. There are, of course, many small drinks companies bringing new products on to the market—indeed, many of them are promoting healthy drinks. I am not convinced that small breweries need a special exemption, but I understand the point he makes. Of course, the scheme is not intended to place an extra burden on small businesses, and we have all said that it needs to be simple and straightforward to administer. I would have thought that all those companies—the breweries and other small producers—would welcome schemes that prevent their empty containers becoming litter or landfill just as much as anyone else. I remind noble Lords—some of us have been around for rather a long time—that we had bottle deposit schemes in the past, so in a sense this is nothing new.
I listened carefully to the Minister’s response, but nothing he said explains why we cannot have a DRS by 1 January 2023, and I disagree that he is on target to meet the Conservative manifesto commitment on this. Businesses have known that this is coming for some time; we have had time to make the transition, and there is still time within the next 18 months to complete that transition. The Minister also talked about Schedule 8, but the problem, as with all those schedules, is that it is not specific; it is just enabling. It does not guarantee anything. It just says that these things “may”—going back to our famous word—happen.
I will, therefore, reflect on the Minister’s comments, but I hope he has heard the strength of feeling around the Chamber today: people want action on this, and they want it quickly. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“(6) The requirement in subsection (5) may be met by consultation carried out before this section comes into force.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the consultation requirement in inserted section 45AZC(5) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 may be met by pre-commencement consultation.
“(4A) The requirement in subsection (4) may be met by consultation carried out before this section comes into force.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the consultation requirement in inserted section 45AZE(4) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 may be met by pre-commencement consultation.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 148A. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division must make that clear in debate.
Clause 61: Transfrontier shipments of waste
Amendment 148A
Member’s explanatory statement
These amendments seek to strengthen Clause 61 of the Bill to mandate a total ban on the export of plastics.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 148A, I will speak to Amendments 148B and 148C, for which the rationale is self-explanatory, and try not to get cross. In essence, the case behind the amendments is that we in the UK should be self-sufficient when it comes to waste. There was a great deal of publicity around China refusing to take our plastic rubbish but very little around the destinations the Government found to replace shipments to China: Turkey, Malaysia and Poland. There has been much talk in recent years of ours being a nation that can stand on its own feet. That being the case, there is no excuse for us to send waste for processing—certainly not to the poorest countries of the world, and not to our neighbours, partners and friends in Europe either.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, and I congratulate her on bringing forward these amendments. I also congratulate the Government on introducing, in Clause 61, the transfrontier shipment of waste clause that sets out the power to prohibit the transport of waste for export and, I understand, later in the clause, the transit of waste for importation as well. I received a very good briefing—I think the same one the noble Baroness received—that shows that the UK generates almost more plastic waste per person than any other country in the world; we are second only to the US. Apparently, in the last two years for which there are reported figures, we exported two-thirds of plastic waste separated for recycling that was collected in the UK. I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister, when she comes to conclude this debate, will confirm that this is a very real problem that is increasing because our landfill sites are full, and they would be the natural place for the plastic waste to go. I am not saying that they are the right place, but they are where recently the waste has been sent. So I welcome the fact that we have identified the lack of infrastructure in these amendments, as set out by the noble Baroness who tabled them. We should set up the appropriate infrastructure in this country.
Many may recall what I call the “first” Hartlepool by-election, in the early 2000s. I visited the Able plant near Hartlepool, where there was a very successful operation for dismantling “ghost ships”—I think that is what we called them. They were rusty bucket ships that had previously been sent to India and other places, where they did not have the infrastructure to dismantle them. We had, in that plant, an extremely successful operation where they had built up the expertise and the skills to use here in this country. It meant that we were disposing of these ships safely. We need to learn that lesson and convert it to the recycling and disposal of plastics.
I commend the University of York: in One Planet Week in February 2019, its researchers created a new system for recycling single-use plastics used in some of their successful scientific experiments. The technique that they have developed will prevent one tonne of plastic per laboratory ending up in landfill sites each year—or, as the amendments would indicate, otherwise being exported, which seems to be the current trend. The successful technique involves the implementation of an in-house decontamination station. If that can be used on site in one university, I hope we can adapt that technique and roll it out across other parts of the country. I hope my noble friend the Minister will commend that and look to set up similar infrastructure, which is obviously inexpensive to set up and probably just means tweaking the current operations that are already in operation throughout the country. That way, we will be able to dispose of much more of our own plastics in this country and will no longer be seeking to export them abroad.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness opposite. I support all these amendments; they are very simple, very short and very small, but they do actually fix a problem. I think the noble Baroness has every right to get cross. I am furious most of the time when I am speaking to the Government, because, for example, they have falsely claimed that they have achieved their CO2 reduction targets, when in fact—when we look at this sort of behaviour: exporting plastic waste—we are exporting our CO2. That is why the Government can falsely claim that they have hit those reduction targets. I very much regret that I did not sign these amendments, and I certainly will if they come back on Report.
We all know that the international waste economy is a nasty, polluting system, where the richest countries are using the poorest countries as dump sites—as giant landfill sites. Many people would be outraged, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, to see that the recycling that they so carefully do is just baled up and dumped on poor countries and among poor communities, who then have to suffer the pollution that it causes.
So the export of waste is nasty, but I am also concerned about the increasing capacity of UK incinerators. From what I can see, the planned capacity of these incinerators will soon far exceed the amount of waste that the UK produces. Many local authorities are, of course, tied into 25-year contracts with such businesses. This means they will be looking around for waste to burn. So either these companies and their investors will sustain losses or—and this is a much more concerning option—they will begin to import waste from abroad into the UK. So I would very much appreciate the Minister giving us the Government’s opinion on incinerator companies importing waste from abroad. Will the Government allow it, or will they join me, and I am sure many others, in calling for it to be banned? These amendments render a very simple option: to clean up our responsibility—our pollution—towards the rest of the world. I hope the Government accept them.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. I absolutely agree with her and would also like to add my voice to asking the question about the payments that go towards incinerators for waste. This also happens sneakily in the food system, and you end up with the absolute absurdity that some food companies are actually manufacturing food in order to be able to meet their commitment or contract with a waste incinerator, which is meant to have waste food—I will come to that later.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, I have also watched “Trashed” and it would make a very good film for a lot of people to see. It is pathetic that people spend their time recycling, only for it to end up being burned in a Turkish field, surrounded by little boys who are poking through the rubble on the off-chance that they will find something sellable. At least they see some kind of value in the plastic that we of course do not because, culturally, we have been told this is worthless. So I would also like to add my voice to support all schemes around bottle return. We have to see plastic as valuable: after all, it has taken air, oil, water, sky, soil et cetera to make it.
One of the things that also came out from the Greenpeace briefings was that, when we send waste out of the country, we send vast trailers. Someone attempting to check it who pulls the front down will see four bales when, in fact, the container probably has 400. So there is no possibility of knowing anything about this. The brokers are in it for the money and they do not take their duty of care seriously.
There was another point that came up. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned the Adana region, where Greenpeace was working. Greenpeace went to the Environment Agency and said, “Can we have a list of approved addresses where waste in Turkey is being sent?” It was given eight to check and four did not even exist. So we know this is a scam, and we know it has to stop. I am extremely pleased that Turkey has put its foot down—although it is a bit embarrassing that places such as China and other countries like it have put their foot down before we were able to put our foot down and start asking ourselves why we produce so much and what we are going to do about it.
It seems to me that of course we have to a good extended producer responsibility scheme. We have to ban our plastic waste—we cannot just send it away—and we have to have legally binding deposit schemes. But on a big level, on a cultural level, we need a real level of behaviour change from the supermarkets, everybody in retail and, in particular, from Amazon. It sends the most staggering amount of packaging with very small things. It seems that we shift our plastic problem from one place to the next. I do not know about other noble Lords but, certainly during this pandemic, I have had things arrive from Amazon that I am frankly embarrassed to have. Nobody ever touches that kind of area, and I think that we should. I am really glad the Government are getting on top of this. I will support these amendments wholeheartedly and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said, I will support them if they come back on Report.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 148A, 148B and 148C in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. To reinforce what other noble Lords have said, I agree with all those who have spoken on this important issue. In fact, we have been talking about the scourge of plastic throughout the debates on the Bill. We support these amendments wholeheartedly and we recognise the frustration expressed by a number of speakers. I will not go on for too long; I just want to reinforce some important points.
Some 61% of plastic packaging for recycling was exported in 2019 because of the lack of a domestic processing capacity. That lack of capacity is not a new problem; investment has been needed for many years, and the lack of progress calls into question the Government’s dedication to transitioning the UK to a circular economy. While the UK has continued to export its plastic waste, other countries, as noble Lords, and the noble Baroness in particular, have mentioned before, have become less willing or able to accept and process it. China closed its doors in 2017, Malaysia has tightened up regulation and just last week, as other speakers have said, Turkey—the biggest single recipient of UK waste—ended imports of most forms of plastic waste.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, made a very pertinent point about the exposure of illegal dumping. She talked, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, about the Greenpeace investigation and our 5.2 million tonnes of plastic waste; we are just shifting our plastic problem. The point she made was very touching: if we do not want our own children to play on these dumping sites and look for plastics, why should we expect people in other countries to allow that? It is a global problem: we cannot just end it by passing it on to other countries.
In recent years, a number of case studies have highlighted how carefully sorted plastics from the UK have ended up being fly-tipped or burned in other countries rather than being turned into new products. This highlights an important ethical case for change, on top of practical arguments about creating new jobs and transforming the economy.
While we may not be able to end our reliance on export overnight, it should be an ambition. The British Plastics Federation estimates that with the right drivers in place, the UK could eliminate low-quality exports entirely and reduce the overall volume of exports to just 9%. Additional investment and an export ban such as that proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, could improve the situation further.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I, like many of your Lordships, find the news reports showing plastic waste from the UK being dumped and burned abroad very disturbing. It is illegal activity and we are working hard with partners abroad to find a resolution. As outlined in our manifesto, the Government are fully committed to banning the export of plastic waste to non-OECD countries, using the powers in the Environment Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, brought up the Greenpeace campaign, which claimed that all UK plastic waste is exported to be dumped and burned overseas. That is false. It is illegal to export waste from the UK to be burned or dumped overseas. Any UK operators found to be illegally exporting waste can face a two-year jail term and an unlimited fine.
Waste exports need to be made in accordance with the legislation, which implements our obligations under the Basel convention and the OECD decision on waste, and we have a system of inspections in place to verify compliance. Over the last 12 months, monitoring by the Environment Agency has had a particular focus on preventing illegal plastic waste exports. In 2020, the Environment Agency prevented the illegal export of 46 shipping containers of plastic waste to Turkey, and this year it has already prevented the illegal export of 122 containers of plastic waste to Turkey.
Defra officials and the UK waste shipment regulators have been liaising with the Turkish authorities to forge better working relationships. The Environment Agency has developed a good relationship with the Turkish Ministry of Environment, which has expressed its thanks for the UK’s collaborative approach in preventing illegal exports of waste to Turkey.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering mentioned ghost ships. I reiterate that ships which reach the end of their lives must be recycled in accordance with the relevant legislation. As with any waste that is exported from the UK, it is illegal to export waste for disposal except in exceptional cases.
A number of noble Lords mentioned capacity, including my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, the noble Lord, Lord Khan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. Certainly, implementing a ban on exports of plastic waste to non-OECD countries will have wide-ranging effects on local authorities, our domestic waste infrastructure and businesses. It is important that delivering the manifesto commitment does not result in unintended consequences such as plastic waste being diverted from recycling operations to landfill or incineration. Defra has commissioned research looking at the available reprocessing capacity in the UK and the OECD, which will inform policy development ahead of a consultation in 2022. However, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for her amendments.
Clause 61 provides full powers to update our existing regulations on waste shipments as necessary, now that we have left the EU, including prohibiting the import and export of waste to any country in the world, so we could, for example, put Turkey on that list. Although the intention behind the noble Baroness’s amendment is welcome, unfortunately it would narrow the available power’s effect so that it could be used only very strictly to make regulations connected with prohibiting waste imports and exports. That could preclude us from making additional reforms that I know the noble Baroness would welcome: for example, to update reporting and monitoring requirements in connection with the regulation of waste imports and exports in future. It is appropriate to provide the Government with flexibility in this case as to when and how such provisions and regulations are made. This will ensure that regulations can be updated and revised as needed to crack down on the harmful export of polluting plastic waste to developing countries.
A number of noble Lords raised the question of the incineration of plastic waste. In particular, my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering mentioned an innovative scheme from, I think, the University of York. A number of small firms are evaluating myriad scientific methods of reusing and recycling all forms of plastic, in particular those that cannot be got rid of in any other way. They include one which breaks down the plastic in question’s relevant chemical components, which then can be made into an oil that can be used to provide power. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, will be reassured that these are not processed for incineration. I do not have enough lines to satisfy the noble Baroness on the question of general incineration, so I commit to write to the House about other ways in which we can prevent plastics ending up being incinerated.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and to the Minister for her response. I am aware that it is illegal to export waste for it to be dumped; nevertheless, that is what is happening. I am aware too that the Local Government Association does not support this amendment as it believes that the cost of dealing with plastic waste will fall on local authorities, at a time when their budgets are under severe strain. I sympathise with that viewpoint. However, as I have said, I do not believe that householders who are taking the trouble to separate their waste for it to be recycled understand that their plastic waste is being sent to countries where it is not being treated in an approved manner. More investment is needed in infrastructure. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, mentioned in-house recycling plants. I have also visited such plants and know how effective they can be. In some cases they can convert waste to energy, which is very useful.
I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. Deposit return schemes are an important part of the answer but the Government need to be proactive on their behalf. There are many instances where each one of us can take steps to reduce the amount of plastic we buy and use, and publicity will be key to ensuring that this is a success. I regret that neither the LGA nor the Government are taking reducing the production and use of plastic seriously enough, and I may return to this issue on Report. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)
We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 149. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in the group to a Division must make that clear in debate.
Amendment 149
Baroness Boycott
“Food waste
(1) This section applies to a retailer who—(a) generates more than 10 tons of food waste per year, or (b) operates stores which with a floor area of more than 400 metres squared.(2) A retailer to whom this section applies must recycle wasted food products, having regard to the following steps listed in order of priority—(a) preventing food waste (for example, by not ordering more of a food product than they expect to sell);(b) using unsold food which is fit for human consumption (for example, through food donation or processing);(c) recovering unsold food which is fit for animal consumption into feedstock;(d) converting food waste into compost for agriculture or for energy recovery, including biogas.(3) A retailer to whom this section applies must make an agreement in relation to each store which it operates with at least one charitable organisation which distributes donated food, having taken reasonable steps to ascertain that the charitable organisation uses appropriate processes to distribute food through a clearly advertised address.(4) A local authority may impose a financial penalty on a retailer in relation to a store within its area if the authority is satisfied beyond reasonable that the person has breached subsection (2) or (3).(5) The amount of the financial penalty is to be such amount as the authority determines but not to be more than £5,000.(6) A retailer to whom this section applies or a large food manufacturer must disclose to the Secretary of State the volume of food waste in their supply chain.(7) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the requirement in subsection (6), including the definition of “a large food manufacturer” and what details must be disclosed and to whom.(8) The Secretary of State must make regular reports to Parliament about the volume of food waste being reported under subsection (6).(9) The Secretary of State must consult those likely to be affected by this section before making regulations under this section.(10) The Secretary of State must ensure that the volume of food being wasted is at least—(a) 60% lower than the 2020 baseline for 2025;(b) 80% lower than the 2020 baseline for 2030.(11) The Secretary of State must conduct a public education campaign on the issues caused by food waste including but not limited to—(a) climate change, and(b) biodiversity loss.(12) In this section—“food waste” and “food waste reduction” are to be defined by the Secretary of State by regulations, taking account of such terms as have been validated by or are in accordance with—(a) the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,(b) the Waste and Resources Action Programme, and(c) the waste hierarchy as set out in the Waste (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2012 (SI 2011/988) and Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011 (SI 2012/1889), save that methods of “food waste reduction” for the purposes of this section may not include any form of waste disposal. “retailer” means any person carrying on (or actively seeking to carry on) a business in any part of the United Kingdom for the supply of groceries to consumers.”
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I really wish that I was not having to move this amendment. I speak as the chair of Feeding Britain, and all through this pandemic we have been giving out meals to an extraordinary amount of people—the numbers have doubled. We have got food from many different food redistribution companies, notably companies such as FareShare and individual supermarkets. Many supermarkets have stepped up to the challenge over the last 18 months and have given away a great deal more food, but there are still lapses in the system. This is, essentially, an extremely simple amendment that just says that big supermarkets must, by law, have a relationship with a food redistribution centre. This was introduced a few years back by Kerry McCarthy in the other place. Indeed, the now Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, signed her 10-minute rule Bill supporting this idea, and such a proposal is now law in France.
We have just been listening to lots of statistics about waste. The most recent one that I have found is that the UK’s biggest supermarkets bin 190 million meals a year. Is that true? I do not know, but it comes from WRAP. My guess is that it is true, and that a lot of food that is up to its sell-by date but still perfectly edible is chucked out the door. That is really what I want to see changed—and I want it to change culturally. At the moment, food is very cheap; I want people to see that it has a value and importance. In the end, with this amendment, as the chair of Feeding Britain, I would like us all to be put of business; at the moment, we are not out of business and are, in fact, incredibly needed. As people come off furlough, the numbers who are using Feeding Britain feeding sites are rising, not going down.
One of the other things that I talk about in this amendment is that we need to get to the food waste pyramid. Food should always be thought of as food for humans: if it has not been sold, it must go for donation; if we cannot eat it, it should feed an animal; and if that cannot happen, it should feed the soil. There is a very exact pyramid to show the way that this works.
The amendment also seeks penalties for retailers which do not do this and to ensure that the volume of food being wasted is at least—and this is where I challenge the Government, because I know that this is above their targets—60% lower than the 2020 baseline for 2025 and 80% lower than the 2020 baseline for 2030.
I did not make this up. I consulted Dave Lewis who, from 2014 until last year, ran Tesco. I asked him what it would take, what we can do, who we can push, and what we can achieve. He came back with these figures. I know the figures will be repeated in the food strategy, so this is doable and challenging. As we all know, this is the year of COP. Food waste is responsible for so much: relevant to the last group of amendments, food waste is the reason we have so much plastic floating around. All these things connect. It is about getting the public to understand that food is valuable and plastic is valuable, and therefore must not be thrown away. We need to do it in the right way.
My other point in this amendment is that the Secretary of State must conduct a public education campaign around the question of food waste and making people understand that, every time we throw food away, we are adding to our environmental problems. As many noble Lords have just said, throwing food away with the plastic adds to all sorts of environment and social problems, but food itself costs air, soil and energy. As the Dasgupta reported showed, these things are valuable and valuable to our society.
I hope that at least part of this quite long amendment will be taken up by the Government. There are currently 13 million people in this country, mostly kids, who are what you could call food-stressed—they do not have enough food and cannot afford enough healthy food. If you want to eat 1,000 healthy calories, it costs about five times more than it does to eat 1,000 unhealthy calories. Much of the food that hits its sell-by date is good, proper food. It has been grown, processed and packaged; a lot has gone into it and we chuck it. We could, very easily—and culturally it would be a big deal—just put this amendment in the Bill and be like the French. Their food recycling went up immediately by 20%—that is a lot of meals.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, I am very happy to put my name to the noble Baroness’s amendment. She has moved it extremely well and there is very little for me to add, except to say that I want to go a bit further than she does. Therefore, I have also tabled Amendment 149A in my own name, which focuses specifically on supermarkets.
Noble Lords might very well ask why I am focusing on supermarkets when they have very little waste. I am focusing on them because I want supermarkets to take responsibility for their supply chains, and not just the food on their premises. To do this, we need mandatory reporting at farm level, which is currently not reported at all, and could account for as much as 25% of all UK food waste. Transparent reporting will reduce the food waste by big retailers, benefitting the environment, the climate and natural resources. A levy ought to be charged on supermarkets proportional to the food waste in the UK supply chains.
Why is mandatory reporting so important? There has been voluntary reporting, but it does not work; the firms are not reporting. Only 60 companies are reporting their data publicly, and more than 500 large companies are not reporting at all. It has to be mandatory reporting. The targets also need looking at because, under the voluntary commitments, UK food businesses have carefully achieved measurable food waste reductions of just 0.23 million tonnes between 2011 and 2018. It is estimated that between 3.78 million and 6.38 million tonnes of food waste occurs in primary production, manufacturing, retail, and hospitality and food services. The saving that has happened—which everyone will praise—is less than 1% a year. That is not satisfactory; that is not good.
The Government’s timetable is slow. It could be speeded up, and I recommend that it is. The Government have been inactive for far too long. Indeed, Tesco itself says that mandatory reporting and a speeded-up programme are absolutely vital to meet sustainable development goal 12.3. My amendment is an important addition to the one moved by my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. In conclusion, it is worth just pausing to think that Tesco makes £4 billion annual profit from food that its customers waste at home. The point of my amendment is to try to reduce that.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I am delighted to follow my noble friend and I support both him and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in the sentiments behind their amendments. In looking at the factsheet that was circulated by the department in connection with this Bill, I welcome the fact that the Government are minded to introduce regulations to, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, move food waste further up the hierarchy, so that there will be less left at the end. I particularly welcome the two amendments in this group as probing amendments, and ask my noble friend: is there not a degree of urgency that we need to do this?
