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Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alister Jack)
Let me start by saying that the Scottish athletes of Team GB have returned triumphant from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games with a record total of 14 medals, surpassing the 13 medals won by Scottish athletes at both the London and Rio Olympics. At the Paralympic games, the Scots of ParalympicsGB won an impressive 21 medals. I congratulate every athlete who competed. I also congratulate the Scottish football team on their victory in Vienna last night.
I regularly discuss a wide range of topics with Cabinet colleagues, including transport and the Union connectivity review. There are of course merits to any direct ferry services from Scotland. I understand that discussions for a new service to mainland Europe have been taking place for some time.
Douglas Chapman
I endorse the comments of the Secretary of State on the Olympic and Paralympic teams, and the tartan army result last night; I am absolutely delighted with second place in the group at the moment, but let us go on to be first and get qualification.
The Secretary of State will be aware of recent dismal export figures in the wake of Brexit, the need to reduce lorry miles to help us get to net zero and the current HGV driver crisis that make up the hat-trick of events that would seem to make the need for a ferry service from Scotland to mainland Europe almost self-evident. However, there are barriers, including the commitment of Border Force to provide the resources and personnel to support that new route. Next week, we celebrate London International Shipping Week—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but we have to get through the list of questions. The Secretary of State is going to have to answer the hon. Gentleman as best he can. [Interruption.]
Mr Jack
I think the hon. Gentleman is requesting a meeting, and I would be happy to meet him. As he knows, the ferry service between Rosyth and Zeebrugge ran from 2002 to 2018, but from 2010 was not a passenger service. We would want any service that comes forward to be economically viable.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Iain Stewart)
The recent drug deaths in Scotland are an absolute tragedy. The majority of the levers to tackle drug misuse are devolved to the Scottish Government, including health, education, housing and the criminal justice system. We are keen to work with the Scottish Government to tackle this tragic issue and to share lessons throughout the United Kingdom.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
I wonder why the Minister and the Government refuse to base their policy on evidence such as that from Portugal, Canada and Switzerland, where drug consumption rooms save lives. We cannot help people when they are dead; DCRs save lives.
Iain Stewart
There is not a unanimous view on the efficacy of drug consumption rooms. The Minister for Crime and Policing, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), recently had discussions with his counterpart in the Scottish Government and it was made clear that we are open to any new evidence about drug consumption rooms, but they are not the single solution to the problem. This requires a holistic approach. We are very happy to work with the Scottish Government to explore all the different options.
Joanna Cherry
There is plenty of evidence on the efficacy of drug consumption rooms. I am sure that my colleagues who have worked on the issue would be happy to discuss it with the Minister. Portugal faced some of the highest rates of drug deaths in Europe at the turn of the century, but it radically reversed the situation through decriminalisation and a public health approach. The Scottish Government have used their powers to commit to the public health approach. The question for the Minister is whether his Government will use their reserved powers to amend the Misuse of Drugs Act and enable the measures that worked in Portugal, such as drug consumption rooms, to happen. The Scottish Government have done their bit. Will his Government do theirs?
Iain Stewart
I have discussed the specific matter of drug consumption rooms at some length with the hon. and learned Lady’s colleague, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), so I am well aware of the arguments for them, but there are arguments against them. As I said in response to the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes), we are happy to look at new evidence. In England and Wales, we have Project ADDER, which is showing some promising early signs of being effective in combating drug misuse. I strongly urge the hon. and learned Lady’s colleagues in the Scottish Government to take up our offer to extend that to Scotland.
Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)
In the last year for which figures are available, 1,339 lives were lost in Scotland as a result of drug misuse, the worst number since records began in 1996, yet we got no solutions from the SNP or from Nicola Sturgeon in her programme for government yesterday. Scottish Conservatives have put forward plans for a right to recovery Bill. Does the Minister agree that the Scottish Government should engage with us to bring forward these proposals?
Iain Stewart
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend and his colleagues have come up with an excellent policy in this area, and it would be to the great advantage of people in Scotland that the Scottish Government take up the proposals that it contains.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Scottish Affairs Committee conducted the most extensive inquiry ever undertaken into drug use in Scotland, taking evidence from practically everybody with an interest and a stake in this issue. We concluded that we need every tool in the kitbag to address the scale of this problem, from an increased resources position to adopting evidence-based solutions with best practice from international examples that have worked, such as drug consumption facilities and decriminalisation. Why did the UK Government reject nearly all of our conclusions and recommendations?
Iain Stewart
I understand that the report from that Committee, which I think was done in 2018, was not a unanimous one and the Committee divided on it, which illustrates the fact that there is not the unanimity of view on the proposals to which the hon. Gentleman refers. As I say, we keep an open mind on this as regards fresh evidence that shows that policies work. My colleagues in the Home Office have discussed this with their counterparts in the Scottish Government and those discussions will continue.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
My hon. Friend may be aware of the sterling work done by my friend—albeit not an hon. Friend—the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, on the misuse of drugs and controlling it. To what degree does the Scottish Office liaise with the regions of England to communicate with Scotland about best practice?
Iain Stewart
I am happy to say to my hon. Friend that I discuss matters throughout the United Kingdom, and if there are good, innovative practices in a particular area it is of course wise to share that and encourage other parts of the United Kingdom to follow suit.
Mhairi Black (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (SNP)
The Minister says that there is no consensus as to drug consumption rooms, but, as has already been said, every country that has trialled safe consumption rooms has a positive story to tell about them. The other thing that he failed to mention is that the legislation that makes drug use a crime often traps vulnerable people in a vicious cycle of poverty and crime. With that in mind, will this Government finally commit to reviewing the 50-year-old legislation that is the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971?
Iain Stewart
As I said to the hon. Lady’s colleagues, we constantly discuss these matters with our counterparts in Scotland. We have made very serious offers, as I say, to extend Project ADDER, which looks at drugs misuse in a holistic way. There is evidence to show that that is working. I strongly urge the Scottish Government to take up that offer. Particularly on drug consumption rooms, as I say, if there is new evidence there, we will consider it.
Mhairi Black
In what world do you get to claim to be taking an issue seriously while in the same breath commit to change absolutely nothing? If the logical arguments will not convince, then maybe the financial ones will. Crimes linked to drugs in Scotland cost £750 million a year to investigate and prosecute. Experts tell us that that money could be better spent. If the experts, the Scottish Government and even the Scottish Conservatives can now agree that health needs to be the main approach, why not the Minister?
Iain Stewart
I think the hon. Lady takes a very partisan view on this. We have put forward some very concrete suggestions. I remind her that the vast majority of powers in this area lie with the Scottish Government, and her Government have been in power for 14 years, so perhaps they should spend a little bit more effort focusing on tackling some of these social issues rather than obsessing about independence, which no one wants.
Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alister Jack)
My assessment continues to be that the United Kingdom is the most successful political and economic union that the world has ever seen. It is the foundation on which all our citizens and businesses are able to thrive. The United Kingdom Government are committed to protecting and promoting the strengths of our United Kingdom.
Stephen Flynn
The helping hand of the Union has left Scotland with no oil fund. It sees our renewables projects pay the highest grid charging levies in the entirety of Europe. In 2015, we saw the scrapping of plans for a carbon capture and underground storage plant in Peterhead, so I am simply seeking reassurance from the Secretary of State that the Acorn project will be one of two clusters to receive backing from his Government next month.
Mr Jack
As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is under review. We want Acorn to be one of the tier 1 projects, and we are pressing for that. I think he should press for his colleagues and his Government in Scotland to support the oil and gas industry.
Patrick Grady
How is the Union strengthened by the increasingly divergent franchises on these islands? Scotland’s Parliament was elected in May with an electorate including 16 and 17-year-olds, refugees and EU nationals, while his Government’s Trumpian Elections Bill wants to suppress and restrict voter turnout. Surely that only increases the legitimacy and mandate of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, and makes this place even more detached from voters in Scotland.
Mr Jack
I think the coalition with the Greens shows very clearly to everyone that one thing that the SNP failed to achieve in May was an outright majority.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
“Shameful” and “disgrace” are words that Nicola Sturgeon likes to bandy at her opponents, but they truly apply to her announcement yesterday that while Scotland continues to have some of the worst covid rates in Europe, she is diverting resources into another divisive independence referendum. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the focus of this Government will be to work constructively across the United Kingdom to defeat covid, save jobs and restore our economy?
Mr Jack
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our focus is on rebuilding our economy. Our focus is on restoring our NHS. I think most right-minded Scots would agree that using civil service resources to design a prospectus for independence is the wrong thing to be doing at this time.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
Over the summer, new data published by the SNP Scottish Government showed the Union dividend to be worth £2,210 a person in Scotland. Does the Minister agree that those figures simply confirm the benefit of Scotland remaining at the heart of a strong United Kingdom?
Mr Jack
I absolutely would agree with my hon. Friend. I would add that the recent “Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland” reports in August showed that the deficit last year for the Scottish budget was £36.3 billion. That is more than the Scottish Government spend on education, housing, transport, culture and health.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
We know that for the past two years, the Government have been spending taxpayers’ money researching public opinion in Scotland on the state of the Union. For two years, I have been trying to get answers as to what that research says. For two years, the Cabinet Office has refused, including appealing to the court of law and bringing in outside consultants to fund its case. Is it not time, if the Secretary of State believes so much that the Union is such a wonderful thing, for him to tell us what he has found out about what Scottish people think about the state of the Union and publish this research?
Mr Jack
As I have said before at this Dispatch Box, that is a matter for the Cabinet Office, and I suggest the hon. Gentleman raises it at Cabinet Office questions.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State update the House on the scale of the additional financial resource that Scotland received as a result of the covid pandemic? Does he agree that it is the strength of the UK balance sheet that allows the UK Government to support every part of the United Kingdom in times of crisis?
Mr Jack
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. The strength of support was over £14 billion during the covid crisis, and the furlough support helped 900,000 jobs in Scotland at the height of the pandemic, which is nearly a third of the Scottish workforce.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
May I join the Secretary of State in congratulating our Olympians and Paralympians on their wonderful medals haul in Tokyo? May I also congratulate the Scottish football team on a marvellous result last night? However, he knows, as all Scots do, that it is the hope that kills you, so let us not celebrate too much.
Our shared social security system is vital to underpinning our Union, but by the next Scotland questions the Government will have made the largest ever overnight cut to social security for those in work by removing the £20 from universal credit. Citizens Advice Scotland says that more than half those people are worried about being able to buy food. At the same time, the Government have broken another promise and want to increase national insurance with the highest tax rise in 40 years. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that about 150,000 working families on low incomes in Scotland will pay an average of £100 extra in tax while losing £1,000. What advice does the Secretary of State give those families on low incomes on where they should cut £1,100 from their family budgets?
Mr Jack
The uplift in universal credit was always intended to be temporary—it was to help claimants through the economic shock and financial disruption of the pandemic—and we now have the kickstart programme and a multibillion-pound plan for jobs. I understand it is difficult to break a manifesto promise, and the Prime Minister was clear that he was doing that in raising national insurance, but he also had a manifesto promise to address social care, which, since Tony Blair said he would address it in 1997, has not been done.
Ian Murray
There is no money going into social care, but we will leave that for a different time. Last week, Labour’s shadow team visited Orkney and its European Marine Energy Centre. It has facilities such as the most powerful tidal turbine in the world, which results in its having excess energy that it cannot get back to the mainland. At the same time, the Scottish and UK Governments are backing the Cambo oilfield. With COP26 coming to Scotland, should the Secretary of State not lead by example, refuse Cambo and reform the outdated transmission charge regime while providing funding for a new large-capacity interconnector between Orkney and Shetland and the mainland? That would bring huge benefits and innovation to the islands and power large parts of Scotland from renewable resources.
Mr Jack
On Cambo, all our North sea oil licences are factored into the 2050 net zero plan. Discussions are ongoing on the interconnector. It is partly devolved, with Ofgem and others involved. However, leaving that to one side, I take the overall view that there will be multiple uses for oil and gas for years to come—people must understand that—and we may as well get oil domestically rather than import it.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Alister Jack)
I have regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues who are as excited as I am to ensure that we strengthen transport connections across the United Kingdom. We recognise the importance of transport and how it is vital to economic growth, job creation and social cohesion. That is why the Union connectivity review was commissioned. I look forward to the publication of the final report later this year.
Andrew Jones
The family, business and cultural links between Harrogate and Knaresborough and Scotland are growing, but, for them to grow further, they will need better connectivity. The east coast main line is at the heart of that. Will my right hon. Friend therefore welcome the investments being made in that line and highlight its importance in the Union connectivity review that he just mentioned?
Mr Jack
Yes. The Government are determined to level up every corner of the United Kingdom, bringing communities across the country closer together. We recognise that infrastructure projects are important to growing our economy, because wherever we create connectivity, we create economic growth.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
Fine words. So by which year will the high-speed rail line be extended to the Scottish border?
Mr Jack
Which high-speed rail line does the hon. Member have in mind—High Speed 2 going north or Galashiels coming south? He should wait for the outcome of the connectivity review—which I must say the SNP did not engage in. Not only that; the SNP Government’s Transport Minister, rather irresponsibly, told his civil servant officials that they could not engage with Sir Peter Hendy or give him any data. When we then offered £20 million for feasibility studies, they declined it.
Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Iain Stewart)
An inquiry into the devolved aspects of the covid-19 response was an SNP manifesto commitment, and the Scottish Government have now set out their next steps. The UK Government have committed to a statutory inquiry into all key aspects of the UK’s response to the pandemic. As the Prime Minister has stated, we will consult the devolved Administrations before finalising the scope of that inquiry.
Mr Dhesi
Throughout the pandemic, one of the most dangerous impacts has been not just that of the virus itself, but the impact it has had on our NHS in preventing life-saving operations from taking place. In Scotland, the situation has been made even worse through the Scottish SNP Government’s under-investment in the NHS, with over 450,000 people languishing on waiting lists prior to the pandemic, and that figure has now risen to more than 600,000. Will the Minister work to ensure that the covid public inquiry in Scotland will look into other aspects of the NHS?
Iain Stewart
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that the impacts of the pandemic are felt in many areas and in other parts of the health service, and there is a need to catch up with that backlog of missed operations and treatments. I am absolutely delighted that, yesterday, the Prime Minister set out very real progress and steps to make that happen, with additional spending in the NHS right across the United Kingdom.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
I am very sorry to tell the House that Scotland now has one of the highest covid rates in all of Europe, with eight out of 20 hotspots across Europe being in Scotland, according to the World Health Organisation. Instead of learning the lessons of the last year, the SNP Government have wasted the summer months with the virus spiralling out of control. While the covid rate soars, the First Minister announced this week that Scottish civil servants will be tasked with drawing up arguments for Scottish independence. In the Minister’s discussions with the Scottish Government, has he discussed the issue of Scottish civil servants being diverted from crucial covid-19 response work to plans for another independence referendum, and can he confirm that this will form part of the covid-19 inquiry into the Scottish Government’s failures?
Iain Stewart
I am very happy to agree with the hon. Gentleman. Whether it is on learning the lessons from covid and making sure that our public services can catch up or whether it is on tackling drug abuse and a whole range of other public service and social issues, that should be the primary focus of the Scottish Government, not obsessing with another divisive referendum.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Duguid)
This Government have already struck trade deals with more than 68 countries as well as the EU worth £744 billion a year. This will create new markets for Scotland’s exporters, including our world-leading food and drinks sector. The Department for International Trade team based in Edinburgh is also helping Scottish businesses thrive and grow internationally. Last week, I was delighted to meet the new DIT director for Scotland heading up this team, and I look forward to planning further engagement with her and her team.
Scott Benton
Scotland’s businesses will be among the main beneficiaries of the trade deals we have already secured around the world, with our historic agreement with Japan boosting trading opportunities for over 500 Scottish businesses alone. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that we will now be able to use our new status as an independent trading nation to promote the very best that Scottish industries have to offer to the world?
David Duguid
I completely agree with my hon. Friend: he is absolutely right. This Government are working hard to strike new trade deals around the world that will benefit key business sectors and consumers across Scotland and across the whole of the UK. We are opening new opportunities for iconic Scottish and British industries to thrive overseas.
Bob Blackman
As the Government negotiate new free trade deals around the world as global Britain, and the new agreement with Australia removes the 5% tariff on the export of whisky to Australia hot on the heels of the tariff-free period of five years with the United States, does my hon. Friend agree that the advantage to Scotland of negotiating together with the United Kingdom for free trade deals makes the case for the United Kingdom to be together as one country?
David Duguid
On that final point, I could not agree more. It is hugely welcome to see the removal of the 5% tariff on Scotch whisky in the agreement in principle between the UK and Australia. That will help Scottish whisky distillers to continue to expand exports to Australia, which have almost doubled over the last decade, making Australia our eighth largest market by value.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
With all these free trade deals, I wonder whether the Minister can detail what the losses are to the seafood industry through Brexit, and what compensation it has received through the UK Government. What are the current losses to the hospitality industry because it cannot access EU labour, and what are the total losses to the Scottish Food and Drink Federation because of shortages caused by the HGV lorry driver crisis?
David Duguid
I did not quite catch all of that, but I did catch the words “fishing” and “HGV drivers”. On fishing, I would not be surprised if I talk to many more people in the fishing industry than the hon. Gentleman does, and I will take my advice on the situation in the fishing industry from them, rather than from Opposition Members, or indeed Twitter and the rest of social media. On HGV drivers, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already said, we recognise this issue. This is not a Brexit issue, otherwise we would not be seeing the exact same problem right across Europe, and in fact right across the world. The UK Government have already put measures in place to help increase, improve and speed up the recruitment of HGV drivers in this country.
Mr Speaker
Order. Before we come to Prime Minister’s questions, I point out that the British Sign Language interpretation of proceedings is available to watch on Parliament Live TV.
Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)
The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Mick Whitley
In the run-up to the last election, the Prime Minister said that “clearly it is wrong” that hundreds of thousands of people are forced to rely on food banks to survive. Research released by the Trussell Trust today shows that one in six people fear that they will almost certainly have to use a food bank in just four weeks’ time as a result of the Government’s decision to axe the £20 uplift to universal credit. That is more than 500 families and 1,000 children being forced into food poverty in my constituency of Birkenhead alone. Will the Prime Minister concede that the cut to universal credit is wrong, and will he change course?
The Prime Minister
Of course I am very grateful to everybody who helps with food banks, and they do a fantastic job. What this Government have done throughout the pandemic is to put the most protection for those who need it most across society, and I am proud of what we have done by uplifting the living wage, and proud of the arm that we put around the whole of the British people.
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
The Prime Minister
Not only has the price of batteries fallen vertiginously, as has the cost of solar power, but I can tell my hon. Friend and the people of Thanet South that they have huge opportunities. The cost of wind power in this country has fallen by 70% just in the last 10 years. What I think the people of Thanet want to see, and I am sure my hon. Friend exemplifies it, is a spirit of Promethean technological optimism.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I want to ask the Prime Minister about the promise he made to the British people to
“guarantee that no one needing care has to sell their home to pay for it.”
Does that guarantee still stand?
The Prime Minister
What this plan for health and social care does is deal, after decades, with the catastrophic costs faced by millions of people up and down the country, and the risk that they could face the loss of their home, their possessions and their ability to pass on anything to their children. This Government are not only dealing with that problem but understand that in order to deal with the problems of the NHS backlogs, you also have to fix social care. We are taking the tough decisions that the country wants to see. We are putting another £36 billion in. What I would like to know from the leader of the Labour party is: what is he going to do tonight? Silence from mission control and his—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. If you do not want to hear the Prime Minister, I certainly do, and I cannot hear him. It is not acceptable. Prime Minister, have you finished?
The Prime Minister
I just want to ask the Leader of the Opposition whether he is going to vote for our measures tonight.
Mr Speaker
I know the House has been away, but it is still Prime Minister’s questions.
Keir Starmer
I noticed that the Prime Minister did not stand by his guarantee that no one will need to sell their house to pay for care. Let me explain why he did not. Under the Prime Minister’s plan, someone with £186,000 including the value of their home—that is not untypical for constituents across the country—who is facing large costs because they have to go into care will have to pay £86,000. That is before living costs. Where does the Prime Minister think they are going to get that £86,000 without selling their home?
The Prime Minister
As I think everybody understood in the long statement yesterday, this is the first time that the state has come in to deal with the threat of these catastrophic costs, thereby enabling the private sector—the financial services industry—to supply the insurance products that people need to guarantee themselves against the cost of care. What we are doing is lifting the floor—lifting the guarantee—up to £100,000, whereby nobody has to pay anything, across the entire country. We still have to hear from the Opposition what they would do to fix the backlogs in the NHS and fix social care after decades of inertia and inactivity. What would the Leader of the Opposition do?
Keir Starmer
The Prime Minister’s plan is to impose an unfair tax on working people. My plan is to ensure—[Interruption.] My plan is to ensure that those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share. That is the difference. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I say to both sides that I need to hear the question. I also need to hear the answer. If there are some Members who do not want to hear it, I am sure that their constituents want to hear it. It is not good to shout down either side when they are either asking or answering a question. Please, our constituents are interested. I want to hear, and they will want to hear. Keir Starmer.
Keir Starmer
Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister’s plan is to impose unfair taxes on working people; my plan is to ensure those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share. I know Conservative Members do not like that. The truth is that the Prime Minister’s plans do not do what he claims. People will still face huge bills. Many homeowners will need to sell their homes. He is not denying it, when he could have done. The Prime Minister has failed the only test he set for himself for social care. It was in the manifesto—another manifesto promise, Prime Minister.
Keir Starmer
It is no good shaking your head. And who is going to pay for the cost of this failure? Working people. Under the Prime Minister’s plan, a landlord renting out dozens of properties will not pay a penny more, but their tenants in work will face tax rises of hundreds of pounds a year. A care worker earning the minimum wage does not get a pay rise under this plan, but does get a tax rise. In what world is that fair?
The Prime Minister
Actually, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed that this is a broad-based and progressive measure. The top 20% of households by income will pay 40 times what the poorest 20% pay; the top 14% will pay half of the entire levy. The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about his plan. Well, I have been scouring the records for evidence of the Labour plan, and I have found it. In 2018, the current shadow Minister for Social Care, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), joined forces with Nick Boles and Norman Lamb to promote a new dedicated health and social care tax based on national insurance. Where is she? I can’t see her in her place, Mr Speaker. She said that this was to be the country’s “Beveridge moment”. Is the Labour party really going to vote against the new Beveridge moment tonight?
Keir Starmer
Mr Speaker, let me tell you what an ambitious young Member for Henley said in 2002 in this House:
“national insurance increases are regressive”—[Official Report, 17 April 2002; Vol. 383, c. 667.]
I wonder what happened to him. If the Prime Minister is going ahead with this unfair tax, can he at least tell us this: will his plan clear the NHS waiting list backlog by the end of this Parliament—yes or no?
The Prime Minister
I think the whole House, indeed the whole country, can appreciate that we at least have a plan to fix the backlogs and we at least understand that the only way to fix the long-term underlying problems in the NHS and the problem of delayed discharges is to fix the crisis in social care as well, which Labour failed to address for decades. We are going ahead and doing it. What I have just understood from the right hon. and learned Gentleman—out of that minestrone of nonsense has floated a crouton of fact—is that he is going to vote against the measures tonight. They are going to vote against plans to fix the backlogs and to fix social care. Vote Labour, Mr Speaker, wait longer.
Keir Starmer
It was a yes/no question. You either clear the backlog or you don’t. The Prime Minister cannot even say that he will do that. So there we have it: working people will pay higher tax, those in need will still lose their homes to pay for care and he cannot even say if the NHS backlog will be cleared. [Interruption.] He gesticulates, but they are all breaking their manifesto promises and putting up taxes for their working constituents for this? Tax rises are not the only way he is making working people worse off. Some 2.5 million working families will face a doubly whammy: a national insurance tax rise and a £1,000 a year universal credit cut. They are getting hit from both sides. Of all the ways to raise public funds, why is the Prime Minister insisting on hammering working people?
The Prime Minister
We are proud of what we have been doing throughout the pandemic to look after working people. We are proud of the extra £9 billion we put in through universal credit. I think people in this House and across the country should know that Labour wants to scrap universal credit all together. We believe in higher wages and better skills, and it is working. That is why we are investing in 13,500 work coaches and £3,000 a year for 11 million adults across this country to train under the lifetime skills guarantee, and it is working. For the first time since 2019, after years and years of stagnation, wages are rising for the lower paid. Labour believes in welfare; we believe in higher wages and higher skills and better jobs.
Keir Starmer
Higher wages and higher skills, the Prime Minister says. How out of touch he is! [Interruption.] Conservative Members laugh. What do they say to Rosie, because Rosie is the sort of person that this impacts on? Laugh away. A single mother working on the minimum wage in a nursing home, she got in touch with me. She will lose £87 a month due to the universal credit cut—a huge amount to her. She will now also be hit with a national insurance tax rise. She has asked for more shifts and she cannot get them. She is unable to get further help with childcare. What does the Prime Minister—what does the laughter—say to Rosie?
This is a Government who underfunded the NHS for a decade before the pandemic, took £8 billion out of social care before the pandemic, and then wasted billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on dodgy contracts, vanity projects and giveaways to their mates. They cut stamp duty on second home owners, gave super tax deductions for the biggest companies and now they are telling millions of working people that they must cough up more tax. Is this not the same old Tory party, always putting their rich mates and donors before working people?
The Prime Minister
Very sadly, Mr Speaker, what you are hearing is the same old nonsense from Labour, because they want to scrap universal credit. I have every sympathy for Rosie and I admire her and families up and down the land, but the best thing we can do for them is have a strong and dynamic economy. As I speak, our economy is the fastest growing in the G7, because we have had the fastest vaccine roll-out and the fastest opening up of any comparable country. Never forget that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would have kept us in the European Medicines Agency; he attacked the Vaccine Taskforce; and if we had listened to Captain Hindsight in July, we would not have the fastest growing economy in the G7—we would still be in lockdown. [Interruption.] It is true. If we listened to him today, we would not be trying to fix the NHS backlogs and we would not finally be dealing with social care. This is the Government who take the tough decisions to take this country forward.
Mr Speaker
You will get a little more if you listen to Mr Jones’s question.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
The Prime Minister
Yes, and I thank both my right hon. Friend and the Centre for Brexit Policy for their analysis. It is good that the interim period has been extended, because clearly, the protocol, as it is being applied by our friends in the EU, is not, in my view, protecting the Belfast/Good Friday agreement as it should in all its aspects. We must sort it out.
Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)
Yesterday, without consultation, the Prime Minister announced plans to impose a regressive Tory poll tax on millions of Scottish workers. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that around 2 million families on low incomes will now pay an average of an extra £100 a year because of the Prime Minister’s tax hike. Yet again, the Tories are fleecing Scottish families, hitting low and middle-income workers and penalising the young. A former Tory Work and Pensions Secretary called it a “sham”. A former Tory Chancellor has said this is the poor subsidising the rich. A former Tory Prime Minister has called this “regressive”. Prime Minister, is it not the case that this Tory tax hike is once again balancing the books on the backs of the poor and the young?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman says there was no consultation. Actually, I much enjoy my conversations with representatives of the Scottish Administration. One thing they said to me was that they wanted more funding for the NHS. I am delighted that we are putting another £1.1 billion into the NHS in Scotland, while all they can talk about is another referendum. That is a clear distinction between us and the Scottish nationalist party—about what are the real priorities of the people of this country.
Ian Blackford
That was no answer to the question, because the facts are that this is a tax hike on the poor and on the young. You should be ashamed of yourself, Prime Minister.
We now know the economic direction of this toxic Tory Government: we are going to see furlough scrapped, universal credit cut and more tax hikes for the low-paid. Let us be in no doubt: this is the return of the Tories’ austerity agenda. It is austerity 2.0. On this Prime Minister’s watch, the United Kingdom now has the worst levels of poverty and inequality anywhere in north-west Europe, and in-work poverty has risen to record levels this century. More Tory austerity cuts will make this even worse.
Scotland deserves better. There is clearly no chance of a fair covid recovery under this Prime Minister and under this Westminster Government. Is it not the case that the only way to protect Scotland from Tory cuts and the regressive tax hikes is for it to become an independent country, with the full powers needed to build a fair, strong and equal recovery for the people of Scotland?
The Prime Minister
Well, I do not think that that is the right priority for this country or for the people of Scotland. I will just remind the right hon. Gentleman of the words of the deputy leader of the Scottish Government, who welcomed it when the Labour Government put up NI by 1p to pay for the national health service. He—this is a guy called John Swinney—said:
“I am absolutely delighted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has now accepted that progressive taxation is required to invest in the health service in Scotland”.—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 18 April 2002; c. 8005.]
I mean, get your story straight! This is more cash for people in Scotland; it is more investment for families in Scotland; it is good for Scotland and good for the whole of the United Kingdom.
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is quite right; he is a great advocate for the people of Grantham and Stamford. The Health and Care Bill will ensure that there are integrated healthcare partnerships, bringing together local authorities and local healthcare, but there is more to be done, and that will be done in the forthcoming White Paper.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
Yesterday’s social care plan forgot family carers, yet we are the millions wiping bottoms and washing and dressing our loved ones, whether they are elderly or disabled, ill or dying. We carers just want a fair deal, so will the Prime Minister raise the carer’s allowance? Will he guarantee proper breaks for carers? Will he change employment law so that we can balance caring with work? Will he ensure that there are enough professional carers to help, starting with a new visa for carers? We carers have a lifetime of ideas to improve our loved ones’ care, so why does the Prime Minister keep ignoring us and taking carers for granted?
The Prime Minister
I certainly acknowledge, and I think the whole House acknowledges, the massive debt that we owe to unpaid carers such as the right hon. Gentleman. Up and down the country, we thank them for what they are doing. What the plan means is that there will be a huge injection of support, both from the private sector and from the Government, into caring across the board. I believe that that will support unpaid carers as well, since they will no longer have the anxiety, for instance, that their elderly loved ones could see the loss of all their possessions. What we are also doing for carers is making sure that we invest, now, half a billion pounds in their training, in their profession to make sure that they have the dignity and progression in their jobs that they deserve.
Rob Roberts (Delyn) (Ind)
The Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, planning is a devolved matter, but what I can tell him and the House is that we have provided business with over £100 billion of support throughout the pandemic, including 1.5 million bounce back loans to small and medium-sized enterprises such as the one that he describes.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his question. We are working with industry to get more people into HGV driving, which is a great and well-remunerated profession, by, for instance, ramping up vocational test capacity and funding apprenticeships for people training to be lorry drivers. As the House heard earlier, the career structure of HGV drivers is affecting countries throughout the European Union. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman take up his proposals directly with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
The Prime Minister
This Government are committed to levelling up the whole country, and Dorset is no exception. I am delighted that the local growth fund in Dorset has contributed £98.4 million to 54 projects since 2015, and I understand that Dorset Council has also made a bid through the levelling-up fund to improve access at Weymouth station.
Richard Drax
As a former soldier, I know that time is never wasted on reconnaissance. May I ask my right hon. Friend to come and get some good Dorset sea air, visit Weymouth and see the infrastructure for himself? Until we improve it, we cannot attract the investment, jobs and prosperity that we so desperately need, in an ancient seaside resort that needs a bit of love, attention and Government money.
The Prime Minister
I can think of nothing nicer than a trip to Weymouth, which I think was the favourite watering hole of George III—or so I am told by the Lord Chancellor. I will do my utmost to oblige my hon. Friend.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I think the whole country should be proud of what we have done to welcome people from Afghanistan. Operation Warm Welcome continues, and as I speak, we have already received more than 15,000 people from the Kabul airlift, the biggest exercise that this country has undertaken. However, I am sorry to hear about the particular case that the hon. Lady has raised. May I ask her to send it directly to me, and I will take it up?
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
We have thousands of illegal immigrants arriving on our shores every single month. When are we going to take some direct action, and send the boats straight back?
The Prime Minister
I share the indignation and the frustration of my hon. Friend at the cruel behaviour of the gangsters, the criminal masterminds, who are taking money from desperate, frightened people to help them undertake a very, very dangerous journey across the channel. This is a perennial problem, but my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is dealing with it in the best possible way, which is to make sure that they do not leave those French shores. We depend to a large extent on what the French are doing, but clearly, as time goes on and this problem continues, we are going to have to make sure that we use every possible tactic at our disposal to stop what I think is a vile trade and a manipulation of people’s hopes.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
The Prime Minister
I think everybody sympathises with people who are on low incomes, whom we have tried to protect throughout the pandemic. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor brought forward a package that was recognised around the world as being almost uniquely progressive in the way it directed funding and support to the lowest paid and the neediest. That was quite right, but we are also now trying to ensure that we have a high-wage and high-skilled jobs-led recovery, and that is what is happening. I am proud to be a Conservative Prime Minister who is seeing wages for the lowest paid rising at their fastest rate for many years.
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
This is, I think, the first opportunity for the whole House to thank all those who have played a role in rolling out the superb vaccine programme over the past six months or so, ranging from the whole of the national health service to the military. If I may, I should like to make particular mention of the Order of St John—St John Ambulance—of which I have the honour to be an honorary commander. All parties in the House with an interest in St John will have an opportunity to thank its volunteers personally if they would like to do so at a reception that I am hosting on the Terrace straight after PMQs today. Perhaps you, Mr Speaker—and the Prime Minister and others—will honour us with your presence to thank the thousands of volunteers who have done such superb work over the last six months.
The Prime Minister
I will indeed join my hon. Friend in thanking St John Ambulance for everything it has done. The volunteers have been fantastic and I have met many of them over the past 18 months who have done an absolutely astonishing job. I do not think that I can come to his reception, but I am sure it will be very well attended. May I also take this opportunity to urge everybody in the country who has not yet had a vaccination and who is eligible for one to get it as soon as they can?
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I think the whole House will recognise that the Education Secretary has done a heroic job in dealing with very difficult circumstances in which we had to close schools during the pandemic. Never forget that the job of teachers and parents up and down the land would have been made much easier if Labour, and the Labour leadership in particular, had had the guts—and if the hon. Gentleman had had the guts—to say that schools were safe.
Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that our constituents, including mine in Hertford and Stortford, should come forward and see their GP if they have concerns about their health, and that his statement yesterday should give them assurance and confidence that this Government are there for the NHS and that the NHS will be there for them in their time of need?
The Prime Minister
Yes. That is why we are putting in another £36 billion under the measures we are putting forward tonight, and I am absolutely astonished that the party of Nye Bevan has confirmed today that it is not going to vote for that. We want GPs to be seeing the right people at the right time, and we want to fix the waiting lists. That is the objective of the measures that we are bringing forward.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Prime Minister
I am of course sorry to hear about the troubles that the hon. Lady’s constituent is experiencing, but I remind her that under the EU settlement scheme we have helped almost 6 million people to settle in this country, which is double the number that was expected at the time of the Brexit referendum. That is a tribute to the compassion of this country and its willingness to help those who come here and make their lives here.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
St Francis tower in Ipswich has been a beneficiary of the building safety fund. However, Oander and Block Management, which manage the building, have shrink wrapped the entire tower and it will be on the building for up to 12 months. Many desperate tenants are living in darkness for 12 months, and bars have been put on the windows so that they can barely be opened.
Does the Prime Minister agree that, yes, this vital work needs to take place but that we need balance and that we need to do this quickly for the lives and mental health of the desperate people in that tower right now?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. I will study the detail and ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to take up the matter directly.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Prime Minister
No. As I have said, households in the top 20% of income pay 40 times more than the poorest. And pay for nurses is exactly what this measure funds, which is why it is so astonishing that the hon. Gentleman and his party are determined to vote against it tonight.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
This Friday my private Member’s Bill, the Asylum Seekers (Return to Safe Countries) Bill, will have its Second Reading. The intention is that an asylum seeker who comes to this country from a safe country will be returned to that country. The Bill would end the problem of people coming across the channel. Will the Prime Minister urge his colleagues to vote for the Bill on Friday?
The Prime Minister
We have introduced the Nationality and Borders Bill, which will make it no longer possible for the law to treat somebody who has come here illegally in the same way as someone who has come here legally. It is high time that distinction was made, and that people understand there is a price to pay if they come to this country in an illegal fashion.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. Can I just say that there is some disappointment that we did not get through the list? I appeal to the party leaders to see whether we can speed up so that we can hear from those Members who might otherwise miss out.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
No. Points of order do not come now, they normally come after the urgent question. You know that better than anybody. You are the expert. You are Mr Protocol. You know better than me.
Covid Vaccine Passports
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will make a statement on the Government plans for covid vaccine passports.
The Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment (Nadhim Zahawi)
Our vaccination programme has given this nation a wall of protection against this deadly virus. Data from Public Health England estimates that two doses of a covid-19 vaccine offers protection of around 96% against hospitalisation and that our jabs have prevented over 100,000 deaths, over 143,000 hospitalisations and around 24 million infections. It is this protection that allowed us to carefully ease restrictions over the past few months. However, we must do so in a way that is mindful of the benefits that both doses of the vaccine can bring.
On 19 July, the Prime Minister announced that
“by the end of September—when all over 18s will have had the chance to be double jabbed—we are planning to make full vaccination the condition of entry to nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather. Proof of a negative test will no longer be sufficient.”
We will be confirming more details in due course.[Official Report, 9 September 2021, Vol. 700, c. 4MC.]
This approach is designed to reduce transmission and serious illness. It is in line with the approach we have taken on international travel, where different rules apply depending on whether someone has had both jabs.
I would like to end by urging people to come forward to get the jab. Some 88% of people have had one jab and more than 80% of people aged 16 and over have now had the protection of both doses. It is the best way to protect yourself, your loved ones and your community, so please come forward and join them, and make our wall of protection even stronger.
Mr Carmichael
First, thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to ask this urgent question; as Big Brother Watch brings its campaign against vaccine passports to Westminster today, it is certainly timely.
The introduction of vaccine passports will have enormous practical implications for the literally thousands of businesses across the country that will be required to gather and to hold our data. It is on those aspects that the answers are most urgently required from the Government—this must not be “in due course”, as the Minister has just said. The deadline for the implementation of this scheme is now just three weeks away. We must not, however, lose sight of the fact that a scheme of this sort opens the door to a major change in the relationship between the citizen and the state. Never before in peacetime have a Government in this country controlled, in this way, where we can go and with whom, and what to do. If the Government have concluded that this now has to change, at the very least this House must have a chance to make its voice heard and its views known. So when will we get the vote that the Minister promised us before the recess?
The case for vaccine passports is riddled with inconsistencies. Nightclubs have been open since July and, notwithstanding recent events in Aberdeen, they have been relatively safe. If they are safe today for people to enjoy responsibly, what do the Government expect to change between now and the end of the month? On Monday the Minister told me at the Dispatch Box:
“We do know that 60% of people who have had two jabs will not become infected with the Delta variant and therefore cannot infect someone else, although 40% will and can.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 75.]
The 40% figure highlights one of the biggest dangers of the whole idea: taking people into large social gatherings where they think they will be safe from infection but in fact they are not. The Minister will know that there will always be some who cannot be vaccinated, so if entry to nightclubs or events is to be dependent on demonstrating vaccination, those people will be excluded. So can he tell the House: what assessment have the Government done with regard to their duties under equalities legislation? A study by the Night Time Industries Association found that 69% of its members view the introduction of vaccine passports as having a negative impact on business, and 70% said they were not necessary for opening their business. Why are the Government not listening to the experts in the industry? When will nightclubs and other businesses be told how will they be expected to check the vaccine status of their patrons? What legal authority will they have to do that and what will the consequences be for them if they do not do it?
On 12 July, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care told the House:
“As we move away from regulations, there will no longer be a legal requirement for any establishment to have covid vaccine certification”.—[Official Report, 12 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 32.]
When did that change and why?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s questions and I will attempt to address them. I will begin by saying to the House that no one in this Government, and certainly not this Prime Minister—it is not in his DNA—wants to curtail people’s freedoms or require people to show a piece of paper before they enter a nightclub. The reason we are moving forward on this is that we have looked at what has happened in other countries, where nightclubs were opening and then shutting again, and opening and then shutting again, and we want to avoid that disruption and maintain sectors that can add to people’s enjoyment of life and dance, as was the case for the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. We want them to be able to do that sustainably.
The reason behind the end of September date, which the right hon. Gentleman asked about, is that by then all 18-year-olds and above will have had the chance to have two doses.
The right hon. Gentleman was quite right when he quoted what I said to him at the Dispatch Box a few days ago: 60% of people who are doubled vaccinated will not be infected and therefore will not spread the infection, but 40% may do. The view of our clinical experts is that the additional relative safety of people having to be doubled vaccinated before they can enter a nightclub does begin to mitigate super-spreader events, which could cause us, in effect, to take a decision to close nightclubs, which we would not want to do.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the disruption to business; as he will know, this is a tried and tested solution that has been used extensively throughout the Government’s events research programme. It requires venues to check or scan the NHS covid pass, in the same way as nightclub bouncers check ID before entry.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the equality impact assessment. I assure him that we conducted a full equality impact assessment and consulted widely to understand the potential equality impact of covid status certification. We spoke to ethicists and representatives of disabilities, race and faith groups. The system allows both digital and non-digital proofs, to help to ensure access for all. Constituents who do not have a smartphone, for example, can confirm their vaccine status by calling 119 and getting proof via email or written letter.
As I say, this is not something we do lightly; it is something to allow us to transition this virus from pandemic to endemic status. We are coming towards the winter months, when there will be upward pressure of infections because of the return to school and winter. Large gatherings of people, especially in indoor venues such as nightclubs, could add to that. The mitigation against that, to allow us to transition the virus from pandemic to endemic status, is the booster programme that I hope we will embark upon later this month, after the final recommendations from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
What a load of rubbish. I do not believe that my hon. Friend believes a word he just uttered, because I remember him stating very persuasively my position, which we shared at the time, that this measure would be discriminatory. Yet he is sent to the Dispatch Box to defend the indefensible. We in this House seem prepared to have a needless fight over this issue. It is completely unnecessary. We all agree that people should be encouraged to have the vaccine, and I again encourage everybody to do so, but to go down this route, which is overtly discriminatory, will be utterly damaging to the fabric of society.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has made his view clear to me on many occasions. It pains me to have to take a step like this, which we do not take lightly, but the flipside to that is that if we do not and the virus causes super-spreader events in nightclubs and I have to stand at the Dispatch Box and announce to the House that we have to close the sector, that would be much more painful to me.
Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for bringing this important topic to the House.
I associate myself with the Minister’s opening remarks regarding vaccine uptake. It is incredibly important that people take up the vaccine where possible, and I reiterate that from the Opposition Dispatch Box.
We are weeks away from implementation, but while Ministers were relaxing over the summer, there was no clarity from the Government about these plans. Businesses remain anxious. Our priorities are clear: to protect the NHS and our economy. We absolutely cannot be faced with an unmanageable winter crisis for both. My first question to the Minister is really simple: what does he think this will achieve? How and when will the UK Government decide which businesses must implement vaccine certification, and will they rely on low-paid staff at venues to act as public health officials, and what support will they be getting?
The NHS covid pass application currently allows individuals in England to either input a negative test result or complete a vaccine record. That is important for those who cannot, for legitimate medical reasons, take the vaccine. Will the Minister explain why the Government plan to drop the negative test option? Will they improve and keep available the NHS covid pass application or will it be replaced or outsourced?
Let me be crystal clear: we cannot support any potential covid pass scheme for access to everyday services. Can the Minister categorically assure me that no one will be required to have a covid vaccination pass to access essential services?
This Government have dithered, dawdled, and, as some have said, dad danced away the summer. They have not planned or prepared, and they have not provided the reassurances or presented a clear path forward. UK businesses have had a hell of an 18 months during this difficult pandemic. They need a proactive, supportive Government, and it is about time that Ministers worked towards that aim.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her opening words and for urging those who have not had a vaccine to come forward and be protected. She asked a number of important questions relating to this measure, including what it will achieve. She will know that double vaccination was important for people to be able to travel, and the implementation of that was largely successful. We need to go further to make sure that we recognise other vaccines from other countries around the world. Those vaccines need to be recognised by the WHO, our regulator and other regulators to make it even easier for people who are double vaccinated to travel to the United Kingdom. The NHS in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland stands ready to continue that joint work, as does NHSX in terms of the technology.
The hon. Lady asked about people’s access to essential settings, which is incredibly important. I can assure her that some essential services will not require people to show covid vaccine certification. They include settings that have stayed open throughout the pandemic, such as public sector buildings, essential retail, essential services and, of course, public transport.
She also asked what certification will achieve domestically. I hope that, combined with the vaccination programme, the booster programme and all the work that we have done around education, we will be able to transition this virus, post winter, from pandemic to endemic status. The reason for this very difficult decision is that it allows us to sustain the opening of the economy, including the nightclub sector, without having to flip-flop, go backwards and close down sectors because of super-spreader events. The chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, tells us that in absolute terms. As I said earlier, if people are double jabbed, only 60% will not be infected by the virus and therefore not spread it, but 40% could be infected. In relative terms, putting that downward pressure on infection rates is important in that journey towards transition from pandemic to endemic.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I have to say that I agree with the Chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg). The Minister set out earlier this year that this policy was discriminatory. He was right then and that remains the case. It is a discriminatory policy. The vaccines are fantastically effective at reducing hospitalisation and death. They are very much less effective in reducing transmission of the Delta variant. This is a pointless policy with damaging effects. I am afraid that the Minister is picking an unnecessary fight with his own colleagues. I say to him that the Government should think again. The Leader of the House has been clear that we do not believe—the Government do not believe—that this policy is necessary for us to meet here in a crowded place. Let us not have one rule for Members of Parliament and another rule for everybody else. Drop this policy.
Nadhim Zahawi
My right hon. Friend asks about my previous position. I addressed it a few days ago from this Dispatch Box. Back in January and February, we did not have the level of evidence on the Delta variant, which he mentioned. That variant is far more infectious—it requires only a few particles of Delta for a person to be infectious. Let me repeat the data that I cited earlier: 60% of people who are double vaccinated will not be infected by Delta and therefore will not spread it, but 40% could be infected and then spread it.
As for the policy being discriminatory, there will, of course, be exemptions—for example, in exceptional circumstances where a clinician recommends vaccine deferral, where that vaccine is not appropriate, and where testing is also not recommended on clinical grounds. Then there are those who have received a trial vaccine, including those who have been blinded or given a placebo as part of the formally approved covid vaccine trials in the United Kingdom.
This is not something that we enter into lightly, but it is part of our armoury to help us transition over the winter months from pandemic to endemic status. I hope to be able to stand at this Dispatch Box very soon after that and be able to share with the House that we do not need to do this any more as we will be dealing with the virus through an annual vaccination programme.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
I pay tribute to all those involved in the vaccination programme. It has been extraordinary. In Scotland, we have 4.1 million adults with a first dose and almost 4 million with a second dose, which means that north of 90% of all adults have had at least one dose. It is a fantastic result across the UK since last December, but the pandemic is not over. Lives are still at risk and the pressures on the NHS are very real, so we in Scotland are introducing a vaccine passport, but, broadly, it will be limited to nightclubs, outdoor standing events with more than 4,000 people and any event with more than 10,000 people. While the rules in England may be slightly different, I hope that they are as proportionate as that.
May I go back to the issue of essential services? It is not enough simply to say that a person will not need a vaccine passport to get an essential service. It has to be any setting where a person’s attendance is unavoidable—shops, public transport, medical services and education. We need the confirmation that no setting where a person’s attendance is unavoidable will require a vaccine passport.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his excellent citation of the vaccine success in Scotland. NHS Scotland has done a tremendous job, as has the NHS in Wales, Northern Ireland and, of course, England. He raises an important point about essential services. In the process of parliamentary engagement and scrutiny, we will be able to share the detail of that in due course.
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister, who is defending a policy that I do not think his heart is truly in. May I ask him a technical question? If a fake vaccine passport is used, who will bear responsibility? Will it be the venue, the person who checked it, or the individual who used the fake passport? Who will police it? Will we be asking our local police, our local authority or some other agency?
Nadhim Zahawi
My right hon. Friend asks an important question. When I or a Minister from the Cabinet Office stands at the Dispatch Box and shares the detail of the implementation, we will address that issue in full.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
The Night Time Industries Association and others have expressed concerns about the practical implementation of this policy. As the Minister has highlighted, those questions remain and need to be answered quickly. Will the Minister also publish clear guidance on which events and venues will require a covid passport? There will also be increased costs for businesses at a time when they are recovering, so will they also be getting extra funding, and when will that be announced?
Nadhim Zahawi
Absolutely, we will issue clear guidance about venues. Nightclubs are a particular concern when it comes to evidence from other countries of super-spreader events, but, absolutely, we will do that.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Isn’t the super-spreader event the spread of illiberal, discriminatory and coercive policies from this Dispatch Box?
Nadhim Zahawi
It pains me to have to stand at the Dispatch Box and implement something that goes against the DNA of this Minister and his Prime Minister, but we are living through difficult and unprecedented times. As one of the major economies of the world, our four nations have done an incredible job of implementing the vaccination programme. This is a precautionary measure to ensure that we can sustainably maintain the opening of all sectors of the economy.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I almost feel sorry for the Minister because he really is struggling to defend this policy. However, he has failed to answer the fundamental question posed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) about this deeply illiberal, discriminatory and unnecessary policy: will this House get a vote on the implementation of covid vaccine passports—yes or no?
Nadhim Zahawi
There will be appropriate parliamentary scrutiny, as I have said today and in the past.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
I fear that my hon. Friend is on a sticky wicket. Let me point out to him that, if people have had covid but have not had any vaccinations, they will not get the passport that he is proposing and therefore will not be allowed into nightclubs. We are a proud, liberal party in that we believe in freedoms; whatever happened to a laissez-faire attitude? Nightclubs have been open since July. My hon. Friend has not closed them yet. There is no need for a vaccine passport.
Nadhim Zahawi
That is an important question. My hon. Friend is quite right that nightclubs have been open since July. The end of September date was chosen deliberately to allow over-18s to have the opportunity to be double vaccinated. On people who may have had covid and not had the vaccine, there is evidence—for example, on the beta variant—that it can be much more harmful to people unless they get vaccinated. I urge people who have had covid and recovered to get the vaccine, get double jabbed and get protected.
Mr Speaker
Let us hear from the former voice of the DJs of the north—Jeff Smith.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. As somebody who worked in nightclubs for 25-plus years, let me tell the Minister that this is a recipe for chaos on the doors of nightclubs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) said—and as I said to the Minister the other day—the Night Time Industries Association has said that this will cripple the industry. This industry has been massively hard hit and it relies on walk-up trade; this is going make it impossible for nightclubs to run.
Let me ask the Minister two questions. First, how does he define a nightclub, as opposed to a late bar with a DJ playing music? Secondly, there is no rationale for this—as the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) said, nightclubs have been open for weeks—so why close them now? Why require vaccine passport for nightclubs, as opposed to other crowded indoor venues, such as the Chamber and the voting Lobby of the House of Commons?
Nadhim Zahawi
That is an important question. As I said earlier, part of the trials gave us the confidence that we can do this and do it well. These passports have already been implemented for international travel and other countries in Europe have them for nightclubs. We think this is the right thing to do to help us transition the virus from pandemic to endemic status. We will be coming forward with the details for parliamentary scrutiny in due course.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Although I understand the libertarian argument regarding this policy and the very good points put forward by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), is it not the prime duty of any Government to protect their own population, whether in peace or war? And in many ways, are we not in a unique war with this virus? The passport is easily available. I have it on my iPhone now, although it shows my date of birth, which I would rather it did not do. I certainly agree, by the way, that if we want equality, we should be using these passports to get access to this Chamber, because it is also a crowded place. Will not the vaccine passport also encourage more people to get double vaccinated?
Nadhim Zahawi
I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a very strong libertarian argument and not one with which I would disagree. This is a difficult and important decision. As he says, we are still not in a place where I can stand here and say, hand on heart, that we have transitioned this virus and that it is no longer a pandemic. That is why we are having to take this decision. I slightly disagree with his latter point; public buildings should obviously remain accessible and open to all without these passports, because there are relative measures that we can take to allow us the additional protection as we head towards the booster programme.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, I am feeling sheepish about earlier; my apologies—touché.
This is just nonsense. I am 100% in favour of vaccination and 100% opposed to vaccine passports. There is no legal definition of what a nightclub is, as opposed to a place where other people might be bouncing up and down, and shouting at one another across a Chamber in a room of 500 people. There is no legal definition that the Minister is going to be able to rely on. The Government will effectively be turning bouncers on the door into legal officers, who will be deciding whether somebody has had a placebo or not. This is for the birds. We can relieve the Minister of all his pain; he just has to say that he has thought again and he is not going to do it.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Member for his question. Bouncers will not have to decide if someone has had a placebo or not, because anyone who has been on a trial will be deemed to be vaccinated and will receive their certificate.
Nadhim Zahawi
I said this at the Dispatch Box before recess. Actually, the Secretary of State took to the World Health Organisation a plea to the rest of the world that people in trials should be considered fully vaccinated, whether they have had the placebo or otherwise, in order to encourage them to come forward for vaccine trials. I repeated that today. It will not be an issue for nightclub bouncers.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
The measures presented by the Minister today are unsupportable because they are bereft of any rationale. I ask him to think carefully about whether this Government wish to take powers that were deemed to be emergency powers and make them the normal powers of a Government in a free society. I, for one, think that that is extremely unwise and that there is no case for this.
Nadhim Zahawi
I agree with my hon. Friend that the times that we are enduring are not normal. This is a measure that we are having to take. As he will hear from our chief medical officers in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, this is a mitigation to allow us to continue to transition this pandemic over the winter months and not have to reverse our policies. I say, with a heavy heart, that I would much rather stand here and take from colleagues arrows in the back—or in the front—than come back to this House and have to close down nightclubs because the virus has caused a super-spreader event. I do not want to have to explain that to the whole industry, because it would be much more detrimental to businesses to have to open and shut them, and open and shut them again.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
The Minister cannot underestimate how much freedom has been limited for those with medical exemptions. I have heard from some of my constituents that they feared even leaving the house. The idea that they will see those freedoms limited again is abhorrent, so how can the Minister ensure that the medically exempt will not have further restrictions on their freedoms because of his vaccine passport plan?
Nadhim Zahawi
We have spent a lot of time, energy and resource on ensuring that those with medical exemptions, who have underlying medical conditions, were prioritised in both category 4 and 6 of phase 1 of the vaccination programme, as the hon. Member will recall. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has gone further for the immunosuppressed. As I said earlier, there will be exemptions from this particular set of rules for people who, for whatever reason, cannot be vaccinated or cannot have a test for medical conditions.
Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the duration of these passports, whether they are passed by the Government or it is done by a vote, would only last as long as it is considered that the United Kingdom was in a pandemic state, not an endemic state, in terms of the disease? Will he also set out when that transition happens so that we can judge and understand it for ourselves?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s thoughtful question. There is great difficulty with knowing at what stage we feel confident that the virus has transitioned from pandemic to endemic. We have now entered a period of equilibrium with the virus because of the success of the vaccination programme. The upward pressure on infections is obviously schools going back. The downward pressure on infections will be the booster programme and mitigating policies like the one we are debating. The Government certainly do not see this as a long-term power grab to restrict people’s liberties.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
I feel I should try to help the Minister by thanking him for the regular briefings on vaccination uptake over the recess, which was very helpful to me in terms of encouraging a number of people from the BME communities to take up the vaccine. However, this policy is not going to work in Vauxhall. A number of businesses that have been hampered over the last 18 months want to get back. A number of those businesses are fearful of the looming rent increases for private commercial tenants. A number of businesses are fearful about the backlog of business rates that they have to pay. We are now probably going to ask those same businesses to pay to implement this policy. I want to go back to the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra): what funding will be available to those businesses and when will they receive it?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s kind words about the engagement that we have maintained throughout the vaccine deployment programme. We will continue to do so, by the way, as we enter the booster programme, which, in some weeks, will hopefully break all records that we set in phase 1 of the vaccination programme. I think what is more detrimental to businesses in Vauxhall is having to open and shut, and open and shut again. The reason for this policy is to sustain their ability to trade, and hopefully trade profitably.
Miss Sarah Dines (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)
I think we all agree that vaccine take-up among the young is essential. What additional incentives can you offer the young people I work with on Hurst Farm, a social housing estate in Matlock, to take up the vaccine?
Nadhim Zahawi
Young people have been coming forward in droves to be vaccinated. We have walk-in centres all around the country where people do not even have to book an appointment. There have been many different ideas for incentivisation of young people. The great incentive, I hope, is to protect themselves, their families and their community, but also to enjoy the freedoms that come with double vaccination.
Mr Speaker
Can I just say that I will not be giving any incentives? When the hon. Lady said “you”, it meant me, and I definitely do not want to do that.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
As the Minister has indicated, many countries are already introducing checks in hospitality and entertainment venues, and a large number of our own citizens are visiting them on holiday, showing vaccine passes issued free by Her Majesty’s Government and having already undergone checks at airports. I have been arguing since February for the introduction of vaccine passes in order to save venues and jobs. To ensure that they can stay open, will he now cut through the hysteria and get on with it?
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
On Sunday, I joined dozens of volunteers for a thank you event with Medicare Pharmacy for the 58,000 jabs that it has delivered to local people this year. What more, though, can the Minister do to encourage—I stress the word “encourage”—those who are still to have their jab to come forward and do so?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s work. He has been a champion of the vaccination programme and I am grateful to Medicare Pharmacy. We continue to have pop-ups at universities and walk-ins around the country, and incentives to young people to get vaccinated. We also continue to redouble our efforts to keep the vaccine evergreen for those who have not yet had their first dose.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
Last week, I spoke to a constituent who is a widow with four children and has been working for the NHS on the frontline throughout the pandemic. One of her children has a range of very complex needs that can only be met by full-time residential care, and there is only one setting in the entire country that can meet his particular needs. She has been told that it cannot take him because of a shortage of care staff, and that the particular difficulty in recruiting at the moment is the requirement for care staff to have had two jabs. As the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is no longer in his place, highlighted, the vaccine does not prevent infection or the spread of covid. So why, given the crisis in recruitment of care staff, do we still have this requirement for two jabs when it is not effective and is depriving vulnerable people of the care they need?
Nadhim Zahawi
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I wish to reiterate that what she said is inaccurate in the sense of the vaccines not preventing infection. Sixty per cent. of people who are double-vaccinated will not be infected and therefore cannot spread the virus, but 40% can. This is an important measure. We have a duty of care to those most vulnerable in care homes in ensuring that the staff are double-jabbed, and they have until 11 November to do that.
Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)
Make no mistake: vaccine passports will create a two-tier society with the hospitality industry having to police an unethical policy that will hammer its recovery. Given the Government’s own words that we need to live with this virus, will my hon. Friend confirm how long vaccine passports will be in place—if passed by this House?
Nadhim Zahawi
We will set out in detail in due course exactly how the vaccine pass will work for domestic use: for example, in nightclubs.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for all the hard work he does and for answering these very difficult questions. It would seem that each region of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has differing versions of the system in relation to offering vaccine passports, and that confuses people whenever they read or hear it in the national news. What discussions have taken place with regional Administrations on this issue? Are there any plans to standardise each region to have a one-size-fits-all UK strategy that people can understand and follow?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s excellent question. I am very proud, as are the Ministers from the devolved Administrations, of the work we have done collectively on the vaccination programme, which we will continue to do for the booster programme. As he heard earlier, this is a devolved matter but we try to co-ordinate wherever possible and do the right thing together.
Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister and all those involved in the vaccination roll-out on four-fifths of over-16-year-olds now being double-vaccinated. This Government have worked night and day to ensure that we have the testing capacity to test over 1 million people a day, and many millions more with lateral flow tests as well. Surely a nightclub full of people who have tested negative is safer than a nightclub of people who are double-vaccinated.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s championing of the vaccination programme. He raises an important point. One of the issues around lateral flow tests is the risk of people fraudulently inputting their test result, but also those are for a single excursion whereas being double-vaccinated means that people can go and enjoy nightclubs as many times as they like.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
May I, on bended knee, implore my hon. Friend to summon all his courage and say no to vaccine passports to protect our civil liberties? He has been so courageous in the vaccine roll-out, so will he please protect our civil liberties and say no to vaccine passports?
Nadhim Zahawi
I hope that when my hon. Friend pauses and reflects on what we will be bringing forward, she will see that it is that it is much better for the nightclub industry to be able to open sustainably while we get through the next few months. The winter months are going to be tough and challenging not just for covid but also for flu. It is a far better option to listen to the clinical advice of the CMOs and implement something that is difficult for me to do, and goes against everything I believe in, but nevertheless is the right thing to do.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
We have a whole summer’s worth of data from the events research programme that shows how organisers of events such as the British grand prix at Silverstone in my constituency had to meet extreme costs to put in the planning and the checking of vaccine passports at the gate. Before this policy is put to a vote in this House, will my hon. Friend commit to publishing the data on the cost to business of vaccine passport checks through the events research programme, so that we can be fully apprised of the cost of this policy?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend’s question is important and is one that we will be looking at. Suffice to say, as I mentioned earlier, the events research programme certainly gave us the confidence that people can deal with this measure relatively easily. In the way that a nightclub bouncer can check ID, they can check covid vaccination status.
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
Like many across the House, I am instinctively wary of this idea. Will my hon. Friend give me a clear answer to a specific question: will right hon. and hon. Members receive a vote? For the avoidance of doubt, I am talking about a vote and not scrutiny of the policy.
Nadhim Zahawi
I have said that there will be parliamentary scrutiny around this, and we will be coming back and setting out in detail what that looks like.
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)
I am flabbergasted, depressed and annoyed that we are even discussing this matter. It is absolutely wrong on a fundamental level. Putting to one side the practical implications of how it will be policed, more important are the general data protection regulation implications of bouncers having medical data in their hands. What are we doing in regard to the data? Nightclubs have been open for over two months. Is there any data to support this policy, because I do not think there is?
Nadhim Zahawi
The very strong advice from the chief medical officers—we have heard from our colleagues in Scotland, too—is that this will be an important mitigating measure. It is something we do not do lightly. I completely understand my hon. Friend’s sentiment and emotion on this. In terms of the data presented, it will be limited simply to the vaccine status and the name of the individual. It can be on a smartphone, but if someone does not have one, it will be physical or by email.
Point of Order
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker, you will know that, last week, the Foreign Secretary told the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs that he would be making sure that all MPs had direct responses to all the emails that we had sent to the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the Defence Secretary about Afghans and those friends and relatives of our constituents who have been caught in the situation in Afghanistan. You will know, Mr Speaker, because you were in the Chair, that the Prime Minister repeated that on Monday. He said that we would all have responses by the end of the day, and the Foreign Secretary then repeated that commitment later that day. Unfortunately, that just has not happened. In so far as there has been any response at all from the Government, it has been a single email from a junior Minister in the Foreign Office that says that we can go and look at a website.
I know that you, Mr Speaker, have said repeatedly that Ministers have to give proper, substantive answers, and I just hope that you might be able to speak to Government Ministers. So many of our caseworkers, for Members in all parts of the House, are in tears every day because they are having so many cases brought to them. On Monday, I mentioned three people out of the 143 cases I have raised, one of whom has been shot, one of whom has been raped and one of whom has been tortured. We are all facing these things. I wonder whether there is anything you can do in your powers to make sure that we get proper answers. We cannot just abandon these people.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
Further to that point of order, very unusually I completely concur with the hon. Gentleman. It is really unfair on our staff, let alone our constituents, that we cannot give them answers. This is the first time since I have been in the House that I have not been able to give them the sort of answers that I would expect a Minister to give. I have been a Minister myself in many different Departments, and I know this is difficult for the Department, but it is fundamentally also difficult for the families and loved ones and our staff, who cannot give them the truth.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Further to that point of order, I reiterate and support what the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) have said. Last week, I had, as others have, constituents contact me on behalf of people who they served with in Afghanistan. Last week, there were gun attacks on the houses of some of the people to whom the hon. Member for Rhondda referred. I sent three urgent emails and have hand-delivered letters this week. I do not want to embarrass anyone—it is not about that; it is about getting the answers. May I just say that I would really appreciate, as others would, having immediate, urgent answers on those issues, because for these people it is a case of life or death? It is really important. Let us see if we can get the answers from Ministers.
Mr Speaker
It is quite right for Members to raise this matter; it is very important. The fact is that commitments were made by the Government to deal with the issues and respond accordingly. MPs have a duty to pursue on behalf of constituents’ cases that are brought to them. We might have been discussing this matter if the Opposition day had not been pulled. Given that it has, let me just say to those on the Government Front Bench that it is not acceptable to make pledges that are not carried out, and in fact, if this continues, it may be that we need an urgent question to discuss why we are not getting responses. That is not from one side; it is from both sides of the House. Ministers should reply to MPs. They are accountable to this House. I expect Ministers to reply accordingly to MPs.
Bill Presented
Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits)
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Thérèse Coffey, supported by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Amanda Milling and Guy Opperman, presented a Bill to make provision relating to the up-rating of certain social security benefits payable in the tax year 2022-23.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 158) with explanatory notes (Bill 158-EN).
Mr Speaker
We now come to the ten-minute rule Bill. I hope your mum is ready, Jonathan.
Multi-Academy Trusts (Ofsted Inspection)
Wednesday 8th September 2021
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Multi-Academy Trusts (Ofsted Inspection) Bill 2021-22 View all Multi-Academy Trusts (Ofsted Inspection) Bill 2021-22 Debates Read Hansard Text
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend section 5 of the Education Act 2005 to provide that Ofsted may inspect the governing bodies of Multi-Academy Trusts.
Mr Speaker, you have may heard me mention only a few times that I used to be a teacher and trade union representative, but having proudly worked in academies in London and Birmingham—I also have a partner who works in the sector—for over eight years before entering this place, I firmly believe that the most important thing we can achieve is to give our children the very best education. In my mind, there is no greater task that we have as MPs, and there can be no better investment than in our children’s futures.
I know that as a teacher and a Conservative, I am a bit of an outlier. There are not too many of us around, although I am delighted to count my hon. Friends the Members for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith), for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) and for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) among our ranks on these Benches.
The Conservatives’ record on education since 2010 is a proud one. The proportion of schools rated as good or outstanding by Ofsted has risen from 68% in 2010 to 86% in 2020. Between 2011 and 2019, the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their wealthier peers narrowed by 13% at age 11 and 9% at age 16. In 2019, 82% of year 1 pupils met the expected standard for reading, compared with just 58% when the light-touch phonics check was introduced.
The great Govian and Gibbian reforms have been key to that improvement, as a result of which almost 2 million more children are now in good or outstanding schools than in 2010. At the reforms’ heart has been the academy and free school programme, which has freed schools from local authority control, given parents more choice and granted schools more control over their curriculum, budgeting and staffing. Through those changes, we have been able to drive up standards across the country.
Since 2010, the Government have invested in academy trusts to be the vehicle of school improvement. Over half of children are now educated in academies and 42% of schools are now academies. Some 84% of academies are part of multi-academy trusts, or MATs, and as of August last year, there were 1,180 MATs, covering 7,680 academies between them. Of those, 70% oversee six schools or fewer, and 38% run two or three schools. There are also a small number of big beasts that oversee 20 schools or more.
Parents and teachers must have confidence in the leadership of academy trusts. Over the years, various scandals have appeared in the papers, such as trusts paying for the lease of a new Jaguar for their chief executive, trusts paying thousands for first-class travel and high-class hotel rooms, and even trusts paying for transatlantic flights. We regularly hear of trusts’ chief executives getting huge salaries of £100,000 or £200,000—and, in some cases, close to half a million pounds. I am a big supporter of the drive for academisation and hope that all schools will become academies. I am not against trusts expanding, but, where they are encouraged to do so, it must be for the right reasons.
Numerous funds have been created to encourage MATs to expand such as the regional academy growth fund and the trust capacity fund, but they have often resulted in trusts expanding beyond their means, and there is no formal way of assessing whether they are best placed to expand. As the evaluation of the regional academy growth fund found, one MAT took on 10 schools in a year despite a previous annual growth rate of only two or three. There must be fairness, transparency and accountability, because, as it stands, there is a glaring inconsistency.
Schools, including individual academies, and children’s social services are inspected by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission inspects hospital trusts, so why are multi-academy trusts not inspected, too? I worry that that loophole risks creating a new group of education authorities that are unaccountable to teachers, parents and pupils. To have a fair and consistent system, MATs and their leadership teams need to be accountable in the same way as teachers.
MATs at their best have been instrumental in turning around failing schools. Having previously been placed in special measures, Whitfield Valley Primary Academy in Fegg Hayes in my Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke constituency is now rated “good” by Ofsted, and with “outstanding” leadership, since becoming part of the Inspirational Learning Academies Trust in 2015. While that is a fantastic example of what trusts can achieve, sadly too many are not performing well. The root of the problem is the accountability regime.
Over the years, there have been calls for change. I thank the previous Education Committee, which in a 2017 report found that there was a gap in assessing the performance of MATs not fulfilled by either Ofsted or regional school commissioners. In 2018, Ofsted trialled a new approach to inspecting academies that involved a number of inspections of individual academies from a MAT taking place over a period of up to two terms. Following those inspections, Ofsted would visit the MAT’s head office to evaluate its effectiveness as a whole. That move towards assessing the trust itself rather than simply looking at individual academies was a shift in the right direction. However, as it stands, accountability measures remain heavily focused at school level and do not reflect the top-heavy leadership style of many MATs.
To harness the power of MATs properly, we need to look at their overall performance. I stress that my Bill is not about creating another layer of bureaucracy or more hoops for teachers to jump through. It is about adding accountability for the trustees of multi-academy trusts, and in my mind there should be no extra work for teachers. Through my Bill, the remit of Ofsted inspectors would be extended so that they must consider: the achievement of pupils across schools covered by the multi-academy trust; the success of the multi-academy trust in reversing educational underperformance; and the quality of leadership, financial management and governance of the multi-academy trust. Bringing MATs under the Ofsted inspection regime would ensure that they are playing their full role and, crucially, allow those truly doing excellent work to be recognised.
As the “Lost Learning” report that I co-authored with Onward and the New Schools Network earlier this year argued, we should be using multi-academy trusts
“much more aggressively as the engine of school improvement”.
We could hold them to account through the provisions of my Bill and assess them on their ability to turn around underperforming schools. Inspections of MATs would allow us to reward those that are well-performing and incentivise the best MATs with generous funding to take on struggling schools. There could be no clearer need for that, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
If levelling up is to mean anything, it must mean that children in places such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke can get the education that they need to go on to university, the skills they need to go on to an apprenticeship, and a chance to make the most of their talents and achieve their potential, no matter where in the country they go to school. To do that, we need to unleash the power of the best trusts to transform children’s lives around the entire country. Ultimately, that is what the Bill is about.
In the wake of the pandemic, the Bill is needed now more than ever. I am delighted that it has the support of a broad selection of hon. Members from all sides of the House. I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Robert Halfon, Emma Hardy, David Simmonds, Dame Meg Hillier, David Johnston, Layla Moran, Brendan Clarke-Smith, Miriam Cates, Ian Mearns, Lee Anderson, Gareth Bacon and Jonathan Gullis, present the Bill.
Jonathan Gullis accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 28 January 2022, and to be printed (Bill 159).
Business of the House (Today)
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
We will be debating an important issue today, and if the debate had been on a Finance Bill, it could have gone until any hour. I appreciate that we are debating a Ways and Means motion, but given the interest in it, the time could have been extended. Will the Minister explain why he decided that the debate would stop at the moment of interruption?
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I rise to express sympathy with the point made by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) about this dribbling out of Budget announcements. These days, we have trinity Budgets, not one Budget: we have Ways and Means motions when it suits the Treasury. The change of behaviour on fiscal issues, Budgets and tax announcements in which the Government are indulging does not lead to decent policy making, and nor does it help Parliament to hold the Government to account. Rather than the ongoing dribbling out of Budget and tax proposals when it suits the Government rather than the House, let us get back to having one fiscal event and one Budget when the Red Book is published so that we can properly hold them to account.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Is there not another point? We already have remarkably weak control over taxation and expenditure in this House. It is one of the things that we do worse than nearly any other legislature in the UK or anywhere else in Europe and the rest of the world. Most other countries have a proper budget when they decide both expenditure and taxation at the same time. Surely the two should go together.
What we have here, most extraordinarily, is a motion that was put on the Order Paper only yesterday, without any forewarning of a debate today. Surprise, surprise, as is the convention under our Standing Orders, nobody other than a Government Minister can table an amendment to increase or vary a tax or duty. We are therefore a completely hamstrung Parliament in which the Executive have excessive control over us. We should have had proper time to debate the motion and proper forewarning, but yet again, the Government are taking everything into their own hands.
Question put and agreed to.
Ways and Means
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Health and Social Care Levy
Wednesday 8th September 2021
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Health and Social Care Levy Act 2021 View all Health and Social Care Levy Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
19:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 243 / Noes: 335 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:14 - The House divided: - Ayes: 319 / Noes: 248 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected amendment (c) in the name of the official Opposition. I remind the House that, under the terms of the business of the House order of today, the amendment will be moved formally at the end of debate.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
I beg to move,
That provision may be made for, and in connection with, the following—
(a) the imposition of a tax on earnings and profits in respect of which national insurance contributions are payable, or would be payable if no restriction by reference to pensionable age were applicable, the proceeds of which are to be paid (together with any associated penalties or interest) to the Secretary of State towards the cost of health and social care but where expenses incurred in collecting the tax are to be deducted and paid instead into the Consolidated Fund, and
(b) increasing the rates of national insurance contributions for a temporary period ending when the tax becomes chargeable and applying the increases towards the cost of the National Health Service.
Supporting health and social care in the aftermath of a pandemic and amid the worst health crisis for 100 years, laying the long-term basis for social care for generations to come—there are few if any greater peacetime challenges for any Government, and that is why it is an honour to be opening this debate today.
As the House will know, yesterday the Prime Minister announced a plan to tackle the NHS backlog, put the adult social care system on a sustainable long-term footing and end the situation in which those who need help in their old age risk losing everything to pay for it. The Government’s plan will make a difference to the lives of millions of people across this country, and it will be funded with a record £36 billion investment into the NHS and social care.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
What estimate has the Minister made of the impact of these measures on the ease or indeed the difficulty of securing continuing NHS care?
Jesse Norman
That is an extraordinarily wide-ranging question, and there are many ways in which impacts could be assessed. My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Government will be bringing forward a social care Bill, and there will be a Budget at which this measure, fiscal measures in general and the wider consideration of the fiscal position will be considered. In the documents published in relation to today’s debate, there is of course a sustainability analysis of the impact of the measure on different parts of the country, by background and socioeconomic income, and there is also a substantial plan published by the Government in relation to the Health and Care Bill.
Several hon. Members rose—
Jesse Norman
If I may, I will just proceed a little bit further, and then I will be happy to give way.
In order to pay for a significant increase in spending in a responsible and fair way, the Government have announced a new 1.25% health and social care levy based on national insurance contributions. This Ways and Means motion enables the Government to introduce the levy and temporarily to increase national insurance contribution rates until it takes effect.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend tell the House how much the 1.25% increase in national insurance will cost the NHS on top of its current payroll?
Jesse Norman
My hon. Friend will be aware that public sector bodies have been adjusted for in the numbers that have been published, and therefore the numbers that have been published are net of the impact on the public sector.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I understand that for a couple of years this tax revenue goes to the NHS, not to care, to get the waiting lists down. By how many will the waiting lists be reduced, and what is the plan for using this money to actually cut them?
Jesse Norman
Of course, it is impossible to say in advance what the impact will be, but I would direct my right hon. Friend to the remarks of the Institute for Fiscal Studies where it said that
“based on detailed analysis to be published later this week…this could be enough to meet the pandemic-related pressures on the NHS.”
I think that is a fairly—
Jesse Norman
No. I have already taken a few, and I will go on a bit further, if I may, and then I will take some more interventions. [Interruption.] Well, the hon. Gentleman has had a fairly substantial go at points of order already, and I welcome his later intervention.
The levy will apply UK-wide to taxpayers liable to class 1 employee and employer, class 1A, class 1B and class 4 self-employed NICs. However, it will not apply where taxpayers pay class 2 NICs or class 3 NICs. It will be introduced from April 2022, and then from April 2023 the levy will also apply to those working over the state pension age. As my hon. and right hon. Friends will understand, it takes time for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to prepare its systems for such a major shift. That is why, in 2022-23, the levy will be delivered through a temporary increase in NICs rates of 1.25% for one year only. All revenues generated by this increase will be ring-fenced and paid to NHS England, NHS Scotland, NHS Wales and the equivalent in Northern Ireland.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister not recognise the burden he is placing on small businesses, many of which the Government completely excluded and failed to support during the pandemic, in their now having to pay this extra levy, as opposed to making a fair taxation system that falls on those who can pay the most?
Jesse Norman
The hon. Lady will be aware that, because of the employment allowance, the bottom 40% of businesses will pay nothing and the next 40% will pay an average of £450. So this does not fall heavily on the bottom end of businesses, and of course it comes in a context in which the Government have provided over £400 billion of support to business and to the nation as a whole in the course of fighting the pandemic. In that sense it is, and it has been recognised to be by reputable independent commentators, a broad-based approach.
From April 2023, once HMRC systems have been updated, a formal legal surcharge of 1.25% will replace the temporary increase in NICs rates, which will return to their previous level. Again, this revenue will be ring-fenced in law for health and for social care only. As the Chancellor stated yesterday, this levy is no stealth tax. That is why the exact amount that each employee pays will also be visible as a separate line on their payslip. Finally, the levy will be administered by HMRC, and collected by the current reporting and collection procedures for NICs—pay-as-you-earn and income tax self-assessment.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I want to ask the Minister: how much money is actually going to get to local authorities to deliver social care at the frontline? Can I refer him to paragraph 36 of the Government’s document, which we got yesterday? It says that £5.4 billion in adult social care will be provided from this levy, but that will be spent on the reforms that are in the document. It also says that all the other pressures on social care that local authorities have now, demographic and otherwise, will be paid for from council tax and the social care precept, which is council tax by another name. So are we expecting the pressures on social care to be funded not from this document, but actually from further rises in council tax? Is that the honest situation?
Jesse Norman
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I am also very grateful to him for actually reading the document, which many of his colleagues may not have done, and he is absolutely right to draw attention to that section. What the levy does, of course, is to provide a very substantial form of funding for social care. The question of the capacity of local authorities, which is of course a matter of great interest to Government and an area that we have supported significantly in the last year or two, will be considered in the Budget in the normal course of things.
If I may, I will now set out why a levy based on national insurance is the best way to raise the funds needed for the Government’s plan for health and social care. The first reason is that there is already a clear precedent. Indeed, in 2003 the then Labour Government increased these same NICs rates by 1% specifically to put more funding into the NHS. Within the NICs system there is, as Members across the House will know, already a long-standing ring-fenced proportion of receipts directed to the NHS.
The second reason is that this is a fair method. Businesses will play their part. In fact, the largest 1% of businesses will contribute 70% of the revenue. However, existing NICs reliefs and allowances will also apply to the levy. That will mean, as I have said, that 40% of all businesses will not be affected due to the employment allowance. When it comes to individuals, those earning more will pay more. Conversely, at least 6.2 million people earning less than the NICs primary threshold will not pay the levy at all.
The third reason why a levy based on NICs is the right approach is that it has worked elsewhere. France, Germany and Japan have all increased social security contributions to fund social care provision. Finally, the question of how to fund health and social care is one that applies to a whole nation. NICs are set on a UK-wide basis, and the levy therefore provides a clear UK-wide solution.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Would the right hon. Gentleman put on the record for the House the consequentials for public bodies that are employers? They would normally be expected to pay this, but I understand there are some mitigations. Perhaps he could explain that, because in the time we have had we have not been able to get to the bottom of it.
Jesse Norman
The overall fiscal approach is set out in detail in the document that has already been referenced by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). We will be presenting a Bill in due course, which will have further explanatory notes and a tax information and impact note associated with it, and of course we have a Budget in which the wider fiscal position will become clear, so the House is not going to be short of information about how this will land.
Finally, if I may, I will just remind the House why this levy is so important. As the Prime Minister and the Chancellor set out yesterday, the levy will enable the Government to tackle the backlog in the NHS. It will provide a new, permanent way to pay for the Government’s reforms to social care, and it will allow the Government to fund our vision for the future of health and social care in this country over the longer term.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
I thank the Minister for giving way. I have two points. He talks about the Government’s vision for health and social care, but with their obsession with outsourcing, that does not match the Scottish vision for health and social care. This is a devolved area. Why is the Minister not using tax, which the Scottish Government control? We have already been slagged for three years in this place for putting a penny on income tax bands to fund health and social care in Scotland. Why is he hitting Scottish taxpayers again, and taking power away from the Scottish Government?
Jesse Norman
Nothing could be further from the truth. All parts of the UK need a long-term solution to fund this health and social care position sustainably, including Scotland and the Scottish Government. Scotland’s own Audit Scotland has said that more money is needed in the Scottish social care system, and an independent review of adult social care said that more money needs to be provided. Of course, there is a Union dividend from that policy, in that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will benefit by an average of 15% more than is generated by their residents. That is £300 million a year on average.
The Government have acknowledged that this policy involves a breach of the manifesto. They have done so directly, they have done so plainly, and they have done so honestly. But I would put it to the House that, in a deeper sense, this measure serves to redeem a promise and discharge an obligation. It is a profoundly Conservative thing to do, to provide for future generations without increasing our borrowing, without increasing spending, and in way that is sustainable and grips a nettle that for too many years has been ignored by the Labour party. With that in mind, I commend the motion to the House.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
There are two tests for the package announced yesterday. First, does it fix social care? Secondly, is it funded fairly? The answer to both those questions is no. It is a broken promise, it is unfair, and it is a tax on jobs. At the general election less than two years ago, the Prime Minister said to voters:
“Read my lips, we will not be raising taxes on income or VAT or national insurance.”
The Chancellor of the Exchequer—I am not sure where he is today—went further and solemnly said:
“Our plans are to cut taxes for the lowest paid through cutting national insurance.”
The Government have broken their legally binding promise on international development, they are breaking it again on the triple lock, and the country is now littered with Tory broken promises torn from the election manifestos of all Conservative Members—promises that they made to their constituents and their country. Promises used to count for something; today the Tory word, and guarantees from the Prime Minister, count for absolutely nothing at all.
Rachel Reeves
I will take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, and perhaps he can tell us what he put on his election leaflets.
Paul Holmes
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, and I remind her that the Conservative party won on the basis of its election manifesto, and the Labour party lost. In the interests of fairness and for the people of this country who voted for her party, will she outline to the House what the Labour party’s plan is to fix social care, because so far we have heard nothing?
Rachel Reeves
I will come on to that in a moment, but that sums it up. You went into the election with a set of promises, and now you are breaking them one by one.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order—[Interruption.] Hon. Members should resume their seats. This is an emotionally charged debate—I fully appreciate that—but as Mr Speaker has pointed out, Members must not use the word “you” unless they are referring to the Chair. Please remember that.
Rachel Reeves
I will clarify: Conservative Members are breaking their promises one by one by one. The Government will claim that that is all down to the pandemic, but in March this year—a year into the pandemic—the Chancellor promised that national insurance would not go up. He said,
“this Government are not going to raise the rates of income tax, national insurance or VAT…Nobody’s take-home pay will be less than it is now”.—[Official Report, 3 March 2021; Vol. 690, c. 256.]
Another Tory promise up in flames. That was not before the pandemic; it was a year into it, and a matter of months later this bombshell on work to fund social care is a broken promise. It is unfair, and it is a tax on jobs.
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making the right sort of points. Government Members do not like it, but they need to listen to it. Does she agree that when the Prime Minister signed the guarantee on the tax lock in the 2019 general election campaign, he also told the country that he had an oven-ready plan for reforming social care, prior to the pandemic? He cannot have signed the tax lock, as well as having a plan for social care, if one of those things was not exactly true.
Rachel Reeves
I would go further than my hon. Friend: neither of those things were true, because the Government have no plan for social care and we have a tax increase. The sad truth at the heart of this so-called health and social care levy is that it will not deliver on social care for at least three years from now, and even then it is uncertain when the Government might allow some money to trickle down. Under the Prime Minister’s plan, many will still face the threat, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition set out today, of selling their home to fund care. Many of those with a house worth £186,000—that includes many constituents of Conservative Members—will still have to sell their home to fund £86,000, within the cap. That is before the costs of living in a care home. How does the Minister expect his constituents to pay for care without selling their home? I will happily take an intervention from him—
Rachel Reeves
Perhaps the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) will explain what he put in his manifesto to his constituents.
Kevin Hollinrake
I was delighted to sit on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee—the Chair of the Committee is in his place now—during its joint inquiry with the Health and Social Care Committee. Some 24 Committee members, 12 of whom were Opposition Members, recommended a solution based on national insurance. The shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care also proposes a solution based on national insurance. Why does the hon. Lady now say that that is the wrong option, and what is her plan if it is the wrong option?
Rachel Reeves
We should be looking at all forms of income, not just income from people who go out to work. A landlord who rents out a number of properties will pay nothing, whereas his tenants in work will. That is not fair, and that is why we cannot support the motion this evening. The Minister told us three important things today.
Jesse Norman
The hon. Lady has accused the Government, who have published a plan, of having no plan, when in fact the Labour party has absolutely nothing to offer on this topic. On the question she raises, the Resolution Foundation said in its report that the cap will offer support that will recognise higher care costs in different parts of the country, and the increased generosity of the means test will have relatively more impact in lower-wealth regions, in the north-east and other parts of the country.
Rachel Reeves
With all respect to the Minister, I asked how he would suggest that one of his constituents with a house worth £186,000, and no other savings, will pay £86,000 for their care without selling their home. It is clear that he does not have an answer to that question, because there isn’t one.
Rachel Reeves
The Minister has had a chance and he did not manage it. I will take an intervention from my hon. Friend.
Chris Bryant
Seventy per cent. of my constituents own their own home. The average house price in my constituency is £98,000. My constituents on lower than average wages in the country will be asked to contribute more in national insurance. Is it not manifestly unfair that they will still have to find £86,000, and the only place they will find that is out of the £98,000, so as to fund millionaires in south-east England to pass on the whole of their inheritance to their children?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend makes the point very well. People will still have to sell their homes to pay for care under these plans. There were three important points—
Rachel Reeves
I have already taken an intervention from the Minister, and he did not answer the question. [Interruption.] Okay, I will take the intervention on the basis that he answers the question that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) have asked: how on earth does someone pay £86,000 when their house is worth £98,000 or £186,000? Let’s have the answer.
Jesse Norman
I am surprised that the hon. Lady did not recognise the point about geographic impact that I made in my last intervention, but let me just point out that the Government have published a Build Back Better plan, which contains specific case studies of the impact of this measure. That is where she should look for an answer to her question.
Rachel Reeves
The Minister is wasting the House’s time, because he is not answering the question.
There were three important points in the Minister’s opening speech. The first was that it is impossible to say what the impact of these proposals will be on waiting lists. The second was that spending for local authorities will be considered in the Budget. There is no detail at all about what money local authorities will get, and we are being asked to vote for a tax increase without a plan to fix social care. The third point the Minister made, in answer to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), was that councils will pay this levy as employers, so they will face increased costs but without any guarantee that they will get additional money to fund care. This is not a plan to fix social care.
There is no plan for care workers, who were underpaid and undervalued before the pandemic—before being sent out on to the frontline by this Government without the personal protective equipment that they needed. Some £8 billion was cut from social care by Tory Governments in the years before the pandemic, ignoring the rising demand, with care workers paid less than they can live on. This Government are not interested in bringing employers and unions together for a positive plan for the future of social care. They are not interested in making the care sector a career of choice, with decent pay and conditions and proper investment in skills.
We know that half a million care workers are needed by 2030. There were 100,000 vacancies in social care before the pandemic. That is only set to increase, with the GMB predicting 170,000 vacancies for care workers by the end of the year—one in 10 jobs unfilled. Labour’s plans will prioritise older and disabled people, shifting the focus of support towards preventive early help, and our guiding principle will be “home first”, because that is what the overwhelming majority of people want.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Just a second ago at the Dispatch Box, the Minister referenced a plan. He was asked repeatedly by those on the Government Benches how this money will be spent, and in response to every one of their interventions he said, “Wait for the forthcoming White Paper. Wait for the forthcoming Bill.” Is this not the biggest blank cheque that this Government or any other have ever asked us to pay, and would it not be irresponsible for us to do so without their telling us how they are going to spend it?
Rachel Reeves
The truth is that the Tories are all tax and no strategy. When it comes to the NHS and social care, last year the public clapped them; this year the Tories tax them. There are far too many outstanding questions, with no detail published yesterday. What other tax rises on working people are set for further down the line, given that the Prime Minister refused to rule them out yesterday? Will council tax have to rise to make the sums add up? How will the Government relieve the burden on councils and care homes? Again, there was no detail on that yesterday, and there is no detail today.
Mike Padgham of the Independent Care Group said:
“It’s not clear how the money is going to…the front line.”
That means that providers will be squeezed, and working conditions and pay impacted. This just does not add up.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
We all recognise the significant crisis in the social care system, but is that not just another broken Conservative manifesto promise? They pledged to approach this in a manner of cross-party consensus. The manner in which they are bringing forward these out-of-the-blue taxation measures on some of the poorest working people in this country does nothing to build that consensus; it just broadens the gap that we know many families face in meeting the costs of social care.
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is exactly right. The Conservatives walked out of cross-party talks in 2010, and despite offers from my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), they have never resumed.
So much for the plan; what does this mean for ordinary people funding it? The Chancellor’s tax on jobs does not just let down those needing care or working in the care sector; it is a tax on all those in work. As daily covid cases continue to climb, the only shielding that the Government are interested in is protecting the wealthiest few from paying more tax. As I said, a private landlord owning and renting out multiple properties will not pay a penny more, yet their hard-working tenants who work for a living will be hit hard. It is deeply unfair.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the question on everyone’s mind is, “When is my operation going to happen?” The Health Secretary does not seem to be able to answer that basic question. When will the waiting list be over? When will we stop having to wait for crucial operations?
Rachel Reeves
That is exactly the question that all our constituents ask, but as the Minister has failed to say today when the backlog will be cleared, we have to wonder whether this plan adds up, and when any money at all will be available for social care.
The incomes of working people just are not of interest to this Government. I asked the excellent staff of the Library to examine the impact on a typical worker in constituencies such as mine in Leeds West, the Minister’s in Hereford, and the Chancellor’s. Let us imagine that our worker is a new police constable—a single mum with two children, earning £26,000 a year. She rents her home in the private sector. She is eligible for universal credit. What have this Government done for her? [Interruption.] Hon. Members laugh, but they will not be laughing when constituents come to their surgeries and ask why this Government are taking money away from them.
Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Rachel Reeves
No, I think the hon. Lady should listen to this. What have this Government done for that worker and her family? The Chancellor has frozen her pay this year. The Chancellor has frozen her income tax personal allowance. The Chancellor is taking £20 a week away from her and her family in universal credit, and her council tax bill has gone up by £80. Now the Chancellor is coming back for more and asking for 1.25% of her income in national insurance. Why do this Government keep coming after the same people time after time, asking ordinary working-class people to pay more of their incomes?
If we add it up, the total cost to that worker and her kids—this is all of our constituents—will be an extra £1,234 next year. That is not just a one-off. Analysis from the New Economics Foundation shows that 2.5 million working households will be hit by the Tory double whammy of cuts to universal credit and an increase in their national insurance. Put that on your leaflets at the next election.
Rachel Reeves
I will give way to the hon. Lady. I will be interested to hear what she is going to say to her constituents at her surgery.
Katherine Fletcher
I would be interested if the hon. Lady would let us know at which point “massive global pandemic” appeared in any of the commitments made during the 2019 general election, and whether the Labour party would continue to have unfunded promises for which we would have to borrow from the market or whether they would continue to kick the can of a gnarly problem down the road. Constituents of mine have been worried about social care all summer. It is a problem that people have ducked for generations. We are doing it in a way we can afford.
Rachel Reeves
I am not sure what the constituents of South Ribble will make of that, but I know what they will think after seeing less money in their pay cheques time after time because of decisions by this Government. There are choices, and they are difficult ones. This Government are choosing to tax ordinary working-class people. Labour would ask those with the broadest shoulders—the wealthiest in our communities—to pay more. This Government make a different choice; they can justify that to their constituents.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Betts
I bring my hon. Friend back to paragraph 36, which I asked the Minister about, which seems absolutely key. There is no clear money coming from the levy to social care. That is what the Government said. I think the Minister said it would all be revealed in the spending review. Paragraph 36 states:
“The Government will ensure Local Authorities have access to sustainable funding for core budgets at the Spending Review. We expect demographic and unit cost pressures will be met through Council Tax, social care precept”.
On top of all the other hits that working families are going to get, can they expect an above-inflation rise in their council tax next year to pay for the Government’s failure to fund social care properly?
Rachel Reeves
I think many councils and the people who work for them and provide social care at a local level will be incredibly worried about what they are hearing from this Government, which is that council costs are going to go up while they are getting no additional money.
Rachel Reeves
I will give way again in a moment, but I have taken a lot of interventions—a lot more than the Minister.
In contrast, who has been shielded by the Chancellor? Which types of income will be paying no additional tax after today? They include those who get their income from financial assets, stocks and shares, sales of property, pension income, annuity income, interest income, property rental income and inheritance income. Well, fancy that. I do not doubt that the champagne glasses were clinking in Mayfair last night toasting the Chancellor, but not in Mansfield, not in Middlesbrough, not in South Ribble and not in Thirsk either. Some 95% of the revenue the Government plan to raise from this tax bombshell comes from employment. What a contrast.
Several hon. Members rose—
Rachel Reeves
Let me just make this point.
What a contrast. Yesterday, Amazon reported an additional £1.9 billion-worth of sales, but it is paying only £3.8 million more in corporation tax, with much of its profits diverted to Luxembourg. Yet with the changes announced yesterday, a graduate on a typical entry-level salary will now pay a marginal tax rate of almost 50%. And not a word from the Chancellor or any of his Ministers about any of that. Politics is about choices and there are other ways to raise this money. The Chancellor wants the country to believe that—[Interruption.] Sales on property or on financial assets such as stocks and shares—there are no additional taxes on people who get their incomes in that way, but plenty of additional taxes on ordinary working-class people.
The Chancellor wants the country to believe that this is the only way to do it, but the point is that it is not. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have deliberately chosen to go after those who are working hard for their money. Labour understands—I understand—how hard people work for their wages. I do not believe that the Chancellor considers the lives of people outside this place in any detail before he takes decisions like this. The Government, as was mentioned earlier, are rushing this through without publishing a proper analysis of the impact on jobs, on different parts of the country and on different incomes. They are not even allowing proper amendments. Members will know that we are limited in how we can amend the motion this evening. That is why we have put forward what we can: an amendment calling for an assessment of this tax on jobs—an assessment that the Chancellor is unwilling to provide.
Several hon. Members rose—
Rachel Reeves
I will give way just twice more: to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) and then to the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott).
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
In my constituency and in my hon. Friend’s constituency next door, we have many people right at the start of their working lives paying, as she says, nearly 50% in tax after this change and very high rents in the private rented sector. They effectively have no disposable income. Their dreams of ever owning a home are being destroyed by Conservative Members. Does she not agree?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend speaks well of what our constituents in Leeds North West and Leeds West will be facing with that double whammy of universal credit and the national insurance increase, in addition to the other tax increases from this Government. I will take a final intervention and then I will start to wind up.
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. There is an obvious precedent for this national insurance rise to raise money for the national health service, which is from 2003. Were Labour wrong to raise national insurance for the national health service in 2003?
Rachel Reeves
We had a clear plan to bring down waiting lists, a plan that this Government are sorely lacking. The economic circumstances are different, too. The Government’s tax on jobs comes at the worst possible time. Businesses create jobs and will drive our recovery. Labour is a party that is pro-worker and proudly pro-business, too. I am proud of the decisions that the former Prime Minister and the former Chancellor made that brought down waiting lists to their lowest ever level—targets that have never been met under 11 years of Tory Government. We want business to succeed, to invest more, to employ more, to pay more and to create more wealth.
These are still precarious times, with many businesses in all our constituencies not yet back to full capacity and others considering how they are going to repay the loans taken on during the pandemic. What do the Chancellor and the Minister think the effect of this tax rise on jobs will be? That has not been set out. It could mean an attempted squeeze on wages and conditions, even higher prices for customers, or the scaling back of recruitment and growth plans. It will affect people and it will affect the Exchequer, too. It is a false economy. The Chancellor and the Minister do not need to take my word for it. The British Chambers of Commerce described it as:
“a drag anchor on jobs growth”
and believes it will
“dampen the entrepreneurial spirit needed to drive the recovery”.
Make UK says it is
“ill-timed as well as illogical”.
The CBI says that it
“will directly hurt a business’s ability to hire staff at a time when businesses have faced a torrid 18 months.”
The Federation of Small Businesses says that
“this increase will stifle recruitment, investment and efforts to upskill”.
They are joined by the trade unions. The TUC says it is wrong to hit young people and low-paid workers
“while leaving the wealthy untouched.”
We agree with businesses and we agree with our trades unions, too. They are right. This is a tax on jobs. It is a tax on the economic recovery and we will not support it.
Let us go back to the key questions that need answering. Will this plan deliver what is promised for our health and social care sectors? No. Will it clear the NHS backlog by the end of this Parliament? No—and the Health Secretary says no. Will it give social care the resources it needs for the next three years? [Hon. Members: “No.”] Is there a plan to reform social care? [Hon. Members: “No.”] Will it create more and better paid jobs in the economy? [Hon. Members: “No.”] Is it fair across the regions? [Hon. Members: “No.”] Will people be prevented from selling their homes to fund their care? [Hon. Members: “No.”] Will this tax bombshell help our economic recovery? No. Is it the last tax increase in this Parliament? No. This whole thing is unravelling. No wonder that Ministers are in a desperate rush to get it through. The Chancellor is absent today. Perhaps he has gone for a swim.
Covid has tested the people of our country like nothing else in any of our lifetimes. After the last year and a half the country deserves a much better future, a recovery that enhances and enriches all our lives and in all parts of the country. Social care is a huge challenge and there are other challenges coming too. We need to do things differently. Labour’s test is simple: does it fix the problem and does it do it in a fair way? The answer to both of those questions is no. That is why Labour will vote against this unfair, job-taxing, manifesto-shredding tax bombshell this evening.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. As Members can see from the Annunciator, there is a five-minute limit on all Back-Bench contributions. We will start with Mel Stride.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
I rise to welcome, broadly, the motion. It seems to me that social care is one of those issues that parties of both colours have grappled with for many years, yet now we are at last at the point where a Government have the courage and are sensible enough to actually come forward with some realistic proposals. As to the breaking of manifesto commitments, no party ever wishes to do that, but listening to the Opposition it seems to me as if the global pandemic never occurred, as if the economy never shrank by the greatest level since 1709 during the great frost of that year, as if millions of jobs were never imperilled, and as if this Government never had to step in fiscally in a way that probably no Government outside wartime have ever had to do, and with such positive effects.
When it comes to the honesty or otherwise of what the Government have done, I think they have been upfront, very clear and very honest in making it clear that they have broken that commitment, unlike, I have to say, the less straightforward way in which, repeatedly in this debate, the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor have ducked the fundamental question: what is the Opposition’s alternative plan? In response to an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), the shadow Chancellor, when asked why Labour had supported an increase in national insurance in 2003, said, “Well, we had a plan.” I humbly remind her that that was 18 years ago. What we need to see now is a plan from the Opposition, as well as the criticism.
Chris Bryant
The right hon. Gentleman and I have known each other for a very long time. I just hope that he could explain to my constituents why it is right that practically everybody in the Rhondda would have to sell their home to meet the £86,000 cost, whereas next to nobody would have to do so in his constituency.
Mel Stride
First, the hon. Gentleman’s knowledge of my constituency is obviously rather deficient, because I expect that mine shares many characteristics in common with his. I do not dispute the fact that any major fiscal move, such as putting up national insurance and bringing in this levy in this manner, will have associated complexities and difficulties. My pledge to the House is that the Treasury Committee will, I am sure, after private discussion, decide that we wish to look more closely at a number of the issues that are being raised in this debate, including the one that he mentioned.
Let us be honest about the options that were available to the Treasury. How could we have squared the circle and funded £10 billion-plus a year? The first thing that the Treasury could have done is to seek to cut expenditure in other areas, yet I have no doubt that if it came forward with any proposals of that nature, the Opposition would have fiercely resisted that as austerity all over again. We have to understand that on the current projections, there are many unfunded commitments, including, for example, keeping our railways going, going for net zero, additional funding that will be needed for school catch-up and so on.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Given the right hon. Gentleman’s experience on the Treasury Committee, does he not agree that a tax hike of this scale could—if it was necessary—be much more fairly and equitably carried out if the tax burden was spread across a number of different taxes, rather than 100% of the burden being landed on one single, narrowly based tax?
Mel Stride
I will come back to the hon. Gentleman’s point, but let me just stick with the options. The second option was to lean into growth, to assume that we could grow our way out of this problem. We have just had a huge contraction of the economy. We are not yet back up to the pre-pandemic level, although the Bank of England thinks that we may arrive at that point some time towards the end of the year, and we have many headwinds to growth ahead of us, not least the bottlenecks in supply chains, the labour shortages that we have witnessed in certain areas, and many other issues.
The third thing that the Treasury could have done is to borrow more money, and that is probably what the Opposition would have done in this situation. Despite the fact that the Bank of England now seems to feel that there is more money—I suspect that the Office for Budget Responsibility will confirm that around the time of the Budget— because the economy is doing a bit better than we expected, probably to the tune of about £25 billion, it would be a very brave Chancellor who started to borrow yet more and more, knowing that one day it is possible that the markets might turn around and look at the United Kingdom and decide that they no longer have confidence to lend to us. That would be a very dark day.
Mel Stride
I will not, actually, because I am very low on time.
That is the sword of Damocles that hangs regularly over the head of our Chancellor, so that leads us to taxation. If we look at taxation and the amounts involved here, there are only three taxes that we could consider. About two thirds of all tax is raised through income tax, national insurance and VAT. We then ask ourselves, “What criteria are we going to apply to the tax measures to test whether they are the right ones or not?” There are at least two. One is that we should look after the least advantaged in our society—the lowest-paid—and the second is that we should look after those who are the youngest, who have borne the greatest brunt of the economic consequences of the pandemic.
Mel Stride
I will not—I am very short on time. We are looking to the younger generations, to some significant degree, to fund predominantly the needs of elderly people and social care. If we look at those taxes, income tax rises would have been very progressive—there is no doubt about that. We would have had to have about twice the level of increase that we are looking at with national insurance to have raised the same amount of money. I think we need—the Minister made this point—a UK-wide solution to this, not one based on income tax, where, of course, elements of income tax are devolved to other nations across the United Kingdom.
If we put up VAT, that would be hugely regressive, particularly at the level of income received rather than expenditure. That would therefore have been wrong. We are also up at 20%, I think—near the upper limit of where VAT should be, given the distortionary consequences of going further.
That inevitably leads us to national insurance, just what Labour was led to in 2003. The original proposal, it seems to me, failed both of my tests. If we just put up national insurance, it would have been regressive. It would have hit the poorest hardest, but what is right about the Chancellor’s approach is that he has extended it to those beyond the state retirement age and those receiving income by way of dividends. That critical move makes this, in general, the right approach.
There are many issues that the Committee will no doubt look at. One of them is that a regrettable consequence of the increase in the employer’s national insurance rate is that it will exacerbate the so-called “three people problem”, whereby the different tax treatment of the employed, the self-employed and those receiving income through their own company will be widened, with consequences for IR35. I am out of time, but I support this motion today.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I would like to start by giving the UK Government some credit: they are absolute masters of illusion and deflection. Trying to get them to simply answer a question is like pinning jelly to a wall. Their Ministers are astonishingly unperturbed by going out to argue for policies that entirely contradict the cast-iron promises they made when they stood for election. We on the Scottish National party Benches are clear that raising national insurance is a blunt tool to fund social care, likely to disproportionately hit young people and lower earners. Our SNP amendment (a) would have forced the UK Tory Government to come clean on the distributional impact of this policy.
We would love to be able to amend the motion more broadly, but as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) pointed out, we have limitations on our ability to do so this afternoon, which is hugely frustrating. Our amendment therefore covers the impact by age, because we know that young people will be affected worst; by income, because we know that national insurance is regressive and will hammer lower earners; by wealth, because those with unearned incomes stand to be the big winners and the key political motive here appears to be for the Tories to bail out their well-heeled voters against losing their inheritance; and by place of residence, because this is a UK tax for an English policy crisis and, within England, the Resolution Foundation is clear that this policy will benefit the south-east the most. It is of no surprise to me that the UK Tory Government’s national insurance hike and the “back of a fag packet” plan announced yesterday are already drawing criticism from all sides—from The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, the Cabinet and Back Benchers.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making a number of very important points. An anonymous member of the Cabinet is quoted in The Daily Telegraph as being very critical of this policy:
“If you get all your income from investments and property you don’t pay a penny but if you work your guts out for minimum wage you get clobbered.”
Can my hon. Friend hazard a guess as to what the Tories have against taxing unearned income?
Alison Thewliss
I would be very curious to know why that is. I was going to read out that very quote, because even three former Conservative leaders, including a former Prime Minister and three more former Chancellors, have spoken out against this move. To complete the quote that my hon. and learned Friend mentioned, this person, an anonymous member of the Conservative party, said:
“Putting up National Insurance would be morally, economically and politically wrong.”
They went on to say:
“After all that’s happened in the last 18 months they can’t seriously be thinking about a tax raid on supermarket workers and nurses so the children of Surrey homeowners can receive bigger inheritances.”
Well, yes indeed they are.
Dr Whitford
Is it not the case that the talk is about making life better for social care staff, but actually, they are exactly the people who will lose £1,000 a year in the universal credit cut and will now face this extra cost?
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. They are the people who can least afford it and who have worked the hardest through this pandemic, who this Government should be thanking, not taxing.
We are being asked to vote today on measures that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has described as “better than doing nothing”, which is about as charitable an analysis as is possible of this policy.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Alison Thewliss
In a second. Very few people would dispute the need for action on health and social care in England. However, an increase to national insurance contributions is not the fairest way to go about it. I would be interested to know why the hon. Gentleman thinks it is fair for his constituents.
John Lamont
The hon. Lady made reference to the IFS. She will know that the IFS has noted that over the past 10 years the health spend in Scotland has grown by 1.2%, whereas in England it has grown by 3.6% on a like-for-like basis. Surely it is astonishing that she would vote against £1 billion of extra investment for Scotland’s NHS.
Alison Thewliss
What the hon. Gentleman fails to understand is that we are starting from very different points. He does not acknowledge that, and he does not understand it.
The response from equality and anti-poverty groups has been absolutely damning. The Women’s Budget Group has said:
“We believe there is a fairer way to fund social care. This is because, as they currently stand NICs are more regressive than income tax—with a lower threshold at which payments start, and a higher rate threshold beyond which employees pay a lower rate.”
The Resolution Foundation has described the policy as “generationally unfair”. Paul Johnson of the IFS has said:
“Remains the case pensioners will pay next to nothing for this social care package—overwhelmingly to be paid by working age employees”.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
There are many ways in which this policy could have been made progressive, one of which would have been to look at the upper threshold for national insurance, which has not been addressed. A young graduate will now have a marginal tax rate higher than a rich Conservative on the Government Benches.
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. For young people who have perhaps struggled through this year, who have graduated and who are going out into the world of work, it is a real hammer blow to their prospects.
Many families are already facing a historic £1,040 cut to their annual incomes and are staring down the barrel of impending cuts to universal credit and working tax credit. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has described the new levy as adding “insult to injury”. The New Economics Foundation has calculated that 2.5 million working households will be affected by the £20 a week cut to universal credit and the increase in national insurance. On average, they will lose out by £1,290 in the next financial year. Working households are doing their very best to put food on the table and support their children, and this cruel UK Tory Government caw the legs from under them.
Alison Thewliss
If the hon. Gentleman can explain why that is fair to the families who have been working so hard, I will be glad to give way.
Mr Baker
I wonder whether the hon. Lady has popped out to the Vote Office and picked up the distributional analysis that the Government have published, which shows the impact across the deciles of income in this country: it just does not bear out what she is saying. I encourage anybody out there to pick up that analysis and have a look.
Alison Thewliss
I have seen a different analysis from the New Economics Foundation; I urge the hon. Gentleman to look at it, because it gives a very different picture from the one that the Government are presenting today, which is why we need more analysis of the policy before the Government go forward with it.
The policy will also have an impact on our recovery from the pandemic. Businesses, which have weathered such a challenging year, have spoken out against it in the strongest terms. The Federation of Small Businesses has called the national insurance hike
“anti-job, anti-small business, anti-start up”,
pointing out that the increase to national insurance will
“stifle recruitment, investment and efforts to upskill and improve productivity in the years ahead.”
Dame Angela Eagle
Is the hon. Lady worried that the Government appear to be increasing taxes at a far earlier stage of the economic recovery from the pandemic than similar economies?
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Lady is absolutely correct. The Government have learned nothing from the austerity that caused so much damage with the last crash. They are about to repeat their mistakes, and those on the lowest incomes will be hammered most, again.
The Institute of Directors has called the hike “political opportunism” and has highlighted the tax on dividends, which will hit sole traders and small company directors, many of whom were completely and unjustifiably excluded from UK Government support during the pandemic. It really does rub salt in the wounds.
Matt Rodda
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way on that excellent point. In my constituency in Reading, many of the same families will be affected; she is wise to point that out, and I reiterate that point. It appears that the same very hard-working groups of people, many of whom are key workers or are with small businesses, are being affected disproportionately by this unfair tax rise. At the same time, it is not solving the fundamental problems with social care.
Alison Thewliss
Absolutely. It does nothing to resolve either issue, and it makes it all the harder for people who have suffered so hard during the pandemic and been excluded from support to get back on their feet and bring money back into the economy. It makes no economic sense whatever.
Of course, the unjust effect of the national insurance hike will be compounded in Scotland because the Prime Minister is proposing that Scottish tax contributions be used to fund England-only policies. My constituents and people across Scotland are generous people, and I am sure that very few of them would begrudge the principle of funding the NHS and fixing social care after the pandemic, if indeed they had any faith that this Government were capable of fixing anything. But as things stand, the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish stand to be taxed twice: first for the health and social care system that they actually receive from their own Government, and then for the NHS and social care in England, for services that they do not have access to, where money more often than not appears to be squandered on dodgy contracts and cronyism scandals.
We know from the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 and other Tory Brexit legislation that we cannot trust Government Members to respect our hard-won devolution. I am not reassured in the slightest by all the talk yesterday from the Prime Minister about directing money raised from the new levy into health and social care services in Scotland.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
The hon. Lady is making a very important point. Is she aware of any discussions having been held between Treasury Ministers and SNP Scottish Ministers or Labour Ministers in the Welsh Government? It seems to me that the British Government are using a UK-wide tax to fund English priorities.
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct on that front. These are not our priorities; we already have these services in our own nations.
Several hon. Members rose—
Alison Thewliss
If Conservative Members will just calm down for a little minute, I will try to bring them in at some point. I want others to get in to make their speeches—gie’s peace.
It is not for the Prime Minister or anybody else in the UK Government to direct how devolved budgets are spent. The Ways and Means resolution ties the money to NHS Scotland, not to our democratically elected Scottish Parliament and Government—a further undermining of decision making, showing a lack of understanding of how services are provided in Scotland. We have had no assurance from the UK Tory Government about the extent of the Barnett consequentials that will be generated from the spending. I seek clarity on that today.
SNP Members cannot support measures that are so manifestly unfair to our constituents and whose financial consequences amount to a pig in a poke. The Resolution Foundation has pointed out that while health spending may go up, spending on other areas such as local government has gone down compared with pre-pandemic plans. [Interruption.] Local government, of course, provides a significant proportion of the social care that Tory Members, who would do better to wheesht and listen than to chat away in the corner, claim to care about.
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Gentleman has done more talking than listening in this place. It would be useful if he sat down.
The spending cuts will have an impact on Barnett consequentials. It would be just like this UK Tory Government to appear to give with one hand while picking Scotland’s pockets with the other. A new Tory poll tax that punishes those on the lowest incomes is being forced upon Scotland by a Government we did not vote for.
Alison Thewliss
If the hon. Gentleman wants to explain that to his constituents, I would be very glad to hear it.
Andrew Bowie
The hon. Lady is making a serious speech with lots of very pertinent points, many of which I disagree with, but the fact is that we have come to the crux. This action by the Government will actually deliver more than £1 billion of extra funding to Scotland’s national health service. The real reason SNP Members oppose the motion is that they would rather Scotland’s NHS were poorer than that Scotland benefited from being a part of this United Kingdom. That is the fact.
Alison Thewliss
We already spend more per head on the NHS than is spent in England. We already have better services in Scotland than in England. This policy is an entirely regressive form of taxation that does nothing for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and does nothing for mine.
Dr Whitford
Scotland already spends 43% more per head on social care, which allows us to be the only nation that delivers free personal care and has extended it to people under 65. That was why we raised the extra 1p on tax, for which Scots are already paying and from which they are already gaining. That should be controlled by the Scottish Parliament.
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend speaks the absolute truth. There is a huge contrast between what the Government propose and what is already being delivered in Scotland.
Some have said, “What’s your alternative?” Well, fixing England’s social care crisis is not for the SNP to decide, quite frankly. Having heard evidence when I sat on the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government some years ago, I know that successive UK Governments have failed to act and have ignored the evidence as difficulties mounted. Now the Prime Minister has come to this House in haste, shamelessly using covid as cover.
Alison Thewliss
I will, because we served on the Communities and Local Government Committee together.
Kevin Hollinrake
I am very grateful. In respect of the sufficiency of Scottish social care budgets, there is now an 11-week wait in parts of Scotland for discharge from hospital into a care home. Is the hon. Lady honestly saying that she does not need extra resources for Scottish health and social care?
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Gentleman should look at the comparative figures in his own constituency. I am not saying for one second, and I would never say, that everything in Scotland is perfect, but we are making good progress on that, and we intend to make more progress.
The social care funding announced by the Government may in the end amount to as little as 20% raised by this tax hike, and not even for a few years. The British Association of Social Workers has said that this raises more questions than answers, and that it needs the funding for services right now, not at some point in the future. The early analysis across the board today demonstrates that the sheen is already coming off this policy. In contrast, the SNP has used its time in government to introduce health and social care integration, self-directed support and the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016. We have health and social care partnerships on the ground working away to deliver more integrated services to our constituents. Free personal care has been available in Scotland for adults aged 65 or over since 2002, extended in 2019—as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford)—to people of all ages who require it. Yesterday the Scottish Government’s programme for government set out the timetable for establishing our national care service, the most significant public service reform since the creation of the NHS.
This is a Westminster power grab on devolved healthcare and the democratic institutions of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Government are taxing our people to pay for their chaotic mishandling of health and social care in England. They are undermining our recovery by putting a tax in employers. They are punishing working people on low pay by cutting their universal credit and hiking taxes on their meagre wages. This is no Union dividend, as the Prime Minister likes to claim; it is a Union dead end, and the people of Scotland must have the choice to take the fastest road out of here to independence.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Let me start by congratulating the Government on grappling with what I think is a very difficult issue—actually, it is probably “the” issue for our generation to deal with—of how we ensure that older people have dignity in their old age, and how we deal with an ageing population. However, I do not believe that the way in which we are proposing to do it, through national insurance contributions, is the correct way.
There are three reasons why I think this will be particularly damaging to areas such as the one that I represent. First, ours is an area with low incomes. The lower a person’s income, the more that person pays, as a proportion of that income, in national insurance contributions. The national insurance rate on incomes above £50,000—before these changes—is just 2%. So those on the lowest incomes pay the most proportionately in national insurance contributions.
Secondly, ours is an area with low property values. An £86,000 cap on contributions, or even a £100,000 asset floor, may be right for other parts of the country, but in my constituency, where the average property price is £170,000 or £180,000, by the time people hit that damping floor of £100,000, they would have had to pay the equivalent of 50% of their property value in care home fees.
Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for raising an important issue, with which I too have been grappling since yesterday’s announcement. Does he agree that it would be wonderful to hear from the Government that they may consider looking at regional disparities in house prices when setting the floor?
Jake Berry
What a brilliant suggestion—one that I was about to make myself. I think that the Government should think about both the £86,000 contribution and regional house prices when considering that damping floor.
Thirdly, ours is an area with historically high unemployment. National insurance, as we have all called it during election campaigns, is in fact a jobs tax. It is a disincentive to the creation of new jobs, and those already in work will see, for instance, pay rises suspended as the wage bill goes up for employers just for employing people in their businesses. That is why I think that national insurance is the wrong tax to use for the people in my constituency. They are hit just as hard by this appalling social care issue as people anywhere else, but, for us, I would have much preferred it if the Government had looked at income tax, which, as we heard from the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee himself—my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride)— would be much less regressive.
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
My constituency has similar house prices, and I know that my constituents share these concerns. As for the point about income tax, the advantage of taking this tax from national insurance is that the cost is shared between workers and businesses, but smaller businesses will not pay, for reasons that the Minister has already given. Is this not a better way of sharing cost across business and employees, which will actually affect lower earners in our constituencies less than the income tax alternative?
Jake Berry
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, but I do not agree with her. I do not think that we have to consign ourselves to one tax to deal with this issue. It is perfectly possible to put up income tax, which is a much fairer way of taxing people across the income scale, and, of course, picks up wealthy pensioners with very large pensions, picks up dividend income, and picks up rental income, which was mentioned from the Opposition Front Bench. It picks up all of our income, while at the same time allowing us to look at different ways to tax business. I have said before that I think we should have an online sales tax—an Amazon tax, as it is called—which the Treasury has previously said could release about £2 billion. That is not enough, but we could increase employers’ NI only, and we could increase corporation tax. This problem needs to be tackled with a cocktail of funding, not just one tax. But if we are to use just one tax, I do not believe that NI is the correct one.
Jake Berry
No, I will not. I have already given way twice.
I congratulate the Government on trying to look at some of the concerns that many colleagues in northern constituencies have about low income, high unemployment and low property values, and I congratulate them on raising the floor to £100,000. I think that that goes some way towards dealing with the issues that concern many of us, although, certainly from my point of view, it does not solve them.
What also concerns me greatly is that this tax is not actually a health and social care tax; it is a Trojan horse for an NHS tax. The Government themselves say that in the first few years of this tax, nigh on 100% of it will go towards supporting the NHS. That is quite right, in that the NHS does need more money, but if it is an NHS tax, which will be hypothecated and listed on pay slips, we should call it that, rather than calling it a health and social care tax.
When the time comes to move the money from the NHS to health and social care, what Government of any political hue are going to cut £12 billion from the NHS budget? If we create an NHS tax, we have an NHS tax forever. It will never go down; it can only go up. No party is ever going to stand at an election saying, “I’ve got a good idea. Vote for me—I will cut the NHS tax.” I think there is a huge danger for us in creating such a hypothecated tax and listing it on people’s pay slips. It is fundamentally un-Conservative, and in the long term it will massively damage the prospects of our party, because we will never outbid the Labour party in the arms race of an NHS tax.
As a Conservative, I believe that the way to fund public services better is to grow the economy, to make the cake bigger. This change makes the cake smaller, because it is a jobs tax—and not even that: those who live in a low-wage, low-property-price, high-unemployment economy will get a smaller slice of it at the end of the day. They will have both a smaller cake and a smaller slice.
I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to think again. I welcome the new money for the NHS, but throwing other people’s money down a bottomless pit does not become a good idea if we put the NHS logo next to it. If we are going to fund the NHS, if we are going to give it more money, before the Government ask the House and us as Members of Parliament to approve that, they should show us the plan. We cannot measure the NHS by what goes into it; we have to measure it by what comes out at the other end.
For those reasons, with a heavy heart, I will not be supporting the Government this evening.
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I look forward to seeing the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) in the Division Lobby tonight. What we witnessed yesterday was a Budget in all but name. It was a Budget sprung on this House with minimal warning and leaked to friendly newspapers over the weekend, but with scant detail being made available to Members of this House in a statement full of the deliberate obfuscations that have come to define this most slippery and unreliable of Prime Ministers. And today the Government are attempting to bounce it through the House before their own Back Benchers rise up in revolt. Some things are abundantly clear, despite the Government’s attempted sleight of hand. This announcement cynically breaks a guarantee personally signed by the Prime Minister at the last election that he would not put national insurance contributions up. That was one of two solemn manifesto pledges that he tore up yesterday, which makes me ask why anyone should believe what any future Tory election pledge says, ever again.
While proclaiming that they are the party of low taxation, the Conservatives have ushered in the largest tax rise in generations and now preside over a country with the largest percentage tax take in peacetime, but it is not a fair tax system. It continues the shift in tax liabilities away from those who make their income from owning assets to those who work. It exacerbates the three-body problem with self-employment, encouraging evasion, and it leaves wealth largely unscathed. It will exacerbate the unfairness and inequality that scar our society and that have been highlighted by the covid pandemic’s unequal effect on the poor and vulnerable. This tax hike has been presented by the Government as an historic move to fix the social care system, but in reality it is nothing of the sort.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
If the hon. Lady is so against this increase in national insurance contributions, why did she vote for one in 2003? Can she say what happened to NHS productivity as a result in the decade that succeeded it? I can, and it wasn’t pretty.
Dame Angela Eagle
We had the Wanless report, rising real wages and a buoyant economy, and we did a lot of work with civil society and communities before we introduced the rise. We did not just pull it out of a hat like a rabbit. It led to a 6% increase per year in funding for the NHS, not the 3.5% that this measure will lead to.
Sammy Wilson
The Member has outlined the effect on the vulnerable and on employment. Would she accept that this is going to affect young people hard as well? People who cannot afford to purchase a house are going to be taxed to ensure that people who have an asset are protected.
Dame Angela Eagle
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, especially given the effect on those young people who are having to repay their student loans, which takes their effective marginal tax rate close to 50%. We have to look at the fairness of that.
This is not a plan to reform social care. A mere 15% of the extra £36 billion raised in the next three years is earmarked for social care and the mechanisms by which that will be dispensed are unclear, but vital to any prospect of an improved outcome. Indeed, they are so unclear that the Minister could not give us any insight into them during his opening remarks. This new money will not be available until 2023 and it will therefore not help a single family struggling now with the catastrophic cost of paying for their loved ones to access social care. It is far from certain that the NHS will not simply swallow up all the money allocated from the tax increase to try to tackle the backlogs in the NHS caused by Government cuts and exacerbated by the effects of the covid pandemic.
This new money will not make up for the huge cuts that this Government have been responsible for making to the social care system in the past 11 years. Age Concern estimates that 1.5 million people in need of care have been denied it as a result of the 7.5% per head cut in funding that this Government have delivered since they were first elected in 2010. The burden has fallen on family members and unpaid carers, many of whom have had to put their lives on hold to deliver care to loved ones with little or no support. The huge cuts to local authorities over the same period have stretched the care system beyond breaking point, yet the Prime Minister had nothing to say about any of that yesterday.
Dame Angela Eagle
No, because I would run out of time.
This is not a plan for social care, even though the Prime Minister is claiming that it is. The system needs fundamental reform, but this is tinkering at the edges. A real reform of social care would involve wholesale change from top to bottom. It would deal with those who require care now, not ignore them and their needs as the Government have done. There is nothing for them in the Prime Minister’s announcement. A real reform would have a plan for care workers and their future, with training, career progression, decent pay and an end to zero-hours contracts, to low minimum wage remuneration, to 15-minute appointments with no pay for the time it takes to drive from one client to another and to fragmented contracts that wreck lives.
At the moment, there are 112,000 vacancies in the care sector, and staff turnover is 34% a year. That indicates the need for fundamental reform. The pay for working in an Amazon warehouse or a supermarket is higher than the pay for caring. Surely that is wrong. The covid pandemic and the shameful betrayal of care workers and those who require care, which unfolded during the first wave of covid-19, told us all we needed to know about the ramshackle nature of a system that this Government have allowed to teeter on the verge of collapse for the past 11 years.
The Prime Minister’s announcements are totally inadequate to the scale of the task, if there really is a plan to fix social care. All that those who work in care got out of his statement was a tax rise and no pay increase. Those trying to access care now got nothing. Those trying to provide domiciliary care were not even mentioned, and nor was the growing army of carers. Protecting the assets of those needing to access care for long periods is not a substitute for fundamental reform of the system; it is not a plan for social care. It is a sign that the Government are dodging a long overdue and necessary reform. The Prime Minister’s so-called plan breaks election promises. It is half-baked, inadequate and unjust.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
I rise as a member of the Health and Social Care Committee to support this measure today, and as I do so I would like to direct Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I sit on the Health and Social Care Committee, and only yesterday morning in the Committee we heard from two patients who talked clearly about the delays that they faced in accessing care in the NHS. The first was a lady called Shirley Cochrane, who sadly had an aggressive form of breast cancer. During her time on an NHS waiting list, waiting for treatment, she felt alone and said that she was not listened to and did not get the attention she needed. The second was a gentleman called James Wilkinson. He had myocarditis, a condition that I know a little bit about myself, having had that condition in the past. While waiting for aortic valve replacement surgery, he had the surgery cancelled three times.
We face an enormous challenge. In that same Committee, we heard from the Health Foundation, which talked about the enormous sums that would be needed to solve this backlog. It also talked about the number of consultants, NHS staff and nurses that would be needed to increase capacity in our NHS. Opposition Members need to understand that, if we are going to face up to the enormous challenge that our NHS and social care system is facing, it has to be paid for. It cannot just be borrowed. If they have a better way of paying for this, they need to outline it now.
When the lady from the Health Foundation was giving evidence to our Committee yesterday, she said that three things were needed to resolve the backlog. Those three things were more money, more capacity and a plan. I have been involved in health politics for 15 to 20 years, and every single review that I have seen the NHS conduct has said that it needs more money, more staff and a plan. That has happened under Labour Governments and under Conservative Governments. So if we are going to go ahead with this plan, which I support, we need to ensure that it goes with reform and innovation too.
Catherine West
With his wealth of experience in health politics, does the hon. Gentleman accept that we do not know, because the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has not outlined it, how many of the people on waiting lists will actually be seen and dealt with, and that this is a bit of blank cheque?
Paul Bristow
We will not approach the backlog unless we have the money and capacity to fund it, and that needs to go hand in hand with what I said about innovation, new pathways and new ways of working. I remember talking to someone who told me that we had three years’ worth of innovation in the NHS in just three months because of the pandemic. New ways of working and new pathways were adopted.
Every time we talk about innovation in our NHS and new pathways—the accelerated access review, the “Innovation Health and Wealth” report and a new life sciences strategy all talk about innovation and new ways of doing things in our NHS. But those new ways of doing things need to be spread at pace and at scale. There is no excuse not to do it now. If it works in one part of the NHS, it will work in another. Culturally, the NHS needs to grasp the nettle and spread that innovation and new ways of doing things so that we can get productivity and outcomes for patients. Now is the time to do it.
Mr Betts
The Health and Social Care Committee, of which the hon. Gentleman is a member, estimated last autumn that there was a £3.9 billion funding gap in social care. I assume that he agreed with that report. Can he explain, therefore, how this levy will deliver £3.9 billion a year for social care? I have not seen any figures showing that at all.
Paul Bristow
Having no plan will not provide the £3.9 billion, and Labour Members have indicated today that there is no plan.
This is a significant tax increase. I am a Conservative, so I do not like tax increases, but I also understand that an enormous thing happened between the manifesto and now. There has been a global pandemic, and Labour Members seem to have missed that fact. We need to shorten waiting lists, we need to do something about it and we need to correct it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Paul Bristow
I have given way twice, and I would like to continue because I want to make another important point.
This tax, this levy, needs to be accompanied by reform. The Health and Care Bill is in Committee, and it is really important. The way incentives are geared within the system is one reason we can power through elective waiting lists. We pay for care through a system of tariffs. I urge Ministers and others to think carefully about how we pay for elective procedures in our NHS, because any system of tariffs needs to ensure that hospitals are paid properly for carrying out procedures. There need to be proper incentives for hospitals to carry out hip, knee, cataract and hernia operations, which are the majority of the backlog, as well as treating cancer, heart conditions and everything else. If we are not able to find the right levers within our NHS system to ensure that we power through those elective procedures, we will not be able to solve some of the more serious operations at the end.
Innovation tariffs, for example, would also help by encouraging new ways of doing things. We cannot have a system where, financially, trusts and our NHS are not incentivised to do the things they need to do to be more productive. They should not pursue short-term financial measures when we really need incentives to make sure that they do the right thing.
I will be marching through the lobby to support the Government today, because this is really important.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Paul Bristow
I have given way a few times.
We must grasp the nettle of NHS reform, backed with finance so that our NHS staff have the bandwidth to deal with the needed reform. That bandwidth is capacity and money. If that does not happen, we will borrow more and spend more in the long term and this ever-lasting round of more staff, more money and more plans will go on and on.
I urge hon. Members to support the Government’s motion today.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
It is pretty obvious that there has been a major funding crisis in local government over the past 10 years. Local councils have had bigger cuts to their budgets than any other part of the public sector, around 30%.
Imran Hussain
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of local government, unlike the Minister, who barely acknowledged its existence. Does he agree that the last decade of ideological austerity and cuts by this Government has meant that local government budgets have been slashed by up to 50%, directly contributing to this crisis?
Mr Betts
I have made my position clear on the extent to which local government has been unfairly cut compared with other parts of the public sector.
Across the piece, local councils of all political persuasions have done a brilliant job of protecting their communities over the past few years. They have done it by giving priority to social care, but that has still meant real-terms cuts due to the demographics, with more older people, with people with learning disabilities living longer and with increased costs and demand for children’s social care—demand for the latter two has gone up faster than the demand for elderly care over the past few years.
In protecting social care, there have still been real-terms cuts. There are 1 million more elderly people not getting care who would have received it in the past. Other services, such as parks, libraries, buses and highway safety, have all been cut by up to 50% in local authorities across the country. We are repeatedly asking our constituents to pay increased council tax, often for care services they are not receiving, when the services they do receive are being cut to shreds. That is the reality.
As representatives of both parties in the local government sector said to the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government, we cannot sort out the funding problems in local government without sorting out the funding problems in social care. That is the reality.
We are in the middle of a Select Committee inquiry, and we will be taking evidence from Ministers. I hope they will start to explain to us how the care plan will solve that problem. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee have received estimates that the funding gap for social care alone is between £2.5 billion and £4 billion a year, which does nothing to restore services to the level they should be at or to address the real problems of low pay, which will eventually destroy the service because it will not be able to recruit people as alternative jobs, such as at Amazon, pay so much more. That is simply the reality.
How much money will come from the levy? Paragraph 30 is the only bit that talks about money: £5.5 billion over three years. The gap is between £2.5 billion and £4 billion a year, yet we know the £5.5 billion has to fund: the cap and floor system, which will be at least half of it, maybe more; and the £500 million for workforce training, which is welcome. The money goes nowhere near funding the current gap, let alone bringing about any improvements or bringing people into the social care system who are currently excluded. It just does not do it.
The Government have said they will
“ensure local authorities have access to sustainable funding for core budgets at the spending review”.
All will be revealed in the spending review, but the key bit is that the Government say they expect
“demographic and unit cost pressures”
will be met
“through council tax, social care precept”.
We have had 5% council tax increases year on year, and a lot of it has been to fund social care, so we are going to get above-inflation council tax increases again, are we? If we say national insurance payments are regressive, council tax is now regressive, too. That is the reality.
Kevin Hollinrake
Yes, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. As always, he is making some very good points. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with him on the Select Committee.
We did two reports on social care, and we made a recommendation in 2018 to fund social care through the national insurance system. Does the hon. Gentleman still support that recommendation?
Mr Betts
Yes. However, may I just say to the hon. Gentleman that it was a slightly different recommendation from what the Government are proposing now? I have our report here, just by chance—I thought I might be asked the question. We talked about the rate at which national insurance would be paid—this was to cover the points that the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) made about low-paid areas. We talked about paying right the way up the income scale. We talked about extending it to pensions and unearned income, and about it not being paid for by the under-40s, who have been really badly hit by this pandemic, and we ought to be doing our best to protect them. In paragraph 95, we also made the important point that people should not have to sell their homes to pay for social care and proposed instead
“that a specified additional amount of Inheritance Tax should be levied”.
We all agreed to that. That system is a lot fairer; people would pay according to the value of their home and it would not be that people in constituencies such as the right hon. Gentleman’s, where house prices are relatively low, end up paying a bigger percentage of the value of their home to fund care than people in areas with higher house prices. I stand by that recommendation. It is a different proposal from the one the Government are now putting forward.
I want to come back to the point for the Minister. There is a crisis in social care, and we have all got that; we all have constituents come to us begging for social care. They are really concerned about having to sell their home, but sometimes it is about not being able to get into a care home or get the care at home they need. Most social care should be delivered in the home where people live. The reality is that there simply is not a proposal in this so-called “plan” to give local authorities that money that is needed to both fund the existing gap and to extend social care to the many people who have been denied it because of the cuts in the past few years. Furthermore, the alternatives will be: bigger rises in council tax—the Government have almost signalled that in this report; or further devastating cuts to other services received by most of our constituents, who do not get social care but have to pay for it. This is a recipe for disaster. Eventually, when it works through, everyone will see that there is no plan for social care here, because there is no funding for social care that will deliver the sort of social care system we all want to see.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
For a low-tax Conservative, it is relatively easy to attack this measure—indeed, I could spend my entire five minutes doing so. I could quote the fates of previous conservative Governments, whether led by President George Bush in America or John Major here, who have put up taxes dramatically—John Major did so in a recession—and been punished at the polls. It is relatively easy to attack this measure but much more difficult to provide an alternative. The manifesto point need not be laboured. Labour produced a manifesto with all sorts of spending promises in 2005 and, arguably, they had more chance of foreseeing the global crash in the markets that followed during that Parliament than we ever had in foreseeing a pandemic. So I do not think the manifesto attack holds water.
I declare an interest, as it has always been a principle that once someone reaches pensionable age they get their state pension and do not go on paying national insurance contributions. Many people will feel aggrieved about the position on that; a constituent has written to me angrily saying, “I am 68. I stopped paying NICs at 65 and now you are asking me to pay them again.” That is a fair point, but this meets the challenge of, “Why should we subsidise pensioners at the same time as we are increasing NICs on the young?” Again, it is easy to attack but difficult to come up with an alternative.
The point about London and the south-east is an easy point of attack. Someone can buy a pleasant house in my constituency for less than £100,000 but that would not buy them a shoebox in London. Are we actually subsidising people who own million-pound houses in London? They can spend 30 years in a care home and can pay a very small proportion of that, because they can leave £900,000 to their children.
All these attacks can be made, but what is the alternative? That is what I ask the Labour party. They will not be a credible alternative Government unless they come up with a plan. I will happily give way to any Labour MP who says, “Right, I do not want to increase NICs. I shall increase income tax.”
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I am struggling to understand the argument made by those on the Government Benches. In 2016, £350 million per week was promised to the NHS once we left the European Union. We have left the EU, but what has happened to the £18 billion? Should the NHS not automatically expect that money, given that on 1 January we left the EU?
Sir Edward Leigh
It is very nice to be intervened on by somebody who has no chance of forming a Government.
I am afraid that all this talk of a wealth tax or a tax on dividends does not even begin to meet the problem. If we have a wealth tax, what happens in respect of two old-age pensioners who have almost no income and just have a capital asset? Is it fair—
Jake Berry
Does my right hon. Friend accept that this may be a fairer system if those in receipt of a pension but not working were asked to contribute to it in some way? Let us consider the position of people who are going to work in Tesco in Haslingden—it is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe), but on the border with mine—and are struggling to buy school shoes for their kids or pay their mortgage. Why should they pay so that a relatively well-off pensioner does not have to?
Sir Edward Leigh
May I say to my right hon. Friend that he gave one of the best speeches this afternoon? It was thoughtful and incisive, and at least he is trying to develop an alternative argument. The Government—this is the problem with being in government—are faced with a crisis now and they have to find the money now. Regretfully, nobody has come up with a better plan than this. I am no toady to the Government, and I say to them that I do not think they can solve these problems by our constantly becoming a tax-and-spend party, as that is simply not going to wash.
We have been spending money like there is no tomorrow. I know there is a pandemic on, but the furlough scheme is riddled with corruption. I know from massive anecdotal evidence in my constituency that many companies are ripping us off left, right and centre. So the Government have to have more of a vision that they articulate: that we accept that there is a pandemic, that the NHS is in crisis and that we have to do something about care homes, but we do have a plan to control public spending. I know that the Chief Secretary agrees with me, but he may not want to leap to the Dispatch Box to say that now, especially as a reshuffle is imminent.
There are innovative solutions we can use to try to encourage people to take more control of their healthcare. John Major was hardly a fanatical right-wing Conservative, but he offered tax relief to pensioners who took out healthcare—we have never even considered that. The argument could be made that rather than having arbitrary limits such as £86,000, we could base this on the value of the house. So there are alternatives available.
I wish to articulate one thing before I sit down, and it relates to state insurance. I am trying to develop an alternative plan in the future. We know what Germany does and we know that it has an excellent system. Lord Lilley argued yesterday in a paper, and the Dilnot commission argued, that there is an alternative to all this. The Government dismiss private insurance straightaway. It is true that private insurance companies will not take over this burden alone, because they cannot foresee how many people will be very frail and stay in care homes for a long time. But why can we not have a system by which we underwrite private insurance? The state would offer insurance. Once someone is of pensionable age, they would enter the scheme. There would be a modest charge on their home, based on the value of the home. The premium, on average, would be covered by the Government, not by the person. On average, it would be £16,000 a year and it would be the covered by the Government, but that individual would have that peace of mind. That is an innovative scheme. It was suggested by the Dilnot commission. I do not understand why the Government have simply just ruled it out and said, “We have looked at private insurance and it simply will not wash.”
Many of us will be supporting the Government tonight—I know it is a bit of a cliché to say, “With a heavy heart”. We will be doing so because we recognise that the NHS is in crisis. However, we say to the Government: “When you just pump more and more money into a socialist construct like the NHS, you get lower and lower productivity. So we want to look at outcomes. We don’t want to just accept this argument that we are in an arms race with the Labour party, because they will always offer more than us.” So we want some answers from the Government on serious plans for the future and on controlling waste and low productivity in the NHS. We want to know how much of this money will actually go into the care home system. We can then vote for the Government with an easier conscience.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who made a thoughtful speech, but I have to take issue with him about the Labour Government pumping money into the NHS and it going nowhere. Which party set targets for things such as A&E waiting times and the reduction of waiting lists and achieved them while in government? The Labour party. Where the right hon. Gentleman and I agree—he is a former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and I have the honour of being the current Chair—is that it is vital that we measure the effectiveness of every pound of taxpayers’ money spent against delivery for citizens and taxpayers. This proposal fails woefully on that.
This is another headline from the Government with no detail attached. Parliament has been bounced, but even the Prime Minister’s party and Cabinet were not involved in the decisions about how the money is to be raised and what it will be spent on. It is clearly an announcement without a plan. There is no plan, other than to put money into the NHS for three years. We all recognise the need there, but the message is being deliberately muddled. Where is the plan for care workers? Nothing. Where is the plan for skills for care workers? Nothing.
Where is the plan for a stable market? There are 25,000 or so care providers or residential care properties in the UK, mostly small, private providers. Their market had been shaken to the core before covid, but covid has really wracked them hard, and there is no support, plan or promise—anything—for them. What about the money for local authorities? I completely associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) earlier and a number of Conservatives yesterday, including my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken). There is also no plan on domiciliary care; more of us will receive care in the home than in institutions.
This proposal is about protecting the capital assets of the wealthiest. I am a London MP, and this proposal will protect a lot of people in London who are like me: a homeowner in London with a wealthy asset for whom £86,000 is a small percentage of the home I own. The right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) made an excellent speech highlighting the real challenge in this respect. I worry that the Government are using this proposal as another opportunity to try to buy votes in London for the next London mayoral election. Nothing seems to stop them in their ability to attack our London Mayor and try to buy people in. We have to make sure we have a policy for the whole country.
There are not even any targets for the NHS funding that is going in. The Minister came to the House and rattled through his speech at pace without answering any of these important questions. It is important that we tackle the NHS backlog, but with £12 billion a year on a base NHS budget of around £150 billion—of course, during the pandemic it has gone up by around £60 billion—that is still going to be a challenge. We need to make sure we are getting outcomes and we need to measure them. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care himself admits that he does not know whether tackling the backlog will be possible in three years; I think it will be a huge challenge.
Let us look at the challenge on finances. By 2038, compared with 2018, there is a projected 90% increase in costs for adult social care for those aged 18 to 64 and a 106% increase in costs for adults over 65, so of course something needs to be done. The Public Accounts Committee has looked repeatedly at the social care market, of which the Department of Health and Social Care has responsibility for oversight. That includes looking at skills and the supply of places, but it has woefully failed—it has failed on drug prices and on making sure that the market and the workers in it are skilled up properly. Of course, there was also the woeful failure on personal protective equipment, where the Public Accounts Committee concluded, in—of course—a cross-party report, that care homes had been “thrown to the wolves” because of what happened.
The inequality really bites. As others have highlighted, wealthy pensioners on good private pensions will not pay an extra penny. That includes those who have retired early because of the Osborne pension reforms. Senior civil servants and so on who are able to retire at 55 on a full pension can then work again, and they may pay money on their new earnings but not on their pension. They are earning way more in their pension than the minimum wage and will not pay an extra penny from that.
In my constituency, we have more private renters than homeowners and more people who rent socially than either of those two options. They do not have assets that need to be protected; they need the insurance to get good social care. They do not have income from assets that they will ever benefit from. Of course, many of the people who do own their own homes have interest-only mortgages. A whole generation is coming through—generation rent—without an asset, worrying about whether they can afford to pay into a pension and unable to afford today’s rent. This proposal just hammers that generation to the benefit of people like me—as I move through my 50s towards retirement—who have an asset. This proposal does not work. There is no plan.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
This is a massively important debate on a subject that comes into our constituency surgeries every week—it has done since the day I came into this House, and did when I was working for Sir Teddy Taylor all those years ago. This is not new. What is new is a Government attempting to address it. I sat on the Opposition Front Bench for four and a half years as a shadow Health Minister. Previous Governments have looked at this issue and tried, but at the end of the day, to be really honest, Conservative and Labour Governments have kicked the can down the road. So for once, we are trying. Is it perfect? No, it is not going to be perfect. I will come in a moment to a couple of points that I agree with my colleagues on.
What we cannot do is keep borrowing. Markets are low; we can keep borrowing. We could go to that wonderful private finance initiative market that previous Labour Administrations went to and that we are still paying for now. Lord Darzi came up with a fantastic plan for how to deal with elective surgery in the market without having over-capacity in the NHS. The only problem was that contracts were issued that meant that these companies were being paid even though they were not doing the operations. So nothing is perfect and everybody wants to try.
It is very easy to be in opposition and throw the can across—that is what Oppositions do—but when the crunch comes, these are the hard decisions. I am a fiscal Conservative and a working-class Tory, so I love all this class rubbish that keeps being thrown across the Chamber. It is absolute, complete and utter tosh. At the end of the day, our constituents look to us for guidance and to try to solve their problems. They do not really care where we come from in life and what we end up doing; at the end of the day, that is what they want us to do.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Mike Penning
No, I am not doing to give way, because lots of other colleagues want to speak and every time I give way, I get an extra minute—and I have just lost half a minute by saying that.
We can say to ourselves, “Is this perfect?” No, it is not. Is this going to help? Yes, it is. Are more people going to pay more in taxation? Have we broken a manifesto commitment? Yes—and Governments in previous Administrations have done that for years, and that happens when the public expect us to act on something that has come literally out of the blue. What has come out of the blue? Covid. We have had to borrow unbelievable amounts of money to keep people’s, jobs, incomes and livelihoods going. We cannot keep doing that, so we have to turn around and say, “Is there a way?”
We heard from the Chair of the Treasury Committee that there are myriad other ways to deal with this issue. We have also heard the minutiae of how national insurance contributions come into it, but at the end of the day it seems that national insurance is probably the way to do it. I have one criticism. In my constituency, we still have more than 12,000 council properties. Many of those residents want to buy their property on right to buy. They cannot do so because the maximum discount means that the mortgage is still too large. Having just over an £80,000 cap is not fair nationally. It is really difficult if someone has a property below that level. In parts of the country, £86,000 will buy such a property, but in my constituency, that money would buy a quarter of a one-bedroom flat. That has to be wrong, so we need to look at how we address the issues that were raised by colleagues earlier.
I have one further thing to say. Frankly, anybody watching this debate, especially the earlier engagements, would have been disgusted by what they saw—partisanship, chips on the shoulder, class war, this war, that war. People do not give a monkey’s about that. They want us to come here and do a job, which is to help them and their loved ones. It is about time Opposition Members got off their butts and did it.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that universal social care would be too expensive. That is exactly what the Conservatives said about the NHS in 1945 when they voted against it 21 times. They have argued that since and they will do so again if given the chance, as we heard from the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) who, just minutes ago, described the NHS as a “socialist construct”.
A universal need demands a universal and freely accessible solution. None of us knows with certainty what will happen in our lives. Through disability, illness and old age, many of us will come to rely on social care if we do not do so already. The care we receive should not be a lottery based on wealth and postcode. We should all have the security of knowing that there will be someone to look after us no matter what. The NHS is there for all of us if and when we need it from the cradle to the grave. It has long been time for the social care system to provide the same.
We need a national care service funded by progressive taxation, including a wealth tax. The Prime Minister’s plans could not be further from that. Even the free market Adam Smith Institute condemned them as “morally bankrupt”, saying that the Government was asking
“poorer workers to bail out millionaire property owners.”
That comes just weeks before the Chancellor will plunge hundreds of thousands of families into poverty with his universal credit cuts.
Mr Deputy Speaker, you would struggle to design a more unfair and economically illiterate social care policy if you tried. Less than £1 in every £6 of the money raised will go to social care in the first three years of the plan. It is a triple whammy that the Government are presenting us with today: nowhere near enough money; not ringfenced for social care; and low-paid workers are funding it.
Why is it that Amazon is paying only 7.5% of its income in tax while a graduate on a standard starting salary is expected to give up around 50%? Let us be clear what this is really about; it is about protecting the inheritances of the very wealthy. What is the Government’s excuse for raising taxes on struggling people and for breaking their manifesto pledge? It is covid-19. We have heard it again and again today. I have seen at first hand, as have my former colleagues in Nottingham, how social care was in crisis well before the pandemic, and this Government cannot use covid-19 as a cover for 11 years of Tory failings, and they cannot use it as an excuse to take money from those who have been on the frontline and not from the billionaires who have profited from the pandemic, increasing their wealth by more than a fifth.
When I use the word “plan”, I am being generous. This is not a plan. It does nothing to fix the system that is broken at its core. A constituent emailed me about her experience. She is a care worker in the community. Her wages have not increased for four years. She does not get any travel expenses, pension contributions or sick pay. She works extremely long hours to make ends meet and often earns less than the minimum wage once she factors in travel and expenses. At the same time, her mum is terminally ill and has been waiting for five weeks to get support. She wants to be with her mum in her final weeks, but she is doubtful that she will be able to afford to get time off. Sadly, disgracefully, her story is not unusual, because our social care system does not work for those who rely on it or for those who are employed in it.
Instead of grappling with these deep-rooted problems, this Government are yet again, as the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) admitted, kicking the can down the road. Instead of giving our care workers the pay rise that they deserve—[Interruption.] Will Government Members be quiet while we talk about the service that care workers have given during the pandemic? They deserve a pay rise, but instead Members on the Government Benches will be voting tonight to make sure that care workers are paying so that their wealthy donors do not have to.
How much longer must my former colleagues in the care sector wait for change? How many more families will be consigned to poverty because their care worker mum brings home less than the minimum wage? How many more disabled and elderly people will be confined to their homes, unable to live the kind of life they want? Anything less than a national care service, funded by a tax on the wealthy, not low-paid—
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), but I must disagree with her that the Government are kicking the can down the road. We are doing precisely the opposite by trying to tackle what is a very difficult problem, as everybody has already described. As many Members have said, politics is about choices. Ultimately, the choice is this: either we put more money into the social care system and borrow extra; or we decide not to tackle the problem, and allow it to continue and continue. I wholeheartedly support the Government in trying to tackle what has been a very difficult problem for a very long time.
I thought it would be useful to address in my remarks some of the criticisms of the plan that need pushing back on rather strongly. Many speakers have said that it would be better to use income tax, not national insurance. I disagree, because national insurance is paid by both individuals and employers; it is a broader-based tax, which raises more money. And guess what? By having a broader-based tax, everybody is going to benefit. It is not bad to have a more broadly-based system, where everybody in the country is going to benefit.
Certain Opposition Members have said that a wealth tax on the wealthy, in and of itself, will somehow fix all the problems. I am afraid that we are dealing with billions of pounds—£12 billion, £13 billion or £14 billion—and no wealth tax in the world has been designed to yield anything like that amount, so that would not deal with the problem.
Many Members have suggested that this levy does not deal with social care at all. The point is that it deals with both health and social care; they are linked. Therefore, by accelerating money in the next 18 months to two years to deal with the backlogs that have developed in the health system due to covid, we actually help to deal with the social care problem. Then, as is very clear in the documents, from October 2023 more money will flow more directly into the social care system, so the levy deals with both these things.
It is worth addressing the point made by many colleagues on the Government Benches—including my constituency neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), and others—that this is somehow unfair because certain parts of the country, such as my own, have higher house prices and others have lower house prices. That is an observable fact. However, there are many problems with doing something much more complicated. First, it would be difficult somehow to change a system on the basis of fluctuating house prices in every county, region or district council. It is also difficult to come up with those differences when, yes, certain areas have higher house prices, but then there are also higher costs for social care in different parts of the country. It is much better to have a broad-based system that is broadly the same across the country, although I am in agreement with certain hon. Friends that the Government should look at all possible options in detail as we look to implement the tax.
I turn to the idea about which I have heard so much from Opposition Members: that this tax is somehow not progressive, but regressive. They think that if they keep repeating that, it will make it true. I took a look at companies. Let us think about big companies versus small companies. The smallest 40% of companies will pay nothing extra as a result of this measure. The next 40% will pay, on average, about £400 more. The smallest businesses are really not going to be paying a lot of national insurance.
Let us turn to individuals and consider the richest individuals. Somebody who earns a very high amount—let us say £1 million a year—will, by my maths, be paying £12,500 extra as a result of this measure. A basic rate taxpayer pays something like £3.40 a week. I am afraid to say to the Opposition that this is a progressive, fair and broad-based way of dealing with the problem.
In addition, we need to think about outcomes. Members on both sides of the House have made the fair point that the money, in and of itself, does not deal with the problem. Yes, we need better pay for carers. Yes, the system needs to be better. Yes, we need to be sure about what we are getting with the money. Yes, there needs to be reform. We should study all that, and work with the Government over the next few weeks and months as the White Paper comes out. I will be supporting the Government in the Lobby this evening.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I want to begin by congratulating the Government Whips on bulldozing this proposal through with such great haste. They have done their job today. They have prevented a Back-Bench rebellion. They have used their own Back Benchers as cannon fodder. It will not be the charlatan in No. 10 who pays the price for broken promises and tax rises that hit the young and the low-paid; it will be those Tory MPs hung out to dry: some of them unexpected victors in 2019, and some of them quite good MPs, but with small majorities. When the emails and the messages of complaint start flooding into their offices, and when the refusals ever to vote Tory again start to hit home, it will not be the occupant of No. 10 who has to suffer—he will have flitted on to his next fantasy—but those who are betraying the very people who voted for them. They will be left to pay the price.
Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)
I am very grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s concern about our future job prospects, but I would much rather be standing for a party that is willing to invest in the NHS, to be the party of the NHS, and to try to fix the problems in social care. I would much rather have those job prospects than be a Back-Bench Labour MP who stands for nothing, has no plan and has weak leadership.
Steve McCabe
Well, that was a wonderful intervention. The hon. Gentleman has not only been hung out to dry; he has been brainwashed in the process.
This is a measure built on deception. There was a promise of no tax rise or national insurance rises, yet this is a tax rise to hit young workers; to hit people who will never get the opportunity to buy a house; to hit the self-employed struggling to get back on their feet, many of them ignored by this Government during the pandemic; to hit employers struggling to get their businesses back on track who now face a tax on jobs; and to hit the low-paid battling to keep life and limb together who will end up subsidising others whose assets they can never hope to match.
Only last year, the Government were boasting about raising the national insurance threshold and now they are squeezing the very same people. What happened to the promise to raise the threshold to £12,500 by the end of this Parliament? This is money to pay for two things: first, to subsidise those who hope to inherit large properties from elderly relatives; and secondly, to cover for the disastrous cuts in the NHS over the period the Tories have been in office. Even on their own reckoning, only about £5.3 billion of this tax grab will ever make it to social care. We were promised that a plan was ready, that it was a priority, that the PM would get cracking within his first 100 days, and that it would fix the crisis in social care once and for all—none of it true.
Age UK estimates that there are about 1.5 million people in need of help with daily living who do not get it. This tax rise will not address those issues. It will not help people needing help with washing, dressing, eating and taking their medicines. This is a broken tax promise: a penalty for those who took a chance on voting Tory at the last election. On social care, it is a fiction and a deception from people whose promises will never again be given any credence.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
I very much welcome the fact that the Government are taking action to properly fund social care and the NHS in this country. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) said, previous Governments and previous Prime Ministers have recognised the challenge of funding social care and the NHS, but it is this Prime Minister and this Government who are taking the brave step of bringing forward concrete proposals to address it.
We have heard much over the past few days and the past few hours from those on the Scottish National party Benches about how horrified they are by these proposals to increase funding for Scotland’s NHS. Astonishingly, they seem to oppose the billion pounds of extra funding that Scotland’s NHS will benefit from this year. It is astonishing. I just do not understand how they can possibly explain that to their constituents and justify such an irrational decision.
John Lamont
I am happy to hear from the hon. Member why she has made that choice.
Alison Thewliss
As the hon. Gentleman well knows and as has been made clear to him in the remarks I made, funding for the NHS is not the issue here; the issue is raising taxes disproportionately on the backs of his and my poorest constituents. I would be interested to hear what he will tell his constituents when they come to his surgery about it.
John Lamont
These proposals will result in Scotland’s NHS and services that our constituents use getting a billion pounds extra each year to help deal with the backlog of treatment, the GP shortages and the whole catalogue of other issues that Scotland’s NHS is dealing with. It is nonsense to pretend that social care is not an issue in Scotland as much as it is in the rest of the United Kingdom. Indeed, the SNP Scottish Government in Edinburgh has called for action on social care in the past. They have said that they intended to increase investment in social care in Scotland, but they have also been clear that their plans required extra resources. Their planned reforms
“can only be delivered with increased investment.”
Their independent review of adult social care said
“more money will need to be spent on adult social care over the long term.”
Further to that, Audit Scotland recognised that “more investment is needed”. The Scottish Government admitted in their August 2021 consultation that the proposals for a new national care service were not yet funded.
Dr Whitford
In Scotland, as I said earlier, we already spend 43% per head more on social care. If the hon. Gentleman is moaning about Scotland, he can perhaps imagine the problem here. Scotland has a plan: the Feeley review, the national care service, a human rights approach and extending free personal care and free provision to all home care. What we are not happy about is the idea that suddenly the Prime Minister will meddle in a completely devolved area of health and social care, and we will have the same outsourcing and fragmentation that England has struggled with since 2012.
John Lamont
Nothing in this plan undermines the devolution settlement. This plan provides our constituents with more investment for NHS services across Scotland. What the hon. Lady seems most upset about is this United Kingdom Government delivering that resource for something that the Scottish Government had previously asked for, and she admits that, which is frankly astonishing. It is beyond belief that the SNP opposes these proposals, which would raise much-needed extra resources for the NHS and the social care sector in Scotland. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will benefit by an additional £2.2 billion a year as a result of the levy and an equivalent increase to dividend tax rates.
There is a clear Union dividend from this policy. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, taken together, will benefit around 15% more than is generated from their residents, equivalent to around £300 million a year. The hon. Ladies and Gentlemen on the SNP Benches shake their heads. How on earth can they justify opposing this extra money coming into Scotland? Scotland will receive £1.1 billion in extra funding over the coming year.
We must ask why the SNP is so opposed to this extra money coming to Scotland and our NHS. That is certainly what my constituents in the Scottish borders are asking. They have witnessed the remarkable job that our NHS heroes have been doing during the covid-19 pandemic, but they also recognise the massive challenges now facing Scotland’s NHS: delayed operations, GPs under pressure, rural health services being withdrawn and waiting lists growing and growing. Yet, when offered extra funding from the UK Government to help address that and to tackle the social care crisis, the SNP says no. The SNP says no to extra funding for Scotland’s NHS.
John Lamont
The hon. Lady says “rubbish”. Should I say “rubbish” to my constituents who have had their operations delayed time and again and those who cannot get access to a GP in their surgery because of decisions made by the Scottish Government, who blame a lack of resource and repeatedly blame the UK Government for not funding them enough? Here we have it: £1 billion more coming to Scotland and the SNP says no. It is typical SNP grievance politics. It is not about solutions or making the lives of our constituents better; it is about grievance, grievance and more grievance. The NHS in all four parts of the UK needs significant investment to tackle the lasting effects that covid-19 has had on services and we must work as one United Kingdom to tackle the collective challenge.
It is also true that the SNP Scottish Government have not prioritised investment in the NHS during their time in office. As I referenced earlier, the IFS has noted that, in the last 10 years, spend on health in Scotland has increased by just 1.2% as a proportion of total expenditure compared with 3.6% in England on a like-for-like basis. Therefore, despite all the spin we hear from SNP Members, Scotland’s NHS needs this extra investment.
Some in the SNP have been complaining that the policy is some sort of attack on the devolution settlement. That is utter, utter nonsense. It is true that devolved Administrations will be required by law to spend their share of the revenue raised by the levy on health services in 2022-23 and, from April 2023, on health and social care services. It is also true that some elements of the new revenue will be spent directly by the UK Government for the benefit of all four nations, including on purchasing vaccines to help defeat the virus. However, there is no requirement for the Scottish Government to implement the same policies as the UK Government. The devolution settlement is protected. So the SNP is really going to oppose this extra funding coming to Scotland’s NHS and social care services.
I very much welcome the announcement. It has been a tough decision for the Prime Minister and the Government, but it is the right decision. More funding for our NHS and social care services should be welcomed by everyone in the House. It baffles me completely why the SNP so strongly opposes it.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
This national insurance increase is a point of no return for the Tories. It is an unfair way to raise the money needed for our NHS and social care, with those who earn the least and the young paying for those who are already well off. It is the biggest single tax increase in 70 years, which will see the highest level of tax paid in the UK in peacetime, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) pointed out, the Government’s own document says there is more to come in council tax increases. We have already had increases and precepts imposed on council tax. When the Tories got caught out because they cut 20,000 police officers, they put a levy on council tax to pay for police officers and this year they put on a 3% levy—£600 million—to go into social care. They have had their hands in people’s pockets for several years now and they have not taken them out.
Let us be clear: the claim that the Tories are the party of low taxes and a small state is over. The argument in the future will be about how we invest in public services and how we value the workers who work in them. People earning as little £10,000 will pay the increase. People who can afford to pay more, such as hon. Members on these Benches, should not rely on them to pay increased taxes: they should be asked to pay their fair share. People who have to count every penny to survive on a daily basis—to buy food and to pay rent, travel costs and household bills—have to budget day by day to live and they will have to tighten their belts, but those of us on higher incomes who could pay more and whose lives will not be changed by this increase will not have to tighten our belts at all.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) pointed out one of the areas that will suffer most. It is those areas where the Tories talk about levelling up that will be the hardest hit by this tax increase. What of their local economies, with the tax the Government are taking out of those economies that will not be there to be spent in local businesses? There is no levelling up in this tax the Tories are imposing, and there will be less money to circulate in those economies. It is not fair that those people we clapped during covid—care workers, delivery workers, shop workers, postmen and postwomen, and many more who kept our economy going during difficult circumstances—will be asked to pay a disproportionate amount through this tax increase.
There is no going back for the Tories from this day forward. Whatever happened to the pledge the Prime Minister made in 2019 that no one would have to sell their home to pay for care and that he would co-operate across the House and discuss the way forward on how to deal with the issue of social care? That is yet another broken promise from this Prime Minister. If a person is property rich and cash poor, how are they going to be able to avoid having to sell their homes? The £86,000 is a Kensington cap. Outside London, in many areas the cap is far too high and will lead to people losing their homes.
There is no plan for social care in what the Government have announced so far. The Tories have behaved here today as if these problems had just been created and had just emerged because of the pandemic, but nothing could be further from the truth. The waiting list was 2 million before the pandemic hit, and they took £8 billion out of social care. Where was all the hand-wringing and all the concern about social care and the NHS back then? They are using the pandemic as cover for 10 years of cutting public services and underfunding our national health service. How are they going to explain to their constituents that they are being forced to pay this increase to pay for 10 years of Tory neglect?
Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)
I am sure that, like many constituents, many of us across this House have personal experience of the need for these measures. In my family, a much-loved family member sold her house during the time of the last Labour Government. I had another family member who had a bad back, but did not want to bother the NHS at the time; unfortunately, it was a lot more serious than that. We do not want that to continue indefinitely. Particularly after a pandemic—and this is why I asked my question to the Prime Minister earlier—we do not want people holding back their concerns and their needs from their GPs and the NHS, with this feeling that they should not bother them because it is under so much stress.
I am so pleased that the Government are grappling with these really long-term intractable problems. It is important and it has a real impact on our lives—all of our lives. But exceptional circumstances require exceptional measures and hard decisions. They are difficult decisions for all of us on the Government side of the House who believe—and our beliefs have not changed—that taxes should be as low as possible, that services should be available to all, but that the state should do as little as possible because people do things for themselves better than the state. There is no easy answer, and I welcome the difficult decisions that this Government are taking. To lead is to choose, and that is what we are doing—making difficult decisions.
I commend the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), the Chair of the Treasury Committee, who evaluated the alternatives. Alternatives such as austerity and spending cuts are not welcome and would also be criticised. There is increased borrowing. This Government put their hands around this nation during the pandemic and spent £400 billion to protect people’s jobs and livelihoods. However, increased borrowing also has a profound effect on the lives of individuals, because it has a profound effect on the economy and its future prospects. I absolutely reject the proposition that this is the end of conservatism, or that this means our principles have changed, because it does not. Because we are responsible, pragmatic, realistic, and willing to lead, I believe people will understand. If we say to people that there is a need and we are going to address it, but that there is no cost, they will know that is not true, nor is it honest.
As Conservative Members have said, we want innovation and a determination that the NHS does not become the insatiable beast that swallows up funds indefinitely, and we must keep a grip on that. It is important that that goes hand in hand with innovation and reorganisation to make this work, and to make it as efficient as possible for all people in this country, and across the United Kingdom.
I welcome these measures. They are not easy, but this is the job we are here to do, so I welcome the Government’s initiative and their implementation of them.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Many who voted for Brexit in the hope of securing £350 million a week for the NHS, or who voted for the Conservative party in the belief that taxes would not be raised, must feel very disillusioned. Today, just nine months since leaving the EU, and after another Johnson broken promise, they are being taxed to pay for health and social care. In recent months, the Prime Minister has broken promises on the foreign aid budget, on his commitment that there would be no checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and on the triple lock on pensions. We all understand the impact of the pandemic, but it should not be used as a shield to mask the Prime Minister’s broken promises. His promise to fix social care once and for all predated the pandemic. Indeed, we have waited more than two years for the plan, which the Prime Minister promised the nation in his first speech was “already prepared”, to materialise.
The 2019 manifesto also committed the Conservatives to deliver a social care plan through consensus and with cross-party support. People are asking what happened to that consensus. Instead, the Prime Minister is pushing this grossly unfair tax through Parliament, allowing as little time as possible for proper scrutiny—the kind of scrutiny that improves legislation. Because of the Government’s woeful mishandling of the pandemic, allowing the NHS and care workers to face the biggest crisis in their history, with the NHS in the depleted state to which it was reduced after successive Tory Governments stripped £8 billion from the service, much more money is now needed for health and social care.
With waiting lists predicted to reach 13 million, even with this money it will take the health service years to catch up. The working public are now expected to stump up more money for Tory mismanagement of health and social care, and working-class and middle-class workers will bear the 10% national insurance tax hike. The Prime Minister’s plan boils down to this: using the taxes of young and low-paid workers without assets to protect the assets of wealthy people. Raising regressive national insurance, which takes money from the pockets of the lowest-paid workers, many of whom have been on the frontline of the pandemic, is not the way to fix our social care system. I hope that the Prime Minister will listen to the many rational voices in business and industry, including the British Chambers of Commerce, which said that his plan will be
“a drag anchor on jobs growth”
as firms emerge from the pandemic and furlough winds down.
We need a national and fair effort to deal with the crisis in social care, and a plan that goes far wider than just looking at funding. We need to address the recruitment and retention crisis in health and social care, which is the most urgent issue at present. It is vital that any long-term plans are included alongside immediate measures. We must properly value those in our health and social care workforce, not tax them to the hilt.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I thank the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care for bringing forward this proposal. It is a bold decision—a difficult decision—but it is the right decision at the right time.
Initially, I really struggled with this concept. When the Prime Minister stood up to deliver his statement yesterday, I did not expect to feel able to support it, but by the time he sat down, I could. That is not just because the PM has excellent rhetorical skills; it is down to the simple and obvious fact that most people want better health and care provision. Most people understand the challenges created by covid and the devastating impact on the NHS. Most people want to see money spent on the NHS, and they expect everybody to make a contribution—and so they should. Covid has brutally exposed what a fragile and struggling health and social care system we have, and yes, the enormous backlog of cases that has arisen must be tackled. Therefore, of course more cash is needed.
I fundamentally believe in incentivising and rewarding hard work, in allowing people to keep more of the money they earn, and that people know better than the state how to spend their own money. A low-tax economy is a buoyant economy, and I hope that when this is all over, we can revert to proper Conservative economic policy. Any MP would say that healthcare features uppermost in their inbox. The struggles to access a GP, the waiting lists, the cancelled operations, the waiting times in A&E and the quality of care are all raised with us day in, day out, and they have very human consequences.
It may be that this is more of an issue in Telford than elsewhere. We have a particularly challenged hospital trust and clinical commissioning group, and some very serious problems have arisen during my time as MP. The trust is now in special measures, it is facing a police investigation into maternity deaths, and there has been a constant revolving door of highly paid senior managers who do not seem to be able to grasp some of the challenges. We have a GP super-surgery with 60,000 patients that has long operated telephone triage. Even pre-covid, people could not get the phone answered, so they have no option but to go to A&E and face huge waits. It is fair to say that it is completely understandable that Telford residents will always put the NHS as their No. 1 concern. We have also had grand transformational schemes devised by hospital management to spend £600 million of Government money. They have had seven years of thinking about it, and they still have not been able to put a shovel in the ground.
I have never been one to believe that throwing cash at a problem will provide a solution. We have a duty to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent wisely, and that waste and bureaucracy are stripped out. We need to make clear that what we are approving today is no blank cheque and that we expect trusts, CCGs and their management to work to put patient care and the patient experience first. That has been lacking. I know that from my experience and my constituents’ experience. They are so often treated as a nuisance or with contempt. That must stop, and this money will help that to happen. I want my constituents to have far, far better patient care than they currently receive and I know they want to see extra cash spent. They will expect improvements, and I caution that this is not the time to be removing the A&E or other local services from Telford.
The motion before us today is a much-needed first step that I welcome fully. I congratulate my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Health Secretary for being bold, for being ambitious for our future and for being willing to embrace the big challenges that others have failed to seize. They have my full support, and I hope that all Members on the Government Benches will also be able to support our leaders.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
When I first heard that the Prime Minister was going to come forward with a plan for social care, to tell the truth I am so desperate for any improvement in social care that I even considered voting for it. Even until yesterday I would have considered voting for it. As the details came out, however, I was not only disappointed but completely devastated, as will be many of my constituents. Not only does the plan fail to deal with any of the real issues in social care, which I will come on to in a second, but it is actually just a tax hike pretending to deal with health and social care. In reality, at the beginning it is not even linked to that, and later on there is some vague promise that it might trickle down to social care if we are lucky.
This is a tax rise that will hit the youngest, the poorest and the hardest working in our communities the hardest. It exacerbates the crisis in intergenerational justice that we have in our society at the moment. Far too many young people feel that the ladder is being whipped up behind them by an older political generation that is currently in power. I think that is sometimes unfair, because actually the issue is class-based and wealth-based, but this will exacerbate that feeling. A young graduate with student loans will be paying a marginal tax rate of almost 50%, which is more than many people on £90,000 and vastly more than someone whose earnings are from property, shares or other forms of wealth.
There are other options. The Government had other options. They could, of course, have lifted the lower rate of national insurance into the higher rate. Most people do not realise—most hard-working people, of course, do not earn £50,000 or more—that those earning more than £50,000 pay only 2% national insurance. That could easily have been made 12%, or now included the additional for everyone. That would have provided £14 billion in one stroke and not affected any hard-working person in our country. It would have already raised more than this non-existent plan. They could have looked at a wealth tax for people who have wealth higher than £5 million, an amendment that I and other colleagues tabled for today; capital gains reform to bring it in line with income tax, for example; or making inheritance tax fair so it is based on what you receive, not necessarily on what you give, so that those in large families can receive a fair amount while ensuring that everyone pays their contribution.
None of those options were considered. Why? Because this Conservative party is paid for by developers, landlords and the very people this tax will not touch. It is a party not of capitalism, but of extraction: extracting the wealth from hard-working people and small and medium-sized businesses, and redistributing it to landlords and capitalists who work in the stock market and in the City, not in the factories that run our country.
Dr Andrew Murrison
I always listen very carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has to say. Why, then, does he think that Gordon Brown did something remarkably similar to what my right hon. and hon. Friends are proposing—on that occasion, in 2003—for exactly the same reason: to raise the spend on our national health service and care services? Was he wrong?
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Because then, wages were growing and the economy and working people were doing better, and now they are not. We are coming out of a pandemic. Everyone has suffered and suddenly putting a tax on small and medium-sized businesses and on working people is the very last thing we need to do.
This is also about the lack of a plan for social care. There is no plan for social care. In fact, we have been asked for a begging bowl, but we have not really been told how the money is going to be spent. How are we going to recruit social care workers, who are currently paid miserable wages for 15-minute appointments and no travel time? How are we going to reform the sector so that is not fragmented between people? How is this going to improve someone’s grandmother’s care home or someone’s brother’s care worker? It is not, because this does not deal with that fragmentation, it does not integrate social care into the NHS, which we desperately need, and it does not relieve the burden on councils. At the moment, the truth is that council tax has to subsidise social care time and again. People complain about the roads, their parks or youth services being shut, but the reality is that it is because the Government have not dealt with funding social care properly. They have put the burden on councils and council tax, which was never designed for social care, and this does not deal with that fundamental problem. When people complain about their bins or potholes, I say to them, “It is not your council’s fault. It is the fault of this Government, failing to deal with that drain on your council.”
This levy will not aid us one bit to close the gap that has been growing. That gap will continue to grow under this Government. So holding my nose and desperately sad, I will unfortunately be voting against this, not because I think that we need no action, but because this action is the worst of all worlds.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I want to begin by thinking through what Labour would do if it were in power. [Interruption.] I am very grateful that the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) has just outlined some of the things that he might do. If I understand the Labour Front Benchers correctly, I think they suggested that they would use stamp duty or various transaction taxes on assets. I am grateful that Ministers are here, because I think that they know, as I know, that there is no way that the money needed would be raised—[Interruption.] I am grateful that the Minister says, “Correct”. It says in the document that not enough money would be raised from stamp duty and transaction taxes on assets. It is fanciful, and the hon. Gentleman’s proposals are likewise, I am afraid.
We would need to change one of the big taxes. Would Labour Members put up VAT from 20%? Of course they would not because it is regressive. It is a bad idea. It is already too high and it already hits everyone, so they would not put up VAT. Would they put up income tax? I think they would get the same advice that these Ministers have had from the same officials. I think they might be advised that we are already in a position where income tax is rather too dependent on the decisions of a small number of top earners. This is the sort of evidence we have had at the Treasury Committee for a very long time, so I think that we would find that, actually, they were not able to put up income tax.
So where would that leave Labour? That would leave it with the big tax that has always, as the document points out, been used to fund health and social care: national insurance contributions. I think that Ministers, if they were from Labour, would be presented with a distributional analysis like the one I have here, which our Ministers have. Labour Ministers would look at it and see that actually, distributionally, it is really only the top two deciles who are net losers. Deciles from the bottom through to No. 8 are either gaining or, in the case of the eighth decile, right there in net overall, neither gaining nor losing. I think that what Labour would do if it was in power is what it did last time it was in power and needed money for the NHS: it would put up national insurance contributions.
My constituents in Wycombe are very reasonable people. While knocking on doors in Marlow Bottom just last Saturday, I discovered constituents who recognise that we have suffered an enormous pandemic that has done so much to damage the public finances and people’s lives, as other hon. Members have said. But where are we going? That is the second point that I want to touch on. This is what I think Labour would do in power, and that is the problem—sorry, Ministers.
If we look, as I am sure colleagues have done, at the future debt trajectory for the United Kingdom produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility, we can see that our public finances are in an unsustainable state. I could easily give quotations—they are in my pocket—but if I recall correctly, the OBR’s 2018 report describes debt getting to about 260% by about 2057 and says something like, “Of course, policy would have to change by then.” I have always taken that to be a euphemism for “Of course, we would have to default on our age-related spending promises.” That is the consistent finding of the Office for Budget Responsibility on our long-term public finances. Sooner or later—in all our lifetimes, hopefully—we will find that the state cannot afford the promises that it has made to older people.
That is the problem that we face today. It is not about the national insurance contribution rise planned today, which I believe is a levy that the Labour party would adopt if it were in power; the problem is that we have no better ideas than putting up taxes to raise more money for public services.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes the powerful point that this is what Labour would do in power. Why are we doing it as Conservatives?
Mr Baker
That is the fundamental problem that I face today, because I believe that this is just the beginning of the generational crisis of our inability to fund the promises that have been made progressively for more than 100 years, since the National Insurance Act 1911. I have talked about it ad nauseam, particularly in relation to a Bank for International Settlements paper that sets out charts showing that all western welfare states, and indeed Japan, are in the same boat. Some of the cuts to age-related spending that would need to be made to balance the books are just implausible.