I may have one point of disagreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. She and I both have family living in Denmark, I understand, and I have been immensely taken by the contribution that the Danes, other Scandinavians and Austria and Germany have made to enhancing energy from waste. I prefer to call it “energy from waste”; I know others call it incineration. I had beer poured over me once in my surgery when I was a Member of the other place; since then, I have called it “energy from waste”. This is the ultimate circular economy, because you are taking potential food waste and putting it into the system—the residual; I accept the hierarchy, and it should be the absolute minimum. The community benefits because it would go, ideally, into the local grid. There is a now a big incinerator in what was my original constituency, the Vale of York. The gripe I have with it is that it goes into the National Grid, whereas, as north Yorkshire is very cold, it should go into the local grid.
The factsheet also set out the importance of reducing the amount of food waste—as do both the amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Caithness and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott—which is currently estimated as producing 25 million tonnes of CO2 gas emissions every year through 9.5 million tonnes of food and drink which is wasted annually post farm gate. I take those figures as being accurate, as I understand that they are in the factsheet we received.
I press my noble friend when he sums up that there is a sense of urgency here: however we address it, we need to reduce that waste. I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, not just on feeding Britain, as I think she called it, but for the national food strategy, as one of the team with its author, Henry Dimbleby. I look forward to hearing the official government response to Part 1 of that report.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as on the register. Like my noble friend Lord Caithness, I support the thrust of both these amendments, though neither goes far enough, in my opinion, including my noble friend’s amendment.
Amendment 149 applies only to retailers generating more than 10 tonnes of food waste and in stores of more than 400 square metres. I would reduce those sizes by half and apply them to everyone producing food waste: retailers, manufacturers and the catering industry. We have no idea of the extent of food waste in the catering industry. Today’s uneaten roast chicken should be tomorrow’s soup or curry.
Similarly, Amendment 149A in the name of my noble friend Lord Caithness is absolutely right in concept, especially the idea of reducing food waste across the whole supermarket supply chain. We often concentrate on the food that is unsold in shops at closing time, but we really need to tackle the rejected misshapen carrots, the less-than-perfectly shaped tomatoes and all the other food that is thrown away before it gets to the shops or caterers. A lot of organisations, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, referred, usually charities, are seeking to use up food before supermarkets throw it away. My noble friend Lord Caithness is right to seek to reduce all food waste across the supply chain, before it gets to the ultimate shop or caterer.
In my opinion, it is wrong to set the bar at supermarkets with a turnover of £1 billion. That is too high. I would apply it to all retailers, manufacturers and catering outlets with a turnover of more than £200 million. As an aside, if I may say so—probably improperly—I hope there is still a Morrisons supermarket in five years’ time we can apply it to, after the vulture capitalists have loaded it with debt, robbed the pension fund and asset-stripped it. But that is possibly for another day.
Neither of the amendments deals with the appalling waste of food in our homes but, again, that is not a discussion for the Bill today. If my noble friend the Minister cannot accept the amendments, I hope he will stress to all those in the food supply business that at some point, the Government will be bearing down on them to drastically reduce all food waste at all points in the food supply chain and across all food outlets.
Lord Lucas (Con) [V]
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Blencathra is quite right to point up food waste at home. Here in Eastbourne, we have a universal system to deal with that, and a pair of them is nesting on the roof above me as I speak: very little goes to waste here. But on the broader front, yes, we absolutely must not accept the idea of waste. This comes back to the point I was making on previous amendments: the necessity of looking at things in the round. One of the prime ways to reduce waste is plastic packaging. The less you use plastic packaging, the more food waste you generate. We need to look at things as a whole, not at little bits. Within the area of food that, however packaged, has reached or is reaching the end of its shelf life, we indeed need to make it compulsory that it is offered to people, particularly charities, so that they can distribute it as it is needed and that, if there is no market there for it, that it is used in the most efficient way possible. By doing that, we will generate efficient ways to use it.
The other day, I came across a fascinating company called C3 BIOTECH, which is using biotechnology to convert food waste into useful fuels and other materials. These things flourish because we create the circumstances in which they can. If we do not mandate that people deal effectively with food waste, it just gets thrown away and the opportunity to do better things never arises. It is really important that the Government take action in this area. I wish the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, well: if not in the detail of its drafting, very much in its spirit.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, on their excellent amendments. They are really good but, sadly, I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. That is not something I usually do, but he is absolutely right: we must go even further on these issues. Food waste is a scourge on our society, We should be horribly embarrassed about it. Unfortunately, we are trying to get the Government to catch up, and I just do not know how we can do that; they are so far behind the general public on such issues.
I slightly disagree about how much individuals can do, because this is not an issue for individual behaviour change. A bit of education, perhaps: teaching people not to take those large packs of something that will end up with half rotting in the fridge, or whatever, but generally, this is for businesses—supermarkets—and for the Government to start legislating. These two amendments do quite a comprehensive job of covering all the issues: the waste hierarchy, practical solutions such as producing feedstock, setting targets and reporting.
I volunteered for a homeless charity for some years. Every Monday morning, I would go out on a very early tea run. Some companies, mainly cafés such as Costa, gave us their food from the day before to distribute to the homeless, which was very welcome. One Christmas, a big supermarket gave us 25 turkeys, which was a little more than we could handle and took quite a bit of redistribution. It happens from time to time, but we must make it normal to do that, so that nobody thinks it is okay to put waste food in a bin.
Personally, I think the Government would be well advised to accept these amendments. It is only by going after supermarkets and businesses that we can actually change the way we treat food waste.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I am happy to speak in favour of this small but very important group of amendments. I have added my name to Amendment 149, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. With so many families and individuals struggling to find enough money to feed themselves, we should do all we can to prevent food waste.
The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, who is an expert on avoiding food waste, has spoken passionately on this issue. Proposed new subsection (2) of the amendment gives a short list of actions that food retailers must take to prevent food waste. Proposed new subsection (2)(b) ensures that where food is fit for human consumption, it goes either to food banks or for further processing. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, spoke passionately about that and I completely agree with her.
As we approach the end of the school term and the beginning of the long six-week summer holidays, many families will be very concerned about how they will feed their children from the end of July until the beginning of the new school term in September. This is a time when food banks are likely to see an increase in the number of people using their facilities. Redundant food from supermarkets and food retailers has a role to play here, and food waste indeed has a value and should not go to landfill. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, quite rightly raised the issue of uneaten roast chicken being made into tomorrow’s soup or curry. That is what happens in our household; however, it cannot happen for homeless people who are accommodated in bed and breakfast facilities, where they have no access to cooking facilities. They are dependent on food banks and other feeding stations not to starve.
Proposed new subsections (3) to (11) give the criteria for how the Secretary of State will prevent food waste, the consultation and the need to report to Parliament on just how much food is being wasted. The public have got behind the campaign to prevent food waste and will be lobbying their MPs to ensure that they support it. Reporting to Parliament is the way in which MPs can reassure their constituents that everything is being done to prevent food waste and ensure that those living in poverty, who are hungry, are able to take advantage of excess food production. Proposed new subsections (10) to (12) give realistic targets for reducing food waste and ensuring a public campaign on the effects of food waste on climate change and biodiversity loss.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in Amendment 149A, ensures that the supermarkets and food producers neither order nor produce more food than is needed. I agree that this amendment should be in the Bill. These businesses have been in operation for many years and, by now, should be aware of just how many items of a particular sort they are likely to sell and how many crops will need to be grown to meet demand. They cannot, of course, be expected to know whether a particular item is going to feature on a television cookery show, which will cause a spike in demand but, with that excluded, the science of supply and demand is well known to both producers and retailers. Ensuring that this is calculated and measured is key to preventing food waste.
At a time when not only in GB are people living in food poverty and going hungry, but large areas of Africa and other continents are suffering devastating loss of crops due to climate change and the aftermath of war, it is simply unacceptable for this country, one of the richest in the world, to be producing food to be wasted. I agree with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, fully support this group of amendments and look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, for bringing forward these amendments, which we strongly support. They both made important points in the introduction to their amendments, and I thank them for that.
In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion, both in politics and the media, about food waste. Some countries have already made laws to try to reduce food waste. In France, supermarkets are not allowed to waste their food; they have to give it, for free, to homeless people. France consistently tops the world rankings for its lack of food waste because of this, and Germany now has similar laws on food waste, so I strongly urge the Minister to follow in their footsteps and take note of these amendments.
Globally, food waste is estimated to cost £2.9 trillion a year. That is enough food to feed every hungry person in the world twice over, yet food insecurity and hunger still exist in both developing and developed countries. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, talked about the problem of school holidays for children who are dependent on free school meals and issues with crop failure in the developing world.
WRAP estimates there is the potential to redistribute a further 190,000 tonnes of surplus food from the retail and food manufacturing sectors. Some of the surplus is difficult to make use of; it could be costly, in that it would need to be reworked or repackaged, and some surplus would not be edible. But WRAP still estimates that around 100,000 tonnes are both accessible and edible. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, mentioned food that is rejected—perhaps it is misshapen. It is a nonsense that we throw away perfectly good food.
It is clear that we are not adequately distributing the food we produce. It is also clear that the environmental costs in water, energy and space to grow food that is not eaten is more than our environment can take. When food waste ends up in landfill, even though it will decompose, it contributes to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it biodegrades. The amounts it produces during this process are on a level with the use of cars and fossil fuels. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, that education is an important part of what we need to do to resolve these problems.
We have heard how much we throw away in the UK, but the 25 million tonnes of CO2 emissions just from the UK’s food waste is more than Kenya’s total annual emissions—a country of 53 million people. This is disgraceful. Even if you count only the edible food wasted, it comes to a total of 14 million tonnes. If we eradicated this, according to the Government’s latest data, it would be equivalent to taking one in five cars off the road. Considering this Government have set a target to reduce greenhouse gas levels by 68% of 1990 levels by 2030, reducing or even eliminating food waste seems like an obvious and easy step to take towards that goal.
Supermarkets are partially to blame for the global food waste catastrophe. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, made this point well and looked at responsibility in the supply chains. We know that supermarket food waste comes to around £230 million a year, but also that they can be part of the solution, with significant power to have an impact on the amount of food we waste. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, rightly talked about how they stepped up during the pandemic. They can behave differently.
We can look at ways in which this can be done. Expiry dates is one. We know that consumers get confused about what the dates for food safety mean and, because of that, a lot of edible food is thrown away at home. There is not enough understanding of the difference between sell-by, use-by and best-by dates. We could do something about this confusion and lack of consistency. Supermarkets can play a role in standardising this information, so that consumers have it in an accurate easy-to-understand format. One personal bugbear is whether we really need a date for fresh fruit and vegetables; it is obvious to me when something has gone off. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, talked of a need to find a use for all foods, which is really important.
The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, talked about food banks, FareShare and the role that supermarkets can play. They can and do donate, but food banks have a limited amount of time to turn overripe produce around before it goes bad, and they are prohibited from giving away food that has passed its use-by or best-before date. Again, perishable foods can end up in the bin. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, we need to find ways to use all food.
Two years ago, in June 2019, more than 100 of the biggest players in food, including all the UK’s major supermarkets, signed a pledge to take action to drive down food waste and raise public awareness of the issue. The Government have also expressed their commitment to supporting UN sustainable development goal 12.3 to help halve food waste by 2030 and to report on progress and prioritise action. I ask the Minister to provide an update on progress on that pledge and the actions that are being prioritised to meet our obligations on SDG 12.3.
Food waste in the UK is a huge problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, rightly said it is a scourge in our society, and it is time for the Government to legislate. As well as an environmental disaster, it is a social catastrophe, when we consider the 10.5 billion meals that wasted food could have provided to deprived people. I appreciate that the Government have cut down on their food waste in recent years, but there is still an awfully long way to go. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and other Lords, have said, I look forward to reading the Government’s food strategy. They must grasp this opportunity and do something about this. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for her unwavering dedication to this issue. We have discussed it on numerous occasions, both recently and before I became a Minister, and she knows that I share her passion.
The impacts of food waste are profound. I was going to give some examples, but they have just been given by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and I will not repeat them. It is true, however, that the impacts of food waste on unnecessary land use, unnecessary conversion of intact ecosystems and emissions are enormous. If food waste were a country, it would be the third or fourth largest emitter in the world. The madness of throwing food away at these levels is evident when there are people who do not have food to eat.
I turn to Amendment 149, which covers a lot of ground, and a similar amendment from my noble friend Lord Caithness, Amendment 149A. Through powers in Clause 49 and Schedule 4 to the Bill, the Government will be able to place obligations across the supply chain on food producers, retailers and supermarkets, making them responsible and liable for surplus food and food waste at all levels of the waste management hierarchy, including prevention and redistribution of food waste. I am pleased to confirm to my noble friend Lord Caithness that this could be through obligations such as food waste reduction targets, as outlined in his amendment, and moving food up the waste hierarchy with a focus on prevention and redistribution. In response to points raised by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, I confirm that the Government will be able to place obligations across the supply chain, from producers to manufacturers to caterers. We will also have powers to enforce these obligations if any producers were to breach them.
I reiterate that the Government are fully committed to meeting the UN sustainable development goal 12.3 target, which seeks to halve global food waste at consumer and retail levels by 2030. Of course, we have a long way to go, but significant progress has already been made, with a reported 27% per capita reduction to date, excluding inedible parts. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I felt it a little unfair to say that the UK is miles behind. It is true that there are miles remaining to go to tackle this problem, but the UK is a world leader in food waste prevention. We have, for example, been singled out by the World Resources Institute for the work we are doing. There is much more to be done, and there are lots of steps which have been put forward by noble Lords today in this debate which we should seriously consider, but it is not true to state that we are miles behind other countries.
To ensure we are on track to meet the sustainable development goal target, the Government have put in place a range of measures to tackle food waste across the supply chain and in households. For example, we already have powers to introduce the public reporting of food waste by businesses and are about to consult on that. The consultation will cover implementation timelines, the inclusion of primary production food businesses and proposes a range of food businesses including retailers which would then be in scope. Regarding the noble Baroness’s amendment, we will first assess progress by food businesses to reduce food waste through various government measures which already exist, and which we are including here. We will then review progress after mandatory food waste reporting regulations have come into force. We have powers in this Bill to then propose or amend producer responsibility obligations broadly in line with the noble Baroness’s amendment. Unless we see serious progress, the Government will necessarily act.
I would like to mention some of the things which the Government are already doing to tackle this problem. For example, we have funded WRAP to work on the Courtauld commitment 2025 to introduce the food waste reduction road map, an objectively ground-breaking industry-wide toolkit with commitment from more than 250 businesses. We are supporting several WRAP’s campaigns, including the citizens strategy, the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, and we backed the UK’s first food waste action week in March this year. These campaigns are clearly designed to shift consumer behaviour, which is a major part of the solution.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, I have no requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
I thank your Lordships, and the Minister, whose final words were telling in that the Government have gone some way towards fixing this problem. I congratulate the Government on all the work which has been done through WRAP. The Love Food Hate Waste campaign has been terrific. However, the target is not high enough, and all sorts of things are not yet good enough.
I thank the noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, in particular the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. I completely agree with him that the food waste at the top of the supply chain is one of the biggest culprits lurking out there, and that we must get at it. In social supermarkets which I have set up, we extracted extraordinary amounts of products which were useless because the labelling was wrong, advertising the football, for example. Where does that food go? That is where we really need government support and transparency.
I was interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, and I agree with her that energy from waste is a very good way to describe it. I know that Ludlow at one point ran its school bus on the food waste which people put in buckets at the ends of their drives. It was very effective because people got involved, and it helped them to understand that there is proper energy, life and all sorts of good stuff in food. As she said, I indeed have lots of relatives in Denmark who are unbelievably good about it, and also do bottle deposit schemes.
I found myself in complete agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that it should apply to every sort of supermarket.d I disagree with him only when he mentioned the catering industry. On the whole, caterers are very canny with their money, and tend to get the right amount of food to feed people. I am always incredibly impressed when I find myself in the same place as a caterer. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, although I wonder where his children were. Were they on the roof, or was it some birds? I saw a whole load of storks this weekend, not far from Eastbourne—perhaps they came down to feed on his waste food, as they are very hungry all the time. He was completely right about plastic packaging—we must use less.
As always, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, said the key things, noting that the public are far ahead of the Government on this. We all want this. This has to be done, because we must get at the industry. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for her support. I echo her view about the coming summer holidays, which should be lovely, but are in fact scary for a huge number of parents. Supermarkets should know how much to get, and not wait for the cookery shows.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, gave a fantastic speech. I am so glad to get all that incredible data on the record. I did not know the statistic about one in five cars, which is really staggering—so I thank her for that.
I shall leave noble Lords with a couple of thoughts about France. Data obtained by the Independent from the Carrefour supermarket chain, the second largest in France with a socking great 20% market share, shows that in 2020 it donated 30,371 tonnes of food from its supermarkets, the equivalent of 72 million meals, meaning that a single French supermarket exceeded the donations of all 10 UK supermarkets by more than 6,000 tonnes. France is now ranked number one by the Food Sustainability Index.
The point about that is that people really liked it. It is a very popular law. Meanwhile, the UK’s top 10 chains donated less than 9% of their surplus food for human consumption. We could really change this. After the end of this pandemic, for the Government to say “This is going to go into law” would be incredibly popular. The supermarkets are already three-quarters of the way along the road, and if we can take on board the fact that it should be all of them, we would have a win that would be a good one. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)
My Lords, we come now to the group beginning with Amendment 150A. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division must make that clear in debate.
Amendment 150A
Baroness Sheehan
“Air quality: speed limits
(1) The national speed limit for restricted roads in England is 20 miles per hour.(2) Nothing in this section affects the power of traffic authorities responsible for such roads to make exceptions to the national speed limit where appropriate.”Member’s explanatory statement
The purpose of this amendment is to reduce the number of fine particulates released into the air from non-exhaust emissions (NEE), such as brake, tyre and road surface wear. The Air Quality Expert Group, an expert committee of DEFRA, has found that one of the most effective mitigation strategies for NEE is to lower the speed of traffic and promote driving behaviour that reduces braking and higher-speed cornering.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, this amendment is in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley. I strongly support Amendments 151A and 151B in the name of my noble friend Lady Randerson. The amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, have similar aims and also have my support.
The amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Tope and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, are ones that I strongly agree with. They are very comprehensive in nature and, if accepted by the Government, would help immeasurably to bear down on the non-traffic-related causes of urban pollution. They dovetail nicely with my amendment, which aims to bear down on traffic-related air pollution.
I should declare an interest as a founder of the campaign group 20’s Plenty for Merton. My amendment is simple: to reduce to 20 miles per hour the speed limit on “restricted roads”, which are defined in the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 as being roads on which there are streetlights
“not more than 200 yards apart”.
Emissions from vehicles arise from two sources: the exhaust emissions—the noxes, the oxides of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and particulates—and non-exhaust emissions, the NEEs, which noble Lords might not be so familiar with. NEEs are particulates, the majority of which are fine particulates, PM2.5s and smaller. They arise from the friction of rubber on tarmac, brake wear and road dust re-suspension.
Two things happen when vehicles slow down. First, exhaust emissions from vehicles are reduced—much more so from diesel vehicles than from petrol. Secondly, non-exhaust emissions are also reduced, because slower speeds lead to smoother driving, with much less stop and start and therefore fewer finer particulates from tyre and brake wear and road dust. It is these non-exhaust emissions that my amendment is particularly aimed at. No legislation is currently in place to reduce non-exhaust emission particles so, while legislation has been effective at driving down emissions of particles from the exhausts of internal combustion engine vehicles, the NEE proportion of road traffic emissions has increased and will continue to do so.
Those emissions contribute to total ambient particulate matter, in particular the tinier PM2.5s and smaller particles that are so damaging to human health, with an estimated 40,000 premature deaths in the UK alone and many millions more overseas. Just last week, in another debate on air pollution on this same Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, spoke with knowledge and authority on the many ways in which these invidious small particles can damage human organs, particularly young ones. The noble Baroness and many other noble Lords cited the tragic case of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, whose asthma, aggravated by preventable air pollution, led to her premature death. Her death and those of many thousands of others need not have happened.
Data from the UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory indicate that particles from brake, tyre and road wear contribute 7.5% and 8.5% of all primary PM2.5 and PM10 emissions. That is a good 16%, which is quite substantial. The above data is taken from the 2019 air quality expert group report on non-exhaust emissions that was prepared for Defra and the devolved Administrations—so it is a government report that I am referring to. The report recommends that policy development with respect to non-exhaust emissions should recognise that such emissions are an important source of ambient concentrations of airborne particles and—I repeat again—will become more so as emissions from exhausts are phased out. Is that important recommendation something that the Government acknowledge and accept?
A key finding of the report is that the most effective strategy to reduce non-exhaust emissions is to lower the speed of traffic and promote driving behaviour that reduces braking and higher-speed cornering. This is effectively what my amendment aims to do.
I will offer some background. Noble Lords will know that 20 miles per hour speed limits are now widespread across the UK, with more than 21 million people living on such streets. Many of our large cities, including London, Manchester, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool and many more, are largely made up of roads with 20 miles per hour limits. Wales is planning to introduce a default 20 miles per hour limit from 2023. It is currently running a pilot in Cardiff and other areas, not to test the concept, which is proven, but to iron out administrative glitches.
Not only are 20 miles per hour speed limits overwhelmingly popular with the public where they have been implemented, they are influencing modal shifts in towns and cities as more people feel safer and more confident about walking on roads where traffic is calmer. There is a real societal shift in behaviour where these lower speed limits have been introduced.
There are a number of other advantages. In moving from 31 miles per hour to 19 miles per hour there is a two-decibel to three-decibel reduction in traffic noise, so noise pollution comes down. Another advantage is that electric vehicles are far more efficient at lower speeds, leading to lower demand on the grid. As a member of the Lords Science and Technology Select Committee I have been listening to evidence to our batteries and fuel cell inquiry, and more than one witness has expressed concern about meeting the demand for green electricity that the move to EVs will generate. We must prepare and plan for that, and any measure that reduces demand will help enormously.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak specifically to the amendments in my name, Amendments 151A and 151B. I also support the other amendments in the group. As my noble friend Lady Sheehan ably and clearly set out the issues in relation to emissions and particulates from vehicles, I will not repeat what she said, for the sake of brevity, but I wish to underline the importance of the information that she has dealt with.