We are in a dreadful position. Historically, when this country has been in a dreadful position economically and socially and on a trajectory towards ruin, there has proven to be only one party capable of rescuing the situation, and of course it is the Conservative party. At some stage in our lifetime, the Conservative party will have to rediscover what it stands for, because I have to say that at the moment we keep doing things we hate because we feel that we must.
My hon. Friend the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment stood at the Dispatch Box today and explained that vaccine passports go against his instincts and those of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister; at one point I think he said that they went against everything that he stood for. We have heard hon. Members say—there are quotes on the internet from former Ministers and Cabinet members—that they hate raising taxes, but do not see how they cannot vote for it. Tonight, colleagues will say, with a good heart, “I just must,” because we all know that we cannot let NHS waiting lists get to where they are going as a result of the pandemic. Well, I know that too, but this I also know: we are going to have to do things differently.
We have to rediscover our confidence as free market Conservatives and the radical reforming zeal of the 2010 Parliament and the big society. We have to show people that we can secure a bright, prosperous and free future that provides for their needs in their old age, but without coming back to higher taxes every time there is a squeeze on the public finances. Down that road is ruin. We all know that eventually socialists run out of other people’s money.
I am sorry, Ministers, but I cannot vote with the Government tonight. Some of us have to be seen to stand for another path.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Peter Grant is next, and then the time limit will be reduced to four minutes.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I am pleased to contribute to this debate. As I listened to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) just now, the words that kept going through my mind were “Union dividend, Union dividend”—we are tied to a nation whose public finances are in a mess, unsustainable and in a dreadful state.
Before I come on to the regressive nature of the Government’s proposal, I want to touch on just how far it falls short of the promises that the Prime Minister and others made in order to get elected. They have claimed that they have a plan to reform social care in England. It is obviously not for me to dictate what that plan should be, but if they have one, perhaps the Minister will tell us what changes, if any, there will be in the balance of resources between the NHS and social care. What changes, if any, will there be to the arrangements to manage each individual’s needs as they make the transition from health to social care? What changes, if any, will there be to the balance in the provision of care for the elderly between residential and non-residential? What changes, if any, are planned to the balance of responsibility between the state and the family?
There are no easy or right or wrong answers to any of those questions, but although I do not have the answers, I know that there are questions. The Prime Minister does not. I do not believe the Prime Minister even recognises that any one of those questions must be faced up to before he can claim to have a plan, or even the first hint of a plan, to deal with the position that we have, or some of us have, in social care.
The second major problem is that, even if the crisis in social care in England could be fixed with money alone, this proposal would not deliver anywhere near enough, and most of the “not enough” is not going to social care. A lot of it will go to benefit the families of some care recipients—some, but not all; and guess which some?—leaving precious little to actually improve the service. To claim that anyone voting against this tax hike today is voting against meaningful improvements to social care is simply untrue, and those who are preparing to make those claims on their Twitter accounts know that what they are about to tweet is not true.
I am in favour of increased funding for our health and social care services. If necessary, I will support fair and progressive tax increases to fund them, and I will pay my share of those taxes quite happily. However, I will not support this proposal, because it is not fair and it is not progressive. It discriminates against younger people with average incomes in favour of older people with much higher incomes. It discriminates against people who earn their money through their own hard work in favour of people who earn their money through the simple fact of having had plenty of it to begin with. It discriminates against my constituents in Glenrothes and Central Fife and in favour of those in places such as the Prime Minister's constituency, where, according to the Government’s own statistics, the average income per person is nearly £10,000 a year higher than what my constituents have to get by on.
The Government have claimed—we have heard this in a number of Conservative contributions—that they already know which of the UK’s nations will contribute most to this tax hike, and which will benefit most. They have claimed to have conducted an analysis which shows that it is not regressive in terms of different income groups. Although our SNP amendment was not selected, I expect to see the Government honour the spirit of that amendment, not by the end of the year but by the end of the week. I expect them to publish the analysis that we have asked for—or is this another case of their claiming to have all the information until they are asked for it, when we suddenly discover that it does not exist?
The final substantial objection to the Government's proposal is that it is designed to grab powers away from the democratically elected Governments of three of the partners in this Union, and place them in the hands of a Prime Minister who has no mandate to do this even in England. I have no issue with anyone allocating additional resources to Scotland, but I have a big issue with signing up to a regressive tax hike with no guarantee whatsoever that the Barnett consequentials will not be siphoned off as a result of some later Budget decision. Any guarantees that we get from the Government today will be as worthless as the promises that they made in their manifesto in 2019.
Let me be clear: the SNP will continue to honour its manifesto commitments. Any Barnett consequentials coming to Scotland as a result of increased spending on health or social care in England will be passed on in full to health and social care services in Scotland. But within that overarching guarantee, who do the Government think has the mandate to decide exactly how Scotland’s health and social care funding is allocated? I doubt that there is a single person, even on the Tory Benches, who honestly thinks it is right to assume that, because a particular way of allocating funding might be right in England, it is automatically right in the other three UK nations, where health and social care are organised in a completely different way. There is all the difference in the world between allocating funding to be used in a way that honours the Scottish Government’s manifesto promises, and decisions being foisted on us in a failed attempt to cover up the fact that the British Government do not keep their promises, to the electorate or to anyone else.
If one of the Prime Minister’s heroes had been here today, he might well have observed that never had so many promises been broken in such a short time to the detriment of so many and to the benefit of so few.
Laura Trott (Sevenoaks) (Con)
This area of social care has not had a happy history in respect of political point scoring, and, unfortunately, we have seen plenty of that today on the Opposition Benches. However, it is unacceptable for us to play Russian roulette with people’s life savings when it comes to social care. One in seven people are going to be affected by this. Just because their loved one died of dementia rather than cancer, their life savings are being entirely wiped out. That is not right, but it is right that we are doing something about it, and I am glad that we are seeing some element of cross-party consensus on the model. It is the Dilnot model, and the Health and Social Committee, of which I am a member, put it forward as a proposal. It was supported by the Liberal Democrats when we were in government with them, and to a degree, I think, by the Labour party. So at least we are moving forward slightly in that regard. The real question now is how we pay for this. There has been a lot of confected indignation on the other side of the House to cover up a lack of a plan. National insurance is imperfect in many ways, but, as Tony Blair said:
“If we want sustained investment in the NHS over a period of time, we are going to have to pay for it.”
He suggested that national insurance was the fairest and best way to do it. I agree with him, even if members of his own party do not seem to. Paul Johnson from the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that
“overall much needed reforms to social care are being introduced and unavoidable pressures on the NHS are being funded through a broad based and broadly progressive tax increase. That is better than doing nothing.”
It is incumbent on Opposition Members to really look at themselves and to understand whether they think real change is needed. If it is, they need to come up with a better alternative. Otherwise, they need to walk through the Lobby with Members on this side of the House who are taking difficult decisions on behalf of our constituents. These are not easy decisions. They are not decisions that can be explained away by saying that we are not doing this in a broad-based way when we are, or by making things up about this not being progressive when it is. We are taking these difficult decisions because that is what the Conservatives do in a moment of crisis.
My colleague on the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow), was right to say that reform was needed. This is an awful lot of money that we are putting into a system that is very broken. A third of social care staff leave every year and there are 120,000 vacancies in the sector. We will need to up the quality of provision and to inspect it properly. We will need to ensure that the integrated care services that are being put in place are assessed by the Care Quality Commission. We will also need to ensure that local government is held to account on the standards of care that it provides. These are all important reforms. We need to ensure that social care is truly part of the NHS, so that a nurse can take a year to go and work in the care service and then come back into a hospital. These reforms will all be necessary to ensure that we deliver on our high ambitions for change. We are taking steps to make that change. We will ensure that the options available to families are of high quality and that they will not take away their life savings. We are taking difficult decisions, and the Opposition need to look at themselves and decide whether they are doing the same.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
For too long, successive Governments of all stripes have failed to grasp the nettle on social care reform. In fact, we have mostly failed to acknowledge that there was a nettle at all. That is largely because this burden overwhelmingly falls on women, and our voices have been silent. I will not rehearse all the debates that we have had, but this is this time to start something better.
When he came into office, the Prime Minister promised that he had “a plan” to fix social care in England. It is now clear that he did not. But—I say this with all sincerity—he has since started one, and he has brought it to this place at some political risk. This is worthy of a sliver of credit in itself. But having brought these plans forward, we now need an honest and thorough debate here and across the country about their merits and deficiencies. Yesterday I said that the Prime Minister may have broken the dam, and he looked slightly confused. That is because he thinks he has now fixed the problem. The trio of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Health Secretary looked very comfortable with themselves yesterday. They are very wealthy men. They seem to have heard something, but this has not fixed it. They need to understand that behind the dam there is a torrent of questions, costings and aspirations, none of which the Government seem prepared to acknowledge.
This motion does not represent a sustainable plan. Instead, what we have is a shoddy push to nod through these changes without even paying lip service to the scrutiny that they need. Millions of families are hoping for something else, and we must not give them false hope. That would be cruel and unnecessary. There is only one longer-term solution that we will need to inch our way towards in the coming months and years, and that is a universal system based on the same NHS principles of fair taxation based on the ability to pay and according to need. Crucially, like the last Labour Government, we need to start moving people with us on the journey to that solution. Pitting people and generations against each other and talking solely about tax rises is a narrative that is now infecting our debate. It needs to stop.
Today is my birthday—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Very kind. I was once in my 20s, and my message to young people is that they will get older. A young woman talked movingly on the BBC yesterday about her struggles with social care, and she said that everyone is one accident away from social care. We have to remake the social contract for a new generation.
Reform is too late for my mother, who is in her 80s, and it is too late for me in my mid-ish 50s. It cannot be too late for my children, which is what I need to explain to them, rather than talking of generational warfare.
On the smoke and mirrors around the NHS settlement, I spent most of my career in NHS management and I was part of the great improvement in health services under the last Labour Government. If we are really going to start delivering on this, it will require a massive clinical and managerial effort to transform the legacy of the pandemic and austerity in the health service, and to change those waiting lists.
Politicians like to talk nicely to managers in private conferences and then take pot shots at them the rest of the time, but clearing the waiting lists is a massive managerial and clinical challenge. The clerical and clinical validation of that list to help people move through the care system will be a massive task, and they need support.
The Prime Minister has a majority of 80 MPs. It is in his gift to deliver a policy that could truly stand the test of time. Having bitten the bullet and picked the fight, he seems determined to squander the opportunity with the solution before us today. I urge him and the Government to think again. He should seek to build the consensus that could exist in this House on doing something truly lasting after the terrible pandemic we have all been through.
Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)
The question of how to deal with the worsening social care problem has been put off for too long. Indeed, the Labour party shunned its responsibility when in government and refused to make the difficult decisions to put social care on a sustainable footing.
Peter from Loughborough said in an email to me that it is
“long overdue to try and fix the social care problem. Governments of both parties have pushed this into the long grass time after time and it cannot be put off forever.”
The Conservative manifesto pledged to build cross-party consensus on an answer to solve the problem. Clearly, this has not been possible. It has therefore been left to this Government to make the tough decisions, which I know the Prime Minister has not made lightly as the Conservatives are the party of low tax.
Dr Whitford
I welcome the hon. Lady’s reference to the aim to create cross-party consensus. We have heard that said repeatedly. I am the health and social care spokesperson for the SNP, and the Labour spokesperson and I did not receive so much as an email. To say that consensus could not have been built is wrong. It could have been built, and we could have had discussions before yesterday.
Jane Hunt
That is not my understanding. Maybe it is the case, I am not sure. [Interruption.] Forgive me if it is the case.
The Government have made proposals to raise much-needed funds to deliver on important commitments such as upskilling the social care workforce, strengthening the adult social care system, tackling the elective backlog in the NHS as it recovers from covid-19, funding a 3% pay rise for our fantastic nurses and implementing a cap on adult social care costs. These aims all have widespread support across the country.
I could mention many cases that have been referred to me over the years of elderly people who are afraid to come out of hospital because they know they are not well enough to live independently but are afraid to move into the care system because of the cost.
In yesterday’s speech on social care costs, the Prime Minister said:
“from October 2023 no one starting care will pay more than £86,000 over their lifetime, and no one with assets of less than £20,000 will have to make any contribution from their savings or housing wealth—up from £14,000 today.”—[Official Report, 7 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 155.]
The Office for National Statistics states that between 2014 and 2016, the most up-to-date figures I can find, the average inheritance was £11,000 per person, which fits in well with what we are trying to develop so that people are enabled to leave something for their family.
Finally, alongside this additional funding, we need to look at the overall finances and management of the NHS to identify where savings can be made, so that money is put where it is needed most—frontline services. That is particularly true in respect of waste generally. For example, GP statistics show that 173,165 people did not attend their appointment last year, costing £5.1 billion. Those are some of the things we need to look at. However, I will support this measure tonight, for the reasons I have set out.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
It is a standard trope from Conservative Members that public services in general, or the performance of the Scottish Government in particular, in some way fall short of what happens at Westminster. We heard earlier from the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), who seemed to spend more time complaining about the Scottish National party than he did talking about the NHS and social care.
Despite some of the Damascene conversions that have clearly taken place among Conservative Members overnight, a number of truths and realities in this debate should make for deeply uncomfortable feelings among Conservative Members. By levying this tax, they are not only breaking a manifesto pledge not to increase NI and increasing the tax burden disproportionately on the youngest and least well-off, but doing so in order to play catch-up with the health and social care landscape in Scotland.
I listened carefully to yesterday’s statement and intently to Conservative Members talking earnestly about the need for health and social care integration. I even listened carefully to that call when it came from Members who had, in ministerial office, been in a position to do something to drive that integration agenda forwards. What was startling for me was the gradual revelation throughout the course of the statement that there was no plan. There was no planned assessment of impact or plan for how the moneys raised would make their way through the NHS and ultimately to social care. Leaving aside the unfairness of the means by which these moneys are to be raised and the Prime Minister’s utterly bogus rhetoric about “Union dividends”, we are being asked to applaud the scale of the inputs without any thought having been given to the nature of the outputs. Clearly, in their desperation to do something about this, the Government have decided that a tax is the best form of defence.
It is also clear that in England at least this debate is not even in the foothills of where it needs to be about its health and social care integration. In Scotland, we embarked on that journey several years ago. There is some irony in the fact that on the day the UK Government finally announced their plan to lace up their running shoes on this, the Scottish Government in Edinburgh were announcing in their “Programme for Government” plans to go beyond health and social care integration and forge ahead with a national care service.
What this measure reveals most of all is the mismatch between policy and resources, and the shortcomings of the fiscal settlement for devolution. We saw that through the pandemic. We still do not know whether this is to be Barnettised or hypothecated. We do not know how much is to come to health and social care, and by what means. The answers to those questions matter, because if the devolved settlement is to be respected, the spending decisions should be taken by the Government who are directly elected and directly accountable to Scottish voters. The suspicion has to be, given the lack of detail on that, that this is yet another power grab, with the UK borrowing and claiming that borrowing as the so-called “Union dividend”.
In the time I have left, let me say that the most iniquitous aspect of all is the impact that this move has on the lowest earners in society, the youngest in society and those who have least in the way of assets of their own. They are being asked to forgo their earnings, for an objective with which few can quibble, in order to protect the assets of those who already have the most. This Government have removed the freedom of movement for young people across Europe, are seeking to disenfranchise them at the ballot box and now expect them to pay for a social settlement that few have the means to do and few can expect to benefit from. This is no country for young people at the moment.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson), although I did not always agree with what he said.
I have spoken in this place on multiple occasions about the need for a long-term plan that addresses social care in this country, so I welcome the Government’s solution. I have direct experience of the problem of social care funding: prior to being elected to this place, I was the finance leader of a large upper-tier authority and we spent more than two thirds of our budget on social care provision, so I am all too aware of local government upper-tier authorities’ issues with funding social care and the challenge that the Government have faced in addressing the issue.
As we continue the recovery from the covid-19 pandemic and learn its lessons, it is clear that we can no longer ignore social care. By introducing this reform to social care after decades of inaction, we will change the lives of thousands of families who are struggling to afford quality care and having to make difficult decisions in the most vulnerable of circumstances. In finally addressing this long-standing issue, we will improve the quality and availability of social care for those who most need it, while ensuring that it is most affordable and helping to relieve the continuous pressure on the NHS.
We now cannot ignore the backlog created by the heroic work of our NHS in rightly prioritising the treatment of covid-19 patients. I welcome the Government’s plan to address the backlog immediately through the new health and social care levy, which will allow us to increase hospital capacity to 110% and create 9 million new appointments. I am sure I am not alone when I say that many of my constituents have contacted me to express concerns about hospital waiting times, and I know that colleagues from all parties will have constituents who are pleased to hear about the Government’s commitment to solving this problem through the levy.
Fundamentally, I am a low-tax Conservative, but as the Chairman of the Treasury Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), said earlier in the debate, the Government have few levers with which to address this issue. As the Prime Minister said yesterday, a global pandemic was in nobody’s plans. The £407 billion that the Government have spent to support businesses and families has been vital to keep people safe and the economy afloat during these really difficult times.
We should focus on the impact, not just on the additional resources. The necessity of our response to the global pandemic has brought many changes in the way things are done in this country. I hope that, along with the increased resources, there will be increased ambition to do things bigger, better, quicker and more efficiently, rather than just continually chucking money at things. The extensive support schemes offered by my Government were never intended to continue indefinitely. As we emerge from the pandemic, it is right that we look at real-world funding options for the reforms that are so clearly necessary.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Like, I am sure, many people on both sides of the House, I came here today desperate to support a plan that would see investment in a system that has been set up to provide care not just for us and all our loved ones but for everyone in this country. This is a problem that we all want to see fixed for the 1.5 million people who are not receiving the care they deserve; for the staff who work long hours, underpaid, with 120,000 jobs left unfilled; for the unpaid carers; for those caught in the backlog of NHS waiting lists that threatens every day to deny them life-saving treatment in time; and for all of us who might one day need the system that we were brought up to believe was there from cradle to grave. It is therefore a huge disappointment that this so-called plan does not do any of that.
What we have is not a strategy that will fix our NHS and social care—the long-awaited oven-ready plan that the Prime Minister promised us on the steps of Downing Street. Perhaps it would now be more appropriate to talk about the naughty step and to consider what this so-called plan will mean for the young people, the lowest-paid and the small businesses that will be hit hardest, because this is a tax hike for the low-paid and young people, which the Government promised there would not be.
Where is the carefully costed, detailed plan of what will be spent on the NHS backlog and invested in our social care system? One must not be funded at the cost of the other. There is a better way to deliver for a social care system that was already in crisis before the pandemic—and that is not an excuse for the broken manifesto promises of 2019. This is a system that was already in crisis and already in need of investment.
Liberal Democrats have repeatedly called on the Government to hold cross-party talks to find some consensus on the best plan to fix social care. The Government have had plenty of time. We know that it can be done. When the Liberal Democrats were in government, we built a cross-party agreement through the Dilnot commission, as mentioned by the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), and the Care Act 2014, based on the values of the NHS. We legislated for it, but after the 2015 election, the Conservatives ripped it up. Instead, they are now pressing ahead with a scheme that places a huge burden on low earners and small businesses. Has it completely escaped their notice that many of those who will be hit hardest by this tax hike are the frontline NHS and social care workers?
Then there are the other public sector workers—police and fire officers. As for business, this comes at the worst possible time. When, as the Federation of Small Businesses points out, firms are still struggling, trying to recover from the impact of the pandemic, what do the Government do? They end support, stop furlough and then hit them with another bill, while many of them are struggling to get out from under the debt that the pandemic has created. Added to that, so many families are now facing a cut in universal credit.
It is abundantly clear to me and to the Liberal Democrats that this Government, this Prime Minister and this Chancellor are out of touch with ordinary families, small businesses, frontline health and care staff and what they face on a daily basis. As I have said, the pandemic is no excuse for breaking promises. This is a moment in our history when the people in this country most need a Government on whom they can depend and who are as good as their word.
What about the people whom this so-called plan is supposed to help? Where is the respect, beyond that for a certain proportion of the population? We will all start paying for this new arrangement in April 2022, but it will not come into effect until October 2023. What about the people who are in care now or who will enter care in the intervening 18 months? As for the cap, £86,000 is still a lot of money. This country deserves better.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I welcome the Government’s commitment to this investment to speed through the backlog that we have had since the pandemic and to invest in social care. For too long, social care has been left in the “too difficult to solve” box. Well, we come here to do the hard things as well as the easier, and that is what this Government are doing.
In spite of the warm words that have been spoken by Opposition Members, it is absolutely clear to anyone listening today or yesterday that, whatever is proposed, they will oppose it to the extent of even voting against people getting urgent NHS treatment or care.
The proposal of additional money comes on top of unprecedented investment in the NHS, approaching £40 billion by 2023-24, but today’s welcome further boost for the backlog and social care does need paying for. No one on the Conservative Benches likes tax rises, and I certainly do not. It is essential to look at the burden of taxes overall and to commit to reducing that over time. None the less, I recognise and accept that, if we fail to take the tough decisions now, the longer-term economic consequences will be even greater in the future.
Along with these changes, I hope that my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench will consider how we can move away from the burden on council tax with a social care precept and make sure that we continue to modernise and make every pound and penny count on the frontline.
I would like to take a moment to reflect on what that NHS investment through successive Conservative Governments has meant for the people of Dover and Deal. It has meant that we have: a brand new state of the art hospital, the Buckland Hospital; a groundbreaking Harmonia dementia village, the first of its type in the entire country, which has been delayed by the pandemic but is now expected to be open in the spring next year; a pilot centre for a new approach to wounds at the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital at Deal; a new training centre for GPs and nurses in east Kent, serving our entire area; and even a new dentist provision. The market is also responding to this investment and commitment to healthcare and to the people of our country, with older people’s housing being built by McCarthy Stone in the centre of Dover at this very time. However, the pandemic backlog is causing real distress, as is the failure to grasp the nettle of social care. I see that in my inbox, as we all do. I therefore strongly welcome this funding, this new approach and this commitment to tackle the issue.
The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) asked about election leaflets. Well, in mine I committed to better healthcare, and I know that it is this Government who are funding and delivering that for the people of Dover and Deal.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
We have heard—mainly from Opposition Members—about the grave issues with and concerns about this NHS tax, which will be detrimental and cause more hardship, especially to young people and poorer people in our society. We have heard about the cuts to local authorities and universal credit, and now the increase in national insurance, which will hit poorer people in our society. How can that be right?
Let me turn my focus to the Government’s progressing efforts to privatise the NHS. NHS privatisation has been a creeping threat for the past decade. The Government make a song and dance about valuing the NHS every election time. This includes their broken promises to build 40 new hospitals and to spend £350 million on the NHS every week if we left the European Union. The Prime Minister has consistently pulled the wool over the trusting public’s eyes, abusing their loyalty to the country’s most beloved asset. He is fixated on the pandemic, yet somehow the Government seem to have amnesia. There were extensive waiting lists at record high levels even before the pandemic. Those levels are even higher now. The Tories cut 17,000 beds from the NHS before the pandemic struck. The way that the Government are betraying and misleading the nation is astonishing.
Two constituents recently wrote to me about their dismay at the way in which the Government are dismantling the health service, and I have to agree. The Government have exploited the chaos of the pandemic to advance their agenda of privatisation with minimal public knowledge. There has been more outsourcing of NHS services to private companies. Public money is spent on contracts, rather than being spent directly on the NHS.
Should the Health and Care Bill pass as written, in April we will enter a new phase, where the NHS will be broken down into dozens of smaller units that will have private companies on their boards, including American health insurance companies seeking only profit. The deputy chair of the British Medical Association wrote last year:
“rather than finding a moment of clarity in this crisis to reinvest in a publicly provided health service and build for a better future, the Government has doubled down on its failures, choosing to throw huge amounts of money at scores of private firms…rather than rebuilding the health and care system and empowering those with the greatest expertise.”
What we are left with is a fragmented healthcare system that is a skeleton of what it once was, with workers underpaid and exhausted, and social care neglected.
Now the Prime Minister wants all taxpayers, including the most financially insecure, to pay for his mistakes—this Government’s mistakes. It is shameful. It is a betrayal of the NHS and a betrayal of the British people, and it is something that the Opposition will certainly not accept.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I welcome the extra funding that is going into tackling the backlog of cases in the NHS. Dartford has been particularly badly hit, with Darent Valley Hospital this week having perhaps its busiest week in many years as it tries to deal with the backlog. I ask the Treasury team, working with their colleagues in the Department of Health, to ensure that the extra money that will be invested in the national health service gets through the treacle of bureaucracy that can quite often affect extra funding for the national health service, so that it can reach the frontline without being siphoned off in various directions on its way through. I welcome the fact that the Government have had the courage to deal with this issue. We can argue about whether the plans are the correct plans, and whether we are funding them in the right way or the wrong way, but it would not be a very wise argument to say that we should carry on kicking this can down the road. It is very welcome that we are confronting this problem head on and dealing with the issue.
It is slightly surprising that we have not seen much support from Labour. I could help my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) in understanding what the Labour party’s plan would have been had they been in power for the past 11 years. The Labour party had a plan for how to deal with social care in its 2015 manifesto, which says that extra public funds were needed, which I think we all accept, that a cap on contributions to social care should be imposed, and, crucially, that it could be funded by a social care levy. That was the position the Labour party took in 2015. It was so happy with that policy that it had it again for its manifesto in the 2017 general election. So that is exactly how the Labour party would have approached this situation: with a social care levy. That is what is proposed by the Government, and it is therefore slightly surprising that we have not seen more support. As my hon. Friend said, we saw Gordon Brown come to the Dispatch Box in a Budget and increase national insurance by 1%. He did not mention it in his Budget speech—we all found out about it in the Red Book afterwards—but that was his approach then.
We have consistently seen the Labour party supporting exactly what the Government are proposing to do today, but instead of Labour Members supporting it, we have received the class attacks referenced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning). That shows that they have learned nothing from the last few general elections. They have learned nothing from their experiences of dealing with working-class people. They do not understand that working-class people actually have aspirations—aspirations to own their own house and to save some money where they can, and not to have that house, and everything else, pretty much, that they own taken away from them if they happen to need social care at the end of their lives. It is trying to ensure that those aspirations are met that has ensured that the Conservative party has made far more progress with working-class people than the Labour party, which has simply lost contact and lost connection with the people that it used to serve. I am therefore surprised that Labour Members are not supporting this, and they should perhaps reflect on that decision. I again pay tribute to the Government for having the courage to deal with one of the most difficult issues that faces British politics today.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), because I do welcome the fact that this debate is happening and that there is an attempt to find a solution to something that absolutely has been kicked down the road. However, I am very disappointed that despite the rhetoric there was no attempt at cross-party contact or to achieve consensus and agree a long-term solution.
I also feel that this proposal is regressive. It will hit lower-paid people, including the key workers we were clapping for just 18 months ago. It will hit the younger generation, who have been hit from multiple directions and will not have the benefits that we have been lucky enough to have in our lifetimes. It will stifle recovery because it is simply a tax on jobs. Like previous social security cuts driven by Tory austerity, it will take money out of local economies and remove spending power. That means increasing poverty—the single biggest driver of ill-health.
In Scotland, that will impact on our aim to have a wellbeing recovery from covid. That is why we object to this measure and why we object to the Prime Minister saying that he will direct how the spending is used. Income tax would have been a fairer method. It is paid by wealthy pensioners, as I will probably be in a few years’ time. It is paid more by people who earn more. It does not hit wealth, but there other taxes that could have been used to do that. The Scottish Government already took action in 2018 by adding a penny to all our tax bands so that we had more money for health and social care. We do not just provide free prescriptions; we are the only UK nation that provides free personal care, and in 2019, that was extended to those in need below the age of 65. That is something to which other nations within the UK should be aspiring. It allows people to stay at home and to have greater independence, and that is how we should be looking on it. The Feeley review, which the Scottish Government commissioned, asks us to turn it around, to stop seeing social care as a burden and instead to see it as a way of allowing the people affected, whether due to disability or age, to still be part of our society.
We object to the undermining of devolution, because it is the Scottish Parliament that has responsibility for the strategy of health and social care. Our health and social care landscape is quite different. Not only do we have free personal care; we also still have a unified, public NHS. We have been integrating with social care since 2013, so to say that suddenly we will hand that control over to the Prime Minister—I am sorry, but that will not wash. The national care service proposal from the Feeley review recognises that we already pay the living wage and we pay for overnight sleepovers. What we actually need for social care in all four nations is to develop social care as a career, so that people stay there and commit to it. It is not just a job that someone does until they can get on the checkout at Tesco. It is a simple fact that above all other careers, care is delivered by people, for people. That is where any plan should start. If there is focus on the workforce, we may end up with a care service that we can be proud of and that will deliver for all constituents.
Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
Political parties in this country set out with manifestos at general elections with a general intent to try to implement them. There is usually a number of rules. If a party thinks it will win, it has the shortest manifesto possible, and if a party is in opposition, it will usually have an endless manifesto with lots of promises to try to attract people. The truth of the matter is that what comes along is events, and a pragmatic, sensible Government have to respond to events.
We have had one big event, the pandemic. Nobody said, “You didn’t have the furlough in the manifesto”, because how could we have foreseen that? The jobs of 7 million, 8 million, 9 million people were protected to get through the pandemic. Nobody said, “You cannot give grants”, or, “You cannot spend £400 billion.” We live in a funny country where the Prime Minister can spend £400 billion getting us through a pandemic, but God forbid he try to put wallpaper up in his flat in Downing Street, which of course the Cabinet Office would not pay for.
The reality is that the Government have been pragmatic and sensible, and the consequence of the pandemic is that we have a higher debt level, and that changes the parameters of what the party that is governing can do. We want to implement our manifesto promises dealing with care. We need to get the backlog of the NHS down. Many people in my constituency have been quiet, waiting for their operation and their opportunity to get back to normal, and we need to give them support. That is what we are trying to do.
The simple truth is that we are in a different world from the one we had in 2019. This Government are treating the world as it is, and that means tough decisions and unpopular decisions. I would not be surprised if we fell behind in the opinion polls, but the reality is that we are doing what the British people expect us to do, which is to govern and deal with the problems we face. I support this Government, not because I agree with everything that they do, but because I am proud of the fact that they take tough decisions. That is what Governments are meant to do. They are meant to take challenges head on.
We are dealing with the NHS backlog. Who can tell how quickly we will get it shifted? Of course we need more staff, but we are seeing in figures out recently that the backlog is already starting to fall. Let us hope it is cleared quickly. We are starting to deal with some of the care issues. Is this proposal a silver bullet for dealing with them all? No, it is not. Is it enough money? I wonder, because there is a list of Government priorities that may mean some funds may be diverted before they get to care. The Government are trying their best to deal with people’s concerns.
We all have constituents whose parents have worked hard all their life to buy a home; we see the unlucky ones when mum or dad has Alzheimer’s and goes into a home and they see the proceeds of a life’s work disappear. If that person is in a home next to someone fully funded by a local authority, it is quite right and proper that we should pay at least some regard to their hard work and recognise the things they did not have—perhaps holidays or horseracing or gambling—because they wanted to buy a home.
The Government are roughly on the right track. I hope that we will get back to a more tax-cutting agenda as the years roll by. I am very hopeful for the deficit this year because we are growing quite rapidly, we seem to be getting control of spending and we have had to take some tough decisions with tax. I am confident that when we come to face the British people, I will hold my head up high because we are tackling the issues that my constituents care about.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
We are all aware that the NHS is the pride of the UK, and we are similarly aware that there is a grim possibility that it may become our biggest loss. I am therefore very much focused on health issues. That loss would be because of historical underfunding as well as the unseen pressures that covid has placed on every facet of the NHS, from dentists, physios and surgeons to waiting lists, assessments and operations.
I will not take the path of some others and seek to score political points because that is not what I am about. I am will think of the constituent who, at the age of 53, came to my office almost immobilised having waited four years for a hip replacement. I will think of the parents desperate to get respite for their disabled children. I will think of the mums watching their daughters—and increasingly their sons—who are killing themselves with eating disorders and cannot get the help that is needed. I do not want to score points, but I do want to get it right.
There are rightful questions about who will bear the brunt of what is undoubtedly a necessary evil. My real fear is that for small businesses who in recent years have taken on the burden of paying statutory sick pay to staff, increased wages under the minimum wage and are paying more to ship their products to Northern Ireland due to the disgraceful Northern Ireland protocol, what seems like a small increase may put them off hiring that new staff member. That is a real concern, and when that is weighed along with fact that big businesses with their expensive accountants can find a loophole to prevent them from paying what they can well afford, it seems that the middle class will again be the ones feeling the squeeze. I therefore share the concerns of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who highlighted the unfair nature of this blanket tax.
Whatever method is used to raise money—I need this to be heard clearly—this money cannot be diverted by way of the Barnett consequential to any other Department, as moneys have been in the past. We need to reform our health and social care or we will lose the NHS, but, in Northern Ireland, the funding make-up means that funding cannot be ring-fenced. As my right hon. Friend said:
“Northern Ireland will benefit by about £420 million per year by this increase in National Insurance but there is no indication that the Executive”—
the Northern Ireland Executive—
“will be required to spend it on the purpose for which it was raised since the Government cannot ringfence money”.
Before the debate, I spoke to the Minister for Care to seek assurances, and she will seek those assurances from the Treasury. Since the relevant Minister is not here at the moment, I put these questions to the acting Ministers on the Front Bench. Can that money for Northern Ireland be ring-fenced? Will all future moneys that come to Northern Ireland for this purpose also be ring-fenced? That is what we need to know. We cannot have a system whereby—as has happened on multiple occasions—this salvation funding for the NHS is used for putting, for instance, an Irish language or Ulster Scots sign up on a street. How do we ensure that the money goes on reform and is not used by others to promote their political goals and aspirations?
We undoubtedly need to take the bull by the horns and swallow the pill for the increase. However, we will never be forgiven if in five years’ time we are still in the same position. What guarantees do we have that the sacrifice of every single employed person, every single pensioner and every single business owner will bring about the necessary change and not be lost in the ether of politics at Stormont? Many are willing to make the sacrifice for care—not anything else—and we need binding legislation in place for us to believe that any guarantee given will not be waylaid by political machinations.
The future of the NHS is worth the change to legislation. Let us get it done. I want to see something happen from which we can all benefit across the whole United Kingdom, and I need that to happen for us in Northern Ireland.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
May I congratulate the Government on dealing with unfinished business? Since 1948, we have pooled our risk for the management of the consequences of poor health except for things such as dementia and the general frailty that for some of us attends old age. This could be a historic moment in which we sort that out, and I will most certainly be enthusiastically supporting the Government tonight. It is grossly unfair that certain conditions should be excluded from our provision, and I am so hopeful that this will finally, after 70 years, complete the job begun by our predecessors.
I am disappointed that Labour Members should have taken the line they have, because I recall their doing something really rather similar in 2003 with national insurance contributions, presumably because Gordon Brown and Tony Blair at that time decided this broad-based tax was the fairest and most equitable way of dealing with this and, crucially, of raising significant amounts of money. We can debate whether the money was then well spent, and the statistics and figures suggest that that was not the case at least for the rest of that decade, and productivity in the NHS only started picking up in the following decade. Nevertheless, in raising sufficient funds for spending on something we all agree is vital, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair made the right call in 2003, and I find it dispiriting, saddening and disheartening that Opposition Front Benchers should on this occasion decide, for their own purposes, not to support it.
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I notice from the right hon. Member’s entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that he makes income via rentals, as many people in this House do. Does he think it is fair that, in what has been presented to us today, rental income for landlords is completely not within the remit of any take for this levy, so there will be care workers in South West Wiltshire who are paying this on the income they make being care workers while it will not be paid by landlords with rental income?
Dr Murrison
I am grateful for that intervention, because additional rate taxpayers, who I think make up about 2% of taxpayers in this country, will be paying a fifth of the whole receipts for this measure and 14% of taxpayers will be providing half of it. That is progressive, which is presumably why Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, all those years ago, decided to levy this on national insurance. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for raising and underscoring that point.
However, I do have some concerns, as Ministers would expect me to have. One of those concerns was expressed by our right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), which is that this is a one-way tax, because there is no way that in the future we are ever going to attack a tax hypothecated to health and social care. In some eyes it represents a flawed tax, since as Conservatives we of course always want to remove as little money as possible from the pockets of all of our constituents.
There is also a traditional disconnect in healthcare between money in and services out. We found that in 2003, and the challenge for the Government today, which I am fully confident they are up for, is to turn the money they have announced yesterday and today into the output we so badly need, and which indeed is vital if we are to turn this around in two years’ time and use this money for social care.
There is some concern about the extent to which the money that has been announced for this will distort the social care market, and I would be interested in Ministers’ views on that. Will the industry load hotel costs, and will it front-load charges up to the £86,000 cap? How will that incentivise the domiciliary care market, which could turn out to be extremely positive? How will it affect the current 40% cross-subsidy from fee payers to local government-funded customers? How can it grow a vibrant insurance product market that will cover the delta—the £20,000 to £100,000 difference—and what will be done with actuaries and underwriters to that end?
Can I finish by saying that all of this depends on improving productivity in the national health service? It is a challenge that has evaded many over seven decades, but one that must be grasped if we are to complete this and ensure that we do indeed set the foundations—and I am confident we will—for proper social care. We need, for example, to drive down sickness absence, which is very high in the national health service. We need more service work to be done by professions allied to medicine. We need more artificial intelligence, data analysis and robotics. We need to crack down on variations in healthcare and to have zero tolerance for practitioners who diverge from it. We need to cut treatments and procedures of marginal benefit. We need early switching to generics. We must stop the revolving door between social care and the acute sector—something I am afraid the industry exploits to its advantage. Over time we must revisit the disastrous doctors’ contracts that I am afraid have meant, over the past several years, that people like me at the peak of our powers are retiring early or going part time, grossly reducing productivity in our national health service.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
Over the course of the pandemic the UK has amassed a record number of billionaires—171. Their wealth has rocketed by more than £106 billion and in total now stands just shy of £600 billion, up nearly 25% since May 2020. It is safe to say that the super-rich class has not had financial worries over the past 18 months. Unlike millions of people across the country, they do not have to worry about putting food on the table, paying the rent, or the cost of caring for elderly relatives. One might think that instead of hitting the living standards of our heroic key workers, that super-rich class would be asked to pay more when the NHS and social care system is in desperate need of funding, but that is not how it is under a Conservative Government.
This national insurance hike will hit low-paid and young workers the hardest, while doing absolutely nothing to tax the wealth of the super-rich. It will cost a band 5 nurse in Coventry more than £250, and the marginal tax rate of a recent graduate, once student loan repayments are included, will now be close to 50%. That is another attack on the living standards of the working class and the young, from a party that for 11 years has let the rents of my generation soar, as student debt rockets and wages stagnate. That does not come in isolation. Next month the Conservative party plans to cut universal credit by £20 a week—the biggest overnight social security cut in the history of the welfare state. That move will push 500,000 working-class people into poverty.
Yesterday, the Conservative party announced that it would break the triple lock on pensions, robbing retirees of nearly £350 a year at a time when pensioner poverty is already at a 15-year high. This Government are hammering working-class people, raising taxes on workers while cutting their safety net, and doing nothing to rein in the vast wealth of the super-rich. They pretend they are one nation, but today they show that they only represent one class—that of billionaire donors, super-rich property developers, big landlords and fossil fuel barons. Yes, the NHS and the social care system desperately need more funding. Our care system needs to be transformed into a national care service, modelled on our amazing NHS and free at the point of use for all, but that must be funded by a wealth tax on the super-rich, not by an income tax on the poor.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
There is, without doubt, agreement across the House that funding is necessary for health and social care. The challenge is in how we fund that, how we spend it, and how we ensure that the Government are held accountable for their promises. I will not repeat the powerful words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker). They spoke truth to power, and I hope the Government were listening. They raised a second issue—indeed, this has been raised by others: is there a proper plan? We have a document; it is called “the plan”. For me, a plan is something that sets out clearly not just ambition—that is there aplenty—but specifically what will be done, when it will be done by, who will be doing it, and how the Government in this case, and the NHS, will be held accountable. What will be the reporting mechanism? I fear I see none of that. If I am asking taxpayers to pay a very substantial sum, I think that is the least we owe them.
Under this proposal, 80% of the pot will go to the NHS backlog and 20% to social care, which will be split between sorting out the woeful provision that we have now and the cap. I suggest that our priorities here are wrong. Yes, there is a backlog, but social care should not be second class. It should not be dealt with second, after the backlog is fixed; it needs fixing now. To be honest, to talk about fixing the mechanism by which we share the cost between state and individual as the priority seems wrong. If we do not have a social care system that actually delivers, there is nothing to pay for, and there is nothing to debate about how we fund it. I believe that the Government must change that priority.
What, then, could the Government do? With regard to the backlog, they could look not just at longer-term plans—we do not have time for that when it comes to recruitment—but at how we are going to get retired doctors and overseas-qualified doctors back. The Government could do that; they could change the bureaucracy that stopped that happening during the pandemic. They could look at how we can change the way we work flexibly across the different specialisms. That can be done, it has to be done, and it should be the focus.
The Government will not like this, but we also need to look at the immigration rules. I know that there are already exemptions for highly skilled doctors and nurses, but we need more than that across the whole health sector, and that help will come only through immigration. What about targets? Constituents deserve to have specific targets set. We need to know how those are going to be triaged according to need, as I assume they will be, and how they will be reported on.
Then we have social care—what are we going to do there? Can we really afford to wait for a White Paper? No, I do not think we can, but what could we do? We could legislate now. We could mandate proper pay—pay that is fair for the quality of work and the professionalism provided. We could develop a proper, professional system. We could fund local government properly. We could police the quality of the commissioning, as we might under the new Health and Care Bill, which is going through Parliament. Again, we could change the immigration rules, and we could also look at properly supporting carers who are looking after relatives at home, removing extra burden on the NHS.
All this is possible, but without a plan and without accountability, how can we look the taxpayer in the eye and say, “If you pay, we will deliver”?
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
There were many elements of the speech by the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) that I wholeheartedly agreed with, on the definition of good social care and in particular the reporting mechanism for the money that is raised as a result of our decision tonight. She made some very important points.
I want briefly to say what an unusual first week back it has been. Yesterday, we debated the Elections Bill and basically voted on compulsory ID cards. I feel that is very much against the grain of who we are. It has always been nice to know that we can pop out to the shops or down to the polling station without photo ID, and I think that some of the things we debated yesterday about photo ID go against that very liberal notion of who we are.
Likewise, we had the debate about compulsory vaccinations. Again, I feel that there is something very illiberal in that, particularly in forcing certain people, in certain workplace conditions, to do it. I feel that that is another essential debate about who we are. I am the daughter of complete Anglophiles; I grew up with “This is England” on the coffee table at home. Sometimes I feel that we have forgotten who we are.
In 2009, the satisfaction rate for the NHS was 80%, the overall best figure ever since the measure was introduced in 1983. When this Government came in in 2010, that started to drop, and it has now dropped by more than 16%. We know that the waiting list is up to 13 million, but as the hon. Member for Newton Abbot said, we have no recording mechanism and no mechanism for knowing exactly what the money will go on. That point was very well made.
We also know that the Federation of Small Businesses has real concerns that the measure might stifle recruitment right now. The TUC is very worried about young people and their employment prospects, questioning whether this is the right moment, when we do not know whether the recovery is sustainable. I am bitterly disappointed as a vice-chair of the Local Government Association and a former council leader—I know there is one on the Government Benches—that nothing has been spelled out on how we are going to help struggling councils. All of this could very well go straight into a waiting list. There are no targets and there is no promise, so I worry that local government will be ripped off and that the £3.9 billion gap will never be filled.
The measure is coming forward at a time when we know the people who will feel its impact the most, as the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) said, happen to be in that care system. The irony is that they will have to pay even more to work in a failing system, where many are not paid the living wage. Many councils cannot afford to pay the extra living wage, which makes such a huge difference to that workforce. I am sure those on the Treasury Front Bench will make those deliberations when they have a chance. I am sure they have been working on this all summer, but it does feel a bit rushed—
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I agree with much of what she has said to date. She may or may not know that in Northern Ireland today a leading gas supplier announced a 35% price increase. That will put significant financial pressure, particularly on the—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I am not sure whether the hon. Lady has been in for much of the debate, but it is important that interventions are very short because there are a lot of people who have put down to speak who may not get in.
Carla Lockhart
That will put significant pressure on the low paid and the squeezed middle. Does she agree that the increase in national insurance contributions on top of that will have an impact on them, even making—
Catherine West
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) is making a really important point about the unknowables. We do not know by how much our gas and electricity bills will go up in the next year. We do not know whether firms will take fright and stop hiring people. One thing we do know is that council tax will go up, because there was nothing in the announcement for councils. We know a few things are not going to get better. We know a few things could get better and might not get better. It does seem to be a bit of a risky move.
In conclusion, we have had a very strange return to Parliament. Sometimes I get very surprised by the Government. I think sometimes Ministers do, too. I hope there is urgent work between the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department of Health and Social Care, and the Treasury to really make this work. It is likely to go through. I do not think there are quite enough rebels like the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen—he is shaking his head. Please try to make it work. In taking such a risky decision right now, we can at least get the dividend of people being better cared for, getting through the backlog and helping our constituents to be able to see GPs when they wish to.
Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)
I know there have been partisan words flying across the Chamber today, but one thing that unites everyone across the House is a commitment to try to tackle the issue of social care so that our children are still not having to deal with it in generations to come. I would like to start by thanking all our NHS workers who have been a part of tackling the really difficult challenge over the past 18 months. Their dedication to fighting covid, keeping us safe and keeping the NHS working at this difficult time must be commended by us all. I also want to thank our care workers. I have to mention my cousin Natalie and my great aunt Elaine, who have been fantastic, working throughout the pandemic. I have said it now. They will be watching at home.
I am really proud that, after years of it being kicked down the road, it is the Conservative party that is finally grasping this issue and saying that we are going to tackle social care. To some extent it has been disappointing to hear Labour criticise with no viable alternative. I want to try to be more constructive. One of my concerns is about the speed at which these proposals have been presented to us. We know that urgency is needed to tackle this issue. In a sense, it is fantastic that the Government want to act swiftly, but having seen these proposals only yesterday, we have had limited time to scrutinise them effectively and to consult our constituents and find out what their concerns are about these proposals, and to feed that into Government. I really hope that Government will engage with us as this passes through to the next legislative stages.
The speech that really struck me today was from my right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry). I kind of wish I could copy and paste his speech and turn it into my own, because it really did address many of the points that I wanted to make. The first one I want to touch on is the relativity of house prices and how the maximum floor for care will have an impact. My hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) made a decent point about needing a simple system, but unfortunately, when looking at that limit and relative house prices in areas such as my Bishop Auckland constituency, where the average house price is about £120,000, seeing constituents potentially lose a huge percentage of their only asset—an asset that they have worked their entire lives for to pass on to their children—is something that I am finding incredibly hard to justify, when people in other areas of the country who have worked equally hard would lose a much smaller percentage of that asset.
It is good, however, to see the floor lifted from £23,000 to £100,000. That is to be commended, but still, there is an issue about the ultra-wealthy who will also have the cost of their care capped, and who can afford to pay more than the £86,000. I hope that that will be addressed. I also have concerns about national insurance being used as the tool for this, like many other colleagues who have spoken today.
My main concern is the fact that we have not had a great deal of time to consider these proposals and to consider alternatives, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said. The article by Peter Lilley proposing a state-backed optional insurance system not only is a free market approach to tackling this, backed up by the state, which is well needed, but goes to the Conservative principle of personal responsibility that I think every Government Member supports.
A quote by Mike DeWine, the former Governor of Ohio and a US Senator, struck me:
“Governing is about making tough decisions, but it’s also about figuring out a better way to do things.”
I am so proud that the Government are making this tough decision. I hope that by working together, we can find that better way of delivering on our social care pledge, but unfortunately, for the reasons I have highlighted today, I will be abstaining on this today. However, I will work alongside colleagues to try to make it the best it can be for all our constituents, for the country and to ensure that our economy can bounce back in the best possible way.
Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)
I find it incredibly ironic that the Government scrapped the chance today to debate the removal of the universal credit uplift—perhaps because they did not want to be exposed for taking money away from the some of the poorest in society—to instead offer up a debate about disproportionately hitting some of the lowest-paid people in our country.
The double whammy of a national insurance hike and a universal credit cut shows the complete disdain that the Government have for the working population. Far from being the supposed party of aspiration, they seem to be nothing more than they have always been— the party of the 1%—and they are not even trying to hide it with this regressive tax grab. Instead of sitting in front of the House today to front up this disastrous decision, the Chancellor seems to have gone AWOL. Maybe he spent the day in Sherwood forest as a reverse Robin Hood, robbing the poor to give money to the rich.
As we have repeatedly heard from so many people in the House today, a staggering 2.5 million families across the country will be hit by this huge national insurance tax rise as well as the £20-a-week cut to universal credit. In constituencies such as mine, which has people who are among the lowest paid in the country, this devastating news will mean that in many cases, people will be pushed further below the poverty line. What do the Government have to say to those people or to the struggling small and medium-sized enterprises and businesses that have battled through the pandemic? What am I supposed to say to the people in my constituency—the public sector workers—who have been hit by wave after wave of pay freezes, and now the Government want to hit them again with a national insurance increase? What about those families who are already stretched to breaking point, who will now be forced to sell their homes and plunder their life savings to pay for the £86,000 of social care? The silence from the Government on that point in particular today has been deafening.
This week, the TUC made it crystal clear that it is completely unacceptable to hit the young and low-paid workers while leaving the wealthy untouched. It cannot be right that 95% of this tax bombshell comes from those in employment. Let us be absolutely clear: this is, unfortunately, a tax on jobs and on our economic recovery from the pandemic.
It is incredible how ruthless the ideology of the Conservatives can be, yet when the facts are staring them in the face and it makes financial sense, the Tories simply cannot countenance taxing their own. It is very simple and I will spell it out very clearly: those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest responsibility. Even the ultra free marketeers on the Government Benches have voiced concerns about the policy.
We need to consider more progressive taxation measures, such as a wealth tax to ensure that the wealthiest pay their fair share. Let us be really clear about what has happened in the past 18 months: Britain has created a record number of millionaires and billionaires during the coronavirus pandemic. Their wealth has surged—the combined wealth of billionaires in this country grew more than 20%. Instead of raiding the pockets of the lowest paid and of small and medium-sized enterprises, who may struggle to afford it, why are the Government not closing the tax loopholes and targeting the tax havens?
We also need an assessment of the impact on jobs, but we have not heard about it from the Government today and so far they have resolutely refused to do one. We need jobs to get out of this crisis into growth and get more tax coming in. We also need a full, comprehensive social care plan that is properly and fairly funded and integrated with the NHS; a system that looks after everyone in our country from cradle to grave; and, most importantly, a proposal that does not pit one generation against another that is less wealthy. The plan is unjust and badly timed, and it will not fix the social care crisis.
Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry), if only because he asked what we would say to the people in his constituency who have been struggling. It seems a strange time to ask that question when the Government have just spent £400 billion helping individuals and businesses through a tremendous crisis, keeping the show on the road and making sure that our economy can recover, that jobs grow and that we have a way of life we can continue with. I feel that the timing of his points was somewhat ill-judged.
It has been interesting to be in the Chamber today, because we seem to have covered all the reasons that we should not do something. It seems that all the ways in which we are doing something are imperfect. I feel we have captured the political paralysis that has surrounded social care over the past couple of decades. It is incredibly difficult to do anything in this area, because it requires tough choices and a punt into the dark that may or may not work—we can never be sure.
We often speak in this Chamber as if we are certain, as if we are positive and as if we know where things will go, but sometimes we have to say, “We think this is the best way forward and we hope it works.” To acknowledge that the Prime Minister and the Government are doing something today on the NHS backlog and on social care is to admire their bravery. To govern is to choose, and that is what the Prime Minister is doing.
We have heard some tremendous speeches about the alternatives to taxation or to systems, but we have been having this debate for so long. When I look my suffering constituents in the eye or when they come to our surgeries and say that the system does not work, we cannot sit there and say, “Okay, but I’m going to engage in an academic exercise for another decade until we find perfection.” Sometimes we have to acknowledge that the best way forward is to take a chance.
Today is a massive step in the right direction. We are investing £12 billion per year over the next three years to try to ensure that any damage done by the global pandemic to our NHS is no longer a problem and that we can reach 110% capacity. We are also grasping the nettle of social care reform. However, there is an intriguing paragraph in the health and social care plan: paragraph 9, which states that
“the Government will ensure this money is well spent and goes to frontline care in England, increasing efficiencies and using reforms to drive up productivity.”
I think that there is an acknowledgment, particularly among Conservative Members, that NHS funding cannot go on becoming a black hole. There is a need to ensure that outcomes and productivity are improved. Look at the lessons of the pandemic, particularly from the Nightingale hospitals, which went up in 10 days through the combination of logistical support from the Ministry of Defence and the NHS—it was unprecedented.
We saw in the vaccine roll-out that when we bring additional expertise into the NHS, we can achieve amazing things.
My “nudge” today is that I do not think we can continue to assume that more and more money will solve the problems that we have. Equally, however, I will not look my constituents in the eye and say, “I did not try.” However tough some of the decisions are that we have to take, I will back our Prime Minister and I will back our Government, because our constituents need to see our country get better, and that is what we are trying to achieve.
Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), who made a typically thoughtful and energetic contribution. There was much to agree with there.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) quoted the words, “To lead is to choose”, and here we have no easy choices. Indeed, in our job we often have tough days in the office, and nights when we lose sleep thinking about a vote, a decision, the options and the choices that we have in front of us. However, in this speech I am going to look on the bright side. I am going to try to be optimistic, and pull out the good things from the situation and the hard choices that we face. One good thing is that owing to the timing of this, I only lost one night’s sleep, but I am going to be very positive about the policy itself as well. I am going to choose three things that I want to improve, and I am glad that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is here to listen. Those three things are how the revenue is raised, the quantum and the period over which it is spent, and how it is spent.
There are never any good options for raising taxes, but I happen to think that raising taxes on having a job should possibly be at the bottom of the list when we look at new areas of income. We have spent billions on furlough, keeping people in jobs. That has been borrowed from future generations, and will be paid back. We have kept people in jobs. We have kept the economy going. We have kept the show on the road. We have avoided the economic death spiral of mass unemployment while we have all these additional rising pressures on spending on public services, including, of course, social care—the very problem that we are here to fix. There are, I think, other less bad options. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) suggested a cocktail of taxes and levies. Normally, I instinctively avoid complexity in taxation—
Ben Everitt
No—not cocktails!
We have to recognise that the simple option is not always the right one, and I look forward to the debates that will follow as this policy evolves.
As for the quantum and the period over which the revenue is spent, I must ask whether it is enough to fix the care sector. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chairman of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, referred to the previous report of the Health and Social Care Committee, which required an additional £3.6 billion for the sector. Are we going to get that, and is it going to go through at the right time? We need to solve the broken economics of running a care home, which mean that providers must fund the services off the back of private clients to subsidise the clients who are referred by local authorities. I think we need a big conversation about that as well.
Let us turn to how the money is spent. The additional funding must be supported by meaningful reform. We must address the issue of funding allocation, and the allocation of responsibility within the sector. Currently, the system is set up to incentivise referrals. The system is split between local authorities, care providers and the NHS.
Dehenna Davison
Does my hon. Friend agree that we need a wide spread of provision to ensure that we have the best possible outcomes for social care patients?
Ben Everitt
Absolutely. We need more providers in the market, but the market needs to be functioning for that to take place.
My hon. Friend made a very good point earlier about another aspect of how the money is spent. The £86,000 cap needs to be met and tweaked with a regional house price element to recognise the fact that houses are worth more in some areas than in others.
In conclusion, I will vote for this. Our job in this place is to make good laws, and we need to do that at every stage. This is a tricky problem. The Government are right to grasp the nettle and reform social care. The fundamental problem that we face is that the assumptions that we are basing our entire welfare system on were made in the 1940s when people went into work in their teens, retired when they were 60 and lived until they were about 65. Now, they are living much longer lives and retiring earlier. That is the funding issue that we face.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I must gently point out that colleagues may think that they are helping each other out by making interventions, but at this stage they are going to prevent other colleagues from getting in.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) rightly said that to govern is to choose. One of the reasons for the result of the last general election was that voters knew that this Government were more likely to make the difficult choices that were needed. The choices we have to make are not always between the good and the perfect. Many of them involve choosing the less bad option. As a Conservative, I believe that raising taxes is certainly a bad option. It clearly breaches a manifesto pledge, and it is both economically and morally wrong. It is economically wrong because higher taxes will dampen growth and prosperity in the longer term, and it is morally wrong because it means taking money away from those who have worked hard, to be spent elsewhere. That needs to be kept to a minimum.
However, if raising taxation is a bad option, surely the alternative—not acting—is far, far worse. Not acting would mean allowing the backlogs that have built up in the NHS through the pandemic to continue. That would put people’s early diagnoses at risk and delay treatments further, clearly endangering lives. It would mean not reforming social care, despite there being almost universal agreement that that reform is long overdue. Government after Government have promised to take this on, to reform social care and to put it on a sustainable footing financially. There have been endless reviews, but each time they have ended up in the “too difficult” box.
How many of us can go for a week without getting an email from a constituent about social care, whether it is about the quality of social care, access to social care, top-up fees, their ability to pay or the fear that they will have to sell everything they have worked hard and saved for all their life? That is why something needs to be done. If we agree that action is needed and that we need more money to be spent on the NHS to clear the backlog and reform social care, the only decision we have to take is how we pay for it.
In the long term, borrowing to pay for this is not a sensible option. There are very few taxes that can raise anything like enough money to meet the challenges we face. Of course this could be put on VAT, but that is clearly a much more regressive option that would place a disproportionate burden on the least well off. There have been various fanciful ideas from some Opposition Back Benchers that basically suggested that someone else should pay for it, or that there was a hidden pot of money that could be raided. It is not there! The fairest way is to have a levy on national insurance contributions, sharing the cost between employees, employers, the self-employed and those who get income from dividends, so that those who earn more pay more.
I think the shadow Chancellor suggested that this could be funded by charges on the sale of land, property and shares, but the truth is that combined revenues from all stamp duties on land, property and shares comes to about £15 billion, which is nothing like enough to pay for what is needed. So national insurance is the fairest option. Gordon Brown was right, on this one occasion, that it is the most regressive option—
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
It has been a pleasure for us to sit here for the past four hours and exercise by seeking to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, no doubt contributing towards alleviating our future social care needs.
In the next 20 years the population of England alone will increase by 10%. The number of over-75s in England will increase by 60%, which is an extra 2.7 million people. In 2020-21 there were 1.9 million inquiries for social care in England. The system is creaking. A third of my constituents are over the age of 65.
This tells us that we need to act now, and I applaud the Government for taking decisive action now. I have concerns about the action we are taking, but we need to act now and the Government are acting now.
I have three concerns about this particular measure. First, we have a health and social care levy that will, in its initial existence, go towards health. I am concerned about when we take that money out of the NHS and put it into social care. We know how difficult it was to convince people that a temporary lift to universal credit was just temporary. How on earth are we going to challenge the equivalents of Marcus Rashford when it comes to the NHS and persuade people that it is not a cut but was always the plan for a period of time before moving the money into social care? There does not seem to be any guarantee on that, and I am concerned that it will be politically difficult for any Government to do so.
Secondly, I am concerned about the intergenerational unfairness that could be seen in this measure. Along with others here in the Chamber, I have advocated a measure that looks for retired people who have a nest egg to pay more for the service they use, rather than expecting the younger cohort, through national insurance, to have to pay for it when they do not have a home of their own.
The German model was built because of the regional imbalances of reunification, and the Germans considered this model and made a provision that everybody would pay in, workers and employers—the retired had to pay both parts—and no one would have to pay more than €138 a month. That took the political heat out of the system, and it uses the private insurance market for delivery. People are incentivised to look after their parents in their own home, and they can take money from the insurance fund to do so. I would like to look further at that model.
If that does not work for the more catastrophic situations, what about the noble Lord Lilley’s proposal of taking a charge against the property, so that a premium is paid out—he estimated about £16,000—and on death the charge is released from the sale of the property?
Both plans look more towards the people using the service having to pay into it. Those who are older would see the fairness of that, because it is their children and grandchildren who have to pay the national insurance.
Thirdly, I am concerned about the overall tax take. We will have to rein in public spending, as this has to stop. We need to allocate money towards the NHS with strict criteria on where it will be spent, because it cannot be right that a 27-year-old graduate who is paying back their tuition fees is seeing 42% of their pay go towards tax. That is not what Conservatives set out to do; we set out to give people the opportunity to build dreams.
That said, we need to act now and I recognise that the health service needs an injection of funding. I will be supporting the Government, but I want to see my three proposals developed before it is too late.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), the Chair of the Select Committee on Transport, I will be supporting the Government on this measure. In so doing, I will be breaking a pledge in the Conservative party manifesto at the last general election. That is not done lightly, and I do it for two mean reasons.
First, the £400 billion cost of covid has created a gap in the country’s balance sheet that cannot be ignored or wished away. It has to be dealt with, and it is fiscally responsible for the Government to produce today’s measures. Secondly, as hon. Members have said, we have deliberated on the reform of social care for more than a decade, with every day of delay creating more risks for families. I want reform, and it is best done by this Government at this time.
However, there will be consequences from these increases in tax rates—they will hold the economy back. Public services require a thriving economy to fund them. In turn, a thriving economy requires people to be inspired to create, take risks, invest capital, make profits and grow their businesses, skills and talent. As Conservatives, this is something we understand. It is capitalism and competitive markets that deliver. I would like to hear a little more from our Government about how good the power of free markets is and a little less boasting about the latest ways in which they are spending taxpayers’ money.
With taxation rates already at highs for the past 60 years, for Conservative Members to describe themselves as “low-tax Conservatives” means that they need to be supporting efforts to reduce public expenditure. Every departmental Minister should right now, ahead of the Budget, be raising the bar for investment decisions and casting out those projects that fall short. Each Minister should be taking an axe not just to obvious waste and inefficiency, but to meaningful slices of expenditure that reflect an over-bloated state rather than an essential public need. That applies to all Departments, including the Department of Health and Social Care.
The NHS is a great hallmark of British society, but it is not a religion. It is an organisation of people to achieve a social purpose. As an MP, my role—our role—is not to deify the NHS but to hold it to account for its effectiveness in achieving that social purpose. It is so dispiriting when taxpayer funding for healthcare is increased and the immediate response of those in positions of knowledge or responsibility in our health services is to say that the funding is not enough. It is dispiriting and it is irresponsible to the taxpayer. It is not acceptable that the leadership of the NHS shies away from even the most modest of productivity targets. It is not right that, by the British Medical Association’s own calculations, more than half—70,000—of the 134,000 people involved in general practice are non-clinical administrators, and yet so many of my constituents find it so hard to get an appointment.
I wish to see reform of social care that eliminates the excessive cost risk for families. I recognise that a private insurance market for these risks cannot exist without significant state intervention and that, for a period at least, taxpayer support is required as care services are reformed. As of today, we have promises but not guarantees for reform. I am placing considerable faith in these reforms being implemented by 2023. The Government and the NHS must deliver.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Increasing taxes is not something I take lightly, and it goes against much of my belief, and of many Conservative Members, in the need for a low-tax, high-wage economy. But the realities we now face of increased pressures on our health and care system mean we cannot stand still; we must invest more in these services. Hundreds in Stoke-on-Trent South have contacted me previously about the need for more investment in social care and the challenges they face in accessing healthcare and medical treatment. I am not willing to go on ignoring these calls. For far too long—decades—social care has been starved of the real investment it needs.
No decision to invest more to the scale required is going to be easy, and money must come from somewhere. What we have arrived at is probably the least-worst option. The approach taken will ensure that this burden is spread as broadly as possible, so that all those with earned income streams must contribute, and protections are in place to protect those on lowest incomes. I also welcome the suggestions in the guidance that health services, local authorities and other public services will be compensated for these additional costs, as I know there was significant concern about the potential implications for these services of those additional costs.
If we are to put this huge investment into improving health and social care, we must also see reforms that are needed to ensure that money goes directly to the frontline of improving services in Stoke-on-Trent. We must see a further integration of services so that patients are truly put first, with all local health and care partners fully committed to delivering the improvements needed, supporting one another to reduce pressures and ensuring that people receive the right healthcare at the right time. We must also see the money spent better, cutting out waste and outdated practices where they exist.
I hope that the Health and Care Bill passes through Parliament as swiftly as possible to bring about vital reforms. Investment must be about the creation of a better funding model for social care that improves quality and reduces the burden on families. I also want Ministers to focus on ensuring that we develop the insurance market to help to protect those whose property values are on the lower end of the scale, such as people in Stoke-on-Trent, because we need to make sure that people in such properties receive the same protection as those in other parts of the country.
We must also address the huge issues we are seeing in access to health treatments and GP services, which have dramatically worsened during the pandemic. It is not good enough that my constituents in Stoke-on-Trent South have to wait inordinately long times for the treatment they need and cannot get GP appointments. We must tackle the backlog at the Royal Stoke and get primary care fully back to pre-pandemic levels. But we need to go further. Social care is a key part of addressing the pressures, but so is primary care, which must be properly invested in. We must see the development of new integrated healthcare hubs in north Staffordshire, including the development of the second phase of the new Longton health centre in my constituency, the first phase of which will open in the next few weeks.
The improvement of both social care and primary care will mean that secondary care is better supported, ending the scenes of services overwhelmed that we see frequently today at our local hospitals. In north Staffordshire, our health services face wider challenges because of the legacies of the burdens caused by Labour’s PFI disaster, and the hospital was not built to the capacity needed. Many such pressures continue, and although much progress has been made, we must continue to see the level of investment that we need in health services in Stoke-on-Trent.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton). I absolutely agree with him that the Government’s proposal is probably the least worst option.
When it comes to this debate, I feel saddest for the many constituents who have come up to me in recent years and said, “When it comes to the big issues—the issues of national interest—why is it that you lot can’t work together and come up with a solution?” Clearly, this issue is of huge national interest and has been debated in this House many times over recent decades. I have been involved in debates dozens of times in the six years I have been here. I blame colleagues from either side of the House—from both the Labour and Conservative parties. Whether it is the “death tax” or the “dementia tax”, people have come forward with proposals only to be rubbished by the other side for political purposes.
The reality is that this issue is one of many challenges that we are going to face over the next few decades. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, if we do not change our tax system, our debt-to-GDP ratio will be 400% of GDP by 2060, because of pension, healthcare and social care costs. We must sort out this issue on a cross-party basis so that we have a long-term solution.
The reality is that we have had cross-party consensus. As I have said several times in the past couple of days, I have taken part in two Select Committee inquiries on the issue, the most recent a joint inquiry by the Health and Social Care Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. There were 24 Members on those two Select Committees, 12 of whom were from the Opposition Benches, and we strongly recommended a solution based on national insurance. We can of course argue about some of the detail of the national insurance proposal, which has been changed in some positive ways over recent days, but simply to dismiss it out of hand for political purposes is irresponsible. I understand that the shadow Minister for social care, the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), has also proposed a solution based on national insurance. It does not make sense simply to say for political purposes that the proposal is wrong—
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
indicated dissent.
Kevin Hollinrake
The shadow Minister on the Front Bench can shake her head, but that is the reality behind the proposal. The Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), said clearly that he still supported a solution based on national insurance.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South that this solution is the least worst option, but we can develop better solutions down the line. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) that the German solution is better. In Germany, they came together across party lines, based on the national interest, to solve this issue. It was very similar in respect of employer and employee. The key benefit of the German solution is that when a person comes to be defined as in need of care, instead of the local authority allocating care, they can choose to take a monthly cash payment, so they can pay a relative, a neighbour or whoever to care for them. A person can be cared for by the people who know them the best, who understand them the best and love them the most, which must be better than some of the stories that we hear about care providers who give a pretty poor service, with a 15-minute package now and then.
This must be a better solution, but I have one concern. I understand why the scheme has been brought forward like this, using national insurance. It is because it is quick and easy, and we need the money today, but the concern is about hypothecation, which many Members have mentioned. This was a social care levy, but already some of it is going to the health service. That is our understanding at the start. Hypothecated taxes simply do not work, and we see that time and again. It would be better to develop this into a proper social insurance system with not-for-profit providers, so that it does not go into the private sector, but instead the money could be paid in on a proper hypothecated basis to deal with the long-term problem of social care.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow a typically well-informed speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake).
I stood for election to be a Member of this Parliament because I want to be part of a party and Government who strive to improve the lives of all of our constituents. I am Conservative because I believe in being pragmatic and realistic, not stuck in ideological thinking, but willing to find solutions to seemingly intractable problems and, more importantly, making sure that those solutions are fit for the times in which we find ourselves. As other hon. Friends have mentioned, I will not shy away from making difficult decisions, which our constituents elect us to take.
When Labour was in power, it failed to fix the roof when the sun was shining. Now the pandemic has clouded our bright skies, but we are determined to grip this issue and to fix the social care crisis once and for all, as we promised. What are we promising to do with the NHS and social care levy? This £12 billion average annual investment over the next three years means that we will invest the largest amount of any Government to upskill the social care workforce, strengthen the adult social care system, tackle the elective backlog in the NHS as it recovers from coronavirus, fund nurses a 3% pay rise as the independent pay review body recommended, build resilience for future pandemics, ensure that the NHS has the resources it needs throughout this Parliament, and, finally, implement a Dilnot solution to cap social care costs.
In addition, we promised to deliver 50,000 more nurses, 50 million more GP appointments and build 40 new hospitals. The Conservatives are the party of the NHS and it is frankly unbelievable that the Labour party will not vote this evening to give the NHS the funding that it needs.
This £36 billion investment to reform the NHS and social care is a responsible, fair and necessary plan. Many of my constituents in Guildford, Cranleigh and our villages will be feeling a sense of relief today for the genuine anxiety they feel. We know that the pandemic has created an enormous backlog in the NHS, with more than 300,000 now having waited over a year for non-urgent care. We know that our constituents have wanted a plan for social care for decades, as many colleagues have mentioned today. Importantly, we know that our constituents understand fairness, which is why I will be supporting the Government today.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson), who set out her position very clearly.
I have to say that this is the first time in all my time in Parliament that a Ways and Means motion has been debated all day. It seems to me that this has been more like a general debate on the NHS and social care. I remind the House that Parliament says:
“A ways and means resolution is needed to authorise the creation, extension or increase of taxes or other charges…Ways and means motions are most commonly put to the House for agreement immediately after second reading”.
In other words, there is a Bill that we discuss; it is laid out there. There should have been a social care Bill. We should have had that Bill and been able to debate the principle of it and then immediately afterwards voted on the Ways and Means, but we have got this mixed up with giving more money to the national health service.
A Ways and Means motion to increase a tax in order to pay more money to the health service is quite acceptable. I mean, we are creating a new tax. The motion today does not refer to 1.5% or to how much will be spent on social care. It just says that we are bringing in a new tax. We are doing that, though, without having the detail. If this was a Budget, the Chancellor would stand up and make a powerful speech, and there would be an immense amount of applause on that day for what he said. People would then read the Red Book, for five days they would unpick the Budget, and then we would vote on the Ways and Means motion.
I am very unhappy with today’s procedure. Although I support the idea of more money for the NHS and I have no objection to it being done through national insurance, I absolutely object to saying that this has anything to do with the Health and Care Bill, because that has not been through the House. Social care should be paid for separately. We should have the Bill and debate it, it should go through Committee stage and through the Lords, and then it should be paid for. I have no idea which clever-clogs in No. 10 thought it was a great idea to mix these two things up. Social care is one of the most important things—if not the most important—that this House will have to decide on. It should be done separately and properly.
The Opposition should be working with us. They have scored so many political points today. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) said it: last night was one of those nights when we do not sleep because we are worrying about how to vote. Should I vote for this because I want to support the Prime Minister? Should I vote against it because I do not agree with the principle? Or should I do nothing because I think it is a good idea and a bad idea at the same time, because the Government have mixed the two things up? I will make my decision after having listened to the shadow Minister and the Minister; as of now, I have no idea what I am going to do tonight.
Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)
It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone).
I am in absolutely no doubt that we need to raise the money to enable the NHS to recover from the pandemic. It would be wrong to raise this money through more borrowing. We should not expect our children and grandchildren to settle the debt at some time in the future; we need a plan to pay for it now.
The criticisms of this motion come not so much from the fact that the Government are choosing to raise the money, but more from the way in which it is being raised. Those criticisms centre around one concept: the idea of fairness. As we have heard in this debate, fairness is extremely important for Conservatives. If the Government are to be the force for good that they should be, we need to ensure that our policies are as fair as possible—that benefits and costs fall in a fair and equitable way across the population. I accept that there is some unfairness around using national insurance to raise the levy, but in order to raise the cash required, we must use a broad-based tax. A VAT rise would have a disproportionate impact on those with low incomes and using income tax would not incur a contribution from businesses. Of course, businesses very much benefit from health and social care, as huge numbers of people would have to leave the workforce if those services did not exist.
On reflection, I think that using national insurance to raise this levy is a fair way to proceed, especially given that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has made sure that dividends and working people of pensionable age are included. I support the motion today because we have to acknowledge that politics is not about striving for perfect solutions. It is about finding the best solutions possible within the financial, practical and moral constraints that bind us all. However, although the money raised through this motion will be a start, it will not be enough.
We have to accept that health and care costs are many times higher now than they once were. I echo the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) on this point. When the welfare state was born, life expectancy was about 65. Many people left school in their early teens and entered the workplace. In the 1940s, an individual might well spend fewer than 20 years of their lives not working. Now people can spend more than 40 years of their life not working. Simply put, during our working lives we must now pay a lot more —double, or perhaps more—in taxation, pension contributions and insurance to fund our decades of economic inactivity. We cannot escape that fact.
So in raising any additional money in future we must be far-sighted, inventive, creative and look to other countries, as other hon. Members have said. In addition to taxation, we could look to build on the success of our automatic enrolment model for workplace pensions or consider some form of contributory insurance scheme. But we must also be clear that there are alternatives to ever-increasing bills for health and social care, so I hope to see extensive consideration of local, community and capability approaches in the White Paper. We must not forget the crucial role of the family. How can we help families to look after their own relatives’ wealth for longer and with appropriate support?
I acknowledge and understand that there are criticisms of this motion, but doing nothing is not an option. When it comes to finding a pragmatic solution to such a difficult and urgent issue, I am convinced that this is a fair approach for now.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I totally sympathise with those on the Front Bench and I have huge respect for the Treasury Minister who is in his place, but I am concerned, as a Conservative, at the direction of travel. As we have heard, taxes are at their highest for 60 or 70 years—and this under a Conservative Government. For me, and I think for many of us and people around the country too, the alarm bells are ringing. I do not like being bounced into this decision. I think someone mentioned sleepless nights. Well, we will not have any because the decision is being made tonight, having been told about it only 48 hours earlier, and we still need to hear a lot more from the Government about how this is all going to work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) talked about the lack of money as our population gets older and the continual demands on the public sector increase. He is absolutely right. We cannot go on just spending the taxpayer’s money willy-nilly. This is not our money. It is money earned by people working their socks off to provide for their family, their friends, their employees and for the health and prosperity of this country, and we cannot abuse that.
I entirely support what my right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) said, in a superb speech, when he referred to a Trojan horse. If I can paraphrase, we, as Conservatives, are introducing a new tax that will never, ever be withdrawn because, come election time, we would have to say, “Okay, remember everybody—that was a one-off tax, so it is now going and billions of pounds are being withdrawn from the national health service.” I think I can see where the Opposition will go with that and what will appear on their literature in 2024.
With regard to promises made in manifestos, can we not think just a little more carefully about what we say? No one could have predicted the pandemic—I am deeply sympathetic to the Government on that point, because of course we could not. But perhaps we should say that we aim to do something rather than that we promise to do something, because circumstances change, and when one Government take over from another they change the whole thing anyway, and then, if we win again, we have to change it once more.
Throwing money into the national health service black hole is not the solution. The sad fact is that parties of all colours over many years have failed to tackle the NHS issue. We need radical reform both of the NHS and, of course, social care. I am not saying that we should change the care free at the point of delivery—not at all; I am saying that there is plenty of room for reform. Most of those I have spoken to who work in it absolutely agree. It is a matter of political courage to actually get on and do it.
We are Conservatives. A pandemic, appalling though it is, creates opportunities. Where is the vision of the Singapore-style, low-tax economy attracting the world’s best to this country to generate the wealth and prosperity that we need? To generate the revenue we need, we lower taxes—that is proven. We do not raise them, because if we do, all we do is damage our economy and have less money to spend on the things we need, like social care and the NHS.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
One thing that concerns me is that I saw some polling earlier this week showing that only about 25% of the population know that social care has to be paid for. That in itself is something we need to address through a certain level of engagement. If a lot of the people who are dismissing and opposing the national insurance rise truly understood and comprehended the devastating consequences of out-of-control social care costs, they might think differently.
Where are we right now? We are in a situation where we have spent £400 billion since the start of the pandemic. We have waiting lists growing and spiralling out of control as a result of the pandemic. We all have constituents who are waiting in pain for hip and knee replacements and more serious operations. We have constituents, including mine, who are not able to see their GP face to face and all the consequences of that. That needs to be addressed urgently. My constituents should be able to see their GP face to face when they need to do that.
We are in this appalling situation, and I take issue with the dismissive way that Opposition Members have spoken about many of the individuals who could benefit from the social care cap, referring to them all as millionaires in Surrey. The people I know who have been clobbered by social care bills are not millionaires in Surrey; they are people who have worked hard their entire life, paid tax on what they earned and at the end of their life, they have something to show for it. It is not just bricks and mortar; it is a home that they love and that they raised their kids in. Not unreasonably, they want to pass that on to their kids. When their mental and physical health is deteriorating, to see everything they have worked hard for whittled away in a matter of years is utterly depressing and morally wrong. I am proud to support a cap that addresses that, and I make no apology for doing so.
In terms of the manifesto point, I stood on a manifesto—we all did—and there was a pandemic straight after we had the election. This is an extraordinary situation, and probably nothing has happened since the second world war that has had such a dramatic effect on cost and spend. We spent £400 billion. People make this inaccurate comparison with George H.W. Bush and “read my lips”. Over the summer, I had a few days off, and I read a very long book about George H.W. Bush. He did not have a pandemic happen a year after he stood for election. It just simply did not happen. It is like writing a manifesto in 1938 and then realising that thousands of Spitfires have to be built because the second world war is starting. The money has to be raised somehow, and to say, “We cannot possibly do that, because we cannot change the manifesto we stood on a year ago”, would be absolutely absurd.
What are we dealing with right now? We are dealing with a situation where we have a cap of £86,000. We need to know more. We need to know more particularly about those with £20,000 to £100,000 and how their care costs will be subsidised. We understand that the councils will help with that. I need to know more about how that will work in practice. I sympathise with my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) and others who represent areas with hard-working constituents where house prices are very different from those in London. We need to know more about that.
Ultimately, we have seen the Prime Minister speak on this issue, and we have seen his passion. He is right to be passionate about this. The easy thing for him to do would be to use the pandemic as an excuse to push this issue into the long grass, but he has not done that. He has done the difficult thing and grasped the nettle. I am proud that he is our leader and our Prime Minister. He is doing that. What else was in the manifesto? Sorting out social care. No one should suggest we push that into the long grass. The Labour party does not want to decrease international aid, it wants us to make the universal credit increase permanent and it wants us to spend £16 billion on this and that. Labour never says no to a pay increase. I know what will be in my manifesto: you voted against—
Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
I begin by joining others in applauding this Government for finally tackling the social injustice of catastrophic care costs. Yet again, a Conservative Government are taking the difficult decisions that others have avoided. My remarks today will focus on fairness and the nature of health and social care demand.
First, on fairness, somehow the political debate in this country—fuelled by those on the Opposition Benches—focuses on fairness as only one thing: the need for the better off to pay more. That is definitely an important element of fairness in society, and we see that with these proposals, with the top 14% of earners paying half of this new levy. It is not the only measure of fairness, however. The other important way to decide whether a society is fair is to think about what someone gets back compared with what they put in. We do not talk enough about the fact that a small number of people pay many, many times over what they get back and that some people pay almost nothing and get everything paid for by others. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have talked about the challenge for those on low incomes and the proportion that will be taken from their income by a tax rise, but it works both ways. Those same people, relative to what they put in, get a lot back when they seek health and social care services.
A person from a middle-income family could pay significant amounts in tax over many decades and buy their home but then see that home and nearly every penny of what they saved taken off them to pay for social care. They could live next door to someone who has paid perhaps no tax or a low rate of tax and gets everything paid for them. They end up in exactly the same boat, with nothing to show for what they saved, despite the huge difference in what they put in through taxes. That is simply not fair. In this case, people on lower incomes will continue to benefit from essentially free social care; they are just being asked to contribute a little bit more, and inevitably a little bit more will be spent on them. That is fairness, too.
I turn to demand for health and social care, and a point that perhaps will not be popular on my side of the House. I am a Conservative and do not want the Government to pay for everything on behalf of everybody, but the facts of health and social care spending are fundamentally different from those of other areas of spending. In real terms, what it costs to run an education system, prison service or public transport should be broadly stable—if anything, it might go down—but every time we treat someone successfully in the NHS, one of two things happens. Either the condition becomes chronic or comes back and we have to treat them again or, if it does not come back, they live longer and become ill with another condition. That is an unalterable reality, and it will happen more and more as we improve our healthcare services.
A heart attack is a good example. We have improved enormously the number of lives we save when someone has a heart attack, but that means more people live with chronic heart conditions that result from their heart attack, or they may live longer and end up with another condition—perhaps cancer or dementia—and we have to pay for that on top. [Interruption.] I join Opposition Members in saying that that is not a bad thing. We have not failed because we have spent more money on people’s health and social care. It is not a negative—we are providing a greater public benefit—but ultimately, over time, even if we tackle all the inefficiencies and challenges in healthcare spending we see in the NHS and get all those things right, we will still need to spend more on health and social care. That is why I welcome the proposal.
We need to start separating the discussion on tax and spend for health and social care from that on other areas of public spending, and the step we are taking to create some hypothecation, which is similar to that seen in other countries through insurance, does that. People can therefore understand that we have not failed because we have spent more and that we all need to spend more to ensure that we get the continued public benefit of living longer, with health and social care supporting us to do that, so that we can spend more time with our friends and families.
I will support the motion and encourage Members on both sides of the House to engage more thoroughly with the challenges of rising costs in health and social care. This is not just about waste, efficiency and all these other things; it is actually in the nature of delivering better health and social care for a population.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
The key issue for me is not so much with raising the funds—there are no perfect solutions for that—but with the spending of them. I am more than happy to look my constituents in the eye and say “I voted to raise taxes” if I can demonstrate that we have something to show for it. Those of us with a local government background will know that the social care sector has been crying out for a sustainable financial settlement for at least two decades.
The fair access criteria that were implemented by a Labour Government in 2003 precipitated a financial crisis in a sector that was already under pressure by removing local authority discretion over services and failing to provide the funding for the new model, and charging policies and council tax precepts have proved unable to bridge that gap. As a chairman of a social services committee in those days, I looked my local residents in the eye while imposing Labour’s charging policy for social care on them, so I welcome the Government’s courage in bringing forward a proposal that looks both realistic and workable.
Ben Everitt
Does my hon. Friend, with his local government background, think that this policy will fit within a wider local government finance reform agenda?
David Simmonds
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to highlight that wider reform agenda. I know we are anticipating more detailed proposals from the Government in due course, but it is clear, as he will know from his local government experience, that if we in this House are serious about fixing social care—much of which is not about the elderly, but about working with adults and children with disabilities—we must learn the lessons from the sector of several decades of change.
First, we must reflect on the lessons of the better care fund, which taught us that councils have been the efficient delivery partner. Even when the sole focus has been to relieve pressure on the NHS, councils have been much more efficient on the whole in using those funds. We must avoid, as many Members have said, that convenient political mistake of allowing all the money to disappear into an NHS black hole with nothing to show for it. However, having learned the lessons of the better care fund, we have to ensure that those additional national insurance costs do not consume the extra funding. I have heard Ministers’ assurances about this, but the care sector has heard many times of new funding that has been cancelled out by deductions from other budgets, so we need absolute clarity that this will find its way to the frontline.
The second point I would like to highlight is that this does not just affect the elderly. About two thirds of social care costs are for working age adults and children, and the NHS is barely involved in many of those cases. However, the costs can be eye-wateringly high, so we need to make sure that as we direct those funds, as my hon. Friends have highlighted, they are getting to where they are required.
The third lesson, which has been mentioned by a couple of Members, is about how the market responds. We have a thriving market for social care in this country, including charities, the private sector and local authorities. We know many of those organisations will see the £86,000 as a very tempting target: the sooner someone spends their £86,000, the sooner the state steps in. We need to ensure that we have learned the lessons of what has happened with the involvement of some businesses, particularly in the children’s social care sector, and make sure this is not seen as simply an opportunity to rip off the taxpayer.
Finally, may I urge Ministers to review the operation of the fair access criteria and the rules that underpin them? The rule of provide for one and provide for all, which was clarified by a subsequent judicial review for the London Borough of Harrow, forced the retrenchment of local authorities in adult social care towards serving only the most critical needs of people in our constituencies.
Mark Fletcher
My hon. Friend is giving an excellent speech. One thing he has touched on, but perhaps not expanded on, is the efficiencies that local government has found. Are there any particular lessons that he thinks are relevant to the NHS as we move forward?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. We really are pushed for time, and this is not fair on those who are winding up.
David Simmonds
Concluding rapidly, Madam Deputy Speaker, that is a very important point. We need to recognise, as many constituents are surprised to discover, that as a matter of law very strict eligibility criteria restrict what they can access. We need to ensure, as we reform the sector, that we free up local authorities to use these resources to meet the demographic challenges.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
It is customary when closing a debate to say that we have had a good debate, and indeed we have, but what has been most striking is how inadequate a basis it has been for a change of this magnitude to the tax system of our country. I intend to come back to that point.
We have heard a number of extremely sharp and insightful contributions, including from my hon. Friends the Members for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) and for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), who talked very powerfully about how what has been set out does nothing to improve the working conditions facing social care workers, many of whom will now themselves be facing a tax rise. I would just like to say that it is wonderful to see my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East back in her place in this House.
We have heard contributions from the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), and the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who asked very important questions of Ministers. We did not get answers to those questions, and I hope the Chief Secretary will address the really important points that were raised. I will touch on those a little later.
We also heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), for Eltham (Clive Efford), for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) and for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West). They covered a range of different points, but they were all clear that this does not represent a proper plan for the NHS or for social care. It is, instead, a broken promise. Two and a half million working households will be hit by the Tory double whammy of cuts to universal credit and an increase in national insurance.
Understandably, I have focused on contributions from Labour Members, and I am sad that, except for a few Conservative Members—notably the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry)—many of those who bravely stated their reservations over the weekend to the Sunday newspapers have been strangely silent this evening. I hoped we might have heard from whichever Tory MP said that putting up national insurance would be “morally and economically wrong”, and that:
“It kicks in at a low level…If you get all your income from investments and property you don’t pay a penny, but if you work your guts out for minimum wage you get clobbered.”
I could not agree more.
Kevin Hollinrake
That point about rental income has been made on a number of occasions. If someone holds their properties in a limited company and they take their profits through dividends, those dividends are taxed to include the social care levy. Will the hon. Lady put the record straight and accept that that is the case?