The purpose of my amendments is simple: to set out clear obligations on local authorities to monitor air pollution at those points where it is likely to be highest, such as near busy roads, and where it is most damaging to human health, such as near hospitals and schools—because children are especially vulnerable. They would oblige local authorities to take action as a result of such monitoring and to publicise that action plan.
Local authorities already have powers to monitor air quality, and additional powers to encourage environmentally-friendly behaviour that improves it. For example, stationary idling of a car is an offence under Section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. It can incur a £20 fixed penalty under the Road Traffic (Vehicle Emissions) (Fixed Penalty) (England) Regulations 2002—that penalty going up for late payment. So this is old hat, but the key point is that the fine is imposed only if the driver fails to switch off their engine when asked.
It is local authorities which issue those penalties rather than the police. As all noble Lords will know, local authorities are massively overstretched, with multiple responsibilities and inadequate funding. For many of them, this simply is not a priority, although there are some that make it so. For example, Islington Council had a crackdown on idling vehicles in 2014, and again in 2016, but it is an exception and not the norm. With a host of other powers, such as safe routes to school, pedestrianisation, 20 mph zones—as my noble friend has outlined—low emission zones, the provision of charging points for electric vehicles et cetera, some local authorities are much more enthusiastic than others, and some are simply better resourced to use the powers effectively.
My noble friend referred to the devolved Administrations. In Cardiff, where I live, we are well used to 20 mph zones, which are dotted around the capital city of Wales. Although there was a minor controversy in the early months of their introduction, it has been notable how widely effective they are and how people accept them. Traffic speeds have undoubtedly reduced as a result.
My amendments would establish a baseline which would raise the game for local authorities and ensure that the Government set the high standards and proactive approach, and provide the leadership which will be needed if the UK is to get anywhere near government targets by the dates that they have set. It should be emphasised that if local authorities are to take a uniformly more proactive approach, they need the funding to do so.
Those of us who work with these issues are sometimes surprised that public knowledge and understanding of the impact of traffic and other forms of air pollution is so poor. The tragic death of Ella Kissi-Debrah, referred to by many noble Lords, and the coroner’s ruling on it turned statistics into an understandable human story. She lived close to the South Circular road, but the link between her asthma and her living conditions was not properly understood back in 2013. There is now research evidence from a large study in Lambeth that a period of high levels of air pollution, particularly diesel-related air pollution, leads immediately to a spike in the number of people going to see their GP with breathing difficulties. That spike includes a disproportionately high number of children.
Local authorities have public health responsibilities, and a natural part of those must be to take a more proactive approach to reducing air pollution and to informing their residents of those areas to avoid because they are heavily polluted.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I am extremely happy to see so many noble Lords interested in this issue, because it is a massive national health issue that we really have to do something about. I agree completely that “20’s plenty”. Reducing the speed limit to 20 mph would not only reduce emissions and improve the health of people living alongside those roads but reduce the number of casualties—the road deaths and injuries—that cost the nation a fortune in social services, the NHS and policing. Anything to do with lowering the speed limit has a lot of benefits. The only negative appears to be a few irate car drivers who think that it is okay to drive at 80 or 90 mph in towns and cities.
My amendments seek to create a comprehensive system of targets, monitoring and funding to reduce air pollution levels to World Health Organization guideline levels. I know that we are not supposed to get involved in money or government finances, but it is not possible to end this crisis without significant public spending. The Government must make the money available to local authorities to transform their communities and clean up their air.
I first became aware of the huge problem of air pollution in London when I was on the London Assembly. I lived through Ken Livingstone’s eight years and the Boris Johnson’s eight years in power; Ken Livingstone did seem to get this, and the congestion charge obviously helped. In Boris Johnson’s time, we were in the build-up to the Olympics. At that point, there were only two monitoring stations in London from which the EU—it oversaw and monitored our air pollution—accepted information. One of the stations was on Marylebone Road, opposite Madame Tussauds. It is still there, and the intake pipe is some 12 feet above the road. Anybody who understands anything about air pollution knows that it is mostly lower, and that is why we should be very careful with children in prams, but this was 12 feet up. Our air was still polluted and higher than EU levels, so that gives an indication of how dirty our air was then.
My amendments are based on my clean air Bill that I keep putting into the ballot to be debated here. It has had a lot of legal input; I clearly think it is the best, but I am prepared to discuss this. One measure that Boris Johnson put in place because of the air pollution on the way to the Olympic Park was to install quite a lot of potted plants along the roadside. They were very attractive, but I am not sure that they did much to reduce the pollution—but he had been told that they might, so he put them in.
It is obvious that local authorities also need tougher powers to clean up other dirty sources of pollution, so my Amendment 153 proposes powers to prohibit the use of fireplaces, wood-burning appliances, diesel vehicles and other sources of pollutants in air pollution improvement zones. The Government have recognised that something needs to be done on air pollution, and this is a very good Bill to do it in. It will be very embarrassing if we get to COP 26 and still have this sort of pollution problem.
In summary, air pollution is a national health crisis: it costs us billions every year. It affects the old and the young. Several of us have mentioned Ella Kissi-Debrah, who lived next to a dirty, filthy road and died at nine years old because of her asthma. It is children who will have health problems all their lives because of living near polluted roads. This Bill is an ideal opportunity to fix this problem. We know what the solutions are, and they are here in these amendments, so I hope that the Government accept them.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and co-president of London Councils, the body that represents the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation.
I will speak to Amendments 156A to 156M in my name. In doing so, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, for adding her name to them, and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, who has confirmed to me her support for these amendments but sadly was a little too late to add her name.
We are starting now to consider the part of this Bill on air quality and it is, perhaps, interesting and relevant to note that today is the anniversary of the date on which Royal Assent was given to the first national Clean Air Act, back in 1956. The problem is still very much with us; indeed, in many respects, it is much worse than it was then. Air pollution is a very serious problem which affects us all. It contributes to up to 40,000 premature deaths in the UK every year, so I welcome the Government’s acknowledgment of the risk that poor air quality presents to human health.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, this is my first appearance in the Chamber for many a long year—it seems even longer than it actually was—but it is a great pleasure to follow a tour de force by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in his speech, the range of his amendments and his resilience and perseverance in getting them on the statute book.
I asked to speak on this group for two reasons. First, I should declare an interest: I am still a vice-president, and was until recently president, of Environmental Protection UK, which, in its former existence, was the National Society for Clean Air. It was very instrumental in creating the Clean Air Act 1956, to which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has just referred.
Primarily, however, I put down my name because I had earlier put down a separate amendment to Clause 2 that leads in to what is being discussed in these amendments. We had a self-congratulatory session on Clause 2 because it is of course a very important principle that we set targets, and I congratulate the Government on making one of their first targets the reduction of PM2.5.
My amendments pointed out that that would require substantial monitoring, systems of enforcement and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and others have said, effective powers and resources for local authorities. Of course, it would also have to be recognised that it is not simply vehicular traffic that causes air pollution in our towns and cities but a range of other sites and machinery, to which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has drawn attention. A comprehensive approach requires a serious transfer of resources to local authorities and a sharpening up of the powers they currently have, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Tope, have already said.
I think that this justifies my earlier intervention, and I hope that the Government and Minister can signal tonight that the Government have taken on board the ideas of the noble Baronesses, Lady Randerson and Lady Jones, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and my noble friend Lord Kennedy, who is not in his place. I hope that, before the Bill completes its passage, we have a comprehensive proposition from the Government, covering all these areas, which will genuinely give the powers and resources to local authorities to implement these measures, and that will make a real dent in the problems of air quality in our towns and cities. I hope that, at the end of this debate, the Minister will be able to indicate that that is precisely what the Government intend to do.
Lord Lucas (Con) [V]
My Lords, I am delighted to support the idea that we should go for 20 miles per hour speed limits. The consequences of accidents at 20 miles per hour are much reduced. It makes for a much friendlier environment for walking and cycling and, as the noble Baroness said, it absolutely results in improvements in air quality. We do not need the centres of our towns and cities to be places of rush and danger, particularly with the decline in the viability of our high streets. We want them to be places where people feel comfortable, enjoy being and want to go to for all sorts of reasons. It ought to be easy and conventional. It ought to be the rule that, where people are numerous and we want them to be at ease, we go for a 20 miles per hour speed limit. It is absolutely justified in terms of the objectives of this Bill.
So far as air quality generally is concerned, I come back to the point, which I made in earlier debates, that we must have better research. We are quite capable of it. It is not very helpful to talk about PM2.5 as if this is some universal characteristic; it is just a size. It does not tell you anything about where the particles came from and what, therefore, can be done to reduce their concentration. As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, pointed out, in some places lockdown resulted in sharp drops in nitrogen oxides and other such pollutants but no drop in PM2.5, so what is going on here? Were the particulates really coming from diesel engines, or have we, again, been barking up the wrong tree? It is not difficult to find the answer. All you have to do is pick out individual particles, analyse them and find out what their origins are. A particle that comes from burning wood is very different from a particle that comes from diesel—at least on average. A particle from emissions from a heavy industrial source is very different from one from a light engine. We need to do this research, and we need to do it locally, so that we can undertake actions that make a difference.
The main difficulty that I have with the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, is that they seem to assume the sources of pollution are all local. How do we know unless we have done the research? If we do the research, that immediately gives us the moral and intellectual authority to take action against a particular source of pollution. If we just generalise about these things, we will end up hitting lots of imaginary enemies as well—perhaps—as a real one. It is really important that we get the level of research well up. We should make it local and consistent so that we really understand what is going on when it comes to air pollution.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has withdrawn so I now call the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I have my name on several of these amendments—namely, Amendment 150A and Amendments 156A to 156M—and I support the others in this group.
Following the 1952 smogs, the Clean Air Act, as we have already heard, came in in 1956 and cut coal smoke from homes. In the 1970s, the output from power stations was high in sulphur dioxide, causing acid rain. Now, there is a lot of research to show that a major source of different particles is exhaust fumes from burning liquid fossil fuels. In 2018, the World Health Organization recognised the effects of these ultra-fine particulates, which are implicated in about 8.8 million excess deaths—around 13% of all deaths globally.
The report The Lifelong Impact of Air Pollution, from the Royal College of Physicians, has shown that it costs £20 billion in the UK alone, through 40,000 deaths per annum, ranging from heart disease, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, diabetes and dementia—which are all linked to atmospheric pollution.
Our death rates from asthma are the worst in Europe. Three people die every day in the UK from asthma. It costs us £1 billion a year and there are more than 5.5 million people having treatment for asthma now. People with a genetic predisposition to asthma living by main roads have worse outcomes. It does seem there are some groups in the BAME community who have a particular genetic predisposition to a type of asthma that is particularly liable to lead to death. There have been 12,700 asthma deaths in England and Wales since 2010.
The role of atmospheric pollution was shown clearly and graphically by Professor Stephen Holgate to map against Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s very severe asthma attacks, including her final and fatal attack, with spikes of nitrous oxide and particulates corresponding clearly to her severe exacerbations. These particulates from fossil fuel exhausts also cross the placenta into the foetus, resulting in a higher incidence of asthma and impaired brain development.
This means it is essential that we tackle this on every front to come into line the WHO guidance as a minimum. We cannot tolerate continuing to allow particulate air pollution, and we must harness positive behaviour and change behaviours. The impact, in fewer heart attacks, strokes and deaths from asthma and lung cancer, would be phenomenal. That is why I added my name to Amendments 156A to 156M, because there is a need to give local authorities the power that they need to protect their own populations.
I will turn briefly to speed restrictions, so comprehensively introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. I endorse every point that she made. Let us not forget that 20 million children have their homes and schools in areas of high air pollution, particularly from traffic.
The report The State of the Evidence on 20mph Speed Limits, by Dr Adrian Davis from Bristol, provides a comprehensive review of the literature. Dropping the speed limit from 30 mph to 20 mph decreases particulates from petrol and particularly from diesel, as well as decreasing nitrous oxide and CO2 emissions from diesel cars. Road traffic is responsible for 80% of particulate production, and diesel produces tenfold more particulates than petrol. When children are sitting in a car in a traffic jam, their exposure is even higher because cars draw in the surrounding air, which is laden with exhaust from other vehicles.
It has been estimated that a cut from 30 mph to 20 mph on urban roads would result in a drop of over 115 deaths from particulates alone, quite apart from the lower death rate in accidents. When traffic is less aggressive and moving more smoothly in urban areas, there is almost no significant delay in getting somewhere but the whole driving experience is calmer and safer. I should declare that I experience this, because I live in the Cardiff pilot area that has dropped from 30 mph to 20 mph and the benefit is tangible. I hope that the Government can support these amendments.
Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]
My Lords, I declare an interest as one of the 5.5 million people with asthma. In winding up this debate on behalf of these Benches, I first thank the Minister for the fact sheet about the air pollution measures in the Bill. It certainly shows willing, but it also falls short of what we would wish to see and gives rise to a number of questions. In particular, why do the Government remain to be convinced and want a whole lot more consultation about the feasibility of the pollution reductions that we are seeking, despite confirmation from many experts that these things can be achieved and would be accepted by the public?
I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, will forgive me for focusing on the amendments of my noble friends, but we also support her amendments, which very much overlap with ours. I support Amendment 150A, moved by my noble friend Lady Sheehan. If the Government were to support Amendment 150A, not only would our air be cleaner and healthier but injuries and lives would be saved because of the reduced speed.
As my noble friend said, electric cars reduce NOx and CO2 emissions, but they still produce NEE particulates from tyres and brakes. A default 20-mph limit would reduce these particulates as well as noise, and injuries and deaths through accidents. Children in particular would be protected from accidents and from organ damage caused by particulates. Will the Minister note what my noble friend said about how people in disadvantaged demographics are more likely to live in areas with high levels of PM2.5?
I accept that local authorities can already designate roads with a 20-mph limit, but my noble friend’s amendment would make it much easier for them, as 20 mph would become the norm in relevant streets. Local authorities are already strapped for cash and have been given additional responsibilities through this Bill, such as imposing civil sanctions where once there were criminal offences, liaising with air quality partners and other matters. However, it is important to consider how legislation could help them to carry out some of their many responsibilities.
There is already considerable support for this measure in Wales and Scotland. In May, as soon as we were allowed, my husband and I went to Scotland for a short break. We noticed how many villages now have 20-mph limits. The traffic moved smoothly, there were no jams and people moved around safely. It was a good example of what can be done and there are similar examples in Wales. If the Minister will not accept this amendment, how do the Government intend to encourage 20-mph zones?
In her Amendments 151A and 151B, my noble friend Lady Randerson wants local authorities to “raise their game”, to be more ambitious about monitoring air pollution and, critically, in publicising the levels specifically in sensitive areas to encourage a change in behaviour, and to be funded to do so. This is particularly important for the future health of our children as well as adults. I hope that the Minister looks at my noble friend’s proposals very seriously. I note the measures already taken, but the fact remains that awareness of pollution levels is low. There may be websites and air quality alert systems, there may be leaflets about smoke control areas and recycling household waste, but the most effective information is gathered and distributed locally, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said.
I welcome initiatives such as the one in Liverpool funded by the air quality grant, which involves children in monitoring the area around their school. I am sure that they would be exerting pester-power and encouraging their parents to walk or cycle them to school, and certainly not to sit outside in their cars at the end of the school day with the engine running, as I have seen outside my local school. However, we need more. Can the Minister explain why we do not need my noble friend’s amendments?
I turn to Amendments 156A to 156M in the name of my noble friend Lord Tope. I welcome the Government’s acknowledgement of the risk to human health presented by poor air quality. That is a major step in the right direction. As we have heard, local authorities have a statutory duty to reduce emissions in their area, but even the Government have recognised that they do not have sufficient powers to take effective action to achieve such reductions, hence some of the government changes in this Bill. Public and government attention has focused mainly on the need to cut emissions from vehicles, but non-road pollution is a major problem, too often ignored, also emitting nitrogen oxide particulate matter that provides a major public health hazard, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. As we make improvements in reducing emissions from vehicles, we must shift our focus to these other sources of pollution too, which is what these amendments do.
We heard from my noble friend Lord Tope about the negligible impact on PM2.5 of the significant reduction in transport activity in London during the pandemic. This highlights the importance of reducing non-road emissions as well as speed, as emphasised by my noble friend Lady Sheehan. These amendments introduce a series of new clauses which would give local authorities additional discretionary powers. Through Amendment 156A, they would be able to designate an area as an air-quality improvement area. If the air quality in that area exceeded WHO air quality guidelines, the Secretary of State could set limits for emissions for a range of these pollutions and equipment. The amendments provide for offences for users and installers who break the regulations, and certain legitimate defences. There are also powers to time limit the use of certain plant which might have a legitimate use in case of a power cut, and to require users to provide relevant information.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, previously in Committee we have discussed the fact that polluted air is a growing national health emergency, and many noble Lords have talked about the terribly sad death of Ella Kissi-Debrah. The Bill provides an opportunity to improve people’s lives, which we must not miss. We support these amendments, which seek to do so.
On Amendment 150A, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, regarding the number of fine particulates released into the air from non-exhaust emissions and the role that speed reduction can play, noble Lords have spoken strongly in support of 20-mph speed limits and the wider benefits to society that those could bring. The noble Baroness talked particularly about the findings of the air quality expert group’s report. I also mention the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants, which has made a statement on the evidence for health effects associated with exposure to non-exhaust particulate matter from road transport. These emissions currently comprise just under 10% of UK primary particulate emissions, but they are expected to become proportionately more important as vehicle exhaust PM emissions from road transport are expected to decrease over the coming years.
The committee said that as non-exhaust particles have a different composition—for example, higher metal concentrations—and a different size distribution from those emitted in vehicle exhausts, they may have different toxicological properties and health consequences. As this component of traffic emissions will become proportionately more important in future years, the recommendation from the committee is that new epidemiological and toxicological research should be undertaken to further understand the potential health risk of this aspect of vehicle pollution and to improve a basis for further policy. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas talked about the importance of carrying out research so that we have better understanding. Does the Minister’s department have any plans to undertake or commission such research? Are the Government considering speed reduction in areas of highest pollution?
I turn to Amendments 151A and 151B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. As we have heard, all local authorities have a duty to review and assess air quality within their district. The aim is to identify all areas where air quality is exceeding, or is likely to exceed, the air quality objectives. We agree with the noble Baroness that monitoring air quality standards at schools, hospitals and major roads is critical. In 2019, over 8,500 schools and almost 3,000 health centres were in areas with levels of PM2.5 above that recommended by the WHO, putting at risk the health of millions of children, patients and health workers.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned the funding of local authorities, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. The burden of monitoring is on the shoulders of local government. If monitoring and compliance are likely to be increased, and given the chronic lack of funding for our local authorities, how do the Government intend to resource monitoring in order to ensure a sufficient degree of data integrity? My noble friend Lord Whitty spoke about the importance of this.
Amendments 153, 154 and 155, all in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, consider the duties of the Secretary of State, local government mayors and the Committee on Climate Change, and how the monitoring of air quality and availability of related data to the public can be improved. She stressed the importance that this information must be accurately collected. But the need for improvements to the monitoring and assessment regimes should not be used as a reason to avoid setting the direction of travel now. As I have already said, we should use this Bill to start driving much-needed action, as soon as possible. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly reminded your Lordships’ House about the increased impact on deprived neighbourhoods if we do not take action.
I come to Amendments 156A to 156M in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. This series of proposed new clauses covers the control emissions from combustion plants. The noble Lord reminded your Lordships’ House that it is the anniversary of the Clean Air Act 1956. It would seem that the problem has not gone away; it has just changed. Combustion plants are a chief source of the power that lights and heats our homes. With a growing population of almost 70 million people, there are understandably tens of thousands of such facilities across the country. According to the latest figures collated by government, there are estimated to be between 30,000 and 35,000 medium combustion plants. As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, rightly says, we must have a focus on those emissions—but also local authorities will need the power to take appropriate action to tackle this area of poor air quality.
Finally, I pay credit to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, who has done so much work in this area. I believe that she made the critical points in the debate about the cost to our health and the number of avoidable deaths. The seriousness of this discussion cannot be underestimated, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister what further action the Government intend to take through this Bill to start to resolve these problems.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking all noble Lords who have spoken with such passion, interest and informed intelligence on this subject.
I start with Amendment 150A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. I am sure the noble Baroness knows that local authorities already have the power to set 20 mph speed limits where local needs and conditions suggest that it is required—for example, in a built-up area or near a school. The Government agree with her that 20 mph speed limits can be a useful tool to improve road safety and reduce air pollution, as acknowledged in the Department for Transport’s guidance for local authorities on local speed limits, but they may not be the solution everywhere. Imposed in the wrong places, lower speed limits may increase congestion and journey times, which may in turn increase PM2.5 emissions.
The noble Baroness is right to focus on non-exhaust emissions; we accept the need to reduce them and have legally binding emission reduction targets, including for particulate matter. Non-exhaust particulate matter emissions have become more significant, as emissions from exhausts and other sources, such as coal power stations, have decreased—and this is a phenomenon identified by a number of noble Lords.
The Government are also working with their international partners to develop procedures to test and evaluate emissions from tyre and brake wear, with the potential to produce future regulatory standards. To reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and my noble friend Lord Lucas, in February, the Department for Transport commenced a significant research project to understand better the measurement techniques, materials, properties and control parameters of brake and tyre wear emissions from road vehicles.
On the general subject of more research needing to be done, I shall write to the noble Baroness, because I think that there is more that we can say to both noble Lords about what the department is doing in this area.