Bridget Phillipson
It is ludicrous that a landlord will be paying not a single penny more, but their tenants—many of them perhaps working in the NHS or social care—are about to be clobbered by a tax rise. Some 95% of what is to be raised from this measure will come from working people and businesses. What the hon. Gentleman says is simply not right. I understand that one former Cabinet Minister used perhaps more colourful language this afternoon, and I will not test your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, by repeating exactly what they said. Safe to say, however, that he or she is not a fan of this Tory tax hike.
It is usual for major fiscal events in the House to be timetabled in advance. Indeed, this week the Chancellor put us all on notice of a comprehensive spending review and an autumn Budget at the end of next month. It is also usual for major fiscal events to be accompanied by independent and thorough scrutiny by the Office for Budget Responsibility. It is usual for those forecasts to be published alongside the Government’s plans, so that all Members of the House can understand, in detail, what they are voting for and how it will affect the public finances, the livelihoods of our constituents and the success of the economy.
The OBR’s typically thorough work back in March produced a report with more than 130 charts and tables, but the flimsy document produced by the Government yesterday had just three. I recall when some Government Members were sticklers for the rights of this House, and sticklers for procedure and proper time to debate and consider changes that will have a huge impact on our society and the shape of our economy. It seems that those days are long gone. The change we are being asked to vote through tonight is not being introduced in this extraordinary form because that is right for the country. The House knows that. It is because it is the right approach for the Prime Minister: announcement on Tuesday, vote on Wednesday, and perhaps a reshuffle later this week—Back-Bench rebellion averted. That is no way to run a country.
Let us be clear about what is happening. This House is being asked to approve, with almost no notice, an extra £11.4 billion of taxation on workers and businesses, and an extra £600 million of dividend taxes—95% of the new revenue is to come from taxing jobs and earnings. When this Government need income, they do not turn first to those with assets, stocks and shares and property, or to those with the broadest shoulders who can afford a little more. No, they turn to working people: to those who work hard to earn their income, and their employers. They break a solemn promise that every Government Member made to the people of this country. That is a choice, and it is not a choice that the Labour party would make.
Two other major questions emerge from the contributions today. Where is the Government’s actual plan? We need a real plan for social care, not a few numbered paragraphs and a handful of case studies. Labour’s priority would be to give older and disabled people the chance to live the life they choose, shifting the focus of support towards prevention and early help. Let us not forget in this place that around half of the social care budget supports working-age adults with disabilities. They are far too often overlooked in discussions about social care, and the Government’s announcement does nothing for them.
Alongside a strong and skilled social care workforce, Labour would deliver a new deal for care workers to create a well-motivated and properly rewarded workforce, with clear support for unpaid carers—the very people who got us through the last 18 months, whom we clapped and claimed to care about. There is absolutely no sign of that plan here today or in the documents published yesterday. The document that the Government published yesterday is strikingly poor on the practicalities of delivery, not just for social care but for our NHS too.
Our national health service was chronically overstretched long before the pandemic hit. We entered the pandemic with over 100,000 vacancies. By March this year, there were 5 million people on waiting lists for NHS treatment—waiting longer for cancer care, longer for vital surgery, longer for mental health support. What we have been given today is not a plan; it is the promise—another promise—of a plan to follow. The Minister could not even tell us what the impact would be on waiting times. He could not tell us what it meant for local authorities on the frontline. He could not give us details of how public sector bodies are expected to meet the cost. It is not a plan; it is just a tax rise.
Much of today’s debate has focused on whether it is the right sort of tax rise. Sometimes it is easy to focus on the fiscal aspects and forget the economic aspects. Our recovery is still fragile. Businesses are under enormous pressure. We all know it; many are yet to fully reopen, and many are not yet operating at full capacity. Yet the Chancellor has been putting up council tax, he is slashing universal credit, he is freezing income tax thresholds—he is sucking demand out of our economy at the worst possible time.
The shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), set out powerfully what these measures mean for working people, but this is a series of hammer blows for firms, too. Small businesses, struggling to get back on track after a terrible 18 months, have been clear, in the words of the Federation of Small Businesses, that this is “precisely the wrong moment” to be putting up the cost of taking on and retaining staff. The FSB estimates that these changes could mean an extra 50,000 people out of work.
This is the wrong process to agree the wrong tax at the wrong time. It will not deliver what is promised for our health and social care sectors. The Health Secretary cannot even tell us whether it will clear the NHS backlog in this Parliament. It will not give social care the resources it needs in the next three years. There is not a plan for reform of social care. This tax rise will not create more and better-paid jobs in the wider economy, it is not fair across the regions, it will not end people having to sell their homes to fund their care, and it will not help our economic recovery. The Prime Minister cannot even guarantee that it is the last unfair tax rise of this Parliament. Tonight, we are not voting for a plan to fix social care. There isn’t one. We are voting on the third Tory tax rise on working people, and we will oppose it.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Steve Barclay)
Let me first thank hon. and right hon. Members for their thoughtful and constructive contributions to today’s debate.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister set out a series of necessary steps to tackle the covid backlogs, reform adult social care and bring the health and social care system closer together on a long-term, sustainable footing. As the House well knows, the pandemic has put unprecedented pressure on the NHS. The number of patients waiting for elective surgery and routine treatment in England is now at a record high of 5.5 million. If left unchecked, that could reach 13 million, an issue of concern across the House. At the same time, this country is facing a long-standing challenge to the social care system. Typically, around one in seven must pay over £100,000 for care, with bills falling indiscriminately on some of the sickest and most vulnerable in society.
The Government’s response, the plan we have debated today, means an investment of £36 billion in the health and social care system over the next three years. Patients across the country will benefit from the biggest catch-up programme in the history of the NHS. The social care system will finally be reformed, ending unpredictable and catastrophic care costs faced by thousands and making the system fairer for all. I gently say to the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), who said a moment ago that this is not the right time, that many times in this House people have highlighted the urgency of acting both on the covid backlog and on social care.
Jake Berry
My right hon. Friend has helpfully said that one in seven—I believe that is what he said—people currently in the care system pay over £100,000. Could he just say in absolute numbers how many that is, in any given year or period he chooses? If he does not have the information with him tonight or cannot get it from the Box, can he write to me with that information and put a copy in the House of Commons Library before we have our next debate?
Steve Barclay
I am glad my right hon. Friend highlights that point. Let me address it in two ways, because it goes to the crux of his remarks in the debate. We have set out, as was referred to even by critics of the Government, the illustrative analysis of the impact of this from a distributional point of view, with lower-income households being the largest net beneficiaries. We have also said that we will say more on that, because it will evolve by 2023, when those of state age who are working come within scope. Obviously, the distributional analysis will change.
Let me take head on my right hon. Friend’s central concern, which was that his constituents in Rossendale and Darwen, because of lower housing costs, will be disproportionately impacted. First, if one looks at London, the Evening Standard, for example, is concerned that 14% will pay the lion’s share of the cost because that is where the highest concentration of higher tax payers are. For his constituents, one key aspect of the reform is that, through the cap, it ends the unpredictability of costs. If I look at the north-east of England, the Resolution Foundation found that only 29% of individuals aged over 70 have sufficient eligible assets that they will not receive any state support. The point is that the uplifting in the means test, which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out, again benefits those parts of the country he was championing.
Steve Barclay
I have just given way and addressed my right hon. Friend’s points head on. Let me, in turn, address head on the points raised by the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves).
In the shadow Chancellor’s speech, she said that she opposed the levy despite, as a number of Members pointed out, the previous Labour Government taking a similar approach in 2002-03, because she supports taxing wealth. The problem with that is that only a broad-based tax base, such as income tax, VAT or national insurance contributions, can raise the sums needed for such a significant investment. Again, that was a point made by critics of the Government, including my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker). It could not be raised by taxes on wealth. Currently £6 billion is raised from inheritance tax, £8.7 billion from capital gains tax and £12.3 billion from property transaction tax. Indeed, that case was demolished by the Chair of the Treasury Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), as well as by my hon. Friends the Members for Dudley South (Mike Wood) and for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who highlighted that to raise the revenue required requires a broad-based approach.
Peter Grant
On the subject of cases being demolished, one of the cases that the right hon. Gentleman’s colleagues have made great deal of play of today is that of the fictional Yusuf in the Government’s own document. According to the Government, Yusuf’s care home costs are £700 a week. They claim that under the current system they would have had to spend £293,000 before they reached the current cap. The Minister will be aware—I hope he can count—that in order to spend £293,000 at £700 a week—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I would like the hon. Gentleman to put his question.
Peter Grant
What percentage of people going into a care home have any chance of still being alive in nine years’ time?
Steve Barclay
One of the features of the Dilnot proposals—Dilnot has been very frank about this—is that his costs ramp up over time. That is why the initial funding is £5.4 billion, but obviously, the social care element will increase. I will come to the case put forward by SNP Members, who seem bizarrely not to want the Union dividend that is offered and to not be seeking that additional funding. Let me finish on the Opposition amendment—
Steve Barclay
I will come to the points on devolution and happily give way at that stage, but let me just deal with the Opposition amendment, which requests a distributional impact assessment. As we have covered, that has been set out today. The Government have already published a document on the impact of our health and social care plan on households, looking at the impact of the new spending and the levy, with a full distributional analysis being published at the Budget and spending review.
As for the impact on businesses, businesses will play their part in funding this plan. However, existing national insurance contribution reliefs and allowances will also apply to the levy. This means that 40% of all businesses will not be affected due to the employment allowance, and it allows eligible employees to reduce their national insurance liability by up to £4,000. Again, that point was brought out by my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who highlighted the impact on business and the fact that businesses, with 1% of the highest turnover, will cover 70% of the cost.
Mr Betts
I think the right hon. Gentleman probably knows which point I am going to raise. I am very interested in the impact on local authorities. Out of the £36 billion that will be raised over three years, how much extra money will go to local authorities after the costs of the “cap and floor” system have been taken into account? How much extra money over three years will go to local authorities out of the £36 billion?
Steve Barclay
I listened very closely to the hon. Gentleman’s speech, because he is a very informed and knowledgeable commentator on these issues. He rightly pointed to paragraph 36, where we are being very clear about the role in terms of demographic and unit pressure. As he well knows, part of the discussion at a spending review is to look at local government pressures in the round. That is in the context that local authorities are getting an additional £2.2 billion of funding. I remind the House, in terms of the adult social care flexibility that was allowed for councils this year, that out of the 152 local authorities, less than two thirds actually used that flexibility. That is part of looking at these issues in context.
Let me come to the central point put forward by the Scottish National party, which was very well demolished by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). All parts of the United Kingdom need a long-term solution to fund health and social care. The Scottish Government’s independent review of adult social care recently noted—[Interruption.] I am quoting from their own review. I thought they would want to hear that. It stated that
“Scotland’s ageing demography means that more money will need to be spent on adult social care over the long term”—
and its recommendations to the Scottish Government are that this would
“require a long-term and substantial uplift in adult social care funding.”
In fact, in 2002, John Swinney said that a 1% increase was
“progressive taxation…required to invest in the health service in Scotland”.—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 18 April 2002; c. 8005.]
Alison Thewliss
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that that was 18 years ago and that things have changed? Since that time, national insurance has not been reformed in any way to protect the poorest, as income tax has been.
Steve Barclay
Obviously, what SNP Members regard as progressive has changed. The point is that if they disagree with this, they can adjust their Barnett consequentials, spend that and reprioritise their spending accordingly. Indeed, likewise, the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards)—I hold him in great affection and he speaks very powerfully in the Chamber—said that these are “English priorities”. Clearing the covid backlog and addressing the challenges of social care are not English priorities. They are United Kingdom priorities, they are this Government’s priorities, and they are the people’s priorities.
This levy will enable the biggest catch-up initiative in the history of the NHS, a comprehensive long-term solution to the social care challenge and a significant long-term investment that will directly improve people’s lives.
Those are things that I think my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) values, and I hope he will support them.
The Prime Minister said yesterday:
“You can’t fix the covid backlogs without giving the NHS the money it needs; you can’t fix the NHS without fixing social care; you can’t fix social care without removing the fear of losing everything to pay for social care”.—[Official Report, 7 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 155.]
This plan addresses those problems. I commend it to the House.
Business without Debate
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Delegated Legislation
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to bring to the House a subject that affects every one of us. On the back of a particularly scorching few days and a summer where we have seen unprecedented weather events in mainland Europe as well as across the wider world, no one is any more in any doubt that we have a problem. Most acknowledge that our actions as human beings on this planet have played a significant part and that we have a very direct interest in addressing those behaviours if we are to survive in future.
With United Nations summits on both the climate and nature emergencies in the next few months, it is particularly timely to be looking at what we can all do in our own areas. My purpose in bringing this debate tonight is to highlight what I consider to be the excellent work being done in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and to press the Government to listen both to the recommendations and the requests that flow from them.
I am sure the Minister is in listening mode. This is no partisan intervention; we all need to be working together on these issues. It is what the public wants and expects, and while there are differences in view and legitimate differences in how some of these goals will be achieved, it is striking that almost all political persuasions are contributing locally. From the school climate protests, initially on Fridays a couple of years ago, which were fantastically well-supported in Cambridge and quite inspiring, through to the explosion of interest triggered by the Extinction Rebellion-led protests, awareness has risen substantially, and the political parties have responded, and rightly so.
The first directly elected mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, James Palmer, was an often controversial figure, and I do not think that he would mind me saying that he was not too unhappy about having that reputation. Between us, we had perhaps predictable areas of disagreement, but on establishing the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate, he made an important and bold move. Persuading Baroness Brown, renowned for her national work with the Climate Change Committee, to chair it gave added gravitas to a highly impressive panel charged with the work. Its first report earlier this year came shortly before Mayor Palmer was replaced by my friend, Dr Nik Johnson, the new mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and I am delighted that Dr Nik has picked up the recommendations with enthusiasm.
We are fortunate in Cambridge and Cambridgeshire to live in a truly beautiful region of the UK, with fenland, nature reserves, peatland restoration projects, and more, but as the impacts of climate change become more apparent, it is clear that we must act to protect those things that make Cambridgeshire and Peterborough so special. Our environmental assets not only enrich our lives and, we hope, the lives of future generations, but provide habitats for wildlife, clean air, and the basis of our local food supply. The work that the combined authority and local councils as well as many companies and voluntary organisations are doing to protect all of this is crucial.
Led skilfully by Baroness Brown, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate published an initial report in March 2021, with a series of 31 recommendations for local and central Government. The recommendations were grouped into four key themes, covering transport, buildings, energy, and peat. The commission will publish a second report, which I am told is due next month, covering other important themes such as waste, water, business and industry. As trade unions have rightly argued, the requirements for a just transition are critical—there must be social justice alongside environmental justice—as is the role of nature in helping us to adapt and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Their conclusions on these issues will be important in guiding actions from a range of local organisations, but will also need support from Government, and I shall return to that point.
That first report highlighted the scale of the challenge. The region is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with low-lying topography, some of the UK’s highest quality farmland, but it is farmland that has been worked hard over many years, complex systems of water management, and flood and very real drought risks. Worryingly, emissions in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area are 25% higher per person than the UK average, so there is much to be done.
It is easy to be dismayed by the scale of the challenge, but it is also important to recognise work already in place. It will not surprise the Minister if I reference work being done by local councils, including the excellent Cambridge City Council. While Councils provide leadership, it is the wide range of organisations, businesses and individuals working together that will make the difference. I was proud, but not surprised, to read that the commission’s survey of local residents showed a strong appetite for climate action. Many have signed up to a Cambridge climate change charter, developed by the admirable Cambridge Carbon Footprint, as we all work to make Cambridge net zero by 2030.
Let me return to the recommendations of the report, which are extensive. For example, on transport, the commission recommends that all new residential and non-residential developments in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough with parking provision be fitted with charging points for electric vehicles, and that buses and taxis should be net zero by 2030. That is quite a short sentence, which, in itself, is a major and costly task. I do not underestimate what we are asking, particularly of taxi and private hire drivers, who have been hit hard by the pandemic.
I find it baffling that we have still been allowing homes to be built—we have plenty of these in and around Cambridge—without electric charging points. I recall being shown around some of those new developments by developers last year and making that very point. We have known for years that electric charging points are needed. I find it staggering that the oh-so-profitable housing development sector needs to be made to do these things.
The market does not deliver. It needs regulation and intervention. It needs intervention in the electricity distribution system. It is too hard to get these systems connected at a cost-effective price, so will the Government review arrangements for network access and connection charges to allow rapid take-up and delivery of local decarbonisation projects? Lack of capacity is now a real constraint, so will the Government support operators to invest more in the distribution network to head off future capacity constraints?
The commission recommends that the combined authority decarbonises housing by adopting a net zero standard for new homes, and improving funding and incentives for home retrofitting. It also advises that new properties have better drainage systems and flood defences—again, short sentences, but big challenges, and I am just summarising.
The commission recommends that the combined authority creates a local energy plan, considering options for hydrogen production with Government support. I urge the Minister to look at the recommendations for the spending review from the all-party parliamentary group for the east of England, which I co-chair with the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), because there is a real opportunity here for the east as a key driver of the wider UK economy.
On peatlands, the commission recommends investing in climate change mitigation and biodiversity enhancement schemes for the fens. That in itself is worthy of a debate in its own right, with great work being done by a range of partners on the fen restoration projects through Fens for the Future.
Now, commissioning a report is one thing; taking on board the recommendations is quite another. I think we are all familiar with excellent reports containing recommendations that languish on the shelf for years. We do not have time for that. This is a serious piece of work. I was delighted to hear that the combined authority has committed to act on all of the commission’s recommendations.
As well as committing to reducing its operations to net zero by the end of 2030, Dr Nik has appointed Councillor Bridget Smith, leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council, to a lead role championing climate and the environment. A report commissioned by a Conservative, implemented by a Labour Mayor, working with a Liberal Democrat council leader—it can be done.
The combined authority is undertaking a review of its local transport plan in the context of the commission’s recommendation, with a focus on active travel and low carbon solutions, and is bringing forward proposals to reform bus services. As a former shadow Transport Minister and lifelong bus enthusiast, I can say that this is another sentence worthy of a whole debate in itself. The reimagining of our bus system will be central to a more sustainable future. I am pleased that the authority has recently been successful in advancing to the next stage of bidding under the Government’s zero-emission buses competition, which would kick-start the transformation of the local bus fleet serving the Cambridge area.
However, I cannot help noting that the achievement of a 10-minute frequency for buses in Cambridge will only take us back to the situation when the last Labour Government supported buses more generously. The real challenge will be to get that frequency to work reliably, which we were not able to do before. That is why I am so pleased that the Greater Cambridge Partnership is putting the infrastructure in place to be able to makes this a reality, because, as I suspect you know too, Madam Deputy Speaker, people will only use the bus if the bus is reliable and on time, and that means prioritisation. This investment will also support the commission’s recommendation that all buses become low carbon, and is part of an ambitious combined authority vision to transform the public transport offer, and connect the too many parts of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough that suffer significant deprivation.
There is so much more to be said on each of these issues. As I have already alluded to, on farming and peat soils the combined authority is supporting a partnership that is drawing together local farmers and academics to understand and develop effective changes. This has stimulated private sector investment in a collaborative approach and will provide local input to the Government’s lowland peat taskforce. The combined authority also has a target of doubling the amount of rich wildlife areas and green space across the area, in line with the Commission’s recommendation—another subject worthy of a debate in itself.
I said that I would highlight the work that Cambridge City Council is doing in response to the commission’s report. I pay particular tribute to some of the lead executive councillors involved—the leader, Lewis Herbert, with Rosy Moore, Katie Thornburrow and Alex Collis. It is very welcome that Cambridge has been awarded a silver sustainable food award and continues to reduce food waste through eight new food hubs. It was a delight to visit Cambridge’s community farm, Cambridge CoFarm, recently to see people working together to provide food for these hubs. The council has also recently secured £1.7 million from the Government to install heat pumps and solar panels at local swimming pools—a measure that will reduce emissions from the council’s biggest source of energy. On top of this, in 2018 Cambridge City Council was the first council to require all new licensed taxis to be low emission vehicles. So we are making some progress, but I strongly believe that the Government need to do much more to equip our local leaders with the tools to tackle the climate and nature emergencies. We urgently need better funding for greening our public transport system and investing in retrofitting, and more new green homes such as the Passivhaus council homes scheme announced for Cambridge just a few weeks ago by executive councillor Mike Todd-Jones.
Looking briefly beyond Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, I am grateful to the House of Commons Library for drawing my attention to the recently published report by the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport entitled “Recognising local authorities as key partners in the Net Zero Strategy”. In this report, it says very clearly:
“Empowering local authorities is not a ‘nice to have’, it is essential to delivering long-term, sustainable emissions reductions for local places.”
I wholeheartedly agree.
Many local authorities across the country are undertaking pioneering and innovative work to address the climate crisis. The Local Government Association estimates that 230 councils have declared a climate emergency, and Climate Emergency UK believes that 81% of councils have a climate plan. Whether it is Telford and Wrekin’s Labour council building a publicly owned solar farm that powers over 800 homes or Mayor Sadiq Khan’s ambitious climate plan for London, local authorities across the UK are doing their bit, and so it is time for the Government to do their bit. Polly Billington of the UK100 network of local authority leaders across the country committed to tackling climate change has said that local authority leaders hold the key to net zero, but “two key hurdles remain”. She argues that one of these hurdles is that the Government simply do not have a plan for reaching net zero, saying:
“The reality…is that the UK’s current rules do not enable local authorities to do what they need to get to Net Zero locally…Put simply, the UK government won’t be able to achieve what they want to do unless they work with local authorities and change the rules”.
Frankly, on all these issues, the Government have been too slow. I have been closely involved in the passage of the Environment Bill, which has been repeatedly delayed and is still making its way slowly through Parliament—too slowly. The initiative we ought to be seeing from the Government simply is not there. For example, on housing retrofitting, the stop-start nature of Government programmes means that the market is unable to retain talent and skill. I ask the Minister: will the Government commit to funding retrofitting incentive schemes in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough over a longer multi-annual period, and will they devolve more control of such schemes to suit the characteristics of the area? I fear I know the answer. I suspect that we will run into the usual problem: which Department is responsible? This debate has shifted from one Department to another—a problem in itself.
I have another ask. Local authorities in the Cambridge area have planning policies in place to encourage high standards for energy efficiency and water usage in new development, and are seeking to go further in their emerging plans. Lack of water supply and the environmental impact of water abstraction is a key concern of residents in the Cambridge area. Our chalk streams are a real worry. The Government’s heat and building strategy is expected soon. Will the Government support Cambridgeshire councils as they seek to adopt higher standards to respond to the specific climate issues in the area? Will the future home standards be implemented? Otherwise every home built now without low-carbon measures becomes a much more expensive future retrofit cost. Of course, inevitably there is the issue of resources, and ADEPT and many others have also called on the Government to step up investment and support for local authorities. Again, I suspect I know the answer.
Sadly, a lack of data from the Government has also proved a barrier to local authorities. A substantial area of UK lowland peatlands is found in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, yet their emissions are not currently recorded in the UK emissions inventory. This is a clear area where the Government can support local authorities with the tools and insight they need to make effective plans. I have spoken at some length and have only been able to touch on some very broad points. I have tried to highlight how people across the political spectrum have been working together, although of course not everyone is always so keen. There have been complaints from some Conservatives on the combined authority who do not like some of the proposals, but the good news is that the vast majority of mainstream opinion agrees that we have a clear and urgent climate and biodiversity challenge. We can only have a chance of making progress if we have the consent of the majority of the people, and I think we have that. That is why it is so important that whatever our differences, mainstream politicians can work together on this key challenge. Local politicians are up for it. The question is: are the Government prepared to play their role?
The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
I begin by congratulating my friend, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this important debate this evening. I take a moment, if I may, to recognise the excellent work done by Baroness Brown and the commission in producing the report of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate Change. The report is testament to the drive and ambition that local areas have in supporting the country’s transition to a cleaner, greener future, and I know that across the UK, our local areas have already made great strides towards this future, including Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, which are demonstrating that in spades.
This Government recognise the important role that local areas play in helping drive progress towards our national climate change commitments. As you are now aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, the report makes a number of recommendations to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and to central Government. While sadly I do not have the time to address each recommendation in turn, I commend these first four areas, which in and of themselves demonstrate the enormous challenges we face as a country. We will have a close look at the peat area, which is of particular note to me as I have a large area of peat in my constituency, too. It is something that we need to work on in a considered way to make good progress.
The recent National Audit Office report “Local government and net zero in England” identifies £1.2 billion in grant funding available this financial year for local authorities to act on climate change and notes that that is a sixteenfold increase on the previous year. In addition to this grant funding, the local energy programme of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is providing direct support to local enterprise partnerships, local authorities and communities in England to play a leading role in decarbonisation and clean growth. The programme was announced in 2017 as part of the clean growth strategy.
Almost £22 million has been invested to date via the programme, including £13 million in funding for five local energy hubs across England, including one in the greater south-east region that provides direct support to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area. For example, the hub has funded several community organisations to develop locally owned energy projects, including a project for three villages—Great Staughton, Perry and Grafham—to transition to renewable heat through a ground or water source heat pump.
Last week, the hub worked closely with the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority to host the first event of the race to zero carbon tour. The tour will continue across the UK in the run up to COP26 and aims to share those local stories of decarbonisation with business, local authorities and communities.
The Government are also providing specific sectoral support to other areas, including a suite of measures to help local authorities to decarbonise heat and buildings through higher standards in planning and construction. For example, the local authority delivery phase 2 scheme, which aims to improve the energy efficiency of low-income households, has awarded more than £79 million to the energy hub to cover upgrades to homes in all 141 local authorities covered in the south-east. Further details on the immediate actions that we will take for reducing emissions from buildings, as well as our approach to the key strategic decisions needed to achieve a mass transition to low-carbon heat across the UK, will be outlined, as the hon. Member said, in the heat and buildings strategy, which will be published in due course.
I hope you will agree, Madam Deputy Speaker, that some excellent work is already under way to support local areas in reaching net zero. Further plans for the role of local authorities in meeting net zero will be outlined in the net zero strategy, which is currently under development—the hon. Member will be pleased to hear that it is keeping me very busy—and due to be published before COP26.
I thank the hon. Member once again for securing the debate. I reiterate that the Government are committed to supporting local areas in the transition to net zero. We understand that local areas are key to the Department’s wider efforts both to decarbonise our country and create a cleaner, greener future for us all as well as adapting to those climate impacts already with us and invest in resilient solutions to protect both lives and livelihoods. The report will help as a guide for so many of those climate-vulnerable countries that I am visiting and working with as the champion on adaptation and resilience for COP26. These are issues that affect us all. From Cambridge to Kathmandu, these challenges are with us now, and communities, counties and countries are having to get to grips with how they become more resilient while they move to clean energy. I thank all those who have worked so hard on the report, which will be a huge resource not only for the area but in helping others who want to find ways through this complex maze to reach a place where we can transition so that all those whom we support live in a cleaner, greener way that ensures that their families can have a safe planet for the future.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information (Lighting Products) Regulations 2021
Draft Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information (Amendment) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 7 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
Colleagues, before we begin, anyone who wishes to remove their jacket may follow my lead and do so. I encourage Members to observe social distancing where possible, given the situation we still find ourselves in. Mr Speaker encourages Members to wear masks in Committee where possible when they are not speaking. I thank officials for sitting in the Gallery, which is very helpful to keep things as a safe as we can. Hansard colleagues will be grateful to speakers for sending their speaking notes to them.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Amanda Solloway)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Ecodesign for Energy-related Products and Energy Information (Lighting Products) Regulations 2021.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Ecodesign for Energy-related Products and Energy Information (Amendment) Regulations 2021.
Amanda Solloway
It is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Miller. The draft Ecodesign for Energy-related Products and Energy Information (Lighting Products) Regulations 2021—the lighting products regulations—were laid before the House on 1 July 2021, and the draft Ecodesign for Energy-related Products and Energy Information (Amendment) Regulations 2021—the amending regulations—were laid before the House on 5 July 2021.
I will first provide an overview of ecodesign and energy labelling and what the policies try to achieve. Ecodesign policies regulate products that consume energy when in use, such as light bulbs and televisions, by setting minimum energy performance standards to increase energy efficiency. More recently, ecodesign policies have included resource efficiency measures that seek to make products more repairable and recyclable, thereby reducing the use of material resources. In effect, ecodesign policies make the products we use in our homes and businesses more environmentally friendly and support long-term product innovation.
Energy labelling policies are intended to make clear and consistent information about a product’s energy usage readily available to consumers at the point of sale, to help them to make more informed purchase decisions. In effect, energy labelling encourages the uptake of more energy efficient products.
Taken together, the policies make an important contribution to energy use, improving environmental outcomes and cutting energy bills. It is expected that the full suite of ecodesign and energy labelling policies in force in Great Britain will save consumers £75 on their energy bills and 8 megatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2021.
The lighting products regulations will raise the minimum energy efficiency of lighting products on the market in Great Britain. That will phase out the least energy efficient lighting products—in other words, the costliest and more environmentally damaging products to run. The lighting products regulations will replace the existing energy label for light sources and rescale labels, moving from the A++ to E scale to a simpler A to G scale, making it easier for consumers to identify the most energy efficient lighting products. New innovations in lighting technology have led to lighting products becoming more energy efficient than they were a few years ago, making it necessary to rescale energy labels to show the difference in efficiency more clearly for two products on the market today.
By setting ambitious boundaries for the A to G classes on the energy label, the policy will spur the innovation and design of lighting products, as manufacturers compete to achieve the highest energy efficient ratings. In addition to rescaling the energy label for lighting products, the Union flag, rather than the European Union flag, must now be displayed on the label for products on the GB market.
The lighting products regulations reflect the requirements of the two EU regulations that the UK supported as a member state, which began to apply in Northern Ireland in accordance with the Northern Ireland protocol. By introducing these more ambitious, environmentally friendly ecodesign and energy labelling requirements, we will ensure we maintain high product standards in Great Britain and push the market to achieve even greater carbon savings.
The measures introduced by the lighting products regulations will continue carbon savings of approximately 1.8 megatonnes in the UK by 2030, which increases to 2.6 megatonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050. On top of that, the resultant reduction in energy use will cut pounds from household and business energy bills.
Lastly, introducing these requirements in Great Britain will ensure a broadly common set of product standards with Northern Ireland, thus avoiding technical barriers to trade across the Irish sea between GB and the EU. A public consultation was conducted between November 2020 and January 2021, and feedback on the consultation proposals showed strong support for implementing these new requirements in Great Britain.
The amending regulations make amendments to retained EU ecodesign and energy labelling law that is in force in Great Britain. The EU has recently made the same amendments to its equivalent legislation, which must be complied with in Northern Ireland under the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol. Therefore, this statutory instrument ensures that we avoid technical discrepancies with the equivalent legislation in force in the EU and Northern Ireland.
The amendments this instrument makes are to servers and data storage products with respect to ecodesign, and electronic displays, household refrigeration, dishwashers, washing machines and washer-dryers with respect to energy labels. The amendments correct technical errors and improve accuracy, with the aim of facilitating the understanding of and compliance with the requirements of product manufacturers.
Further, as with the lighting regulations, implementing these regulations in Great Britain avoids technical barriers to trade between GB and Northern Ireland and GB and the EU, as they will be a broadly common set of standards. A consultation was conducted between March and April 2021 with product manufacturers who will be impacted by the legislation. Respondents were supportive of implementing the new requirements in Great Britain.
Introducing the lighting products regulations and the amending regulations is aligned with the Government’s ambitions to achieve our carbon budget and net zero target. The measures will reduce the energy use and environmental impact of the products we buy. Further, both SIs avoid technical barriers to trade and ensure an effective regulatory environment for business, while providing greener choices to consumers and businesses. I commend these two statutory instruments to the Committee.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of my near neighbour. You will be pleased to know, Mrs Miller, that the Opposition do not intend to pit our mighty forces against the Government in a vote this morning, because we consider the two SIs to be very uncontroversial.
These measures are an obvious thing to do to ensure that the labelling processes for ecodesign and energy efficiency, which I have long supported, remain an excellent way of ensuring that people know what they are getting in terms of the energy efficiency of the products they are purchasing. Indeed, over time that drives changes in consumer choices and hence manufacturing arrangements for the energy efficiency of products. We have seen that in operation already with the emergence on the market of products that seek to get the highest energy rating on the scale in their marketing.
We are all together on the desirability of ensuring that, post the UK’s exit from the EU, those labelling arrangements are maintained in the best possible order for the future, and that is essentially what these SIs are about as far as lighting is concerned.
The Minister said that, for ease of both transition and continuing reputational arrangements as far as labelling is concerned, the closest alignment with EU regulations and arrangements would be achieved. I think that is right, in terms of the interaction of products between EU countries and the UK. I assume that by that, the Minister means that should there be future changes in the labelling arrangements within the EU, the UK will seek to ensure that those are mirrored, if not now, then for the future.
However, I am not sure whether one of the changes that has been made to the regulations applies to the UK alone or is mirrored by changes in EU regulations. That is the change—on lighting—from the A to E scale that we are familiar with to a simpler A to G scale. Common sense suggests that that is necessary given that, as a result of the substantial improvements in energy efficiency in lighting and other electrical products, the scaling as it stands has tended to bunch towards the A++, A+ end of the scale, so there is a danger of the scales becoming incoherent for the public. Moving to a simpler A to G scale is therefore the right thing to do. However, I do not know whether that has happened in the EU as well, and whether, in Northern Ireland, scales might differ on products that are EU-certified, as opposed to those with a UK label.
In most of the UK that is not an issue, inasmuch as such products will all be labelled appropriately for the UK market, but it may not be the case in the interaction between Northern Ireland the rest of the UK. Can the Minister tell us whether those changes in scaling mirror the EU arrangements, or whether they apply to the UK only?
The change in scale, while logical, common-sensical and important, is almost totally unknown to the public. Such changes have been made in other product areas. I have personal experience of turning up to, as it were, rate a dishwasher, only to find that the products had the new A to G scale labelling on them, which made what had previously looked very energy efficient look very energy inefficient—until one understood that products labelled D or E, which looked at first sight energy inefficient, were the equivalent of, say, A+ under the previous arrangements. Will the Minister reflect on the possible need for publicity and some public-facing general explanation, so that we all know why these changes in lettering have been made and how important they are to get the system working properly for the future?
I have no further comments to make about the detail of the statutory instrument, which, I have to say to hon. Members, is some of the most tedious stuff I have ever read—[Laughter.]—from which they may deduce that I did actually read it. I look forward to further enlightenment from the Minister.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller. It seemed appropriate that the shadow Minister mentioned “tedious” as I stood up to speak.
In the Minister’s opening remarks, she spoke about products being reusable and recyclable, and I wonder how much that is applicable to these regulations. They copy EU regulations, and the explanatory notes make it clear that because of the Northern Ireland protocol, we do not want any differentiation between Great Britain and Northern Ireland as that would mean differentiation within the UK. Does that mean that, in this magnificent, post-Brexit world, the UK Government will always mirror EU regulations to avoid that differentiation?
How confident is the Minister about the carbon savings and the savings for consumers and businesses that are detailed in the explanatory memorandum? Is there anything that can be done to go further, because carbon savings are not saving money although they are clearly a good thing as we project through to net zero? Was a consultant employed to design the new labels that will effectively replace the EU flag with the Union flag? Was a consultant needed to do that and how much did that cost?
Amanda Solloway
I thank both hon. Members for their valuable contributions. As I have said before, the Government are committed to delivering their carbon budget and net zero target. The lighting products regulations will help us to achieve those by setting higher product standards, leading to 1.8 megatonnes of carbon savings in the UK by 2030, which will increase to 2.6 megatonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050. The amending regulations will help to achieve that by safeguarding the carbon savings that will be secured from our retained EU law.
In response to specific questions about mirroring the EU, I can confirm that we are doing that, and the Government intend to uphold common high product standards where possible and appropriate. The framework is part of the 10-point plan that we are doing. The EU rescaled their labels for lighting products.
In conclusion, I will underline the main purposes of the lighting products regulations and the amending regulations. The lighting products regulations will raise the minimum energy efficiency of the range of lighting products sold in Great Britain and reform energy labels for lighting products by rescaling the energy classes and introducing a scale from A to G. As the hon. Member for Southampton, Test said, that will be a lot simpler. The measures will result in carbon and energy bill savings for consumers and businesses.
The amending regulations will facilitate compliance with and understanding of the ecodesign and energy labelling requirements for a range of products by improving accuracy and correcting technical errors. That will ensure that the expected carbon savings from the regulations are realised. Both SIs will help to avoid technical barriers to trade while also bringing significant benefits to consumers, in the form of reduced energy bills, and to the environment via lower emissions.
I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
DRAFT ECODESIGN FOR ENERGY-RELATED PRODUCTS AND ENERGY INFORMATION (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS 2021
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Ecodesign for Energy-related Products and Energy Information (Amendment) Regulations 2021.—(Scott Mann.)
Draft Alcohol Licensing (Coronavirus) (Regulatory Easements) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 7 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Chair
Before we begin, may I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, which is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission? Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated, as you all have done, and, of course, when entering and leaving. Members should send their speaking notes by email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk, and officials in the Gallery should communicate electronically with Ministers.
The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Alcohol Licensing (Coronavirus) (Regulators Easements) (Amendment) Regulations 2021.
I know that every Member of this House will be aware of a hospitality business in their constituency that has closed for good due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Research by Curren Goodden Associates suggests that around 6,000 licensed premises closed in 2020 across Britain, and Members will have heard of many others that are struggling to stay afloat.
This Government have taken a number of measures to support the hospitality industry and other businesses during the pandemic, including the coronavirus job retention scheme, which has paid a proportion of the wages of workers since the first lockdown, a business rates holiday for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in the 2020-21 tax year, and a recovery loan scheme that supports access to finance for UK businesses as they grow and recover from the disruption of the pandemic.
We also introduced a number of regulatory easements through the Business and Planning Act 2020, among which were temporary measures to make obtaining a pavement licence quicker and easier for those who wish to set up chairs and tables outdoors. A complementary measure on alcohol licensing gave a temporary off-sales permission to 38,000 licensed premises that did not have one.
The draft statutory instrument is relatively modest and contains three measures. The first is an extension for a further year, until 30 September 2022, of the provisions of the Business and Planning Act to allow sales of alcohol for consumption off the premises of licensed premises that did not previously have that permission. The second measure amends the limits prescribed in section 107 of the Licensing Act 2003, increasing from 15 to 20 days the allowance that a premises user can give in respect of a premises for a temporary event notice, and increasing from 21 to 26 days the maximum number of days on which temporary events may be held at such premises in each of the calendar years 2022 and 2023. The increase in premises’ allowance of temporary event notices will allow unlicensed premises to host more revenue-generating events such as wedding receptions and markets where alcohol is sold, as well as enable licensed premises to extend hours to accommodate celebratory occasions. Finally, the draft statutory instrument amends existing the Licensing Act 2003 (Permitted Temporary Activities) (Notices) Regulations 2005, to prescribe revised versions of the relevant forms for temporary event notice and counter-notice.
In the light of Public Health England’s monitoring of trends and consumption during 2020, I would expect our measures to result in a change in where alcohol is consumed, rather than in more people drinking at harmful levels. As we have seen, hospitality businesses across the country are struggling because of the pandemic. Therefore, I hope that the measures to support the industry’s recovery will receive broad support, and I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Ms Nokes.
I thank the Minister for his opening contribution. The Opposition will not oppose the extensions in the draft regulations, which as he has explained extend permission for licensed premises to allow off-sales, increase the number of temporary event notices permitted for a premises in a calendar year, and increase the maximum number of days on which such temporary events may be held. We believe, on balance, that they are sensible measures that will help to aid the hospitality industry’s recovery from the pandemic. Increasing the number of temporary event notices will be particularly helpful for venues that wish to hold one-off events or celebrations, thus allowing businesses to utilise additional opportunities and generate extra revenue.
My own constituency has a thriving independent food and drink offer, with such an impressive live music scene that The Guardian described Halifax as
“the Shoreditch of the north”.
Of course, those of us in west Yorkshire know that, in fact, Shoreditch is the Halifax of the south. None the less, I have witnessed at first hand that many of the venues that contribute to our thriving offer have been able to utilise the extensions under discussion as they continue to navigate very challenging times. The off-sales extensions provide businesses and consumers with not only greater flexibility but confidence, given the public health benefits of socialising outdoors as we enter the colder months.
I do, however, have queries concerning the practicality of the measures for local authorities and local police forces. I am sure that the Minister will be alive to the possibility that, if not managed properly and responsibly, the draft regulations have the potential to bring about disruption to roads and transport links, and unwelcome antisocial behaviour.
The explanatory memorandum states that there
“has been informal consultation with the Local Government Association”,
and cost 4 of the impact assessment—“Increased crime and disorder”—is clear about the relationship between alcohol and crime, suggesting that there
“may be an increase in alcohol-related crime”
as a consequence of extending the changes. However, it also states that due to the uncertainties involved,
“this cost has not been quantified.”
I am concerned, therefore, at the impact assessment’s statement:
“There are no plans to monitor or evaluate this legislation.”
There is a risk that the extensions will burden already stretched councils and police officers, so I ask the Minister to keep the proposals under review, to ensure that they have the desired effect, without having unintended negative consequences, which are clearly outlined as a possibility by his Government’s own impact assessment.
Kit Malthouse
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Halifax for her support, not least because I am not often called sensible by Members of other parties. She is right that we need to keep the measures under review. Of course, the people who most closely keep them under review are those who live proximate to premises that make use of them. It is worth pointing out that, notwithstanding these easements, the police and, indeed, councils retain their powers under section 76 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 to issue closure notices on premises that are causing a nuisance because of their licence status. There is also, of course, particularly under TENs, an accelerated review process in the event of one being granted and then subsequently resulting in nuisance, but we will of course keep this under review. On that note, I commend the measure to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Westminster Hall
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Tigray
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Good morning and welcome. Bore da. Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with the current Government guidance and what the House of Commons Commission has prescribed. Please would Members also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room? Members should send speaking notes by email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Similarly, officials should communicate electronically with Ministers. Without further ado, it is my great pleasure to invite Sarah Champion to move the motion.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the humanitarian situation in Tigray.
As ever, it is a pleasure, Mr Davies, to serve under your chairmanship, and also to see so many Members here, which shows the significance of not just the debate but what is happening in Ethiopia at the moment.
The situation in Tigray is truly horrific. This could be a debate about conflict prevention, regional stability or foreign policy in the horn of Africa, but it is the dreadful humanitarian situation and the terrible conditions the people in Tigray are having to endure that must be our focus today. That dire situation motivated the International Development Committee, which I chair, to produce a short report. I am grateful to the Government for their response to the report, and I look forward to hearing more from the Minister shortly.
Let us be clear: it is conflict that has driven a worsening humanitarian situation in Tigray. Against a backdrop of deteriorating political relationships between the regional Government in Tigray and the federal Government in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian national defence force started security operations in Tigray in November 2020. The Tigray regional security forces have fought against it, retaking the Tigrayan capital of Mekelle in June. Local militia and unidentified troops are involved. Eritrean troops are fighting in Tigray and are alleged to have committed human rights violations and abuses.
I do not want to dwell too long on the causes and the nature of the conflict, save to note two things. It is clear that there have been abuses by all parties to the conflict and that all parties are using propaganda and misinformation to advance their cause. All the time, it is the people who suffer—people whose lives were already difficult; people whose livelihoods were under threat from climate change and the worst desert locust infestation for decades; people who were already hosting populations displaced by previous conflicts in the region.
I would like to set out briefly some of the key humanitarian challenges, before going on to talk about some of the grave violations of human rights that have been reported. I want to focus on women and girls because, like in so many other conflicts and crises around the world, women and girls are disproportionately impacted. We must find a way to end the heartbreaking and unimaginable horrors that some women and girls have had to endure and continue to face in the form of gender-based violence and sexual violence.
The first issue that arises in conflict is the risk of injury or death. People fearing for their lives and those of their families flee areas of conflict. An estimated 2.1 million people have been displaced by the conflict. In Tigray, many people have fled rural areas, and thousands of displaced people are being hosted in communities in large urban areas. These communities are themselves already stressed by the effects of conflict, shortages of food and water, and a lack of access to essential services. People are not always safe once they have fled. The unpredictable nature of conflict means that fighting often erupts unexpectedly. People have to flee fighting more than once. The effect on their lives and livelihoods is devastating, sowing the seeds of problems that will endure for years.
Access is another major problem. The conflict has prevented humanitarian agencies from reaching people in need. They have been unable to access areas to deliver vital supplies, while the lack of access has also made it much more difficult to assess need. The latest situation report from the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that no trucks have entered Tigray since 20 August. Since 15 July, only 321 trucks with humanitarian supplies have entered the region, providing only a fraction of the assistance needed by the 5.2 million people in need. The reality is that 100 trucks a day are required to meet the demand.
It is true that there have been some improvements in access, and at the time we were preparing our report it looked like agreements had been secured, but the situation is not yet good enough to meet the needs of the people affected by the fighting. Parts of Tigray remain problematic to this day, with fighting still disrupting access routes and belligerents on all sides failing to recognise permissions granted to humanitarian agencies. I pay tribute to the extraordinary work the humanitarian agencies are doing in the face of terrible difficulties and huge personal risks. Tragically, some humanitarian workers have been killed. Worse, it seems that they have been deliberately murdered.
Thousands of people in Tigray have not had the access they need to food and water. Over 400,000 people are suffering catastrophic levels of hunger and more than 4 million—around 70% of the population—are experiencing high levels of food insecurity. Combatants have blocked food aid from reaching its destination, it has been looted by soldiers and there are reports of food silos being contaminated.
Beyond these immediate life-sustaining needs, the conflict has brought about a collapse of essential services. Communication was cut off in the early part of the conflict, there have been power shortages, markets have closed, the internet is down making bank transfers extremely difficult, banking has been disrupted and essential services have collapsed, but to talk simply of a collapse of essential services would be to hide the shocking and awful truth that schools, hospitals and the means of production have all been deliberately and systematically targeted, vandalised and destroyed. Where schools have not been vandalised, they have been occupied either by the combatants or by displaced people seeking some kind of refuge.
With markets closed and limited access for food deliveries, finding adequate nutrition is a real problem. An estimated 45,000 children under five are suffering from malnutrition, while health centres are reportedly running out of stocks. It gets worse because farmers, where their farms and machinery have not been vandalised, are unable to plant crops. Only 25% to 50% of cereal production will be available this year. Soldiers are reported to have beaten people they have seen ploughing fields, and harvests have been destroyed and livestock looted, all in a part of the world that was already severely stressed by changes in climate and the effect of desert locusts. There is a real prospect of famine and the creation of yet another cycle of aid dependency, in a part of the world that has suffered so much in the past and that had hoped to leave this sort of problem behind it.
Then we turn to the atrocities: the mass killings and the chilling sexual violence. We know there have been massacres, including the cliff-top killing of 25 to 35 civilians near Mahbere Dego, the killing of 160 people in Bora village in southern Tigray and the massacre of 100 people in Aksum in November by Eritrean soldiers. We know there have been extra-judicial killings. In March, Médecins sans Frontières staff witnessed young men being pulled off buses and killed.
We know that women and girls have been raped. In February, a young mother was abducted and over 11 days repeatedly raped by 23 soldiers, who at the end of her ordeal forced a rock and nails into her vagina. Twelve women, five of whom were pregnant, were raped in front of family members, including their children. We know that some women have been held captive and repeatedly raped by soldiers and militias.
Mark Lowcock, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, acknowledged this after a Reuters investigation found that women and girls as young as eight were being targeted. It is brutal, dehumanising treatment. That the perpetrators cause these terrible acts to be witnessed by family members suggests they intend the effect to be terrorising, and clearly points towards the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Since February, 1,228 cases of sexual and gender-based violence have been reported, yet we know that for every rape and sexual violence case that is reported, there are many more that are not. The UN Population Fund estimates that there might be 22,500 survivors of sexual violence who will seek clinical care this year. Let me note at this point that the UK Government have slashed funding to UNFPA by an astonishing 85%. I dread to think of the impact this will have on women and girls in humanitarian crises like that in Tigray.
We know a lot about what the survivors of atrocities and sexual violence need to recover. Sadly, we also know that with much of the healthcare system in Tigray in tatters, there is little prospect of the survivors getting the support they need. The stories emerging via these organisations are horrifying. Many of the survivors will go on to suffer long-term debilitating physical and mental trauma. It may well be years before health systems are recovered to the point where women and girls will be able to get the support that they need.
It is important that the world bears witness to what is happening in Tigray, and the international system must do all that it can to bring the perpetrators to justice. I commend the work being done by the UN and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to investigate. I ask the Minister to try to allow access to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. At the moment, it is suffering difficulties trying to get in and carry out its investigation. It is vital that evidence of human rights violations and abuses allegedly committed by all parties in Tigray is secured and investigated properly. It is important for the victims that that happens. It is important as a warning to others.
In the Select Committee’s report, we said that
“the situation in Tigray is an early test of the UK’s commitment to the principles and approach of the UK as a ‘force for good’ as set out in the Government’s Integrated Review.”
It still is. We recognised the Tigray crisis as
“a test of the FCDO’s desire to combine ‘diplomacy and development’ and to establish an integrated approach to conflict and instability. Failing this early test could damage the credibility of the UK’s new strategy.”
My Committee welcomes the Government’s response and their acceptance of the key points that we made about ending conflict and preventing it from spreading, ensuring that humanitarian needs are met, finding a sustainable political solution and supporting a process for reconciliation. I welcome the work of Nick Dyer, the UK special envoy for famine prevention and humanitarian affairs, and the support that the Government have provided to humanitarian agencies working in Tigray, but let us be clear that the biggest challenge in UK development policy is that the cuts to overseas development assistance are likely remain for the remainder of this Parliament and very much longer. The tests that the Government have set for the return to 0.7% are, potentially, impossibly hard to meet.
The Government’s response claims that
“HMG has been at the forefront of the international response throughout the conflict”.
UNOCHA reckons that the current gap in funding for the situation in Tigray is $170 million. There is a very real risk that the Government’s wholly unnecessary cuts to ODA will undermine our response.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for her comprehensive description of both the scale and the brutality of the conflict, but one issue that she has not referred to is the potential use of chemical weapons by the Ethiopian forces, on which I tabled a written question to the Minister in June. I understood from the response that the Government were seeking to verify the truth of those allegations, but is my hon. Friend also concerned about those reports, and does she agree that they should be part of the issues that the Government are seeking to address?
Sarah Champion
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right. The problem that we have is the verification. I saw the pictures of the chemical attack. I have no doubt from seeing those pictures that that is what happened, but unless we are able to get people on the ground to capture that data and are then able to verify it, it is incredibly difficult to encourage the Government and the international community to take a more robust response. That is why it is so important that we, as parliamentarians, keep raising the issue of access to gather data and to get the evidence to hold people to account, and keep it on our Government’s agenda-.
I have several questions that I hope the Minister will be able to address. First, how will the cuts in the UK’s ODA affect Ethiopia and in particular the humanitarian situation in Tigray, and what does being
“at the forefront of the international response”
mean for the UK’s response to the current shortfall in funding? Secondly, what steps will the Government take to put pressure on belligerents to end the fighting, and will the Minister also press the UN to act on the issues of rape and hunger being used as weapons of war? Thirdly, will he update the House on the deployment in Tigray of experts from the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, and what assessment have the Government made of the impact of aid cuts to programmes such as the United Nations Population Fund on supporting survivors of sexual violence in the long term?
Fourthly, what steps has the Minister taken since the Government’s response was issued in July to prioritise Tigray, and what recent discussions has he had with aid agencies, the UN and other actors in the region? Fifthly, has the delivery of aid improved significantly since the Government published their response to our report, and what are the next steps if the delivery of aid is to be further improved? Sixthly, what steps is the Minister taking to put pressure on the Ethiopian Government and regional authorities to improve access and communications? Seventhly, how concerned is he about the safety of humanitarian workers in Tigray, and what can be done to better protect them?
Finally, what is the Minister’s latest assessment of the conflict spreading in Ethiopia, and what impact is the fighting in Amhara, Oromia and other parts of Ethiopia having on the work of the UK Government in Tigray? Will people displaced by those conflicts depend on the same pot of money as the people in Tigray?
The last month has been dramatic and traumatic in equal measure, but with attention focused on Afghanistan it is easy for the crisis in Tigray to slip from our collective consciousness. Even without Afghanistan, Haiti may have pushed Tigray off the news cycle, and we hear precious little day to day about what is happening in Ethiopia. The reports are there if we look for them but, as a real crisis, it does not get the level of attention it should. It is clear that the violence in Ethiopia has spread, and the risks we identified of conflict spreading further are still very real.
In closing, let me just say this: we must not lose sight of the situation in Tigray. The level of human suffering and the risk of conflict spreading demand it.
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
I thank the Chair of the International Development Committee. We have nine speakers, which, according to my mathematics, means that they have about four and a half minutes each. I invite Andrew Mitchell to speak first.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your benign sway today, Mr Davies. I congratulate the Chairman of the International Development Committee on so ably leading this debate and on all the work that she and her Committee do. I join her in praising hugely the humanitarian actors who are in harm’s way in Tigray today.
I went with Bob Geldof, who probably knows more about the situation in this part of Africa than most people in Britain, to see the Foreign Secretary some months ago at the start of the crisis. I was extremely impressed that the Foreign Office and the Foreign Secretary were absolutely on top of what was happening. With so much else going on, there is a danger that public attention on what is happening in Tigray, so eloquently described by the hon. Lady, is missing. There is not enough public attention. I urge the media to ensure that attention increases greatly. There is a lot else going on.
There is a massive deterioration in the position on the ground. At least 7 million people need urgent assistance. The position was set out yesterday on the BBC website, which reported that 150 people had starved to death. That really matters to us in Britain. In 2011, the development programme in Ethiopia was the biggest anywhere in the world. It is a big country and there have been huge development gains in health and education, particularly among girls, and in the rights of women. There has been enormous progress in that respect.
Britain has huge strategic, commercial and security interests there. Ethiopia, for example, is pulling troops out of Somalia at the moment, which creates space for al-Shabaab to do its evil work there. There are huge flows of desperate people across the border in Sudan, a fragile country where millions of people are displaced. The whole thing destabilises the region. Ethiopia is being pulled apart by the conflict. Liberation movements and alliances are growing in strength. At the best of times, Ethiopia is a very fragile democracy with 110 million people. A major collapse there will have far more impact than Syria, Libya or Yemen, and we need to bear that in mind.
So what should we seek? First, we need to seek a cessation of fighting on all sides. Secondly, we need humanitarian access, which is grossly inadequate at the moment. It needs to be led by the international community, drawing on British expertise, and by the United Nations and the World Food Programme, which is doing an enormous amount of good work there at the moment. However, its funding has been cut from £21 million last year to £9 million this year, and that needs to be put right. We need to recognise that people are starving to death in Tigray and that there is massive violence, as set out by the hon. Lady, so I will not repeat that. Britain has a big strategic interest. Whether we care about development or not, Britain has a huge strategic interest in this part of the world, especially in Ethiopia, where millions and millions of taxpayers’ money have been spent on the ground to massive and real effect. That is why this debate matters so much, and why the issues that we are discussing are so important.
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Thank you for your brevity. I invite Navendu Mishra, who is a member of the International Development Committee, to contribute to the debate.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Davies. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), my colleague on the International Development Committee, for securing the debate at a critical juncture for millions of Tigrayans. I also note the briefings from Oxfam, Amnesty International and Protection Approaches. As we have heard today, the escalating tensions in Tigray are deeply concerning and the international community must act urgently to put pressure on the Governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia and the Tigrayan authorities to bring an end to this latest conflict, which has now lasted almost a year and cost thousands of lives.
The UK Government must do all they can to de-escalate the rising tensions, investigate the reported war crimes and put pressure on all sides to allow non-governmental organisations to access the thousands of Tigrayans who are the victims of this conflict. Their lives remain at risk and they will continue to suffer unless urgent action is taken to permit vital aid to enter the region.
More than 400,000 people in Tigray are experiencing famine-like conditions. To put that in context, that is more than the rest of the world combined. Furthermore, the Red Cross has estimated that almost 6 million people in Tigray and the neighbouring regions of Afar and Amhara are going hungry, while an additional 1.7 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance as a result of the conflict. It is clear that we are witnessing a humanitarian crisis unfold before our eyes in Tigray.
I am a proud member of the International Development Committee. Earlier this year we urged the UK Government to intervene in the crisis to bring a swift end to the conflict and help facilitate humanitarian access. Since then, there has been a deterioration in the humanitarian situation, while the ability of non-governmental organisations and aid organisations to access the region has diminished. For example, Oxfam told Members of this House that aid organisations are struggling to transport the 100 trucks a day of food supplies that are required into the region. It is vital that the UK Government apply pressure to ensure that there is unfettered, unimpeded access to Tigray to enable that lifesaving aid to be delivered to thousands of citizens.
Given our historic relationship with the region, we should do all we can to help. Amnesty International has raised concerns that attacks and mass killings have continued unchecked since the conflict started in November 2020, with crimes against humanity taking place on both sides, between the Ethiopian and Eritrean Governments and Tigrayan rebels. Worryingly, a report this week by The Daily Telegraph revealed that, since July, soldiers occupying parts of Ethiopia’s Tigray region have been involved in what has been described as an ethnic purge of native people, who are being thrown into concentration camps and massacred by the dozen. Witnesses in the northern city of Humera, near the border with Eritrea, have claimed that soldiers from Amhara province have been conducting Taliban-type door-to-door searches for ethnic Tigrayan people, the result of which is that thousands of residents have been forced into makeshift detention centres.
Such scenes followed reports, which have since been corroborated by the UN, of Eritrean troops systematically killing hundreds of unarmed civilians in the northern city of Aksum over a two-day period in November 2020, which saw open shooting in the streets. Amnesty International has said that could amount to a crime against humanity and has also described it as just the tip of the iceberg, given the mass killings that followed. The charity has also heard shocking reports of gang rapes of people held in captivity, which they have described as sexual slavery, as well as clear examples of sexual mutilation of survivors, which is a crime under international law.
The toll on all citizens in the region has been unbearable. Since the beginning of the conflict there have been widespread and systematic campaigns of destruction and looting, including the theft of farm animals, which has significantly affected harvesting across Tigray, compounding the famine and starvation of the population.
It is clear that the UK Government cannot delay action any further. We must not lose sight of this crisis and the fate of thousands of Tigrayans while the eyes of the world are on Afghanistan, and we must continue to add pressure to allow organisations such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to have access to Tigray to investigate the situation further and carry out a thorough assessment of the impact of this conflict.
The charity, Protection Approaches, which works to tackle all forms of identity-based violence and mass atrocities, has rightly stated that the UK Government have a legal obligation to prevent further conflict in the region under the 1948 convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.
It is also a matter of national interest and, left unchecked, the financial and human cost will be enormous. Much would be in keeping with what Tigrayans have already called for, which is a commitment to a negotiated end to the war. The UK should help facilitate that. Failing to support them in that endeavour would lead to an ongoing conflict that will cost tens of thousands more lives.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Thank you for calling me, Mr Davies. I declare my interest as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Eritrea. I thank the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) not only for securing the debate today and her graphic speech, but for chairing the pre-briefing, which the APPG on Eritrea co-hosted yesterday.
We must do all that we can to fulfil our international obligations to prevent mass atrocities of the nature occurring in Tigray. Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports on worrying indications that atrocity crimes—war crimes, crimes against humanity and possible genocide—may have occurred and could still be under way in Tigray. In the words of a priest from the Catholic Eparchy of Adigrat, interviewed at the height of the occupation,
“They want to annihilate Tigray. By killing the men and boys, they are trying to destroy any future resistance…They are raping and destroying women to ensure that they cannot raise a community in the future. They are using rape and food as weapons of war.”
By June 2021, researchers at Belgium’s University of Ghent had documented 10,000 deaths and 230 massacres, with many more incidents yet to be fully investigated. No one, anywhere, should be targeted on account of their religion or beliefs, yet in Tigray clergy and worshippers have been targeted and killed in large numbers.
According to a statement in February from the employees of Mekelle diocese and the administrators of 45 monasteries and churches, almost every monastery and church and religious school in Tigray has been bombed by drones or heavy weapons.
“A lot of clergymen, deacons, congregation members of Sunday schools, religious students and children, especially those clergymen who were on religious service, were massacred like animals.”
The indiscriminate bombing and destruction of ancient churches, mosques and other religious institutions, and the extensive looting of irreplaceable historical artefacts and manuscripts, appear to be part of a multifaceted campaign that involves cultural cleansing. Not only do those actions violate international humanitarian law but, according to the Rome statute, intentionally directing attacks against religious buildings and historic monuments can also constitute a war crime.
In 2019, the Government published a good policy paper, “UK approach to preventing mass atrocities”. In places such as Tigray now we need to see actions to match the strong words from that document, such as:
“The UK supports the deployment of all appropriate tools available to the UN in dealing with potential atrocities and conflict such as sanctions (diplomatic, travel bans, asset freezes, arms embargoes, and commodity interdiction), and is a strong advocate for securing accountability and justice for atrocities committed.”
“Development/programmatic support aims to foster environments where atrocities are less likely to take place—by addressing the root causes of conflict and drivers of instability, through tackling corruption, promoting good governance, improving access to security and justice, and inclusive economic development.”
I hope that in his closing remarks the Minister will elaborate on how those words are being applied now to the UK’s approach to the conflict in Tigray and the wider region, not least to help de-escalate tensions.
I also note the recommendation of the Select Committee on International Development for atrocity prevention training. In addition, the Truro review, a manifesto commitment of this Government, states at recommendation 7:
“Ensure that there are mechanisms in place to facilitate an immediate response to atrocity crimes, including genocide, through activities such as setting up early-warning mechanisms to identify countries at risk of atrocities, diplomacy to help de-escalate tensions and resolve disputes, and developing support to help with upstream prevention work. Recognising that the ultimate determination of genocide must be legal not political and respecting the UK’s long-held policy in this area, the FCO should nonetheless determine its policy in accordance with the legal framework and should be willing to make public statements condemning such atrocities.”
Colleagues can be assured that, as the Prime Minister’s special envoy for freedom of religion or belief, I am working closely—indeed, daily—with the FCDO in order to ensure that we implement this and all 22 recommendations of the Truro review in full by their required completion date of July 2022.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I congratulate the chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), on securing the debate. It is so important to keep this issue on the table in the face of so many other global challenges taking place today. It is so concerning, disappointing and worrying to hear the kinds of stories and testimonies that we have already heard, because Ethiopia looked like a bit of a success story several years ago. It was quite a stable country, food security was increasing, and Prime Minister Abiy was awarded the Nobel peace prize. Unfortunately, it is not the first time in recent years that the Nobel Committee seems to have jumped ahead of itself slightly and given awards that, in hindsight, it maybe should have taken a bit more time to think about.
I echo the thanks of right hon. and hon. Members to those who supported the Oxfam briefing yesterday, which was incredibly helpful. It informed a lot of what we have heard today. We have heard the statistics again: it is estimated that 2 million people have been internally displaced, with 61% facing acute food insecurity. Some 600,000 are already over the threshold into famine, and another 2 million are on the brink of what the Oxfam rep who spoke to us yesterday described as the risk of catastrophic hunger. As we have heard, there are multiple, complex and overlapping causes, which require multiple, overlapping interventions—the huge displacement, the lack of infrastructure, the destruction of roads and bridges, which simply makes getting aid to where it is needed almost impossible, and the communications blackout, which has come up time and again in the briefings and evidence. It is a military tactic that is completely undermining humanitarian relief, which should be delivered, over and above whatever is going on in terms of conflict.
There is dreadful use of hunger as a weapon of war, and we have heard stories about the deliberate destruction of crops and livestock. There are particular concerns around ethnic tensions and tribal loyalties, which have fuelled the conflict and political division. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) spoke about the serious risk of regional overspill, the influence of Eritrea, and the displacement of over 60,000 refugees into Sudan already.
I want to touch briefly on the situation in Oromia. I have a very active constituent who is originally from Oromia and who is part of the Oromia Support Group, which has identified extra-judicial killings going back to October 2018. Of the more than 2,000 victims, 1,612 were identified as being from the Oromo group. The Oromia Support Group and its colleagues are calling for an inclusive dialogue between all the factions, with a view to ending any domination of one group over another. I will send the Minister the information that I have, and I encourage him to look at it very carefully indeed.
There is a challenge here for the Government. How will they live up to the standards that they have set for themselves in being proactive about atrocity prevention? How will they use their convening powers and diplomatic influence? If they want to be a soft power superpower, will they start by properly supporting agencies on the ground? We must support multilaterals, the United Nations and NGOs such as Save the Children, which, in very difficult circumstances, are maintaining a direct presence. What will be the impact of the aid cuts? Time and again in Westminster Hall, we hear practical, real-life examples of the effects of that completely unnecessary cut. It is having an impact practically, in terms of what can be delivered, and it is having a diplomatic effect as well, because it undermines the UK’s stance on the world stage. There is a need to work with all the agencies and partners and to recognise the Government’s obligations under international law.
One of the most sobering questions that was posed yesterday was: what if this is not the worst? What if the worst has yet to come? Too often we have stood by, when we should have learned the lessons of the past. The UK has to assess, it has to intervene, and it has to work with others and make sure that we avoid even further and more rapid deterioration.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
As the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for Ethiopia and Djibouti and somebody who has visited Ethiopia many times, I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing this debate and the very moving way in which she described the terrible situation in Tigray. I thank her for her and her Committee’s continued interest in Ethiopia. I also thank the Minister for his willingness to provide briefings and attend meetings regularly on this subject, and for his ongoing involvement.
I asked an urgent question on 14 June, and sadly the situation, if anything, has deteriorated since, but it need not be this way. As has been alluded to, Ethiopia is a great country. It claims to have been the origin of coffee. Lucy, one of the world’s oldest human beings—4.4 million years—was found there. It has been independent for longer than any African country. I am not quite sure of the claims about the Queen of Sheba, but I do know that Ethiopia is one of the west’s oldest Christian civilisations. That is one of the tragedies: Christian and Muslim populations, sizeable as they are in Ethiopia, have lived peacefully together. More than 80 tribes and probably as many languages have managed to co-exist peacefully since the overthrow of the Derg in 1992.
I am told that Ethiopia has enjoyed world-record growth in the past 15 years; certainly, it is one of Africa’s outstanding success stories in that sense. It really is ironic that trouble has flared since the appointment of the outward-looking, modernising Prime Minister, who, as has been said, won the Nobel peace prize for making peace with Eritrea after a very long-standing dispute, but the rumblings of discontent started before he took office and have sadly increased since.
Ethiopia has suffered recently because of the unusually warm weather. The attack of locusts and, of course, covid have not helped. It is important to recognise that millions of people in Ethiopia each year depend on food aid. I am really rather struck by what World Food Programme people have said this week: up to 7 million people are in dire need of food assistance in northern Ethiopia alone. Their food stocks in Tigray are running perilously low, and they need $140 million to expand their northern Ethiopian response.
I will not go into the details of the conflict, which the hon. Lady covered ably, but I will ask a few questions. As far as the Minister knows, has the conflict spread as far as Lalibela—a town I visited on my last visit to Ethiopia? It really would be tragic if it had got that far. Could the United Nations be doing more, beyond helping refugees, which is a very important thing for it to be doing? Could the African Union be doing more, especially in speaking to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Eritrea, to make sure its troops are all withdrawn from the country? During the urgent question, the Minister said he had diverted aid to Tigray. Did that have any effect, and if so could that practice be repeated?
I also ask that other donors do not turn away from Ethiopia because of the conflict. People living in war-torn areas are often the most in need. I want us to continue with our aid programme. We need to target the aid and we need to require transparency. If possible, we should use it as a lever to bring about peace, but we should continue it.
As a very long-standing friend of Ethiopia who has stood in this Chamber and the main Chamber and defended Ethiopia as a friend, when perhaps it was questionable to have done so, I call on all the parties there to resolve this conflict very quickly and peacefully.
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Thank you so much for your words. I will be calling the Front Benchers at 10.28 am. We are keeping good time, so without further ado, over to you, Helen Hayes. I look forward to hearing from you.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Davies. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing this important debate.
November will mark one year since the onset of violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. It started in retaliation to an attack on the Northern Command by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. This is a complex conflict, with many different actors on the ground, but the reports of the conflict have consistently included evidence of mass executions, the targeting of Tigrayans by ethnicity, the destruction of crops, livestock and machinery, and the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war. It is estimated that tens of thousands of Tigrayan women and girls have been raped since this conflict began.
The conflict has led to a humanitarian disaster in Tigray, and non-governmental organisations are continuing to report difficulties getting into the region. The latest reports indicate that Tigray is still facing siege-like conditions, and a recent UN aid convoy was held at a checkpoint for two days, after which only nine of the trucks were allowed to proceed. Some 5.5 million people are facing crisis levels of food insecurity, and 350,000 are at catastrophic risk. There are sickening accounts of Tigrayans being held in prison camps near the Sudanese border, with reports from Sudan of corpses floating down the Setit river, clearly identifiable as Tigrayans and showing signs of torture. This conflict contains the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing and genocide, and there are reports of the use of white phosphorus, which, although not classified as a chemical weapon, delivers appalling injuries.
In addition to the problems with humanitarian access, it has been very difficult for journalists seeking to report on the situation in Tigray. Some extremely brave journalists have continued to do so, often placing themselves in grave danger and facing an aggressive smear campaign for their work. I pay particular tribute to Nima Elbagir and Lucy Kassa—brave women who have done so much to bear witness to the atrocities in Tigray.
Despite the horrors unfolding in Tigray, this conflict has remained under-reported and under-prioritised by the international community. I secured an Adjournment debate on Tigray in March, and at that time, five months into the conflict, with 10,000 women and girls at that point reported to have been raped, that was the only debate to have taken place on the issue in any western Parliament. I have constituents with loved ones in Tigray who are in fear for their lives, and constituents working with NGOs in Ethiopia, seeking to deliver aid to Tigray.
The response to the conflict from the UN so far has been insufficiently resourced, and there is an urgent need for additional capacity. In this context, it is also concerning that the Government of Ethiopia appear to be withdrawing from the international community, with reports that as many as half—about 30—of their international embassies are to close.
I hope that the Minister will set out today what the UK Government are doing to secure a stronger response from the UN and ensure that the attention of the international community is focused on Tigray. What are the Government doing to increase the mobilisation of UK-funded aid to support UK nationals delivering humanitarian assistance? What are the Government doing to secure a peace process to prevent this conflict from escalating further, across Ethiopia and the horn of Africa? Will the UK Government prioritise trauma support and healthcare services for women and girls who are survivors of rape and sexual violence, as a first-order priority of their humanitarian response? And will the Minister finally recognise the catastrophic implications of cutting international aid at this time?
The conflict in Ethiopia risks a humanitarian catastrophe potentially as serious as the famine of the 1980s, and there are other, equally pressing priorities across the world, including the 18 million people in need of humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. In the current context of cuts, each time the Minister stands up and says that the Government are committing additional resources to a humanitarian emergency, it prompts the question: at the expense of which other humanitarian priority is that additional aid being delivered? This simply cannot be justified in the face of such unfolding horror.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and to be back in Westminster Hall—I almost got lost this morning. I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for calling for this important and timely debate and for her opening remarks highlighting the need to ensure that the issue stays on the agenda. With the 24-hour news cycle, it is so easy for major issues, issues of this scale, to be pushed down. With constant refreshing and updating, one could almost forget what is going on, so it is important for us in this Parliament to keep this issue on the Government’s agenda and to look at what clear action and response our Government will be leading to help the situation.
The situation is nothing short of a humanitarian crisis—the war that erupted last year and the horrific human rights abuse. Just this week, there have been reports of thousands of men, women and children being forced into concentration camps and of door-to-door ethnic purging of the Tigrayan people. The International Development Committee highlighted the gendered nature of human rights abuses in Tigray, with sexual violence a key feature of such abuse. Last month, a report by Amnesty International revealed that forces aligned to the Ethiopian Government had subjected women and girls to sexual violence, rape and sexual slavery. If we are committed to ending sexual violence against women in this country, we have to be equally committed to helping women and girls in other countries.
For women with family in the region, such as my constituent who contacted me in March, the war has made contacting their loved ones even more difficult. They are worried—petrified—for their loved ones. Tragically, the isolation has made it so much harder for humanitarian aid to get through to the people who need it the most. Food has run out in many regions of Tigray. As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) highlighted, more than 150 people died of starvation last month alone—that should shame us as a country. There can be no mistake about the level of human suffering being a direct result of the conflict, which shows no sign of a peaceful resolution any time soon.
Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I too ask the Minister what additional support the Government will be offering to address this serious issue and to help bring an end to the conflict. Will the Government use their relationship with the Ethiopian authorities to ensure that Ethiopia’s Government protects the affected communities and brings an end to human rights abuses and the gender-based violence?
Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to be back under your chairship, Mr Davies, and to be back in the real Westminster Hall. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing this important and timely debate. I agree with many Members that the eyes of the world are not on Tigray as they should be, so this is an important time to put on the record what is happening there right now and to hear from the Minister about our response.
I share the distress and sadness displayed by so many colleagues this morning about what we are still witnessing in Tigray. It is a truly heartbreaking situation. At the time of Live Aid, we were so proud that as a country we stood up together to support the people of Ethiopia in their time of crisis. We want to do the same again. We want to know what is happening in that region. We feel a great bond, as well as having constituents—as I do—who have family members in the region.
The UN Secretary-General has said that
“a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes”.
The Foreign Secretary took his eye off Afghanistan, but I hope to hear from the Minister that that is not the case with Tigray. I was heartened that the Foreign Secretary mentioned Tigray in briefings held during the recess, so I am glad of this opportunity for a Minister to lay out what is happening in the British Government. I also have some questions.
On 4 November 2020, armed conflict broke out in northern Ethiopia between the regional and federal Governments in the country’s Tigray region. That conflict has since spilled over into the neighbouring Amhara and Afar regions. Reports indicate that clashes continue in northern Ethiopia, involving Ethiopian, Amharan and Tigrayan forces. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in Afar and Amhara, and more than 2.2 million people are now thought to be displaced in Tigray, many to neighbouring countries, as has been mentioned in the debate, including Sudan. It is estimated that more than 6 million people across those areas are affected by the crisis and in need of assistance. The scale of the humanitarian crisis is staggering.
More than 5 million people in Tigray require immediate humanitarian assistance. At least 54 organisations are providing aid and services. I join with other Members in paying tribute to the brave humanitarian workers on the ground right now. However, there are significant gaps in assistance, which disproportionately affect Ethiopian women and girls, who have virtually no access to livelihoods and often live in insecure environments. The harvests are failing right now, and the harvests of November and December are likely to fail as well—there has been no ability to plant—so the crisis is getting worse. Verification on the ground is needed.
For months, Ethiopian troops, aided by Eritrean soldiers, have tortured, sexually assaulted, killed and displaced Tigrayan civilians. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front has also perpetrated human rights abuses and has looted a United States Agency for International Development warehouse. The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian affairs reported on 19 August that, while access in large areas inside Tigray is now feasible and secure, other areas remain inaccessible. The extended delays in the clearance of humanitarian supplies, with lorries going in but not coming out again to replenish their stocks, is a major issue right now. OCHA says that it is 50% short of the funding needed to respond now.
When did the Foreign Secretary last speak to the Ethiopian Government to make these points? Has the Prime Minister spoken to his Ethiopian counterpart? What steps are the UK Government taking to ensure the protection of civilians, including women and girls, from sexual and gender-based violence in particular? Will the Minister ensure that aid is prioritised for this crisis and do everything in his power to press the Ethiopian Government for an increase in funding, the cessation of fighting and unfettered humanitarian access? The road through the Amhara region is now closed. What is happening with that? What about the resumption of essential services—water and sanitation, power, banking and communications? We need to challenge the Ethiopian Government on the rhetoric being used against the humanitarian community, which is endangering aid works in the region—many of them British. The targeting and arresting of Tigrayans in Addis Ababa must cease. The eyes of the world must be on Tigray and urgent action must be taken.
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Last but not least from the Back Benches, the indefatigable Jim Shannon.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to be back in the real Westminster Hall, as the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) said, and to be part of this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for setting the scene. We have all said it and we all mean it: she is a champion on these issues and speaks out. Whenever I see her name down for a debate I am attracted to speak on that matter, because I share her concerns and those expressed by everyone today.
It seems that all eyes are on Afghanistan. That is understandable and, perhaps, as it should be. However, this debate reminds us that there are people in need of help and support throughout the world, and the war in Tigray is one such place. The hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) referred to the historical connections and relationships that the UK has with Ethiopia. We should be able to use those and use our influence. I hope the Minister can tell us what can be done.
I declare an interest as a chair of the APPG for international freedom of religion or belief. Since the war in Tigray began last November, over 52,000 people have died and an estimated 1.7 million have been displaced. A report on persecution.org states:
“On March 10, 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before the US Congress about the ‘ethnic cleansing’ occurring in Ethiopia, particularly in the Tigray region. In early November, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced military operations against the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which he accused of attacking a federal army base. Despite official denial, the Eritrean military, as well as forces from an adjoining region, Amhara, have been participating in the offensive and committing war crimes.”
Those crimes have been illustrated by other Members and I do not intend to repeat them. They are horrific to listen to and cause me great grief when I hear them.
The report continues:
“According to witness reports, egregious human rights abuses, such as rapes and mass killings, are being perpetrated by the various actors involved in the conflict… As so often the case, Christians are often caught in the crossfire as ethnic and political conflict accelerates. This year Ethiopia rose from 39th to 36th on the Open Doors World Watch List of countries with the most persecution. This change was due an increase of violence against Christians. In addition, Christians were discriminated against in the distribution of government aid during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
International Christian Concern reported in September 2020 that 500 Christians had been killed since June 2020. In late November 2020, approximately 800 people were killed near the St Mary of Zion church in the northern Tigray region.
The situation is dire for Christians, people of all faith and those of none. The fact is, no one is really safe in the Tigray region. The debate highlights the need for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to offer more help to address the reality of living life in war-torn Tigray. Children are living in fear, with no educational or vocational prospects, with insufficient food, and family units are decimated. It is so important to have families, yet they are dispersed, attacked and violated.
Less than 10% of the required humanitarian cargo, 2.2% of the necessary operational cash and 28% of fuel has been able to reach Tigray since 12 July. Only 320,000 hectares of farmland were planted out of 1.3 million hectares available, with a maximum of 13% of typical agricultural yields expected, further exacerbating food insecurity. So much needs to be done. I know that we in the UK can always play our part, but we need confirmation from the Minister that that is happening in every way.
Only 25% to 50% of the normal cereal production will be available this year, as the agricultural planting season has been missed in many parts of Tigray because of food stock depletion. Only 131,000 people received food assistance between 19 and 25 August; it was 547,000 in the previous week. An estimated 1.7 million people are facing food insecurity in the Afar and Amhara regions because of the spillover of the Tigray conflict.
I understand that the Minister will outline the steps the Government have taken, and I welcome those steps. However, my question is simple: can we do more? The answer from everyone here is, “Yes, we can.” Can we offer more support? Can we uplift aid? Can we use local churches and NGOs to ensure that the aid gets through to those who need it most? Minister, can those churches and NGOs be used? If possible, either today or in the future, please tell us what can be done. Will we stand by and watch, or will we be able to say that we did what we could?
I conclude with this, Mr Davies. I implore the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Minister to review the scenario and to source additional support to feed these children, help these people to plant the crops and ensure that there is at least some hope of a future for these people. That is what we all ask for today.
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Over to Alyn Smith. If you could keep your remarks to about 10 minutes, that would be helpful. Thank you.
Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)
Thank you, Mr Davies. It has always struck me that nobody ever criticised a speech for being too short, so I always endeavour to keep my remarks brief. It is a genuine pleasure to wind up the debate and to follow so many consensual speeches. I also congratulate the chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), for bringing this very important issue up the agenda. We cannot lose sight of the tragedy that is unfolding.
The first casualty of war is truth, and that is certainly the case in Tigray. There has been wrongdoing on all sides, and it is difficult to calculate what is actually happening on the ground. There have been some very strong contributions to this debate. I was particularly struck by the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), who gave us the context: that the situation in Tigray is a reversal of the progress that had been made. It did not need to be like this. There has been good, constructive aid spent. There has been progress made. What we are now seeing is a tragedy, in which we are genuinely witnessing sexual violence and starvation being used as weapons of war, while the world is watching.
The scale, as we have heard, is quite staggering: 900,000 Tigrayans are starving; 5 million are on the brink of starvation and experiencing chronic food insecurity; an estimated 15,000 cases of rape in the last seven months have been calculated by Amnesty International; and there are 2.2 million displaced persons so far, with many more in grave danger.
This has been a very consensual debate, and I am glad to hear it, because this is not for party political knockabout. However, where we in the SNP do very strongly diverge from the UK Government is in our deep sadness at the walking away from the 0.7% aid commitment. We cannot do more with less. We see that in Tigray; we see it elsewhere. The cut is a reversal of the UK’s good work on international development, as we have heard, and we regret it deeply. Particularly with so many former Department for International Development personnel being based in Scotland, in East Kilbride, we feel that very personally. We would again urge the UK Government to reverse course on those cuts.
I have a number of concrete questions for the Minister. As I said, I always seek to be brief. What discussions and what success have the UK Government had in their talks with the Ethiopian and Eritrean Governments about a ceasefire and about achieving humanitarian access? What emergency food aid will the UK commit to, particularly as winter is approaching? So many people are at the really grave risk of starvation, and we could see a globally significant tragedy.
What assessment has the FCDO made of the risk of the instability in Tigray spreading to other regions within Ethiopia, but also to other countries within the wider region? This could be the focal point of a far wider crisis than even now. The UK has authorised £65,000-worth of military exports to Ethiopia since 2018. That is not huge, but it is surely not appropriate. Can the Minister assure us that there will be no further arms exports to the region? That is surely the last thing that the region needs. On accountability, there have been war crimes committed in this conflict. What discussions has the UK been part of—within the UN in particular, I suspect—to ensure the accountability of war criminals in the region? We must hold them to account.
Tigray is going to need support on many things going forward, and where the UK Government make steps towards meaningful contributions, they will continue to have SNP support. This issue is too important for a party political knockabout.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), the Chair of the International Development Committee, for securing this debate and for the work she and her Committee have done on this matter. I also thank everyone else who has contributed today, and particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), for Putney (Fleur Anderson), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) and others. I also want to thank all other Members, because what has been clear today is the level of concern; the comments made by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and the hon. Members for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) have all illustrated the horrific reports we are getting from Tigray and the wider concerns of this House.
As the SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) said, this is not a party political issue; this is about concern for the people of Ethiopia and Tigray, and about our wider humanitarian and human rights responsibilities. That is why the Labour Front Benchers and I have repeatedly raised this issue with Ministers and had many discussions with the Minister, as well as with the Ethiopian Government and other parties directly.
I commend all those humanitarian and human rights agencies doing remarkable work on the ground and, as has also been mentioned, the journalists reporting in very difficult circumstances, whose reporting is so crucial for us to understand what is going on in situations such as this. Attempts to intimidate and threaten them have been deeply disturbing.
I have been absolutely horrified by the allegations of abuse on all sides: the reports of ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, attacks on women and children, torture and war crimes—some of this stuff is simply horrific. As ever in these situations it is the civilians who suffer. The tragedy is that we are yet to see full human rights investigations and actions on those who have perpetrated these crimes, we have yet to see full humanitarian access and we have yet to see a sense of humanity break through the fog and the horrors of this war.
I share the concerns expressed by many Members about this becoming a forgotten crisis—we have all been deeply concerned about what is going on in Afghanistan, but we must recognise that crises and tragedies are happening in so many other places, whether that is in Yemen, across the Sahel, in Ethiopia or the disturbing events we have seen in Guinea in recent days. We as a House and, I hope, the Government are keeping a full awareness of all these situations and taking action wherever appropriate.
I want to touch on some of the comments that have been made. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood spoke very powerfully in the Adjournment debate earlier this year about the sexual violence we have seen, which I will come on to later. The shocking figure that an estimated 10,000 rapes had happened is simply horrific. All sides have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Secretary-General described the situation in Tigray as “hellish”, and that very much bears out what we have heard today. Thousands have already died; 4.4 million people are now in phase 3 or above of the integrated food insecurity phase classification, with 1.7 million facing food insecurity in the Afar and Amhara regions as well, and 400,000 people in famine-like conditions. We all remember that tragedy of the early 1980s and the consequences of human-made conflict for civilians, which led to absolutely devastating famine.
It is very important that we focus on the experiences of ordinary people living in Tigray, especially women and girls who are facing the consequences of this conflict. The Amnesty International report on sexual violence was particularly damning about the sadistic brutality being inflicted on women by people on all sides of this conflict, with rape and sexual violence used systematically to torture and dehumanise women and, in some cases, children; women being kept as sex slaves; women being subjected to genital mutilation—an act that is, horrifically, often conducted in front of family members to impose further psychological damage. Of course, women and girls are at risk even if they survive these attacks, because only 53% of health facilities have clinical capacity for management of rape and sexual violence, and only one in 10 health facilities overall are functioning, many of which are controlled by—or at least access to them is controlled by—those who have been committing crimes.
In the Amnesty International report, the father of a 10-year-old child who was raped in November 2020—I will not go into the details as they are simply too horrific to read out—said
“he was not able to get his daughter—who suffered terrible physical and psychological damage—to the hospital for four and a half months”.
He said he wanted to take her to the hospital in one location, but the armed forces who committed the abuses were administering it, so he had to seek support at another location, where she did in the end receive medical help, but only after months of trauma. That is utterly horrific. Women often have no way of receiving help for the consequences of these actions.
The area is also experiencing wider famine conditions, because of the impact of locusts, climate change, covid and other diseases. The pressures of this current conflict come on top of all those other issues, because this was already an area with significant challenges. In terms of the wider humanitarian situation, 5.2 million out of 6 million people living in Tigray are now in need of humanitarian assistance and 13.6 million people are estimated to be food insecure across Ethiopia as a result of the conflict, as well as the wider circumstances. According to OCHA,
“only 25% to 50% of the normal cereal production will be available this year”.
I will ask some questions about the situation facing people who have been internally displaced and refugees. There are now 2 million internally displaced people according to USAID, with nearly 50,000 refugees arriving in South Sudan since November 2021. There is a spill-over of internally displaced people into the Afar and Amhara regions as well. We have heard from many Members today about the challenges of getting humanitarian assistance into the region. One of the reports from OCHA said that only 10% of the 3,500 cargo trucks carrying lifesaving materials had been able to enter the region. The USAID chief, Samantha Power, was very clear when she said:
“This shortage is not because food is unavailable, but because the…Government is obstructing humanitarian aid and personnel, including land convoys and air access”.
I am interested in the UK Government’s comments on her remarks.
There are reports that EDF soldiers forcibly entered World Food Programme and UNICEF offices and destroyed communications equipment belonging to those two agencies. What does the Minister have to say about those recent events, and who does he view as responsible for them?
I mentioned the refugee situation, and I am particularly concerned for the 24,000 Eritrean refugees. Because of the previous conflict, there are many refugees in the region already. The Mai Aini and Adi Harush camps in the north-western zone have been cut off from assistance and apparently have not been reached since mid-July. It has been reported that both those camps have run out of food and the refugees are facing violence and intimidation by armed groups. What assessment has been made of the situation of refugees and IDPs, the numbers, the needs and the attacks? There were disturbing reports of people being forcibly relocated from refugee camps earlier in this crisis. What has happened to them? What assessment has been made? What has been the involvement of Eritrean or other irregular forces in attacks in that region?
In the last couple of days we have seen some pretty horrendous information from the UN about the Semera-Abala corridor, which has been inaccessible since 22 August, and that 200,000 litres of fuel are required for the humanitarian response, which is not available. Cash, needed to pay for services locally, has not come in the levels needed to provide those services. UNICEF reported that 100,000 people face severe or acute malnutrition this year.
The acting humanitarian co-ordinator in Tigray, Grant Leaity, said
“all parties to the conflict must allow and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of impartial humanitarian relief to avert this…catastrophe.”
He is very stark in what he says about risks of famine and significant levels of mortality. We heard from colleagues about reports of 150 people allegedly having died directly of starvation. That report is from the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front and cannot be independently verified, but it tallies with the figures we have heard from the UN and other agencies, which have spoken of 400,000 people already living in famine-like conditions.
I will end by asking the Minister some specific questions. Yesterday, the WFP announced that it faces a funding gap of $426 million for its operations across Ethiopia, to meet the needs of 12 million people in 2021. The US increased its funding to the WFP by $149 million in June. I wonder what the UK will do specifically to support agencies such as the WFP. We have also heard about women’s programmes that have been cut.
We have been clear that the decision to cut the aid commitment from 0.7% to 0.5% was completely wrong, and that is exemplified in situations such as this. I know that the Minister does not want to answer this question directly, but I will ask him again: is our total support to Ethiopia going up or down this year? He has spoken about giving £42.7 million, plus £5 million for refugees in Sudan—obviously that is welcome, with the focus on Tigray—but if the total support for Ethiopia is going down, that money is being diverted from other needs. There are many needs elsewhere in Ethiopia, so that is deeply concerning. I worry that we will find ourselves in a situation similar to Afghanistan, where cuts simply have to be reversed. We need to be putting resource in because the needs are so great.
I have mentioned access issues. Have the Government raised the road access issues for fuel and food trucks in recent days? There seem to have been particular problems in the last few weeks. The Security Council report mentioned that Turkey and Sudan have been attempting to act as mediators, and other regional powers have also been attempting to act as mediators in the conflict. What is the Minister’s assessment of those regional and international efforts? Is the UK offering any particular diplomatic and good-offices support to attempt to reach a peaceful settlement between the parties?
I understand that the Foreign Secretary spoke to Prime Minister Abiy in early August. Has there been further contact with Prime Minister Abiy, Ethiopian Ministers and other parties to the conflict since that time? I welcome that the Foreign Secretary did that, and I am sure that the Minister himself has been in contact with people, but it would be useful to understand who and when. Have we identified anybody for Magnitsky-style sanctions yet? The US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on the chief of staff of the Eritrean defence forces for alleged crimes in Ethiopia. Have we issued any sanctions? I know that the Minister will not speak about potential sanctions, but have we issued any? What role have we been playing at the Human Rights Council? What discussions have we had with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights?
We have a huge responsibility. We have a particular relationship, friendship and history with Ethiopia through our aid programme, and the world has a responsibility to protect civilians in such crises. This House and the British public have a keen interest in the situation in Ethiopia; we all want to see a prosperous, secure and inclusive Ethiopia, but sadly that seems very far from the present situation.
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
The Minister has about 15 minutes if he allows two minutes for the Chair of the International Development Committee to respond. With luck, there might even be time for a couple of interventions. Over to you, Minister.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (James Duddridge)
Fantastic. Thank you, Mr Davies, for providing plenty of time. I know that there is lots of interest in this issue across the House, and it is quite right that we review it. This is a great opportunity both to update the House on what is happening and to answer questions directly, and I am more than happy to take interventions throughout.
The horrific conflict in northern Ethiopia has now entered its 11th month. To make matters worse—to reply to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and others—I am concerned about it spreading not only within the region but across the rest of Ethiopia. I will go into more detail on contacts and activity, which are very much at the forefront of what is happening in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—I was in a meeting with the Foreign Secretary last week reviewing all this. As the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) mentioned, the Foreign Secretary spoke to Prime Minister Abiy last month, and not a day goes by when I do not engage in this issue, either directly or through other intermediaries, whether they be other countries, regional players or organisations. This is not just a concern for the United Kingdom; it is a concern across the continent and for international bodies.
May I address the issue of money? I know that there is a debate about the 0.5% and 0.7% commitments, but the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth nailed it when he referred to Samantha Power. The real issue is not money and resource in Ethiopia; it is getting access. I will go through some of the detail and the numbers on that access. The next stage will be moving from conflict to mediation, when I am sure there will be resourcing issues, and the points being made now will perhaps be more relevant. I will not focus on the broader debate; hopefully hon. Members will recognise that there is a more immediate problem of access.
Let me get into some of the detail and update the House on what has been happening. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front continues military action, which is going beyond Tigray into the Amhara and Afar regions. That is extending the remit and the nature of the suffering. We have consistently called on all sides to stop the fighting. It is horrific to have to listen to the stories of what is happening, but it is clear that rape, sexual violence and famine are being used as weapons of war. Reference was made to chemical weapons. It is difficult to establish definitively what is being used, but it is clear that civilian populations are being targeted, which in itself is against international humanitarian law. If someone’s child, mother or family dies, how they die may be technically relevant, but their being targeted is the offensive thing that we need to stop happening.
Humanitarian agencies are realistically facing what I would describe as a de facto blockade of aid into Tigray. To avert further humanitarian catastrophe beyond the atrocities we have already seen, we call on the Ethiopian Government to allow unfettered access and start restoring essential services. I will go into a bit more detail in a second.
Eritrean forces are, alas, once again in Ethiopian sovereign territory in significant numbers. They must withdraw, and their failure to do so will lead to a further escalation in this conflict, which simply is not needed. The position that both parties are taking is not helpful. I have been asked about mediation. There have been a number of mediation attempts, and there is a lot of discussion. I will not go into the detail of some of that mediation, but it is fair to say that it is not currently working, so different things need to be tried in different ways.
Since November, more than 2 million people have been displaced across Tigray, and 450,000 have been displaced just in Afar and Amhara in the more recent conflicts. Basically, everything has broken down. Ninety per cent. of hospitals and health centres are not working. There are no banking facilities and no electricity. Communications are down, which makes it very difficult to verify some of the stories. If things open up, which we encourage, no doubt we will find out more and it will feel worse.
Florence Eshalomi
On communications, I highlighted that I have constituents who are very worried about their families. If the Minister is saying that communication has broken down, is there anything more the Government can do to help Members who are trying to get that crucial information for their constituents?
James Duddridge
There are things at the periphery that can be done, but the heart is about building that access in the fullest sense of the word. Early in the conflict, we were even finding evidence of satellite phones from aid organisations being taken and used for other purposes, further breaking down communication. There are some parties that do not want open access to communications—they want to finish the conflict, as they see it—on both sides.
On supplies getting through, there is a need for more than 100 trucks every single day to get in. That is a massive logistical effort, even if everybody were behind it. Since 12 July, only about 10% of the required aid has been able to get through, so UN warehouses in Tigray are not being restocked: they are empty. Most people are not eating, effectively, or are not eating enough. There is no private sector provision, so even if one has money there is nothing to buy. Displaced individuals are relying on host communities who are already suffering. The lack of goods means that prices have gone up fivefold, and community resilience is eroding to the point of tipping over to an even more serious and systemic problem.
Sarah Champion
The director of Oxfam in Ethiopia yesterday raised the fact that because the internet is down—deliberately—it was almost impossible to get money transfers, which deeply hampers its process. May I echo his plea for the Minister to try to get at least a window of the internet up so that money transfers can occur?
James Duddridge
I will investigate the specific issue of internationals working together to make sure that money comes through. I am in touch with Ethiopian Ministers, including the Finance Minister, and I will raise that issue with him. That is a slightly separate problem from the one that we are discussing.
Jim Shannon
In my contribution, I referred to churches and NGOs who are active in the Tigray region. If we have such groups operating there, is it not possible to co-ordinate our relief efforts alongside those people and groups to ensure that when it comes to getting to the people who need it, they can work in partnership? That is just a thought. It is important to use all the avenues that we can.
James Duddridge
It is a good thought. It is something that we are doing and will do. I will certainly discuss with our envoy for freedom of religion or belief, my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), how to make it as effective as possible. The networks are really useful to validate informally before we see what is happening on the ground.
Stephen Doughty
On the point about communications, the Minister is aware that our own CDC and also Vodafone have invested substantial amounts in the new Ethiopia telecommunications partnership. Opening up telecommunications to people in Ethiopia is obviously a good thing for all the people, but, given the issues with money transfers, internet access and telecommunications being cut off, is there not an incongruity here? What will we do through those investments to ensure that we get telecommunications open in Tigray properly?
James Duddridge
Various Members have talked about the size of the population of 120 million. My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), the able chair of the all-party group, has talked about a nation of optimism. This is one of the gems at the heart of our east African strategy. It would be a bastion of stability if we could build out and not have to resolve problems. Telecommunications is an essential good. It allows people to trade and allows cash transfers, so the investment is right. It is a long-term investment that we have talked about for years and will be deliverable going forward. It does seem incongruous to talk of Ethiopia as a place of optimism and investment, but we simply have to get back to that place when we get beyond this because that is where development happens.
There are echoes of the ’80s and Live Aid—we did a brilliant job, and Ethiopia has done a brilliant job in bringing itself up. When there has been a natural crisis, it has needed help, but it has also been able to help itself. We need to reset and get back to that position, but we are so far from that point at the moment.
Mr Mitchell
The Minister is right about the massive British taxpayer investment and the huge results that have been achieved. Will he follow my earlier comments and give Members an undertaking that he will look personally at the funding for the World Food Programme, which is absolutely at the critical edge of the humanitarian crisis? Will he look at its funding this year to see what more can be done to meet the need?
James Duddridge
I will. I am already in communication with David Beasley and have discussed food provision in Ethiopia with him. He is an influential figure in the region. Today, my initial issue is getting access: it is not getting food. Until we sort that, no amount of money or WFP extra resource will do it, but there will be a point at which we need to do that and we need to be ready, so I pledge to have another discussion with David Beasley to take the issues forward.
I am concerned to hear reports of press, NGOs, civil society and churches being targeted. We will confirm whether that is happening. If people are being arrested based on their ethnicity, clearly there needs to be stringent following of international human rights rules. I want to reassure hon. Members that we are fully engaged at all levels—locally with those groups and at the United Nations through Lord Ahmad.
Nick Dyer has also been to Ethiopia twice since November with the envoy on famine prevention, and has had access to Tigray. British embassy staff have visited on multiple occasions. I spoke yesterday with our chargé and new development director to get updates. That is a very normal thing, although I would have done that in preparation for this debate—as I say, not a day goes by that I am not doing something on this. That is not to say we are doing enough, but it gives hon. Members an idea.
It is good that President Obasanjo was appointed on 26 August to look at issues in the horn. That is another way of pushing mediation of various descriptions. We are doing a lot through the G7, through discussions with all counterparties. Notwithstanding the fact that money and food are not the immediate issue, we are still the second largest donor to Ethiopia.
On sexual violence, there is some good news. My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), who is no longer in his place, led a debate on that following his intervention on the Select Committee. We are now deploying two individuals based on the scoping mission into Mekelle.
Fleur Anderson
I have a very short question. The Minister referred to high-level conversations; has the Prime Minister spoken to Prime Minister Abiy?
James Duddridge
I do not know, so I do not want to say yes or no and mislead. This is very much on his desk, but I do not have a kind of tick-tock of his interactions. The situation is dire and horrific, but there is a nation and a positive relationship we can get back to. We have a long-standing and deep friendship with the people of Ethiopia. Our development partnership has made a major contribution to lifting people out of poverty and to political and economic reform, and had increased prosperity in that country. I talk today about the horrific incidents with great sadness, but we should aim to get back to where we were, progress with that nation and put it back on a more positive path.
Sarah Champion
I thank every Member who has spoken, for both the tone and the content. I thank the Minister, who I know is deeply committed to this area. The problem is that this is not going to go away. It is important for us all to keep it on the agenda of the Minister and of the international community. The risks we have highlighted are dire. I cannot see an easy way for them to be resolved without international intervention, to get all the parties round the table and discuss a long-term solution. The threats to the broader region are profound.
I would like to raise one thing with the Minister that came up in the debate: atrocity prevention. It was the one thing in the Committee’s report that the Government pushed back on. I would like to request a meeting with the Minister to discuss that.
James Duddridge
I agree. I note the work that has been done on that, but there is still more to be done, and a more nuanced solution. I will arrange a meeting with officials to work out a better way forward following the Committee’s report.
Sarah Champion
Thank you.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the humanitarian situation in Tigray.
Co-operative Purchase of Companies
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated, and when entering and leaving the room. Members should send their speaking notes to hansardnotes@ parliament.uk. Similarly, officials should communicate electronically with Ministers.
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered co-operative purchase of companies by employee groups at risk of redundancy.
It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. As a Labour and Co-operative Member, I am delighted to have secured the debate, which provides a vital opportunity to discuss a co-operative way to secure economic recovery after the devastating effects of the pandemic, and to build a UK economy that is more inclusive and more equal than before.
The symptoms of inequality that have plagued our economy for too long were there for all to see a long time before the first pandemic lockdown was implemented in March 2020. In one of the world’s richest economies, too many families have been struggling to put food on the table, and the pandemic has highlighted this inequality. I commend all the wonderful people who have worked, and who continue to work, relentlessly and tirelessly during all the severe challenges of the pandemic, in order to make sure that our communities function. However, those wonderful workers take home some of the lowest wages. As Robert Owen, the founder of the co-operative movement, who was born on 14 May 1771 in Newtown, Powys, in beautiful Wales, said:
“The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others.”
The economic inequality in the UK has cost lives during the pandemic. It is detrimental to our economic growth, and it ensures that the UK remains fragile and vulnerable to economic shocks. Although those issues were the symptoms, the underlying causes are just as clear. Narrow ownership of our economy has resulted in the problems. Too much power and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of investors, shareholders and executives. As a result, decisions are often made in the interests of the rich and powerful, rather than promoting the interests of communities, workers, consumers and the environment.
The public agree. According to polling conducted by the UK Co-operative party as part of its “Owning the Future” report, only 10% of people believe that the economy prioritised sharing wealth fairly before the covid-19 pandemic, and nearly seven in 10 believe that our recovery is an opportunity to give communities more of a say in how business and the economy can operate, which is exactly what is needed—a widening of ownership, so that we give a greater voice to people who work for, use and are affected by businesses that shape their lives and our economy. One way in which we can do that is by giving employees the opportunity to buy out and operate companies at risk of closure. The companies would be run as co-operatives, so that each worker had a stake and an opportunity to shape the manner in which the business they had purchased was operated. Such employee buy-outs can hardwire resilience and productivity into our economy by preserving productive businesses and giving employees greater motivation and incentive through their stake in the organisation.
That is particularly important where jobs and the local economy are dependent on a small number of larger employers in areas such as manufacturing, where the collapse or downsizing of those companies has a disproportionate impact on local communities. When large companies fold or shrink, and in cases of potential closure, most often due to conjunctural reasons or succession issues, employee buy-outs give people a viable option for saving businesses and jobs.
We can learn much from Italy and the so-called Marcora law, named after the former Italian industry Minister Giovanni Marcora, who established the worker buy-out system more than 30 years ago, to divert the money spent on unemployment to retain jobs and continue economic activity. The Marcora law gives workers the right and, most importantly, the financial support to buy out all or parts of an at-risk business and establish it as an employee-owned co-operative. Workers are given the opportunity to rescue profitable parts of businesses or the whole of profitable businesses. The legislation in Italy does that by giving those workers at risk of redundancy their unemployment benefits as a lump sum in advance to use as capital for the buy-out, as well as access to the necessary support and advice to make it successful.
The results speak for themselves. Hundreds of businesses previously at risk of closure have been preserved as worker co-operatives, with an economic return of more than six times the capital invested by the funding mechanisms. In Italy, between 2007 and 2013, €84 million was made available for worker buy-outs, generating €473 million and saving more than 13,000 jobs.
Marcora law buy-outs benefit hugely from their co-operative organisation, where employment is safeguarded and fair workplace conditions are guaranteed. The economic and financial performances of co-operative buy-outs are often superior to those of traditional businesses.
UK Co-operative party polling indicates that the public support co-operative buy-out innovation, with 64% believing the economy would be fairer if employees could buy their business if it was at risk of closure or sale. The Co-operative party has long championed the impact that Marcora law could have in widening ownership of our economy and reducing inequality, by giving workers a real stake and a practical opportunity to be part of how their businesses are run.
As a Labour and Co-operative MP, I believe the UK Tory Government should give serious consideration to introducing Marcora law-type provisions into UK law. They can do that by introducing provisions to give workers rights to take a stake in their workplace by implementing a statutory right to own, supported by financial assistance and advice from the Government.
New legislation should also be introduced to give employees adequate opportunity to request ownership during business succession, alongside an early warning resource capable of informing workers in advance of insolvency, or when viable businesses are at risk of disposal. That would give employees the ability to assess the scope for acquisition, time to prepare a co-operative business model and an opportunity to bid for a business that is at risk of shrinking or closing.
Not only will the employee buy-outs save jobs and businesses, but their transition to a co-operative model with help to hardwire the principles and values of co-operation into our economy. A co-operative business model gives workers a stake and a voice in how their business is run, and economies with a greater percentage of co-operatively owned businesses have been shown to be more equal, more productive and more resilient. Co-operative communities are more equitable and have a narrower gap between rich and poor. Co-operatives widen ownership and ensure that the businesses on which workers, consumers and communities depend operate in the long-term interests of their workers, not those of long-distance shareholders.
By existing to provide a service for members, rather than generate profits for investors, co-operatives that have formed when businesses are bought by employees are essential to create a better economy that puts people before profit. A larger co-operative sector is a sign of a different economy, where purpose and participation are valued above profit maximisation. A UK Marcora law would not just maintain individual businesses but, through the implementation of co-operative ideals, help the UK shift to a fairer and more democratic economy.
On his election as leader of Welsh Labour, my dear friend Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, appointed a Minister with specific responsibilities for the co-operative sector, Lee Waters, the Labour and Co-operative MS for Llanelli. In May, the Welsh Labour Government were overwhelmingly re-elected on a radical left-wing manifesto, which pledged to provide greater support for worker buy-outs and, with the co-operative sector, seek to double the number of employee-owned businesses in Wales. Perhaps the Prime Minister should take the lead from Mark and appoint a UK Minister for co-operatives, and include doubling the size of the UK’s co-operative sector in the next Tory manifesto.
I would like to thank all the amazing co-operators in the UK Co-operative party for continuing to strive to work together in pursuit of Robert Owen’s values and beliefs. A special mention goes to my friends on the Wales Co-operative council. Our wonderful assistant general secretary, Karen Wilkie, has retired after 22 years of tireless work championing co-operative values. I thank our long-term and long-suffering secretary, K. C. Gordon, who has worked so hard to keep us in co-operative order, and I thank a stalwart of our movement, Sylvia Jones, who will be 88 years young in December, and has been a member of the Labour party since 1963 and a member of the Co-operative party since 1967, has won many awards, and became the first ever female chair of the TUC on 6 May 1979.
May I ask the Minister to answer some questions? Has he or his Department conducted an assessment of the benefits of the existing co-operative sector to the UK economy? If he has done so, will he publish the results and place a copy in the House of Commons Library? If he has not, will he consider carrying out such an assessment? What consideration has he and his Department given to the potential benefits of employee buy-outs for at-risk businesses? What plans do the UK Government have to increase employee buy-outs through greater legislative support? Will the Government give more financial support to those employees looking to buy out their businesses? Will he investigate the successes of the Marcora law in Italy and bring forward an equivalent provision for employees in the UK? What actions is he undertaking to increase the size of the co-operative sector.?
In conclusion, as we look forward to moving on from the worst days of the pandemic, we are presented with a unique chance to do things differently in our economy. Going back to business as usual will not be good enough—not when the economy that existed before the pandemic did not work for so many people. The UK Government have an opportunity to build a fairer economy that works in the interests of communities, workers, consumers and the environment. Learning from the innovation and success of the Marcora law in Italy is one way of doing that, by giving workers the legislative and financial means they need to take a greater stake in their business and the economy. The buy-out of at-risk companies by employees would crucially widen ownership. It would safeguard businesses and give workers greater control in the future and a real voice in the decisions that affect them. The opportunity is here, as is the support and appetite from the public and workers to continue the spirit to work together that emerged during the most difficult days of the pandemic.
The UK Government should rewrite the rules governing our economy so that co-operative values are given the opportunity to flourish and grow. I know the Minister is a very magnanimous person, so I urge him to embrace the co-operative sector, implement Marcora law and, as my good Hywel Francis, the former MP for Aberavon, used to say, “Get on the right side of history.”
Geraint Davies (in the Chair)
I, too, give my best wishes to Karen Wilkie and Sylvia Jones. It is appropriate that we have this debate 250 years after the birth of Robert Owen. With magnanimity, over to the Minister.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. It is a privilege to respond to the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) and I congratulate her on securing the debate. She asked about a Minister for the co-operative movement. That is indeed the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen). I believe he is the longest-serving Economic Secretary to the Treasury. The reason for that is partly because he is magnanimous and looks at the economy as a whole, beyond the macro down to the human level. That includes the value that he and the Government place on the co-operative movement. Co-operatives bring something different from other forms of businesses to the landscape and communities of the country. They have a clear focus on serving their communities’ needs. As I speak, Members will hear about the work that he and the Government are doing.
To answer the specific question about an assessment, we have not done one and do not plan to do so, but we do value co-operatives and have done much to support them. I will cover that in my speech, so that the hon. Member for Neath can hear of the work that we have been doing. She has raised the issue a number of times with the Economic Secretary, and it is right that we are here today to listen to her points about the movement that she supports. There are clearly staunch advocates of workers’ co-operatives across the House.
We want to see the co-operative sector grow. We see co-operatives in the employee-ownership model as being good for workers, local communities and businesses. That is why we have introduced a series of measures in recent years to support and promote the sector. One example is the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, which cut the legal complexity involved in running a co-operative. Alongside that legislation, we increased the amount of withdrawable share capital a member can invest in a co-operative from £20,000 to £100,000, which has given a number of societies greater flexibility to raise capital from individual members.
The hon. Lady asked about reviewing the legislation. We do not plan to undertake a review of the 2014 Act, but the Government are open to receiving credible proposals for its reform. I encourage the sector to ensure that it continues to engage with officials from Her Majesty’s Treasury on suggestions in that area. We have also rolled out a variety of tax reliefs to support organisations that choose an employee-ownership structure. Like any other business, co-operatives have been able to benefit from the Government’s support during the pandemic, including the furlough scheme and business loans.
I turn now to the hon. Lady’s proposal that we introduce a policy similar to Italy’s Marcora law. Although there are currently no plans to introduce legislation of that type, we are always open to receiving proposals that support co-operatives and employee-owned firms. The Economic Secretary and community representatives, along with the hon. Members for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), are looking to discover what more can be done to boost the sector’s ability to raise capital, following the green shares Bill last year.
In June, the Economic Secretary spoke about a wide range of issues relating to co-operatives and mutuals with the hon. Member for Neath and other members of the all-party parliamentary group for mutuals. As I understand it, the Marcora law was mentioned during those discussions. It is only right, however, that we acknowledge the need to take a pragmatic approach to the issue. First, there are clear differences between the Italian and UK economies, which could mean that the positive impacts of a Marcora law might not be as strongly felt in this country. The unemployment rate is one of those differences. The most recent UK unemployment figure from the OECD was 4.7%; by contrast, the Italian unemployment level stood at 9.3%. There is clear disparity between those numbers.
That is not all. In addition to the UK’s comparatively low unemployment rate, we are rolling out unprecedented levels of job support to get even more people into work. The upshot, according to the latest OECD data, is that UK workers are less likely than Italian workers to be unemployed for sustained periods of time, so it is far from clear that a Marcora-style policy here would deliver the same levels of welfare savings for the taxpayer as it does in Italy. As Members may be aware, those savings are sometimes cited as a reason to introduce the policy in this country, as we have heard.
Secondly, we need to learn more about the productivity implications of such a policy. In short, we have to be sure that employee-led buyouts under the Marcora law really are long-term solutions. That means gaining a deeper understanding of what is causing the companies to fail in the first place and of whether transforming them into worker co-operatives would really resolve those structural issues. That knowledge is really important, because providing funding to businesses that are unsustainable is a poor use of taxpayer money.
It is clear from this debate, however, that we are united in our desire to protect jobs and employers from the impact of the pandemic long into the future, so I will briefly touch on our work in this area. First of all, let me remind Members that the Government are providing extraordinary levels of financial support to individuals and businesses affected by covid-19. In fact, by the end of this month, the furlough scheme will have helped to pay workers’ wages for a year and a half, supporting over 1 million employers and more than 11 million jobs. In addition, at last year’s spending review, the Government built on the Chancellor’s plan for jobs by giving the Department for Work and Pensions an extra £3.6 billion to deliver labour market support. That includes funding for the Government’s new three-year restart programme, which will provide intensive and tailored assistance to over 1 million unemployed people to help them find work.
Last year, the Government launched the £2 billion kickstart scheme, which is rolling out hundreds of thousands of new, fully subsidised jobs for young people across the country. Over 50,000 positions have already been created, and the number of young people supported by the scheme will continue to rise as we approve more bids and as more employers recruit kickstart participants. We also recognise that large-scale layoffs can pose enormous challenges to affected communities, which is why in such circumstances we deploy the rapid response service of the Department for Work and Pensions, which provides immediate and personalised support to mitigate the impact of redundances.
Undoubtedly, the failure of large businesses can have very significant consequences for local economies. However, it is equally true that the closure of a much-loved pub or long-established village shop can be a major blow to areas, with the loss of jobs and vital community assets. For that reason, at the Budget, the Government announced the £150 million community ownership fund. The scheme operates in a similar way to the Marcora law. It allows community groups to bid for up to £250,000 of match funding from the Government, enabling them to take over valuable and viable local assets at risk of closure. We are currently assessing first-round bids, and we believe that this money will save jobs, protect services and help to keep the spirit of co-operative entrepreneurship alive around the country. Successful bids will be announced later this autumn.
I will end by reiterating my thanks to the hon. Member for Neath for her thoughtful contributions today and to the co-operative movement as a whole for its work. I hope that I have illustrated that the Government are both committed to supporting worker co-operatives and determined to protect those at risk of unemployment as a result of company failure. My ministerial colleagues and I are keen to continue the conversation with co-operative representatives as we work together to secure these vibrant and innovative organisations’ future success.
Question put and agreed to.
Rough Sleeping
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Christina Rees (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members to wear masks when they are not speaking. This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. Members should send their speaking notes by email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Similarly, officials should communicate electronically with Ministers.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered ending rough sleeping.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. It is a joy to be back in Westminster Hall with colleagues after what has felt like a very long time. While it looks a bit sparse, and I appreciate that there is a lot going on in the Chamber, I know that ending rough sleeping is important to many Members across the House. I am grateful to have been granted this debate to bring it up the agenda.
Here we go again: we are debating how we end the blight of rough sleeping. The pandemic has shown us that the will and capacity to radically change policy is there, albeit in an emergency. “Everyone In” was without doubt a success. It was a phenomenal response to an international health crisis, but it is not a sustainable response to a national rough sleeping crisis. That is what I want to focus on. The pandemic has shown that there are systemic problems preventing us from grasping the nettle and getting to the root causes of rough sleeping and homelessness.
I do not dispute that “Everyone In” was remarkable, and I applaud the Minister and the Government for their efforts. During the pandemic, 355 people in Oxford were brought off the streets and out of hostels into safe accommodation. Now, 215 people are in settled housing. It is becoming clear that we need to turn our minds to a long-term, permanent solution. Insight from the CHAIN database tells us that in 2021, at the height of the pandemic and the “Everyone In” campaign, London saw more people returning to rough sleeping than it had in the last four years. That is about one third of the rough sleepers that were on the streets. Why, when we had the successful programme, was that happening?
We have to ask those who were affected. There is a gentleman called Mr T, who spoke to the Mayday Trust last year as part of their “Wisdom from the Pandemic” work. From Westminster tube station, just metres from where we are now, he said:
“They gave me a room in a hotel. It was miles away. I was lonely, everyone I know is here. I didn’t know what was going on, how long I was going to be there, so I came back here.”
The “Everyone In” campaign may have worked, but it did not work for everyone. We need to learn from these experiences.
Councillor Ben Martin, cabinet member for housing at Swale Borough Council, told me that his experience is that rough sleeping must be about the individual, not the symptoms, and about their hopes and dreams, not their problems. To fundamentally end rough sleeping, we need to treat rough sleepers and the homeless as humans with individual needs, not as statistics. Take substance abuse. Councillor Fran Oborski, who is the treasurer of a homelessness charity, emailed me about how many rough sleepers have substance abuse issues—something that is often not helped in hostels or temporary accommodation—and said that we need to improve access to rehabilitation services for those who want or need them.
Someone who used to be homeless and who now works with rough sleepers emailed me to say that the speed with which services want people to make progress only adds to their problems instead of solving them. Given the pressure the services are already under, they cannot address the traumas rough sleepers have faced. That point is echoed by the Salvation Army, which points out that we need more funding for support services to tackle the root causes.
“Everyone In” brought people off the streets, but it did nothing to repair trust between many rough sleepers and authorities—councils, services and Government. Someone who simply goes by the name London Homeless Info emailed me to say that they are sceptical about the aims of councils, charities and services. We will not solve the rough sleeping crisis without addressing that issue of trust. How do we do that? That is what we all want. How do we break the negative cycle of people returning to the streets and failing in those services—and, more to the point, those services failing them?
The liberal approach would be to empower those forced to sleep rough, not to dictate—as is often unfortunately the case currently—narrow pathways designed by others. People going through tough times should be able to decide for themselves what support they want, and the state should then be ready to respond. I appreciate that that is no easy task and actually flips the entire system on its head, but if we actually listen to rough sleepers we know what they want.
Gemma, who was sleeping outside Joe & The Juice on Oxford Street last year, told the Mayday Trust:
“Living in a hostel is no life. It doesn’t help me with my depression. The atmosphere feels like a graveyard in there.”
Richard, who was begging on Victoria Street, said:
“I’m being told I have to go to a hostel; I really don’t want to go. I know I will relapse. Everyone there takes drugs. I’m trying to stay sober but they are forcing me to go.”
Talk about a rock and a hard place—someone gets themselves on their feet and is told that they have to put themselves in a position that will send them backwards.
The answer to rough sleeping is not just more money, more emergency accommodation or more housing, especially social housing. We have to look beyond the statistics. All of that is important, but when we are commissioning the services, we need to change our mindset. We are commissioning with, not just for, people. We need to provide them with unconditional and personalised support.
We also need to appreciate, Ms Rees, that a rough sleeper could be us. They could be our friends or our family members. Their stories highlight that often what causes someone to become a rough sleeper is a series of events that compound—family breakdown, job loss, ill health. We cannot think of rough sleepers as an other. They are us. We need to give them the autonomy and respect that any one of us in this room would want.
Aspire and Oxfordshire Homeless Movement do something like that. They treat the person as an individual, with coaching, and catch them just before the point of rough sleeping. After Adeline reached out to them, she says, she has
“now found a part-time live-in role, complemented by my freelance graphic design work, and sleep well and safe. This experience made me realise that anyone can become vulnerable at some point in their life”.
I dare say that, after the pandemic, more and more people of a background that most of us here might recognise—perhaps even more than before—are ending up in this situation.
The Mayday Trust has done lots of work to develop a new approach called the person-led, transitional and strength-based response, or PTS. That gives people the ability to choose the support that they want at a time that works for them, working with someone who coaches them through and helps them find the right pathway. Upcoming research from the New Economics Foundation shows a correlation between being treated with dignity and respect and a person taking positive actions. We all want those positive actions to happen, because that is how we end the rough sleeping crisis. That kind of approach—trusting people with their own decisions—helps to build trust between the individual and the state.
As the Local Government Association, Crisis, Shelter and others have said, we urgently need a renewed, detailed, cross-departmental strategy for how the Government plan to meet their commitment to end rough sleeping by 2027. I say that knowing, of course, that the Minister takes a particular interest in this matter. However, we are very concerned that, to end rough sleeping, we need all Government Departments to join up in their thinking. Without a new strategic approach, the Government will not meet this manifesto commitment. The Government have broken three of those so far. Will this one be next?
The Government are not short of expert recommendations from local government, the sector and elsewhere to draw on. Crisis, which has an event after the debate that I want to plug to all Members, is absolutely right to urge the Government to adopt the Housing First approach to permanently end homelessness for those with the most serious needs. Should the Treasury be listening, if the priority is to rebuild our finances after the pandemic, then it should prioritise the analysis published by Crisis today, which shows that Housing First is cost-effective. For every £1 we put in, we get £1.24 back because we are reducing dependencies on services. It is win-win. Can the Minister tell us if there have been any discussions with the Treasury and the Chancellor ahead of the spending review about rolling out Housing First across England?
The Government are making things harder by cutting the universal credit uplift and freezing the local housing allowance. Shelter has suggested a model of “protect, prevent and build” for this strategy, which I hope the Minister is considering. Shelter, the LGA and individual councillors have told me about the need to fix local authority funding in this area. There should be ongoing, dedicated funding for councils to tackle rough sleeping and prevent homelessness in the first place.
Councils need to be given sufficient time to bid for money, and then to spend it. Giving them two to four weeks to bid for the rough sleeping accommodation programme, which requires that properties are purchased and occupied within the same financial year, makes it almost impossible for local authorities in the south-east to be successful. Surely some common-sense tweaks to that bidding process could achieve better value for the money that is coming in.
There are more lessons that we need to learn, but at the heart of a renewed strategy must be that the rough sleeper is an individual. They should be part of the process, not have policies imposed on them. I have heard too many stories of the bad experiences some people have had with councils, rogue landlords and service providers. I fundamentally believe—I genuinely do, which I do not often say—that this Government want to improve the situation, but I urge them to put it high up on their priority list because 2027 is not that far away. The pandemic has been challenging, but it has also provided an opportunity to see what can work. I say grasp this nettle and use this opportunity.
In conclusion, I have a few simple questions. The Minister will be surprised that I have not mentioned this yet, but when will we scrap the Vagrancy Act 1824? I have been banging on about this for over four years. Six months ago, the Secretary of State said that it is happening. Please can we have an update on some timelines? When will we give councils certainty and long-term funding for rough sleeping programmes? Will the Minister come back to the House with a renewed, detailed and thought-through strategy for how we are going to end rough sleeping for good, recognising the changing circumstances that we are in?
We need to give rough sleepers support, but I urge the Minister to consider that the plan must also give them control. What we are doing is not working, particularly for the last few, who will be the most difficult to win round. We need to start building a strategy that reaches out to them now if we are to be successful in just over five years’ time. With a combination of intervention through programmes like Housing First, prevention through better mental health and financial support and through social house building, and empowerment through a system that works with the individual, we can do this. I believe there is cross-party support to do it. I thank all those who are here today and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
We do not need to concern ourselves with time limits.
Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this afternoon, Ms Rees. I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on securing the debate on this crucial issue.
I was elected in December 2019 with a pledge to end rough sleeping on the streets of Hastings and Rye, which is a pledge I intend to keep. As constituency MPs, we will all have had experiences of meeting and hearing from those who have unfortunately fallen into homelessness and rough sleeping. The distress and desperation that individuals in that position experience is hard to hear and challenging to overcome.
The Government have committed vast amounts of investment since the last general election to support work to eradicate rough sleeping, and to support those who find themselves homeless. In the 2021 Budget, the Chancellor pledged a further £676 million, which included a rough sleepers’ support scheme of £221 million. Hastings has benefited from that investment in eradicating rough sleeping, and I thank the Government for that.
As welcome as the funding is, I have discovered something that is equally important in tackling the issue, and that is collaboration. When I was first elected and made tackling rough sleeping one of my top priorities, I was struck by how many organisations were already working on this: councils, churches, faith groups, large national charities and individuals doing their bit here and there. What was evident, though, was the disjointed approach to providing support to those who most needed it. It was clear to me that there needed to be more collaboration and joined-up thinking.
Thanks to the fantastic work of Homeless Link, in east Sussex we now have more of a joined-up approach. Following a meeting last year, we have set up a forum aimed at preventing homelessness and mitigating the risk factors of rough sleeping. It includes local charities, churches, organisations, local authority officers and homelessness support representatives from all over, particularly those who are involved in housing and health support. The forum meets on a regular basis, which means that all those concerned with tackling the issue can meet to discuss progress and next steps. By working together, they are beginning to end the pandemic of rough sleeping in our area. The Government have played a crucial role, in providing funding and impetus to eradicate rough sleeping. Combined with the collaboration of those on the ground, that is now delivering results.
I agree with the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon that another crucial aspect in tackling rough sleeping is the Housing First policy. Piloted in 2017, the policy has supported and helped countless people, and was the foundation for the Government’s approach to those sleeping on our streets during the covid-19 pandemic. It is the principle of helping those with the most complex needs not just with housing and support for long-term accommodation needs, but to tackle the causes of their rough sleeping, whether they be mental health issues, drug or alcohol misuse, unemployment or family and relationship breakdown. Providing that wraparound care and support, rather than just a roof over someone’s head, is the best way to tackle rough sleeping and ensure that people do not end up back on our streets.
That is why collaboration is so important in our approach to this issue. We need individuals and organisations from all areas to provide that wraparound support and work together to tackle the issue. That includes volunteers, local authorities and other organisations. I conclude by asking the Government to ensure that we focus not only on funding, but on policies such as Housing First and the collaboration they instil in those working on the ground. Funding and collaboration are the two crucial ingredients we need to make a success of our pledge to eradicate rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on calling a debate on this very important issue.
In one of the richest nations, in 2021, we are still debating the issue of people who are left with no home and no choice but, night after night, to sleep in shop doorways and, day after day, to sit in them, pained with loneliness. The deal that the Government have talked about around homelessness should not be transactional but relational. This is the reality of people’s lives. They are not numbers—they are people who need attention and focus.
We see homelessness services rush around, but when they go away somebody’s life can feel very isolated. That is why we have to talk about people and the stories that they hold. We look at our constituents in this situation. I talk to my homeless constituents very regularly and I know that they are looking to live out a fulfilled life. We need to move the language on and talk about people in our community. These are people who—let us face it—have been failed by a society that has not protected them and failed by a system that has not provided for them. They are homeless not only because they have complex lives, but because they have no home. It is not rocket science. There is a simple solution: just provide somewhere safe, somewhere personal and somewhere to make a new beginning—somewhere not to be isolated, but to be connected.
The evidence on Housing First, as hon. Members have already said, shows that if we give somebody their own place and give them the help they need and the hope they need, there is no cause for rough sleeping. Nicholas Pleace, an academic in my city, at the University of York, has evidenced the impact, and today we are hearing about a crisis furthering that evidence. There is no need for delay, more pilots or more time to be spent on this; we know that Housing First works.
What the Government did during the pandemic was right. There was the fear that covid would sweep through the homeless communities and so people were given a safe place. In York, that meant staying at an aparthotel, in hotel rooms with en suites and kitchenettes—microflats. For the first time, somebody could be fully independent. They had a resettlement opportunity, an opportunity to be on their own, to be in a stable place, to cook their own meals, to live their own lives and—yes, while restricted and locked down—to start rebuilding their lives with the services that were provided. Some had been on the streets for years. Others had been in and out of hostels—going through that rotating door. Suddenly they had the start they needed. Of course, behind that, we have seen charities step in, and I have to say that the charities in York are utterly outstanding in the work that they do.
I met with a homeless person just a few months ago. It is somebody I know really well and have talked to often since I have been an MP. He told me how he now has a job and now has pride. Others, because they have done so well, are placed in their own accommodation. The initiative taught our services something really important: if people have the right spaces, the right opportunity and the right chance, which so many of us take for granted, they can break the cycle—they can break through.
However, the funding has ended. Of course, the funding did not just go on housing; it also brought in a new collaboration around the services that could be making people’s lives so different. For the first time, these people saw a dentist. They saw a GP. They had their needs addressed. They had people to talk to. They had services to help them to address some of their financial challenges and to show them how to navigate through the very complex world in which we live. I thank those organisations that have been working in that area and, in particular, organisations such as Kitchen for Everyone York. They go out week by week, providing food and friendship to our homeless community.
However, with the funding ended, people are yet again on our streets. Let us just imagine if the initiative were a permanent offer. People would be moving into independent living instead of enduring years going in and out of hostels. How much that would save the state! The step process of hostels to shared housing just does not work. It does not work for the people involved, it does not work for the communities, and it does not work—let us face it—for Government.
The answer must be Housing First. I speak regularly with the Salvation Army and Changing Lives in York and I thank them, too, for what they do. They also understand that they need a Housing First model and are desperate to see it. They believe it will save money, and not only save lives but rebuild them.
Tragically, however, we have not got the accommodation we need. This is where I want to support the Minister to make these arguments because once again, in my city, the wrong housing is being built. The obscenity of luxury apartments shooting up everywhere—not lived in, but sold as assets and second homes—when York is full of inadequately housed families and individuals, sofa surfers and rough sleepers, screams of a failed system. We have a planning Bill before us, and we need the right homes to be built to meet the needs of my community.
However, it is going to get worse in York. The cost of living has shot up through this pandemic. The cost of housing—eye-watering sums—has gone up at the fastest rate in the country. It is already a lower broad rental market area, and therefore has a lower local housing allowance, because of the broader area with which it is associated; it does not even meet the cost of housing in the city. So many homes and council homes are still being sold but we are not seeing a replenishment, and therefore we do not have the housing that our city needs. It is completely out of joint. It is impacting our economy too: we cannot recruit people with the skills that are needed because they cannot afford to live in our city; we cannot recruit social care workers who cannot afford the accommodation in York either.
We need to talk about a new generation of resettlement housing in the social housing mix—one that comes with a price tag that talks about the support services that are required too. There are so many communities across our constituencies that need resettlement, whether that is people coming out of the criminal justice system, refugees coming right now from Afghanistan—incredibly vulnerable people—or perhaps those people about to lose £20 a week from their universal credit, who will lose their home as a consequence.
We need to ensure that the right stock is being built. We do not have enough of it. I want to encourage the Minister in all he does to seize this moment; to see this as the time, after such a successful programme, to drive forward resettlement housing, to give people that chance. I know that the leaders in York’s voluntary sector who oversee the homelessness project recognise the failure of the system in which they have to work. They want to work and see the outcomes that all of us in this debate long to see.
Winter is coming. We have a chance to end rough sleeping once and for all. We know what has worked in this pandemic, and we can do it again. It saves money and it saves lives. I trust that the Minister will have the ammunition he needs to make this happen.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Diolch yn fawr, Ms Rees. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and I am delighted that the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) has secured this debate. This is actually the third time I have taken part in such a debate: I called the first two, so I am hoping it is third time lucky when it comes to what I hear from the Minister.
Before I talk about the wider issue of ending rough sleeping, it is really important that we consider what the Government have done so far. This year alone, £750 million has already been put in to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness, in particular the £203 million investment through the rough sleeping initiative—double what it was last year. None of us can be in any doubt that the Government are determined to end rough sleeping.
We saw that with the “Everyone In” initiative during the pandemic, when national Government, local government and charities came together to collaborate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) pointed out. But even when probably 90% of rough sleepers were housed during “Everyone In”, the remaining 10%—the most entrenched rough sleepers—were still on the streets in the city.
As the MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, I know full well the impact of rough sleeping on our streets. My constituency has the largest number of rough sleepers in the country—more than the next three boroughs in London combined. That shows how acute the issue is in Westminster. However, it is equally important to point out that only 3% of those on our streets have a connection to Westminster, which shows that this is a national and international problem on the streets of Westminster.
Having been responsible for rough sleeping strategy and services in Westminster for 10 years or so until I came to this place, I know about the brilliant work that the rough sleeping team at Westminster City Council do day in, day out and night in, night out. They work with partners such as St Mungo’s, which provides the outreach service. Again, the outreach workers are out every single night of the year—on the coldest and hottest nights, including Christmas. I pay tribute to those brilliant outreach workers, with whom I have been out so many times over the last decade.
Why were 10% of rough sleepers left on the street? It was not a case of not having somewhere to go, because there was a room for every rough sleeper on the streets of Westminster, as there is tonight. Tonight there will be 500 beds available in this one borough alone, which is incredible. However, why are we still seeing people on the streets? It is because the vast number of people on our streets have mental health and addiction problems.
From my experience, and as I am told by St Mungo’s and Westminster City Council’s outreach teams, these people are some of the most damaged and vulnerable people in our society, and they need and deserve our help. When they have such entrenched problems, however, it can take years to build up trust with them. They will often refuse help, as I have seen. I have lived in the Cities of London and Westminster for 25 years, and in Westminster for more than 20. During the “Everyone In” programme, we saw the 10% on our streets. I live in Pimlico, and they were there when we would come out to go shopping every day. They were so ill, and it is because of drugs and drink and the mental health issues that they are suffering.
How do we go about helping people who refuse time and again to be housed, even on the coldest days of the year? When I was responsible for rough sleeping at Westminster, I took out the Minister responsible for rough sleeping on the coldest day of the year. He was shocked to find people still sleeping on the street. When we have our cold weather plan, we open up churches, synagogues and other community halls, with no questions asked. We do not even have to ask for people’s names. We just want people to come in and be safe—we want to save their lives.
Even on the most dreadful nights of the year, people still refuse to come in. Why? That is what we have to tackle, which is why I have been working together with the brilliant people at Crisis, as well as the equally brilliant people at St Mungo’s and The Passage, on repealing the Vagrancy Act 1824. When I asked the Secretary of State in February in the House of Commons, he said that the Act
“should be consigned to history.”—[Official Report, 25 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 1138.]
I am forever hopeful that that will happen one day, and perhaps the Minister can enlighten us, but we are working to replace the Act. From what the Government are saying, we think we have won the argument but what do we replace the Act with? We need to have a new approach—an assertive outreach approach—whereby we have the mental health and addiction services available on the street. We used to have mental health services on the street, but they have now gone. We need them back, and we need a health-led approach. We have heard about Housing First; we have the housing, the hostels, the temporary accommodation and the move-on accommodation. It is about persuading the people who refuse to come off the street with that offer and about tackling the reasons why they are on the street. Any expert in outreach would tell us that it is about tackling those causes.
I am proud to be involved in and a member of the Kerslake Commission, for which St Mungo’s is the secretariat. I have seen the first draft of the report, which is coming out in a couple of weeks’ time. It is one of the most collaborative pieces of research on homelessness and rough sleeping that I have ever seen, and I hope the Minister will welcome the abundance of recommendations coming his way in the next couple of weeks. What I have so far learned from taking part in the Kerslake Commission, which was UK-wide and involved charities and local authorities across the country, is that we all believe in one thing: we can, by working together, tackle rough sleeping and resolve it for good.
Many hon. Members have mentioned the issue of funding. As I said, this Government have probably put more into rough sleeping than any other Government for decades—that is the right thing to do—but it is about longer-term funding. I know from being responsible for commissioning services in Westminster that we need to know as much as possible years in advance. It is does not necessarily work to have a funding stream for a year; we need at least three years. We need to be able to commission services, and if we are to tackle the long-term reasons why people find themselves on the street, we need those services to be there for at least three years. Again, my plea to the Minister is for longer-term funding.
If we do not come together on this matter, we will continue to see people on the streets night in, night out. At the latest count, there were 171 rough sleepers in Westminster, which is much lower than in previous years, showing that we are working together and that the “Everyone In” strategy has had a longer-term effect. The vast majority of those still sleeping on the street do not tend to be British; they tend to be from eastern Europe. We also need to look at how local authorities—not just in London, but across the country—can work with people who do not have any recourse to public funds, which is an ongoing issue. Any local authority or charity that works in rough sleeping would tell us that.
I pay tribute to the brilliant organisations that I have mentioned, including Hotel School, a scheme set up by the Passage and Jeremy Goring of the Goring Hotel. They understand that if we are to help people off the street and turn their lives around, tackle their mental ill-health and addiction issues—the reasons why they are on the street—and give them a place to live, they also need skills and the ability to find a job. Hotel School, which is based in my constituency, is about doing that. It brings together hotels such as the Goring, the Ritz and others to provide real training, and jobs afterwards. I would love for the Minister to join me on a visit to Hotel School in the near future, so that he can see what the private sector and charities such as the Passage are doing together.
I have probably gone on for quite a long time now, Ms Rees, but as you can probably tell I am passionate about this subject. If I do nothing else in my time in Parliament, I hope that I can secure the repeal of the Vagrancy Act and, equally importantly, its replacement with the legislation, services and approach that will tackle rough sleeping once and for all. I really think we can do that, and from what I can see—and I have seen a lot of Governments in Westminster in my time in this role—if any Government can do it, it is this Government.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken), and I thank her for bringing her insight and expertise to this debate. I also thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this important debate.
Having somewhere to call home, somewhere to sleep and somewhere we can feel safe is the very least that each of us should hope to secure in our lives. We all have a duty to work together to eradicate the scourge of rough sleeping. As has been said, there has been good progress and the pandemic prompted a renewed focus on the issue, but of course there is always more to be done. A sensible, partnership approach between the third sector, local authorities and the Scottish Government meant a move away from night shelter provision and led to the “Ending Homelessness Together” action plan, and that work has benefited from £50 million of additional funding.
In Scotland, rough sleeping is at a record low and frontline teams offering support to those who might need it, particularly during the pandemic, have done a sterling job. The priority of keeping people safe and housing those with no settled home in emergency accommodation was a public health imperative during the pandemic, which is why the Scottish Government awarded £1.5 million to third sector organisations to assist them in their work of securing accommodation for that emergency provision. However, we must continue that as we move through recovery, as the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon and others who have spoken have indicated. To that end, the Scottish Government have launched their “Housing to 2040” strategy—a renewed commitment to ending rough sleeping and homelessness for good.
The emphasis must be on prevention of rough sleeping, and that means that the necessary support structures must be in place to support people in their homes. That means working with third sector organisations, landlords, local authorities and a range of other services to support those at risk of homelessness, for whatever reason. As was mentioned earlier, some of those who sleep rough may have complex needs and may require a lot of support in a lot of ways. As a society, we have to be prepared to help them through that.
But all that work is taking place against a much more challenging background, and it would be remiss of me not to mention the policy of no recourse to public funds, which leaves some people with no access to basic essential services, putting those affected at real risk of housing insecurity and homelessness. We cannot underestimate the impact that removing the £20 universal credit uplift will have on households who are already struggling and teetering on the financial edge. The Scottish child payment is the Scottish Government’s attempt to target support at the most financially challenged, but that will be wiped out by the abolition of the universal credit uplift. I urge the Minister to use his influence and good offices to encourage the United Kingdom Government to think again on that policy.
The freeze on local housing allowance rates from April will push people further into poverty and increase the risk of homelessness for many. The Scottish Government’s discretionary housing payment spend is around £82 million for 2021-22. That is an important investment used by councils to safeguard tenancies and prevent homelessness. Alongside that, the much-hated bedroom tax has been fully mitigated in Scotland, helping 70,000 households to sustain their tenancies, but of course challenges remain. I hope that best practice will be shared across the UK as each part of the UK works to eliminate this social scourge—this social blight. It does not matter where it is working. Whatever works is what matters, and we should all be sharing the best practice that we are using to tackle this issue.
Progress has been made on rough sleeping and homelessness. I am sure we all welcome the renewed focus on that, which the pandemic prompted, but we must look at the fabric of our society and how we build a more inclusive society, so that we can envisage a time when homelessness and rough sleeping become part of our past. At its heart, tackling rough sleeping and homelessness is fundamentally about the kind of society that we want to build. If tackling this issue is about anything, it is about asking ourselves what kind of country we want to live in. Dealing with it requires concerted effort around supporting tenancies, the welfare system, and supporting families who are struggling through these times in the range of ways I have indicated.
We can never be comfortable with homelessness and rough sleepers in our communities and on our streets. We must all work together to address this issue and ensure that it is no longer part of our society; we must envisage a future in which it does not happen. Rough sleepers and homelessness are hard evidence, if we need it, that our support systems have failed or are inadequate. We must have systems that are comprehensive and flexible to assist those most at risk. Supporting people in their tenancies allows them to go on to live full, productive lives and to contribute to their community. We will all be better off for that. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on the further progress we can make on co-operation across the United Kingdom, so that we can work together to solve this.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, I think, Ms Rees. I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on securing this vital debate and speaking consistently and passionately about the need to end rough sleeping. I also praise hon. Members from both sides of the political divide for talking about the value of the third sector and volunteers, whether it is Crisis, Shelter or local charities, and advocating the need for Housing First and making sure it is implemented using a sustainable model. I thank the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) for her consistent campaigning for the repeal of the Vagrancy Act 1824. Of course, there will be advocates of that in the Opposition. I look forward to the Minister’s answer on that subject.
Before the pandemic, people sleeping rough on our streets was a visible sign—a shameful sign—of failure for Governments and society. That includes the many people that the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster referred to. On my walk to my flat last night, I saw that visible sign: people have started to reappear, rough sleeping in alleyways and doorways. After a decade of austerity before the pandemic, we have twice as many rough sleepers as we had 10 years ago; that is a fact. Tragically, 976 homeless people—human beings—lost their lives in 2020.
Not having shelter and the necessary wraparound services that hon. Members have referred to is literally a matter of life and death. The hopes and aspirations that we all share just disappear without those wraparound services. More than 2,500 people slept rough last autumn. The figures cause considerable debate and give policymakers and service providers only a snapshot of the level of need at any given time. I hope the Minister can elaborate on how the Government intend to provide more accurate and robust figures in the future. I know that Crisis has been advocating for that for some time.
When covid-19 hit, the Government promised councils that they would do “whatever it takes”. Local authorities were asked by Ministers to ensure that those sleeping on our streets or in high-risk accommodation were supported into safer accommodation. It seemed to take a national and international health pandemic to gain the focused political will to provide shelter and tackle homelessness, but I pay credit to the Government and all the supporting agencies in the third sector for doing so. Councils and partners up and down the country, including in my own patch—Cheshire West and Chester and Halton councils—should rightfully be praised for all their work in getting people off the streets in extremely challenging circumstances for us all.
Despite that work, I fear that the Government have quietly started to roll back the support of the “Everyone In” programme—a move highlighted by Dame Louise Casey, who resigned from her post as the leader of the Government’s rough sleeping taskforce. She is the very same person who helped successfully to reduce rough sleeping under the previous Labour Government some time ago. Shelter says that now almost three quarters of the people helped through the “Everyone In” programme—almost 30,000 people—have not moved into settled accommodation. Minister, we require a sustainable solution. Meanwhile, the freeze of the local housing allowance and the end of the eviction ban mean that many more people risk being pushed on to the streets, as workers in rented accommodation still relying on furlough or currently in arrears risk losing their home.
Homelessness is not inevitable. The Government’s manifesto stated that they had the ambition to end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament, but the refusal to address some of the fundamental causes of homelessness—the interdependency of public services that refer to mental health services and social services, for example—means that we could be getting back to business as usual, with people starting to appear back on the streets. I hope that the Minister and the Government can prove me and others wrong.
Rachael Maskell
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his speech, but does he also recognise that over the pandemic, charities have had an extremely difficult time with funding? Across the board, charities have £10 billion less now than they had at the start of the pandemic. We are likely to see significant cuts in local authority funding, too. That is the biggest threat to the ability to resettle people safely.
Mike Amesbury
My hon. Friend is exactly right about that interdependency, not only of the state, whether regional or local, but of charities. I am sure that the Minister will refer to it when summing up.
Housing and people—the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon referred to people being at the heart of this—should come first. That should be the foundation on which to build better lives. Housing First, however, does not seem to be part of the Government’s—or, should I say, of the Treasury’s—stated mission to “Build Back Better”. Instead, the response to housing during the pandemic and as we transition out of it seems to be a story of half measures, repeating mistakes similar to some of those of the past 10 years, with the austerity to which my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) referred.
If I look at some of the Housing First pilots, our metro Mayors are leading the way, whether it is Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram in Liverpool City Region or, indeed, Andy Street. Those pilots have been successful. I declare an interest, in that I used to work for Andy Burnham, but he talks about an 87% tenancy sustainment rate, and Andy Street uses similar figures. I know that they have certainly been speaking to the Minister. I hope that they help. Indeed, I hope that Treasury Ministers can see the light, and that investment in people and Housing First would create an overall cost saving over time. I wish the Minister well with that argument.
We need to look more at the underlying problems of rough sleeping. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster referred to that. There is a need for mobile, flexible mental health services, but of course they have been cut, particularly in the last decade. There is an interdependency there.
We must also ensure strong investment in building council and housing association homes. Social house building has almost ground to a halt under Conservative Governments. The number of homes for social rent built in England stood at just under 6,700 in 2019-20, compared with almost 40,000 in 2010-11. The Government risk that figure being further reduced by the scheme that provides half of those homes under their long-awaited planning reforms, which may come somewhere down the line. The Minister, who, like me, came into politics shaped by experiences in a housing association, knows that socially owned homes provide a real foundation for stability for growing families. Social housing is affordable.
The Government’s ambition is to build 300,000 homes a year—I think we built around 244,000. However, the only time we have had a successful house building programme—way back in history, back through successive Governments—was when social housing was a fundamental part of the mix. It was not the only element—market-led housing always leads the way, and that should be regulated more effectively—but we need to step things up on social housing.
Reforming our broken private rented sector will also be key if the Government want to get serious and prioritise preventing rough sleeping and homelessness. The Government could have used the Queen’s Speech to drive through the long-awaited reforms of the private sector and abolishing section 21. I hope that the Minister will confirm exactly when that will happen—the day and the month—in his response. I look forward to that reply.
I mentioned seeing, last night while walking home, the visible signs of a re-emergence of people sleeping rough on our streets. It is somebody’s son, daughter, sister, grandfather or gran huddled in a doorway, sometimes hidden down an alley, but without a roof over their head to call home. The right to shelter and a good home should be a basic human right for everybody, regardless of whether they have access to public funds, which was a point well made by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster. My plea to the Minister and the Government is to ensure that “Everyone In” continues and becomes a permanent feature of that ambition to end rough sleeping for good.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Eddie Hughes)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees, but more importantly, it is a pleasure to see you not just at 6 o’clock in the morning at the gym, which is where I am more used to seeing you.
Eddie Hughes
My apologies, Ms Rees.
I thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing the debate. We may be few in number in Westminster Hall, given that other important things are going on in the Chamber, but we are all committed to the cause. Generally, this has been a largely unpolitical debate—sometimes the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and the SNP draw us more towards the political element of the discussion, but perhaps that is no surprise. It feels to me that in this room we have a bunch of people who are committed to this cause, regardless of political affiliation. That is a nice place to be.
We have half an hour, and although it is not my intention to use all that time, a slightly less formal approach might be warranted in the discussion. For example, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon mentioned Aspire in her opening speech. One of the things I find critical in my role is that we do not make services and do things to people, we do things with them, and an important part of that is to speak to those people who have experience of the rough sleeping system. I believe 30% of Aspire staff are in that position. It is incredibly important that it is not just a bunch of civil servants or MPs in London creating the policies, but that we are making sure that we take account of the people on the ground who know what they are talking about.
On the issue of support at a time that works, as a Minister, during the summer I had the opportunity to go out and about round the country, and I went to Fairmount Lodge in Shipley. Through the rough sleeping accommodation programme, a building that was originally built in the early 1900s is now converted into one-bedroom and two-bedroom flats, and co-located in the building is the local support service, so that people can access care at the time they need it. There is a concierge on site 24 hours a day, to protect the flow in and out of the building so that inappropriate people are not coming in. Care and support is brought into the site from other groups, such as drug and alcohol abuse support organisations, so we are not sending people out to appointments that we expect them to attend all the time.
Members have mentioned the “Everyone In” programme, which provided, for example, the opportunity to make sure that people saw dentists or GPs for the first time. We held events where I have been joined by, for example, the vaccine Minister. Some people said it was the first time they had seen Health and rough sleeping Ministers attending meetings together. Let us hope that in the future we develop the appreciation that homelessness and rough sleeping are about not just the absence of a home, but the health requirements that go with that.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
Not far from Shipley, in Leeds, St George’s Crypt provides crisis accommodation for people rough sleeping and has built a number of houses on a similar model, providing wraparound services. The houses are low carbon. It has been able to get assistance from the social investment sector. What more can be done to provide asset funding to organisations to build this sort of housing to move people on from rough sleeping into that type of accommodation?
Eddie Hughes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. That sounds like an innovative method of providing houses. We have our flagship rough sleeping accommodation programme, with the intention to provide up to 6,000 new homes by the end of this Parliament. Significant progress has already been made. The programme is not simply providing the capital for the homes and the fabric of the buildings, but the support that I think we have all recognised is so important. We would be kidding ourselves if we were to expect people who have previously had chaotic lifestyles to immediately sustain a tenancy.
Several Members have mentioned Housing First. The hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) mentioned graciously the various Mayors who have been involved in the programme. I was delighted when Andy Street became Mayor, as the first thing he did was to convene people to address homelessness and rough sleeping in the west midlands. At the time, I was working for YMCA Birmingham, a charity supporting previously homeless young people. It seemed like a really emblematic moment for him to take that lead. This is not a political point. Andy Burnham has also done incredible work—not least, I am sure, because his campaign had the political support of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale to help secure that position in the first place. To push the non-partisan theme, I am hoping to meet up with Andy Burnham at the Conservative party conference, of all places, to discuss how we might continue to work together.
However, the Housing First scheme is not perfect. While I am a keen, enthusiastic supporter, I would not like it to be held up as a completely perfect scheme. For example, there were reservations from some housing associations over committing property to the scheme. Subsequently, now that some have engaged and seen how the scheme works, I think they are warming to it and, after that initial delay, are coming forward with more properties. As it is a housing-led project, it obviously needs to ensure that it has the homes before it can put people in them and provide them with support.
Through things like a combination of the rough sleeping accommodation programme and the rough sleeping initiative, we get a good element of the same sort of principle. I fully appreciate that keen advocates of Housing First will talk about fidelity—the purism of its approach—but we can still achieve giving somebody a home and providing them with support.
Layla Moran
On the rough sleeping initiative, I would seek a point of clarification, and I think that many council officers would also be desperate for a clear answer on this. Councils received letters from the Government saying that, because of the rough sleeping initiative, they should end all “Everyone In” programmes, and, in particular, the use of hotels. Meanwhile, they have heard elsewhere from Government that the “Everyone In” scheme is still ongoing.
That has caused huge amounts of confusion, not least in my own area in Oxford, and other councils have also contacted me, desperate for an answer. My question is: has “Everyone In” now stopped completely, or are councils still allowed to use money to put people in hotels, or was that letter not saying the right thing?
Eddie Hughes
I would say that “Everyone In” continues; we still have people who are in emergency accommodation. However, we also need to appreciate that “Everyone In” is not a sustainable approach. It was fantastic that, during the height of a pandemic, we were able to move people into emergency accommodation, but the type of accommodation that many of those people were moved into is, by its very nature, not something we would expect people to stay in for a sustained period.
I make no apology for constantly referring to my time with YMCA, but we would have had a range of accommodation. With off-the-street accommodation, we had a 72-bed hostel, but would then move people through a system where they were supported in accommodation until, eventually, they were in a position to perhaps gain employment and support a tenancy on their own.
We still have people in emergency accommodation; I do not think that councils will be pressured to get people out because, for some reason, it is coming to an end. The pressuring we are doing over moving people on is around moving them to more stable, permanent accommodation, which is appropriate to their needs.
Layla Moran
The problem with the step process, though, is that those people who do not want to go into a hostel do not get on to that first step, and therefore remain on the street. In light of that, what steps can the Minister take to try to encourage local authorities—or even provide for local authorities—to release housing for Housing First?
Eddie Hughes
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, but I would suggest that the question is slightly more nuanced. If, for the sake of argument, I was running a hostel that people did not want to come into, I would be questioning why that was the case. As I have moved around the country, I have seen excellent examples of accommodation which people feel is safer, more secure and more appropriate than sleeping on the street. If the hon. Lady has examples of hostels where she thinks that people do not feel that degree of comfort, I would be happy to work with her and look at that with my team. We should be ensuring that all accommodation of this type, for particularly vulnerable people, is appropriate.
To run through some of the other things the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon said regarding scrapping the Vagrancy Act, my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster reminded us what the Secretary of State said previously: we do have quite a busy legislative programme. It is almost amusing to me that it feels like we have barely had the previous Queen’s Speech, and already the hon. Member for Weaver Vale is talking about the next one. We have reviewed the Act, and are considering what action to take. We do not want to get rid of an Act and find that there is an unintended consequence; some useful element that we have thrown in the bin, but which we in this room would not be keen on losing.
With regards to long-term funding: the upcoming spending review is something way above my pay grade. However, it is something that I am contributing to as somebody who has experienced the vagaries of waiting for funding settlements in order to employ staff, and, unfortunately, as someone who has even had staff leave because they felt their position was insecure. We would all accept that, like the rest of us, the Chancellor has been through a pretty dramatic 18 months. We are moving into a more settled position thanks to the success of the vaccine rollout, and the economy seems to be getting back on its feet. Hopefully, the Chancellor feels suitably reassured and is able to give us a couple of years’ funding to provide that certainty.
With regards to a refreshed strategy, I am delighted to have spent a considerable amount of time discussing with Ministers in other Departments what they need to contribute to help us reach the ambition of ending rough sleeping during the lifetime of this Parliament. We have seen some fantastic schemes, such as work done with the Ministry of Justice on the accommodation and settlement of prisoners when they come out of prison—a very delicate time to ensure that they do not automatically reoffend and go back in.
Patricia Gibson
In the interests of working together and learning from one another—which is very important on an issue like this—regarding the Minister’s understandable comments about the unintended consequences of the abolition of the Vagrancy Act, he may wish to look at the Scottish example. This Act has been abolished in Scotland for decades. He may wish to look at how that has worked, and see if it can be applied to England.
Eddie Hughes
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. Under no circumstances do this Government have a monopoly on good ideas, so I will be happy to have a look at that.
Rachael Maskell
The Minister has raised the issue of people leaving the criminal justice system. I have been particularly concerned that many of the reasons why women, in particular, end up in the criminal justice system are due to the fact that they have been exploited on the streets, and they do not have a safe base. Within his programme, would he look at some of those issues so that we see a more preventive programme in place to protect women?
Eddie Hughes
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I have had some discussions with the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), on this subject. It is a theme that I will continue to come back to.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) touched on a theme that is incredibly important: it is not just about the Government doing stuff. There are an awful lot of organisations in this field—sometimes they are almost bumping into one another. The idea that she might convene those people to secure a collective aim, so that they are all working together efficiently and effectively, is an incredibly important one. She also touched on the problems of family and relationship breakdown; one of the areas for which I am responsible as a Minister is the Supporting Families programme, for which I am an incredible enthusiast and advocate. During the summer I have seen councils putting that programme into action across the country. Early interventions to support people who are experiencing multiple difficulties, trying to ensure that the family stays stable, provide an incredibly important contribution.
Going back to York Central, the charities there are outstanding. Having worked for one, I fully appreciate the work they do, and I admire and respect the work that the hon. Member for York Central does in this field. We have seen some incredible work, such as the transformation fund, which is money we have given to charities so they can transform their provision. It sometimes seems to be the most efficient spend, because for small charities, every pound counts, so when they get some money from the Government they make sure they spend it effectively. Amen to the charity field.
I am looking forward to going out for a walk around the streets with my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, or “TwoCitiesNickie” as I think of her because of her Twitter handle, although I appreciate that is inappropriate here. We will be going out to have a look around. Strangely, I thought I completely understood the rough sleeping sector and those who provided support, but my view was from the west midlands. Then I came down to London. My hon. Friend represents an area that has three times as many rough sleepers as the next two boroughs in the list. That gives us a keen appreciation of the problem. It has been a real pleasure for me to benefit from her experience and to visit organisations such as the Passage with her to see the excellent work that they do. I am looking forward to going out with her next week at night for a look around so that I can understand first-hand the service provision available.
I am very happy to learn from whatever is going on in Scotland. It is great to hear about the success that there has been—prevention is key, clearly. I want to touch on a couple of points that the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran mentioned. No recourse to public funds sometimes can be a catch-all phrase that does not apply to the people we are talking about. During the summer I visited other organisations, and saw people in London, for example, who employ their own solicitor to help people regularise their immigration status and then secure funds. I appreciate that sometimes navigating that system is not easy—it is complex, which is why the Home Office is offering surgeries to help people navigate their way through what can be a very difficult process. I would also make a minor political point: sometimes, it is impossible for us to regularise people’s immigration status, and sometimes they do not have the support networks they would need in this country, so helping them to reconnect with family and friends in their country of origin is an appropriate solution to the problem, and we have done that in some cases.
I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate today. It has felt warm and non-partisan, and I am sure our collective discussions will continue in the months and years ahead. With regard to the point made during the opening speech about this Government’s commitment to end rough sleeping, it is clearly absolute. We are committing significant resources to it and working incredibly hard, with experts and councils and councillors up and down the country. I think that our collective effort will help us to achieve that goal.
Layla Moran
First, I warmly thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate today. As many have said, and as I know, there are other Members of the House in all political parties who feel as strongly as we do. I agree with the Minister that there is not a paper between us on where we want to end up; however, there is a genuine debate to be had about how we get there.
The support for Housing First is welcome, but equally welcome is the Minister’s acceptance that nothing is perfect, nothing is a panacea. In some parts of the country—in the south-east, for example, where there are only 255 Housing First places—we need to work out how we can unlock that housing. I am genuinely concerned about the planning Bill and the impact it will have on councils’ ability to deliver the policy. It feels a little like one hand of the Government does not know what the other is doing. We need to make sure the actions are joined up. I have other concerns about the planning Bill—that is just one of them—but they are not a matter for this debate.
Regarding the Vagrancy Act, I thank the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) for the work that she and others do on that. I am hopeful that we will get a positive result in the next few years, but—to push the Minister gently on this—I do not believe that new legislation is needed. The example from Scotland and the legal advice obtained by Crisis and others show that there is already provision in law, and in large swathes of the country local police have decided not to use the Vagrancy Act at all. That shows that already in England the Act is not needed. I understand the precautionary principle, but it has been proved that we do not need it, so just get rid of it.
I will end by asking the Minister for a favour. I mentioned that trust is an important part of this work. An innovative charity, the Mayday Trust, which I mentioned a few times, has come up with a programme that I genuinely believe is the answer to that final 10% we have been talking about today. Will he consider meeting me and the trust, so that we showcase that important work?
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered ending rough sleeping.
British Council
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Christina Rees (in the Chair)
Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. Members should send their speaking notes by email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Similarly, officials should communicate electronically with Ministers.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered British Council closures.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. The British Council is the oldest and, for a long time, one of the most important cultural institutions in the world. It has had and continues to have enormous influence. I am sure the Minister knows this, and I do not want to use my time to give him a history lesson. However, we are having this debate because the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office seems to have forgotten about the British Council’s value with its refusal to provide financial support, so I will briefly remind him of the British Council’s initial purpose.
Founded in 1934, the British Council was created in response to a changing global stage: the United Kingdom was losing its traditional forms of influence, extreme ideologies were on the rise around the world and there was a global economic crisis. Those problems may not sound unfamiliar to the Minister and others here today as he and his Cabinet colleagues seek to re-establish the UK as a global power outside the EU, respond to extreme ideologies at home and abroad, as we have devastatingly seen over the last few weeks, and tackle the economic and social implications of the pandemic and the climate crisis. Clearly, the British Council remains as relevant today as it has ever been. If the Minister disagrees, I will be interested in hearing him explain that later.
This Government like to talk about us being a global Britain. In fact, the integrated review of security, defence, development and foreign policy earlier this year was named “Global Britain in a Competitive Age”. In the review, we were told the UK would become one of the most influential countries in the world, and a key aspect of this is our role as a soft superpower. The review explicitly highlighted the important work of none other than the British Council, noting that it
“operates in over 100 countries”.
The problem is that the British Council does not. It just cannot. Why? Because, frankly, the Government have prevented it from doing so.
Like many organisations, the British Council has suffered during the pandemic as its commercial operations, which usually provide most of its income, have been severely hit. As of July, teaching revenues were back to only about 50% of pre-pandemic levels, representing a loss of hundreds of millions of pounds over the course of the year. It is predicted that income from commercial operations will not be back to pre-pandemic levels until 2023. That is absolutely devastating.
In a usual year, the British Council can provide an income of several million pounds more than it needs to run its commercial activities, and that surplus is effectively used to subsidise its other work, which is otherwise funded by Government grants. Have the Government tried to help? Yes and no. An immediate shortfall in funding was met through an additional non-official development assistance grant of £26 million, which was very welcome. What was less welcome for the British Council was that most of the additional grant was counterbalanced by a cut in ODA grant funds of £80 million. It is quite literally giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Would she agree that, especially since the broken manifesto pledge on 0.7%, we are beginning to see that this Government’s actions do not match their words? When the Government say they want to be a world superpower, this example of the British Council funding is yet another proof point that what they say and mean is not what they do?
Wendy Chamberlain
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Yes, I agree. I would argue that the integrated review was published at the start of the year and that work was ongoing, but the decision on the Department for International Development was taken before that review was published. That, alongside the cuts to the British Council, demonstrates that the Government are not aligned with the view of global Britain seen by my hon Friend, myself and others.
A series of loans has also been agreed, but on commercial terms, requiring the British Council to submit business plans to be agreed by the FCDO. Ordinarily, as we know, the British Council is incredibly economically successful, but the reality is that the loans have been needed to fill a hole made by the pandemic. Business operations are not currently normal. None the less, business plans were submitted and in effect the loans became contingent on cost-saving measures that needed to be put in place. What do cost savings and less income mean? That does not promise a strong British Council presence in 100 countries. It is not a bolstering of our soft power presence. It means cuts to services and staffing—I met some staff online earlier this week—and cuts to Britain’s presence around the world.
Already we have seen office closures, with more to follow in coming years. Closures span the world from Belgium to the United States and from Australia to South Sudan. They include all the Five Eyes countries. In other countries, cuts mean there will be no staff, with operations happening remotely.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the hon. Member for securing this crucial debate. I chair the all-party parliamentary groups on Kosovo, North Macedonia and Montenegro. All those countries face British Council closures. The programmes that they run are vital to those countries. The Prime Minister of Montenegro came here in July and met me in Parliament. We talked about the importance of the British Council in development work in Montenegro and about the bilateral exchange. Without that, and with the office moving to Belgrade, development and our work in vital Balkan countries that are in that phase of development will be severely impacted on. Britain will lose out in our relationship with them.
Wendy Chamberlain
I thank the hon. Member for his contribution and for his work with the all-party groups, which are important as they are cross-party. Criticisms of the Government’s British Council closures come not only from the Opposition Benches, but from across Parliament. In relation to the Balkans, the British Council is a part of how we demonstrate to our European friends and neighbours that we want to continue in a close partnership despite having left the EU, which I and many other Members disagree with.
Devastating cuts have already been made. The choices have been made by the Minister and his staff. The cuts are the result of cutting ODA spending, a policy hated across the country that my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) referred to, and hated across this House, as I mentioned, including in the Minister’s own party. Perhaps, this is the inevitable outcome of merging the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which is something we warned about last year. That was also done in the name of cost savings, but it is as yet unclear whether any savings have been made from that decision. Perhaps the Minister will let us know when information on the merger will be made available.
I understand there is also an expectation at the Treasury that all Departments will have to reduce their spending by 5% at the next review. The British Council has already gone through so much hardship, has already had to agree to a reduction in spending of more than £185 million over the next five years, and is already looking at making 20% of its staff redundant here in the UK and across the world. Further cuts will put pressure on the future of the British Council itself. Will the Minister provide reassurance that he will fight to maintain his Department’s budget, and will he consider ring-fencing the current level of grant funding that the British Council receives?
Our soft power is rooted in who we are as a country. It is central to our international identity, and its strength cannot be taken for granted. Those are not my words, but those of the Government’s own integrated review, published just months ago. It is absolutely remarkable that the Government pay lip service to the importance of the British Council while simultaneously undermining it. I urge the Minister to address that in his speech.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. She was in a meeting online this week with me and members of the Public and Commercial Services Union. I should refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Is she as concerned as I am that the business plan is going forward and the whole redundancy exercise is being done in secret? We really need a bit more disclosure, and we need more parliamentary scrutiny as to how the restructuring is being carried out.
Wendy Chamberlain
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I was pleased to join him earlier this week. One thing that struck me from the meeting was the longevity of some of the staff there, how long they had worked for the British Council, their passion and dedication and how the current actions and what was happening were undermining how they felt about their organisation. I agree that it is very important that we have a degree of transparency, particularly for a non-departmental public body such as the British Council.
Soft power is important. My colleagues and I see the benefits of the UK’s being trusted and respected around the world. Our education system is outstanding, and we want international students to come and benefit from it. I want students from around the world to come to the University of St Andrews in my North East Fife constituency. The British Council helps to support that aim, engaging with the Turing and Erasmus programmes, science, technology, engineering and mathematics scholarships, technical placements and assistance with applications.
Those students bring countless benefits to us at a local level, not only to our local economic circumstances, but with their experiences and knowledge. Speaking as a member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, we should remember the importance that international students have in Scotland in particular, which we picked up in our inquiry. Their fees are no doubt part of that.
Tourism contributes £106 billion to the British economy and supports 2.6 million jobs. We cannot recover without it, particularly in North East Fife, so we need to encourage visitors to our shores. Despite current temperatures, I am yet to meet a tourist who says they came to the UK for the good weather. People come for our history and to experience our culture. They go to Stratford to learn about Shakespeare, they go to the pub just about anywhere, they want to experience our vibrant arts and theatres and, at least in North East Fife, they definitely want to have a round of golf. Of course, all those good things exist independently of the British Council, but its presence around the world, teaching English, sharing our culture and demonstrating that we are an open and welcoming nation, plays a significant role.
We also need trade deals. We need to export our goods and services, be it Scotch whisky or cutting-edge science, technology, engineering and maths knowledge, but what country is going to make a trade deal with a country it does not trust? What does it say to the countries we want to work and trade with if we turn our backs on them and withdraw our institutional presence? What does it say about our commitment to tackling climate change if, as reported today, this Government are considering doing away with agreements around climate change when they look at trade deals, such as that with Australia?
The biggest challenges we face today do not affect us alone and cannot be solved by us alone. We face a climate crisis; we face a growth in extreme ideologies around the world. The world is a less safe, less stable and less prosperous place, and retreating solves nothing. For better or worse, we have already retreated from the European Union—I firmly believe it is for the worse—but we still need to work together to respond to global health crises, to house and support refugees coming from Syria, Afghanistan and other places, to tackle cross-border crime and terrorism, and to make the shifts required to respond to the climate crisis.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
I was approached by constituents concerned about the lack of clarity on plans for the evacuation of British Council employees from Afghanistan, and I wrote to the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence. I received responses from the Home Office and the MOD but, despite the Foreign Office’s being the sponsoring Department for the British Council, I did not receive a response from it; I still have not. The clear advice from the MOD, however, was that British Council staff were not eligible for the Afghan relocations and assistance policy scheme. In the main Chamber on Monday, the Foreign Secretary questioned whether that was really the case. Nobody has a clue what is going on. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is shoddy treatment of British Council employees in Afghanistan, and that the Government need to think again—and quickly?
Wendy Chamberlain
I absolutely agree. To hear that British Council employees are not considered eligible for the ARAP programme is devastating. Not only that, but I understand that the MOD and Government guidance to those nationals who could not be evacuated from Kabul airport has been that they should make their way to third countries. We know that in Iran, for example, the British Council is a proscribed organisation. I am sure there will be contractors who have worked for the British Council making their way there who have no knowledge of that proscribed status and who could find themselves in very difficult circumstances, were they to make it across the border.
We need to restore our ties with countries in the EU, both for relations between ourselves and to act together elsewhere. Rebuilding trust, using our soft power and, in fact, doing all those things that the British Council does are key to that. It is staggering to hear the Prime Minister talk as he does of his “global Britain” ambitions. I am not sure whether he has read his own review, because again and again, be it on girls’ education, which has seen cuts of up to 40%, the BBC, which is continually undermined, or the British Council, it seems this Government are more concerned with eroding the sources of our soft power than with strengthening them. Global Britain needs the British Council. It is extremely short-sighted to require such drastic cuts to be made to it now, in response to an extreme event, when its long-term presence is so valuable to our standing in the world.
I would be remiss—I thank the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald)—if I did not use this opportunity to acknowledge the work done by British Council staff in response to the situation in Afghanistan. I understand that all directly employed staff and contractors are now out of the country—that might be news to the hon. Member—but that a decision will shortly be made about previous contractors. I know that staff at the British Council have been working around the clock to provide assistance, and I thank them for that. Can the Minister, as previously requested, provide an update about the status of this group, their eligibility for ARAP—because if our understanding is correct, and they are not eligible, that is very concerning—and what assistance will be provided to them and others in reaching the UK via third countries?
The Minister for Asia (Nigel Adams)
I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for securing this important debate on the British Council’s global presence. I will take my mask off; that would probably help. I am grateful for the interventions of other hon. Members. I am also conscious that I need to give the hon. Lady a couple of minutes, if she would like that, to sum up.
The hon. Lady has already said that the British Council plays an absolutely crucial role as one of the UK’s international organisations for cultural and educational opportunities and cultural relationships. It is an arm’s length body of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. It has a core mission to promote English-language education, arts and culture across the globe, and it does a fantastic job of that. It delivers key soft-power benefits to the United Kingdom, and it is a crucial part of our overseas presence, operating in over 100 countries. The British Council’s own figures show that, in 2019-20, it reached 983 million people.
We recognise the British Council’s considerable contribution to promoting our influence and values overseas. It is important to acknowledge, however, the devastating impact of the covid pandemic on British Council operations. As the chairman has said a number of times, the organisation went from producing almost £1 billion of revenue to producing virtually zero overnight. It takes a lot to recover from that.
At the peak of the pandemic, over 90% of the British Council’s teaching and exam centres were forced to close. The hon. Lady referred to the fact that we have provided the council with additional financial support in an extremely challenging fiscal climate. We are facing the worst economic contraction in over 300 years and a budget deficit of close to £400 billion. However, to depart slightly from the bonhomie, I politely suggest that the hon. Lady’s remark that we were refusing to provide financial support to the British Council is frankly, on every level, inaccurate. Despite these unprecedented economic circumstances, we have allocated over £600 million to the council since the pandemic hit. The hon. Lady may not be aware of that figure.
Chris Stephens
I thank the Minister for giving way. Can he tell us today what the conditions are for that £600 million in terms of loans?
Nigel Adams
I can certainly go into some more detail on the financial settlement. It included a 2021-22 spending review settlement, in 2020, that totalled £189 million. That is a 27% increase. Furthermore, £150 million of the settlement is composed of ODA, while the non-ODA allocation of £39 million is triple that of the 2020-21 baseline. In addition to the settlement, we are providing loan support, which the hon. Member for North East Fife referenced. That is up to £245 million and includes a £100 million loan to support restructuring efforts and to rebuild commercial surpluses.
Nigel Adams
I will come on to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens). The hon. Member for North East Fife suggested that the British Council had to provide a business plan to secure a loan. I am not entirely sure that a business plan requirement is a particularly heinous thing to ask of the British Council. I would be grateful if any hon. Members could point me to a bank or any lender that would provide a loan without at least politely asking what that money would be used for. We worked very closely with the management and board of the British Council to come to this arrangement on the loans. We have worked very hard with them; they have done an incredible amount of work, and I pay tribute to Stevie Spring, the leadership and the interim chief executive.
Chris Stephens
I thank the Minister; he is being very generous. There are problems with the restructuring, and the outcome is that some of the industrial relations from the British Council need to be improved. Is the Minister’s Department scrutinising how the British Council is carrying out the restructuring? Would he be prepared to meet me and PCS representatives to hear our concerns?
Nigel Adams
I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman or any hon. Member here today to discuss the British Council. We discussed it in the main Chamber quite recently, and I am more than happy to do so again. Members are very welcome to come into the FCDO and meet me and our soft-power team, who work incredibly closely with the British Council. Clearly, changes such as staffing are operational matters for the council itself. We understand that it is working incredibly hard to restore its commercial operations and to maximise its revenues. It is a particularly difficult time.
While we have had to make difficult decisions across all Departments and in other areas, we are increasing the money we are providing to the British Council. Never has there been a clearer endorsement by the Government of the British Council and the important soft-power role it plays. However, the unprecedented impact of the pandemic has forced the Government to take tough but necessary decisions about the British Council’s global presence. It has reinforced the need for the council to do more to adapt to a changing world. As the interim chief executive of the British Council said at the time, the British Council will stop spending grant-in-aid funding in 11 countries and will deliver grant-in-aid programming through offices for a further nine countries.
Let me re-emphasise that decisions on presence were taken only after a thorough assessment alongside the British Council of how the council’s priorities link with the Government’s foreign policy objective, as set out in the IR, as well as how the British Council can achieve the greatest impact.
In the debate in the main Chamber, some said that the British Council can make a meaningful impact only with an office in-country. That, frankly, is incorrect. I said in June that it would be a strategic mistake to judge the impact of the British Council in a digital world by its physical presence. This crisis—the pandemic—has changed the way we all operate, and the British Council has done an excellent job.
Wendy Chamberlain
We returned to Westminster this week and to business as usual—in 2019, when I was elected as an MP, I did not really know what normal was—and I am sure everybody here has really benefitted from a physical presence. I absolutely understand that the British Council needs to look at different ways of delivering its services, but does the Minister agree that sometimes you absolutely cannot beat face-to-face contact and being there physically?
Nigel Adams
I do. In an ideal world, that is the case, but there are services that can be delivered digitally. Since the pandemic, the British Council has done a brilliant job of turning around its business model. It is rapidly expanding its digital services in response to the covid crisis. As an example, a year after the pandemic forced us into lockdown last March, there were over 80,000 students learning English online with the British Council. There were nearly 10 million visitors recorded across its online English language platforms, which is an incredibly impressive transformation in a short time.
The British Council has also continued to deliver its excellent cultural programmes and events digitally during the pandemic. It launched its Culture Connects Us programme—a digital online campaign about the value of culture for international connections and exchange. I personally had the pleasure of taking part in an online session with leading figures from the UK and Japanese cultural sectors as part of the UK and Japan season that the British Council headed up.
There is no doubt that the British Council can maintain impact through digital delivery. I understand what the hon. Member for North East Fife says, but we will continue to support the council to invest in this area. It has a proven track record now of maintaining impact through digital delivery. We are confident that investing further in that will serve to enhance its offer.
The changes to its presence are necessarily accompanied by further measures to streamline and enhance the council’s governance structures. We have agreed with the council a new set of key performance indicators and targets, and measures to update the council’s charitable objectives to focus on its core mission. I am delighted that Scott McDonald, who I met online prior to appointment and have since met physically, has now taken up his role as chief executive of the British Council. I have no doubt that he, alongside the exceptional chairman, Stevie Spring, will provide the strong leadership needed to put the British Council on a steady footing for the future.