It is therefore appropriate to allow local authorities, working with air quality partners such as Highways England, to determine whether lower speed restrictions are appropriate locally. Schedule 11 to this Bill strengthens the local air quality management framework by increasing joint working between local authorities and relevant public authorities for precisely this purpose. The Government will shortly consult on designation of the first of these relevant public authorities, Highways England.
In addition, last year, the Government announced their plans to implement the moving traffic enforcement powers in Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004. This will enable local authorities in England with civil parking enforcement powers to take responsibility for enforcement of moving traffic offences. This can include enforcement of no entry, banned turns, access restrictions, box junctions and cycle lanes, but also includes idling. Although we encourage local authorities to make use of the powers available to them, which include issuing fixed penalty notices, this issue will not simply be resolved through fining. Local authorities, as existing guidance makes clear, should utilise a range of methods to encourage motorists to change their behaviour, including public information campaigns. The Government continue to invest in infrastructure for active travel, including a £2 billion fund for cycling and walking. An additional £200 million was allocated in the previous financial year as part of the Covid-19 active travel fund.
I think the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, was a little churlish about Boris Johnson’s initiatives while he was mayor. He did introduce the Routemaster bus and Boris bikes, and he also introduced potted plants, which may have had a little bit of an effect. I just defend him on that front.
We hope that this investment will enable and encourage people to switch from polluting methods of transport such as private cars to cleaner, greener and healthier transport modes such as cycling and walking, which we hope that all noble Lords will welcome. The solution to less air pollution from traffic is less traffic, not just slower-moving traffic.
On Amendments 151A and 151B, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and Amendment 155, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, we need to be careful not to be too prescriptive. Local authorities are required to review and assess local air quality and decide what action to take based on local needs. The Government already have a national network of 533 air quality monitoring sites across the UK, which measure air pollutants, operated by the Environment Agency. I hope that that gives some reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. It is not possible to monitor in every location, as this would be prohibitively expensive, so modelling enables assessment of air quality in locations without monitoring stations, allowing more effective investment on implementing policies that will deliver air quality improvements. Local authorities are already required to make their air quality action plans freely available, and they are advised in statutory guidance to do so on their website, as requested by the amendment from the noble Baroness. Specifically on Amendment 155 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, my noble friend the Minister has previously set out the Government’s action on provision of air quality information, including our daily air quality index.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for also tabling Amendment 154. The Government agree that action is needed on air quality, and I reassure noble Lords that the Bill includes several measures to achieve this. In this Bill, the Government are committing to set a new national concentration target for PM2.5 under Clause 2, as this is the pollutant that has the most significant impact on health. We will also set a second ambitious target to reduce the exposure of the population to PM2.5 on an ongoing basis through our long-term air quality target, which must be set under Clause 1.
As my noble friend the Minister has already set out in this Committee, we are taking account of the World Health Organization’s guidance on this matter when setting air quality targets, and will continue to do so, but we simply do not yet know the policies that will be required to meet the WHO’s guidance level for PM2.5, especially in London. Therefore, we do not believe it is appropriate to set such a target, which would affect millions of people’s daily lives, without first levelling with them about the choices and changes that will be required as a result.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
I have received requests to speak after the Minister from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I call the noble Lord, Lord Lucas.
Lord Lucas (Con) [V]
My Lords, I would be very grateful if the Minister—in writing if not immediately—could let me know what steps the Government have taken or intend to take to enable local action in this area? My particular concern, as ever, is the town of Eastbourne. We are told from time to time that our air quality is bad; we are never told why. What support can the Government offer for properly testing the air pollution we are said to have, so that we can have a proper diagnosis of where it is coming from and therefore direct our local efforts accurately at dealing with it?
Similarly, the current system for trying to get speed limits moved to 20 miles per hour is very time-consuming and difficult and imposes a lot of burdens on the higher county authority. Is there not some simpler way in which an expression of local will might convert into something happening without the need for deep, long consultations? This is a matter of policy and of the direction we want to take a community in. It really should not have to justify itself at every cobblestone.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend. I think I answered in general terms how much the Bill enables greater local action on air pollution by improving local air quality management frameworks and ensuring that responsibility for addressing air pollution is shared across local government structures and other relevant public authorities. If I can offer him more detail, I commit to writing to him. On that last subject, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked two questions that I failed to answer: traffic management in Northern Ireland is a devolved issue and I would of course be very happy to meet the noble Baroness to discuss further matters.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, reflecting on the Minister’s response to my noble friend on the current Prime Minister’s record on air pollution, would she acknowledge that it was the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who in February 2008 unveiled the plans for the London cycle hire scheme? Will she also acknowledge that the New Bus for London, commonly known as the “Boris bus”, had complete battery failure in 80 models, meaning that they only ever operated in diesel-only mode and emitted 74% more harmful particles than the old diesel buses they replaced?
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
Ken Livingstone may well have had the original idea, but it was certainly Boris who breathed life into the whole project. I think the new buses were much better than the old Routemaster, and I do not think one can blame him for trying to reduce emissions in London.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, I start by thanking all noble Lords who have spoken in support of 20’s Plenty. It has been much appreciated. I know it has not been discussed in this House much before, if at all; it is a new concept but I think it is a really worthy one. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, did not feel able to express his support, but I hope in time to convert him to the cause.
I found the Minister’s response disappointing and complacent. Air pollution is such a devastating killer, and it is not a pleasant way to pass away—particularly in light of the compelling and chilling evidence from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, who speaks with huge knowledge in these matters. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, had already asked about the Minister’s assertion about 30 mph limits being in place and the opportunity for local authorities to change that to 20 mph. That is exactly the situation we are trying to reverse; it is complicated and costly, et cetera, and it would be far better to have a default limit of 20 mph and for local authorities to have the power to change it to 30 mph or whatever speed limit they think appropriate.
The Minister also asserted that we are looking for less traffic, not slower traffic. The point is that all the evidence shows there is less traffic in areas with 20 mph speed limits, because people are more willing to switch to walking and cycling when traffic around them is calmer. These 20 mph limits are really popular. The national attitude survey on transport shows that substantially more than two thirds of the public are in favour of this. The Atkins report also showed the public were in favour.
I think the Minister was referring to the Atkins report when she said there was evidence that, in some areas, 20 mph limits can lead to higher casualty rates. That report has been challenged extensively, and I believe the 20’s Plenty campaign group wrote to the Government to say it was concerned about some of the report’s findings and to ask what evidence the Government could provide on the use they made of the various comparators in particular. The group has yet to have a reply from the Government; maybe this is an opportunity for it to receive that reply, which would be much appreciated.
The 20 mph limit is popular, practical, cheap and affordable, and there are numerous bodies of evidence to support the social and environmental benefits it would bring. It would be a bold step; it would help tackle climate change and public health issues at a single stroke. I hope the Government will take the amendment seriously, but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw it.
“(4A) The requirement in subsection (4) may be met by consultation carried out before this section comes into force.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the consultation requirement in inserted section 81A(4) of the Environment Act 1995 may be met by pre-commencement consultation.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 152. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division must make that clear in debate.
Amendment 152
Lord Whitty
“Air quality and human health in rural areas: application of pesticides
(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations make provision prohibiting the application of pesticides for the purposes of agriculture or horticulture near—(a) buildings used for human habitation, and(b) public or private buildings and associated open spaces where members of the public may be present, including but not limited to—(i) schools and childcare nurseries, and(ii) hospitals and health care facilities.(2) Regulations under subsection (1) must specify a minimum distance from any of the locations listed under subsection (1) to be maintained during the application of any pesticide.(3) In determining the distance in subsection (2) the Secretary of State must be guided by the optimum distance that would make a significant difference in air quality for people using the locations listed in subsection (1).(4) In this section “public building” includes any building used for the purpose of education.(5) Regulations under this section are subject to the affirmative procedure.”Member’s explanatory statement
In order to improve air quality and thereby protect human health and the environment in rural areas, this new Clause would require the Secretary of State to make regulations to prohibit the application of chemical pesticides near buildings and open spaces used by residents and members of the public.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, we now come to another aspect of air quality. I move Amendment 152 with a strong feeling of déjà vu. I and my cosignatories, whose support I very much appreciate, argued for a similar amendment to the Agriculture Bill a few months ago. The Committee will recall that the House agreed that amendment. Regrettably, the House of Commons, advised by the Government, did not and rejected it. Ministers’ reasons for rejecting it were partly on the grounds that it would be better considered in an Environment Bill. So, here we are.
I never quite understood the Ministers’ argument since the application of pesticides is surely a matter of agricultural practice, and the amendment was and is about the impact of that practice on human health and well-being. It obviously also has implications for the environment and for biodiversity. I certainly argue the case on both those grounds, but centrally this is about for human health: the health of residents and others in danger of ingesting or touching pesticides because they are close to where crops are being sprayed. Those who are frequently close to, and often subject to repeated exposure from, multiple sprayings—in some cases over years, often of cocktails of pesticides—can develop severe illnesses. Anyhow, we now do have an Environment Bill, so I hope for a more positive line from Defra Ministers. I am encouraged by the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, is responding to this amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
I understand that there has been a slight change in the order of speakers. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I am most grateful for this slight change being allowed for the convenience of the House.
I am glad to be able to speak in support of these very important amendments. I added my name to Amendment 152 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. As he said, we are doing exactly what we were advised to: we are bringing this issue back in the passage of the Environment Bill.
I will not repeat what I said on the Agriculture Act—it is all there on the record already—but I did point out in Committee of the then Agriculture Bill last year that synthetic chemical pesticides were originally developed as chemical warfare in the 1930s and 1940s. These highly toxic substances have now been used in farming for more than 75 years. They carry warnings on them, such as “risk of serious damage to eyes”, “possible risk of irreversible effects through inhalation” and even “may be fatal if inhaled or ingested”. In 1975, the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food stated:
“The repeated use of pesticides, even in small quantities, can have cumulative effects which may not be noticed until a dangerous amount has been absorbed.”
Here we are, 46 years later, and I am not sure that we have heeded that warning.
Although spraying equipment and the protection of employees doing the spraying is regulated, residents in an area downwind from any spraying have no protection in law at all. These pesticides are known to cause different cancers and have been thought to be associated with birth defects and a wide range of diseases, particularly neuroendocrine and autoimmune conditions. All this is a mounting cost to the NHS but, more importantly, it destroys people’s lives and the quality of their lives.
Amendment 152 aims to provide protection to residents. These airborne droplets in pesticide vapour can settle on the ground and be revaporised in subsequent high heat or windy weather conditions. Several studies have shown pesticides being transported in the air for many miles from where they were originally applied, which then exposes babies, children and pregnant women to these chemicals. We cannot carry on allowing the next generation—whether in utero or after they have been born—to be poisoned by chemicals that are often used as a convenience in farming rather than being absolutely essential.
I also strongly support Amendment 254. Without our pollinators, we will have no food. This Bill is the place to protect this essential part of our food chain.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I am speaking to Amendment 254 in my name and fully support Amendment 152 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I am grateful for the information I have received from the Crop Protection Association, Buglife, Friends of the Earth, the UK Pesticides Campaign and others.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, have long campaigned for tighter control of pesticides in order to protect human health and the environment. As the noble Lord has already said, these are issues which we explored in depth during the passage of the Agriculture Bill. Undeterred, we are back again to explore the dangers of pesticides to both humans and pollinating insects.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and also to follow the very expert testimony of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I am speaking to Amendment 152 and 254 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, respectively. Noble Lords will have noted that both have cross-party, and indeed non-party, backing. It is worth repeating, again, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, that the House has already agreed something very similar to Amendment 152 in the Agriculture Bill.
These are apparently two separate amendments about pesticides: one focused on public health, the other more on nature—but of course those two things are not distinct but very much interrelated. They reflect the countryside that is increasingly soaked in poison. That is what pesticides are, by definition. We have been applying stronger poisons, and more of them, more often. In the first half of the last decade, three metrics—the area treated, often measured as spray hectares, the frequency of applications and the number of active ingredients used—all leapt significantly. So, while UK cropland covers about 4.6 million hectares, the area treated is many times larger. Defra figures show that that increased from 59 million spray hectares in 2000 to 73 million spray hectares in 2016: a rise of 24%. The average number of active ingredients per field has risen from 12.8 per hectare to 15.9 per hectare.
Let us imagine actually living next to that field. I am sure everyone has seen the videos: spray nozzles practically brushing people’s windows, other nozzles right up against garden hedges. Imagine being a pollinator—a moth or a solitary bee—going about your business. Your body is gradually being degraded, and your behaviour modified disastrously: all the impacts that we have just started to understand, with 16 active ingredients—poisons—introduced right into the depths of your world and your home.
The person applying the pesticide, quite likely from an air-conditioned tractor cab with protective equipment, has protection—still not enough, but protection. You, the local resident or pollinator, have none. You have no idea what it is in that spray, and even the experts really have no idea what impact that cocktail of chemicals will have. I refer to Defra’s own former chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir Ian Boyd, who, in an article in Science in 2016 said the impact of “dosing whole landscapes” is being ignored, and the assumption that it is safe to so behave is simply false. Even the person applying the pesticides will suffer ill-effects, as a recent Annals of Agricultural and Environmental Medicine journal entitled Influence of Pesticides on Respiratory Pathology set out. It notes that there is a
“significant increase in respiratory problems within the population”
of people working in agriculture because of this.
Turning to look particularly at the pollinators, many of the UK’s most valuable crop, including apples, strawberries and runner beans, are pollinated by insects. The monetary value of that—if you can put a monetary value on it—is put at £430 million a year. Honeybees are important, and there is often a lot of focus on them, but they probably do only 10% or 15% of the work. These wild creatures are crucial, and they are perhaps the ones that are suffering the most.
We are talking about food security being at risk, and in particular the supply of healthy food: fruit and vegetables. The chemical industry will say, “We need these chemicals to grow food”. I would very much agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and others that the closeness between the Government and the industry is a grave concern. There is something of an infamous paper from 2011 titled Without Pesticides, Apple Production in the United Kingdom Would Not Be Viable. Well, I ask noble Lords to look back and think about before we had pesticides: we actually had apples, a lot of apples.
This is where I would, perhaps, slightly disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, who talked about convenience. I think what we have is a broken system. Farmers are being forced to use these chemicals, and forced to use production methods to suit the supermarkets and multinational food production. We can produce the food in different ways, and it may be sold in different ways. Potato blight has caused much use of chemicals. There are varieties that can do very well with little or no application of chemicals, that are blight resistant, but they are not necessarily to the exact specification of the international fast food giants, who want their chips all around the world to look and taste exactly the same. But each field is not a global field; it is a local field, and we need to be growing the right crops in that field for the right conditions. This is something noble Lords may already be aware that I am quite passionate about, but I am going to restrain myself here and just make one final point.
In Defra’s 2019 report on pesticide usage on food crops, there is a graph entitled “Area treated with the major pesticide groups”. In that graph, fungicides tower above the rest. The weight of fungicides increased by 5% from 2017 to 2019. Yet, increasingly, as we were discussing a few weeks back in the soil amendments, we understand that fungi are a crucial part of healthy soils. We are heaping a specific targeted poison on our environment to kill the essential life in our soils. This is also, of course, damaging the pollinators that this amendment refers to, and is having impacts on our health.
There is also the issue of antimicrobial resistance. Here we come back, as so many debates do, to Covid. There is something called “black fungus”, which is a problem particularly in India. Its technical name is mucormycosis. It is infecting—utterly horribly—patients already very ill from Covid. Treatment is prolonged and difficult. We have a huge problem with resistance to anti-fungicide drugs. We have also seen, in the US and the UK, increasing levels of infection from Aspergillus and from Candida auris. All these fungi that we target out in our natural environment are a threat to our health. We are using the same kinds of drugs in the environment that we are then using to treat the diseases in our bodies.
In summary, we have a natural world—a world of air and ground in which we live—that is out of balance: a poisoned world. These amendments are very modest. They are small steps towards turning that around. When we were talking about the state of nature and about a species target, the Minister said, “Well, things are going to have to get worse before they get better”. He said we need time to turn the curve around. Well, I would say that in this area there is no time. We absolutely have to act on pesticides now.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]
My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and indeed the other speakers to this amendment. I have added my name to both of these amendments. There is really very little to add to what has been said. I found that my main theme was slightly taken by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I was going to emphasise that, when we talk about pesticides, we are talking about poisons. If you refer to them as “poisons”, perhaps that has a little bit more significance for people.
As has been said, one amendment is about human health—very important—and the other one is about the natural world and pollinators. Although I put my name to it, I could have added some other pollinators that have been left off. I have a feeling that moths and bats were not there. Moths are very important. However, I am not going to quibble about this.
The real point is that we are doing as the Government wanted because, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, the Government said during the passage of the Agriculture Bill that the place for it was not there but in the Environment Bill. So I am delighted that we are doing the Government’s work in bringing this back. I am sure it will have the same reaction in your Lordships’ Chamber and that we will be passing it back to the Commons, so I would have thought it would be wise for the Government to accept these amendments when they can.
Because I am in a particularly generous mood today, I am not going to refer to an earlier life of the Minister, who did sterling work in this area before he had to accept responsibility for government positions. I understand his position admirably and I think that he is doing a fantastic job. I know he has got extremely good history on this and I hope he can prevail with the powers that be.
I look forward to hearing his response—and, indeed, the Government’s response when this comes back on Report, if it is not accepted.
Lord Carrington (CB)
My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register. I also declare my interest as someone who is involved in a major beekeeping operation.
As has been pointed out, this is not the first time that noble Lords have discussed this issue, and no doubt nor will it be the last. I would like to speak against Amendments 152 and 254 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and other noble Lords.
Neither of these amendments achieves anything that is not already covered by existing regulations and practice, but both might be not only counterproductive but harmful to food production in this country. Farmers need to grow healthy, affordable, sustainable food, at the same time as addressing environmental and climate-change issues. It does not make sense to push farmers out of food production, with the consequence of increasing imports from countries with lower standards. We need to accept that the UK has one of the most stringent regulatory systems in the world for the use of plant protection products.
With regard to Amendment 152, the existing PPP regulations cover the impact on bystanders and residents living or working near the area of treatment. There is already a strict code of practice, and incidents of harm and noncompliance are investigated. Operators must have appropriate qualifications and equipment is regularly tested under various protocols and insurance schemes. Please remember that farmers spray only when it is strictly necessary as part of integrated pest-management approaches. PPPs are targeted and not used in isolation. However, failure to use PPPs for weeds, pests and diseases can result in significant crop losses, which have been estimated by some at around 30% to 40% of our food.
Turning to Amendment 252, appropriate and robust risk assessments on all active substances are already performed. With the current pressure on farming to improve sustainable practices, as it moves from the blunt instrument of the basic payment to that linked to public good, there is considerable likelihood that the amount of land under food production will decrease. This will be compounded by pressures for land from forestry and housing. Therefore, improvements in productivity are essential. This will be brought about largely by technology, and agritech in particular. Plant breeding, precision farming and pest control, together with gene editing, are all part of the armoury to make sure that we can feed people in a sustainable and affordable way. Investments in these areas need to be encouraged, not discouraged by introducing more regulation regarding areas that are already sufficiently regulated, with the regulations recognised as being among the most stringent.
Humankind faces many challenges and I applaud this Bill for addressing many of them. But we need to bear in mind proportionality. Let us not, albeit guided by the best of intentions, limit our capacity to feed the population of this country in an affordable way. Just look at the number of food banks in the country today. Empty stomachs have caused many a revolution and riots.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 152 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and colleagues, and Amendment 254 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, regarding the use of pesticides and their impact on the environment. I vividly recall similar debates last year in Committee and on Report during the passage of the Agriculture Act.
I believe, like the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, that there has to be a level of proportionality and balance, but I live in a rural area and I know what it is like to be impacted by the use of pesticides. There is a clear need for a pesticide management plan, because there has been an excessive use of pesticides, which have been damaging not only to the pollinators, as expressed through Amendment 254, but to human health and the environment, as conveyed by Amendment 152.
Amendment 152 is a cross-party piece of proposed legislation and is crucial in that its focus is the protection of human health and the environment in rural areas by prohibiting the use of agricultural pesticides near specified areas and the vulnerable groups within them, such as rural residents’ homes, schools, childcare nurseries and other healthcare facilities. As detailed in the UK Pesticides Campaign’s submission to the Public Bill Committee, it is highly noticeable that, although human health and the environment are inextricably linked—particularly when it comes to the use of agricultural pesticides—and the Environment Bill includes priority areas for regulations to be set, including in relation to air quality and the listed air polluting impacts, there appears to be a total omission of any requirements for the protection of human health and the environment from agricultural pesticides. Quite clearly, a level of balance and proportionality is required in the use and the location of pesticides.
As it stands, the Environment Bill does not appear to recognise in any capacity or even have any specific reference to pesticides, when in actual fact they are the biggest contributor of damage, pollution and contamination of the air, soil, water and overall environment in rural areas. The UK Pesticides Campaign asserts that the existing pesticides standards here in the UK fail to protect human health and the environment in rural areas.
Because improving air quality is a major public health issue, long-overdue regulations for the protection of human health and the environment from agricultural pesticides now need to be set in the Environment Bill, most importantly for the protection of the health of rural residents and communities—hence the need for Amendment 152 to be put on the face of the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, outlined.
Furthermore, on Amendment 254, the reality of crop spraying in the countryside is that it involves the dispersal of innumerable mixtures and cocktails of pesticides sprayed on crops, so the critical point about the exposure of any species—whether it be humans or bees and other pollinators—is that it will be to mixtures of different pesticides.