I am conscious that we are nearly at the two-minute stage, Ms Rees. To summarise, we are absolutely committed to ensuring the future success of the British Council. We have provided a strong rescue and reform package to support it through the pandemic and to enhance its governance structure. It is important that the British Council can make the most impact in a changing world. It will continue to operate in over 100 countries and the FCDO will ensure that it can continue to play a leading role in promoting UK soft power and all our integrated objectives.
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
Unfortunately, in 30-minute debates the Member in charge does not have two minutes at the end to respond. I am sorry for the disappointment.
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
I will put the question.
Question put and agreed to.
Plastic Waste
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Christina Rees (in the Chair)
Before we begin, can I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking? That is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. Members should send their speaking notes by email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Similarly, officials should communicate electronically with Ministers. I call Elliot Colburn to move the motion.
Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered reducing plastic waste.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees, and a pleasure to be back in a fairly busy Westminster Hall. Thank you to all colleagues for expressing an interest in today’s debate. I would also like to thank the many organisations and charities that have, I am sure, been in touch with all right hon. and hon. Members to prepare briefings, particularly the Conservative Environment Network.
Reducing plastic waste is a mammoth topic to tackle. I fear our short time today will allow us only to scratch the surface. I would like to begin by outlining why this is such an important issue to discuss. It is a topic often raised with me by residents of Carshalton and Wallington. I am sure colleagues here today will share similar experiences from their constituencies. I had the pleasure of visiting Culvers House primary school in Hackbridge recently after pupils had written to me about plastic pollution and why they were so passionate about it. They thought more could and should be done. I am very grateful for their insight.
We all know the harm that the scourge of plastic pollution causes our environment, but it is worth going over some of the numbers, because they make stark reading. Plastic waste in the UK continues to grow, with more than half of all plastics ever manufactured being made in the past 15 years. An estimated 5 million tonnes are used every year, nearly half of that being packaging alone. Plastic waste harms our natural environment if it is not recycled, lasting centuries in landfill or, if discarded as litter, polluting our oceans, rivers and soils, and the creatures that rely on them.
Plastic production and waste contribute to climate change. Current projections show that, if the strong growth of plastic usage continues as expected, emissions of greenhouse gases by the global plastic sector will account for 15% of the entire global annual carbon budget by 2050. Again, that barely scratches the surface of the scale of the issue, but it gives an indication of the challenge we face and the action that must be taken.
I want to say a big thank you to the Chamber engagement team at the House of Commons for their amazing work in engaging with the public ahead of today’s debate to find out people’s priorities. I thank the more than 500 people who took part in that survey. I will go over some of the headline figures that came out of that piece of work.
People were asked what measures should be taken to ensure that plastic waste is recycled, rather than sent to landfill or incinerators. Respondents came back with many suggestions, such as better education on how to recycle and the need to do so; more consistency in approaches across local authorities, with many citing confusion when moving from one area to another; preventing recyclable materials from being sent abroad; and introducing deposit return schemes. I will go into that later.
After the three or four debates about incinerators that I have held in this place, the Minister will know about my passion to ensure that they are properly regulated. When one opened in my constituency, on a visit there I witnessed recyclable waste being put into the incinerator. I know the Minister is well aware of my interest.
The second question asked what steps should be taken to reduce the amount of plastic waste being produced in the first place. Suggestions included banning single-use plastics, especially for food products; using incentives, legislation or both to assist transition away from plastic packaging; and holding businesses accountable for the plastic that they produce. What stood out for me in that question was the word “reduce”. We often speak about recycling and reusing, both of which are, of course, much better than landfill and incineration. Nevertheless, we must remember that at the peak of the waste hierarchy, the best thing that we can do is reduce the amount of waste that we produce in the first place, so that must be our aim.
Finally, people were asked about how we can use technology to reduce the amount of plastic that is produced and to deal with the plastic that is within the circular economy at the moment. Suggestions included using technology to find alternatives to plastics, particularly when it comes to packaging; investing in technologies such as biodegradable or compostable plastic; new technologies to look at labelling, in order to track the life cycle of plastics and use that as an education technique; and using plastics in more innovative ways for house building, roads, pavements or construction—images from around the world that I am sure many colleagues have seen before. Indeed, it has been a pleasure for me to meet many businesses, charities and organisations that are looking at developing new technologies or that have such technologies, which they are trying to use as a way to deal with this issue. Although there is no silver bullet, and I am sure that everyone would agree that there is no one solution or one thing that we can offer, the new technologies out there certainly give us a chance to make a considerable impact.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Like me, the hon. Member was, and presumably still is, a councillor. Between 2010, when I was a councillor in Camden, and the start of the pandemic, there were £16 billion-worth of cuts to local government, and the Environment Agency saw its Government funding slashed by nearly two thirds. The direct result of that underfunding is that councils have struggled to deal with plastic waste effectively, and there has not been enough monitoring and enforcement of the rules. As a fellow Member of Parliament and a current councillor, does the hon. Member agree that reducing plastic waste relies on local councils and bodies such as the Environment Agency having the resources that they need to do so?
Elliot Colburn
I am grateful to the hon. Member for that question, and she raises a very important point. The only thing I would observe is that some councils are doing incredibly good work and increasing their recycling rates, and they all face similar pressures. I am sure she will go more into her argument in her speech, and I thank her for her contribution.
I thank the people who shared their views and information and engaged with the Commons Chamber engagement team in advance of the debate, because what has come out loud and clear is the call for action on tackling plastic waste. Indeed, action is being taken. There are things that I want to acknowledge, and some measures that I want to praise before I go any further, such as the restriction on supplies of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds, and the ban on microbeads. I welcome the consultation that is coming this autumn on banning more single-use plastic items, and the Government’s commitment to prevent all avoidable plastic by the end of 2042. I welcome the requirement for large retailers to charge 10p for a single-use plastic carrier bag. The 95% reduction in the use of plastic bag sales since 2015 is very welcome indeed.
I welcome the measures in the Environment Bill, such as putting charges on single-use plastic items, ensuring that producers take greater responsibility for their waste, establishing consistent approaches to recycling across England, tackling waste crime, enforcing litter offences, and delivering on the manifesto pledge to ban the export of polluting plastic to non-OECD countries, among many others. I welcome the plastic packaging tax, which will come into force from April 2022, and the fact that we are leading the Commonwealth in fighting against marine plastic pollution through the Blue Planet Fund. Those are very welcome measures, but there is always more that can and should be done to tackle this huge issue. Something that I would pick out immediately is the push for an all-in deposit return scheme, which would capture up to three times more plastic than an on-the-go system does.
Dr James Davies (Vale of Clwyd) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. He refers to the deposit return scheme, which we hope will be introduced in the next couple of years. Does he have any thoughts about the possibility of a novel solution using digital technology—for instance, to capture the plastic crisp wrappers that litter our streets and countryside?
Elliot Colburn
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. That is an incredibly important thing, which the Government should definitely look at, and I urge the Minister to take that away. The deposit return scheme described applies only to plastic bottles, and we know that there are opportunities and examples from around the world of where that can be expanded to include much more, so that is definitely something that should be looked at.
Although it is important that the Government take action and that businesses take on more responsibility, old habits die hard, as the saying goes, and our biggest challenge is potentially changing our own individual behaviour.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate on this important issue. He has outlined many measures, and I remember a measure that was introduced by the coalition Government: the plastic bag tax. He was talking a moment ago about personal responsibility. Will he urge the Minister to increase the plastic bag levy to encourage people to take greater responsibility in their shopping habits?
Elliot Colburn
The 95% cut figure is proof of the success of the plastic bag tax. It has obviously worked, so I urge the Minister to do as my hon. Friend suggests.
I have a strange sense of déjà vu here. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) mentioned my time as a councillor. Indeed, this was the first topic I ever spoke about as a councillor, when we were discussing it during a full council motion almost three years ago. The point I made then still stands: without buy-in from people at large, with all of us playing our part, lasting change will be difficult. Those survey responses from members of the public point to some really important things that need to be done, particularly on education and ensuring that transitions and changes are as simple possible for people to make. Later this year, I hope to do my part in that by hosting a local event to coincide with COP26, during which I hope to have a session on the changes we can make right here, right now to reduce the amount of plastic waste that we contribute.
The central message I will leave behind is the need to look at the circular economy and always keep one eye fixed sharply on the top of that waste hierarchy. If that is done right, we can bring businesses and individuals along with us—not as some kind of burden or punitive measure, but as a positive contribution to our environment, to the world that we live in, and to the creatures with which we share it.
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
I will move to wind-ups at 5.8 pm, so you will probably have about four minutes each, but I might have to reduce that. I call Geraint Davies.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Ms Rees. It is good to switch places—I was in the Chair this morning. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for bringing the debate on this enormously important matter to the Chamber.
People may know that the United Nations predicted that by 2050, there would be more plastic in the sea than fish. The problem we face is that plastic is simply too cheap, which is why it is thrown away. The reason for that is essentially that 6.5% of global GDP is used to subsidise fossil fuels, creating cheap plastic. China is now putting more subsidy into fossil fuels than the United States, the EU and Russia combined, which means plastic is too cheap. It is incumbent on us to take leadership to reduce subsidies and to tax plastic so that the price goes up. We know from simple taxes such as the carrier bag tax that that has an effective impact on behaviour. It is all very well preaching that people should use less plastic, but people need fiscal drivers to make the change.
Meanwhile, the landfill tax is significant, and although I would not argue against that, local authorities have been driven towards building more and more incinerators. I will be involved in a meeting next week—possibly with the Minister—about the Edmonton incinerator, which generates 700,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year at a time when 85% of the plastic that Camden throws away is recyclable. We need a carbon tax, and although one is coming for plastic made of less than 30% recyclate, we should do better than that. Indeed, the tax itself will be £200 per tonne, compared with the EU tax of £685 per tonne.
We need to drive up those costs to switch producers and consumers. Frankly, if I went to Costa Coffee and could get a cheaper coffee in a china cup than in a takeaway cup, I would stay indoors to drink it. We need to think carefully about that and take tough action. It is all very well having a 25-year environment plan, but that is simply too long to wait. The Government’s target is for zero avoidable plastic waste by 2042, and for zero avoidable waste generally by 2050. Yet on current projections we know that by 2025 we will have breached the Paris 1.5° threshold ambition to address climate change. Plastic waste is generating incineration waste, which is causing massive problems in terms of emissions, and that is in addition to the waste in our oceans. Alongside that there is a lot of evidence that these fumes do not just change the climate but affect people’s health, because ultrafine particulates breach the filters.
In a nutshell, I am calling on the Government to up their game in terms of taxation, timing, enforceable targets and the deposit return scheme, and to let businesses and consumers know that the cost of plastic will go up in the future and that the best advice, in terms of their pocket and of climate sustainability and the local environment, is to look at other forms of packaging and so on. For instance, the cost of clothing would not be pushed down by the fact that we are all wearing plastic clothing and breathing in particulates and so on.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
The covid emergency has demonstrated how vital plastic is, forming the primary component in billions of items of personal protective equipment and other medical equipment used to fight the virus and save lives. It is versatile, low cost and durable. However, it is that strength—that durability—that has led to increasing public concern about plastic littering our neighbourhoods and polluting our seas. Plastic will always be a part of our economy and our daily lives, but we urgently need to reduce our reliance on it and also make sure that more of the plastic that we do use is reused or recycled.
This Conservative Government are doing more than any of their predecessors to address the issue. We were one of the first countries in the world to introduce an extensive ban on microbeads in personal care products. Our charging scheme, as we have heard, has led to a dramatic reduction in plastic bag use, and the Environment Bill contains groundbreaking proposals for further action.
That includes extended producer responsibility, to make the companies benefiting from plastic packaging pay the full cost of disposal. That will give them an incentive to consider the impacts that their products have after they have been used by consumers. I hope that the Minister will also put pressure on the takeaway sector to play its part in reducing plastic waste and tackling litter. Local authorities are at the sharp end of dealing with litter and household waste, so I would argue that the bulk of the proceeds of extended producer responsibility should be used to help councils keep our streets cleaner and to ensure that more of our household waste is recycled.
A second key proposal in the Bill is the deposit return scheme for drink containers. In its 25-year plan for the environment, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs points out:
“Millions of single-use bottles jostle their way around the oceans, carried on the currents even to the remotest and most fragile Pacific atolls.”
I appeal to the Minister, as I have done on previous occasions, to make progress as quickly as possible on both EPR and the DRS, given the urgency of the situation and the impact of these drink containers.
Lastly, I turn briefly to the subject of oxo-biodegradable plastic. I have been briefed by Symphony Environmental, which is an export success story and employs a number of my constituents. It considers that policy makers both here and in the EU are not basing their approach to oxo-biodegradable plastic on the scientific evidence. It strongly denies, for instance, that its d2w product emits microplastic when it breaks down. I ask the Minister to engage with Symphony Environmental and consider the research it cites—for example, from the Laboratory of Microbial Oceanography in France—before taking a decision on whether to introduce the ban envisaged in article 5 of the EU single-use plastic directive.
We need to reassess our attitude to plastic fundamentally if we are to deal with the appalling damage it can do to our oceans, and the eyesore it can create in our streets and parks if it is thrown away irresponsibly. We need to break away from the linear “take-make-consume-dispose” model, which assumes that resources are abundant, available and easy to dispose of. Our commitments on climate and nature simply cannot be met unless we move to a more circular economy by reusing, repairing and recycling much more than we do now. We set ambitious goals in our 25-year environment plan, and the Environment Bill will turn them into binding targets. The question for the Minister is: are we on track to deliver the change we need to meet those targets?
Tahir Ali (Birmingham, Hall Green) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for securing the debate. I have received many letters and emails from constituents of different ages—both young and old—who want to see urgent action taken to reduce waste, which is a serious threat not only to animal and marine life but to us and our environment. The children of Chilcote Primary School in my constituency wrote to me during the lockdown, and the message is absolutely clear: take action now and save the planet. I am in the process of going round to schools and doing that.
The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said that the first issue he spoke on in the council was the environment. When I first became a councillor in 1999 in Birmingham, there was a councillor who used to speak on environmental issues, and people used to laugh at him. Twenty-two years on, we are still talking about recycling and the action that is needed. If we are to take this seriously, we must bring forward the actions that are needed to save the planet and the children of Chilcote Primary School, and all other schools in my constituency and across the country, because it is about their future. We will then hand over to them the baton and they will look after the planet in the way that they want for future generations. We do not want those children to be in this position 20 years on, still talking about it and debating the action that needs to be taken.
Microplastic pollution is a risk to animals and humans alike, and it is now abundantly clear that radical action needs to be taken. The Government maintain that the UK is a world leader in tackling plastic pollution, yet progress remains painfully slow. The UK is still one of the largest producers of plastic waste in the world. Much of it is exported abroad, but that does not diminish our responsibility. It would be a nimby approach—not in my back yard—to say, “Let’s offload it to someone else.”
Not so long ago, I saw a documentary about the slums in India—the name of the biggest slum escapes my mind. It was amazing to see not only how they recycled every element of an object that could be recycled, from plastics, Coke bottles and whatever else, and turned them into goods that could be resold, but the way that community came together. If that can happen in a slum in a third-world country, as a developed nation we need not only to learn lessons but to set the standards to make progress on this important issue. Once again, I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for instigating today’s debate.
I may be found regularly in Stroud balancing food on my baby’s head, having already stuffed my pockets and her sling full of my purchases as I join millions of people who refuse to pay 10p for a carrier bag. Such shopping/baby juggling was unthinkable even five years ago, but the Government’s determination to bring about meaningful change has led, as we have already heard, to a 95% cut in plastic bag sales in major supermarkets since 2015. When I start worrying about the scale of the issue of plastic pollution, I think about the change of behaviour on carrier bags, because it gives me hope. By golly, do we need hope on plastic pollution.
The UK is a world leader, but it is estimated that 5 million tonnes of plastic is still used here every year, and nearly half of that is packaging—8 billion drinks containers include plastic, and they end up landfilled, incinerated or lost in our precious environments. Plastic waste lasts centuries in landfill, pollutes soils, rivers, wetlands and oceans, harms the creatures that inhabit them and weakens our environmental infrastructure that is essential not only for ecosystems but for our future.
Closer to home in Stroud, littering and fly-tipping is a constant feature of correspondence, casework and the local council’s work. As my hon. Friend mentioned, children are really exercised by the issue and I regularly receive letters from schools. Our farmers have reported livestock being harmed by ingesting plastic rubbish, and local people want to see massive corporations such as McDonald’s and Tesco taking responsibility for the litter that flows from their stores. Covid has not helped—masks like the ones we are wearing around the room are often found on the streets. The Government have hugely increased the fines that can be imposed for littering, but we need to see regular prosecutions to create a serious deterrent.
I am proud that Stroud is the greenest constituency in the greenest county of Gloucestershire: we are already punching above our weight. One of our volunteer groups, Stroud District Action on Plastic, works with individuals, businesses, schools, clubs and other community organisations to reduce their plastic footprint. The group was accredited by Surfers Against Sewage in 2020. We have zero-waste environmental shops, such as Greenshop in Bisley, Waste Not, Want Not in Berkeley, Loose in Stroud, Stroudco food hub, the Stroud Valleys Project shop and the Shiny Goodness health store and Beeswax Wraps in Nailsworth—I could go on, but I would probably be told to be quiet.
What are our asks? There is no question in my mind that the Conservative Government are working incredibly hard in this area. The Environment Bill gives a range of new powers, and our creation of the Blue Planet Fund will help developing nations to tackle marine plastic pollution, so action is not just here with restricting plastic straws. We have heard the list of things that we have done.
One of my constituents works for an organisation called City to Sea, which is calling for the ban on plastic plates, cutlery and polystyrene cups to be considered even more swiftly than we are doing with our autumn consultation, and brought in as a matter of urgency. I support that, and I will press for it. The Government’s proposed deposit return scheme is excellent, but it can and should go further with the all-in system that we have heard about. It would capture 23 billion drinks containers a year, while the limited system would capture only about 7.4 billion. I recognise my hon. Friend’s suggestion that technology could be used better too. I hope Stroud’s successes will spur many others on.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
I am delighted to participate in this debate on reducing plastic waste. A recent report from Greenpeace, called “Trashed”, highlighted the shocking truth that the UK generates more plastic per person than any other country in the world except the USA, with supermarkets and major consumer brands being the largest sources of plastic packaging. We must improve that shameful situation.
Half of all plastics ever manufactured have been made in the last 15 years, and every year some 8 million tonnes of plastic waste escape into the oceans from coastal nations, equivalent to setting five full binbags of rubbish on every beach around the world. Millions of animals are killed by plastics every year, including birds, fish and other marine organisms. Nearly 700 species, including those that are endangered, are known to be affected by plastics. Nearly every species of seabird eats plastics. However, most animal deaths are caused by entanglement or starvation. Seals, whales, turtles and other animals are strangled by abandoned fishing gear or discarded six-pack rings. Microplastics have been found in more than 100 aquatic species, and in our food chain.
The Scottish Government were the first to introduce the charge for plastic bags, and have banned personal hygiene products containing plastic microbeads and plastic-stemmed cotton buds. The work being done to ban single-use plastic cutlery, plates, straws, and food and drink containers is very important, tackling some of the most environmentally damaging single-use plastics. However, clearly more must be done at UK and international level to tackle the issue. Scotland aims to match the EU ambition for all plastic packaging to be economically recyclable or reusable by 2030, signing the New Plastics Economy global commitment, led by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, showing a real commitment to a circular economy for plastics.
COP26 is a pivotal moment when this serious issue can and should be tackled across the international community. It offers an opportunity to make real progress in dealing with the damage plastic causes to our world, our climate, our natural habitats and our population systems. That opportunity must not be squandered. The Break Free From Plastic movement found that Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé were the three largest plastic polluters in the world in 2020. These corporations must be held accountable for the shocking plastic waste that infects our communities and takes centuries to decompose. We must not let them off the hook. We need concerted international action to effect real and positive change; we need to consider what carrots and sticks can be used to persuade producers to reduce plastic waste. COP26 presents that opportunity to take action and ensure real accountability, and we must use it to seek to influence producer behaviour in a comprehensive and holistic way, so that we can say we are doing all we can to address the scourge of plastic waste on our world. I urge the Minister not to let that opportunity pass by, and look forward to hearing what plans she has to make sure that is firmly on the agenda.
Failure will not be forgiven by future generations. Consumers want action, and now is the time for the international community to listen to consumers and finally take real action to address the issue globally.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. There are two important reasons why this debate matters so much. First, plastic pollution is killing more than 1 million birds per year—that is a shocking figure. I have just come from a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reception. In addition, more than 100,000 sea mammals and turtles—those majestic creatures of the sea—are dying every year from eating, or getting tangled in, plastic waste. We are making the biodiversity crisis worse. Secondly, plastics are currently contributing 1% of global carbon emissions, but projections show them rising to 15% of the global carbon budget by 2050 if we do not take action. That is absolutely the wrong direction.
The UK has not been idle on this issue: we have banned microbeads, restricted the supply of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds, and we are consulting on banning single-use plastic plates, cutlery and polystyrene cups. The 95% reduction in supermarket plastic bag sales since 2015 shows what can be done. There are good measures in the Environment Bill, we have a world-leading plastic packaging tax coming in from April next year—£200 per tonne on plastic packaging that does not have a minimum threshold of 30% recycled content—and we are leading, with other Commonwealth countries, on the Blue Planet Fund, so we are working internationally as well. However, there is more to do, and my hon. Friend the Minister will be the first to champion us to go further and faster—I know how much she cares about this issue.
The House of Commons Library briefing paper states that in 2017 the UK was recycling 41.5% of our plastic waste. However, we were behind Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. In particular, we are behind Lithuania, which appears to be recycling about two thirds—66%—of its plastic. Perhaps the Minister will go to Lithuania to see whether we can learn anything from them.
I, too, am excited about the deposit return scheme, which one or two colleagues have mentioned. That is really needed. Like every colleague on the Government Benches who has spoken, I urge the Government to go for the all-encompassing all-in option, which would capture 23 billion plastic containers every year, rather than the more limited on-the-go option, which would capture only 7.4 billion containers. That is the first extra thing that we could do.
Secondly, we must make recycling instructions clearer. I am sure that my wife and I are not the only couple in the country who stare endlessly at items of plastic trying to work out whether we can recycle them—it is very small writing and not clear. Perhaps the Minister will make us have really clear, large and easy-to-see instructions on products, so that we all know which bin that stuff should go in.
I am also pleased to hear that we will make progress with local authorities all having to recycle more items. With plastic, I understand that from next year every local authority in England will have to recycle plastic bottles, including clear drinks containers, HDPE—high-density polyethylene—milk containers, detergent, shampoo and cleaning product containers, and plastic pots, tubs and trays. That is good. Will we go further? Will we include more? We should not lack ambition.
In addition, there is what we can do personally—we will all of us, absolutely, want to hold the Government’s feet to the fire on this, but we can all recycle more ourselves. We can use more items for life. It is excellent that many shops, large and small, get that. I visited a new small business, the Good Life Refill shop on Leighton Buzzard High Street, where people can refill, as in the name. Tesco is also doing great things—Leighton Buzzard has one of the stores where we can recycle considerably more plastic than in other stores. Those are some good local examples but, please, we need to keep going on this. Our constituents really care about it, younger people in particular.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for securing a debate that we are all invested in—so are our constituents, clearly.
The UK Government simply must do more to combat the plastic crisis. They must seek to match the Scottish Government’s significantly more ambitious targets and achievements. Protecting Scotland’s natural environment is a key priority for the Scottish Government and always has been, which is why we are bringing forward a circular economy Bill to encourage the reuse of products, to reduce waste and to increase recycling. That comes on top of all our other actions since 2007.
We are good at recycling in Scotland, but we want to get even better. The recycling rate in my Angus constituency is 59.1%. That is not quite the 66% of Lithuania, but if the Minister wants to come somewhere slightly more expedient than Lithuania, she is more than welcome to see what we do in Angus.
Consumers need confidence that the trouble they go to in order to recycle does not result in their commodified recycling turning up in mixed-plastic bales to be shipped somewhere far away and end up smouldering on a roadside somewhere, as we saw in Turkey. That does not instil confidence in consumers to do the right thing. This crisis must receive renewed attention from the UK Government, not least because the UK is estimated to produce 5 million tonnes of plastic waste every year, nearly half of which is packaging.
According to National Geographic, half of all the plastics ever manufactured was produced in the past 15 years, as others have said. That is clearly and profoundly unsustainable. Without oversharing, I must mention my fondness for Mr Kipling’s lemon slices. I am too fond of them, and it is unfortunate that they come in a plastic tray, inside a plastic sleeve, inside a cardboard box, held together with—I hope—a water-based glue, although it might be a plastic-based glue. That is not okay, and it is done in pursuit of a competitive edge.
The growing use of plastic is a feature of competition, largely in food production, a shift to ready-made produce, and the growth of the food service sector. Legislation has not been anywhere near keeping pace with changes in the market. As the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) mentioned, plastic packaging is not cheap. It may be relatively cheap in monetary terms to produce, but it is not cheap in environmental and generational terms.
There is a technological and a cultural dimension to this crisis. Culturally, we need to move to greater awareness of our purchasing decisions, to drive producers to change their practices, but we need the legislation to back that up. There will always be plastic waste, and we need to halt those bales of mixed plastic being shipped out and dealt with somewhere else; we need to deal with our mess here. In our regime, it is “Out of sight, out of mind.” That is the UK’s position and it is incorrigible.
We need a technical vision, too. We need to see beyond the current challenges and find a route out of them. This might seem a little abstract, but I want to touch on the production of Concorde, the supersonic passenger aircraft. It is no exaggeration to say that the engineers and technicians who designed that aircraft had no idea how they were going to do it when they embarked on it. We need to recover some of that ambition and eagerness to confront the challenges in front of us.
The Scottish Government led the way in October 2014 with the plastic bag charge, with England following after. Scotland is again leading the way. We have already banned personal hygiene products containing plastic microbeads, and plastic-stemmed cotton buds. In this parliamentary Session, the SNP will take action to ban single-use plastic cutlery, plates, straws, balloon sticks and so on. Those are some of the most environmentally damaging single-use plastics, and we will ban their manufacture and supply in Scotland. My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) went through the entire list, and I have touched on some of the imminent improvements in Scotland. They will be supplemented by an ambitious deposit return scheme.
I urge the Minister to listen to Members from her own party, if not to me, and to have the most ambitious deposit return scheme. The one that we are to introduce in Scotland next year will incentivise the recycling of not only single-use plastic drinks containers, but cans and glass bottles. Scotland is leading the way, and I very much hope that the UK Government will follow in this context and many others. It is incumbent on Ministers and the Government to ensure that this is delivered on.
May I, in a conclusion that is hopefully not too confusing, speak up for plastics, as some right hon. and hon. Members have done? I do not fancy a life without plastic. I do not want to get on an aeroplane without plastic; I do not want to get ill in a world without plastic; and I really do not want to clean up after my 12-year-old Golden Retriever in a world without plastic. Plastic is not the villain here. We must minimise its use in a way that is consistent with our climate objectives, but focus on the post-consumer regime. The operative word in the plastic waste crisis is “waste”, and I urge the Government not to waste any more time.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for calling this debate and providing the House with the opportunity to address our collective responsibility to preserve our planet and protect our environment.
The scourge of plastic waste is evident in communities across the country, thanks to a lost decade of Tory austerity. It is piling up on high streets, on street corners and in our green open spaces. It is also exported, as we have heard, to some of the world’s poorest countries, where what is supposed to be recyclable material ends up in landfill, polluting our oceans, or even being shipped back to Britain for us to deal with. This is a very real problem, and it requires speedy, comprehensive and properly funded solutions.
The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington will know, as will the Minister, that many of the agencies that should be tackling waste and pollution are underfunded and understaffed. The Environment Agency has struggled to tackle waste crime and monitor waste exports because of the cuts to its budget and staff numbers. Colleagues across the Chamber have mentioned the issues with local authorities, which are struggling to deal with waste effectively.
The Government’s plan to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste by 2042 is years behind schedule and appears to contain only weak proposals. Britain’s plastic waste crisis is being kicked into the long grass. That plan reflects what we all know to be true: the Government lack ambition and drive, and are failing in their responsibility to preserve our planet and protect our environment. Talking of the environment, I am very pleased to see the progress that the Environment Bill is making in the other place. It is important legislation that, at every stage, Labour has attempted to strengthen, improve and empower. Regrettably, the Conservative party and Government voted against and defeated every single amendment of ours, including our plans for tackling plastic waste.
The Environment Bill’s provision for a deposit return scheme is limited to certain materials, rather than creating a framework that could be broadened to include more types of plastic or bioplastics. The Bill’s waste and resource efficiency measures are too focused on the end-of-life solutions to waste and recycling; much more emphasis is needed, in a real cyclical economy, on the production side, and on encouraging the reduction of waste in the first place.
The country is crying out for real leadership from the Government. We require proper action now. That action will take many different forms. One important one is building a narrative out in the community. UK supermarkets produce approximately 800,000 tonnes of plastic waste every year, so how are we empowering customers to do away with plastic waste? We heard from the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) about the use of slings and juggling with babies, but we also need to work on other issues, to get everybody to do the same thing.
Although this is a devolved issue, it is important for all parts of the UK because plastic waste in our waterways and our seas does not stop at national borders. Could the Minister outline what recent discussions she has had with the devolved Administrations on a four-nation response to tackling the plastic waste crisis across the countries?
May I suggest that the Minister arranges a meeting with the Welsh Environment Minister at the earliest opportunity? The Welsh Labour Government have led the way on delivering bold policies to tackle single-use plastics. Wales is now recognised as the second most successful recycling country in the world. The Minister does not need to go to Lithuania or even Scotland—she could come to Wales first. There is much for this Government to learn from the Labour Government in Wales, and there is no time like the present to start doing so.
Back in 2019, the resources and waste strategy set out a plan for resource efficiency and a circular economy, which included the ambition for all plastics to be biodegradable. It is clear that environmental damage caused by single-use bags would be somewhat mitigated if there was a requirement for them to be biodegradable. Will the Minister provide us with a progress check on what the Government are doing to stop plastics, including plastic bags, that are not biodegradable, from entering circulation?
Ahead of the debate, I received a very helpful briefing from Wildlife and Countryside Link—I pay tribute to it for all the work it does to shine a light on the issues. The briefing acknowledged recent Government announcements, but they do not go far enough and do not tackle the problem.
I have questions on a couple of policy areas. The primary aim of the deposit return scheme is to increase the recycling rates for drinks containers, and to reduce littering. That is great, but the Government are considering whether to restrict the scope of the scheme to covers only drinks containers under 750 ml in size. That is an issue. We have heard the stats on how the scheme could be improved if there was an on-the-go option. Extended producer responsibility is another area. The Government are right to recognise that it needs a major overhaul. Will the Minister commit today to delivering EPR for packaging by 2023? I have asked a number of questions, and I look forward to the Minister’s response to each and every one.
Christina Rees (in the Chair)
I call Minister Rebecca Pow. Would you please leave a couple of minutes at the end, so that Elliot Colburn can wind up?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
Thank you, Ms Rees. It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair. I am really pleased to be in this very important debate in Westminster Hall. As colleagues know, I take the whole issue of plastics very seriously indeed. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for bringing the issue to us. Clearly, there is an awful lot of synergy in the room on the issue, as there is from the public. I get a lot of letters from schools, as we all do. It is good that there is so much interest in this agenda, which we take very seriously in Government.
My hon. Friend mentioned that the issue is not just about what we do with waste at the end; it is about not producing it in the first place, and I will touch on that. That is why we have a lot of targets. We have already set targets to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill to 10% by 2035, and an overall target of zero avoidable plastic waste of any kind by 2042—a point touched on by the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). That does not mean that we will wait until then; we have a raft of measures in place to tackle the issue long before that. The Government are moving on the issue, which I am sure hon. Friends and hon. Members will understand, because we are moving towards a recyclable, reusable, compostable era, with all plastic[Official Report, 13 September 2021, Vol. 700, c. 6MC.] waste hopefully being of that nature by 2025. We are committed to transitioning to a circular economy.
Rebecca Pow
I will not give way, because I think I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s question, and I want to get through the many points that have been made.
We have already introduced one of the toughest bans on microbeads and microplastics anywhere.[Official Report, 13 September 2021, Vol. 700, c. 6MC.] We have had the 5p carrier bag charge—now the 10p charge. As has been highlighted, that has cut down dramatically on the number of single-use plastic bags being used by supermarkets. We have extended it to small producers. I love the image of juggling the baby and not taking a bag. I have done the same, but I always take my Somerset Willow wicker basket with me. Everyone should have one—support local traditions.
We have also restricted the supply of single-use plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds, and we will go much further than that shortly, because we are consulting on banning single-use plastic plates and cutlery, and polystyrene drinks containers. In that consultation, we will ask whether there are similar things that we should be working towards. I know that there is an awful lot of pressure relating to the EU single-use plastic directive, but we will be addressing all that and more. Indeed, we are tackling a whole lot of other issues that have not even been tackled yet by that directive. For example, we are looking at textiles, because a lot of textiles produce microfibres. There is an awful lot that we are working on.
Innovation and research have been touched on. We have established a £100 million package for research and innovation to deal with the issue of plastic waste. That includes £38 million through the plastics research and innovation fund and £10 million through the resource action fund to innovate in recycling and in tackling litter, which was touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers). Talking of science, she touched on oxo-biodegradables, an issue that has been raised with me and that I have had meetings about. As a result of a call for evidence on this, and the review by the Hazardous Substances Advisory Committee on oxo-biodegradable plastics, we are minded to consult on a ban on those materials. That is the latest update that I can give her on that.
Plastic pollution is not just a problem for our country. That is why we have worked to support the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, the Commonwealth Clean Ocean Alliance and the tide turners plastic challenge badge, helping hundreds of thousands of young people tackle plastics in their communities. Through the £500 million Blue Planet Fund, we are investing in, among other things, the Global Plastic Action Partnership.
We are ready to go further, and that is why we are calling for a new global agreement to co-ordinate action on marine plastic litter and microplastics. Just as we had in Paris for climate change, we believe we need an international agreement on these types of plastic pollution. The majority of UN members are already on board, so when we come together at the UN Environmental Assembly next February, I hope that other nations will join in with this.
Geraint Davies
Is the Minister sympathetic to the EU’s idea of a carbon border tax, whereby we tax imports of plastic? The implication is that the cost of plastic would go up and consumption would go down.
Rebecca Pow
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. I heard what he said in his speech. All issues are being discussed. It is not something that we are particularly focusing on right now.
The export of plastics was touched on by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali) and by the shadow Minister. We have committed to banning the export of waste to non-OECD countries, and we are working with other global partners to implement our obligations under the Basel convention and the OECD decision on waste. We have a robust system, run by the Environment Agency, for compliance and tackling any illegal exports of plastic. It is doing increasingly focused work on that. At a national level, I am sure the shadow Minister will be pleased to hear that we are committed to tackling waste crime, mandatory electronic waste tracking and the overhauling and improving of the carrier, broker and dealer regime. We are moving on with that very shortly. This was mentioned in the Environment Bill as well, as she knows. Our comprehensive electronic waste tracking system will help regulators to identify illegal and non-compliant activity.
What next? Many councils are already doing great work on recycling. We are determined to learn more, and to ensure that every household can recycle easily, as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) mentioned. We have myriad different systems, but clarity will be key, as well as guidance, because the Environment Bill requires a core set of materials to be collected by every council, to make recycling easier across the board.
We will seek powers under the Bill to introduce the deposit return scheme that so many hon. Members mentioned. It would apply to drinks containers of multiple materials—not just plastic—including packed plastic bottles. That has been very successful in other countries, as we have heard. We have consulted on the all-in-one and on-the-go systems, and we are analysing all that information.
On the digital DRS system, we have a lot of trials running on technology, because we have to harness that. There could be real opportunities there for systems in busy places such as transport hubs—railway stations and so forth—as well as shops. I know Scotland has been working away on the deposit return scheme. I think it has already been delayed and a review is under way, so we will watch how Scotland proceeds with interest. We have the extended producer responsibility scheme, introduced under the Environment Bill. That has a special focus on plastic packaging, because it is the most littered item. We will ensure that companies that place plastic packaging on the market will cover the costs of disposal, rather than passing it on to the taxpayer, which is what happens at the moment.
In addition, from April next year, the plastic packaging tax will impose a charge of £200 a tonne on plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled content. It is estimated that that will lead to 40% more recycled plastic used in packaging by 2022-23, which will cut carbon emissions by 200,000 tonnes. I think all hon. Members and friends will agree that that will be significant; it will make a big difference to our moving in the right direction, and it will happen very shortly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington mentioned incineration. In October 2020, we legislated to include a permit condition for landfill and incineration operators, which means that they cannot accept separately collected paper, metal, glass or plastic for landfill or incineration unless it has gone through some form of treatment process first and that is the best environmental outcome.
I hope this demonstrates how many measures are under way and will be coming forward shortly to help us to reach all those targets and to tackle this issue, which I think we all agree is a scourge. We must do something about it, but we genuinely are moving at great speed in the right direction.
Elliot Colburn
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for taking part in what has been a really good debate. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) spoke about the cost of plastic; my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) mentioned the need for councils to do more. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali) spoke about leaving a good future for our children, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) spoke about how changes in behaviour on bags have given us hope. The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) spoke powerfully about international responsibility and working together, and my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) gave us some good international examples. I would happily join him on a trip to Lithuania, if he is offering.
I hope that Mr Kipling has listened to what the SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) said; I would hate him to have to reduce his intake of Mr Kipling’s cakes, as they are fantastic. I thank the Minister for her reply, and the action she and the Government are taking. I know all right hon. and hon. Members here and across the House will continue to hold the Government’s feet to the fire over this issue, and I am sure the Minister welcomes that. I also thank the Commons Chamber Engagement team and those who took part in the survey for helping us to prepare for today’s debate; it has been very informative.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered reducing plastic waste.
Written Statement
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Sport Broadcasting Update
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport wrote to the DCMS and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committees on 2 August to set out the final decision on making an Exclusion Order under the Competition Act 1998, regarding the Premier League’s domestic broadcasting agreements. This followed the open letter sent to the Premier League informing them of Ministers’ “minded to approach” and inviting representations from interested parties. This approach sought to guarantee around £1.6 billion of funding for the football pyramid, including for grassroots football, women’s football, and lower league clubs.
On 13 May 2021, in a written ministerial statement to Parliament, I confirmed that officials at DCMS had written to the Premier League, and to Sky, BT, Amazon and the BBC as the current holders of the Premier League’s UK broadcast rights. This informed them that the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my right hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), was minded to make an Exclusion Order under the Competition Act 1998, allowing the Premier League to renew its current UK broadcast agreements with relevant broadcast rights holders for a three-year period without carrying out the normal tender process. Such an Exclusion Order would be a temporary measure to provide stability for the football pyramid coming out of the pandemic, guaranteeing around £1.6 billion for the game. This funding would spread across the pyramid including grassroots football, women’s football, funding for lower league clubs, and long-term income for clubs to plan for the future. This is crucial given the losses sustained by football during the pandemic, with around £2 billion lost by the Premier League and its clubs alone.
The Government invited interested parties to make representations before a final decision on the Exclusion Order was taken. Of the 15 representations submitted, most were supportive of the Exclusion Order because of the stability that would be provided by renewing the broadcast agreements. The Secretary of State for BEIS and DCMS Ministers acknowledge the concern that was raised in one representation about the inclusion of the “Near Live Package” of broadcast rights in the renewed agreements. However, we have concluded that subdividing the rights packages could disrupt the current arrangements, which would undermine the intended purpose of providing stability to the football pyramid. Moreover, the Government have not received representations indicating a potential bid for the Near Live Package if a tender were to be run.
We also note one concern raised about consumers potentially facing higher prices in the absence of a competitive tender process. We have carefully considered this point and concluded that the risk of higher prices is low and outweighed by the significant public policy benefits that would be delivered by providing stability to the English football pyramid. We expect broadcasters to keep the costs of their packages at current levels, as a result of the renewed broadcast deal on existing terms. Finally, in response to a question that was raised by one stakeholder, I can confirm that the “fair dealing” exemption in copyright law will not be affected by the Exclusion Order.
Having carefully considered the representations made, the Secretary of State for BEIS has concluded that there are exceptional and compelling reasons of public policy to make the proposed Exclusion Order. I can therefore confirm that, subject to the Premier League formalising their financial commitments to the football pyramid with the Government, as set out in my written ministerial statement on 13 May, the Government will bring forward secondary legislation to make the Exclusion Order.
The Exclusion Order will disapply UK competition law to allow the Premier League and the relevant broadcast rights holders to agree to extend the Premier League’s UK broadcast agreements on substantially their current terms to the 2022-23 and 2024-25 seasons, without the Premier League carrying out a competitive tender process.
If the Premier League’s current UK broadcast agreements are renewed for seasons 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25, the Premier League has committed to:
guarantee existing levels of financial support for the football pyramid for four years from 2021-22 to the end of the 2024-25 season. This includes solidarity payments, parachute payments, youth development funding and funding for grassroots football at existing levels, worth over £1.5 billion over the three-year rights cycle;
maintain at least this level of funding even if its international broadcast rights decrease in value when they are re-tendered individually over the next year into 2022, and to increase the level of funding if its international broadcast rights exceed their current value; and
provide a further minimum £100 million in solidarity and good causes funding to the end of the 2024-25 season, in roughly equal shares, to the National League, women’s football, League One and Two clubs, grassroots football and cross-game initiatives. This would make a significant financial contribution, including doubling the support for the non-league system, and providing crucial financial support for the women’s game.
This Exclusion Order is a temporary measure in response to the pandemic. The normal tendering process is expected to be followed for the subsequent broadcast rights period following the 2024-25 Premier League season.
[HCWS271]
Grand Committee
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Arrangement of Business
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Sub-Saharan Africa (Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee)
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Anelay of St Johns
That this House takes note of the Report from the International Relations and Defence Committee The UK and Sub-Saharan Africa: prosperity, peace and development co-operation. (1st Report, Session 2019-21, HL Paper 88).
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce our report The UK and Sub-Saharan Africa: Prosperity, Peace and Development Co-operation. I thank the members of the committee and our staff, including our specialist adviser Dr Julia Gallagher, professor of African studies at SOAS, for all their hard work in producing the report. I am also grateful to all the witnesses who contributed to our inquiry, one of whom, the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, has subsequently been appointed as a member of our committee and is participating in the debate today.
Our inquiry was launched in July 2019 and the report was published in July last year. In the interim, in addition to carrying out short inquiries on topical issues, we have conducted two major inquiries: our report The UK and Afghanistan was published in January this year and our report on the UK’s security and trade relationship with China will be published this month.
The constraints on parliamentary time caused by the pandemic have delayed the opportunity to bring today’s report before your Lordships for debate. Naturally I am looking forward to hearing the contributions by all noble Lords today. Despite the passage of time since we published our report, our 96 conclusions and recommendations remain valid—some of them perhaps even more so. Today I shall give an overview of some of the major issues that we covered.
Our primary recommendation, from which all others flow, is that the Government should publish a clearly articulated list of their priorities for their engagement with Africa along with an action plan for meeting them. When Theresa May visited Cape Town in September 2018 as Prime Minister, she announced a “fundamental strategic shift” in the UK’s engagement with the countries of Africa, known as the “strategic approach”. We welcome the uplift of staff in the region that followed that announcement but are disappointed to conclude that the Government’s so-called strategic approach to Africa falls short. It is not a strategy but rather some broad ideas and themes. Making a random set of speeches does not constitute setting out a coherent strategy.
The context of the UK’s departure from the European Union and the integrated review of foreign policy, defence, security and international development presented us all with a timely opportunity for a renewal of the UK’s engagement in Africa. So what additional light was thrown on the strategy by the Government’s integrated review earlier this year? Not a great deal, I am afraid. The region takes up so little space in the review that it reminds me of the evidence given to us by General Sir Richard Barrons, who said that while “politicians … and officials” often say that “Africa really matters”,
“almost in the next paragraph Africa becomes the fourth priority”.
Sub-Saharan Africa is a region of 49 countries of immense complexity and diversity. In the next 30 years it will see unprecedented social and economic changes, some of which present enormous economic and social opportunities as well as challenges for individual nations. The African Union has developed a long-term strategy intended to meet those challenges and harness the opportunities. We say that the UK should take a greater interest in, and seek a stronger partnership with, sub-Saharan Africa to support the delivery of the African Union’s strategy.
The region has some of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Africa’s population is expected to double to 2.1 billion by 2050. That growth is fuelling a rapidly expanding middle class and an increasing proportion of young people across the continent. Africa is the biggest bloc at the United Nations and it can be felt that the AU is growing in significance. It is therefore of strategic and geopolitical importance to the UK. It is a region where the UK really can make a difference.
During our inquiry, it became clear that aspects of the UK’s domestic policy have a direct impact on its reputation in Africa. We received overwhelming evidence that the UK’s—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness, but a Division has been called and we will adjourn for 10 minutes.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
My Lords, there is a consensus in the Room that we do not need 10 minutes for a Division. If the Committee is content, we will make future adjournments for a Division five minutes. I think that meets with the approval of everybody I can hear.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, I had begun to explain that, during the course of our inquiry, it became clear that aspects of the UK’s domestic policy have a direct effect on our reputation in Africa. The first of those is visa policies. We received overwhelming evidence that the way in which the Home Office deals with visa policy is damaging to our reputation across Africa and has a deleterious effect on our businesspeople’s ability to carry on economic relationships with countries across Africa.
We also heard evidence of the lasting impact of the historical legacy of slavery and colonialism on perceptions of the UK in the region.
We were struck by evidence that remittances from the UK to sub-Saharan Africa exceed both aid and charitable giving. Remittances are given too little profile in the narrative of the UK’s economic relationship with sub-Saharan Africa, and we believe the Government should work to reduce the cost of remitting money to the region.
Of course, it is now clear that the pandemic is having a damaging impact on the region in both health and economic terms. This adds urgency and scale to the collective responses needed to the challenges we identify in our report. Significant economic support from international partners will be needed to prevent economic gains made over previous decades being reversed. In particular, we say that the Government should support the African Union’s call for a two-year standstill for African countries’ public and private debt and continue to work with international partners to ensure that the Covid-19 vaccine is made more available to developing countries across sub-Saharan Africa.
We conclude that the UK’s future relationship with the countries of Africa and their regional institutions must be based on a genuine partnership. That has not always been the case. The UK should continue to support constructive reforms to the rules-based international order, including the UN Security Council, to provide, for example, African countries with a voice commensurate with their size and importance.
The cultural, educational, language and other soft-power connections of the Commonwealth provide a substantial basis for a further strengthening of the UK’s ties. We believe the Government should work with the 19 African members of the Commonwealth to seek ways in which its work in the continent could be strengthened.
We conclude that working with international partners must remain an important part of the UK’s approach to sub-Saharan Africa. We identify common interests between the UK and France, particularly in the Sahel, and the need for new methods of co-operation to be built up with EU institutions and member states.
It is, however, China which is regarded as an important partner and source of investment in the region. There is scope for the UK to work constructively with China, especially through multilateral institutions, on issues such as debt, health, climate change and trade—provided, of course, that the UK’s national interests and values are robustly defended.
We welcomed the range of effective UK official development assistance projects across the region and were therefore dismayed by the Government’s decision last year to make swingeing cuts to ODA across Africa. The cuts are already damaging the UK’s reputation and standing there.
The committee finds that UK trade with and investment in sub-Saharan Africa has flatlined over the last decade. Concerted action by the Government will be needed to address this. The UK-Africa Investment Summits in January last year and this were high-profile events and welcome, but detailed, consistent follow-up is required. I note, for example, that the Minister for Africa tweeted this last weekend that he had signed an MoU for the UK to partner with the African continent free trade agreement—we are the first non-African nation to do so—but he did not say what the MoU is about and what it would do. I hope that my noble friend Lord Parkinson can update us on that and explain what the implications will be for UK trade with the region.
There are significant challenges to peace and security in sub-Saharan Africa. They are likely to be exacerbated by wider trends affecting the region, including population growth, weak states, governance challenges, violent ideologies and the climate crisis. Witnesses highlighted instability in the Sahel, Nigeria, Somalia and Cameroon as of particular concern, and areas where the UK could play a constructive role, including through peacekeeping, diplomacy, and support for human rights. We should now, of course, add conflict in Tigray to that list. The Government’s strategy in the Sahel is now unclear because the integrated review mentioned the Sahel only once and Mali just in passing.
While the UK pursues important new economic opportunities and seeks to tackle security challenges, human rights will remain critical. The Government should consider a package of support to build the necessary conditions for democracy to function effectively in sub-Saharan Africa: a system that encompasses accountability, human rights, the rule of law, the prevention of conflict and measures to fight against corruption. That package should be a key factor in an Africa strategy and implementation plan. We should work in partnership to achieve those goals. It would be a partnership of lasting value both to us and to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. I beg to move.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, who chairs the committee with great distinction, following in the footsteps of the distinguished noble Lord, Lord Howell, who will be contributing shortly himself. I begin by paying tribute to our late and much-missed colleague, Lord Judd. Frank had great expertise and a great love for Africa and its peoples. He had his head in the air but his feet were very firmly on the ground.
My first observation is this: the report, which is very radical, particularly in its call for a new strategic approach to Africa, has been to some extent overtaken because of the delay of over a year between publication and the debate we are having now. Clearly, the authorities need to examine this.
My second observation is that there is much British experience of Africa. After all, as the noble Baroness said, 19 states are members of the Commonwealth. Nevertheless, in this country there is insufficient attention to Africa. Just look at the British press coverage compared with that of France, for example. I recall that, when I was in the FCO, Africa was the afterthought state and afterthought posting, when those who had key expertise elsewhere had a short period in Africa and did not build up a particular expertise. Let us hope that the much-criticised merger between DfID and the Foreign Office will lead to a change in that. There is also a great turnover of Ministers. It is sad to mention in passing the gaffe by the incumbent in mixing up Zambia and Zimbabwe.
I shall give examples of areas that have changed since publication, or which merited greater attention in the report. The report argues for greater commitment by the UK to Africa, yet the subsequent cut in overseas aid must surely undermine this aim and lead to a reduction in our influence and a consequent increase in the influence of other countries, particularly China.
Perhaps again, the defeat of the West in Afghanistan will lead to a loss of credibility and enhance the appeal of jihadist groups, which are active not only in the Sahel but down the whole swathe of east Africa, from Somalia right down to Mozambique. Do I detect the possible beginning of a recognition in the post-Afghan situation of the need for closer co-ordination of policy, particularly with France? I recall that Robin Cook, when Foreign Secretary, initiated regular high-level meetings with the French and closer co-ordination with posts, for example with the British having a position in the French embassy in Togo and the French having a link with our high commission in Accra. There must surely be some scope for that.
Can we have a detailed breakdown of the effects of the cuts by country and by section? VSO, for example, is part of that soft power which is too often neglected. I understand that VSO has been funded, albeit at a reduced level, only until the end of this financial year. There is no certainty thereafter. How can VSO, which is so important to our soft power impact, plan properly for the future when it does not have adequate and long-term funding? I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, will consider writing again on behalf of the committee to the Government to try to obtain some clear commitment on funding for VSO.
It would also be helpful to have some indication of the Government’s contribution to the challenge of Covid. After all, we have bought substantially more vaccines than we need. We will need to pass not only vaccines to Africa but, hopefully, some of the technical expertise that we have, given that even South Africa, with its comparatively good communications and quality medical services, is struggling massively.
Africa contributes very little to climate change: perhaps 0.3% of carbon emissions. Yet the effects are potentially massive, as we have seen in the latest UNICEF report. It showed the effect on sub-Saharan Africa, which is vulnerable to the increased frequency and severity of floods and of droughts, with inadequate infrastructure.
My final point relates to population, a problem that is only touched on in the report. The explosion of Africa’s population has effects not only on Africa but on us in Europe through migration. I understand that this is too hot a potato for the Security Council to handle. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, with his experience, may wish to comment on that. The report states that the population of Africa will double by 2050. Africa’s population was 230 million in 1950 and is projected to rise to 2.53 billion by 2050. Even as fertility is projected to fall, Africa’s share of global population, at 17% in 2017, will be 26% in 2050 and could reach 40% by 2100. Nigeria, for example, had a population of 38 million in 1950; it is projected by the UN to rise to 411 million by 2050 and to 800 million by 2100. The noble Lord, Lord Hague, wrote a perceptive article on this recently, in the Times of 24 August. Have western Governments and our African partners adequately recognised this challenge?
The human pressure for land leads to the cutting of forests, adding to climate change, desertification and conflicts over land and water. How will Africa find the resources to feed, educate and house that scale of increase? Will Europe be prepared to open its doors more widely to receive the new and increased migration? What work is under way with African and EU partners to confront this challenge?
Of course, expenditure on girls’ education may help and is important, but it is clearly insufficient. To what extent is family spacing a part of our aid effort? To what extent have we factored this population increase, massive as it is, into the aid policies that we pursue, particularly in Africa? Surely we need to work alongside African states, as well as with our EU partners and countries such as China, to understand the nature of local societies, recognise the problem and seek to mitigate its effect. The report is valuable—it is a gold mine of information—but perhaps we need another report on the challenge of population in sub-Saharan Africa.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I, too, served on this committee. I do so no longer but I begin by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, who did a remarkable job after all of us, I think, had some initial hesitations, both about taking on such a huge subject that involved a large number of countries and about whether we would be able to give coherence to our findings. I hope that we managed to do that; if we did, it was largely thanks to our chair.
I join the noble Baroness in saying that the fact that we are debating this report on Britain’s relations with sub-Saharan Africa some 15 months after it was published is a travesty of proper parliamentary procedure, which cannot be justified by excuses about Covid. I hope that that invisible entity known as the usual channels, which of course could not be present in this Room, will take some lessons from this because, together with the failure to debate the report of the committee on Afghanistan, this is frankly a scandal.
Why do I say that Covid is not a reasonable excuse for not debating earlier? It is quite simply because Covid has hit Africa particularly hard, accentuating the many challenges that its countries face in health, social and economic terms. We should have been debating what Britain can do to help. Why so? Because Africa matters to Britain and Britain matters to Africa, however patchy our past record there may have been—and it was. Through partnership and co-operation, we can make a real, positive difference there and shape up an essential part of our post-Brexit international role, which is likely to be more significant and more helpful to our western allies than any chasing after Indo-Pacific tilts.
On that point, the integrated review says quite a lot about the Indo-Pacific tilt. However, it does not explain coherently the rationale behind it or of what in practical terms it needs to consist. Briefly sailing an aircraft carrier through the South China Sea does not answer that criticism. The case for working in concert with the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia and other countries in the region to reduce the economic, trade, technological and investment disequilibria between all of us and China, which has taken excessive advantage of the benefits of WTO membership and other aspects of the rules-based international order, is a convincing one. But militarily too? I really wonder. Where is the evidence that the US—or India, for that matter—is looking to us for a closer military relationship in the Far East? The US has gently made it clear that it is in Europe and in Europe’s back neighbourhood, of which Africa is clearly a part, where it is looking for a more active and more substantial role from us, our European NATO allies and the EU as a whole. Given Africa’s potential in terms of demographics—the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, rightly referred to them—and economic growth, does that not make good sense from our own point of view too? I suggest that it does. Let us not forget that sliding into a quasi-Cold War relationship with China will not endear us to many African countries, which will want no part of that.
I will focus my remarks on three main issues: trade policy, visa policy and peacekeeping. There are many more, but time presses. We heard a lot ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum about how the UK would be able to offer much better trade opportunities both to African countries and to our exporters if we were outside the EU. More than five years on, there is nothing to show for that, other than a number of rollover agreements—“running to stand still”, we might call it. I urge the Minister, when he replies to this debate, to undertake that within, say, six months the Government will publish a detailed framework for the development of our post-Brexit African trade policy. Any such framework will need to address how we plan to ensure that our policy objectives do not cut across, complicate or undermine the objective of an African free trade area, whose success the Government have quite rightly identified to be in our interests. I am delighted to hear that the Minister has signed a memorandum of understanding with the African Union on this, but I hope that he also understands the complexities that will arise from making our trade policy towards Africa consistent with Africa’s own trade policies.
On visas, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, all the evidence that we took demonstrated that the pre-Covid operation of our visa policy towards African countries was humiliating and a serious obstacle to any strengthened relationship with them. On higher education scholarships and university places, which are surely a key part of any future British policy, the requirements were onerous and, post Covid, completely inoperable because they required people to travel to countries other than their own to take an English test, even where English was an official language of the country concerned, as I discovered when I was in Liberia last year. What is our future policy on these visa issues? Not a squeak do we hear. If we cannot find a better, more humane approach, there will be little chance of a strengthened relationship with the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. I hope that the Minister will say something on that.
Thirdly, only an incurably foolish optimist would suggest that there will not be a continuing demand for international peacekeeping in Africa, both UN peace- keeping and African Union and subregional operations. The integrated review says little on this. What contribution do we plan to make to it? Will we not only help to train African peacekeepers before they deploy, as we are already doing—I welcome and applaud that—but mentor them when they do deploy, which is what they desperately need? Will we be there with sophisticated equipment and staffing to help such international operations? You would not get the answer to that in the integrated review.
I hope that the Minister can provide some response on these three issues. I cannot say that the Government’s original response to our report, which raised all these issues, was in any way adequate. That was why the committee, rather unusually, had to send it back and ask them to try harder. The FCDO tried a bit harder, with some modest success, but the hard fact is that that Africa strategy about which ministerial speeches often wax eloquent simply does exist. There was a total unwillingness to provide us with a detailed explanation as to what it consisted of. Since then, the draconian cuts in the aid budget have hamstrung any future strategy. I hope that the Minister can at least assure the House that those cuts will be restored and that full implementation of our legal commitment to 0.7% of gross national income will be honoured as soon as our economy again registers growth.
Lord Lilley (Con)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, not least because it gives me a rare opportunity to agree with two things that he said: first, that the Government should spell out sooner rather than later a post-Brexit trade framework ambition for our relationships with African countries, and, secondly, that they should facilitate rather than discourage the development of a pan-African free trade area.
I congratulate my noble friend Lady Anelay and her committee on producing a comprehensive and valuable report—so comprehensive that, in the few minutes available to us, one could not comment on it generally. I have been interested in these subjects since my first career was working on aid and development projects in Africa and Asia. That led to me being appointed by David Cameron to chair his global poverty commission along with Bob Geldof—an unlikely pairing, you might think—which in turn led to the formation of the Trade Out of Poverty group where my noble friend Lord Hastings, whom I believe I am allowed to call my noble friend, and I were initially and subsequently chairmen, with great and invaluable support from the noble Lord, Lord Boateng.
At a conference organised by that group to coincide with the meeting of Commonwealth Trade Ministers, I was struck by the different priorities of the European and African contributors. The European contributors, myself included, talked about the importance of facilitating trade, removing barriers, encouraging and supporting education, shifting the emphasis of aid to helping in the development of the economy and trade and that sort of thing. The African delegates politely agreed with that but then focused on one word, which, to my astonishment and that of most people, they all without exception repeated again and again: electricity. They said, “We cannot develop without electricity. Our development depends on developing our electricity, and unless and until we electrify our economies we will not grow or develop.”
I do not often have a good word to say for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin but he said the future prosperity of Russia depended on two things, Soviet communism and electricity, and he was half right. You cannot develop without electrifying your economy, and we have to recognise that. Industry cannot function without a regular, reliable and economical supply of electricity. Education is hampered if people cannot study because they have no light to work by and read by in the evenings. Hospitals cannot function if they cannot run refrigerators and other equipment because they have no regular and reliable source of electricity. Female emancipation, above all, cannot proceed if women are unable to leave the home and domestic tasks because they cannot have refrigerators, washing machines and the other things that have played a major part in freeing women in so many parts of the developed world from some of those chores.
Since I worked in Africa, the supply of electricity has improved, but unfortunately in many areas it has been outstripped by the actual, let alone potential, demand for electricity. Blackouts, shortages and the sheer absence of electricity are widespread. Although references to electricity in the report are few, I am glad that paragraph 333 mentions the availability of
“‘strong DfID support, both technical and financial’ for the African Development Bank’s efforts to ensure that the 250 million people in the region without access to electricity and energy were able to get this off grid.”
Unfortunately, that is qualified in the next paragraph by a report saying that
“it was important to ‘make sure that we do not subsidise the use of fossil fuels or investment in them, and that we do subsidise the use of, and develop, renewables’”.”
It is also reported that
“The UK’s aid budget was ‘going much more into renewables than into fossil fuels’”,
and since then that has been intensified.
Obviously, renewables may be the optimal way to provide electricity in parts of Africa where you are distant from, and unable to be connected to, a grid—the sun is a lot more plentiful there than here, and in some places wind is also well available—but even in Africa the sun does not shine at night and the wind does not blow all the time, so you need batteries. The combination of intermittent renewables and batteries is hideously expensive. It may be cheaper than anything else if you are a long way from the grid, but we should not kid ourselves that it is cheap.
For urban areas—the population of Africa is increasingly living in urban areas—renewables are far more expensive than reliance on fossil fuels. Some armchair commentators in this country, who certainly do not fall into the category of experts, claim that renewables are cheaper. If that is so, wonderful—there would be no problem. If renewables were cheaper, no African country would waste its resources on a more expensive source of electricity, would it? They are not stupid. Or are we going to base our policy on the assumption that African Governments do not know what they are talking about and are too unwise and ill educated to choose the cheaper source of electricity over the more expensive?
They are trying to develop fossil fuel plants, but of course they cannot get loans and assistance from international organisations, or from us, to do so. It is surely arrogant and patronising of us to say that they are going about these things in the wrong way. We have to decide: should we help them to electrify their economies in the most economic way by offering technical advice and, if need be, access to finance, or should we withhold such assistance and even put obstacles in their way and the threat of punitive tariffs on their exports if they do not rely on renewables?
Those who argue that we should use every method that we can to guide, force and coerce them to use more expensive renewables, rather than cheaper fossil fuels, say that we should do so because African countries, and poor countries in general, are more vulnerable to climate change. They are right—that is true—but poor countries are vulnerable to climate change because they are poor. We are much less vulnerable because we are developed. They will reduce their vulnerability only if they develop and they will develop only if they have access to electricity. I rest my case. We should not stand in the way of Africa developing itself in the way that Africans think is best for them.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity to debate this report, but I have to say: better late than never. A couple of speakers have mentioned that the report was published in July 2020, and here we are debating it in September 2021.
The good news is that the report emphatically remains relevant. It is a very substantial piece of work of 160 pages, produced during the period when we were facing all the difficulties of remote working. I pay tribute to the work of our secretariat, particularly our clerk Eva George, and very much so our chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay.
One thing we can all agree on is the huge importance and potential of the region we studied, Africa south of the Sahara. The population of Africa as a whole is projected to double to 2.1 billion by 2050. By 2100, the population of the continent will account for just under 40% of the world’s population.
The UK has close links extending over many generations with many countries of the continent—especially in the south where, as we have heard, 19 countries are members of the Commonwealth—but by no means have all these relationships been positive. Our colleague, my noble friend Lady Amos, told us in her evidence that
“a lot of young Africans I speak to are very ambivalent about Britain, partly because of the issues around visas and the perception of a hostile environment, but also … [because] they will have family here who are constantly reporting back on what it is like to be living and working here.”
But the contacts and interactions over so many years also have many advantages. Dr Nick Westcott, director of the Royal African Society, told us that there was respect among African Commonwealth countries for the UK’s
“strong tradition of a free press, free speech, democratic institutions and visible and effective accountability.”
There are many positive connections through the Commonwealth; 19 of the countries in the region are members, including two recent additions, Rwanda and Mozambique. I think many of us are quite surprised that countries are joining that were never formally associated with Britain in the way that others were. Others have expressed interest in joining. In addition, of course, there are numerous soft power links between us, ranging from the BBC to the Premier League.
But, for all the advantages of the history of interaction between the UK and Africa south of the Sahara, there is a clear sense in our report—in fact, it is a theme in the report—of opportunities missed. Dr Westcott said that
“‘the overall perception of the UK’ was that it had ‘been a major player and a major partner for Africa,’ but it was ‘fading’.”
We were told that Africa has suffered
“political neglect from the UK”,
and it is hard to disagree. One illustration of that—you might think it is an oversimplified one—is that, since 1997, the British Government have had no fewer than 19 Ministers for Africa. That is an average time in office of 15 months. How on earth can a Minister make a positive impact in that time, let alone maintain personal contacts with African political leaders, which can be so important?
All too often, UK Governments have made grand statements that have not been followed by action. In a speech in Cape Town in August 2018, Theresa May announced the Government’s intention to be the largest G7 investor in Africa by 2022. By the time of the UK-Africa Investment Summit in January last year, the target had been dropped and Boris Johnson said he wanted the UK to be a “partner of choice” for the continent, whatever that means—any help would be gratefully received. Our trade with sub-Saharan Africa, both in goods and services, currently amounts to just 2.06% of UK exports and 1.76% of our imports. There has been a flatlining in UK trade and investment in the region. The Royal African Society told us:
“African leaders complain that British companies are no longer bidding for … big contracts.”
The picture that clearly emerges is that of a part of the African continent which has huge potential, which has many generations of interaction with Britain, about which British Governments speak grandly, but where the potential is unrealised. In paragraph 4 of our conclusions, we say:
“Successive governments have said that Africa should be given a higher priority across Whitehall, but have failed to make this a reality in the face of competing demands.”
That is why we call on the Government to publish a clearly articulated list of the priorities for their engagement with Africa and an action plan for meeting them. And it is a good time to be doing this. As we say in paragraph 415,
“Leaving the EU provides an opportunity for the UK to re-cast its trade relationships with African countries and remedy some of the defects in the EU’s Economic Partnership Agreements.”
There are also a number of practical proposals that could be implemented quickly. One would be to keep Ministers in post long enough to establish personal ties with their counterparts on the continent. It is also important that intergovernmental meetings are not simply at official level but at a political one. Another would be addressing the problems associated with UK visa policy, as previous speakers have mentioned. Among the many criticisms expressed to us were its bureaucracy, its inconsistency and its cost, as well as its being time- consuming and humiliating.
Then there are the problems with remittances sent by families from the UK to Africa. We know from a 2018 World Bank report that the total value of remittances to low and middle-income countries in Africa was three times higher than the combined official development assistance that they received and similar in size to their total foreign direct investment. We know the huge benefits of these remittances, which go directly to support individuals and companies, cutting out any payments to intermediaries. Yet the average fee for an international money transfer to sub-Saharan Africa is a staggering 9.4%. Our Government should be working to reduce these costs, which the World Bank has said could be as low as 3%.
Finally, the Government should do far more to engage with the hugely important resource that we have, which is the African diaspora. In 2019, diaspora groups in the UK included 251,000 from South Africa, a similar number from Nigeria and 128,000 from Zimbabwe. These intercontinental family ties are a huge source of mutual support and understanding and carry great potential for ever closer ties in the future. Many of our witnesses argued that the Government should improve their engagement with the diaspora, which, as we say in paragraph 478, is
“an essential resource in delivering the Government’s plan to increase trade and investment with the countries”
of the region.
These are just four relatively simple ways—ministerial links; visas; remittances; and the diaspora—in which the UK could deepen and strengthen its links, which are already of long standing, with sub-Saharan Africa. I am proud of our committee’s work, which is substantial and practical, about an area of our foreign policy where our message to the Government and the Minister is “Could do better”. I look forward to his reply.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Zimbabwe and vice-chair for southern Africa of the Africa APPG. I join other noble Lords in commending the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and her committee for an excellent and comprehensive report, although I must admit that when I read it I felt a mixture of despair and anger, because it confirmed everything I feared and have often observed—the lack of strategy or consistency, the counterproductive policies and the missed opportunities.
I had the privilege of working in southern Africa as a teacher in a rural secondary school in the late 1980s and subsequently have been an adviser in South Africa’s first and second democratic Parliaments in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Since that time, I have travelled irregularly back to the region and remain in contact with many of my former pupils, as well as with politicians and others whom I came to know in South Africa. What is most striking to me is how our significance in the region has waned over that period, not just among political elites but in the eyes of ordinary people. It is, in part, a consequence of the lack of consistency, strategy or even sometimes apparently any real interest in Africa highlighted in this report.
However, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, Africa remains important to Britain and Britain still has the chance to remain important to Africa. The noble Lord, Lord Hague, pointed out in the Times last month that, over the next 30 years, Africa’s population is expected to grow by more than 1.1 billion people, meaning that the continent will host three times the population of Europe by 2050. As a result, he argued:
“The future of Africa will … be one of the decisive factors in world affairs”.
Yet there seems to be no real understanding in government, at a political level at least, of Africa’s central importance economically and politically. Perhaps that is in part because of the fact highlighted in the report and referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that since the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, was Minister for Africa for a period from 1989 to 1997, no Minister has been in place for more than two years. The noble Baroness’s effectiveness as a Minister was not just because she was an excellent Minister, which obviously she was, but because she had been there, was known by people, had the expertise and was highly respected. With the best will in the world, that cannot be achieved, however good or bad our Ministers might be, if they are reshuffled every few months.
China understands the importance of Africa. Even Russia, with its much more limited resources, understands the importance of Africa. But they seem to have some sort of strategy, where we seem to have a series of knee-jerk reactions. Somebody described it to me as if we are playing a chess game: they are sat there looking at the board and we in the meantime are watching TV and shouting at the kids to be quiet. Every now and then, they say, “Your move”, and we look up, look at the board and make a move. It is not surprising that it is not very strategic.
Nowhere could our lack of strategy be clearer than in the approach we have taken since the beginning of Covid. We have hit African economies with a triple whammy. First, not content with the big cut that our aid budget would have faced anyway as a result of the Covid-related reduction in our GDP, we savaged it yet further, cutting off assistance to millions of people at their time of greatest need.
Secondly, we cornered the market in vaccines for ourselves while African countries have gone wanting. We are talking about booster programmes at the moment, when some of the most vulnerable people in Africa do not have access. Where national programmes have managed to get above 20% vaccination rates—for example, in Zimbabwe; not a country or Government that I normally commend, but they have—it is largely led through Sputnik and Sinovac, because they have provided the drugs. People do not forget such things. We have compounded that by helping to spread the erroneous belief that AstraZeneca was ineffective against the beta variant, something that has been proved not to be the case, but we still seem to spin.
Our final coup de grâce has been to cut off the African tourist economy at the knees by putting every African country on the red list and requiring that even double-vaccinated tourists have to quarantine on their return. There is no rationale for such a blanket approach: the US does not take such an approach; Germany does not take such an approach; Switzerland does not take such an approach. I hope that, in his response, the Minister will explain why we take such a different view from them.
We talk about tourist travel as non-essential travel, but it is essential to those economies. It is estimated that tourism provides £160 billion to Africa’s GDP and £18.3 billion to South Africa alone, supporting 1.5 million jobs. Travel bans are literally a death sentence. Of course we have to protect our people, but we must have a coherent rationale in how we go about it. If we do not correct this policy by the time of the southern hemisphere summer season, we will further devastate the economies of many countries, driving desperation and compounding political instability. I hope that the Minister will give us some comfort in that regard.
A number of noble Lords have raised the issue of visas, the excellent report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Africa and other all-party parliamentary groups which also fed into this report. When I sat on the governing council of the International Planned Parenthood Federation for three years, our African youth representatives could never come to this country: they were never granted visas. That was shocking, and it was of course noted. We made many representations to the British Government, but they would not treat it on a sensible, rational basis because the embassies and high commissions no longer had any discretion in these matters.
My final point is on climate. While I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, on the importance of electricity, I also say that the importance of getting African countries to work as part of the COP 26 process has been fatally undermined by our reduction of aid. I hope the Minister will also address that.
Baroness Fall (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Oates, who has such personal experience of the region. This time two years ago, I was honoured to join many learned colleagues on the International Relations Select Committee, a brainchild of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and skilfully chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. We began our investigation into the UK’s relationship with sub-Saharan Africa. Over the course of the months ahead, we were to hear from many fascinating witnesses, and I thank them for their time and inspiring insights over that period.
However, by the time we came to write the report, we found ourselves exiled to our homes and working in this strange, virtual world. While we were busy dealing with those challenges in our own country, we became increasingly mindful of what they meant for sub-Saharan Africa, a region of some 46 countries with great energy, brilliance and a population dominated by the young, with huge potential, but also with an underbelly of vulnerability to conflict and extreme poverty. I believe that we do no service to this important relationship by ignoring Africa’s great strengths and potential as well as its fragility.
I emphasise from the start that our report was focused on the UK’s relationship with sub-Saharan Africa. It was not about the future of Africa per se, which was and is for Africa to decide. However, that is not to say that there is not a role for us as partners and friends.
The single biggest strategic recommendation of our report was to embrace positively a region of great promise, working with Africa as equal partners and building investment and trade relationships. However, there was also the realisation that the region faces many challenges that call for a response, not least on humanitarian grounds. We were reminded of the importance of a joined-up strategy where our trade, investment, aid and security policy are brought into alignment. Yet time and again we found this lacking—a point made by many noble Lords today. This also meant having an awareness of where our own position fell short. For example, our approach to the issuing of visas to the people of Africa was of particular concern; again, that has been raised many times this afternoon. There was a sense that this soured our relationships with African nations, as well as with the diaspora.
Before Covid, four of the 10 fastest-growing countries in the world were in Africa. It also has one of the youngest and fastest-growing populations. However, Africa is particularly vulnerable to falls in GDP that thrust it back into poverty and cause hardship and tragedy. As Dr Moyo said when she gave evidence to us, to
“put a meaningful dent in poverty in one generation”,
economic growth of 7% per year is needed, but annual growth before Covid was around 3.5%. Covid is a deep, immediate concern in Africa, but so too is its potential long-term impact from falling economic growth. So, we held our breath for the people of Africa as Covid took hold.
Hovering in our mind was also a question that we had posed even before the pandemic began: would our own Government honour their aid commitments to Africa and, if not, what would be the result? At the core of our aid policy lies a commitment to some of the most vulnerable communities in the world. It is there to alleviate the scourge of global extreme poverty—but there is more. ODA is in our national interest and blatantly promotes it at the same time. If you want to see global action on climate change, insure against mass migration—often caused by conflict or famine—combat terrorism, eradicate poverty and counter world pandemics, as well as compete with China’s growing influence, the provision of 0.7% is a good way to set about it at the same time as standing by our commitment to the world’s poor.
So where are we now? This summer, as Britain hosted the G7, we had the opportunity to convene some of the richest countries in the world at a critical juncture. Although I was proud of some of what was achieved in Cornwall, I believe that we fell short of what was needed in three crucial respects. First, we hosted a G7 summit in the middle of a global pandemic in which we were the only G7 country not to have increased aid spending when the world most needed our help. In fact, we cut it. The cut from 0.7% from 0.5% acted as a double whammy alongside a shrinking economy that already would have led to substantial reductions. It meant cuts of around 66% in African programmes, according to aid charities.
Secondly, in Cornwall, the Government claimed to have put women and girls at the centre of their agenda, yet we are witnessing devastating cuts to many programmes that are designed to support them.
Thirdly, we committed 1 billion vaccines to the world, which we knew, however worthy it was, fell far short of what is needed. The contrast between vaccine delivery in the East and in the West could not be greater. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote in the Guardian over the summer:
“while 50% of European, US and UK adult populations have now been fully vaccinated, the figure for Africa is 1.8%.”
How short-sighted this is. Even if we put aside the moral responsibility argument, we are left with a blatant self-interest one. Until we vaccinate the world, Covid will be among us, mutating, causing deaths and blighting lives.
Great Britain still holds the presidency of the G7. It should use its convening power to hold a vaccine summit, virtually if needed, or to encourage the world leaders who are meeting next week at UNGA to engage nations, the business community and NGOs to commit to a global vaccine scheme that meets more like the 14 billion needed by 2022 if we are going to win the battle against Covid globally. We should also review and think again on our ODA cuts, which are damaging lives and livelihoods at a time when communities, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, need our support. Lastly, we should be working with African nations to build a partnership for trade, investment and friendship for a future that has so much possibility and a partnership of so much potential.
Baroness Blackstone (Ind Lab)
My Lords, the Select Committee was disappointed in the Government’s eventual written reply to its report, which failed adequately to address many of the issues that the report had raised, so I hope the Minister will be able to give a fuller reply today focusing on real action rather than vague aspirations.
The report was wide-ranging, but I will pick out one issue in particular and touch on three or four others. Before I do so, there are three background factors that need to be taken into account in most of what the UK does in sub-Saharan Africa. The first is our responsibility as a post-colonial power in the region, the second is the continuing poverty of vast numbers of its people and the third is galloping population growth.
Most of the 19 Commonwealth countries of Africa are former British colonies with a legacy of the English language, a parliamentary system, legal structures based on a recognised rule of law and the wish to maintain educational and commercial ties with the UK. This legacy can be of value to the UK in developing new long-term partnerships based on mutual benefits. Perhaps the Minister could tell the House explicitly what economic and commercial partnerships the Government are currently developing, indicating their size if possible and intended outcomes, given their stated ambition to support African countries in transforming their economies.
Turning to poverty, as others on the committee have already said, it is estimated that, by 2045, 85% of the poorest billion people will live in Africa. Demographic projections also indicate that global population growth up to 2030 will be greatest in sub-Saharan Africa. The Government’s decision to cut development aid from 0.7% to 0.5% of GNI is therefore a greater calamity in Africa than in most other parts of the world. The cuts mean that more African children under the age of five will die of preventable diseases or malnutrition; programmes to extend education will be reduced; investment in agricultural productivity will decline; and—in some ways worst of all, given the pressures of rapid population growth—family planning and reproductive health services will reach fewer women and girls. It is shameful that the UK will be doing so much less to support poverty reduction in Africa while at the same time boasting about “Global Britain”. The cuts should be restored quickly.
Although remittances should never be seen as a substitute for expenditure on development aid, as my noble friend Lord Grocott said, there needs to be greater recognition of how much the diaspora community in the UK are supporting their families in Africa through remittances. So what have the Government done specifically to lower the cost of remitting money to Africa since the committee recommended this over a year ago?
I turn to the specific issue of Cameroon whose capital, Yaoundé, is in the former French colony but where a substantial English-speaking minority, around 20% of the population, exists in north-west and south-west Cameroon, which was formerly a British colony. Since independence, there has been a history of discrimination against the anglophone minority and a lack of representation for them in the political and economic leadership of the country. This has led to an uprising, with demands for secession.
The armed separatists, regrettably, are guilty of violence, as are the Cameroonian Government’s security forces. The civilian population in the north-west and the south-west are victims of atrocities including looting, the burning of bridges, the destruction of crops and livestock and wanton killings, leading to the collapse of the local economy and serious food shortages. The international community has done little about it. The UK has a particular responsibility, given the history of Cameroon, and so do the French. The World Food Programme has been struggling to feed starving civilians.
Meanwhile, the Government are apparently going ahead with a trade agreement with Cameroon, in spite of the human rights abuses taking place. Can the Minister provide more information on the rationale for this agreement and say why it is taking place in the context of serious human rights abuses, as well as massive government corruption? Instead, will the Government work with the French Government and the international community more widely to try to restore peace and to ensure that that there are impartial investigations of human rights violations, that schools and health centres that have been closed are reopened, that funds are provided to help those who have fled their homes and are internally displaced and that there is support for the World Food Programme to provide food to stop starvation in the civilian population? If the Government are serious about what they claim is the foundation stone on which all government activity is built—a commitment to human rights—surely they should take greater action than just expressing concern in various international fora about what is happening in Cameroon.
Before I end, I want to return to a couple of general points. First, I hope that the Government will do what the committee asked and publish their priorities in a coherent and convincing way, above all setting out the actions that they will take to achieve them. Secondly, in the year in which COP 26 is taking place, I hope that the Government will engage with sub-Saharan Africa on climate change, so that the continent’s potential for economic growth can be exploited in ways that do not lead to more pollution and environmental damage. Lastly, I hope that they will fight to get international recognition of the need for a two-year standstill for African countries’ public and private debt, as the committee recommended. Without this, it will be much harder for many African countries to maximise their economic growth and to give their people new opportunities to be creative and innovative, as well as prosperous.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for her splendid introduction of a huge subject. May I also say what a pleasure it is to be among friends of Africa in this rather exotic Egyptian setting?
Global Britain has been looking east and not south, with Afghanistan dominating world attention and Britain even acquiring a trans-Pacific outlook, so sub-Saharan Africa, as usual, has had a very low media profile. The Select Committee therefore rightly seeks to develop a sharper foreign and security policy focus on Africa.
The Sahel region, especially Mali, has become or threatens to become one of the world’s most dangerous sources of terrorism and migration. The report applauds, as I do, the UK’s intervention there, alongside France, as part of the UN stabilisation mission. RAF Chinooks were in action earlier this summer, transporting French troops in a counterterror operation and carrying out rescue operations alongside French helicopters. However, Her Majesty’s Government still need to explain their wider strategy in the Sahel, especially as the region has become a funnel of trans-Saharan migration through Libya, where there are still terrible stories of trafficking and forced prostitution.
Before Brexit, this was a UK concern through the EU’s Khartoum process. This links again with the committee’s recommendation on development, good governance, human rights and so on, known as the Copenhagen principles. Does the FCDO measure the impact that this considerable aid programme—although it has been cut—has in slowing down migration, as is often claimed?
On student migration, the Home Office is doing nothing to improve the visa regime—as the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Oates, said—in spite of all the research done by the Africa APPG. Will it follow the advice of the Overseas Development Institute and review present visa arrangements, which are much worse than those offered by the US and the EU and do little to encourage students to come to this country?
The report is surprisingly thin on climate change and what HMG can do about it. It welcomes mitigation programmes, low-carbon development and renewables, but without giving examples. Friends of the Earth and CAFOD have provided one suggestion, which is for the UK to give up its export finance for the giant LNG drilling project of Cabora Bassa in Mozambique. They say that many families have been displaced, and Total has withdrawn its staff. Would it not be a strong response to climate change in Africa for the UK to pull out of this project? It would surely be better PR and greater transparency for us to promote more sustainable green energy projects such as wind farms and electric vehicles.
On the other hand, CDC set out an impressive Africa climate change strategy in a timely presentation this morning. I certainly had the impression that CDC is now working closer with NGOs and others in the local community. However, there are still questions about the continuing use of gas and fossil fuels. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, suggested that they follow the SDGs a little more faithfully; he may say more about that. We must hear from the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, as well.
There are some welcome statements in the Government’s response. One is that they will increase their engagement with the diaspora. They will highlight evidence from Africa in their COP 26 presentation—that is good. They will further support the suspension of debt payments by LDCs during the Covid pandemic; can the Minister say for how long this will be? They promise to strengthen Commonwealth institutions in Africa.
As for the pandemic, the report was written before Covid had established itself in Africa, which began receiving gifts of vaccines only in March. We recently sent 3 million vaccines to 11 African countries, the first of a batch of 80 million sent via COVAX, but these are very thinly spread and many people are having to pay for their vaccines. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, said, Gordon Brown says the poorest countries, which are meant to have priority, are not receiving nearly enough, given that altogether 92 countries are eligible for support. Is the FCDO scaling up this programme? At present, vaccine coverage is minute in population terms. Can the UK help to develop greater capacity for manufacturing vaccines in Africa?
I turn finally to conflict. According to the integrated review, the conflict fund is going to be reinvented and a new conflict centre established. Has this now happened? How does it differ from the original CSS fund? Can the Minister confirm that, in countries such as Sudan and South Sudan, the churches remain important channels of peacemaking and that CAFOD, Christian Aid and other faith groups based in the UK can be, are and will go on being a direct channel of support for our funding of this sector? Unhappily, as he will know, both north and south are continuously on the edge of conflict. President Salva Kiir in the south is still trying to co-operate with the international community, but he has just withdrawn from the peace talks in Rome. Is the Minister satisfied that the UK can do nothing to speed up the inquiry into the June 2019 massacre in which at least 127 demonstrators died? But we must welcome the Government’s initiative in sanctioning two Sudanese men: Salah Gosh, who was President Bashir’s head of security, now in Egypt, and another prominent businessman accused of corruption in the south. Those are positive steps.
Finally, in the context of aid cuts, have any embassy programmes in the Sudans been cut since the reduction of ODA was announced, or have they been protected?
I will end with a comment from my Ghanaian Uber driver this morning. He said, “The West has not yet learned to match democratic principles to local African culture.” I think I know what he means.
Baroness Helic (Con)
My Lords, this was one of the last reports of the International Relations and Defence Committee that I was a part of. It is good to be back in the presence of many of my colleagues and listening to their expertise once again. I add my thanks to the clerks and all who supported us in producing this report.
I intend to focus on one of the major changes that has taken place in the 15 months since the report was published and look at how our conclusions are challenged and confirmed by it. Our report largely described Ethiopia as a success story, whether as a fast-growing economy, a leader on climate change, or even as host of the African Union, including its peace and security department. But since November last year, peace and security have collapsed. Ethiopia is now in the midst of a horrific civil war. Thousands of people have been killed. Hundreds of thousands face famine. More than 5 million are in need. There is a de facto humanitarian blockade: less than 10% of humanitarian aid has got through since July. Press and aid organisations such as Doctors Without Borders have been banned.
The war fits many of the patterns the report outlined as typical of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. It is a civil war, but one that does not respect borders and has outside interference, in this case from Eritrea. It is based in large part on old political grievances and the historical relationship, or lack of it, between the TPLF and other parts of Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Government still claim that they are targeting only a small group of TPLF leaders, whom they brand terrorists. It has been clear for months that the violence goes far wider than that. This is an ethnic conflict, and the Tigrayan people face what the UN Secretary-General has called “unspeakable violence”. There are reports of massacres, of Tigrayans rounded up and sent to camps or slaughtered. The famine and hunger in Tigray are not accidental: they are deliberate —an attempt to starve Tigrayans into submission.
The Ethiopian President, sadly, has already used language to dehumanise those whom she described as opponents. When I hear it, I cannot avoid hearing echoes of the language that preceded genocide in the former Yugoslavia. No conflict is the same as another, but ethnic conflicts have features in common. Pramila Patten, the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, has described how
“In Tigray, women and girls are being subjected to sexual violence with a level of cruelty beyond comprehension.”
That is the fate of innocent women and girls, whose only crime was to be born of the wrong ethnicity—cruelty beyond comprehension, inflicted deliberately to terrorise and destroy a region and its inhabitants.
Ethnic violence and sexual violence go hand in hand. Ethnic violence and international inaction also seem to be linked. Some of the weaknesses in the African Union that the report identified have been cruelly exposed in Ethiopia: it is proved powerless when its host commits atrocities. Senior UN figures have been vocal in condemning the violence, but there seems little by way of concerted attempts at international mediation or diplomacy to end the conflict.
That includes from our Government. The integrated review identified Ethiopia as a key partner; it is our biggest recipient of aid in sub-Saharan Africa. We ought to be well positioned to influence this conflict positively and help to end it. Yet we seem to be more concerned with preserving relations with the Ethiopian Government and protecting trade than bringing our influence and pressure to bear on ending ethnic conflict. In seeking to become investment partners, we have perhaps forgotten that, as our report warned, partnership must be conditioned on human rights.
The absence of the international community and the proliferation of sexual violence are not separate issues. The Government have deployed one—I repeat, one—expert from the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative to the region. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister can update us on what progress they are making and what the likely next steps are. I fear that a single expert will not make much difference in preventing the horrors of which we have heard.