There is also the risk of adverse impacts on bee health from the cumulative effects of multiple exposures to mixtures of different pesticides. The only way to properly protect bees and other pollinators is to prohibit the use of such harmful pesticides in rural areas. Maybe another way to address this issue would be if farmers were allowed to set aside greater areas that were fully covered by all the subsidy schemes.
The Soil Association wants to see a different approach to farming and the use of pesticides. It believes that the Government and society should support UK farmers to transition to whole-farm agroecological systems, ensuring that there is no lowering of environmental or health standards as a result of any new trade deals, and that they should introduce a clear quantitative target for significantly reducing the overall use of pesticides in agriculture.
Therefore, pollinators must be protected from pesticides as Amendment 254 requires. I look forward to the response from the Minister and I hope that he will see fit to accept both amendments to ensure that our environment, our natural life and biodiversity and the human health of individuals in rural areas can be protected from the harmful impacts of pesticides.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, it is very good to have the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in the Chamber. He has been very active on the screen but there is no substitute for being here in the flesh. I very much hope that it will not be too long before we see the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, here too. She also has been very assiduous in taking part in debates and making her contributions, but I ask her to come here if she possibly can, please, because that is what proper debating is about.
My heart is entirely with those who have moved these amendments, but we owe a great debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, for making this a proper debate. I was a Member of Parliament for a rural constituency for 40 years. I got to know many farmers and many of them became close friends. A person I would like to quote is perhaps the greatest countryman I have ever known. Some of your Lordships may remember Phil Drabble and his programme “One Man and His Dog”—he was its originator—but he was far more than an accomplished shepherd. He had his wilderness, about which he wrote books, which was a wonderful corner of Staffordshire with the second largest heronry in the country. I often used to talk to him about these things. He used to say to me, with his inimitable burr, which I will certainly not try to imitate, that it is a question of getting the balance right.
Nobody could dispute that pesticides are indeed poisonous, as my noble friend Lord Randall said, or that their indiscriminate or careless use causes enormous damage. It is right that colleagues in this debate should point out some of the dangers—the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, was particularly forceful on this. It is also very important indeed that the dangers to pollinators should be properly recognised. Without pollinators there is only one end, which is extinction, and we have to be conscious of that. But the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, was right when he asked us to consider whether the current regulations are adequate. He came down on the side of saying that they were. I am not absolutely convinced, but we have stringent regulations and, although one case of poisoning through pesticides is one too many, there have not been enormous numbers and we have to bear that in mind.
The Minister, who will reply in a few moments, is, as someone said a little while ago, someone with a good track record in this field. I hope that he will bear in mind that your Lordships’ House—as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and several others reminded us—voted for a similar amendment during the passage of the Agriculture Act. I well remember the debate and the graphic and gruesome examples that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, drew to our attention. But, at the end of the day, farming is there for one overriding purpose: to produce the food to feed the nation.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest through my involve at Rothamsted, which carries out research on pesticides and pollinators.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Whitty—and welcome him back—for introducing his amendment on the impact of pesticides on human health with such knowledge and such detail. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for championing the very important case of pollinators, to which I have added my name.
As my noble friend Lord Whitty reminded us, these issues were debated in some detail during the consideration of the Agriculture Bill, and it is right that we return to them today. I very much commend his Amendment 152 because I think that it is a common-sense and reasonable proposal that we have before us today.
During this debate, noble Lords have shown considerable concern, passion and determination about these issues. As noble Lords have said, we are talking about the application of poisons here, so we cannot take these issues lightly. My noble friend Lord Whitty and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, have given powerful examples of the public health concerns which can arise from close contact with pesticides. As they said, asthma, respiratory problems, skin disorders and even cancers are destroying people’s lives. Sadly, all too often, our experience has been that the health problems come to light when the damage has already been done. We discover in retrospect that what was promised to be safe turned out not to be. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, pointed out, we are still learning and we are also storing up problems for the future, for example, given our understanding of the impact that antimicrobial resistance can have on public health.
The point at issue here is the particular concern about the impact on those living and working adjacent to fields that are regularly sprayed. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, at least farm workers have access to protective clothing but no such provision is made for the local population. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, said that spraying is already covered by the regulations, but the problem is the difference between the regulations and practice. It is obvious that the rules are not being adhered to in their current form, which is why we need to spell out more specific protections. This is what my noble friend Lord Whitty’s amendment does and why it particularly singles out spraying adjacent to homes, schools and health facilities. I would have thought that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, would have understood and agreed with that. We are not trying to ban the wholesale spraying of crops; we are just trying to put some limitations on it.
The UN report The Right to Food, published in 2017, highlighted that chronic exposure to agricultural pesticides is associated with a range of diseases, including cancer, sterility and developmental disorders. The local population, rather than professionals, were often subjected.
We welcome the Government’s commitment to reduce levels of pesticide use, combined with integrated pest management. We can all see the potential of harnessing the natural power of biodiversity and the advantages of precision applications in the future. But I agree with my noble friend Lord Whitty that the action plan on pesticides does not go far enough. We have to bear in mind the huge vested-interest lobby trying to draw out the reforms, which are needed more urgently. This does not answer the problem addressed in this amendment: we need to have confidence that, in any consultation, the voice of residents will have the same weight as that of the farming community. This is why we need the best independent scientific evidence to underpin our policies.
The Government clearly feel that we can farm with fewer pesticides. They have said that during the Agriculture Bill and in the action plan since. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, presented us with a false dichotomy. It is not a choice between growing food and public health; we can cut back on the application of pesticides and still grow food but live a healthier life.
However, for the foreseeable future, spraying will still take place and, as the UK Pesticides Campaign makes clear, the real problems often lie in exposure to mixtures of pesticides. Therefore, we cannot just sit back and wait for the technology or for nature-friendly applications of the future. We need measures to protect people from the suffering that is occurring now. It is clear that the regulations in existence are inadequate to protect the local population. I hope that the Minister has listened to this debate seriously and will give assurances that the Government will take these concerns on board.
We also wholeheartedly welcome the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, which would provide added protection for pollinators, particularly bees. We are now much more aware of the importance of pollinators to our crops and to levels of biodiversity, yet since 1990 the UK has lost 13 out of its 35 native bee species. All the evidence shows that pesticides, and particularly neonicotinoids, are seriously harmful to our dwindling bee population. This is why the EU has a ban on the use of neonicotinoids.
We understand the concerns of sugar beet farmers, but sugar beet is a complex crop and ending the ban is not necessarily the solution to tackling crop blight. To quote a much-quoted Michael Gove again,
“Unless the evidence base changes again, the government will keep these restrictions in place after we have left the EU.”
In a Commons debate on the issue earlier this year, the Minister Rebecca Pow said:
“We supported the ban in 2018 and we stand by that now”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/1/21; col. 262]
So we have to ask what has changed, because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has pointed out, the Government have now lifted the ban, even though evidence of its harm has not altered. To the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, I say that a risk assessment was carried out, but the Government chose to ignore it.
This is why we support the eminently sensible amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, which would take the decisions out of the hands of politicians and pass them to an expert scientific authority. We need to be assured that the Government are not being put under undue pressure from the business sector to maintain its market access. I therefore hope that the Minister takes both these amendments seriously and comes back with a government proposal that adequately addresses these concerns.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I shall start by addressing Amendment 152 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. Noble Lords are right to shine a light on this topic today, and I hope I can reassure them on the Government’s position. The Government fully agree that pesticides should not be used in a way that harms human health.
Under the current regulatory system, pesticides are authorised for use only where a comprehensive scientific assessment determines that there are not expected to be any harmful effects on human health. The assessment, carried out by the Health and Safety Executive, covers all situations where people may be exposed to pesticides. It specifically covers the potential impacts on those who live, work or take their leisure around treated areas. I am not going to pretend that it is a perfect system—if it was, we would not be having this debate. Historically, there has been an unnatural, unhealthy closeness between the regulated and the regulators, here and across the European Union. I remember the lobbying efforts which were deployed to prevent the European Commission introducing a tough approach to the regulation of endocrine-disrupting chemicals. It was probably the biggest lobbying exercise that I have ever witnessed, and I remember writing about it years ago. That situation is true of the UK too, and I suspect of most countries. There is no doubt that despite the existing protections—which the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, described as one of the toughest approaches, which is probably true—harmful chemicals have been poured into our soils, our waters and throughout our food chain. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is right that the status quo is not sufficient. I agree with my noble friend Lord Cormack that it needs to be put under the microscope.
With that said, authorisation is frequently refused because the proposed use of the product is not demonstrated to be sufficiently safe to people or the environment. These controls allow pesticides to be used where they are deemed to be safe and where they are considered necessary for UK farmers. Unfortunately, in the current system, pesticides are a core part of the control of pests, weeds and diseases. Without them, it is estimated that UK farmers would produce around one-third less food. At the same time, we must—and do—recognise the need to change the current system and to reduce our dependence on the use of pesticides. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, talked about productivity, and I want to throw into the debate that it is not always the case that large intensive monocultures for export are more productive than the smaller, more diverse and perhaps more traditional farms that they often replace. A seminal report was conducted by the UN FAO and the World Bank, which surprised themselves by discovering that the small diverse mixed farm was productive per unit of land, where the large intensive monoculture for export was often more productive per unit of labour. In terms of getting food off the ground, it is not always the case that modern industrial farming produces more.
Under the 25-year environment plan, the Government committed to developing and promoting integrated pest management. Applied properly, this approach maximises the use of non-chemical control techniques and minimises the use of chemical pesticides, including by pursuing nature-based, low-toxicity solutions and precision technologies. This will reduce risks from pesticide use and the amounts used over time. In addition to that, as noble Lords will know, we are moving to a system away from the common agricultural policy toward the environmental land management system which will be rewarding and paying farmers for the delivery of public goods. That means, among many other things, a clean environment. I add that in their consultation on the draft revised national action plan for the sustainable use of pesticides, the Government also committed to reviewing the code of practice that governs all professional users of pesticides. The code’s statutory basis means that it can be used in evidence if people are taken to court for offences involving pesticides.
Turning to Amendment 254, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, she is of course right that the use of pesticides must not put pollinators at unacceptable risk, for all the reasons that she gave and which I will not repeat. It is impossible to exaggerate the existential damage that would be done were we to see the continuing decline of pollinators on the scale that we have seen in recent years, so I will not take issue with her at all on that.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)
I have received one request to speak. I call the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]
I am most grateful, and I thank my noble friend for his answer. He may have said this in his reply, but I ask again because I could not pick it up. When authorisations are given for substances, is the mixture—the toxic cocktails, if you like—actually checked? I am no scientist, but I do know that when you mix certain chemicals together, they have a different effect from what they have when they are on their own. I am just wondering whether that is checked to make sure that the effects are not harmful.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My noble friend raises an incredibly important point and I have to be honest and say that I cannot give him an authoritative answer. He is right that the synergistic effect of mixing chemicals creates entirely new qualities, and two relatively harmless chemicals, or not particularly dangerous chemicals, mixed together can create something that is lethal. A decent, proper and thorough regulatory system absolutely would test new chemicals as they enter the market on the basis of how they are likely to interact with chemicals that they are likely to meet. I am afraid this is not an area I have any expertise in, but I will look into it as a matter of urgency, and I will write to him and place my answer in the Library.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply and all noble Lords who supported my amendment. I find the Minister’s reply slightly equivocal. I have been in his shoes, and I know that sometimes you have to read out stuff with which you do not entirely agree. I rather think that, in the light of his final remarks, that is the position the Minister finds himself in today. Nevertheless, there are some points that we on our side have to take into account, but I ask that the Minister takes our position into account.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for welcoming me, but he was wrong to say that there are relatively few cases. There is a significant number of cases, some of which are due to historic exposure but, nevertheless, there is a large number of cases—thousands. Around the world, there are several tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of people who are seriously medically affected, in some cases lethally, by the use of pesticides.
I applaud the Government's long-term aim of reducing pesticides, in one sense. I would prefer the long-term aim to be the elimination of non-organic pesticides, but that is for the long term. The amendment deals with a very specific and, as I said, modest proposition in the more or less immediate term.
To reply to the noble Lords, Lord Carrington and Lord Cormack, the present regulations are not effective. They largely depend on codes of practice, which are not directly legally enforceable. The rights of residents are only minimally covered. I agree that we need to put those regulations under the microscope, but my belief—and that behind the amendment and shared by those who support me and the thousands of people who have been affected by pesticide exposure—is that, having put them under the microscope, we must reach the conclusion that those areas where people permanently live, work or attend must be permanently removed from airborne crop-spraying application of pesticides.
It is not a simple question, and there is not a simple scientific argument, about how far that should be, because the wind changes and methods of application change. I was slightly alarmed, although I think it was supposed to be reassuring, that part of the medium-term development of pesticide application could be the use of drones. On one level, they may be more precise, but on another, they are less controllable. Rural residents will certainly be fearful of that.
All those issues must be taken into account. Some of us may want different and more radical long-term objectives, but the amendment relates to the distance between places where people are in our countryside and where toxic material is being put into the air which they can breathe and which touches them and can affect them and their children.
Any putting under the microscope of the present situation would reach the same conclusion: we need a distance. As I said earlier, the exact distance and regulation is a matter for further discussion with the Government, but the principle needs to be in the Bill, and I shall return to this at a later stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)
We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 157. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in the group to a Division must make that clear in the debate.
Clause 73: Environmental recall of motor vehicles etc
Amendment 157
Lord Berkeley
Member’s explanatory statement
This Clause appears to enable the Government to recall pieces of internal combustion engines that are no longer compliant with emissions legislation. This amendment, as well as others in Lord Berkeley’s name, is to probe why trains, ships and aircraft are not included as they are capable of similar emissions.
Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 158 and 159 and comment on the other amendment in this grouping. This is to do with the environmental recalling of motor vehicles, which covers everything in Clause 73(3). As I read it, this is for the purpose of the environmental impacts, which in Clause 73(6) include
“any impact on the environment caused by noise, heat or vibrations or any other kind of release of energy or emissions resulting from the use of the product.”
I have tabled this amendment to probe Ministers as to why the clause relates only to motor vehicles, which I think are effectively road vehicles, and does not include emissions from trains—there are a lot of diesel trains around—from ships, certainly within UK territorial waters, or aircraft. We have had many debates about emissions from aircraft, although fewer about ships and trains. They all have the same ability to emit harmful emissions and do everything mentioned in Clause 73, a clause that I of course support.
Amendment 159 relates to similar pieces of equipment. Construction equipment, bulldozers and cranes, and agricultural plant or equipment are all powered by motors that emit possibly—in fact, almost certainly—harmful emissions. I want to probe the Minister on why these are not included in this rather excellent piece of legislation. It will be quite difficult to get them into the regulations. On the principle that most of this equipment has motors that cause noise, emissions or a combination of the two, I think they should be included in the same clause.
Some vehicles are major polluters because there are so many of them, and you can include cars and trucks in that. There are probably fewer agricultural vehicles, such as tractors, but some of the ones that I have seen certainly do their bit to pollute the environment. I would be pleased to hear from the Minister why they have been excluded.
There has been a lot of talk of biomass being able to fuel aircraft in order to make them zero carbon, but if we ever got to a stage where aircraft could be powered by a fuel that was 100% biomass, it would need so many hectares of land on which to grow that biomass that we would probably all starve around the world. That is not a long-term solution. Aircraft cause just as much pollution as everything else. Obviously we need to have international agreements on all these issues, but we still need to do our national bit.
So those are the big numbers. Conversely, Amendment 279 in the name of my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester and other noble Lords is a plea for an exception to Clause 73. Railway locomotives, road vehicle chimneys and even stationary steam engines emit quite a lot of harmful emissions, but there are so few of them around that one could argue from a heritage point of view that they should be excepted from Clause 73. I shall listen carefully to what noble Lords say about this amendment, but because there are so few of these vehicles around there is a strong argument for excepting them from the clause. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and I beg to move.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 279, which is grouped with the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I tabled it with noble Lords from across the Chamber, the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Bradshaw, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, because we believe that the members of the heritage steam alliance—heritage railways, steam boats and ships, steam road vehicles, engineering museums and historic houses—are entitled to have confirmed the guarantee given by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, in a private meeting on 25 May and repeated by him at Second Reading on 7 June, that they will be permitted to continue to burn coal. That guarantee should be placed in the Bill and enshrined in the Act when it finally passes.
At Second Reading, the noble Lord said:
“The Government are very confident, as am I, that heritage railways will continue to operate, because although our electricity systems will no longer rely on coal, it can still be used by a range of industries that need it”.—[Official Report, 7/6/21; col. 1306.]
In our meeting a fortnight earlier, he said that banning heritage coal use would be a disproportionate response to the clean air and climate change agendas and would damage the great cultural and economic value of the steam sector to our tourism economy. There is no need for me make again my Second Reading speech about the value of the heritage rail sector and other aspects of the heritage steam alliance to tourism and the regional economy in particular. I simply make the point that all Amendment 279 does is to put it beyond any doubt that the assurances Ministers have repeatedly given us that the heritage steam sector will remain in being have the force of law and cannot be reversed without fresh primary legislation.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, like all noble Lords, I support this Bill in the round. Having said that, it contains hints of an ugly intolerance; it sometimes gives the impression that those responsible for it know all the answers. A more open attitude would pay dividends and avoid error. After all, a short while ago, some of the same people were confidently and wrongly demanding that we all switch to diesel engines. The truth is that science evolves and new discoveries are made all the time. Humility in scientific matters is essential.
My concern in this group is with a small matter, economically speaking, where I fear an error could be made. It matters because this Bill could bring about the death of Thomas the Tank Engine and his or her nautical steamboat equivalent. Noble Lords will recall my repeated requests for cost-benefit analyses and my concern about the perverse effects of legislation, however important and well intentioned. I rarely receive a satisfactory answer, but that does not mean the request was not valid.
By making it impossible in practice to use British coal for heritage trains, boats and steam engines, we would, I fear, be consigning them in time to the scrap heap. This is unjustified. It is not in the spirit of reuse and recycle, which some of us supported earlier in Committee. Without a small exemption for the use of coal sourced in the UK, we will be importing coal from elsewhere. This would be worse for climate change, as you would have travel emissions as well as the impact of coal use. Also, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, explained to me this morning—we often agree across the political divide—we are talking about small and often impecunious operators who need one or two suppliers to source, pay for and distribute this coal. What supplier would think of taking that risk if it had to be imported from Russia?
Alternatively, of course, we will be consigning these heritage vehicles to a sad death. That would lead to a loss of tourist engagement and income as travellers move elsewhere, often overseas by air. The rotting of the vehicles and railways would create its own waste pile, and the whole dismal process would be a wholly unnecessary and self-inflicted harm and error. As is often said by our Green colleagues—I am sorry that they are not here this evening—we must look in the round at these resource issues. I am very hopeful that my noble friend the Minister will listen to the concerns expressed by me and others and propose a suitable amendment on Report. Like others, I support Amendment 279.
Lord Bradshaw (LD) [V]
My Lords, I too support Amendment 279 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. Steam locomotives, in particular, and the associated steam engines employed elsewhere are generally now maintained to the highest standards by the most enthusiastic people, and they bring lots of tourists into the most remote areas of the country. The effect on the areas where these railways and other such things operate is immense. Many areas such as north Wales would be immeasurably harmed if the use of steam locomotives was banned. I want simply to say that I support Amendment 279 with enthusiasm. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said that he has received assurances from the Minister. I hope this is true, and I agree with him that including this in the Bill would be something we would all look back on with pride.
Lord Lucas (Con) [V]
My Lords, I want to address two aspects of Amendments 157 to 159. First, looking at the underlying clause, what do the Government intend to use these provisions for? Once a motor vehicle has been out in the world for a while, it tends to have drifted a long way away from the ability of the original manufacturer to do anything about it. Is the clause saying that a second-hand car that someone cheerfully bought a year or two ago will be hauled in and scrapped? If so, where is the provision for compensation? If that is not what the clause means, what does it mean?
Secondly, I will take the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, a bit further. If we are looking at aspects of our lives that emit a lot more carbon dioxide than they need to, why are we not looking at cement? Standard cement is a very heavy emitter of carbon, and inevitably so, as it involves taking the carbon dioxide out of limestone. But, as the Romans knew, you can get a very strong material by mixing about 70% standard cement with 30% volcanic ash, in the Romans’ case, or in our case maybe steel slag. You can get a material which is just as strong and durable, yet there does not appear to be any focus on doing that. I hope it will be possible to pursue this with officials between now and Report, to help us understand in which bits of our lives it is considered important that we focus on CO2 reduction, which bits are to be left alone and, in each case, why.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about exactly what this provision in the Bill refers to. The word “recall” usually implies some kind of faulty manufacture which does not live up to the technical specifications. It can also mean something that, when manufactured, seemed safe but has since been proved to be unsafe. At what point has a fault that develops in a motor vehicle got nothing to do with the original manufacture? It could be due to the way it has been used or misused.
When I first read this, I thought that I entirely understood why the Government wanted this clause in the Bill, because I thought that it referred to a series of incidents a few years ago where some car manufacturers made false claims about the environmental emissions efficiency of their vehicles. They went further than that: they taught them to cheat in the emissions tests that we were then following as EU standards—we are still following the same set of tests, but we refer to them rather differently now. At the time, I was aware that the UK Government took rather less strenuous action on this than some other Governments. Therefore, as a result of various government statements, I was led to believe that perhaps the Government did not have the powers that they felt were necessary. When I first read this part of the Bill, I thought that it was a very reasonable requirement by the Government that they should want more powers to deal with this.
It is rather difficult to get through to the true meaning of this because so much of it is going to be left to regulations. If you read this section of the Explanatory Memorandum, it has sentence after sentence saying to us “This is going to be left to regulations” and “That is going to be left to regulations”. It is such a bald original statement with so much to be filled in by regulations. So I look forward to the Minister’s explanation as to exactly what the Government are concerned about.
However, if I am right on that, can I then ask the Minister why the recall is restricted, apparently, to motor vehicles? It seems to me like a remarkable lack of imagination to do so, because manufacturers of component parts in trains, ships and aircraft will have as great an incentive to cut corners, misrepresent or downright cheat in the future as car manufacturers have had in the past. The environmental restrictions and limits that have been placed on car manufacturers in the past will very soon come to aviation, shipping and the rail services, so there is every reason to apply this throughout the transport industry. I ask the Minister to explain why that has not been done so far. I support the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in his amendments.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 157 and 159, in the name of my noble friend Lord Berkeley, and Amendment 279, in the name of my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester. As has been outlined, the amendments in this group have different intentions, but, nevertheless, they allow us to reflect on the fact that, when we consider emissions, it is not just cars that we need to worry about.
Amendment 279 focuses on heritage vehicles and buildings, which have already been the subject of some debate. I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and other colleagues across the Committee speaking on this very important point. We need to make sure that we recognise the great value of the heritage vehicles sector. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to add on this particular point.
My noble friend Lord Berkeley’s amendment speaks to other transport modes, including aviation, where progress towards cleaner technologies has been slow compared to the car market. Indeed, when the sector asked for dedicated support during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Government missed an opportunity to strike a deal with airlines and airports to improve environmental performance. The Government also have a somewhat questionable record on rail modernisation. While HS2 is going ahead, Ministers have cancelled the electrification of certain rail lines, meaning that older diesel-powered trains will continue to run.
My noble friend Lord Berkeley touched upon aviation and recognised that it is an area that we have to do a lot more about. I ask the Minister specifically about the discussion around the sustainable aviation fuel concept that the Biden Administration in America are looking at. I know that this is not the focus of these amendments, but it has been mentioned by speakers. What discussions are the Government making in this particular area?
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for his amendments, and I thank other noble Lords who have participated in this debate. Regarding Amendments 157 and 158, I assure the noble Lord that the Government’s intention in Clause 73 is to ensure that polluting vehicles and non-road mobile machinery not meeting environmental standards will be taken off our roads and brought back into compliance. The policy was designed for motor vehicles, their components and non-road mobile machinery, and it was designed in line with the regulatory framework governing their environmental standards.
In response to the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, this is analogous to an equivalent power in relation to safety standards—so, yes, vehicles can be recalled by manufacturers long after they have been on the road if we find that they are not compliant with the relevant environment regulations. Specifically to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, this power could be used to recall vehicles that do not meet the standard that they should have met when they were originally authorised for sale, not standards that have since come in. However, I shall write on the detail of what we should put in those regulations.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I should say that all recalls will be fully funded by the manufacturer, and there will be provision for the Government to compel the manufacturer to pay compensation to the owner. I am also pleased to confirm that train engines, as outlined in the amendment, could be recalled under the legislation as drafted without these amendments.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and others mentioned the incentive to cheat. Increasing the scope to include aircraft and ships would add significant complexity to this regime. These would also be outside the remit and expertise of the intended enforcement authority, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, and would not be within the scope of the Bill nor necessary to achieve the wider policy aims. I reassure noble Lords that there are already robust systems in place to ensure that aircraft and ships comply with environmental standards. Compliance for marine engines already exists through our enforcement of requirements under the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships. Civil aircraft are required to meet the environmental certification standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization before they are allowed to operate. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that biomass may not be the way forward to fuelling aircraft but, as the noble Lord, Lord Khan, said, we must encourage research into alternative fuels.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, brought up something that is really rather out of scope of the Bill—cement. It is indeed a heavy carbon emitter, but I am aware of really innovative and attractive solutions being worked up in the private sector that could in time transform heavily carbon-emitting cement.
I move on to Amendment 159. The legislation specifically enables the Government to recall the engine of non-road mobile machinery if it is found not to comply with environmental standards. Again, I want to be clear for the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that his amendment would fall within the definition of non-road mobile machinery, termed “machinery that is transportable” in the Bill, and would already be subject to the proposed recall regime. I thank the noble Lord for his contributions, and I agree with him that it is important to ensure that all vehicles are properly regulated, especially in relation to emissions in air quality. I hope that I have provided reassurance that this is the case such that he will not press his amendments.
I turn to Amendment 279 from the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner. The Government understand the important contribution that the heritage sector makes to our national culture, and I appreciate the concerns raised by the noble Lord and others who have participated in this debate. I can confirm for noble Lords that heritage vehicles are not within the scope of the legislation, and that includes trains and boats. As for historic buildings, I confirm that local authorities, when declaring a smoke control area under Section 18 of the Clean Air Act 1993, have the power to exempt specific buildings or classes of buildings under Section 18(2)(c) of that Act. They could exempt specific historic houses or historic houses in general from the requirements applying to the smoke control area. The Bill will not impinge on that ability. We listened to the concerns raised by the heritage bodies during consultation on the measures, as well as engaging with the inquiries of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Heritage Rail. I can confirm that there will be no direct impact on the heritage steam sector as a result of this Bill. The Government do not intend to bring forward policy that would have a direct impact on it.
I reiterate that I understand the concerns raised by the noble Lord. I thank him for the recent discussion that he and others, including my noble friend Lord Forsyth, had with my noble friend the Minister on this issue. The Minister and his officials are happy to continue to engage with him as guidance is developed. I hope that the assurances that I have set out at the Dispatch Box are persuasive and that I am able to reassure noble Lords about the Government’s view about the importance of the heritage sector and that nothing in this Bill will impact on it. I hope that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)
I have had one request to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for her assurances in respect of the amendment concerning steam-powered vehicles. I declare an interest as president of the Steam Boat Association of Great Britain and as the owner of a steamboat. Can the Minister explain why she is not prepared to put in the Bill the exemption for historic vehicles of the kind to which she says the Government are committed?
I was very grateful to my noble friend Lord Goldsmith for agreeing to a meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, myself and others where he gave that assurance. However, Ministers are here one day and gone the next—indeed, they can be here one afternoon and gone by evening. It is not enough, despite Pepper v Hart, just to have an assurance from the Dispatch Box. We are dealing here with a major industry. I was on a steam train on Friday, the Jacobite Steam Train that runs from Fort William to Mallaig. It was absolutely packed with people—and not all of them were tourists; there were also people from the UK. At every point along that journey where it was possible for people to gather, they did so in order to wave at the steam engine; you could see the smiles on their faces. It is not a lot to ask of the Government to make it absolutely clear that there will be an exemption for these important vehicles.
There are some 400 steamboats in the country that regularly go to events and gatherings. They support an industry and skills that would otherwise die. We are the leading makers of steam engines in the world, with people such as Roger Mallinson and others. The costs of operation are enormous, many of them supported by volunteers for heritage railways and their kind. There are hundreds of thousands of pounds invested in steam traction engines, which we see at every country fair, and in their maintenance. It is important that people have the assurance of primary legislation, especially when we see so much legislation that contains powers for Ministers under Henry VIII clauses, pretty well to do as they like, and which this House can do nothing about by tradition because we do not vote against secondary legislation. Will the Minister say why the Government are resistant to putting a clear commitment in the Bill that heritage vehicles not only are not within the scope of the Bill but are protected from the whims of any Minister?
After all, it was only a few years ago when Michael Gove announced that all coal was going to be banned in households, which has wiped out both coal merchants and the distribution system. It meant that, on Friday, when I asked the driver of the steam engine that I was on where he got his coal from, he said, “We’re having to get our coal from Russia now. That is where we get it from.” I asked, “How much coal does your steam engine burn?” and he said, “Three and a half tonnes a day, and there are two of them and there are many like them.” I find it very difficult to understand how it is protecting the environment to bring coal in on ships and then trying to find a new distribution system to those vehicles. I urge the Minister, as was put so eloquently, to recognise the cultural importance of this and not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I understand the passion that I could detect in my noble friend’s voice. However, I repeat that we cannot list everything that the Bill does not apply to. I can reassure my noble friend that the Government are not doing anything that would impact on heritage vehicles, nor would they plan to do anything that would. An exemption is just not needed because these are not caught within the scope of the Bill. Again, I say that the Minister and his officials are happy to continue to engage with him and others as this guidance is developed.
Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken on this group. We have had a really good discussion, especially about older steam engines. I certainly would support an amendment that put this in the Bill, because it is a really serious issue, and it does affect stationary engines as well as moving ones, as noble Lords have said.
I shall also read with interest and in detail the Minister’s response to my three amendments. I find it odd that we are not looking at legislation that applies to all machines—if you can call them that—that emit emissions. Whether they are air, sea, river or road-based, they all emit emissions, and so to me, they should all be treated in the same way in this legislation.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)
My Lords, we now come to the group beginning with Amendment 160A. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in the group to a Division must make that clear in the debate.
Clause 77: Water resources management plans, drought plans and joint proposals
Amendment 160A
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment places specific requirements upon water companies to engage stakeholders in the development of plans.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]
My Lords, we now enter the chapter in this Bill on water, which has attracted a lot of attention in both Houses and in the outside world. The first thing to say is that undoubtedly Defra and the Government have recognised the concerns across the nation about the state of our waterways and, in this chapter, have tried to put in place actions to improve the situation. So at least from my perspective, there is none of the indignation I felt when trying to sort out the set-up of the OEP.
I hope all my amendments to this chapter are as helpful as intended. I, and others, are trying to make certain that what the Government are trying to do really works for all those whose lives are touched by our aquatic environment—and that is probably most of us.
Amendment 160A is on “may” or “must”. I know the Minister, in his letter to us today, indicated that the point of the word “may” is to allow the Government to consult, but the Defra fact sheet that also came out today indicates that it has already consulted the water companies on this matter. I guess my point is that, if the idea is good and the water companies have been consulted, it must be done—and this is a good idea.
We know for a fact that some parts of England, notably the south-east, will be stretched to provide enough water for all human needs over coming decades, let alone for nature. If we are going to build 1 million new homes along the Oxford-Cambridge arc and 300,000 new homes every year, which we probably need to, if Southern Water is predicting a supply-demand deficit by 2030 equivalent to 50% of its current supply, and if we are going to get hotter summers, meaning less rain and more evaporation, we have to do some serious planning sooner rather than later, as proposed new Section 39F in Clause 77 rightly suggests we do.
I like the idea of moving water between catchments; I also like the idea of more reservoirs, probably numerous smaller reservoirs, which might be easier to plan, bearing in mind that there have been no significant reservoir constructions in England for over 40 years. I know we are coming on to abstraction later in the Bill, but this is a serious issue that needs serious long-term planning. There is no “may” about it; it quite clearly “must” be done.
The purpose of my next two amendments, Amendments 160B and 160C, is just to bring the necessity of putting the all-important wider consultation process, and the stipulation of who is to be consulted, under the “must” part of the clause as per Amendment 160A. Note that this is consultation on what the regulations should cover, not on whether they should actually be introduced because, in my view, they should all be “must”s. I beg to move.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I declare my environmental interests as in the register. I support the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and his Amendment 163A, which encourages sewerage under-takers to consider nature-based solutions for wastewater treatment.
We have new and emerging threats in trying to treat wastewater. We have microplastics and increasing levels of hormones and other pharmaceuticals, as well as an increasing range of chemicals flushed down toilets to clean them. These are called contaminants of emerging concern—CECs—and the traditional approach would be to use different and even stronger chemicals to neutralise them, although I am not sure how one can neutralise microplastics. This is where nature-based solutions can play a big part. We all know that nature-based solutions near and on rivers can reduce flooding, cut down on nutrients getting into rivers and the sea and improve biodiversity. They can do the same thing before treated water even gets to the rivers.
In the next group is the new clause from my noble friend the Minister on stormwater overflows, which is long overdue. We must stop ordinary rainwater from entering the sewerage system and adding millions of gallons of clean water to wastewater, making the whole lot in need of treatment. In addition, we need a campaign to educate householders not to pour gallons of poisonous cleaners down the loo. I think we are still trapped—well, some older noble Lords might remember this—in the old Harpic advert of the 1980s, with its slogan of it being essential to clean “right round the bend”. It was a great slogan that has encouraged millions of us to use unnecessarily powerful chemicals to tackle a non-existent problem of cleaning sewerage pipes and not just the toilet itself.
In addition to reducing the amount of water which becomes wastewater in need of treatment and reducing the poisons we add to it, we need sewage treatment works to adopt, where possible, alternatives to chemical treatment. The main alternative has to be reed beds, which work exceptionally well and do a perfect job. Of course, reed beds and treatment require space and they are not the solution for many urban areas but they can be a much greater solution than they are now. Amendment 163A merely states that a sewerage undertaker in its management plan must address
“the opportunities for nature based solutions”.
As I read it, there is no compulsion, no fixed targets; it merely asks them to look at the opportunities to do it. In my opinion, that does not impose an unreasonable burden on them and I urge my noble friend the Minister to accept it, or accept the concept, anyway.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I welcome this part of the Bill. I refer to my interests as in the register, in particular that I am vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities and that I worked with the Water Industry Commission for Scotland for a number of years. I also declare my interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Water Group. I welcome Amendments 160A, 160B, 160C as probing amendments and would like to follow up the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and my noble friend Lord Blencathra.
In the regulations to which the Government refer, and as referred to specifically in the amendments by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, it would be helpful to know who the consultees are. I wish to place on record what an enormous difference it has made since the Environment Agency became a statutory consultee to applications for major new developments. I know that at one stage drainage boards themselves would have liked to have been considered as statutory consultees in relation to similar amendments, but they are focused more now on the provisions of the Bill which relate to drainage authorities, which I personally welcome, and which we will come to later. It is essential in my view—and I do have an amendment down to this effect—that water companies be considered as statutory consultees, for reasons which we will discuss elsewhere.
I welcome the references to water efficiency in earlier parts of the Bill, and I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, referred to water moving between catchments. Catchment management control is a very positive way forward. He also referred to reservoirs. Has my noble friend the Minister had the chance to look at—and, if not, will she look at—the most recent advice given by Professor Balmforth on reservoirs? I particularly support what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said about smaller reservoirs, particularly in the context of what my noble friend Lord Blencathra said about nature-based solutions. We had an extremely successful scheme with the Slowing the Flow at Pickering pilot project, which only involved public bodies, and I am delighted to say that Pickering has not flooded since we have had this scheme in place. I pay tribute to all the partners—albeit public partners—that have been involved. We can slow the flow not just by building reservoirs, as those of a particular size do pose problems because of the current legislation, but smaller bunds and dams, and smaller reservoirs all have a role to play.
I welcome these as probing amendments to see specifically what form of consultation the Government have in mind in the context of these provisions in Part 5.
Lord Oates (LD) [V]
My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and I welcome the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, on the important issue of consultation.
As noble Lords are aware, the Bill as currently drafted would delete subsection (8) of Section 37A and subsection (7) of Section 39B of the Water Industry Act 1991, which provide for a list of statutory consultees that “shall” be consulted, to use the wording in that Act. It replaces those subsections of that Act with a new Section 39F which would allow, but does not require, the Secretary of State to make provision for preparing and publishing a water resources management plan, a drought plan and a joint proposal. It fails to set out the list of stakeholders which must be consulted, as required in the existing Act. The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, would address that.
I note that, back in 1991, it seems that Bills that came before Parliament were a lot less equivocal than what we have now. The word “shall” rings out throughout the Water Industry Act 1991, whereas the word “may” is the dominant phrase of this Bill. Of course, the use of “may” puts far more power in the hands of Ministers and far less power in the hands of Parliament. Beyond the issues directly addressed in these amendments, there are a number of subsections in the new Section 39F which involve “may” where, in my view, a “shall” would be much the preferred formulation. Section 39F(5), for example, provides that
“regulations may make provision for the purposes of ensuring that persons likely to be affected by the plan or proposal have a reasonable opportunity to make representations to the Minister.”
Again, it would be useful if that was a “shall”, and the Bill would be considerably improved if most instances of “may” became “shall”. But for the moment, we on these Benches are happy to support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 160A, 160B and 160C in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. This is the first of a number of debates on water. While they cover different aspects, they are all important and we hope that the Minister will have detailed responses to the questions asked this evening. This set of amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, is relatively straightforward but could have a significant impact on the success of the various plans envisaged under this chapter of the Bill.
Consultation is an area that has been raised repeatedly thus far, with many colleagues feeling that the requirements throughout the Bill—whether on targets, environmental improvement plans, waste or water—are insufficient. The Minister may well say that water companies are already subject to a variety of requirements around consultation and community engagement, but current arrangements clearly are not working. Environmental performance is not good enough, and neither is customer satisfaction.
I totally agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said about tightening the language. As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, later agreed, nature-based solutions will play a big part. I totally agree that “opportunity” is vague. We need to have stronger and more definitive language to ensure that the process of consultation and working with stakeholders in relation to this landmark Bill does not end up being a process of post hoc rationalisation of predetermined decisions.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for tabling these amendments. Before I turn to them, the noble Lord made a point about the use of “may” versus “must” in legislation, which I hope is helpful to touch on in a general sense before I go into the specific use of “may” in relation to his amendment. The Environment Bill, as with other primary legislation, provides powers for the Secretary of State to make some regulations by using the word “may” and others using the word “must”. I assure the noble Lord that where we have used “may”, it is because we want to regulate effectively, allowing for effective consultation and proper consideration. The term “must” is used to impose a statutory duty to take a specified action—for example, to make regulations—as soon as it can reasonably be achieved; the term “may” provides a power to take that action while preserving some flexibility to make regulations as and when appropriate.
On Amendment 160A and the specific use of “may” here, the Government understand that water undertakers need certainty about the requirements for fulfilling their duties when preparing water resource management plans, drought plans and joint proposals. However, when exercising these powers, Ministers will need flexibility to be mindful of when to introduce new water planning requirements. This is to avoid causing unnecessary impacts on the preparation of water companies’ plans, which are revised every five years and prepared by water companies at different times within their own five-year cycle.
On Amendments 160B and 160C, the Government recognise that planning for water resources is strengthened by the involvement of a range of stakeholders. It is the Government’s intention that these stakeholders are involved in the preparation and delivery of these plans in England. Clause 77, as drafted, enables Ministers to set out in regulations who should be consulted. Under existing powers, Ministers have set out a long list of relevant consultees in the Water Resources Management Plan Regulations 2007 and the Drought Plan Regulations 2005. The clause as drafted will enable the Government to set out in regulations all existing statutory consultees—including, for example, water companies, the Environment Agency and Ofwat—as well as a range of other stakeholders to be consulted. Therefore, I am pleased to confirm that the intent of the noble Lord’s amendment is already delivered by the clause as drafted.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Khan and Lord Cameron of Dillington, mentioned reservoirs. These measures will support ongoing work to improve regional water resources planning, as set out in the Environment Agency’s national framework for water resources. They will help to improve the assessment and selection of water resources, such as water transfers or shared new reservoirs, which will provide shared benefits.
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions and hope that I have provided enough reassurance for the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who took part in this very short debate. These amendments were very much probing amendments that were designed, I hoped, to provoke a robust declaration of intent from the Government—which, if I understood the noble Baroness’s remarks correctly, we actually got, so I am pleased to thank her for that. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his remarks on nature-based solutions, and I will save my remarks on those for a later grouping, if I may. So, again thanking all those who took part, and in the hope of further positive statements on water from the Government, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)
We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 161. Anyone wishing this press this or anything else in the group to a Division must make that clear in the debate.