I know that the Government have decided not to seek to establish an international accountability mechanism for sexual violence. I regret that decision, but I recognise it. They must explain, though, how else impunity can be ended. How can sexual violence be prevented otherwise, in the absence of accountability? What accountability do the Government think there will be for the sexual violence committed in Tigray? If the answer is that some sort of ad hoc mechanism might be set up in the distant future to act, but probably only with the Ethiopian Government’s oversight, then I am afraid that we have totally failed to learn anything from past conflicts and are doomed to see sexual violence recur repeatedly in future.
I desperately want to believe that Ethiopia can be a success story once again. Our report highlighted its importance to the region and to the UK. Escalating conflict and violence, which threaten to draw in more and more of Ethiopia’s people and regions, is terrible news for Ethiopians and for Africa as a whole. One of the main thrusts of our recommendations was that the Government should be clearer about their strategies for sub-Saharan Africa—and make sure that they actually have strategies. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can tell us what the Government’s strategy is for working with allies in Africa and from around the world to end sexual violence and ethnic cleansing in Tigray, bring peace to Ethiopia and help to rebuild that country so that it can be a success and a partner once more.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, the House, and indeed Africa, owes the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the committee that produced this report a debt of gratitude for all the work that they put into it and for the good sense and wisdom that it contains. I am able to say that because I was not a member of the committee at the time, but the speeches that we have heard today reflect that.
I wish simply to underline to the Minister the importance of him responding in a way that demonstrates that there is a strategy. Where is the evidence of closer integrated relationships and working between the Ministry of Defence, the Department for International Trade and the FCDO? If there is no written strategy, where is the practical evidence on the ground of that closer working relationship? I am bound to say that I do not see it. Nor, in listening to speeches from Members from all sides of the House, do I hear any evidence of it existing and making a difference, both to African lives and to the good relationship between the peoples of Africa and the people of the United Kingdom.
One thing that struck me when I was a high commissioner in South Africa was the depth of civil society relationships, such as the relationship between the Mother’s Union in New Brighton in the Eastern Cape and the Mothers’ Union in Brighton in our country or between those integrating rugby in Gugulethu, a township in the Western Cape, and the Datchet Boys’ Rugby Club. I saw actual evidence of that commitment and engagement. If only we saw the same evidence of commitment and engagement on the part of the Government. Sadly, it is not there. It does not do any service to this country or this House in the absence of evidence of that relationship.
I want to make two or three points about one particular area that the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, has already referred to and which, importantly, is dealt with in recommendations 81 and 82 of the report, in relation to Cameroon. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, who knows about these things, described the history of Britain in Africa as patchy. Frankly, it was nowhere more patchy than in the history of Cameroon, but I am bound to say that when you compare it to the legacies of Germany and France in Cameroon, there is a difference. The legacy of France, which continues, is one of exploitation while the legacy of Germany, which was inherited after the mandate, was, frankly, one of brutality.
However, I fear that Britain’s legacy in Cameroon is one of neglect; I am afraid that neglect continues to this day. We were promised that there would be attention to human rights in the partnership agreement between the UK and Cameroon on trade, but where is the evidence of that? We hear about trade but do not hear about human rights. What has been the British Government’s response to the most recent atrocities that occurred a matter of only days ago in Cameroon?
The report refers rightly to the role of women and girls as, all too often, victims of conflict. Just two weeks ago there were two such victims and I am going to name them, because naming is important. Sinclair Shaalanyuy, a young girl who was attending a summer school in Kumbo, was killed. Grace Titalabit, a mother attending a presbyterian church in Bali in north-west Cameroon, was killed in circumstances where the blame is quite clearly on the security forces of the Biya regime.
There is ample evidence, I am afraid, of atrocities time and again on the part of the Cameroonian security forces. What is our response to that? How are we engaging with France on this issue? Where is the evidence of our engagement—if it exists—producing any difference on the ground? How are we supporting civil society’s peacemaking efforts in Cameroon? How are we working with the churches in all that they seek to do in relation to peacekeeping and conflict resolution in that country? What resources are we applying to that?
How are we working across the piece in ways that protect civil society engagement? The report rightly refers to the importance of that engagement, just as it refers to the importance of diaspora engagement in relation to development. Just a matter of days ago, on 26 August, the Minister of territorial administration in Cameroon issued an order demanding that promoters and representatives of all foreign associations operating in Cameroon submit information about their operations and their relationship with Cameroonian civil society. I am afraid that was specifically designed to suppress and hold back the activities of civil society organisations promoting peacekeeping, conflict resolution and indeed development. It was aimed at the sort of organisations that are doing excellent work in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Cameroon.
As a result of those decrees and that activity against civil society, Médecins Sans Frontières has had to withdraw from Cameroon, and the threat exists to British organisations too. So how are we working with France on this issue? When was the last time that a Minister from the FCDO spoke with a French Minister on this issue, and what was the result? We must have evidence of that co-operation. The report specifically calls for co-operation generally in Africa—we want joint approaches and joined-up development efforts—but there is no evidence of it.
We have an opportunity to make a difference, but we will make that difference only if we see evidence of a strategy focused on unlocking the potential of Africa and recognising the warm and effective relationship that exists at every level of our society here in the United Kingdom with Africa and Africans, with the diaspora and, indeed, on the continent itself. It needs to be evidenced by a strategy and its implementation, so that we move from warm words and sentiment to reality.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, the House is rightly proud of the work of its Select Committees and it is a matter of profound regret, as my noble friend Lord Hannay said earlier, when their reports are not debated in a timely manner. The usual channels should address that. It is a privilege to serve on the International Relations and Defence Select Committee, and I, too, pay tribute to the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, who chairs it admirably and keeps us all on our toes at every meeting. I refer to my interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Eritrea, as an officer of various other APPGs and as a patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response.
At paragraphs 82 and 83 of the report, the committee expressed its disappointment at the Government’s approach to Africa, describing it as “confused and confusing”.
“It is not a strategy”,
we said,
“but rather some broad ideas and themes, and there is little clarity on how the Government plans to put it into action.”
In urging the Government to take a deeper interest in Africa, the report points out that Prime Ministers rarely visit Africa and that Ministers for Africa come and go, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said. The noble Baroness, Lady Amos, told us that there is always a new plan—and here we go again. Contrast this with the approach of China. We need to be much more aware of the strategic nature of belt and road indebtedness, the plundering of resources and the quid pro quo demand for African votes at the United Nations.
We also need to learn from and harness the diaspora. As we have been hearing, remittances have a greater value than development aid. That is not to say that we should not restore the cuts in development aid, but we must recognise the role that remittances can play. For example, in 2019, people in South Sudan received $1,200 million in remittances, a staggering 29.5% of GDP, compared with £104 million in UK aid. The World Bank says that in one recent year, $40 billion of remittances were sent to sub-Saharan Africa.
Money and goods from the diaspora are wonderfully targeted and relatively free from the problems of corruption and siphoning-off by officials. Yet, as the Brookings Institution points out:
“The fees paid to remittance service providers to send money to Africa average nearly 9 percent— the highest rate in the world and three times the Sustainable Development Goal target for remittance costs (3 percent).”
I hope that, when he comes to reply, the Minister will address that, especially in the context of the diminished ODA and the high fees for digital remittance channels, and commit to examining the Brookings proposals for a global non-profit remittance platform.
However, unless conflict in Africa, discussed in chapter six of the report, which looks in detail at countries such as Nigeria, Somalia and Cameroon, about which we have heard from the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, is addressed, development will continue to be blighted. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, reminded us, the report names ideology as one of the factors driving conflict. Sudan’s civil war, driven by Khartoum’s attempts to impose its ideology, led to 2 million deaths. I saw ruined clinics, hospitals, schools and homes. Ultimately, Khartoum ideology destroyed its own country and partitioned it into two diminished states.
I also visited Darfur. The same ideology killed 300,000 people and displaced 2 million, many of whom still live in precarious, squalid camps. Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the ICC for genocide and crimes against humanity, gave the orders in Darfur. Last week, Sudan’s Foreign Minister, Mariam al-Mahdi, said that Bashir will be handed over to the ICC for trial. I should like to hear from the Minister what progress is being made to expedite this.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, there are mutations of the same ideology: murder, maim, destroy and displace. Globally, a shocking 82.4 million people are forcibly displaced, with more than 26% of the world’s refugee population in sub-Saharan Africa. Last year, the highest increase in the number of internally displaced people occurred in Africa. Displacement leads to trafficking, exploitation and jihadist recruitment, posing a real and present threat to local populations and to British interests, and indirectly to Britain itself. Jihadists in Boko Haram, IS West Africa and al-Shabaab have inevitably seized on events in Afghanistan. Like the Taliban, their task is made so much easier by inherently weak and unpopular corrupt Governments. Note that those who blindly support them also become tainted.
According to the 2020 Global Terrorism Index, Nigeria is now ranked only behind Afghanistan and Iraq. Corruption and ineptitude have run the economy into the ground, while the UK has poured in more than £2.5 billion over a decade, averaging £800,000 a day. That does not imply support for cuts in ODA, but it is not unreasonable to ask how those resources are being used to combat conflict.
I have sent the Minister’s department reports that over the past eight months more than 4,000 Christians have been murdered by jihadists in Nigeria, with 400 killed in August alone. Over 12 years, 43,000 Christians and 29,000 Muslims have been murdered by jihadists, with places of worship destroyed, attempts to eradicate alternative beliefs and countless numbers of people displaced. The case of Leah Sharibu—a Christian girl abducted, raped and forcibly converted in 2018—is highlighted in the Select Committee’s report. She is still in captivity. What can the Minister tell us about Leah’s case?
A long-serving retired military intelligence officer states without equivocation that religion and ethnicity are primary factors in Nigeria’s current insecurity. The foremost Muslim traditional ruler, the Sultan of Sokoto, has condemned the killings of others as un-Islamic and has called on the Nigerian Government to decisively address the insecurity. The levels of insecurity in Nigeria are beyond critical, and the Buhari Government’s response is a mixture of complacency and complicity. Beyond ritual condemnations, what are we doing to hold those responsible to account?
I end by turning, as the noble Baroness, Lady Helic, did, to the Horn of Africa and to Tigray, where conflict, as in Nigeria, has morphed into atrocity crimes, including the use of manmade starvation, and where those responsible are living in impunity. Listen to this report from Monday’s Daily Telegraph. It describes how Tigrayans have been
“rounded up, mutilated and dismembered”
with
“thousands of men, women and children”
thrown into
“makeshift ‘concentration camps’, cutting off limbs and dumping mutilated bodies into mass graves as part of an orchestrated ethnic purge”.
What are we doing to bring those responsible to justice?
The report says that the UK and its international partners have too often failed
“to tackle the underlying conditions that allow conflict to emerge.”
It calls on the Government to
“develop longer-term strategies to prevent conflict, and above all to prevent genocide, and support regional partners.”
I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us exactly how the Government intend to do that and assure us that we will be less timid in confronting the destructive power of ideology and naming it for what it is.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure but also quite difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton, because his knowledge of human rights conditions all over the world, particularly in Africa, is tremendous. His dedication to trying to find solutions is wholly admirable and very much respected by the House.
My African experience comes from CDC. I am very pleased that the committee, under my noble friend Lady Anelay’s chairmanship, was able to get a lot of evidence from CDC. However, my CDC experience ended some 30 years ago. The way CDC operates, the people it employs and the imperatives in their lives have changed dramatically over the last 30 years. I am not going to go into a comparison. I am not at all enthusiastic about comparisons anyway, but time has passed. Things have moved on and when we think about Africa, particularly the 19 Commonwealth members of sub-Saharan Africa, we must think very carefully about the way that things have changed.
I would like to pursue the committee’s partnership concept, which is absolutely the right way to be thinking about a direction of travel. When you come to read the Government’s response to the committee’s report, take into account that the committee was looking for the publication of a proper plan of engagement—the plan of action which was mentioned by its chairman. Paragraph 167 of the report says:
“Bilateral relationships with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa should remain a key part of the UK’s”
involvement. I would say they are vital and, if I might be practical, are the only form of deep involvement in sub-Saharan Africa which makes any sense to me.
I notice that we have just reappointed a high commissioner in what I remember as Swaziland—I think it is now called Eswatini. If you think about how a high commissioner would be the front-line man or woman of British policy in sub-Saharan Africa and compare their role with that of the high commissioner in Lagos and Abuja in Nigeria, it is just not the same thing in any way. Indeed, in pursuing the partnership concept I would like to speculate about Nigeria and the partnership with it.
In parenthesis, we should remember that Cameroon, which has been mentioned several times, quite rightly, is on a boundary with Nigeria. Indeed, when Cameroon got its independence two of its provinces opted to go into Nigeria, so their relationship is very close. At the moment, Nigeria is host to a great many refugees from Cameroon. That is a thing which has to be thought about if we are to create a meaningful partnership with Nigeria. On the other side of Nigeria, again in parenthesis, is Benin. They speak French as their common language in Benin and whenever we think about a partnership with a country in sub-Saharan Africa, we have to think about the complexity of life there.
Let me come briefly to Nigeria itself. It has 200 million people and it is predicted—most population estimates turn out to be wrong, thank goodness—to rise, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, to 400 million in 2050. Well, 2050 is not a long way away. The effect of Nigeria’s fertility rate being over five is that the per capita income is falling. The economy is growing slowly again, after Covid and all the other problems, but it is not keeping pace with the increase in the numbers of Nigerians. The per capita income in Nigeria is about $2,500 a year. Noble Lords will do their own mental arithmetic on what that means and be able to compare it with, for example, ours.
When we come to think about a partnership with Nigeria and Nigeria’s relationship with the UK, since the average age of the Nigerians is probably about 16 or 17 and the country has been independent for close to 80 years, we have to forget any idea that the population of Nigeria as they grow up have any real relationship with the fact that we were once the colonial power. We have to start from somewhere else.
The place that I think one needs to start from is: where are the Nigerian Government? If you are going to be a partner but the partner does not tell you what he is thinking, it is not going to be much good trying to be a partner. What about the dilemma of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley? The Chinese are solving his electricity dilemma by building coal-fired power stations. Apparently, that would not be a good thing in Nigeria; well, I suppose they do not have much coal, but they have plenty of oil and a lot of gas. Are we really going to say to our partner, “You can’t do that”?
You have to look at what your partner is saying. What do the Nigerian Government think about the explosion of their population from 200 million to 400 million in the next 30 years? Is it something that they want to see happen? Unless we have a dialogue that opens up a conversation, we will continue to get pathetic responses from the Government such as the one they gave to the noble Baroness’s report—and it was pathetic; it was completely general and had no commitment. We are faced with a Government who basically have no real commitment to any single country in sub-Saharan Africa.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, this is a massive and impressive report. I for one am very proud to see this committee, which was born only in 2016—in the teeth, I remind your Lordships, of strong opposition, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, will vividly remember—taking such a lead under the excellent chairmanship of my noble friend Lady Anelay in reaching out to issues and areas that other committees do not reach and where much more illumination is vital for our future.
It really is time to piece together fresh approaches to a continent that is going to contain, as the report tells us, one-quarter of the world’s population—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)
My Lords, the Grand Committee now stands adjourned for five minutes.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, as I was saying, it really is time to piece together fresh approaches to a continent that is going to contain a quarter of the world’s population and where the past 50 years of western intervention—especially the trillions of dollars poured into Africa by our American friends from the time of Chester Bowles onwards—have had such sadly limited success. If any of my observations seem to have a mildly critical tone, it is precisely because this report successfully opens up many important new perspectives and issues and acts as a powerful stimulant, so anything I say must be taken as further proof and praise of its value.
I have four points to make. First, the canvas is enormous. I understand completely why sub-Sahara was chosen: to limit the subject and avoid some of the labyrinthine complexities and turbulences of the Maghreb to the north. However, in the age of communications revolution and hyperconnectivity, I wonder whether the traditional geographical distinction is so valid. Modern violence and terror networks are increasingly intimately linked. The same ugly and destabilising forces as operate in the Middle East and along the Mediterranean shore—of course, they are the chief barrier to peaceful trade and development—poison politics across the Sahel states and have long since reached down into Nigeria with the Boko Haram horror, as we heard, and right down the east and west coasts of Africa. All in all, the huge sea of sand between north and south in Africa may mean less separation politically and in economic terms today than in the past.
Secondly, humanitarian aid is plainly needed more than ever, especially where terrorists and Islamic extremist violence have left and are leaving their wreckage. So trade concessions are needed—particularly the sort that encourage local enterprise and infant new industries. However, as has been said, we must be careful not to disrupt the rapidly growing trade cohesion in Africa, as exemplified by the new African Continental Free Trade Area and several other key networks that the report rightly lists and which are rapidly taking shape. Furthermore, we are gaining a new understanding of the mainsprings of development in Africa, which old aid views do not necessarily reflect. The wrong kinds of aid, measured just by volume and percentages, can easily hold back growth and do as much harm as good. Factors such as property ownership and remittances, on which the report held an evidence session, may be far more significant in development than was believed in the past.
Thirdly, there is no prosperity or development without peace. We need to know a lot more about what is happening across the whole belt of Sahel states, where violence rages from Niger through Mali right over to Somalia and the Horn of Africa on the east coast, and of course down to Mozambique. The report has an excellent chapter on peace and security across the region where, in Mali, the UK, working with the French, now has a fully mechanised long-range reconnaissance group, the Americans have a major drone base at Agadez and the UN struggles to keep the peace through MINUSMA along with some EU initiatives and the so-called G5 Sahel group of states.
Fourthly, there is the Chinese factor. Perhaps this should come first because it is now the biggest outside influence by far. The report looks at China’s activities, but there could perhaps be even more emphasis on the reality that the Chinese are everywhere in Africa, doing good in some areas but doing harm and arousing antagonism in others. I often think that if the Chinese would sometimes come off their anti-western high horse, they might learn a lot from the Brits on how to be most constructive over African development and reinforce the best trends instead of entrenching the bad ones. They are the largest funders of the African Union, but they own far too much of the debt of African nations for the health of the continent. Does not the whole problem of how and where to work with the Chinese need a thorough analysis and refocus across all involved departments here in Whitehall? I think I have heard other noble Lords say the same thing.
From here, I will strike a more jarring note. Everyone nowadays is calling for grand strategies of this kind or the other, especially in the field of foreign policy. I am afraid that the report is not immune from that tendency. However, in the fast-moving and fast-evolving age of digital revolution, the most beautifully crafted strategies are out of date before they begin. Anyway, the vast variety and changing character of Africa’s many regions, with all their totally diverse problems, fit into no single strategy. We have to be ready to work with different partners in shifting alliances in different areas. We have to work with the French very closely in some areas, and with the Japanese—whose enormous development programmes go quietly and expertly forward—in others; I am not sure that there is much about this in the report. We also have to work carefully and selectively with the Chinese.
We have to use different models, such as the CDC Group’s excellent approach to new enterprise encouragement and innovation, which my noble friend Lord Eccles has just been speaking about and which, incidentally, goes right back to the principles of the old CDC when it started 50 years ago. I had the privilege to be slightly involved.
We also have to work as closely as possible with the African Union itself. We have to focus on unique phenomena such as little Somaliland—I do not know whether that gets a mention—which works in smooth contrast to its violence-ravaged neighbour, Somalia. Frankly, I think it deserves more support and has lessons we ought to be learning in that region—for instance, how to deal with the extraordinary Djibouti situation, where we are not represented but the Chinese, the Americans, the French and many others are all building enormous military bases.
A prospering new Africa, cleansed of the poisons that still infect it but ready with a younger generation to leap-frog straight into the high-tech age—as in Kenya, for instance—and free, as far as possible, of hegemonic rivalries and ideologies is directly in our own national security and economic interest. Historical ties help us, and the modern Commonwealth network is very much alive and growing in ways only dimly understood by our media here, and indeed by our policymakers as well. But we also need a variety of imaginative, up-to-date and adaptable new approaches to meet fundamentally changed conditions across the whole continent. This report gives us a sharp and welcome push in that direction.
Lord Sarfraz (Con)
My Lords, the committee has produced an excellent report. I will focus on a very specific bit of it, the role of CDC, which the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and my noble friend Lord Eccles mentioned earlier.
I happen to think that CDC can do a whole lot better. It has said it aims to invest $1 billion a year in Africa, but before it invests a single additional dollar it needs to revisit and rethink its investment strategy. CDC should be backing the boldest and most innovative entrepreneurs in Africa, those thinking about the biggest problems across the continent, but it hardly ever does that. It invests large amounts in private equity funds and expects them to invest on CDC’s behalf, as the report points out. As such, it has very little control over investment decisions at these funds, and ends up owning all sorts of exotic assets.
CDC owns a Pepsi bottler in South Africa, hotels in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana, an Ethiopian fine wine business and a real estate development called Project Paradise in Mauritius. I could go on and on. Surely there must be a better way to achieve CDC’s own stated goal, which is “to leave poverty behind”. Fizzy drinks and upmarket hotels are probably not a priority.
It is also disconnected with our own Government’s bold ideas domestically. We published the UK Hydrogen Strategy last month. Why is CDC not trying to find the most promising entrepreneurs working on hydrogen fuel cells in Africa? They exist. We say we want to be the global science and technology superpower. Why is CDC not directly backing the very best technology entrepreneurs, scientists and innovators across Africa? Just ask any African entrepreneur and they will tell you the same thing: when CDC does invest directly, it prefers to work with big-name groups, conglomerates and big banks—everyone across Africa who does not need our money.
Finally, CDC flies the UK flag globally, but without the accountability and standards our diplomats are held to. When an entrepreneur meets a CDC representative overseas, they see them as a representative of the United Kingdom. Over the years, I have spoken to dozens of entrepreneurs in Africa who feel they were brushed off when pitching their ideas to CDC. Its employees must be held to the same standards as others who fly the UK flag.
One billion dollars a year is a lot of money. It can go a very long way, but for that to happen CDC needs to embrace African entrepreneurs. I hope this Government insist that it does so.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, I give many congratulations to the committee; its report will be referred to for many a year. I would have welcomed an inclusion regarding the Maghreb countries, given their role in continental affairs. Many consider that Morocco, for example, makes for an excellent springboard when wishing to impact francophone Africa, and then there is the getting to grips with the reasoning and consequences behind the migration exodus through the third countries of Mauritania and Libya or the Spanish enclaves. Other downsides exist, given the serious challenges of the security situation in Africa’s central belt of countries, including the Sahel, to which I will refer later.
I must declare with pride having been honoured with a Yoruba chieftaincy and my interest as co-chair of the APPG for Trade and Export Promotion. We are to engage on matters of Africa. I approach African affairs overall with a sense of optimism, particularly as regards Africa’s remarkable performance over the last decades and its prospects for substantial growth.
The African Agenda 2063 tracks a course for the continent becoming:
“An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens, representing a dynamic force in the international arena”.
The African Continental Free Trade Area represents the latest step towards achieving that objective. I too encourage the Minister to shed light on the MoU referred to earlier. With 54 contracting parties, the free trade agreement brings together a combined population of more than 1 billion people and a combined GDP of over US $2.6 trillion, with the potential to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty and 68 million people from moderate poverty, and increase real income gains by 7% by 2035.
While trade and investment between the UK and Africa have barely advanced over the last decade, we have the potential to be Africa’s partner of choice. A comprehensive vision by the UK therefore needs to be put in place that would position us as a powerhouse for services, an investment environment, standard-setting and good governance that would contribute to Africa’s economic and social development. Promoting a rules-based trade system in Africa, forging investment and advancing partnerships and technology would bring tremendous growth potential for both sides. A regrettable fact remains that in an age of increasing protectionism, isolationism and nationalism, certain countries wish not to share but to prioritise what they perceive to be protecting their interests.
The UK has a strong internationally-acknowledged and respected regulatory environment, recognising that the true benefit to Africa will come when standardised, rationalised and reusable processes, customs and regulatory legislation become common across all nations, facilitating fairer trade. The Government should embark on a “training, knowledge and sharing” approach across the continent.
Work remains to be done, however, to reinvigorate existing commercial ties. The UK does not have any trade agreement with 40 of the African nations. It has rolled over the EU’s former trade agreements with 15 African states but has lost former EU trade agreements with four African states. We therefore have catching up to do, and HMG should be focused on delivering a comprehensive and detailed UK-Africa strategy that addresses the challenges and needs of the continent in a systematic way.
The UK will have to compete with established and emerging partners. China has used its belt and road initiative to restrengthen its presence across the continent, having invested in 52 out of the 54 African countries; it is about to enter the São Tomé market. China’s FDI stock in Africa totalled US $110 billion in 2019, contributing to over 20% of Africa’s economic growth.
The UK should also take note of the efforts of the traditional development part of the European Union, which last year issued its briefing Towards a New EU Strategy with Africa: A Renewed Focus on Outreach. It aims to boost economic relations, create jobs on both continents and generally deepen the EU-Africa partnership across the board by aiming to not only reduce tariff barriers, which are already low, but minimise and remove non-tariff measures while harmonising domestic regulations and good regulatory practice.
Further negotiations between standard-setting bodies should take place to assist African firms to export products to the UK, not just agricultural goods but manufacturing and advanced products. Open markets for African goods and services, increased mobility and the enhanced reallocation of resources should lead to economic and industrial diversification, structural transformation, technology improvement and improved human capital.
Innovation in Africa already abounds—for example, in the health sector in countries such as Rwanda and Ghana, and in the fintech industry. I note with interest the plans to turn Nairobi into a world-class financial centre. That is further illustrated by mobile banking, which is transforming the lives of Africans in both rural and urban centres.
A word on the downside. We must be cognisant of the political instability faced by a number of African countries, most notably in the Sahel and the west and central Africa region. Added to the increasing security threats resulting from the ongoing expansion of ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliated groups, and the activities of disaffected non-state armed groups in many of these countries, the economic disparity and political instability by coups in Chad, Mali and, most recently, Guinea, are an illustration of this. Even Niger, which experienced relative calm during the recent presidential election, is bedevilled by the infiltration of ISIS-supported dissidents from southern Algeria into the northern border area around Agadez, by incursions across its eastern border with Nigeria by elements of Islamic State West Africa Province, and by the increase in similar turmoil created by terrorist groups on its borders with Burkina Faso and Mali.
The UK must do its part to assist these countries by continuing to participate both in humanitarian assistance initiatives and security endeavours, and by continuing to support, for example, the military component of the UN’s Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali operations. France’s decision to replace the extensive Barkhane military operations in the Sahel with a Special Forces contingent, involving greater international participation but with significantly reduced boots on the ground, makes MINUSMA of crucial importance.
I must add in conclusion that Africa has helped itself with significant improvements in leadership and governance, while signalling increasing demands for stronger accountability, checks and balances from its leaders. Over the period 2008 to 2014, 34 countries had improved their national governance, and since 2016 meaningful elections have led to changes in numerous countries, including Benin, Comoros, Ghana, Lesotho, Liberia, São Tomé and Sierra Leone. Africa is about much to do and much to be gained for all, but there is also the risk of much to be lost if the economic disparity and security concerns are not addressed.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I begin by echoing the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, in congratulating all noble Lords involved in the authorship of the report, particularly their chairman. I learned an immense amount from it and have learned an immense amount from listening to noble Lords in this debate.
All of us born in the 20th century, which I think is all of us in this Room—even my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay—grew up with stereotypes of Africa made by aid appeals and bad news stories. We can all think of those images: flies settling on children with bloated bellies, gun-toting teenagers and so on. Those stereotypes led my near contemporary, the noble Lord, Lord Oates, into a great adventure where, with his father’s stolen credit card, he landed in Addis Ababa, determined to do something about the Ethiopian famine in 1985. He realised two things on landing: first, that Ethiopia in 1985 did not particularly need 15 year-old English schoolboys, but secondly that the problems were not caused by western policy; they were internal and caused by bad domestic policy. We heard from my noble friend Lady Helic how, having grown impressively in the meantime, bad policy is again condemning that country.
I do not think that stereotypes survive first contact. You cannot fail to be hit by the industriousness and the hum of enterprise in Africa. If you want it in figures: before the coronavirus hit, sub-Saharan Africa had been growing at between 5% and 6%. According to the African Development Bank, even this year, despite everything, it is forecast to grow at 3.4%. Of course, that is partly just the number of people. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, the numbers laid out in impressive detail. When I was last in Africa a lot of politicians were saying, “This is a terrible problem and a great challenge—how are we going to find jobs for all these young people?” I would say: imagine the opposite problem. Imagine that you are Russia or Greece or somewhere where you have an immense number of retirees and very few people of working age. Then you would have a problem.
There is a terrific opportunity in demographic growth. If, as my noble friend Lord Eccles said, it sometimes does not feed into growth, that is usually again caused by bad policy. My noble friend specifically mentioned Nigeria. Nigeria has a 120% tariff on rice—a basic staple—and crazy banking rules. By the way, I would say it has a mildly corrupt Government that did not return the favour of the PDP, having accepted the election results last time. It is ultimately in the hands of Nigerians to choose different policies.
What drove that growth in Africa? It is the great unreported happy fact of the 21st century. It was not aid or even remittances; above all, it was mobile phones and the technology that went with them, facilitated by investment. Here is a hard truth: the motives of the companies that put in the mobile phones that allowed farmers to check the weather and see where the seed was cheapest, and allowed fishermen to decide where to land their catches, were purely mercenary. They did this openly for the profit motive; they were not pretending to dress it up in humanitarian terms. Some people find that an unsettling, even sordid, fact. I do not think that the beneficiaries on the ground see it in those terms.
Some people fret that there is a necessary tension between economic growth and environmental protection. My noble friend Lord Lilley ably set out the choice between affordable electrification or electrification through renewables. However, it seems to me that the best thing we can do if we want countries to take environmental protection more seriously is assist them in reaching a level of economic development where it becomes feasible.
My noble friend Lord Ridley is fond of pointing out that, 50 years ago, wolves, tigers and lions were all endangered but now, wolves have rebounded, tigers have flatlined and lions are still endangered. Why? Because wolves live in rich countries, tigers live in middle-income countries and lions live in poor countries. He is slightly oversimplifying but look at the story of our generation. In the years since 1980, there has been net reforestation on this planet of an area roughly the size of Alaska, but it has happened overwhelmingly in wealthy countries, particularly in Europe and North America. Why? For all the most obvious reasons: people in those countries do not rely on slash-and-burn agriculture or wood fires for cooking, and they do not have this constant pressure on land.
What can we do to help Africa to reach a level of development where those pressures are eased? The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, had the answer: open our markets. It does not even cost us anything—on the contrary, we are doing ourselves a huge favour. The reason to have comprehensive trade liberalisation with Africa, including in services, visas and professional qualifications, is not as a favour to a growing part of the world but as a favour to ourselves that also, incidentally, benefits exporters in that great and rising continent. Yes, there will be moments when it is not, if you like, aesthetically pleasing. The movement of rural populations into workshops in urban areas is not pretty. The 19th-century novelist Anthony Trollope once said:
“Poverty, to be picturesque, should be rural.”
However, this is a process that every country goes through. We were first, and others are now following, but—let us allow them the dignity of agency, for heaven’s sake—they do it because they are making rational choices about how to secure the best living standards.
What can we do to help? We can ensure that they have the right to buy and sell without restrictions. Here, like my noble friend Lord Lilley, I am delighted to be able to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay: we could be doing way more. It is true that a lot of sub-Saharan African countries already qualified for what they call EBA, which is almost a tariff-free deal, effectively. However, as the wags in Africa will tell you, it is not so much “Everything but Arms” as “everything but farms”. There are all sorts of ways in which agrarian produce is excluded. I met Ugandan vanilla producers, who said, “In theory, we are allowed to sell all the vanilla we want to the European Union. There is no tariff”. In practice, the standards are set by two French lobbyists who have substantial interests in Madagascar in such a way as to exclude everyone else’s vanilla. If Britain, pursuing an independent global trade policy, is serious about global engagement, we must identify and remove those tariff and non-tariff barriers. I repeat: we must do this not as a favour to Africa but as a favour to ourselves.
Let us apply the lesson learned by the noble Lord, Lord Oates, aged 15: it is not always about us. We are a naturally solipsistic species—it is human nature to put ourselves at the centre of the universe—but the rise of Africa is a demographic fact and will be an economic and geopolitical one. The challenge for us is to stop thinking of it as an obligation and start embracing it as an opportunity.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I and, no doubt, my noble friend Lord Oates’s publisher, are delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, has read his Africa memoirs. For those who have not, we both commend them very warmly to the Committee.
I declare my interest in the register. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the other noble Lords who referenced Sudan that it was the last country I visited, last March. I was stranded when it declared a state of emergency and closed the international airport. If anything, it brought home to me the vulnerability that many countries had when the pandemic struck in terms of not only immediate health but the ongoing economic impact. I have had a very close relationship with Sudan. It was therefore right that this committee started with an understanding of the impact—not just the immediate impact but what are likely to be very long-term consequences—of the pandemic on sub-Saharan Africa.
As others on the committee have said, it was a pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay. She led the committee and our inquiry report in an open and inclusive manner. It took as its starting point how robust the Government’s self-described Africa strategy was in relation to the African Union’s own strategy for 2063, for example in the 2019 Joint Communiqué on the African Union-United Kingdom Partnership. We were told that just one initial example of what was then referred to as the new strategy was the “pivot to the Sahel”. However, as the noble Baroness indicated, there was only one reference in the integrated review, and that reference was to our support for the French deployment. As we have now seen, and as was referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, the change to that deployment under President Macron raises questions. I hope that the Minister can say whether it is the Government’s intention now to change this element of the integrated review.
Overall, the committee concluded in paragraphs 82 and 83 that
“the Government’s new ‘strategic approach’ to Africa falls short. It is not a strategy, but rather some broad ideas and themes, and there is little clarity on how the Government plans to put it into action … Communication of the new ‘strategic approach’ to Africa has been confused and confusing … and has relied on jargon”.
The Government’s position did not remove that confusion because the last witness the inquiry heard from was the Minister for Africa, James Duddridge, who told the committee:
“In my mind, we have a very clear strategy. We are acting on that strategy and organising ourselves and our resources around it. One of the tests that I apply to everything I do is: how does it contribute to the Africa strategy? That is alongside other tests, such as value for money, the manifesto commitments and so forth. It is very much a real document.”
However, the Government’s response to the report said this on page 5:
“A single strategy document for such a diverse continent would not be effective, nor is a continent-wide strategy usual practice.”
Either it is or it is not. Recent government documents and statements in the integrated review on an approach to the Indo-Pacific suggest that such a diverse area seems to warrant a strategy, so why not sub-Saharan Africa, or Africa and our relationship with the African Union?
However, the confusing position within government tells a deeper truth, which has been highlighted in this debate. Statements have been provided with grandiose assertions and ambitions, whereas the reality seen by our partners never reaches those ambitions. The shockingly high turnover of Ministers and the lack of seniority of ministerial visits, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and my noble friend Lord Oates highlighted, are illustrative. Of more substance is that in 2018 the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom gave a commitment in Africa that the UK was to be the biggest investor in Africa in the G7 by 2022, but there was subsequently no public statement by the Government on why this was scrapped just 18 months later. The Government hoped that people had not noticed, but the African Union did and so did China, at the very time—as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, highlighted—when many countries are now much more sceptical of the strategic debt policy of China and much more open to the approach of investment from the UK and other, similar countries. I am afraid the Government need to explain why this was the case. I asked the Minister why the target was dropped. He said:
“Our competitors are investing heavily. Financially, China is eating up a lot more of that investment opportunity than before. It makes hitting a crass target of being the largest harder and harder.”
So something has moved from being a target by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to being “crass”. I ask, as did the noble Lord, Lord Grocott: what, therefore, is the ambition for UK investment in Africa?
The second area in which we have reneged on a leadership position, as my noble friend Lord Oates and the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, highlighted, is the real and devastating impact of UK development co-operation cuts. It is not so much a cut in aid as a cut in co-operation and partnership. British embassies and high commissions have spent the last six months telling scores of UK and Africa-based NGOs and charities to ask USAID and the EU to fill funding gaps. This is humiliating for the UK missions around the subcontinent and it is leaving unhelpful vacuums that others may fill.
In his letter to the IDC in the Commons, the Foreign Secretary highlighted the countries in sub-Saharan Africa where UK bilateral co-operation is being cut in its entirety. When the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, asked the Minister to reassert the position on aid, he replied:
“I will go back, if I may, to something that I should have said and which is truly amazing. We are still one of the few nations that delivers on 0.7% GNI. The fact that we do not still bash that around as a debatable is fantastic. We should be very proud of that.”
We were very proud of that.
The Government have failed to publish anything on soft power, covering education, wider rule of law issues and cultural and societal partnerships. It is of interest to me, for example, that this Friday the African Union-China human rights dialogue is convening. There will no doubt be a very powerful counternarrative on this subject from Beijing. What is the UK’s response? As we leave the field in many respects, reneging on leadership, it will be filled by others.
As the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, my noble friend Lord Oates, the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, and others highlighted, this is a region of countries with young populations who are also more globally minded than previously and led by Governments who are more democratic and stable than ever before, as the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, said. They seek co-operation to meet global challenges but they look objectively at our approach and the actions that our Governments address. If we leave the field, renege on leadership and become less reliable, others will fill this gap, which means that when we want to bring together coalitions of the willing to defend our positions around the world, we will find fewer partners as a result.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I associate myself with the remarks of my noble friend Lord Anderson about missing the late Lord Judd. His commitment to development and Africa would have been highly relevant to today’s debate.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, not only for chairing the committee but for her excellent introduction to the report, and I thank all members of the committee. The report is a great resource, bringing together a range of important information on our relationship with sub-Saharan Africa. As we have heard in this debate, it makes incredibly powerful points that are as relevant today as when it was published. I associate myself with the remarks about the delay in our ability to debate it.
It is right to call for a stronger relationship between the UK and sub-Saharan Africa, and I am particularly pleased that the committee sought to change the narrative about the region. A genuine and constructive partnership between the UK and the 49 countries of sub-Saharan Africa presents enormous opportunities for all involved, but there is clear evidence from the committee that this is not being utilised by this Government. That was so ably amplified by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, this afternoon. As the report points out, sub-Saharan Africa is of great strategic importance to the United Kingdom, but it finds the Government’s strategy for Africa too vague to be useful and not adequately reflected in action. The talk is not yet matched by the walk.
The region includes many of the world’s fast-growing economies, and there are enormous opportunities for new trade agreements that would benefit both sides in the multilateral system. I hope that we will see a much more effective strategy on trade, instead of the simple rollover agreements that we have seen so far. In the multilateral system, the 49 states are increasingly important. They make up a large proportion of the influential G77 grouping at the United Nations and have often shown leadership throughout the UN system. Geopolitically, close security co-operation between the UK and the states in sub-Saharan Africa can make the world a safer and more secure place.
But our relationship with Africa should be based on much more than our interests, and the committee found that the United Kingdom can make a huge difference to the lives of people throughout the region. A closer relationship will clearly be mutually beneficial.
The report also recognised the great work done by the CDC in supporting African growth, particularly industrialisation. I do not particularly recognise the portrayal of the CDC’s work by the noble Lord, Lord Sarfraz. If he had been able to attend the CDC’s latest stakeholder event, he would have seen exactly what sort of projects it is prioritising. The CDC is not a replacement for private investment: that is something we should be promoting. The CDC has a very clear mandate set by the Government, and I hope the Minister will justify it. The most important thing is that it must make sure that its work reflects the 2030 agenda, the SDGs—a critical part in developing Africa. We should understand that it is not us telling Africa about the SDGs; the important thing is that they were accepted by all nations at the UN as a target for everyone and that they apply to everyone. It is the fact that they are universal in their nature that makes them so important.
The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned climate change. I am sad that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, is not here, because a critical part of development is energy generation. As we have heard in the debate, without energy generation we cannot meet the SDG targets. This morning I was fortunate enough to co-host a CDC event with the noble Baronesses, Lady Sugg and Lady Sheehan, looking particularly at its investment strategy in terms of climate change and energy generation. There were lots of critical questions about that but, for me, the most important thing is that the context of its strategy is the SDGs. How do we get better employment? How do we get health systems working? How do we get gender equality? Those investment decisions in energy are really important.
What we heard in our session today was about the strategy of ensuring that there is a just transformation—how we work with Africa to ensure that the pathway to net-zero carbon targets actually embraces those commitments to jobs. The problem with the portrayal by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, is that it was about either green and effective energy generation or cheaper carbon generation. Actually, that is not the CDC’s strategy but it recognises that to start the process of transformation you may need to use natural gas, which it has done. There is a debate to be had about that but the most important thing is that it is focused on this transformation, working with Governments and the private sector in Africa to ensure that the pathway they take is a green one—and not making the mistakes of the industrial north. The invitations went out to every noble Lord and it is a shame that not enough turned up, but I hope that the CDC will organise further events about how we can see the effectiveness of its investments.
Many noble Lords referred to the remittances sent from the UK to Africa, which come to many billions each year. As we heard in the debate, they exceed contributions in aid spending as well as charitable donations. However, decreases in the total were widely expected in 2020. I would like to hear from the Minister what assessment the Government have made of the level of remittances to sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, have they declined in 2020 and are they expected to decline further in 2021?
A major theme of the report is the need to pay more attention to the interests and concerns of the diaspora communities which contribute to these remittances. The report also states:
“In order to develop a better understanding of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Government should seek to foster knowledge of the UK’s historic relationship with the region among UK citizens.”
As my noble friend Lady Amos pointed out in her evidence to the committee, those citizens include a growing number of diaspora Africans themselves. In their response, the Government state that they are committed to continuing and increasing diaspora engagement. They said that a key area in which they will increase our diaspora engagement is on climate change-related issues, using the opportunity provided by hosting COP 26. With less than two months to go until that summit, what preparations have the Government made to facilitate this?
Mention has also been made of our political support for civil society, which, as many noble Lords may have heard me say, is a key guarantor of human rights. A strong civil society protects human rights. The committee made the case for greater engagement with civil society groups; in the Government’s response there was mention of only Nigeria and Sudan. Can the Minister detail what the Government have done to instigate further local engagement with civil society in Africa?
Our support for Security Council membership negotiations can strengthen the voice of Africa on the world stage, and our backing of the African Union-led peacekeeping missions can bring it a more stable future. Unfortunately, in recent years the Government’s lack of a coherent strategy for engaging sub-Saharan Africa, in addition to their inconsistent and often incoherent foreign policy, has created obstacles to our relationship with the region. Since the Government’s response to the report, as noble Lords referred to—of course the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, did so, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fall, made this clear—we have seen the break from 0.7% as it has gone to 0.5%, which has resulted in the UK abandoning its commitment to the world’s most vulnerable and undoubtedly harmed our standing with our allies in Africa.
I do not want to bang on too much. I was going to make a lot of references. The report is so wide-ranging that it is incredibly difficult to cover all elements of it. I was certainly going to raise the visa point but noble Lords have mentioned it so I will not repeat it; I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that particular point.
The committee’s report presents the right starting point for developing a new approach, including taking a greater interest in the region, identifying opportunities for genuine partnership and giving altogether greater priority to our relationship with the 49 countries. However, more than that, we need to ask ourselves what role we play in the world and how sub-Saharan Africa relates to that. The UK should be an outward-looking nation that is confident of its values and determined to work with other nations to the advantage of both parties.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, this has been a wide-ranging and interesting debate. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Anelay of St Johns for the way in which she opened the debate and for her great dedication as chair of your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee. I am also grateful for her understanding, as a former Chief Whip, for the reasons for the delay in having this debate, as well as for the patience of all the committee’s members; I recognise that it has been tested. I am glad, however, that there have been opportunities during our many Statements, Questions and PNQs on the pandemic for some of the points raised in the debate to be made in your Lordships’ House.
The committee made several recommendations to the Government in its report. Many of them are already informing our approach to African countries as we tackle the pandemic and work towards a sustainable recovery. Africa is a continent of unequalled diversity. It is critical that we calibrate our engagement accordingly and focus our resources to ensure that we deliver the greatest possible impact for those with whom we work and for the UK taxpayer.
The Government’s vision for the UK in the world, including in relation to Africa, is set out in the integrated review. It highlighted our focus on east Africa and the continent’s regional powers, such as Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana, but we are also working to strengthen partnerships across the continent to boost trade, strengthen democracies and bolster security. Our overarching objective is to increase economic growth in African countries and support them becoming greener, healthier, more open and more secure.
To achieve this, we are focusing on five priority areas: economic growth; tackling threats; open societies; human development; and the shift towards a greener, cleaner planet. In the time available, I will say a bit about each of these priority areas. I will also try to address as many of the points made and answer as many of the questions posed by noble Lords as possible. As ever, I will of course consult the official record afterwards to ensure that all noble Lords’ points are properly followed up.
Our first priority is supporting economic growth to help African countries recover from the pandemic and meet the aspirations of their growing populations; as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, and my noble friends Lord Eccles and Lady Anelay noted, the number of people on the continent is doubling every 27 years. If African countries are to put themselves at the forefront of emerging global markets, economic growth needs not only to keep pace with but to consistently exceed population growth. That sounds ambitious—it is—but, as my noble friend Lady Fall mentioned, before the pandemic countries such as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ghana, Benin and Côte d’Ivoire had growth rates of more than 7%. Those rates put them among the fastest-growing economies in the world. Fifteen other African countries grew at more than 5%. We want to help them to bounce back to those levels as quickly as possible.
As the Prime Minister reiterated at the Africa Investment Conference in January, our ambition is to be Africa’s investor of choice. These are competitive markets—as they should be—but we have much to offer and are working hard to increase trade and investment with and between African countries. We are supporting the African Continental Free Trade Area, as your Lordships’ report recommended, and strengthening our trade agreements; my noble friend Lady Anelay asked about that.
The African Continental Free Trade Area is the African Union’s most ambitious regional economic integration initiative and is a potential game-changer for Africa’s economic growth, driving industrialisation, jobs and prosperity. As well as delivering increased prosperity for Africa, if implemented fully, it could also generate new trade and investment opportunities for UK businesses, for example by reducing the complexity and cost for businesses of operating in multiple countries. That is why the UK is a strong supporter of it and why, on 3 September, my honourable friend the Minister for Africa, James Duddridge, signed a memorandum of understanding with the secretariat. The MoU is the first of its kind with a non-African country and will facilitate UK collaboration with the African Continental Free Trade Area across a number of areas, including investment and trade facilitation.
At the UK-Africa Investment Summit last year, we announced more than £15 billion of commercial deals between British companies and African partners. The summit was followed up earlier this year with the Africa Investment Conference, highlighting our goal significantly to increase trade and investment with the region, which your Lordships’ report recommended; the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, touched on this in his contribution. Supporting UK investment in Africa is a priority for Her Majesty’s Government. In 2019, using ONS statistics, UK investment stock was £50.6 billion —an increase on the previous year of almost 15%. Last year, when many investors in Africa were withdrawing, UK development finance committed more than £800 million of investment. To touch on the points made by my noble friend Lord Sarfraz, as others were withdrawing from Africa during the pandemic, the CDC Group stepped up to provide much-needed, impact-driven, targeted capital and liquidity to investment partners in the region.
In June, as G7 president, we committed the group’s leaders to working with their development finance institutions and multilateral partners to invest at least $80 billion in the private sector in Africa over the next five years.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, pressed for specific details about our trading arrangements. We have successfully signed nine agreements with 16 countries in Africa, representing bilateral trade worth £21.7 billion—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)
My Lords, there is a Division in the Chamber. The Committee will adjourn for five minutes.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I was saying in response to the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, that the nine agreements we have signed with 16 countries in Africa represent bilateral trade worth £21.7 billion in 2019. There are also 12 trade envoys to Africa covering 15 countries, four of them Members of your Lordships’ House.
A number of noble Lords raised visas. We have designed our new visa system to support our business and trade ties with Africa. It treats people from every part of the world equally, welcoming them based not on the continent they come from but on their skills and the contribution they can make to the United Kingdom. I know that my honourable friend the Minister for Africa has had correspondence with your Lordships’ committee on this, including giving the reassurance that he raised many of the issues highlighted in your Lordships’ report with Ministers at the Home Office, but this is a new system. As we build it, we will of course keep reviewing it and ways that it could be improved to ensure it has the confidence of those we want to welcome to the UK. We would welcome continued feedback from your Lordships’ committee on this issue as we do that.
For growth to be sustainable, we must address security threats that could undermine it and harm our interests and those of our African partners. There remain pockets of violent conflict across Africa, and our second priority is to tackle them, working with affected countries, the African Union and the UN Security Council. We have expanded our diplomatic presence across the Sahel, one of the poorest regions on the planet and one suffering from growing insecurity and violent extremism. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, asked about that, particularly whether we have changed our shift to the Sahel in the light of recent events. Since 2018, we have significantly expanded our presence in the region, with resident ambassadors in Mauritania, Niger and Chad for the first time, and an increase in the size of our embassy in Mali. We have also increased staffing in London, set up an advisory hub in Dakar and appointed an envoy. We are playing a prominent role in the Sahel Coalition and the Sahel Alliance.
The noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, and others raised peacekeeping. We provide 300 troops to MINUSMA, the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Mali, and four Chinook helicopters to the French counter-terrorism Operation Barkhane, as the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, noted. We also use our £12 million Conflict, Stability and Security Fund programme to build stability and bolster conflict resolution in Mali and the wider Sahel.
We are working to tackle terrorism in west Africa and the Lake Chad basin through a £12.6 million support package to counter Daesh in the region. We continue to support conflict resolution in Somalia and Sudan, and their transitions to democracy. In addition to pressing Somalia to hold rapid and credible elections, we are using our £24 million CSSF programme to seek to reduce current and future threats by focusing on building and delivering capability in its security sector, supporting stabilisation efforts and our efforts to counter al-Shabaab.
We are working with our partners and through the UN Security Council to end hostilities in Tigray. We have used our G7 presidency to amplify our calls for unfettered humanitarian access, a dialogue to resolve the conflict and accountability for atrocities. My noble friend Lady Helic mentioned some of these. Thanks in large part to her work in government, the UK is a global leader on tackling sexual violence in conflict. We have deployed the UK team of experts more than 90 times since 2012 to build the capacity of Governments, the UN and NGOs, including most recently in Tigray, to investigate crimes of conflict-related sexual violence and to hold perpetrators to account. This year, the UK will publish the three-year PSVI strategy, which will focus UK efforts on strengthening pathways to justice for all survivors and enhancing the support available to them, including tackling stigma.
Our third priority is to nurture open societies. That means supporting human rights and democratic values and supporting civil society groups to provide African-led solutions to the continent’s challenges. It means building institutions that can stave off authoritarianism and corruption, and it means supporting democratic values and institutions through diplomacy. In Kenya, for instance, we have supported the reform of the police and strengthened independent institutions such as the judiciary and elections commission. It also means holding those who violate human rights to account, including through our sanctions regimes. In Zimbabwe, we used our new autonomous sanctions regime to hold to account four security officials who were responsible for some of Zimbabwe’s worst human rights violations under the Mnangagwa Government.
Providing developmental support is our fourth priority. We are determined to end preventable deaths, improve sexual and reproductive health, and help more girls to receive 12 years of quality education. Between 2015 and 2020, more than 37 million young children, women and adolescent girls in Africa were reached through our nutrition programmes, and we supported more than 26 million people in Africa to gain access to clean water or better sanitation. Over the same period, we enabled an average of 25 million women and girls each year to access modern methods of family planning, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
We will continue to invest in stronger health systems towards saving the lives of mothers and children, including bilateral programmes in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, the DRC, Malawi, Uganda and Mozambique. Our bilateral programmes will be enhanced by multilateral investment and partnerships. The UK will continue to support the large-scale delivery of vaccines to children through GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, and scale up the prevention and treatment of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria through the Global Fund.
A number of noble Lords made points relating to Covid and the provision of vaccines. I am mindful that the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, has secured a debate on that very subject in your Lordships’ House tomorrow so I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I go into only some detail on it now; I will be responding to that debate and will be able to go into further detail with the extra time allowed there. We continue to support the delivery of Covid-19 vaccines in Africa, where we have contributed £548 million to COVAX. Forty-two African countries have received a total of 31 million doses through the initiative. Furthermore, the Prime Minister has announced that the UK will share 100 million vaccine doses by June next year. However, I will take back the point made by my friend Lady Fall about further discussions at UNGA and discuss it with colleagues.
In July, we hosted the Global Education Summit in partnership with Kenya, advancing our commitment to 12 years of quality education for all girls by 2030 and supporting education across Africa. This was an extraordinary demonstration of global solidarity, raising more than $4 billion to help the world’s most vulnerable children. The UK made our largest-ever pledge of £430 million to the Global Partnership for Education fund, maintaining our position as its top bilateral donor. However, we must acknowledge some of the difficult decisions that have been taken because of the economic impact of the pandemic.
Many noble Lords raised—as we have debated many times before—the need temporarily to reduce our development spending from 0.7% to 0.5% of GNI. This was a difficult decision, and the Prime Minister has committed to returning to 0.7% as soon as possible. However, we will still spend more than £10 billion around the world this year to fight poverty, tackle climate change and improve global health. We remain the third-largest G7 donor and will spend close to half our bilateral aid budget this year in Africa. We are targeting our support where human suffering is most acute. Our focus is on preventing deaths, getting girls into school, boosting science and technology and tackling climate change.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, asked some questions about VSO in the light of that. We have agreed funding with VSO for the V4D programme until the end of this financial year, and officials have started discussions with VSO on our future relationship.
A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Anelay, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and the noble Lords, Lord Grocott, Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Collins of Highbury, raised the issue of remittances. The Government recognise the importance of remittances sent from the UK to low and middle-income countries. We are committed to achieving G20 and SDG targets, seeking to reduce the average cost of remittances to 3% of the total being sent and with no send costs in excess of 5%. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, asked about the decline in remittances. They declined by 1.6% globally in 2020, which is a fall but a lot less than was predicted earlier by the World Bank and others.
Our fifth priority is to help African countries to become low-carbon economies and shield them from the worst impacts of climate change. We are working with countries and the African Union to prioritise climate, nature and a green recovery from Covid-19, including through the African Union’s Green Recovery Action Plan, which was launched in July this year. We will use the COP 26 summit to address the disproportionate impact of climate change on Africa and turbocharge global action. We are pressing donor countries to live up to the $100 billion climate finance commitment made at the Paris climate summit. For our part, we have committed to doubling our climate finance to £11.6 billion. This is helping developing countries to pursue sustainable low-carbon futures.
Like my noble friends Lord Lilley and Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, we recognise the importance of reliable, affordable and clean energy to African nations’ development. Low levels of access to electricity present a major barrier to development and an opportunity to leap-frog to low-carbon economies, driven by renewable energy. That is why the UK launched the COP 26 Energy Transition Council, which will help to accelerate the transition from coal to clean energy across Africa. It will bring together the global political, financial and technical leadership in the power sector to seek to improve the international offer in support of an equitable transition from coal.
In the time available, I have given just a glimpse of the work we are doing across Africa. We have one of the largest diplomatic networks—
Lord Boateng (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down, I hope he is going to address Cameroon.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am indeed. I was not yet winding up, simply saying that I have been able to give but a glimpse of the soft power work that we are doing across Africa. We have one of the largest diplomatic networks across the continent, strengthening partnerships with African countries and creating further people-to-people links. In working towards our goals, we will make the most of our considerable soft power assets, which were noted in your Lordships’ report and its recommendations. We have a rich array of creative, cultural and sporting links to build on, whether through scientific collaborations, tech start-ups, Africa Fashion Week London or BBC Africa.
The education sector is another vital link in this area. More than 30,000 African students are studying here in the UK. The British Council supports better knowledge of the English language through a number of programmes, including English Connects, which engaged with more than 1.3 million 18 to 35 year-olds through digital resources in the last academic year. Our Chevening programme, which was mentioned, has an extraordinary record of accomplishment in helping to educate future and current African leaders. We have increased funding for the programme and the 2019 intake of 1,100 was the largest ever.
A number of noble Lords talked about the importance of the diaspora communities here in the UK. We are looking to make better use of the knowledge and expertise of our African diaspora communities in strengthening our partnerships. Already, this approach has helped to identify trade and investment opportunities in countries such as Ghana and Nigeria. There are important ways in which the diaspora communities can build bridges with civil society and communities in their countries of descent to support action on priorities such as open societies and climate change. The noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, mentioned COP 26, and of course we want everybody in the United Kingdom to be engaged with that important summit.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford both raised China. As the Government’s response to your Lordships’ report made clear, the committee’s recommendations reflect the Government’s current approach. China is an important source of aid, trade and investment for many African nations. However, we are clear-eyed about the potential risks that this poses vis-à-vis issues such as debt sustainability and China’s economic and political influence. We take a nuanced and differentiated approach. We seek to maximise the positive impacts that China might have, especially in multilateral fora, while working to mitigate any risks. We distinguish carefully between the threats and opportunities China poses in Africa, and proactively engage where doing so is in the national interest and supports our Africa objectives.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, also raised the case of Leah Sharibu. We remain deeply concerned about Leah’s welfare. Our officials in Abuja raised her case with the Nigerian Government in March this year. The Nigerian Government have provided assurances that they are doing all they can to secure her release, and the release of all those still held in captivity.
Cameroon was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and others. The Government remain deeply concerned about the situation in the northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon. We are aware of reports of human rights abuses in those regions and have made representations to the authorities about the importance of timely and transparent investigations into such reports. Indeed, we regularly raise our concerns about the crisis with the Government of Cameroon at the highest levels. The Minister for Africa visited Cameroon in March this year, met both President Biya and Prime Minister Ngute and set out the UK’s commitment to supporting a peaceful resolution.
The UK has also shared our experience of conflict resolution with the Government of Cameroon, and we work in conjunction with international partners, including France, as the noble Lord said, to raise the crisis in multilateral fora. During my honourable friend’s visit in March, he met the American, French and Swiss representatives to share assessments of the crisis. We also welcome the active conflict resolution role that can be played by faith leaders, both locally and globally, and welcomed the visit by the Vatican’s Foreign Minister, Cardinal Parolin, in June.
The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, asked about trade in the light of all this. The UK-Cameroon economic partnership agreement ensures continuity of our trading arrangements, but the Government’s approach is clear: using trade to support development is not mutually exclusive to the rule of law, protecting human rights and democratic principles. We continue to press the Government of Cameroon to uphold these important principles, which underpin the economic partnership agreement.
I am now, however, running out of time, and must conclude—
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
I recognise the time too and wish to ask a question, because the Minister has not answered at all the two points most frequently raised in this debate: visas and our trade policy, going beyond simply running to stand still. Does the Minister, on behalf of the Government, accept that within six months they will bring forward an overall approach to improving trade with African countries, as was called for by the noble Lords, Lord Lilley and Lord Hannan of Kingsclere? Is he unable to give us any information about visa policy, which, as a large number of noble Lords pointed out, is probably the biggest single impediment—apart from the cut in aid—to our improved relationship?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
I am very sorry if the noble Lord missed it, but I did address the points that many noble Lords raised about visas. I noted that my honourable friend the Minister for Africa responded to the committee about that and gave the reassurance that he had raised the points mentioned in your Lordships’ report with Ministers at the Home Office as we implement our new visa arrangement, which welcomes people from around the world, based not on the continent they come from but on the skills they provide and the contribution they can make. I repeat what I said earlier: we welcome further discussion with the committee and the experiences of the people with whom noble Lords come into contact as they use the new system. We want it to enjoy the confidence of all those who use it.
I also outlined the Government’s approach to trade vis-à-vis Africa with the investment summit and the work we have been doing with the trade envoys, which continues, but I will certainly revisit the official record and, if I have missed some of the points that the noble Lord, in particular, raised, I will ensure that he gets the response he wants.
Lord Oates (LD)
On a point of clarification, can the Minister assure the Grand Committee that the MoU with the Africa trade area will be referred to your Lordships’ International Agreements Committee and will be published? I declare an interest as a member of that committee.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
If the Committee will permit me, I will take that back and provide a response once I have been able to discuss it with colleagues at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I will ensure that the Committee has an answer on that point.
In conclusion, the Government greatly value the interest of your Lordships and the committee in our relationship with sub-Saharan Africa and ensuring that Africa is a key part of the long-term approach of global Britain. We recognise the enormous potential that comes with the continent’s young demographic and growing markets. We are very grateful for the report and this debate, which has been a welcome opportunity to discuss it in depth and to cover some new ground as well. I know that the debate will continue, but for today I end by again thanking everyone for their participation and my noble friend for the way that she opened the debate.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, I also begin with thanks to all noble Lords who participated in today’s debate, as well as to those who rotated off—it is horrible phrase, is it not? It sounds like something to do with a rotisserie—in January and those who have rotated on. I thank those who have such a deep knowledge and interest in Africa and see beyond what the red tops—okay, I read the Daily Mail, but noble Lords know what I mean—say about it; they have a much deeper understanding than so many. It was great to be able to listen to noble Lords; thank you very much indeed.
It was a great privilege to introduce this report because it was the first time I have been able to do so since I became chair in July 2019, taking over from my noble friend Lord Howell. Without him, this committee would not have existed in any event and this House would have been the poorer for it. He is possessed of an enviable quality of analysis and clarity of presentation. I always used to enjoy listening to him in the long, cold years of opposition when he was our Front Bench spokesperson—the Treaty of Lisbon? We were there—and when he was the Minister at the Foreign Office and subsequently served this House so well.
I very much agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that the purpose of our committee was to move the dial—a horrible phrase, but the noble Lord made it much better. He said that it is important to change the narrative about the region. That was picked up by my noble friend Lord Hannan, who talked about the stereotypes stuck in the some of the minds of not just younger people but older people, if I can speak like that. Too often we think about Live Aid as describing all of Africa. We think of poverty. There is a difficult nexus here. We must try to encourage people to be generous, and to realise the value of overseas development and of contributing, both financially and through hours of work for voluntary organisations to assist across Africa. However, we must also be sure that we can be clear about the opportunities, as my noble friend Lady Fall set out so clearly. We have to look at the strengths in Africa and build on them while not being doe-eyed and ignoring some of the vile practices that go on in, say, the middle of the mining areas of the DRC, as well as the ways in which Presidents and Prime Ministers seem to ignore their constitutions and try to go on for ever. We must be clear-eyed about the difficulties too.
My noble friend Lady Helic made a really important point about that: not so long ago, we saw Ethiopia as the way forward for the future, with the great success when Abiy Ahmed became its leader. I went there with the Inter-Parliamentary Union in February 2019. It was very much a case of meeting people who were excited about this new environment in which people of different religions and regions were coming together. You could feel the dynamism. Science parks were being thrown up all over the place; the Chinese were investing there a great deal, of course. At that time, I had the privilege of having a meeting with Ethiopia’s equivalent of our upper House. The Speaker of that House, who was a Muslim and the first woman Speaker of their upper House, was from Tigray. Now, she is no longer there. She left immediately after the conflict began and made it clear that she would stand in Tigray with those being oppressed.
I think the conflict in Tigray has made us realise far more carefully that we should never take anything for granted in Africa. We need to be able to work in partnership, but we also need to ensure that we do not tell Africans how to behave, because there is such diversity, and it would make it look as though we were going back to our old ways of trying to foist our views on them.
On the other hand, if we do not assist with conflict resolution, why will businesspeople invest in Africa and ensure that there is a way forward that is good for them—but my goodness, it would be good for us, with a hard-edged idea about the increase in a population who have been increasingly well educated, who are motivated and with whom we really should be able to share innovation, as my noble friend Lord Sarfraz said. There are the ideas about how entrepreneurial work should occur in Africa.
When I visited many countries in Africa as a Minister, I met entrepreneurs who were longing to have better trade links with us. My colleague on the committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and I visited a regional economic community when we were in Botswana on a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association visit. We saw its determination to make the African continent free trade agreement work, against the background that the regional economic communities have had their own cross-border issues in their activities too, so it is not a straightforward matter.
Throughout all this, there is so much that we can achieve as the UK in partnership. We will be watching the way forward in what the Government do—my noble friend Lord Parkinson will know that. I thank him for stepping in at very short notice to take this debate. He has done that astonishingly well—although that sounds terribly condescending; I apologise for that. We will be watching, because one of the roles of any Select Committee in holding the Government to account is to ensure, when the Minister is wise enough to say in winding up that he will follow up on any points that he has not answered, that we remember and press him on that. He knows that here before him is a group of Peers who are trying to ensure that the United Kingdom is successful in its relations with all the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. We are ambitious.
House of Lords
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Government Departments: Non-Executive Directors
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what professional expertise and qualifications they look for when appointing non-executive directors of Government departments.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, departmental non-executive board members are appointed by the Secretary of State following the principle of selection based on merit. The majority of roles are advertised on Her Majesty’s Government’s public appointments website. The corporate governance code for central government departments states that appointees shall be
“experts from outside government … primarily from the commercial private sector, with experience of managing large and complex organisations”.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
The Minister will be aware of the comments that the Committee on Standards in Public Life made in Standards Matter 2. Paragraph 88 states:
“However there is an increasing trend amongst ministers to appoint supporters or political allies as NEDs. This both undermines the ability of NEDs to scrutinise the work of their departments, and has a knock-on effect on the appointments process elsewhere.”
Does the Minister accept that criticism and does he also accept the strong recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that the appointments process for non-executive directors of government departments should be regulated?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the Government obviously respect the recommendations in any report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life, and we will consider and respond to those recommendations in due course. I believe that talent is not confined to people of a single political opinion. Therefore, I do not follow the noble Lord in the implication that anybody who has ever supported the Conservative Party should be disqualified from one of these roles.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have adopted a model of non-executive directorships which has been used at BHS, Carillion, crashed banks and other scandal-ridden entities. The non-executive directors there were friends of executive directors; they lacked independence and were ineffective. If the Government are to persist with non-executives, can the Minister give an undertaking that they will be directly elected by employees and users of the services of the relevant departments?
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the BEIS website, which points us to the 2014-15 annual report on departmental boards. In it, there is fulsome praise from the then Paymaster-General for how such departmental boards
“help the Whitehall machine function more effectively”.
That was one Matt Hancock—and we all know how, six years later, that ended up. However, it is not just in the Department of Health that the non-executive appointment process and the purpose of NEDs have become opaque. As we have heard, the whole system has become the captive of political appointees. Does the Minister agree that these are public appointments and that, for the public to see benefit from them, there should be clarity in the appointments and clear objectives as to how they operate?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, on the first point, Mr Hancock is no longer a member of the Government.
Lord True (Con)
On the gravamen of the noble Lord’s rather lengthy question, I repeat that I believe, and I think successive Governments have believed, that there is benefit in bringing the experience and knowledge of people from outside the Civil Service into supporting and assisting the public service. I think that that is agreed by many senior people in the Civil Service. I hope that the noble Lord is not suggesting that the system of non-executive directors be done away with.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the appointment of NEDs to government departments, but can my noble friend explain why, according to the GOV.UK website, there are seven NEDs at HMRC and eight at the Home Office, but only three at MHCLG and only two at BEIS?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the code of practice which I referred to sets out at point 3.3:
“The board should be balanced, with approximately equal numbers of ministers, senior officials and non-executive board members.”
The Home Office has eight Ministers and has appointed eight NEDs. MHCLG has five Ministers; it currently has six. There is an effort to ensure that there is a broad balance.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. If NEDs, ethical advisers and heads of Ofcom and quangos look like political donors, look like political colleagues and look like friends of the Prime Minister or other Ministers, they probably are. So is it not time that the Government either admitted this and said that they want to appoint their own friends and political trusties to these bodies, and did just that, getting rid of the pretence that these are independent appointments, or reverted to impartial, open and fair recruitment, properly regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I repeat that the vacancies for non-executive board members are advertised on the Government’s public appointments website. Appointees are subject to a shortlisting panel interview, with the appropriate mediators and the appropriate composition.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, in a speech in June this year, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, opined on the useful challenge and enhanced scrutiny that non-executive directors would bring to boards—yet in August last year the Times found that eight out of 13 appointments, including four to the Cabinet Office board, were, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, might say, “ducks”. They all had close allegiance to the Conservative Party. Will the Minister explain how merit determined that eight out of 13 should have close political allegiance?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, again, I am not following any implication of disparagement of the honour of those who are serving as non-executive board members. The Government are grateful and I would submit that, if we could see into the future, we would probably find that future Governments will be grateful for the public spirit of those people who come forward to help government departments run in a more businesslike manner. The majority will be people with great business experience who are used to driving up performance in large organisations. I cite from the Cabinet Office, for example, the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I wonder whether our Cabinet Office Minister could tell the House how the Government decided that the best person with the expertise and qualifications to provide objective scrutiny of the Cabinet Office was a former Labour MP who supported the Tory Government’s Vote Leave campaign.
Lord True (Con)
For those noble Lords who are not aware, I believe that the noble Lord is referring to the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart. I pay tribute to her outstanding contribution to the work of the Cabinet Office from personal experience of it.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a holder of a public appointment. I want to turn to ethnic minorities. The Minister will note the figure of 15.3%, which is the representation of ethnic minorities on public boards at the moment. This is an increase from 11.9% in the past year, which is very welcome. However, the figure for chairs from ethnic minority backgrounds is still low, at 5.4%, although that is an increase from 2.9%. What efforts are the Government making to increase senior positions such as chairs within the public appointments framework for ethnic minorities?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness raises an important point. I agree that every effort should be made to improve the standards that we have now. The more that appointments reflect the ethnic diversity of our country, the better, and I will certainly take the spirit of her comments back to my colleagues.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, going through the list of all the non-executive directors appointed to the different government departments, I was perturbed to see so many Members of your Lordships’ House—not just from one side but from other sides, too—and so many others who had recently been Members of Parliament. I wonder whether there is a constitutional issue here around the scrutiny role of Members of your Lordships’ House in relation to Ministers, and the scrutiny role of non-executive directors on departmental boards performing a different function. Should there perhaps be some rules that do not allow Members of your Lordships’ House to serve in these roles and that set a time limit from leaving Parliament for former MPs as well? There is a real conflict between the scrutiny roles in these two Houses of Parliament and the scrutiny role of an NED, and the Government might want to look at that.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, as ever, raises a thoughtful and interesting point. I do not follow him entirely, because I believe that it is the essence of your Lordships’ House that it contains people of enormous experience—past and current—whose input into our public affairs is to the benefit of the country generally. I will reflect on what he said. Obviously, in relation to leaving time before taking up an appointment, in the current circumstances, no one ever leaves the House of Lords until they retire at the very end of their days.
NHS: Nursing Workforce
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Clark of Windermere
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to retain the nursing workforce in the National Health Service following their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)
My Lords, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the nurses in all parts of our healthcare system, who have done an amazing job through the pandemic. We are on track to deliver our manifesto commitment to have 50,000 more nurses by the end of the Parliament. This includes a focus on retaining nurses already working in the NHS and social care. We are taking action through the NHS People Plan to improve nurse retention by prioritising health and well-being, supporting flexible working and improving NHS workplace culture. The signs are that these efforts are paying off.
Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)
My Lords, the training of these new, welcome recruits to the nursing profession will take some time. Immediate improvements will depend on the current staff, who feel battered and bruised following the intense pressure of Covid. Daily, nurses end up in tears at work and many are contemplating leaving. What specific plans—I stress “specific”—do the Government have to retain nurses to meet today’s growing problems in the NHS?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I completely acknowledge the phenomenon of burnout that the noble Lord rightly points out; the NHS people recovery taskforce, appointed to tackle exactly that problem, is very much focused on it. It works in conjunction with the NHS retention scheme and has led to the appointment of new well-being guardians, which have made a huge impact. The statistics suggest that the leaving ratio, previously at 10.3%, has now been reduced to 8.3%. That is an encouraging sign, but we have a number of other measures in place to ensure that retention remains upward at a time when, as he pointed out, nurses are under huge pressure.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, a group of Nightingale scholars has informed me that nurses are experiencing greater levels of abuse verbally, on social media and physically, together with racism; they attribute this in part to the long waiting lists and their duties in encouraging Covid vaccinations and mask wearing. Will the Government commit to furthering zero tolerance against violence and racism towards NHS staff, which the scholars argue would aid retention significantly?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, the noble Baroness raises a really important point. We addressed it nearly 18 months ago, before the pandemic, when we had a crackdown on racism and abuse from patients. I would be very grateful if she could send me the details of her correspondence, and I shall look into whether we need to do more on that immediately.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
Why should patients with vulnerabilities and vulnerable conditions, who have obediently had their injections, risk their lives by attending hospitals or medical facilities and encountering staff who have refused vaccinations? Will the Minister make it absolutely clear that there is no place in the NHS for vaccine refuseniks either among the medical staff or among those tens of thousands of people who seem to wander around carrying files or doing non-medical work?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, we are looking at ways in which to take testing and other treatment out of hospitals and into the community. On my noble friend’s substantive point I say that, as he may know, we have promised to have a consultation on mandatory vaccination for healthcare. We are determined to do that in partnership with the workforce, and I look forward to updating the House on our progress.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that the most important mechanism for retaining nursing staff in the NHS is by improving their wages, terms and conditions, and that the best way of doing that is by the restoration of full sectoral collective bargaining, as was the case in 2018?
Lord Bethell (Con)
I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s great experience and expertise in this matter. He will be aware that we have a social partnership forum, where we work extremely closely with the professions on how to improve retention. But I think that the motivation of those in public service and, in particular, in healthcare is much more complex than he describes. We have come to a 3% pay agreement with the nurses, and they have demonstrated huge support for the healthcare service during the pandemic, which suggests that it is more complex than he describes.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, current NHS nursing vacancies in England are now thought to be over 40,000. Nurses have recently reported concerns that a number of nursing posts at a standard that require a registered nurse or midwife are now being advertised to those not registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, presumably because of the shortage of nurses. What steps will the Government take to ensure that only properly qualified nurses and midwives are recruited to these posts that require registration?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, there are vacancies in nursing, as there always are. The vacancies at present are not hugely higher than they are normally and, in fact, we have more nurses today than we did two years ago. What I can report to the noble Baroness is that UCAS data shows 27,720 acceptances to nursing and midwifery courses in England as of 7 September. That is extremely good news; it shows the commitment of our graduates to the nursing profession and our commitment to making sure that more nurses are trained.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, there are concerns that in some areas there are dangerously low staffing levels as a result of nurses leaving the profession. In the Belfast trust, in the first six months of this year alone, hundreds have left due to the Covid pandemic and for other reasons. Undoubtedly, that will have an impact on tackling long waiting lists. Can the Minister assure me that the money raised under the new health and social care levy and sent to the devolved Administrations, including Northern Ireland and Scotland, will actually be spent by those Administrations for those purposes, including addressing nursing shortages? As things stand at the moment, that money could be used for other purposes.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, there are 303,900 full- time nurses in the NHS trusts and CCGs, an increase of more than 8,900 from June 2020, so the impression that the noble Lord is giving is not, I am afraid, entirely supported by the numbers. In terms of recruitment, 2021 saw a third consecutive year of growth in the number of applicants to nursing and midwifery courses, which again is very good news. As for commitment on devolved Administrations, of course devolved does mean devolved, so I am not sure that I am in the position to make the commitment that he has sought.
Lord Lilley (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that, as well as retaining nurses, we need to train enough to end the scandalous reliance on poaching nurses from poor countries? The move from bursaries to loans was supposed to end the scandal of us turning away tens of thousands of applicants for British nursing courses in this country. Can he explain why last year we again turned away more than 20,000 young British people who wanted to train as nurses in this country?
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, as my noble friend will know, the training grant of at least £5,000 per academic year per eligible student is in place, plus a further £3,000 of additional targeted funding—for example, for childcare costs and students studying special subjects. That is the kind of financial commitment that we have made to meet his concerns. On the specific point that he mentioned, I say that not everyone is suited for the nursing profession; it is a really tough job, and not everyone who wants to be a nurse can be a nurse. I am afraid that the applications that we get and the sifting that we do reflects that point.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
I draw attention to my interests at Whittington Hospital in the register. Thank goodness that our nurses are incredibly resilient, but the relentless nature of working for the NHS, not just in the last year but prior to the pandemic, is now taking its toll. That includes senior and experienced nurses; there must be a worry that many could take early retirement, which is a risk to the profession. The feedback that I get, to which noble Lords have referred, is that respect and regard is less evident as the pandemic continues, and I think that is exacerbated by the debate about pay. What other initiatives is the NHS considering to deal with the fragile nature of retention—for example, housing offers, travel and the working environment—and will they be funded?
Lord Bethell (Con)
The points that the noble Baroness makes are entirely right, and we share exactly the same concerns. That is why we have put in place mental health support, enhanced occupational health support, expansion of the right to work flexibly across the NHS, and the promotion of equality. On the point about older nurses, two things particularly stand out: there is significant investment in leadership through the NHS Leadership Academy, and we have bespoke support for over-50s and newly qualified nurses, recognising that they are likely to be the biggest flight risk across the NHS.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, might the Government consider upping NHS nurses’ pay rates but, at the same time, ending the practice of employing agency nurses? Frequently nurses work three days a week directly and two days a week on an agency basis, costing the NHS significantly more than full-time employee nurses.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I acknowledge my noble friend’s concerns about that point. It is a fact of life of trying to manage complex healthcare systems that you do not know necessarily on a day-to-day basis which staff you will need and exactly where you are going to need them. Therefore, we rely on flexible working arrangements, which suit some nurses who cannot make the kind of time commitments that are needed for a full-time job. There are hourly costs to that additional flexibility, but we leave it to chief executives to balance those benefits and disbenefits to achieve their objectives.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Sheffield Forgemasters
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Walney
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they made of the benefits of acquiring Sheffield Forgemasters.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Baroness Goldie) (Con)
My Lords, Sheffield Forgemasters is a unique and key strategic supplier to the UK’s defence programme. The decision to acquire this company will secure the supply of components for critical current and future UK defence programmes while preserving jobs and safeguarding important skills within the UK. The acquisition was assessed as offering the best value for money for taxpayers from the options available.
Lord Walney (Non-Afl)
I thank the Minister for that reply. The Government’s acquisition of this great British company is highly welcome. It will help secure the submarine supply chain for future generations of vessels. Can the Minister say how much of the up to £400 million—which was announced via press release last week—has been allocated to what and under what timescale? How will the Government maintain their commitment to net zero alongside allowing this energy-intensive industry to perform its critical task for the nation? How can the Government allay fears that the company’s governance through the Ministry of Defence may inhibit its potential to expand into other key sectors, such as civil nuclear power, which are also desperately needed?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for the tenor of his remarks and say to him that the proposed investment of £400 million over 10 years will be in defence-critical plant, equipment and infrastructure. That will include plans for a replacement heavy forge line, building a flood resilience scheme, and major machine tool replacements. It will be for the board of directors of the company to determine its activity in relation to climate change and targets for emissions. It is the case that the company has a healthy suite of commercial customers outwith defence. That is one reason why the company’s future has the potential to be very exciting.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, Sheffield Forgemasters provides key parts for our deterrent submarines and, as such, it is absolutely right and proper that the Government should ensure its continued operation under UK control. This ensures sovereign capability, which is a key plank of the integrated review. In the light of that, can the Minister say how the Government view the large number of foreign takeovers of very successful, high-tech UK firms during the past few years and the possible takeovers of Arm, Meggitt and Ultra, which are being considered at the moment?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
As the noble Lord will be aware, the Government take a very keen interest in and keep a vigilant eye on security of defence supply. In relation to the specific issue that he mentions, the Government are closely monitoring the proposed acquisition of Meggitt by Parker-Hannifin. The Government have powers, as the noble Lord will be aware, under the Enterprise Act 2002, to intervene in transactions that raise national security concerns and will not hesitate to use those powers as appropriate if the UK’s national security interests are at risk.
Lord Udny-Lister (Con)
My Lords, like others today, I congratulate the Minister and the Government on taking control and purchasing Sheffield Forgemasters. It is a company with a long and very distinguished history—it goes back over 200 years—but, like the rest of the British steel industry, it is seriously undercapitalised. It needs financial investment. The £400 million is great news, but that can be only the beginning of the likely level of investment that is needed. It will also need investment in management, in skills training and in the workforce to make sure that it is one that is not ageing and that younger people want to join. Above all, it needs a long-term commitment; there has been far too much short-termism in the steel industry. Although I fully welcome this step, I would like the Minister’s assurance that the MoD will look at Sheffield Forgemasters in the long term.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
Yes, I am happy to give my noble friend that assurance. It is demonstrated by our commitment to provide up to £400 million of funding to the company over the next 10 years. Some of the defence programmes that Sheffield Forgemasters is a unique supplier to will in fact stretch beyond that period, so we have acted to ensure that the company continues to be able to meet these long-term requirements.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, the cost of Sheffield Forgemasters was £2.56 million and there is already an agreement to have another £400 million of expenditure. To what extent is that coming from existing defence budgets and to what extent is that additional expenditure? Is this because, yet again, a defence procurement has not been fully thought through?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
As I think is universally understood, this was really a stand-alone case and a matter for essential intervention to preserve critical national infrastructure. The financial undertakings to which the MoD has committed itself include the share capital purchase, as the noble Baroness has indicated. It also includes taking on and refinancing the current indebtedness, which is approximately £19 million, and the capital investment that we have just been discussing. I say to the noble Baroness, as I observed earlier to the noble Lord, Lord Walney, that this is a company with an exciting commercial future. This is an ongoing enterprise and defence’s role is to ensure, as my noble friend inquired about in the previous question, that this company has a secure future—a sufficiently secure future that we can return it to the private sector.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, this week, the Secretary of State said that SFIL is
“the only available manufacturer with the skills and capability to produce certain large-scale high-integrity castings and forgings from specialist steels in an integrated facility to the highest standards required for specific defence programmes.”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/9/21; col. 2WS.]
Does that mean that SFIL will have a monopoly of supply for such components, allowing it to invest, with confidence, in the future?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
It means that the company has an ascertained level of demand from the MoD but, as I said earlier, it also has a very healthy suite of non-MoD, commercial customers. Part of the challenge that the MoD is embracing with the current management of the company is to ensure that that side is grown as well, but the money that the MoD is providing will be directly and singularly applied to the needs of the company to address the MoD customer requirement.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, I too welcome the acquisition of Sheffield Forgemasters International Ltd. May I ask my noble friend what impact this will have on companies bidding now or in the future for defence contracts?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My noble friend asks an important question. We operate under strict regulations that preserve the commercial market. Where competition exists, MoD contracts are tendered in an open and fair competition and companies will not be disadvantaged from bidding for MoD contracts where they have the required capability.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, given that, three weeks ago, the Swedish steelmaker SSAB supplied Volvo with what was described as the world’s first “fossil-free steel”, produced with iron using 100% hydrogen, does the Minister see this acquisition as a step towards the development of such environmentally friendly procedures for the production of steel in the UK? If Sheffield Forgemasters is not the vehicle, how will we catch up with Sweden in this important industrial area?
Baroness Goldie (Con)
Well, I feel very inadequately qualified to give the noble Baroness an intelligent answer. What I would say is that, in so far as the MoD premise is concerned and in so far as our responsibility extends to Sheffield Forgemasters, as I indicated earlier, it will be for the board and managers of that company to determine how they comply with climate change aspirations and targets for emissions.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, as an out-of-date chartered engineer, I very much support what the Government have done. However, thinking about the past, is there an absolute guarantee that the management of Sheffield Forgemasters is superior to what it was in 1990, when it was making the supergun but did not know it was a supergun and was working for Saddam Hussein but did not know it was working for Saddam Hussein? If it had not been for Mossad having a meeting with Gerald Bull, the designer, we would have had an absolute disaster in the Middle East—we were deeply involved in that.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
I remember that in 1990 I thought Scotland would never see devolution, so we all have to get used to change. What I can say is that the activities of the company have moved on significantly. I reassure the noble Lord on what I think is an underpinning serious point to his question that, as part of the MoD supplier monitoring programme, the MoD, in line with key customers of the company, worked with the company to restructure the management team in 2018. That management team has successfully led the delivery of a transformation programme for the company and the MoD regards the current board as the right leadership to deliver the capital investment programme, secure defence output and secure the long- term future of the company.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Football Grounds: Safe Standing
(2 years, 7 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are working closely with the Sports Grounds Safety Authority—the SGSA—towards implementing the manifesto commitment to work with fans and clubs towards introducing safe standing. The Government expect to announce next steps in the coming weeks.
Lord Mann (Non-Afl)
I declare my interest as the elected chair of the Leeds United Supporters Club. Every supporters’ club in the Premier League backs safe standing now. What timescale is the Minister giving clubs for the rather complex discussions and arrangements to introduce it for next season?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I had hoped that the noble Lord would be stunned and happy at the accuracy of my prediction about more information in the next few weeks. He will also be aware that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State confirmed that standing would be seen at top games this season, albeit in all likelihood initially in pilot form.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, the Minister has given us some information but not very much. Would she like to start by thanking my noble friend Lord Foster for setting this ball rolling with a Private Member’s Bill about 10 years ago? If we are going to do work in football stadiums to change the way that seats are put out, can we have an assurance that the first thing we will do is make sure that wheelchair and disability access are of a sufficient standard? This has been promised for even longer than my noble friend’s Bill.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I hope I can address both of the noble Lord’s points. I am delighted to thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for his early work on this. The research by the Sports Grounds Safety Authority has demonstrated that introducing standing areas can not only reduce conflict but improve wheelchair access.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, over the summer, we sadly learned of the passing of Andrew Devine, who suffered life-changing injuries during the Hillsborough disaster. The coroner ruled that he should be considered the 97th fatality caused by the events of 15 April 1989. Since the horrors of that day, many improvements have been made at football grounds and these must be welcomed. While Labour supports exploring options for the safe reintroduction of standing, it remains an emotive issue for many. Can the Minister confirm that the department recognises the need to handle this topic sensitively and take time to consider fully the evidence gathered in pilots across various leagues before making a final decision?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. Obviously, the context of all these discussions is the Hillsborough tragedy, which he rightly raises. The department is currently working with a wide range of supporter groups. Our absolute abiding principle is that we will never compromise safety and never return to the tragedies of old.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, safe standing is already working very successfully all around the world, including in Scotland. However, the Minister will be aware that there are many different forms of safe standing, even within the lower divisions in England. Can the Minister give us an absolute assurance that any new regulations that come forward will take this into account to make sure that a range of allowable options will suit the needs of clubs of all sizes and all sorts of stadia, not just those in the top flight of the game? With so many examples working so successfully, can she explain why we are still talking about the need for further pilots?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Lord will be aware that the Sports Grounds Safety Authority commissioned independent research into this, which is in the public domain. It published its Safe Management of Persistent Standing in Seated Areas report. As the noble Lord said, this confirmed the very positive impact this has had on spectator behaviour, particularly in relation to away fans. That is what we will be updating on in more detail in the coming weeks.
Critical Benchmarks (References and Administrators’ Liability) Bill [HL]
Wednesday 8th September 2021
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Critical Benchmarks (References and Administrators’ Liability) Act 2021 View all Critical Benchmarks (References and Administrators’ Liability) Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text
Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2021
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
That the draft Order laid before the House on 8 July be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 6 September.
Alcohol Licensing (Coronavirus) (Regulatory Easements) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 8 June be approved.
Relevant document: 5th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 6 September.
Pensions Regulator (Employer Resources Test) Regulations 2021
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Stedman-Scott
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 21 and 28 June be approved.
Considered in Grand Committee on 6 September.
Environment Bill
Wednesday 8th September 2021
(2 years, 7 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 43-II Second marshalled list for Report - (6 Sep 2021)
16:20 - Division on Amendment 11 - Ayes: 203 / Noes: 181 - Amendment 11 agreed.