Amendment 161
“Duty on water companies: untreated sewage
In Part 1 of the Water Industry Act 1991, after Chapter 1 (appointments) insert—“CHAPTER 1ZADUTY ON WATER COMPANIES: UNTREATED SEWAGE17ZA Duty on water companies: untreated sewage (England)(1) A water company in England must take all reasonable steps to ensure that untreated sewage is not discharged into inland waters.(2) The Secretary of State, the Authority and the Environment Agency must exercise their respective functions under this and any other Act to seek to secure compliance with that duty.(3) In this Chapter, “water company” means any company holding an appointment under Chapter I of this Part (appointments).17ZB Requirements in connection with section 17ZA duty Reasonable steps to be taken by water companies in accordance with the duty under section 17ZA include, but are not limited to—(a) maintaining and publishing a register of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and any other sewer catchment assets from which discharges of treated or untreated sewage may be made to inland waters;(b) publishing biannual reports on the operational status of those assets;(c) progressively installing capacity to monitor continuously all discharges of treated or untreated sewage into inland waters from those assets and publishing the data so obtained;(d) monitoring and publishing reports on the quality and duration of discharges made from CSOs;(e) as part of drainage and wastewater management plans, setting out steps to ensure that—(i) biological or nature-based treatments are progressively installed where practicable and made operational at wastewater treatment works discharging to inland waters that do not otherwise provide for the tertiary treatment of effluent; and(ii) reliance upon CSOs is progressively reduced; and(f) any requirements specified by the Secretary of State under section 17ZC(2)(b).17ZC Report on measures to assist water companies in fulfilling section 17ZA duty(1) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report on measures to assist water companies in fulfilling the duty in section 17ZA—(a) within one year of this section coming into force; and(b) in every calendar year after the year in which that first report is published.(2) Each report under subsection (1) must for each of the measures listed in subsections (3) to (7) set out—(a) the Secretary of State’s assessment of the contribution that measure could make to reducing treated and untreated sewage discharges to inland waters in England; and(b) what steps, if any, the Secretary of State intends to take in connection with that measure, including any specific requirements on water companies in relation to their duty under section 17ZA. (3) Measures intended to separate surface water and sewage collection including—(a) requiring all new developments of more than two residential or commercial buildings to have separate surface water and sewage collection systems;(b) bringing Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 into force for England;(c) requiring all new surface water collection systems to incorporate sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS);(d) requiring all major retrofitting or redevelopment projects of buildings where practicable to incorporate SUDS and separate surface water and sewage collection systems; and(e) amending strategic guidance to the Authority to require it to facilitate capital expenditure on—(i) nature-based drainage systems, such as integrated constructed wetlands, and(ii) SUDS.(4) Measures intended to reduce the volume of sewage produced by domestic properties, including—(a) requiring by 2025 all domestic properties to have a metered water supply when being leased, rented or sold;(b) requiring the Environment Agency to maintain a register of all private sewage treatment systems;(c) amending Building Regulations to require efficient processing of grey water (sullage);(d) requiring all new domestic and commercial outside ground-level surfaces where practicable to be made from permeable materials; and(e) introducing water efficiency labelling on household appliances.(5) Measures to reduce the polluting content of sewage, including—(a) establishing a regulatory standard for flushable products;(b) prohibiting the use of plastics in sanitary products and wet wipes;(c) reducing the use of microplastics in flushable products; and(d) prohibiting the disposal of fats and oils into sewers by food service establishments.(6) Measures intended to reduce the impact of CSO discharges, including—(a) requiring the Environment Agency to work with water companies in reducing harmful discharges from CSOs; and(b) directing the Environment Agency to research the effects of CSO discharges on water quality in inland waters and water bodies.(7) Measures intended to promote improvements in bathing water quality in inland waters, including—(a) setting statutory targets for the increase in the number of bathing waters classified as “good” or “excellent”;(b) designating a minimum of two inland bathing waters, to include one in-river inland bathing water, in each water company area for each year of any price review period; and(c) amending strategic guidance to the Authority to require it to facilitate capital expenditure on the improvement of water quality in inland bathing waters. 17ZD Reports on performance against section 17ZA duty (1) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report on the performance of water companies against the duty in section 17ZA—(a) within one year of this section coming into force; and(b) in every calendar year after the year in which that first report is published.(2) Reports under this section must include assessments of—(a) the performance of the sewerage assets of each water company; and(b) the quantities of treated and untreated sewage discharged into inland waters from those assets.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment inserts into the Environment Bill the provisions of the Sewage (Inland Waters) Bill, which was prepared by Rt Hon Philip Dunne MP in the last parliamentary session.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am moving Amendment 161 in my name and those of my noble friend Lady Hayman and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. Our amendment would insert a new clause based on the wording of the excellent Private Member’s Bill tabled in the Commons by Philip Dunne, which fell without a Second Reading. It sets out the requirement for water companies to take all reasonable steps to ensure that untreated sewage is not discharged into inland waters. It sets out the responsibilities of the Government and the Environment Agency to ensure compliance. It sets out the monitoring, reporting and wastewater treatment plans that need to be in place. It sets out the requirements to separate surface water from sewage, reduce the volume of sewage, reduce the polluting content of sewage and increase the quality of inland bathing waters. It would require the Secretary of State to report on progress in delivering this duty within one year of the section coming into force, and every year thereafter.
I gather that there have been a number of discussions with Philip Dunne since his Bill was published and that the Government committed to take his Bill forward. I understand that this is what the Minister’s Amendments 165 and 300 are meant to achieve. But, by any measure, the Minister’s amendments are pale imitations of the original. Gone is the obligation on water companies to ensure that untreated sewage is not discharged into inland waters, combined with the obligation on Governments and the Environment Agency to secure compliance. Instead, in the Minister’s version, the Secretary of State must simply prepare a plan, which may include proposals to reduce sewage being discharged by storm overflows. It also includes several exemptions, which could undermine the whole intent of the clause. This is more than a difference of semantics; it fundamentally changes the tone and the urgency of the amendment, when what is needed is swift and strategic action to end the pollution caused by storm overflows.
We therefore also support the series of amendments to the Government’s amendment tabled by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, which put the original bite back into the clause by adding back the duty on water companies, taking out the exemptions and adding in dates to give a greater sense of urgency. These amendments achieve much the same as our original Clause 161 but by a different route.
This issue is urgent. Our rivers and inland waterways are being routinely polluted by raw sewage. It is affecting our biodiversity and wildlife and putting human health at risk. A recent report from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology shows that water companies are being allowed to unlawfully discharge raw sewage into rivers at a scale at least 10 times greater than the Environment Agency’s prosecutions indicate. Professor Peter Hammond found that, although there were 174 prosecutions of water companies between 2010 and 2020, in the same period there were 2,197 potential breaches recorded.
Earlier this year, Thames Water was fined £4 million when the sewage treatment pumps failed one night in 2016, allowing what was described as an “avalanche of foul waste” to spread over Green Lane recreation ground. Enough toilet paper to fill 2,500 refuse bags was recovered from the scene. It seems that our outdated sewage infrastructure cannot handle the pressures of increased population and climate change that cause these storm surges.
At least that case finally came to court. The fact is that the Environment Agency can no longer cope with the pressures on it, due to huge funding shortfalls. In a letter to the Secretary of State this year, the chair of the Environment Agency, Emma Howard Boyd, wrote that the drop in grant had forced it to reduce or stop critical work such as responding to environmental incidents, allowing it to attend only the more serious ones. In the meantime, the latest data shows that every river in England is polluted and is failing to meet the minimum water quality test—and, as we know, we have the lowest bathing water quality of any county in the EU.
So this is an urgent issue, and the Government’s proposals in the Bill are just not good enough. I therefore hope noble Lords will support our amendment and those in the name of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I beg to move.
Amendment 161A (to Amendment 161)
Lord Chidgey
“(3A) Measures intended to reduce reliance upon septic tanks and cesspits in rural communities, including requiring the progressive connection of such rural communities to main sewers.”
Lord Chidgey (LD)
It was—I was going to say “delightful”, but that sounds rather patronising and I do not mean that at all. It was “reassuring” to hear the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, because I cannot find a single word to disagree with. Nevertheless, I have a few points to add to this debate. I hope to speak to Amendment 161, the insertion of the Philip Dunne Bill, but also Amendment 161A in our name, on the reduction of the number of septic tanks, and Amendments 165 to 174.
We are advised that, despite years of investment, sewage and agricultural pollution still plague the UK’s rivers and coasts. Only 16% of inland waterways in England meet good ecological status, none of them passes the chemical tests and the UK now ranks last for bathing water quality in Europe. We could have a separate, long discussion about where the assets of our water companies throughout our land have gone since the companies were privatised; they certainly have not got into investing in and improving the facilities.
Water users who interact with water are also being put at risk of contracting harmful illnesses and antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, and I want to return to that issue later. The overwhelming cause of this pollution is the UK’s outdated infrastructure, which cannot handle the pressures of increasing population, urbanisation and climate change. Water companies are therefore routinely relying on combined sewer overflows, CSOs, so graphically described by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to manage demand.
Amendment 161 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, brings back into play the provisions of the Private Member’s Bill prepared by the right honourable Philip Dunne MP, which, I am actually appalled to hear, never got to Second Reading in the previous Parliament. Its provisions will be a welcome addition to the Bill. Again, we shall return to that later, I am sure.
Amendment 161 seeks to achieve the progressive reduction of managing domestic sewage waste through septic tanks discharging into rivers. They are mainly located in rural or semi-rural areas unconnected to mains sewers, and are often inefficient and poorly maintained. I understand that in continental Europe, septic tanks are being progressively phased out and are becoming increasingly rare, yet in the UK it has become a national issue yet to be addressed as a primitive legacy of a pre-industrial age.
This is again primarily a question of investment in sewerage infrastructure to connect to the large number of sewage works already handling sewage from smaller communities. As part of that investment, phosphate strippers should be fitted at sewage works serving communities of 5,000 or more. This would start to address the extensive algal growth now known to be as likely to be associated with sewage works as with farming. The investment comes at a cost, but it should be to investors rather than customers.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, my Amendment 161B does not sit very well with the rest of the amendments in this group. It is effectively about the reduction in demand for treated water, whereas most amendments in this group deal with sewage. I strongly support those amendments moved by my noble friend Lady Jones, and tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey—particularly in relation to chalk streams—and the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.
However, my amendment deals with something entirely different; I tabled it because I thought that as soon as provisions on water appeared in this Bill there ought to be a declaration that one of our main aims is to reduce the demand for water in our system, which not only puts pressure on the system but has carbon implications. At present there is no real regulation driving more efficient use of water in the home or in industry. Therefore, my amendment would require the Minister to set a 10-year strategy to reduce domestic demand. Many of the experts say that it needs reducing to be sustainable and resilient; it must be reduced by about a third. Our domestic use of water is considerably higher than that of many of our European neighbours. In order to achieve that, we will need measures of metering, new water efficiency schemes, water appliance standards and labelling, and much stronger building regulations that require efficient appliances and piping to be installed.
I realise that others want to get on to the sewage amendments. I also realise that there are other amendments covering the same territory as mine, which come after Clause 87. I still think that it would have been useful at the beginning of the section on water to make a declaration about water efficiency. If it is not there, however, I will support amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, when we reach that group after Clause 87.
The Duke of Wellington (CB) [V]
My Lords, I am very pleased to speak after the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. Her Amendment 161, as she said, is nearly identical to an excellent Private Member’s Bill tabled in the other place in the last Session of Parliament by the right honourable Philip Dunne, Member of Parliament for Ludlow, to whom I pay tribute. It is an excellent Bill; it is a pity that it never got a Second Reading, but my concern is that, as an amendment, there is so much in it that I doubt whether there is a majority in this House to vote for it in its entirety.
At the beginning of this Session of Parliament, the Government announced that they would take over most of the components of Philip Dunne’s Bill by tabling amendments in this House. The result this evening is government Amendment 165. However, I do not think—and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, feels the same—that Amendment 165 goes nearly far enough. Therefore, I have tabled a number of amendments which we are now debating in this group. I have also tabled some amendments to Clause 78, which will be debated in the next group.
I must describe first to your Lordships the purpose of all my amendments. To me and to many others in this House and elsewhere, it is completely unacceptable that in the 21st century raw, untreated sewage continues to be discharged into our rivers. I suspect that the two respected Ministers, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and Rebecca Pow in the other place, also find it unacceptable, but government Amendment 165 commits the Government to lay before Parliament by September of next year a plan only to reduce such discharges. To my mind, and I hope the Minister will not mind me saying it, this is an inadequate response to a most disagreeable state of affairs affecting the environment in general and the quality of water in our rivers in particular.
My Amendment 166 would place an obligation on the water companies to prevent any untreated sewage being discharged and not just to reduce the discharges, as the Government propose. The amendment would also require the Secretary of State, the office for environmental protection and the Environment Agency to use their powers to secure compliance by the water companies. Regrettably, there is evidence that illegal and unjustified discharges are occurring regularly with apparent impunity.
My Amendment 167 would strengthen the government amendment by inserting “and eventually eliminating” after “reducing”. The Government are not being bold enough if they plan simply to reduce discharges, which must surely be eliminated in a country which is trying to leave the environment in a better state for future generations.
My Amendment 168 seeks to replace “may” with “must” for a number of provisions in the government plan. A plan which only “may” reduce the need for discharges, “may” require the treatment of sewage discharged by storm overflows, “may” monitor the quality of watercourses and “may” obtain information on storm overflows is clearly inadequate in the face of 403,000 discharges in England last year.
My Amendment 169 requires that the plan includes proposals for nature-based solutions, which my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington has already referred to. It is surely desirable that reed beds, for example, should at least be considered, where possible.
My Amendment 170 proposes a new subsection to the government amendment, to ensure that progress is made every year and that, by 2025, full monitoring is in place. It is essential that those who enjoy rivers—swimmers or anglers—have access to information on discharges in real time.
My Amendment 171 seeks to bring forward the date by which Ministers must bring their plan to Parliament. The proposed plan was announced in May; for the department to have given itself 16 months to do the work shows a certain lack of urgency. These revolting discharges are happening every week, and it seems appropriate to put Ministers and their officials under greater pressure to come up with a solution.
My Amendment 172 would add, through the Secretary of State, some important further requirements on the water companies. It will be necessary to report in detail the extent to which discharges have occurred and the adverse impact on public health. The effect on public health of these regular discharges of raw sewage is, to my mind, not yet fully understood, neither by the experts nor the public.
As I go through these amendments, I would like to say in passing that I support Amendments 172A and 172B in the name of my noble friend Lord Cameron. Storm overflows should certainly only ever occur in extreme weather conditions.
My Amendment 173 is similar to Amendment 172, but places the obligations on the Environment Agency in its reporting to address the extent to which the water companies have complied or will comply, and to give its assessment of the impacts on public health.
My Amendment 174 would effectively delete the let-out clause in the government amendment, whereby the water companies would not have to report discharges if there had been an electrical or mechanical failure or a blockage elsewhere in the system. To me, that is a most surprising exemption—a huge loophole. Disclosure and publication of these very problems would undoubtedly make the water companies tackle the issues concerned with greater urgency.
I also support Amendment 175, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and others. Installation of grey water systems is eminently sensible and long overdue.
To conclude, government Amendment 165 is very welcome, but it really needs strengthening, and my amendments seek to do that. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and the noble Lord, Lord Oates, for signing them. These matters should never be party political, and I hope that there will be cross-party support for our attempts to improve the Bill and to make significant progress in cleaning up the rivers of England.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]
My Lords, it is a real honour to follow the powerful and authoritative speech of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I agree with every word he said.
I will first speak to Amendment 161, to which I would have put my name had there been more room or had I got there soon enough. Although most of the content of this amendment has now been superseded by other amendments to this Bill, as a general approach to the appalling pollution of all our rivers it still holds good. However, we will cover CSOs, SuDS and water metering in this and future groupings, and we have already spoken about flushable products, so I will not touch on those aspects at this time. But there is one area in this amendment—I am sure there are others—which is not really covered by other amendments and which caught my attention: the question of designated bathing spots.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, this is one of the groups of amendments which really ought to be just swallowed wholesale by the Government. It has some excellent amendments in it.
I have signed Amendment 161, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, because it is a really good amendment with some very practical solutions for cleaning up our rivers. The way that we as an industrial society treat our rivers is one of the grossest examples of the way we trash our planet. We see rivers as little more than a dumping ground we can use to dispose of our rubbish when we cannot be bothered to sort out our waste disposal systems. It is time to stop that.
In particular, Amendment 161 emphasises the importance of nature-based solutions and other ways of separating our sewage from the clean water that falls on the surface as rain. It is absolutely absurd that we mix these two things together, instantly turning clean rainwater into raw sewage that, as far as we are concerned, is good for nothing. There are a great many nature-based solutions for treating sewage water. In the US, more than half of sewage is treated to become organic fertiliser, although some recent studies show that this can be contaminated by the inclusion of industrial waste. As long as we remove or cut out this waste, there is no reason why the UK cannot develop a well-regulated, safe industry to turn our domestic wastewater into useful resources like that. Alternatively, there are fascinating natural wastewater systems such as constructed wetlands, which use a combination of natural processes to create safe water, with the excellent secondary benefit of creating central wetland habitats.
I know that the Minister is keen on nature-based solutions, so I hope that he can expand on the Government’s plans for using nature to clean up our water and reach zero river sewage. Quite honestly, if I had to pick one amendment as the most crucial, it would have to be Amendment 166 tabled by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, which sets the essential target of zero discharges of untreated sewage into rivers. This is the level of ambition that we should be working towards as a matter of urgency.
Baroness Redfern (Con) [V]
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and other noble Lords who have spoken in support of this group of amendments dealing with sewage overflows. As I stated at Second Reading, action is needed now because time is short, particularly as we are experiencing much longer periods of heavy rainfall. It is imperative that water companies upgrade their facilities to address this issue and help improve our environment in the light of climate change. I am pleased to have the opportunity to add my voice to these amendments, which address the problem of untreated sewage and propose other measures to prevent further destruction of our aquatic environment.
We are witnessing a gradual but destructive process which is reducing wildlife habitats and choking plant life; it cannot continue. The Environment Bill should be strengthened to place a legal duty on water companies to reverse these impacts on the environment and, in particular, public health, and to help reduce the negative impacts for both young and old, who enjoy aquatic leisure pursuits.
Water companies must take all reasonable steps to prevent the flow of untreated sewage from storm overflows into our rivers, lakes and coastal waters. It has to be stopped. We simply cannot keep saying that just a reduction is necessary; we must go much further, working towards eliminating these discharges. The harm caused by sewage discharges is a serious issue and must be a priority for the Government, who manage approximately 15,000 storm overflows in England. A plan to increase the continuous monitoring of storm overflows by sewerage companies by 2025, with much more detailed data being published at the earliest opportunity, obtained in as close to real time as possible, will stop sewage being spewed into our waters.
Finally, we need to address the use of technical failures as a justification for untreated sewage discharges, which last year increased by 46% compared with 2019 figures. This cannot continue to be condoned. Time is no longer a luxury we can afford. The sewage pollution crisis is here today and needs radical action; the general public know that and support action now.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lady Redfern. There are a number of extremely interesting and pertinent amendments in this group. In a way it is a pity the group could not have been attached or somehow linked to the amendments in the group which follow—obviously it would have been too big. Were the amendments I shall be speaking to in the next group to be accepted, there would be no unwanted sewage overflow or discharge. They refer back to the well-researched and constructive proposals put forward by Sir Michael Pitt, who was responding to the 2007 surface water flooding of that year. Obviously it is regrettable that many of his recommendations have still not been put into effect.
The amendments in this group carry a lot of favour, not just within the House but from bodies such as the coalition of Surfers Against Sewage, the Rivers Trust, Salmon & Trout Conservation, Wildlife and Countryside Link, Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, and the Angling Trust, many of which have been working in particular with my noble friend the Duke of Wellington to put meat on the bones of these amendments, which obviously aim to reduce the sewage overflow. Amendment 161 in particular, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, looked to my right honourable friend Philip Dunne’s Bill in the other place. The aim of that amendment and others in this group is to stop the discharge of untreated sewage going into inland waters. Obviously, I commend that. However, these amendments are only part of the solution.
It is unacceptable that water companies are being forced, in many respects, to connect to major—and sometimes even only minor—new developments but where those connections are unable to be made safely. It inevitably leads to the situation that this group of amendments seeks to address. The amendments in this group are, therefore, a necessary part of the solution but they would go only so far in placing a legal duty on water companies to stop the discharge of water sewage, which I think is what both the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and my noble friend the Duke of Wellington are seeking to achieve. I hope that we can go further back in the process and look to prevent many of these false or unsafe connections being made in the first place. I am delighted to say that the coalition of Surfers Against Sewage and others is aware of that and it is their intention to support my amendments in the next group.
The reason why I care so much about the amendments in this group is because, when I was an MEP, I participated in a number of Blue Flag awards for beaches in my then Essex constituency—for the first five years I had the whole of the Essex coastline in my European Parliament constituency and, for the next five years, it included part of the Suffolk beaches and most of the Essex beaches. As an enthusiastic swimmer, I went and had a swim after one of these Blue Flag awards—it would have been at some point in the 1990s—and I regret to say that 48 hours after that short swim I went down with gastroenteritis, and I have a pretty good idea of the reason why.
I hope that my noble friend will look favourably on many of these amendments and will also marry up to this idea that the connections should not be made in the first place. I welcome the amendments in this group, but we are dealing with pollution after the event and that pollution could be prevented in the first place. However, I commend to my noble friend Amendment 161 and the amendments in the name of my noble friend the Duke of Wellington and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, as something we should very seriously consider adopting as part of the Bill.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]
My Lords, this is a rather substantial group of amendments, and I am a very insubstantial person right at the end of list. Nevertheless, I will have a go, because it is a very important group.
Climate change has an increasing impact. We are seeing lower flows in rivers, more intense rainfall flowing rapidly off land and hard surfaces into watercourses and more occasions when storm overflows are spilling untreated sewage into our rivers. We need to take swift action to ensure that less rainwater and surface run-off gets into the foul water spill-off system. Noble Lords have previously remarked on that; it is a very ridiculous way of managing a drainage system to put clean water with dirty water.
Some 50% of our storm overflows that are in the firing line tonight are in fact probably okay and operating within acceptable limits. However, 30% have unknown impact: we do not know what harm they are causing and there is an urgent need for better understanding of that impact. Meanwhile, 15% are already known to have totally unacceptable impacts and need either engineering or catchment base solutions, so that they do not spill. This means bigger storm tanks, conveyance by pipes to alternative treatment works, increasing the capacity of some sewage treatment works and possibly UV treatment, as well as reducing the amount of surface water that goes into the foul water system.
Currently, drainage from roads can automatically be discharged into the foul water system. Can the Minister assure us that the Government will make it mandatory for all major new roads to have substantial drainage systems with sufficiently large tanks in flood conditions to ensure the foul drainage systems are not overloaded with unacceptable resulting spillages?
For all these reasons I support Amendment 161 in the names of my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—one can never have too many Baroness Joneses—and my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock. It inserts the provisions of Philip Dunne’s Sewage (Inland Waters) Bill, which has been praised already by several noble Lords. In my view, this lays out a fairly comprehensive and effective strategic approach with a menu of options. That is very different from the Government’s rather limp and inadequate Amendment 165, which is all about monitoring and publishing and not about doing.
I also commend the spirit of Amendments 166, 167 and 168, tabled by the noble Duke, Lord Wellington, the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and the noble Lord, Lord Oates, which seek the elimination, not just the reduction, of untreated sewage. These amendments talk about using “all reasonable steps”. I suspect that the Government’s judgment of what is reasonable—if we can take their woolly, wishy-washy amendment as a yardstick—would be different from what may be judged reasonable by noble Lords.
I also support Amendment 172A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, which seeks to ensure that CSOs are discharged on a temporary basis only in agreed, genuine storm conditions in terms of volume and duration of rainfall. Too many CSOs regularly discharge in conditions that are far from storm conditions.
I also comment on and commend my noble friend Lord Whitty’s Amendment 161B on reducing domestic and non-domestic water consumption. As he noted, it appears rather oddly in this group since it is concerned with water quantity rather than quality. We simply cannot live with the fact that a rising population could be allowed to lead to a rising demand for water, as increasingly erratic weather patterns could mean more frequent periods of low rainfall and consequent drought and the current over-extraction from rivers and aquifers for agricultural industry use is already a problem.
There are some fascinating statistics in this area, and we may well rehearse them again when we get to clauses covering water quantity. Currently, the average Brit uses 142 litres per day, while the average German person uses 121. The gradient is even more marked between London and Berlin: the average Londoner uses 150 litres per day, and the average Berliner uses 110. To my certain knowledge, using a scratch-and-sniff test, I have not yet detected any difference in the hygiene levels of Berliners, who are using almost a third less water than Londoners. Added to that, customers with a water meter use 129 litres per day, while those without one use 171.
There is clearly big scope for increased water efficiency, and the amendment of my noble friend Lord Whitty would require the Secretary of State to set targets to reduce both domestic and business consumption, which would drive a long-overdue change.
Lord Oates (LD) [V]
My Lords, I am pleased to support the amendments in the names of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, to which I have also put my name. As we have heard, they seek to strengthen the new clauses that government Amendment 165 introduces. As the noble Duke said, it is completely unacceptable that, in the 21st century, we are discharging raw, untreated sewage so regularly—or indeed at all—into our rivers. I also welcome the amendment in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Hayman, which has similar objectives and, as we have heard, takes up the initiative of Philip Dunne’s Bill in another place.
There are other important amendments in this group, including Amendment 161A, in the name of my noble friend Lord Chidgey, who made a powerful case for the amendments as a whole, but particularly for his, on the issue of septic tanks and rural connections to mains sewerage, which is a very important issue. He mentioned that, in continental Europe, septic tanks are progressively being phased out. I am lucky enough to have regularly visited a village that is beside the River Charente in south-west France, and I can confirm and attest that, some six or seven years ago, they phased out all septic tanks there and put the whole village on the mains sewerage system. The beautiful cleanliness of the Charente is testimony to the effectiveness of that: it is a great place to swim—unlike some of our own rivers, I fear.
Amendments 170A and 188D, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and my noble friend Lord Teverson, need to be addressed by the Minister. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, explained, they highlight the important role of catchment partnerships and the need for their key role to be recognised in the Bill. I also strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, on the need to reduce domestic demand, but, as he said, that issue will be dealt with in other groups that we will come on to.
It is welcome that the Government have at least acknowledged that the existing Bill was substandard in the important area of discharges into rivers, and have brought forward an amendment to tackle that. However, from the debate that we have had this evening, it is abundantly clear that the amendment put forward by the Government falls woefully short. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said, it is a very pale imitation of Philip Dunne’s Bill, which it is supposed to take the place of, in some way. As we have heard, it does not impose a duty on water companies to take all reasonable steps to prevent sewage outflows; it aims only to reduce the frequency, duration and volume of discharges and has no ambition to eliminate them. It also does not set any specific targets for reductions.
It does require the Secretary of State to prepare a plan, but, as the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said, it provides only that that plan “may” include proposals to reduce
“the need for anything to be discharged by … overflows”
or to treat “sewage that is discharged”, or “monitor water courses”, or “obtain information”. It is all “may”—there is no requirement that the plan must include these critical elements. In the previous group we were speaking on, I was not convinced at all by the Minister’s explanation, nor indeed by the explanation in the letter that we received ahead of this Committee stage, on “must” and “may”. We know that “may” puts the power in the hands of Ministers, and they may decide not to do any of the things that we wish them to do. So, that “must” is very important.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I begin by thanking all noble Lords for their contributions on storm overflows. I am grateful to those both in this House and in the other place who have dedicated so much time to giving this issue the attention that it rightfully deserves. We have listened to noble Lords and parliamentarians in the other place, and we are all united in our view that action is needed. This is why we have tabled government amendments to change the Bill.
I shall move Amendment 165, in my name, will commit government to produce a statutory plan to reduce discharges from overflows and the harm this causes by September 2022. Work is already under way to develop the plan, including via the Storm Overflows Taskforce, made up of Defra, the Environment Agency, Ofwat, the Consumer Council for Water, Blueprint for Water and Water UK. I hope that noble Lords can appreciate that, if the plan is to deliver the change we want to see, it needs to be evidence based and developed in consultation with all key stakeholders. When we talk about stakeholders, that is not just the water companies but the NGOs and organisations battling to protect our rivers, as well as Members of this House and the other place. We need to get this right.
Government will be required through this new amendment to report to Parliament on progress towards implementing the plan. These reports will align with price review cycles so they can inform decisions about sewerage company funding. The amendment will also require water companies and the Environment Agency to publish annual data on storm overflow activity. This will improve transparency by ensuring that information on the activity of overflows is made available to the public, and ensure that Governments are held accountable for making progress.
I shall also move Amendment 300, which provides for the new clause after Clause 78, relating to storm overflows, to come into force two months after Royal Assent. Once in law, these measures will become an important step in tackling the scourge of sewage pollution in our rivers. I am pleased to say that they have been very warmly and enthusiastically welcomed by Philip Dunne, who tabled the initial Bill. The key word there is “step”—it is not the end of the journey but a step within that journey.
I turn to Amendment 161 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. My amendments also impose similar requirements to publish information on the activity of overflows. They do not, however, include precise legislative provisions on how a reduction of discharges from storm overflows could be achieved. That is to ensure that options are not limited before due consideration is given to the most productive and effective approaches. However, the plan itself, which the government amendment will require us to publish, will include specific measures to reduce discharges and the harm that they cause. The Government will consider a range of options during the development of the plan, including many of those outlined in the noble Baroness’s amendment, and there will be many opportunities for stakeholders to feed into its development. It is for these same reasons that it would also be inappropriate to change the wording from “may” to “must”, as Amendment 168 from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, proposes.
Amendment 169 was also proposed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I would first like to thank the noble Duke and my noble friend Lady Altmann for taking the time to meet with me again last week. I want to put it on record that I and the Government absolutely agree that we should be making much more use of nature-based solutions, particularly with regard to storm overflows. Nature-based solutions can play a key role in meeting flood resilience objectives in addition to numerous objectives in the Government’s 25-year environment plan at the same time. The beauty of nature-based solutions is that, while they are deployed to tackle one problem, they tend to answer so many other problems at the same time. They are not a silver bullet for all locations and all issues, and we will need to rely on a wide range of solutions to tackle the harm caused by storm overflows, including a combination of green, blue, and traditional grey infrastructure. But where a workable and appropriate nature-based-solution exists—I say this in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—our view is that it should be the default option. Government and water companies are also already investing in nature-based solutions to deliver multiple outcomes for the water environment and for biodiversity.
For example, in the Hanging Langford flood alleviation scheme, the Environment Agency used innovative permitting to allow Wessex Water to discharge, on the requirement that it provide a reed bed to treat the overflows. As a result of this nature-based solution, these sewage discharges are treated naturally and have negligible bacteriological impact on the River Wylye. This is exactly the sort of scheme we wish to see more of, and we are working with the Environment Agency and Ofwat to encourage greater take-up of nature-based solutions. I might add that the process that I have just described on the River Wylye would not qualify as elimination of storm overflows, as specified in Amendment 166—it would be regarded as management—but it is absolutely the kind of solution that we need to back. We need many more such solutions, but the language there is key and I will come back to that later.
I also assure the noble Duke that the current duty in the Bill allows for the government plan to use nature-based solutions where they are the most effective tool. On this basis, the Government do not believe it is necessary to specify them as a requirement in the Bill.
The noble Duke’s Amendment 166 was addressed by most noble Lords who have spoken today. All discharges to the water environment, including from sewer overflows, require a permit issued by the Environment Agency. The Bill contains clauses to place a statutory requirement directly on sewerage companies to produce drainage and sewerage management plans. This will ensure they are able to better deal with sewage discharges and tackle future risks. The statutory plan introduced by the Government’s new amendment will be based on robust evidence and consultation with all stakeholders, as I said earlier. It will be vital to have that evidence base and stakeholder participation to make sure that we have a plan that really works. I promise the noble Duke that the intention of his Amendment 166 is one that I and colleagues in Defra firmly share. We will take it into account as we draw up the plan.
On the noble Duke’s Amendment 167, storm overflows are a last resort in modern sewer design, but the age of our sewerage system means that their complete elimination is a major undertaking. For example, I am told that replacing all combined sewers with a separated sewer system would cost in the region of £200 billion to £500 billion, and would not eliminate the need for overflows in the system to cope with emergency situations. That does not mean that it is impossible or that things cannot significantly improve.
The agreed goal of the Storm Overflows Taskforce is to eliminate harm from storm overflows in the long term. The reason that the harm bit matters relates to the point I made earlier about the difference between appropriate management through nature-based solutions and elimination. The task force is working on options to achieve this goal and has commissioned research to gather evidence on the costs, benefits and feasibility of different options. This research project is due to be completed in early summer. The Government will take full account of the task force’s research findings and recommendations, other relevant evidence and views from the full range of stakeholders in drawing up our new statutory plan. We will decide on the precise details of our plan based on evidence and from weighing up the costs and benefits of all the different options. As I said when we spoke last week, I am keen to continue discussions with the noble Duke and other noble Lords with an interest in this, so we can discuss the options in more detail and look at them exhaustively.
On the noble Duke’s Amendment 170, the Government agree that transparency and monitoring are essential for creating a complete picture of the health of our water environment and to inform our decisions.
On the noble Duke’s Amendment 171, the Government also agree with the need for urgent action on this issue. To deliver a proper, comprehensive and robust plan, September next year does not feel like an exaggerated delay. We need to make sure that the plan is the best it can be, and is based on robust evidence, enabling all the appropriate consultation with all the relevant stakeholders and understanding the impacts of the plan on business, water customers and the environment. We do not yet know what the cost of the full solution would be, and we need to know that before we pass legislation.
On the noble Duke’s Amendments 172 and 173, the Government are already placing new duties on water companies and the Environment Agency to report on storm overflow activity. This includes information on investigation and improvement works. Clause 78 requires sewage undertakers to develop a drainage and sewerage management plan. These set out how they will maintain an effective system of sewerage and drainage and will include considerations of storm overflows.
Amendment 173, specifically, goes beyond information the Environment Agency currently owns, but additional transparency and reporting measures relating to undertaker performance will also be considered in developing the plan and through the task force. The Government do not feel it would be right to pre-empt this work by implementing additional reporting requirements at this stage.
The Government share the ambitions of the noble Duke in his Amendment 174. However, this amendment risks expanding the definition of “discharges” beyond the EA’s permits and creating confusion between the treatment of permitted and illegal discharges. The purpose of proposed new Clause 141E(2) is to define what a storm overflow is and this definition ensures that our amendments to prevent the harm caused by storm overflows apply only to permitted discharges. We already have a robust regulatory regime in place for tackling illegal discharges. They are subject to enforcement and fines by the Environment Agency and therefore it would not be appropriate to bring them into the scope of this proposed new clause. As most noble Lords have said today, the key issue is not illegal discharges but what is currently legally permitted in our waters.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
I have received a request to speak after the Minister from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.
The Duke of Wellington (CB) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for such a detailed response to this series of amendments. I must admit to some disappointment that we do not seem to have persuaded the Minister—yet—to move very far. It seems generally accepted in the Committee that government Amendment 165 is not strong enough, and I hope it will be possible to strengthen it. As noble Lords will be aware, many of my amendments have been intended to persuade the Government to take water quality as seriously as they clearly take air quality, as we heard in the debates this afternoon. I will continue to press some of these points. I am most grateful to the Minister for agreeing to meet me and others between now and Report to see if we can strengthen the new government clause, with the intention—which we all have—of cleaning up the rivers of England. I thank the Minister and look forward to meeting him in the coming weeks.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I simply thank the noble Duke for his interest in and commitment to this area, and reiterate that I am absolutely persuaded and committed to ensuring that our approach as a Government to tackling this problem matches the scale of the problem itself. To that end, I look forward to future discussions with him and other noble Lords.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken and supported our amendment this evening. I also pay tribute to Surfers Against Sewage for its excellent campaigning role in highlighting the terrible current state of our water quality.
To pick up on some of the contributions, the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, rightly raised the environmental damage that can be done by septic tanks and the need to link them to the main sewerage system. As he said, their existence is a primitive legacy of a pre-industrial age and a symptom of a lack of investment in the infrastructure over many years.
My noble friend Lord Whitty has a considerable background in the water industry, and I bow to his greater knowledge on all of this. He rightly pressed the point that we need to reduce household consumption of water within a deliverable timescale. As he said, we will have a chance to debate some of these issues in more detail in one of the later groups, so I will hold many of my comments back for that. But I agree with him that a declaration about reducing water consumption at the front of this part of the Bill would be very important. Again, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, raised issues that are coming up in later groups but equally relevant to this one; we will come back to those.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, for his thoughtful and detailed contribution. He raised the important point about the need to involve local catchment partnerships in preparing the policies to reduce sewage discharge and the need for stricter criteria on when such discharges should be allowed. He made the point that they could also have a role in designating bathing sites, and I am grateful to him for alerting us to the fact that 1.2 million people are involved in outdoor swimming. We all seem to know somebody involved in it these days, so its popularity is clearly increasing. It is obviously something to be welcomed in terms of health. We also need to know the adverse health effects if people are swimming in these waters. That point was also well made by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh.
The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and I were in exactly the same territory. He echoed a number of the issues that I had raised about the government amendment. As he said, it is not good enough to reduce sewage discharges; we should instead resolve to eliminate them. That point was echoed right around the Chamber this evening. The noble Duke has clearly not been too impressed by the discussions that he has had with the Minister so far. His amendment would also improve other loose wording in the government amendment; again, his thoughtful corrections are very welcome. We could discuss tactics and the right way forward later but, whether we have one amendment or a number of smaller ones, I think the noble Duke and I agree on what the ultimate objective should be.
I welcome the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. She rightly stressed the context of reforms needing to be based on nature-based solutions, and her point was very well made. She and my noble friend Lady Young raised the importance of setting out as soon as we can to separate storm and drain water from the sewerage system, which would obviously alleviate pressure on some of the discharges.
The noble Lord, Lord Oates, made a very important point about why the exemptions which the Government currently have in their amendment simply should not be allowed to apply. His example of the discharges into the Hogsmill illustrated that very well.
I listened carefully to the Minister’s response. We obviously welcome the task force and the extra money that has been made available. I also agree with him that we owe a great deal of thanks to the engineers, who often battle with outdated plant when they come out in difficult circumstances and weather conditions and at all times of the night. It is not an easy job, but their job would be considerably enhanced if they were able to deal with more modern equipment. I will need to consider the Minister’s points, which he raised primarily in response to the amendments of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, in detail, because I know that he went through them point by point.
However, none of this captured the urgency of the situation and the need to get a better grip on the performance of the water companies. This is at a time when they are still paying huge bonuses to their executives, rather than fixing the outdated sewerage infrastructure in a timely way. So I reiterate that the solution to our amendment would be for the Government to table a revised and improved amendment which more clearly matches what was originally put forward by Philip Dunne, which my colleagues in the Commons certainly felt was destined for the Lords and to be in the Bill—so there is disappointment in that Chamber as well as this one that that is not where we are at the moment.
I would be happy to have further discussions about this, if that can be arranged. There is a solution to be had here but, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 162. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in the group to a Division must make that clear in debate.
Clause 78: Drainage and sewerage management plans
Amendment 162
The Duke of Wellington
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to secure continuous improvement of sewage treatment plants and to secure the separation of drainage systems from the sewerage systems through a legal obligation placed on the water companies.
The Duke of Wellington (CB) [V]
My Lords, the amendments in this group are all to Clause 78 and would place obligations directly on the water companies and others concerned with drainage and sewerage management. In some ways, of course, this is a repeat of the interesting debate we have just had on the new government clause, but it is essential to strengthen the duties placed directly on the water companies. Otherwise, there will always be a doubt in law—I am not a lawyer—as to whether the Secretary of State or one or another agency, or one of the water companies, is ultimately responsible for compliance.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB) [V]
My Lords, once again, it is a real pleasure to follow my noble friend the Duke of Wellington and to support his Amendment 162, which seems a very good response to the Minister’s claim in respect of the last grouping that it was altogether far too expensive to prevent CSO discharges and the damage done to our rivers by our sewage treatment works. My noble friend’s amendment asks for continuous improvement of sewage works, and it should be accepted.
I shall speak to Amendment 162A in my name. It is probably superfluous, and I am merely probing to get an assurance from the Government. In the light of what we know about the state of our rivers and of getting to grips with some of the future problems—for example, the necessary but dramatic rise in planned housing provision and the fact that we probably have too many people per cubic metre of water in many parts of our country—it is important that the drainage and sewerage management plans work.
The amendment is designed to ensure that the plans work not only for present and future customers but for the environment. Above all, and I stress this, it is important to get this emphasis on the environment into this part of the Bill, so that Ofwat, in its authorisation of capital expenditure by water companies, is aware that environmental considerations are a legal necessity. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me on that specific point.
Turning to my other amendment in this group, Amendment 163A, on nature-based solutions, I realise that this has already been touched on today, but I thought I would use the amendment to drive home the message. “Nature based solutions” is a better name than the alternative of a sustainable urban drainage system, or SUDS, the point being that these solutions are just as important in rural areas as in urban.
Like trying to fit modern heating systems into old houses, it has to be admitted that retrofitting natural drainage solutions into existing communities can be expensive and difficult, but it is crucial that, starting right now, we insist that all new developments consider nature-based solutions from the start. It should be a compulsory part of the planning system. The main message I wish to get across is that Schedule 3 to the 2010 Act, as mentioned in Philip Dunne’s Bill, must be implemented in England as it already is in Wales, because these schemes have to be planned before the design of the site even starts. They are dependent on gravity, whereas every other service to a site can, as it were, flow uphill. The positioning of these nature-based solutions is therefore crucial, and they should be the first thing designed into any new site.
Let me give a brief example of a retrofitted nature-based solution which also perhaps helps explain what it is all about, and which could even be a model for new developments. I refer to the Greener Grangetown scheme, as it is called, near Cardiff. It consists of 12 streets and is now a series of rain gardens. The water is cleansed, and many trees grow there. What is essentially a drainage scheme has become a community garden scheme looked after by people of the community. The CSO is no longer needed, as storm conditions are already catered for. I admit that such a scheme is probably too expensive for mass replication, but, with its many outputs, it attracted many willing partners and investors. Businesses and local government wanted to get involved, so it is not totally unrepeatable with the right local driving force. When the Severn Trent Mansfield pilot has produced some results, we might be able to introduce more schemes across the country, confident that we know what works and what positive outcomes we can expect.
It is worth stressing that one of the major purposes—in fact probably the main purpose—of nature-based solutions is that they deal successfully with much of the problem of road run-off, which is such a contaminant of our rivers. As well as the oils and grease from roads, 63,000 tonnes of rubber tyre particles go into our rivers every year, plus suspended solids which coat the bed of the river, hydrocarbons and dissolved metals which are toxic to fish, and benzo(a)pyrene, which is very carcinogenic. Highway run-off needs treating, and most sewage treatment works are not really designed to deal with its particular pollutants. Meanwhile, at the moment, highway authorities can connect their drains to sewage works without the water companies being able to deny them. We must do all we can to introduce nature-based solutions, wherever we can.
To summarise—and I apologise if this is over labouring my point—nature-based solutions have four main benefits. First, they slow the flow, which of course helps the CSO problem; secondly, they act as filtration plants to remove road oils, grease, hydrocarbon pollutants and microplastics; thirdly, they clean the water, whether it is going back into the river or down into an aquifer; and, fourthly, and not unimportantly, they provide beauty and habitats. As I said, they should be everywhere.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, it is genuinely a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who always gives us a master class. Whereas I tend to rely a bit too much on rhetoric, he gives us facts, which are far more robust and demanding of a government response. I shall speak to Amendment 175, although I also put my name to Amendment 175A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, which I support. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for their support.
It was more than 15 years ago that a member of my family opened a printing factory in Cornwall and I heard the term BREEAM for the first time: a building standard demanded at the time because it was partly financed by the European Regional Development Fund. There was a reasonable expectation—in fact, a necessity—that certain standards be built into that building. One of them concerned grey water. I remember saying, “What the heck is greywater?” The answer was that it is recycling water—not water that has gone through the lavatories, or loos, but the rest of it—to make sure that water demand comes down. It was one of the most obvious examples of what we would now call the circular economy. Those technologies can save something like 50% of water consumption.
In those days—all of 15 years ago—it would have been completely unrealistic to apply such a system to domestic houses, because they were not available at that scale. But even then, for commercial buildings, it was the case that those systems worked, and worked well—the system in that building is still working very effectively and reducing water demand. But now those systems are up for use in domestic housing as well. They work. There are criticisms of them: obviously, the cost, technically—I shall come back to that—but also that they raise the demand for electricity, and so the carbon footprint may go up. We should always remember that domestic buildings will probably last for 100 years. We know that we will decarbonise electricity generation anyway, I hope, well before 2050, so that carbon footprint will not be an issue for very long.
I say to the Government that surely we have a real opportunity here to save a major proportion of water consumption. It will not solve leakage, which I appreciate has to be done elsewhere, and there are other amendments to deal with that, but on water consumption we already have a solution which, if it is rolled out in new buildings, whether commercial or domestic, the difference on the cost of that building is far from great—perhaps a couple of thousand pounds. Over the life of that building, clearly there will be savings in both resources and the cost of water.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move that the debate on this amendment be adjourned.
Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill
Monday 5th July 2021
(2 years, 9 months ago)
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