18:12 - Division on Amendment 20 - Ayes: 184 / Noes: 182 - Amendment 20 agreed.
19:12 - Division on Amendment 24 - Ayes: 180 / Noes: 151 - Amendment 24 agreed.
19:47 - Division on Amendment 27 - Ayes: 153 / Noes: 143 - Amendment 27 agreed.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, before we begin proceedings today, I think we can all agree that we did not make as much progress as we had hoped on Monday. May I make a few points about the rules of engagement for Report in the hope that we can make things a little swifter today? I remind the House that on Report, apart from the mover of an amendment, who may reply to the debate on the amendment, Members should not speak more than once to an amendment, save with the leave of the House to explain some material point in their speech. Only the mover of an amendment may speak after the Minister. Other Members speaking after the Minister may do so only to ask short questions of elucidation. I should be very grateful if we could all adhere to these rules.
Clause 5: Environmental targets: reporting duties
Amendment 11
“(d) interim targets are met.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment places a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to meet any interim targets they set.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 11 and will speak to Amendment 14 in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Parminter, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd. Both amendments are designed to ensure that the important environmental plans and targets established by the Bill drive strong and effective action. The Bill introduces an important suite of legally binding, long-term environmental improvement targets and provides for these to be guided by five-year interim milestones. Unlike those in the Climate Change Act, these interim milestones are not binding requirements.
In Committee, the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, Lady Hayman, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Parminter, the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, made a persuasive case for these interim targets to be statutory. They cited evidence—lists of non-statutory targets missed, such as those for biodiversity, contrasted with the success and focus of the Climate Change Act. They highlighted human behaviour; a statutory duty in five years’ time will get more focus than one in 20 years’ time—or, as Allegra Stratton, the No. 10 climate spokesperson, has said, 2050 is “too far away”,
“we have to feel the … urgency of now.”
They stressed the need for urgent action. Nature takes time to respond, and there is no hockey stick from new technologies enabling back-ended action. They emphasised the value of transparency; statutory interim targets make progress more visible and the OEP’s role more effective. They quoted business, with the Aldersgate Group’s support for statutory interim targets that give business certainty to invest and act. In short, they outlined a compelling case.
However, the Minister was not persuaded. He responded that interim targets would
“undermine the long-term … targets framework”—[Official Report, 23/6/21; col. 268.]
across political cycles. This perplexes me, because the Climate Change Act demonstrates quite the opposite—that statutory interim targets maintain focus and pressure as Ministers and Governments change. He said that, without statutory targets, Governments might take more ambitious action; it is also perplexing that one might think that statutory targets prevent greater ambition. He said they would lead to “rushed policy-making”. I do not understand how it would be possible to set robust, achievable, science-based, long-term targets—as the Bill rightly requires—without identifying the steps needed to get there. This is exactly how the Climate Change Committee works. The original 80% target and the net zero recommendation could not have been made with any credibility without an analysis of the pathways to achieve them.
The Minister rightly said that we are dealing with complex, living “non-linear systems”. Indeed we are. In my experience as a scientist, it is easier to predict the impact of actions to support such systems over a five-year timescale than it is to predict outcomes in 15 or 20 years, as the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, reminded us on Monday. The Minister said it discourages large-scale change for a focus on quick wins. I might agree with this if we were talking about a five-year target alone, but evidence shows the effectiveness of the combination of statutory interim targets and a legislated long-term goal. I sincerely hope the Government will reconsider their position on statutory interim targets, because the evidence is clear. They would help ensure that the excellent intent of this important Bill is delivered.
I will very briefly turn to Amendment 14. This amendment strengthens environmental improvement plans by linking them clearly to the proposed measures and targets under the Bill and by requiring the Government not just to take steps to improve the natural environment but specifically to set out policies and proposals. Without this clear link to specific measures and delivery of targets, there is a risk that environmental improvement plans will resemble our current national adaptation plan—long descriptions of process with few time-bound actions.
This requirement to set out policies and proposals is the wording in the Climate Change Act. This has led in recent months to a stream of major policy announcements across government departments, including the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan, the transport decarbonisation strategy, the hydrogen strategy, the industrial decarbonisation strategy and the anticipated net-zero strategy—an impressive list, referred to by the Minister on Monday. These are truly important developments for the climate. Do nature and the environment not deserve the same? “Yes” is the message we have heard in many speeches in this debate. The Minister was reassuring in his response on this issue in Committee. I hope he will now accept that we must turn steps into policies and proposals and give nature the focus and funding across government that it so urgently needs.
Binding five-yearly targets on our way to critical long-term goals are such an important issue in terms of the urgency of now that I may wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
My Lords, I rise very briefly to say why I added my name to this amendment. The Bill currently lacks a coherent interlocking scheme, and these amendments seek to deal with that. It is right to warmly acknowledge the huge progress made by the Minister, but as he has said so clearly, the costs of much of this are not yet understood by the public and there are still obvious strong lobbies that will seek delay.
It is therefore very important that there be a coherent scheme with interlocking interim targets, environment improvement plans and long-term targets. I warmly thank the Minister that we have legally enforceable, long-term targets. It is good that we have them, but the really difficult decisions relate to interim targets. They do not easily fit into the short-term electoral cycle; they are not something a politician or decision-maker can say is for a future generation, years and years away. Interim targets are the here and now. Nothing much has changed, as one can see from the great Victorian novelists, “Yes, Minister” or, more tangibly, the targets that have been missed to date. That is why I so strongly support providing for the practical nature of legally binding interim targets.
There is another matter to which, as a legislature, we should have regard: we ought not to be passing aspirational, vague legislation, but legislation which is clear and sets clear duties so that people know where they stand and so that the Government can be held to account. The noble Baroness, Lady Brown, has dealt eloquently with the arguments made by the Government. There is no need for me to add anything to her observations.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendments 11 and 14, but actually rise to speak to Amendment 13 in my name. The background to this is an amendment I put down in Committee specifically in relation to trees, tree-planting and tree health. It asked the Government to ensure that an annual report was made to Parliament on how far we had got in achieving the target set in the Bill. Obviously, what is applicable to trees is applicable to every target in this Bill—a whole range of targets will eventually be put forward and I will not go through them all.
The Bill as it stands now says there must be a review within five years of the first review. I suggest that the situation is now so urgent that Parliament needs to consider every year how far we have got towards achieving or failing to meet that target. We are all agreed that there is huge urgency to this, and we need to keep the pressure on year by year in Parliament.
I will never forget a meeting in Singapore in 2020, when one of the major issues facing the world was third-world debt. At the end of the meeting, people from the developing world looked at their diaries and said, “Perhaps we could meet again in three years’ time”, when suddenly a friend of mine—for whom this was literally a matter of life and death in his country—erupted with huge righteous anger which still echoes in my mind. I am not myself given to righteous anger, but I am sure that countries where people are literally now dying as a result of what is happening would have that same anger.
I will not divide the House on this as we have quite enough votes anyway. But I would like the Minister to consider seriously—sharing the sense of the urgency of this, as he does—bringing forward a government amendment to ensure that Parliament has a chance to look at the targets in this Bill every year in order to see how close we are to achieving them, or to what extent we are failing.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, because I know from my experience as chairman of the Climate Change Committee why it works. It works because there are statutory targets to be met within reasonable times. If the target date is 2050, no Minister presently serving will have to be responsible for it. Indeed, I remind my noble friend that when a former Labour Party Administration announced a date for net-zero houses which was some 10 years later, there was ribaldry on the Conservative Benches on the basis that that would mean that they would not have to do anything during their period of office.
I am afraid I am long enough in the tooth to recognise that the Climate Change Act ensured that no Government could put off the actions they had to take until a more convenient time arose. The brilliance of the Act was to bring together two very different timescales. One is the democratic timescale of four or five years for the renewal of mandate and the other is the continuing timescale of fighting climate change. A democratic society has somehow to bring those two together. The cleverness of it was that by ensuring that Parliament agreed on the interim budgets and therefore they were democratically voted on, the Climate Change Committee was then able to hold the Government to them. They could not be changed without their agreement. That brought these two things in line.
What surprises me about my noble friend’s—and he is a noble friend—reply during the previous debate was his suggestion that somehow everything that is true about the Climate Change Act does not count in the Environment Bill. He does not believe that because he is a great supporter of the Climate Change Act. It is just not possible to hold those two views. I fear that this is the result of some apparatchik somewhere who does not want anybody to be held to anything. All of us should recognise how dangerous that is from the news today. Despite everything that has been said at this Dispatch Box and a similar Dispatch Box in the other House, the Government have bent over to the Australian Government and removed from the agreement the commitment to meeting the climate change figures and temperatures in the Paris Agreement.
If that is so, how can we possibly accept merely the assurances? We have to have it in the Act—we have to have it clearly there, not because we have any doubt that this Minister, this Front Bench, would do what they say they are going to do, but because we have lived long enough to know that if it is not in the Act, in the end it does not get done.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I fully support Amendments 11, 13 and 14. I simply ask: what is the point of having targets if there is no duty to meet them?
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, I want, very briefly, to support Amendment 11. The whole point of this Bill is that it is going to be ready for the COP 26 meeting. It is a model Bill. It is something that we hope that other countries will adopt as a method of dealing with very difficult problems.
It seems to me in business experience that if you have long long-term targets, interim targets are very helpful. Therefore, as a necessary logical consequence, one would want the model Act to have such interim targets as well—the exemplar we would want other countries to follow. As I am sure we will be managing the thing in a logical way and therefore managing it with interim targets and would want other people to do that as well, it is logical that we should have these targets.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, for her excellent opening remarks. As she rightly said, a number of us spoke at some length on this matter in Committee. We have had excellent expositions from her and supporting evidence from the noble Lord, Lord Deben, of the merits of this case and why we need these statutory targets. It is not just this House that is calling on them —business is calling on them. This is what it needs to make the changes in the future for our country and for the sustainability of companies. Given that time is tight, if the noble Baroness were to press this to a vote, she would have the support of these Benches.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendments 11 and 14 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, to which I have added my name. I thank the noble Baroness for her introduction.
In Committee, we tabled an amendment to place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to meet any interim targets. We were very disappointed that the Government did not agree that this is important if we are to make genuine progress in improving our environment. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, today that if she chooses to test the opinion of the House, she will have our support.
It has been made clear in the debate today, as it was in Committee, that we really need to make sure that the interim targets are going to be met. Amendment 14 would strengthen the EIPs to do this and link them to the targets to make them legally binding, as opposed to their current standing, which is really being nothing more than policy documents.
As I said in Committee when I provided your Lordships’ House with a number of examples of how voluntary environmental targets had been badly missed or even abandoned on a number of occasions, this really only emphasises the need to make sure that the interim targets are as legally binding as the long-term ones.
The Government have seen fit, as we know, to bring in a legally binding species abundance target for 2030, which we welcome and support. This shows that the Government do not, in principle, object to legally binding short-term targets and, indeed, accept that they can drive progress in that area. It seems very inconsistent, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, said earlier, that they are not doing it in this case. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, strongly explained, the Climate Change Act 2008 has been very successful in holding the Government to account on their interim targets. I have heard no compelling justification for why there should be this critical difference in the Environment Bill.
The Minister made the point in Committee that long-term targets provide much-needed certainty to business; the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, also mentioned business and the Aldersgate Group. The Minister said that for businesses to invest confidently they need flexibility around the interim targets but the Aldersgate Group representing business has said that that is not the case. In fact, it has been very clear that it wants other legally binding interim targets so that it can deliver the much-needed investment in nature restoration.
I acknowledge the noble Lord’s previous argument that change towards long-term goals and progress towards meeting them, does not always happen in a linear way. However, I do not accept that this is a convincing argument not to make the interim targets legally binding. Instead, it is an argument for the Government to apply some flexibility in the type of interim targets they may well be setting. We know that the Bill already gives the Secretary of State considerable discretion in setting these interim targets
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, made the point that if you get this set, it means that any early action taken is much more likely to be sustainable as well. So, if we set end goals far into the future, we need binding interim targets with monitoring and scrutiny to prevent the targets being potentially kicked into the long grass or left to the last minute.
Finally, I remind your Lordships’ House that, as I mentioned in Committee, this is not just an issue for Defra. This is important, because if we are to meet our environmental targets, other departments have to play their part. If the interim targets are not binding, why do we think that the DfT, BEIS, local government and others will be on the path to meet the long-term targets? They will have their own priorities, so they will need to be properly encouraged by legally binding targets to make the progress we need.
This amendment would hugely strengthen the Environment Bill and its outcomes. I urge the Minister to review his previous position and support it.
The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. Beginning with Amendment 11, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, the Bill’s robust statutory cycle of monitoring, annual reporting and five-yearly reviews, combined with the OEP and parliamentary scrutiny, ensures that meeting interim targets is taken seriously, without the need for them to be legally binding. We discussed this in detail in Committee, but I would like to outline the Government’s position briefly once more.
The OEP will scrutinise the Government’s progress on targets, including those interim targets, and it can make recommendations on how to improve progress, to which the Government have a duty to respond. It would be both unnecessary and detrimental to our targets framework and our environmental ambitions to introduce legally binding interim targets, as the approach risks undermining the long-term nature of the targets framework, which we have designed to look beyond the political cycle of any one Government and to avoid action solely focused on short-term wins. As I mentioned in Committee, it is undoubtedly a natural temptation for any and every Government working to legally binding five-year targets to set eye-catching, short-term measures in their manifesto, even if those are not necessarily the most effective measures for meeting the longer-term targets.
However, everything we know about the complexity of the environmental targets—indeed, everything we know about natural systems—shows that they transcend any one Administration or five-year period. We are talking about living, non-linear systems, where there will be plenty of measures whose effects will take many years to bear out. For example, for certain habitats, such as peat bogs, native woodlands and elements of the marine environment, significant change is very unlikely to occur within a five-year period, no matter what we do now. We would not want to have to deprioritise key aspects of the environment with longer recovery times to meet a legally binding target in five years.
A number of speakers have made comparisons to the carbon—
Lord Krebs (CB)
I thank the Minister for allowing me to interject briefly. He makes the point that restoring and maintaining natural systems is a long-term process. I would agree with that, but does he not also accept that a key element of meeting the targets is to build resilience of natural systems—that is, their ability to withstand shocks and to recover from events such as extreme weather or infectious disease outbreaks? One can tell, from decades of ecological research, at an early stage whether the right steps are being taken to build the resilience of natural ecosystems. Therefore, that could be identified as a shorter-term target to achieve the long-term aims.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I agree with the noble Lord; building resilience into our natural environment—into the natural systems on which, ultimately, we depend—is clearly a priority, and I think that is reflected throughout the Bill. It is certainly reflected in our soon to be newly introduced 2030 biodiversity target. But I do not think that takes us away from the fact that, if we are measuring progress on the basis of a longer-term plan, you would end up in some cases with a very dramatic hockey stick, which would be difficult for a Government to explain in the way that would be necessary in the context of legally binding targets.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)
I thank the Minister for his response, and I agree with him that the targets will be difficult and complex and need to be set with considerable thought and attention. However, I can only repeat my point that I cannot see how it is possible to set robust, achievable, science-based, long-term targets as the Bill requires without identifying the steps needed to get there. If you can identify the steps needed to get there, you can set statutory interim targets.
I thank all noble Lords across the House who have contributed to this debate, and I would like to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Redesdale
“(5A) It may also set out steps Her Majesty’s Government intends to take to improve the conservation of land environments of archaeological, architectural, artistic, cultural or historic interest, including improving people’s enjoyment of them (and if it does so references in this Part to improving the natural environment, in relation to that plan, include conservation of land environments of archaeological, architectural, artistic, cultural or historic interest, including improving people’s enjoyment of them).”
Lord Redesdale (LD)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 16, 17, 25 and 29 in my name. this amendment is looking to include heritage as one of the requirements of EIPs.
The Government stated clearly in Committee that they are committed to heritage through the 25-year plan, but it seems to have been neglected in the EIPs. The problem is that if it is not on the face of the Bill there is no compulsion for heritage to be looked at in this provision. There is an issue here, because while we talk about environment, there is a read across to many historic landscapes where heritage has led to the conservation and preservation of species. In the summer I was working on hedgerows. You can tell the age of a hedgerow by the number of species incorporated in it, and if you say, “we’ll replace it with a modern hedgerow”, you will end up with just one species and a degradation of the landscape. Preserving the historic heritage could save many parts of the environmental landscape that could be at risk.
It was clear in Committee that the Government are not going to place this on the face of the Bill, but can the Minister state clearly before the House today that while they are not placing it as a duty under the EIP, they see it as a fundamental area that should be brought into an EIP going forward?
I would love to make a long Second Reading speech on the joys of heritage but obviously, in the interest of haste I am not going to. In return, I would like the Minister to make a very strong statement. However, I will raise a second issue. While this is not part of this Bill, the heritage sector in this country has been very worried about what has been going on in Afghanistan. Those working in the heritage sector in Afghanistan are particularly at risk and were on a bus ready to go to the airport to be taken to a safe country. Unfortunately, the bomb went off and those people have not been able to leave. I hope that the Minister will raise this with the DCMS. I know that the DCMS has been doing a lot of work on this, but there is a long-standing and strong link between those in the heritage sectors in this country and in Afghanistan.
I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. I support all these amendments. As an ex-archaeologist I feel strongly that this is something we must take notice of. We cannot keep trashing our heritage. I will try to be brief, if not as brief as last time, but will give two examples of where we have absolutely blundered.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, mentioned “historic”, but my area of study was prehistoric. For example, the way Stonehenge has been treated, with plans for a tunnel and a road, is absolutely outrageous. Why is there no understanding that these monuments contribute not only to wildlife, the landscape and the soil in lots of ways but to human happiness? Luckily, the plans for the monstrous Stonehenge road have been turned down by a British court.
That is a prehistoric example. An historic example is Bevis Marks Synagogue, which has just celebrated its 320th anniversary of continuous use, which is absolutely incredible for a building in London. However, an application has been made to build three high-rise tower blocks around it, which would plunge it into darkness for most of the day. This will impact on the people who go there, and it will be a tragedy to degrade this stunning monument in this way. It seems that, with ambition, development and building, people lose sight of what is good for us all. The local community is, of course, absolutely up in arms and trying to stop the City of London Corporation’s planning committee.
The Green Party is incredibly keen to support these amendments. I am astonished that the Government do not understand rather better the need for our heritage. They make a lot of fuss about statues at Oriel College but somehow, these other wonderful monuments do not seem to play any part in their thinking.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I have put my name to all four amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.
My noble friend the Minister acknowledged in his speech at Second Reading that heritage is a part of the Government’s vision for conservation and the countryside. He reminded your Lordships that the 25-year plan explicitly recognises the link between the natural environment and heritage and said that it is at the heart of our approach. However, if that is so, why is heritage the only one of the 10 goals contained in the 25-year plan to be excluded from the definition of “the environment” in Clause 44? EU legislation did not treat heritage buildings and archaeological features as part of the environment and, as a result, they have been underfunded for decades.
More than half of our traditional farm buildings have already been lost. As I said in Committee, I do not think it is possible to set targets with respect to people’s enjoyment of the natural environment without recognising that traditional farm buildings and other archaeological features are an essential part of accommodating increased numbers of visitors to the countryside and their enjoyment of it. Ancient tithe barns and other buildings have been or need be restored and repurposed in order to accommodate increasing visitor numbers.
On 23 June, my noble friend the Minister stated that heritage was never funded under the common agricultural policy. I am not sure that he was correct, in that, although heritage was not treated by the EU as part of the environment, I understand that it has been funded by Defra ever since the Agriculture Act 1986. Landscape heritage was one of five priorities for agri-environment scheme funding under the CAP and has received Defra funding of several million pounds a year—both maintenance and capital—for more than three decades, under country stewardship, environmental stewardship and previous schemes.
On page 42, the 2019 Conservative manifesto guaranteed that the current CAP budget would be maintained but that it would be moved from direct payments to public goods. The budget for public goods such as heritage is thus up to three times higher than it was under the CAP. Like the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, I look forward to hearing something strong and positive about this, because heritage is a great omission from the Bill.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and his excellent amendments. Like him, I regret that we did not get this on the face of the Bill. My noble friend the Minister rejected that in Committee and there is no point in trying again. However, I hope that my noble friend will pay strict attention to what the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said about making a strong statement that this funding should continue. I apologise if I am incorrect, but I think that my noble friend Lord Trenchard was right. My noble friend the Minister probably was given wrong advice when he said in Committee that it has never been funded under the CAP and that:
“It is not something that Defra has done or can do. It is very much a job and a responsibility for the DCMS.”—[Official Report, 23/6/21; col. 365.]
I think that is not the case and that this has been funded for some considerable time through Defra. I understand that the sums are not significant. We are talking about £10 million per annum, which has of course been used for things such as farm buildings, walls, and archaeology. It is not funding residences; it has not been funding grand estates which may be the job of the DCMS, or anything like that.
In addition to asking the Minister to make a strong statement that the funding will continue, I enter another strong plea. I do not speak on its behalf, but I understand that Historic England is deeply worried about this. It was under the impression, rightly or wrongly, that this would appear on the face of the Bill. It is now concerned that, since it will not be included, and given that my noble friend the Minister and Defra are rightly concentrating on funding the Bill’s priorities—peatland restoration, woodland planting and so on—something such as heritage might fall through the cracks. I would be very grateful if my noble friend said that either he or one of the Defra Ministers will meet with the heads of Historic England and reassure them as to their intentions. Historic England is not seeking much: it is seeking reassurances that the status quo can continue. I would be very grateful if my noble friend gave that assurance and assured the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, that this will not fall through the cracks but will continue to be a small but important priority.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Blencathra just said about a meeting with Historic England and indeed with English Heritage, which is responsible for a large number of important buildings up and down the land. I support all the amendments, as I did in Committee. To me, it is an anomaly and a contradiction of the phrase “joined-up government” that because something is largely within the province of another department it cannot be covered by an all-embracing Bill.
This afternoon, I will concentrate on an issue that I raised on another amendment in Committee. I do so—and I have discussed this with my noble friend the Minister—because it fits logically under these amendments. When we were debating this last time, I said, and there were nods all around the Chamber, how central and important to the manmade landscape our churches are. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred to a synagogue in London, the most historic synagogue in the land, and she was absolutely right in all she said. I pray that that is not overshadowed, literally, in the way currently threatened.
Central to most of our country towns and virtually all our villages, especially in England, is the parish church. You come closest to the soul of the country in the parish church, particularly through the monuments it contains, which often tell the story of the whole community—one thinks of Gray’s “Elegy”—in that church.
We have a real problem when it comes to the preservation of species and buildings. The National Trust paper, which we have all been sent, refers to habitats, and we have got the balance very wrong when it comes to the preservation of bats—important creatures that they are, despite being a bit of a health hazard sometimes—and the preservation of those buildings that tell the story of our land. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Goldsmith; I gather he is not going to reply to this debate, but he replied to the earlier one in which I took part and we had a brief discussion this afternoon. I had a lengthy meeting with him during the recess, on the dreaded Zoom, but it was a good meeting and Professor Jean Wilson, a great former president of the Church Monuments Society, took part.
I know there is a Bats in Churches project, but it is creeping forward slowly. We have 16,000 listed churches in this country, most of them Church of England, but not all, by any means. Some of them are being despoiled and defaced—the monuments, the wall paintings, the alabasters and the brasses in particular—by bat urine and bat faeces. We have to get the balance right when we are preserving species and buildings that were not built to house bats; they were built to house worshipping Christians. We are still officially a Christian country, and the parish church means a great deal to many people, even if they do not worship in it regularly. We have to remember that the parish system in our country means that everyone who lives in England lives in a parish and is entitled to the services of the parish and priest, particularly at times of great moment in a family’s history—birth, marriage, death. It is truly important that we recognise how important these buildings are.
In his letter to me, sent following our meeting, the Minister talked about something like five churches a year benefiting from this new scheme. That is good but, measured against the overall number, it is negligible. I hope that the Minister will meet me, Professor Wilson and perhaps others again, because we must try to get the balance right. Getting the balance right is the answer to so many problems in our country, not just heritage and environmental problems, but many others. It would be wrong if, during the passage of this environmental Bill—and I agree strongly with my noble friend Lord Blencathra and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale—we do not get this on the face of it. I am realistic enough to know that we are not going to get it, but we need a strong ministerial statement. This is casting no aspersions on my noble friend Lady Bloomfield, who will reply to this debate, but we need a statement from my noble friend Lord Goldsmith as well.
We live in a landscape that is mostly manmade and, where it is not, it is man-moulded. Some of the most important features of that landscape are parts of the built environment and the archaeology of which the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, spoke so movingly. Can we please try to recognise the threat to our churches from the overpresence of bats in many of them and do all we can to rescue a priceless part of the nation’s heritage and an embodiment of much of its history?
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I will be very brief. I support all these amendments. We should be proud of our heritage in this country, but I am not sure, as others have pointed out, that we have been doing enough to protect our cultural landscapes in recent years. They may vary from ancient monuments all the way up to the present day, and include the lived environment, which overlaps so much with the past.
There are two real concerns, at present. There may be more, but I will point out two. The first is the lack of local authority funding and the second is the danger of untrammelled development, particularly through the tearing up and sidestepping of planning regulations. It is a disgrace that, in a country not affected by war at home—and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, mentioned Afghanistan—we have lost one site of world heritage status, Liverpool’s Waterfront, and are in danger of losing another, Stonehenge, if that road tunnel is built. We still do not know what is going to happen.
On the lived environment, I am put in mind of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the artist Joseph Beuys, who co-founded the German green party. His work “7000 Oaks” involved the planting of oak trees, often in bombed-out sites, across the city of Kassel. This was not a simple tree-planting exercise, as each tree was accompanied by a large stone marker. As the trees were planted—and it took five years to complete the project—the pile of 7,000 stones in front of the city’s museum was gradually reduced. Beuys’s idea for this piece, which was radical at the time, was that of nature being in harmony with humanity. His ideas have been copied in America and Britain. In this context, I just mention the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. This lesson of sensitivity towards our environment is something that we all need to learn.
Lord Carrington (CB)
My Lords, I fear that in my contribution I cannot be as poetic or as evocative as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, but I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, on focusing these amendments solely on putting heritage on a statutory footing in regard to environmental improvement plans. This prevents succeeding Governments removing these incredibly important matters of heritage and the historic environment from future EIPs. It also makes sure that funding to support heritage under the Agriculture Act has much greater certainty.
This is at the heart of the argument this time. It continues to take into account all the arguments we made in Committee on the importance of protecting heritage of all sorts in this groundbreaking Bill. I believe that these amendments will be a simple change but have a distinct impact. Importantly, they will cover the concerns of the previous amendments introduced in Committee.
Finally, these amendments would also allow the office for environmental protection to monitor heritage in the rural environment as a statutory requirement based on EIPs. I give them my full support.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, I remind the House of my interests and my passion for heritage landscapes. I have spoken already on the gaping hole in this Bill where heritage should sit, and I need not repeat that. However, having read the Committee stage debate afresh, particularly the Minister’s response, I am concerned that the Government are promoting a false and very damaging dichotomy between manmade heritage, which is delegated to DCMS, and the natural environment, which belongs to Defra. This reveals either a fundamental misunderstanding or a deliberate rejection of the millennia of human intervention in creating our natural landscape, of which we are an integral part and on which so much of our life and biodiversity is dependent. To misquote the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York, we are “in” this earth and should not be separated from it.
We are not talking about rural buildings, towers and follies here—important though they are—but the much less sexy engineering works that have created and protected so much of our essential farmable landscape, particularly in East Anglia and the Somerset Levels, as well as vast areas of urbanisation such as the Thames estuary. This dichotomy is dangerous and wrong. I ask that the Minister makes it explicitly clear that the preservation and maintenance of our manmade landscape is a priority for this Government and will be supported through this Bill. This is very important to those of us who live and farm at or near sea level—and sea level that is protected by heritage features.
This damaging misunderstanding is particularly pronounced in the current fashion for rewilding, and the condemnation of any and all human intervention in nature. Having created this green and pleasant land, we must not abdicate our responsibility for it.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for tabling these important amendments. Cultural and historical landmarks and environments bring recognised value to our environment. As such, this debate has raised important concerns about their omission from the Environment Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said, after our debate in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, assured your Lordships that the historical environment will be considered when the Government prepare their environment improvement plans for the natural environment.
The Minister also referred, as have many noble Lords here today, to the 25-year environment plan, which, as we know, is to be adopted as the first statutory environmental improvement plan. It has a commitment to safeguarding and enhancing the beauty of our natural scenery, and improving its environmental value, while being sensitive to considerations of its heritage. However, because this Bill explicitly excludes the historic environment from the provisions of Part 1—as the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, said—this potentially excludes it from future versions of the EIPs. The 25-year plan also recognises the importance of the environment for people. This is something else that is not explicitly carried forward into the Bill. It is all very well for the Minister to talk about what is in the 25-year plan, but that is not the same as actively improving the quality and conservation of these environments, and increasing people’s opportunity to appreciate and enjoy them, by putting them inthe Environment Bill.
Many noble Lords have talked about the need to ensure that the goals in the 25-year plan will be taken forward into future versions. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, among others, talked of the disconnect between this Bill and the 25-year plan. We have also heard many noble Lords eloquently describe how the natural and historic are tied together, their importance to our society and that what impacts one aspect may well have an effect on another. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke passionately about parish churches; the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, talked about the importance of our archaeological sites; and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, mentioned the particular concerns of Historic England. I am sure we are all aware that the National Trust has also expressed its deep concerns.
We have also heard much in recent months and weeks, highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic, of the importance of us getting outside into nature. However, the Bill fails to afford equal priority of access to and enjoyment of the natural environment. Again, this is another disconnect between the Bill and the Government’s ambitions in their 25-year environment plan, which included a policy aim to ensure that the natural environment could be used by everyone. Amendment 17 brings people’s enjoyment of the natural environment into the EIPs.
This Bill needs to be brought into line, I believe, with the 25-year plan and the plan needs to be brought in line with legislation, so that when the Bill gets Royal Assent, these provisions are part of what we will take into the future. As published, the Bill fails to commit the Government to act on this. As we emerge from the worst of the pandemic, during which the importance of getting outside and connecting with nature—and understanding our historic environment as part of that—it becomes very clear that this is something that society wants and needs. The Bill presents us with a rare opportunity to ensure that everyone can benefit from that.
Why are the Government so reluctant to explicitly include some of the really good and welcome provisions that are in the 25-year plan in the Bill? This would secure these ambitions for the future. It would continue to protect and improve our important landscapes and to encourage and facilitate equitable access for everyone to enjoy.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this interesting debate. In particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, for tabling these amendments and for speaking with me earlier. I stress that this Government consider the protection of our heritage a crucial issue.
The threats posed to the setting of the Bevis Marks synagogue are matters to be considered through the planning system, but I emphasise that in taking relevant decisions the local planning authority should have regard to the heritage policies within the National Planning Policy Framework. Certainly, in the case of Stonehenge, the recent decision is going through redetermination by the Department for Transport, National Highways and other relevant partners to protect the outstanding universal value of Stonehenge as much as possible. The state of conservation report will be submitted to UNESCO by February 2022 for the World Heritage Committee’s consideration.
On our commitment to heritage, in response to the Covid pandemic, in just the last year this Government have established an unprecedented £2 billion Culture Recovery Fund to support hundreds of heritage organisations, demonstrating our ongoing commitment to this country’s heritage. Furthermore, Defra’s new planning and protected landscapes programme will provide additional investment, allowing farmers and land managers to deliver better outcomes. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, that this can include projects that provide opportunities for people to discover, enjoy and understand the landscape and its cultural heritage.
The new ELMS will allocate money for heritage as part of the list of public goods and will be focused on delivering against priority environmental outcomes. We are exploring our scheme offer with regard to heritage outcomes, as well as the potential for delivery on heritage through other available mechanisms. In the meantime, Defra’s countryside stewardship programme has proven very successful in delivering outcomes for heritage and the historic environment. Countryside stewardship is open to new applications until 2024, with agreements running throughout the agricultural transition period. I think my noble friend Lord Blencathra asked for a meeting with Historic England. I confirm that the Minister has agreed to that meeting.
I turn first to Amendment 15, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. I emphasise that the primary purpose of the EIP is to improve significantly the natural environment. Amending the Bill to make express provision in relation to the historic environment risks eroding this important focus. However, I can reassure noble Lords that, where appropriate, the Government will consider the historic environment when preparing EIPs for the natural environment. Indeed, in the 25-year environment plan, the Government committed to:
“Safeguarding and enhancing the beauty of our natural scenery and improving its environmental value while being sensitive to considerations of its heritage”.
I turn to Amendments 16, 17 and 25. I reassure noble Lords that the Government’s annual reports will already include a description of the steps taken to implement the EIP, as well as an assessment of environmental improvement and progress towards Bill targets. The Government will also obtain data for the purpose of monitoring improvement to the natural environment in accordance with the EIP. These requirements are broad in scope, allowing the Government to consider all aspects of the EIP in their monitoring and reporting. This includes measures expressed as targets, goals or objectives, as well as any measures included to improve people’s enjoyment of the natural environment. Therefore, we feel that these amendments are unnecessary. Likewise, the OEP’s monitoring functions allow it similar breadth, monitoring progress in improving the natural environment in accordance with the EIP.
Turning to Amendment 29, Clause 44 is a bespoke definition created to underpin the new environmental governance framework provided for in the Bill. Not only does this clause define the purpose and scope of EIPs, it also defines the scope of the OEP’s enforcement function. This amendment could therefore result in provisions concerning the protection of specific historic sites falling within the enforcement remit of the OEP. This is not and should not be the OEP’s role. In drafting this clause, the Government have taken into account that heritage stakeholders, including the Heritage Alliance, are not seeking this effect. The OEP’s remit should be focused on its principal objective: to contribute to environmental protection and the improvement of the natural environment. This amendment would only dilute the focus of the OEP and therefore weaken its effectiveness.
I must stress to all noble Lords, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and my noble friend Lord Trenchard in particular, that the Government take heritage seriously. But the raison d’être for this particular Bill is the improvement of the natural environment, which is why its focus should always be the natural environment. However, while I will not be able to accept these amendments, I would like to confirm for the noble Lord that we are planning to engage with a wide range of stakeholders to inform the EIP review and refresh process through specially organised round tables and by bringing the subject to existing stakeholder forums throughout 2022. In addition, there will be various subject-specific consultations, such as the nature recovery Green Paper, which are likely to inform the EIP’s development.
I should touch on the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. As he rightly said, and as was agreed in the meeting between him and the Minister—at which I understand my noble friend made a strong case—officials will, with Natural England, explore opportunities to develop further guidance for churches to help them mitigate problems caused by bats. I am sure these conversations will be ongoing. I confirm that we will consult heritage stakeholders as we develop the next EIP, and I look forward to their inputs in the design of the plan.
Lastly, the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, mentioned the cultural sector in Afghanistan. Across government we are closely monitoring the situation and stand ready to provide whatever support we can to help protect the rich Afghan cultural heritage for future generations and those involved in the sector. We obviously urge all parties in Afghanistan to protect the cultural heritage of their country, including the museums and cultural institutions. I hope I have been able to reassure noble Lords and I ask the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Redesdale (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her response and thank all who took part in the debate. That was quite a detailed reply, with a number of assurances that the heritage sector will be consulted. I thank the noble Baroness for that because I know there is a degree of concern in the sector.
It was also good to hear that stewardship and ELMS will include heritage. I know that that has had a marked effect on preserving elements of the historic environment which could have been obliterated because of the lack of funding. There is a great deal in the reply, which I am sure people will scour over, but the noble Baroness has gone a long way to mitigate some of my concerns. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Caithness
“Soil management strategy for EnglandSoil management strategy for England
(1) The Secretary of State must prepare a soil management strategy for England.(2) The soil management strategy for England must set out Her Majesty’s Government’s objectives, priorities and policies for the sustainable management of soil in England during the period to which the strategy relates.(3) That period must not be shorter than 10 years.(4) The soil management strategy for England must include—(a) a commitment to the long-term monitoring of soil quality and health,(b) a definitive open access map identifying the different soil types,(c) plans for the integration of soil management with environmental objectives such as climate mitigation, flood risk minimization and water quality measures and policies relating to food production, and(d) targets for achieving the sustainable management of soil on Grade 1 and Grade 2 agricultural land (and other soils where necessary).(5) The Secretary of State must publish—(a) an annual statement on progress against the soil management strategy for England, and(b) after a period of three years beginning on the day this Act is passed, a review of the effectiveness of the soil management strategy for England including any necessary revisions of the strategy.(6) Before the end of the period to which the soil management strategy for England relates, the Secretary of State must prepare a new strategy for a new period that must not be shorter than 10 years.”
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 18. Some of your Lordships will remember a BBC radio comedy series called “Beyond Our Ken” in which there was a gardener, Arthur Fallowfield, played by the late Kenneth Williams. His stock reply to any question was, “The answer lies in the soil”. Arthur Fallowfield was more right than he could possibly have imagined, because the answer to many of our problems lies in the soil, as we discussed in Committee and on the first day of Report when we discussed the amendment on soil of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. That is why I have tabled Amendment 18, which asks the Government to prepare a
“soil management strategy for England”.
I am extremely grateful for the support of my noble friend Lord Randall of Uxbridge, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. That is cross-party support, and it is clear that such a strategy is needed.
I will be brief, as I said I would be on Monday, because I said most things then, but may I reiterate a couple of points? Why are there strategies for water and air when there is not a strategy for soil? My noble friend the Minister will be aware that in 2020 a survey showed that 16% of our arable soils were being lost through erosion at such a high rate that they are likely to become unproductive. Some 25% of biodiversity lives in the soil. My noble friend the Minister has stated on many occasions that he wants Britain to be a world leader. I give him the opportunity now with soil. By including this amendment in the Bill, we will become a world leader and we will be able to point to it when we come to COP.
My final point, as an ex-Treasury Minister, is on cost. It will not cost the Government anything to prepare a soil strategy. If it is prepared and implemented, it will actually save the Government money. It will improve our environment and farming, which will benefit us all.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I am very pleased to support the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in this amendment. If anything needs a strategy, it is the soil. As was talked about on Monday night, the air, the water and the soil are the three pillars on which we exist, and I would say that the soil is the most important. It is a magical world that we know very little about. People can name the planets, but they cannot name a single thing that lives in the soil. Indeed, it is a whole complex world that lives on a different timescale and on a different planet, as it were, from us because it is all so tiny, but that does not make it any less complicated. As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, 25% of our biodiversity lives in the soil.
As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, pointed out, soil is already degraded, and the five a day we have to eat is now probably four, because we have so weakened this magical substance. We also give it a very bad press. We talk about the dirt beneath our feet; every single laundry advert has someone coming back muddy, as though this is something that we do not like. We treat our soil—this extraordinary world—in the most amazing way, because twice a year, a plough goes through, which, if you can imagine it, is literally like your town, your house and your landscape being bombed to pieces. Despite that, our soil struggles on.
As I pointed out the other day about rivets in planes and when biodiversity starts to turn in the wrong direction, our soils are depleting. Various figures have been given, but most people in this House were nodding when it was said we have maybe 50 harvests left. That may be an exaggeration, but we cannot live on chemicals any more. The soil is also our most valuable means of storing carbon if we treat it right.
Soil is there to help us, to enable us to live on this planet and thrive. It seems to me that this needs a strategy. This is where government should come in. There are lots of people out there campaigning about water and clean air. The soil gets a seriously poor look-in, and if the Government are there to protect the most precious elements of our life, we need a soil strategy.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I added my name to this amendment. I will not go over the ground again. The noble Earl and the noble Baroness have made the case strongly, and it was made strongly on Monday. But I would say one thing to the Minister: on Monday, he was reluctant to accept the amendment that made a priority of soil management, which, as the noble Baroness has just said, has historically not been given attention. The neglect of that dimension of agricultural land use and environmental policy is one of the most dangerous things confronting humanity.
Soil is essential for our food, our biodiversity, our ecosystems and our very survival. Therefore, even if the Minister and his colleagues decide that the priority we voted on in this House on Monday is not to their liking, and they want to delete it or alter it, whatever they do at that level in this Bill, operationally they need a strategy of the kind that is laid out in the noble Earl’s amendment. No amount of arguing about priorities will change the fact that it is absolutely clear that soil must be one of our priorities, and we need a plan as laid out in this amendment to operationalise that priority. I do hope that, whatever the circumstances, the Minister will accept this amendment.
Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of Cawood Scientific, which provides analysis of soil and other agricultural products. I apologise that I was unable to be present on Monday, but I was very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for quoting me in her speech. Let me, without duplication, endorse what has been said already and perhaps expand on my comments repeated by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on Monday.
The Republic of Ireland has decided to carry out an extensive survey of its soil. It is spending €10 billion this year and is expected to spend a similar amount over the next three years to have a comprehensive understanding of the quality of the soil throughout the entire Irish Republic. Northern Ireland is considering a similar approach, so the whole island of Ireland will have, I hope, a soil-mapping exercise that will provide it with all the data it needs to make informed decisions to improve the quality of its soil.
I attended the Rothamsted Research centre a few years ago and met the soil scientists. The thing that stuck in my mind was when a scientist said, “Once soil is completely degraded, it is impossible to recreate soil.” I thought that was a tribute to what was concluded with perfection in the Garden of Eden. Once we have degraded our soil completely, we have lost it for ever. So, why would we in England not wish to take a leading global position and understand the quality of our soil and have a strategy to address that quality? We need to do this. We have a vehicle to do it through the ELMS, when testing soil will be part of the encouragement that farmers will be given. It would be a simple matter to extend the responsibility in terms of quantifying and qualifying what soil testing actually means and to establish a standard nationally that would give us the same data and information that the Republic of Ireland will have. Why would we not do that?
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
If noble Lords have noticed my silence at earlier stages of the Environment Bill, it is because my noble friend Lady Jones has been very ably joined on the Front Bench by my noble friends Lady Hayman and Lord Khan. It is now a much better team, and I congratulate them. But I too had noticed the omission of soil and improvement targets. I declare my interest as a working farmer and wholeheartedly support Amendment 2, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. Her points were very well made on Monday night, and I am glad the House agreed.
The Soil Association was aptly named by Lady Eve Balfour following the Dust Bowl events in America in the 1930s. Amendment 18 complements Amendment 2 in proposing a soil management strategy in rolling 10-year cycles. This is very important, and soil is, to some extent, recognised within Defra, in that farmers need to comply with regulations concerning NVZs—nitrate vulnerable zones—concerning the application of manures, fertilisers and water run-off.
The importance of soil is also recognised by and included in the advice to government by the Climate Change Committee, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Deben, for his powerful words in drawing attention to this. Not enough attention is paid by Defra, as soil compaction is becoming ever more problematic, as farmers’ machinery becomes bigger and more powerful to cover the necessary acreage needed to remain profitable while catching favourable weather conditions.
I thank Professor Karl Ritz of Nottingham University, introduced to me by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for sending me his paper, “The Groundswell 5 Principles and Soil Sense”, which wisely recognises:
“Regenerative agriculture wisely puts soil health at the heart of its concepts and practices.”
It underlines the five principles as: diversity; protect soil surface; maintain living roots; minimise soil disturbance; and, finally, livestock integration.
This allows me to ask the noble Earl why, under proposed new subsection (4)(d) in his amendment, he highlights only
“the sustainable management of soil on Grade 1 and Grade 2 agricultural land”.
while putting in brackets “other soils where necessary.” The noble Earl will know that much of the livestock grazing on the west side of Britain is categorised as grade 3, where soil structure and stockholding capacity are also important as primary business assets, providing nutritious food to the nation. All soils should be included, as they support all terrestrial habitats, store and filter water, sequestrate carbon and nutrients, and even inform us of the past.
Peatlands and uplands are also vital and part of Defra’s strategy for flood management. The Climate Change Committee recommends the full restoration of peatlands by 2045. Could the Minister write to your Lordships, as time is short, updating the House on the department’s peatland strategy and say when the banning of horticultural peat is scheduled to take place and whether this could be brought forward? There may also be drafting issues with this amendment that the Minister may take exception to.
I stress that soil management must be included as an element under ELMS, the new support payment system for agriculture. Will the Minister also undertake to write to me with the latest information on trials being conducted on the introduction of the ELMS, which are still needed by agriculture to balance the progressive withdrawal of area-based payments, pointing out where soil management will be undertaken within the new ELMS?
Nature does not like a bare soil and tries to cover up as soon as possible. Will the Minister commit to covering this important element of our environment under targets supplementing others in this Bill?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, who has contributed so much on these issues to the House over many years. I want chiefly to reiterate a point that I made on Monday, when your Lordships’ House backed Amendment 2. There is no conflict between that amendment and this one, so ably introduced by the noble Earl and supported by all other speakers in this debate today.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, pointed out that the 25-year environment plan mentions soil quality 19 times. In that debate on Monday, the Minister talked about how the sustainable farming initiative scheme includes practices such as the introduction of herbal leys, the use of grass-legume mixtures, cover crops and so on—as the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, just referred to. The Minister talked also about how complicated it was to measure soil health but said that the Government were doing that work. So we have these suggestions here, there and everywhere, but what this amendment would do—I hope that we might hear some good news from the Minister when he stands up shortly—is join this all up. Joined-up government is one of those favourite phrases we hear very often. It is clear that your Lordships’ House believes, and it is clear from the science, that soils absolutely are the foundation. As the noble Earl said, we have a water strategy and an air strategy; we have to have a soil strategy, just as we have to make soils a priority. This is joined-up government; this is sensible, practical work to make sure that the Government are working towards one goal, which has to be healthy, high-quality soils.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, on Monday, we debated adding soil health and quality to Clause 1. Many noble Lords from all sides of the House spoke knowledgeably and passionately about the need to monitor and improve the quality of our soil. The noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, gave an excellent summary of the attacks from all sides on our soil. In response, the Minister said that it was difficult to measure soil quality and indicated that the Government were working towards targets that could be measured with reliable metrics. He felt the amendment would pre-empt that work. However, the House did not agree with him.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, is also passionate about the quality of soil and has spoken extremely eloquently to his Amendment 18. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, have also spoken in favour and added their names to the amendment. If we are fully to appreciate the role of soil, its condition and how we as a nation might best help to improve its quality, we will need a soil management strategy for England. The noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, although not in his place today, on Monday recommended this amendment to the House.
As noble Lords have previously said, there are many different types of soil. They contain billions of essential bacteria, but over the years, by the continued spraying of chemicals to control insect pests, prevent weed growth and promote the growth of crops, we have denuded the soil of its quality. Whether the soil is of grade A agricultural value, peat bogs, clay, sandy or containing lime, it is all suffering. The noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, has given an excellent example of the strategy adopted in Ireland. It is time that we followed that example.
I fully support the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in his desire to introduce a soil strategy into the Bill. The timeline set out in his amendment, of a 10-year strategy to be reviewed and renewed for another 10 years after that, is right. It would give adequate time for a proper action plan to be implemented for the different types of soil and the uses to which they are put. It would give time for the soil to recover and to be adequately measured, and for the Government, landowners and farmers to see whether their actions had been successful.
Given that everyone across the House fully supports the amendment, I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept it, despite what his briefing notes might say.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Grantchester for his kind comments and for all his excellent advice and support on this issue.
This has been a very interesting short debate. I want to thank in particular the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, for speaking so passionately on soil health and management and for furthering the issue. From reading his contributions on this Bill and previously on the Agriculture Bill, it is evident that he cares deeply about this issue.
According to the Sustainable Soils Alliance, poor soil management releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which contribute 21% of total UK agricultural emissions. In contrast, healthy soils sequester carbon rather than releasing it, while also increasing resilience to floods and droughts.
We hope that the Minister will have taken note of the earlier amendment on soil health and will use it as an opportunity to bring forward a wider soil management strategy. The Government need to note the strength of feeling in the House and give this important issue its due attention, rather than leave it as an afterthought, which seems to be their current strategy.
What does the Minister plan to do to reverse the currently fragmented approach to soil policy? I know it has been said that the answer lies in the soil, but on this serious issue of a soil strategy, the answer lies with the Minister. I look forward to his response and the joined-up approach, as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate regarding Amendment 18, tabled by my noble friend Lord Caithness. I thank him for his correspondence on this issue over the summer, for the discussions we have had and for his passionate speech earlier. I assure him that we of course remain committed to sustainably managed soils by 2030, as laid out in the 25-year environment plan and the action we are taking to get there. I will not repeat the case for soils, because we touched on that on Monday but also because we have heard some compelling speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, my noble friend Lord Caithness in introducing the amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Khan, who made the critical point about the carbon values of soils.
I want to start by emphasising the actions I outlined in our debate on Monday which the Government are undertaking to improve soil health. We will produce a baseline assessment of soil health, which could inform a potential future long-term soils target. We are currently identifying soil health metrics to complement a future soil health monitoring scheme. The Path to Sustainable Farming: An Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 to 2024 sets out examples of the types of actions that we envisage paying for under the schemes, including soil management, such as the use of cover crops. I described in Monday’s debate the England Peat Action Plan, which we published in May. This sets out the Government’s long-term vision for the management, protection and restoration of our peatlands, which are crucial carbon stores, as well as—to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester—our commitment to end the use of peat in amateur horticulture by the end of this Parliament.
However, I would like to add to my remarks from Monday. The Government recognise both the strength of feeling expressed by many noble Peers from across the House and the critical importance of this issue. Soils matter of course in and of themselves, but they underpin, quite literally, the improvements that we will have to see right across the environment, as well as being critical for agriculture and, by extension, food security.
I am therefore pleased to announce that the Government will publish a soil health action plan for England. The plan will be a key plank in our efforts to halt the decline of species by 2030, as well as meeting our long-term legally binding targets on biodiversity. As we have heard from a number of noble Lords in this debate and in the debate on Monday, our soils are in a perilous position. The action plan will be crucial in driving progress across government to restore the health of our soils. We will set out further details of what the plan will contain by the end of this year.
I repeat my thanks to my noble friend Lord Caithness for having applied the pressure on this issue in the way that he did. To quote the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, campaigning works from time to time. I hope that this new announcement and my comments in our earlier debate reassure my noble friend and others in the House. I beg him to withdraw his amendment.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken and given me support. It is always nice to have unanimous support when one moves an amendment, and on a subject such as soil it is also good to have at least three farmers supporting one. As the Minister said, the case for this amendment is very sound.
I need to answer the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. The reason I included only grades 1 and 2 is that those are the two soils most likely to be ploughed. The noble Lord is absolutely right to say that grassland is equally important, but there is less erosion on grassland, particularly pasture grassland. Given the amount that Defra has to do, if it starts with grades 1 and 2, it can go on to grades 3 and 4 afterwards. However, I take the noble Lord’s point.
What the noble Lord said has been overridden by the Minister, and I am extremely grateful to the Minister for his commitment to introduce a soil action plan by the end of the year. I noted with care what my noble friend Lord Deben, my fellow ex-Minister, said on Amendment 11. He said that if it was not in the Act it would not get done. I am going to back my Minister and not my noble friend Lord Deben; I shall trust my Minister to introduce the soil action plan by the end of the year. I am sorry that it is not in the Bill, because being able to wave that bit of paper at COP 26 would be good. However, if he could write a letter confirming what he has done, or at least wave Hansard in front of people at COP 26, we might get a little bit more. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend on the Front Bench and to all noble Lords, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“(f) the principle that policies and decisions should take into account the interests of members of future generations.”
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I rise at the request of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, to move Amendment 19. He wishes me to send his sincere apologies that he is unable to be here today. I shall do my best to be a substitute, although I am not quite sure that my acting skills are up to it—but I shall do my best.
The amendment is very simple; it would add an extra principle to the list of principles to be considered, stating that
“policies and decisions should take into account the interests of members of future generations”.
The fact is that we know that the climate emergency and nature crisis are already here, but even more severe impacts are waiting in the wings for future generations. We are seeing floods and forest fires, and these impacts will grow in coming decades. Future generations are desperate for us to do something now so that they get a chance of a decent life.
In this Chamber we have all benefited from the vision, bravery and foresight of past generations, whether that is a parent or grandparent who fought in a number of 20th-century wars or those who founded the NHS or decriminalised homosexuality. Indeed, noble Lords may remember the noble Lord, Lord Bird, speaking very powerfully on his Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill at greater length on those issues. We are in a unique position now to change the course of history for our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and those not yet born, to make their lives better and safer and more secure, stable and prosperous. This amendment sets that out as a principle of government action. We need to acknowledge that responsibility and to listen to the young people who are saying, “What are you doing to our future now?”
We must have a commitment to long-term thinking and interrogating the consequences of our policy decisions—to look for better solutions to today’s problems that will leave the future better off. We all know—many Members of your Lordships’ House who have been former members of Governments within these walls have recognised—that decisions in the past have had unintended consequences. We have to start trying to solve the problems that we have created.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for moving the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bird. I support the sentiments and the important issues that it raises and thank her for her remarks and her support for my Amendment 20.
The point of Amendment 20 is to help the Government’s policy statement on the environmental principles to put environmental protection at the heart of government decision-making. Currently, the principles ask departmental Ministers to consider the least environmentally damaging option when they are looking at a range of policy options. However, not all Ministers are obliged to take that policy statement into account. The MoD and the Treasury are exempted because defence and tax and spending have a disapplication from the existing statement on environmental principles.
I thank the Minister and his colleagues for meeting me over this summer to discuss this matter, but I am disappointed that we have not made as much progress as I thought we might, and I reserve my right to test the opinion of the House on this matter. As the noble Baroness said, the Minister said in Committee that the reason for this exemption was that it could restrict our response to urgent threats. I accept entirely that the MoD will have urgent threats which it needs to respond to, and I would support the Government coming forward with a targeted disapplication to enable that to happen. However, this is not a targeted disapplication; it is a blanket disapplication for the MoD. The MoD has a third of all the UK’s SSSIs—our most special land for habitats and for environmental protection. In addition, there are all the tenanted farmers, the ancient woodlands and all the land that could deliver so much in terms of natural resource protection on the 2% of the UK land mass which is the military estate in the UK.
There are plenty of examples in pockets of the MoD where it shows that it can marry together environmental protection and the protection of the state. However, unless we change this clause as it stands, I fear that the description in the National Audit Office review in 2020 of environmental protection in the MoD as a Cinderella service will not change. Equally, since then, in March of this year, the Minister Jeremy Quin MP and others launched the MoD’s new climate change and sustainability approach. It says:
“The response to climate change and sustainability in Defence must be led from the top and applied across all areas and at all levels.”
Without this amendment, that cannot be delivered.
As regards the exemption for the Treasury and for tax and spending policy, given the importance of tax policies and departmental budgets to deliver environmental targets when we are looking at managing the land for protecting the environment, it is almost unbelievable that there is that exemption. It means that Ministers will not have to consider environmental matters when they are looking at spending issues such as roads. As the noble Baroness said, the Minister’s response was that the exemption was to allow maximum flexibility. In the Government’s response to the Dasgupta review, which was produced earlier and to which the Government have signed up, they accepted that nature was a macro- economic consideration and supported setting out steps to align national expenditure with climate and environmental goals. Without this amendment, that cannot be delivered.
It is not just me saying that; since we last met in Committee, the office for environmental protection has given its first advice—at the request of the Government—on the draft environmental principles policy statement. I will quote from the chief executive offer of the OEP, which we will come on to in the next group of amendments. Natalie Prosser said that
“there are such important benefits to be reaped should policy-making across all departments embrace and live by these principles.”
That is all departments—not some departments. It would be a very worrying sign if the Government were to refuse that first piece of advice from the OEP.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and I have put my name to Amendment 20. I will be very brief, because I had a real moment of joy and optimism this morning when I read the latest Defra briefing notes, called Key Facts on the Environmental Principles. I will read out two sentences from this factsheet, which lead me to believe—if these really are facts, as it says —that the Government have changed their mind. First, “Ministers across government”—I emphasise that—“will be legally obliged to consider the principles in all policy development where it impacts the environment”. Secondly, “All government departments” —I emphasise that—“must consider the environmental principles policy statement when developing policy”.
I assume that unless the key facts are not key facts, the Government have indeed accepted Amendment 20, and I very much look forward to the Minister confirming that in his response.
The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, I shall speak in favour of Amendments 19 and 20, and passionately so.
Many members of your Lordships’ House have spoken of the urgency of the crisis before us; just yesterday, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch issued a powerful joint statement. They appealed to those with “far-reaching responsibilities”—including ourselves—to
“make short-term sacrifices to safeguard all our futures; become leaders in the transition to just and sustainable economies.”
There can be no exceptions.
Last week I was privileged to take part in an interdisciplinary gathering in Milton Keynes, which is part of my diocese of Oxford, which brought together, through the agency of Citizens UK, a range of contributors on the climate crisis. The first speech of about 12 during the evening was the most memorable. It was from a 19 year-old woman who described how, when she was 16, she first encountered the news of the climate crisis. She was told—mistakenly, of course—that nothing could now be done, so serious was it, and that the world would end in 10 years. The impact of this news was absolutely devastating to her mental health. She has moved on and is now active in climate campaigning, but her speech was a real eye-opener to the importance of engaging with future generations and those who are now young on this issue and all those with power and responsibility, indicating that they are part of our considerations.
With regard to Amendment 20, the Bill and the climate crisis need to be taken with equal seriousness across the whole of government. The submissions already made to your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Environment and Climate Change, of which I am privileged to be a member, indicate a catastrophic variation in the place these issues have on the agendas of major departments of state. These exceptions signal that this can be tolerated when the opposite is the case. Every part of national and local government, every church and charity, company, institution and household need to play their part, and that includes the MoD and the Treasury. As has been said, we need a fresh pair of economic spectacles.
Another contribution in the Milton Keynes seminar last week was a fine presentation from those planning the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, of which MK is in the centre. The environmental leaders in that venture are attempting to apply Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics as the foundation for the life of the arc and are viewing everything through that lens. Taxation is a key lever for government to drive environmental improvement, and I urge the Government to accept this amendment.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak primarily to Amendment 20 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. However, having interacted with the Minister on a number of occasions during my short time in the House, I feel that he will naturally address Amendment 19 on ensuring that environmental policies consider the interests of future generations. In fact, I am looking forward to seeing him on a speaking tour around schools, colleges and universities to promote this landmark Bill—with all the amendments accepted, of course.
The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has consistently been profoundly clear, eloquent and razor-sharp on the issue of environmental principles in this Bill. Across the House, there is a strength of feeling that we have not made much progress on this matter. We cannot allow the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury to be excused from the need to take responsibility for what happens on our planet—it just sends out the wrong message.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate. I know there is significant interest in this House in the environmental principles. Regarding Amendment 19, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in a typically compelling and powerful speech, the contents of which I fully agreed with, I reassure noble Lords that the concept set out in the amendment is already covered by the duty on the Secretary of State, and I shall explain why. Currently, the Bill states that the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the environmental principles policy statement will contribute to the improvement of environmental protection and to sustainable development. I want to clarify for noble Lords that this legal reference to “sustainable development” encompasses and includes the importance of meeting the needs of future generations. That is what it means.
As I explained in Committee, these are internationally recognised principles and consistent with those agreed through the EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement. This amendment is therefore unnecessary, as the existing principles are fundamentally about passing the natural environment on in a better state to the next generation. However, adding it would nevertheless require government departments to consider an additional principle that overlaps with the existing objective but is not as commonly understood. The fear is that that would cause confusion, resulting in poor policy outcomes. I hope I have adequately addressed the issue raised by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw it in his name.
I turn now to Amendment 20, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. First, I thank her for our discussions in the run up to Report. I understand the motivation behind the amendment, but the Government’s view remains that exempting some limited areas from the duty to have due regard provides vital flexibility in relation to finances, defence, and national security. I will take each of those exemptions in turn. Starting with the exemption on taxation, I understand the interest in removing this exemption, but Treasury Ministers want flexibility to alter the UK’s fiscal position and respond to the changing needs of, for example, the NHS, schools, the police and any number of other vital public services. Applying the environmental principles duty to taxation would be a constraint in cases where speed is required in altering the UK’s fiscal position, with limited environmental benefit. Nevertheless, the Government are committed to encouraging positive environmental outcomes through the tax system. An example of that in the Bill is our commitment to a new plastic packaging tax to encourage greater use of recycled plastic, which is estimated to achieve around a 40% increase in recycled plastic being used in 2022-23. The Treasury’s Green Book already mandates the consideration of natural capital, climate change and environmental impacts in spending. This applies to spending bids from departments, including at fiscal events.
Furthermore, the Government’s response to the Dasgupta review commits to delivering a “nature positive” future, ensuring that economic and financial decision-making, and the systems and institutions that underpin it, support the delivery of that future. I emphasise that the spending and allocation of resources exemption refers to central spending decisions only. In other words, once funds are distributed by the Treasury to other government departments, the principles will apply to how those funds are spent by departments. To be clear, even if we accepted this amendment, principles such as “the polluter pays” could not be applied to, for example, the allocation of overall departmental budgets. This is because allocating money between departments sits outside policy-making. In other words, this amendment would have no material impact in respect of the allocation of resources within government. To reiterate, however, the policy statement must still be considered at the level of individual policies that require spending, such as the design of new transport programmes or environmental subsidy schemes. This is where they can deliver real benefits.
Looking at the Armed Forces, defence and national security exemptions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, noted, they are also excluded from the duty. That is to provide maximum flexibility in respect of the nation’s protection and security. However, I shall address some of the concerns raised in Committee about the management of defence land. The primary function of the defence estate is to support our operations and maintain military capability. It provides homes for those who defend our country, offices for work, space for training, and conditions to prepare to meet the ever-changing threats that the UK faces. Defence land cannot be practically separated out: it is part of the MoD and touches on decisions across the Armed Forces, national security and defence.
The MoD’s concern is that if we were to impose a consideration of environmental principles on defence policies, or on MoD land, it could result in legal challenges which could slow critical policies or expose sensitive decisions to the public domain, threatening national security. However, the MoD already has statutory duties to protect the environment and the enormous amount of land that the MoD owns, and these are not altered by this exemption. The MoD is subject to all the environmental legislation that other landowners are required to adhere to: the habitats directive, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act and others.
Under Clauses 98 and 99, the MoD will be subject to two strengthened duties: to take action to conserve and enhance biodiversity and then to report on the action it has taken. The MOD already reports publicly and regularly on its contribution to improving the environment and SSSI conditions, and showcases its conservation initiatives through the sanctuary awards. The MoD will fully comply with new reporting requirements in the Bill by building on its existing approach. Its SSSIs are managed through a partnership with Natural England, which jointly implements integrated rural management plans to improve and maintain them. The percentage of MoD SSSIs in a favourable condition in England is higher than the national average.
I recently met Minister Quin, who has responsibility for this area. Although I am not able to secure the amendment for this House, I am assured that the MoD takes its responsibilities to the environment seriously. I am confident in the wider arrangements in place to support environmental improvement. I hope, therefore, I have gone some way, at least, to reassure noble Lords and I beg them not to press their amendments.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I thank all noble Lords who contributed to this short but very powerful debate and the Minister for his response. I particularly wish to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford for reminding us so powerfully of how human health and planet health are interrelated and how the sickness of our planet has real impacts on people’s well-being, particularly that of young people. It is certainly part of the epidemic of mental ill health, from which our society and the whole world are suffering. I also thank the right reverend Prelate for mentioning one of my favourite books, Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics. I commend it yet again, as I am sure I have before.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for her support for Amendment 19 and the noble Lord, Lord Khan, for his suggestion to the Minister. Indeed, I would extend that suggestion to all Members of your Lordships’ House. I take part regularly in Learn with the Lords, a chance to go out, through the mechanisms of your Lordships’ House, to speak to young people. It is a great opportunity, and it would be wonderful if more people took that up, particularly to speak about environmental issues.
I want to make one comment on the Minister’s response to Amendment 19. He suggested that “sustainable development” within the principles covers this. When we think about our current planning law and the way in which the term “sustainable development” is used in that and proposals for changes to our planning law, there is cause for grave concern about suggesting what sustainable development in our current legal framework might or might not achieve.
None the less, we have a lot to do and much pressure on our time. However, before I finish, I want to commend to your Lordships’ House the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Bird, has—one might call it fate—the number one slot in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills. The greater expanse of his Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill covers the issues that this amendment sought to address. I commend that Bill, engagement with it and support for it to all Members of your Lordships’ House. In the meantime, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 19.
Baroness Parminter
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the exceptions for armed forces, defence policy, tax, spending and resources from the requirement to have due regard to the policy statement on environmental principles.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have supported my amendment, and the Minister for his response. His comments on the Treasury reiterated the point about flexibility. This Government have got to decide either that nature is a macroeconomic consideration that they want to take seriously, or that it is not.
Secondly, regarding his comments about the MoD, when again, he reiterated the points about flexibility, we had no answer to the question asked in Committee by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. The MoD is obliged to take the requirements of the Climate Change Act into consideration; it should have to do the same for this Bill. It is not right that the Government are not prepared to do this. The noble Lord, Lord Khan, summed this up well when he said that by not taking forward this amendment, the Government are sending out all the wrong signals to businesses and the public. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on Lord Goldsmith’s next amendment to Clause 25.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I am pleased to open this group and speak to the amendments I have tabled, which respond to many of the concerns raised by noble Lords in Committee regarding the independence of the OEP. I also notify noble Lords that I outlined in a Written Ministerial Statement yesterday the full range of provisions already in place to ensure the OEP’s independence. I hope that it is a useful reference point for noble Lords and that it offers reassurance on the Government’s commitment to the independence of the OEP.
These amendments will increase parliamentary scrutiny of any guidance that the Secretary of State wishes to issue under Clause 25. They will afford Members in both Houses the opportunity to review and make recommendations regarding the draft guidance, to which the Secretary of State must respond before final guidance can be laid and have effect. This will provide additional parliamentary oversight, not only of any guidance issued by the Government but any issued by future Governments.
For parity, Northern Ireland Ministers have decided also to bring forward amendments to Schedule 3 to give the Northern Ireland Assembly the same opportunity to scrutinise any draft guidance issued relating to the OEP’s Northern Ireland enforcement functions.
As I have said before, the OEP has an unprecedented remit, with the ability to take enforcement action against all public authorities. It is for this reason that the Government feel that a guidance power is necessary to help ensure that the OEP continues to carry out its functions as intended. However, I understand the concern about the use of this power and hope that these amendments go some way to reassuring noble Lords that there will be an additional check on its use.
There is no question that the OEP must be impartial and independent but it should also be accountable to Ministers who are ultimately responsible for its use of public money. Any guidance issued must respect this important balance and I hope that this additional mechanism for parliamentary scrutiny will allay these concerns.
Finally, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, and the other members of the Constitution Committee for their recommendations on this matter. I beg to move.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 24 in this group is in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern.
In Committee, there was strong support from across the House for my amendment that would have removed the guidance clause from the Bill in order to ensure that the OEP was fully independent. In fact, I do not recall anyone making a coherent case for greater ministerial control over the OEP. I acknowledge and thank the Minister and the Secretary of State for their time in discussing this matter since Committee. I also thank the Secretary of State for his letter to my noble friend Lord Anderson of Ipswich and myself, dated 28 August.
I also acknowledge that the Government have made concessions in their own amendment to Clause 25 and that, furthermore, the importance of the independence of the OEP was reiterated by Minister Pow yesterday in a Written Statement and also by the noble Lord the Minister with the same Written Statement.
So why am I still pressing ahead with my amendment to replace Clause 25? It is simply this: if we must get one thing right in this Bill, it is the office for environmental protection. The OEP is the body that will ensure that the Government’s warm words about the environment are translated into action. The Minister himself could not have been clearer on Monday. When I asked who will hold the Government to account on the target of halting species decline, he replied that it was the office for environmental protection. Even with the government amendment to Clause 25, the OEP is not, in my view, sufficiently independent of Ministers for us to be confident that it will be able to do what is has been set up to do.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for introducing—or reintroducing—a similar amendment to one that a number of us supported in Committee. I also acknowledge that my noble friend Lord Goldsmith has indeed come forward with improvements in the form of Amendments 22 and 23. However, as my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, through the good offices of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has indicated, a number of us have serious issues about the financing and resources available to the OEP, and I am not sure that those have been entirely addressed at this stage.
I am very disappointed to see, in the government amendments that have been tabled, that the Government are intending to keep Clause 25 relating to the guidance. It is extremely important that, if we are going to have a new body with the essential responsibilities such as we are allocating to the OEP, it must be seen to be independent of government because its remit is, among other things, to hold the Government’s feet to the fire to ensure that they are implementing those parts of this Bill, the Agriculture Act and other Acts that have implications here.
When my noble friend sums up this little debate on this group of amendments, I hope that he will address how his Amendments 22 and 23 address my concern that the Government are seeking to micromanage the OEP. I am particularly attracted to proposed new subsection (4) in Amendment 24:
“In making or terminating appointments … the Secretary of State must obtain the consent of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Environmental Audit Committees of the House of Commons.”
As a former chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I obviously believe that these committees have a special role to play—and they have played that role extremely well, if I may say so, over the years. They are independent by nature and have had, historically, the duty to approve such appointments for Natural England and a whole host of other bodies to which the Government make appointments.
In addition to the concerns about the financing, the resources and the general independence of the OEP, in the terms so eloquently expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, we are asking this body to undertake a role of the level of importance as that attributed to the European Commission in implementing environmental policy, the whole raft of which is before us in the other parts of the Bill. I hope that my noble friend will take this opportunity to address my concerns. It cannot be the case that not only is the Secretary of State appointing the chairman of the OEP and the members of the board but is micromanaging in the form of the guidance set out in the current Clause 25. I am minded to support the contents of Amendment 24 and subsequent amendments that we will come on to. I hope that my noble friend will address these very real concerns that I and others have.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 30 in this group, which is similar in intent to Amendment 24 from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering; I well recall her efforts on the EFRA Select Committee in the other place, as I was a member of it, in holding the Government to account on a wide range of environmental and agricultural matters.
My amendment also relates to the vital matter of the OEP’s independence. Its scope addresses how this needs to be strengthened in Northern Ireland where, subject to the approval of the Northern Ireland Assembly, we all hope that the body will operate and flourish. My cross-party amendment, also signed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Suttie, would provide the OEP with the necessary discretion to undertake its functions, including the enforcement function, in Northern Ireland. It would remove the power for DAERA Ministers to provide guidance to the OEP on its enforcement activity and strengthen the appointment process for the Northern Ireland member on the OEP’s board, requiring this appointment to be subject to the consent of the Committee for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
These amendments, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, set out very eloquently in speaking to Amendment 24, are necessary if the new environmental governance framework that this Bill will establish in England and Northern Ireland is to be robust and effective over the long term. I well recall explaining in Committee why the guidance power was inappropriate in principle, as this afternoon’s debate has powerfully reiterated. I also set out the different administrative and political context in Northern Ireland, which serves only to increase concern about such a widely cast power. To recap, my concerns related to the power-sharing nature of the Executive, how cross-cutting matters are dealt with and the potential for the power to be misused against specific parties or public authorities. I also explained my concern about the blurring of accountability that can result from the power, not least because front-line environmental regulation is currently carried out by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, which resides within and is ultimately accountable to DAERA and its Minister.
In addressing the strong concerns raised by noble Lords across the House, the Government’s response has been to propose some extra procedure around the guidance power. I know the Minister has outlined those issues this evening through his various government amendments and in correspondence to us over the Recess, but those amendments fail to grasp the seriousness of the matters we have been raising. The amendments will not protect the OEP from directive guidance issued by an overly zealous Minister, nor do they require that any concerns that the Assembly might express be heeded. They are not an appropriate response to the depth and breadth of concern that many noble Lords outlined this afternoon and in Committee.
I carefully read the letter the Minister addressed to us, announcing the Government’s amendments, during the Recess. My understanding is that the Government’s noble objective of ensuring accountability for the proper use of public money and effective functioning of public bodies is driving the rationale for their approach to the OEP. As someone who has been involved in local and regional politics in Northern Ireland since 1985, I recognise and respect this. However, there are other and, I suggest, better ways to achieve the Government’s objective. It is about establishing the OEP as a non-departmental public body; the tailored review process which all such bodies undergo is a far more effective vehicle to discuss and address any issues regarding their operational effectiveness.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I will speak briefly. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that he brought the amendment back because it was the most important one for this Bill and, quite honestly, I agree. There are lots of very important amendments but, if we are going to have one, this must be it. I absolutely take the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, on Northern Ireland, and support both amendments.
It is obvious to anybody looking in from outside that the office for environmental protection must do things such as hitting the share price of a water company whenever it dumps sewage into our rivers. We must have an independent OEP that commissions research into the impact of pesticides on our wildlife and insects and hands it over to MPs so that they can actually challenge Ministers and the lobbyists in Whitehall. We need an OEP that can say a straightforward no to damaging developments, whether it is infrastructure or development, urban or rural. It should not be suggesting mitigation and greenwash, which is what could happen with such a toothless watchdog. This country needs an OEP that is a rottweiler and not a lapdog.
The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, I also support Amendment 24 and related amendments. Again, I quote the unprecedented statement made yesterday by the Archbishop, Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch:
“We stand before a harsh justice: biodiversity loss, environmental degradation and climate change are the inevitable consequences of our actions, since we have greedily consumed more of the earth’s resources than the planet can endure.”
For that reason, we cannot solve these complex problems through good intentions alone. Independent scrutiny is absolutely vital. Therefore, I support the maximum possible independence for the office for environmental protection. Action on climate change and biodiversity will be challenging politically for every Government over the next three decades. We will face many difficult decisions. It is essential to build in independent assessment and challenge for the medium and long term.
Over the last three years, I have had the privilege to be part of the board of the Government’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation—as it happens, alongside the new chair of the office for environmental protection, in whom I have every confidence in that major role. One of the major threads running through the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation’s work—which, I believe, has been excellent—has been a strong ambiguity about its independence from government in terms of budgets and the appointment of its chair and board. The questions were present at every meeting, whether spoken or unspoken, and consumed a significant amount of energy. Reading the political runes at any given moment was, on balance, a distraction from the CDEI’s vital task.
As has been said, the OEP needs to command national and international confidence for the objectivity of its advice and recommendations. I join many other voices in urging the Government to build in greater independence along the lines of these amendments.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, I just want to intervene briefly to stress the importance of Amendment 24 and the associated amendment relating to Northern Ireland.
I recognise that the Minister himself and the Government’s own amendments in part reflect the concern about the independence of the OEP. I welcome in broad terms the letter I received from the Minister although I have to say that yesterday was probably not the best day to receive a letter whose first reassurance was that it was all going to be all right because it is in the Conservative Party manifesto.
However, these reassurances do not go anywhere near as far as the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. If the Government do not accept these amendments, there is a much bigger story than one about appointments and guidance. In many ways, the Bill is a great Bill and I thoroughly support the bulk of it. However, if we do not accept the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, or if the Minister does not agree to bring forward something very like it at Third Reading, then the credibility of the Bill—all its 145 clauses and 25 schedules—is at stake. Ultimately the effectiveness of all the good parts of the Bill depends on us having an office for environmental protection that is objective and independent and a system of environmental regulation and enforcement that is itself effective and independent.
As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, post-Brexit we were promised a system of environmental regulation that would be at least as effective as the past EU regime when we had the Commission checking on the actions of member states and our public bodies. If the office for environmental protection—the body overseeing what is arguably the most important job of the Government: the long-term future of our environment —is not seen as independent, it will not be respected. It will be challenged and much of the good work that is behind this Bill stands to fail.
As I have said, the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is not just about procedural niceties in making appointments. It is about the credibility and effectiveness of everything we are working on in the Bill and in this House. I beg the House to support the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and my noble friend Lady Ritchie.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I share the view around the House that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, have made a compelling case for their amendments on a fundamental issue. It would be of enormous assistance if the Minister when he comes to reply would identify which part of Amendment 24 he objects to. Is it really the Government’s case that the OEP should not have
“complete discretion in the carrying out of its functions”?
Is that the Government’s case? I would be surprised and very disappointed if it were. If the Government accept that the OEP should have complete discretion, surely a matter of this importance should be in the Bill.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, no Minister likes an authority such as the OEP, because the Minister is undoubtedly convinced that his policy is absolutely right. However, when one stops being a Minister and looks back, one realises the importance of bodies such as the OEP.
I think my concern was summed up beautifully by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, when he said that this is the one thing we have to get right. We were promised a totally independent body, equivalent to that which operated when we were in the EU. I accept that the Government should not be fined for not doing the right thing, but the OEP not only is—but has to be seen to be—totally independent. The Bill as drafted at the moment does not cover that. I hope that my noble friend will not be intransigent and stand out against this amendment but will go back for one more go with the other people in the department and the Secretary of State, understanding the enormous support there is in this House for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. It would be so much better if the Government solved this problem rather than having a Division. My noble friend was very good to me on my amendment on soil and has made a promise; I hope that he will be able to do the same thing again.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, I will not detain the House for long because the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has made a compelling case for his amendment, to which I was very happy to add my name. I just want to add a reflection on the point which I think all of us feel very strongly about. There will sometimes be occasions when the OEP will have to take Ministers to task. There has to be not only a degree of separation between the OEP and the Government but also public confidence in that degree of separation.
I ask the Minister to reflect on the fact that the public will see what is happening in Scotland, where the body they are setting up has no such curtailment of its powers. Indeed, Environmental Standards Scotland has the powers to take the steps it considers appropriate to secure public authorities’ compliance with environmental law. The public need to see that there is independence between the Executive and this body. If they look to Scotland and see what is happening, that is another reason to support the case that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has made so compellingly. Therefore, I support him and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. If they should be pushed to a vote, our Benches will support them.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to support Amendments 24 and 30, to which I have added my name. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, as ever, has set out persuasively why we think Amendment 24 is so important. As he said, a strong, effective and trusted OEP is essential to underpin all the other measures in the Bill. As the OEP will be scrutinising the Government’s compliance with environmental law, it is vital that those points of separation, as well as interface, are set out clearly from the start. We cannot afford to fudge the relationship, which, I am sorry to say, the government amendments attempt to do.
Our amendment would take out Clause 25, which allows the Secretary of State to issue guidance to the OEP, and replace it with one that sets out that the OEP has “complete discretion” in its enforcement policy, exercising its enforcement functions and preparing a budget. It would also make it clear that the non-executive appointments must be approved by the relevant parliamentary committees.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I begin with Amendment 24 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and will take each of the issues raised by his amendment in turn.
Clause 25 does not provide the Secretary of State with any power to direct the OEP or to intervene in decision-making about specific cases. Indeed, the Bill states that the Secretary of State must have regard to the OEP’s independence. In fact, more than that, the OEP is required by the Bill to act objectively and impartially. So, it is not a matter of micromanaging the OEP; indeed, that is not possible within the context of the Bill we have here today. The Government have confidence that the OEP will develop an effective and proportionate enforcement policy. However, as the Secretary of State is ultimately responsible to Parliament for the OEP, this guidance power is an important safeguard for accountability and to help ensure that the OEP continues to carry out its functions as intended. We have always been clear that the OEP should focus on the most serious, strategic cases and that this guidance power will not change that.
The Government have committed to provide a five-year indicative budget for the OEP, ring-fenced within each spending review period, to give the OEP greater financial certainty. This is an administrative matter and is not appropriate for primary legislation, but other bodies with multiannual funding commitments, such as the Office for Budget Responsibility, do not have this set out in legislation.
Regarding appointments to the OEP’s board, the Secretary of State is accountable to Parliament for the department’s public appointments. Therefore, Parliament can call on the Secretary of State to justify appointments at any time. The appointment of the OEP chair-designate, as noble Lords know, has already been made following a pre-appointment scrutiny hearing conducted by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Environmental Audit Select Committees. This process ensures fairness, accountability and independence, and I am happy to confirm our intention that future chair appointments will follow a similar process. All public appointees will ultimately remain accountable to Parliament.
Parliament may also choose to call a member of the OEP board to provide evidence of their suitability for the position after they have taken the post. However, as Ministers are accountable and responsible to Parliament for public appointments, it is appropriate that they retain the ability to make that final choice.
Amendment 30 was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. I hope she is at least partially reassured that the Northern Ireland department will be subject to the same constraints as the Secretary of State when exercising the guidance power. Northern Ireland Ministers have decided to bring forward the parallel amendments that I have presented today, and we will continue to work closely with them to ensure the best level of environmental protection across the devolved nations.
The Government carefully considered your Lordships’ comments in Committee, as we developed the amendments we have tabled. We are confident that our current position will set the OEP up to be genuinely independent and effective. I suspect we will have to test the opinion of the House but, nevertheless, I beg noble Lords to withdraw their amendments.
Lord Krebs (CB)
I am sorry; I would like to make a few comments about Amendment 24. I thought the agreement was to Amendments 22 and 23.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
I am just putting the amendment. As far as I am aware, Amendment 22 has passed, so we now come to Amendment 23.
Amendment 23
“(6) Before issuing the guidance, the Secretary of State must—(a) prepare a draft, and(b) lay the draft before Parliament.(7) If before the end of the 21 day period—(a) either House of Parliament passes a resolution in respect of the draft guidance, or(b) a committee of either House of Parliament, or a joint committee of both Houses, makes recommendations in respect of the draft guidance,the Secretary of State must produce a response and lay it before Parliament.(8) The Secretary of State may prepare and lay before Parliament the final guidance, but not before—(a) if subsection (7) applies, the day on which the Secretary of State lays the response required by that subsection, or(b) otherwise, the end of the 21 day period.(9) The final guidance has effect when it is laid before Parliament.(10) The Secretary of State must publish the guidance when it comes into effect.(11) The “21 day period” is the period of 21 sitting days beginning with the first sitting day after the day on which the draft guidance is laid under subsection (6).(12) “Sitting day” means a day on which both Houses of Parliament sit.(13) The Secretary of State may revise the guidance at any time (and subsections (6) to (12) apply in relation to any revised guidance).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides for Parliamentary scrutiny of draft guidance under Clause 25.
Lord Krebs
“OEP independence
(1) The OEP has complete discretion in the carrying out of its functions, including in—(a) preparing its enforcement policy,(b) exercising its enforcement functions, and(c) preparing and publishing its budget.(2) At the start of each period of multi-annual funding and no later than 1 April 2023, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament, and publish, a statement setting out the multi-annual budget which they intend to provide to the OEP.(3) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament, and publish, a statement responding to any request from the OEP for additional funding due to a change in the body’s responsibilities or functions, within three months of that request being received.(4) In making or terminating appointments under paragraph 1 and paragraph 5 of Schedule 1, the Secretary of State must obtain the consent of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Environmental Audit Committees of the House of Commons.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment aims to ensure that the OEP is as independent as possible.
Lord Krebs (CB)
I apologise for my earlier interjection, out of order. I thank the Minister for his response to my amendment and Amendment 30, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. I also thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this short but interesting debate.
I reiterate what I said at the beginning and has been said by a number of other contributors to this debate: if we get it wrong on the office for environmental protection, the whole edifice of the Bill could fall. All the things the Bill attempts to achieve will, in the end, depend on having a strong, independent, powerful office for environmental protection. If we get it wrong, people out there who observe what Parliament is up to and care about the environment will not understand why we failed.
At the moment, the arrangement is rather like having a whistleblower who is told by the boss which areas he or she is not allowed to investigate. That is simply unacceptable. Unfortunately, we seem to be involved in a dialogue of the deaf. We keep on repeating the message, and it is strong and not from one particular party or group in the House—the view is held widely—and the Government, unfortunately, reiterate the same points over and over again. I feel the time has come to test the opinion of the House and I wish to do so.
“(2A) The OEP may include in the application for an environmental review a request that the court also review additional alleged conduct constituting a failure to comply with environmental law where—(a) the additional conduct is similar to, or related to, the conduct described in the decision notice, and(b) the additional conduct is conduct of—(i) the public authority to whom the decision notice was given, or(ii) another public authority, where that additional conduct indicates there may be systemic failures to comply with environmental law.(2B) Where subsection (2A) applies—(a) the OEP need not have given an information notice or a decision notice to the public authority to whom the additional conduct relates in respect of that additional conduct, and(b) the court may review that additional conduct if it thinks it reasonable to do so.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment allows greater flexibility to consider multiple instances of misconduct rolled up into one single application, rather than issuing separate proceedings in respect of each individual incident.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to take these amendments before the dinner break. Like other nobles Lords, I will be as brief as I can.
The purpose of these cross-party Amendments, 26, 27 and 28, in the now-familiar dentistry metaphor, is to provide the OEP with a working set of teeth. They do not give enforcement powers to the OEP itself, they do not allow it to claim damages and they do not replicate the fining power that gave the European Commission the big stick that it used so effectively to concentrate minds. All they do is allow the High Court its usual discretion to enforce the environmental duties of public bodies by the grant of appropriate remedies. That is a modest aim but also, I suggest, a necessary one if the OEP is to achieve even baseline credibility, whether at home or internationally, as an enforcement body.
The “key facts” note on the OEP, circulated earlier today, correctly states that the OEP will be able to bring legal proceedings against public authorities but is less forthcoming about when it can do that and to what purpose. Three other key facts, not dwelled upon in the Government’s note, lie behind these three amendments. First, the OEP is unique among interested persons and bodies in being disqualified from bringing proceedings for judicial review, save in urgent cases. My Amendment 28 seeks to correct that.
Secondly, the bespoke process of environmental review, designed for the OEP to keep public bodies up to the mark, is available only after each individual breach of duty and each repetition of such a breach has undergone the cumbersome pre-litigation process set out in Clauses 32 to 37. My Amendment 26 would introduce greater flexibility and indeed speed into that process.
Thirdly and most significantly, Clause 38(8), the subject of my Amendment 27, introduces to environmental review a presumption, unique I think in our law, against the grant of any meaningful remedy. Victory for the OEP is rewarded only by a statement of non-compliance, which has no legal effect and which the Minister accepted in Committee is “not … considered a remedy”.
Lord Duncan of Springbank (Con)
My Lords, I am not a natural rebel but I stand in rebellion today. I am troubled by what I see before me. It is always difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, because he has nailed all the key elements. I seek not to repeat but rather to associate myself with what he has said.
I will draw attention to only one aspect. The Explanatory Notes, which, very helpfully, were sent out earlier today, drew attention to one aspect: that the smooth functioning of the planning system depends on investors and developers having confidence that, past a certain point, permission will be upheld. I cannot help but think that we are looking at the smooth functioning of the planning system rather than of the environment, and that would cause me some unease.
For that reason, I am afraid that I must support the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and will continue to do so until we can achieve a change, which I believe is both necessary and proper.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I spoke in support of the amendment in Committee, and I think it is right that I comment on the slightly changed amendment before us. I support it entirely and there are elements in it I would have thought the Government would welcome, particularly proposed new subsection 8A(b), where the court has to have regard to
“the likelihood that the grant of a remedy would cause”,
among other things,
“any detriment to good administration.”
This is a very carefully drafted amendment. It has all the elements one would expect to find in a Bill dealing with the subject we are concerned with. It is also looking at the interests of justice, which any court would want to do in any case. I support the amendment.
Lord Garnier (Con)
My Lords, we are all being very diffident this evening. I apologise because I did not speak at Second Reading or in Committee on this Bill, but I am as concerned as my noble friend Lord Duncan and the two noble Lords on the Cross-Benches about the way this Bill is going to deal with this particular subject. Unless this amendment is made to the Bill, we will be the poorer for it.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
My Lords, I spoke to and signed the amendment in Committee. I entirely support the new wording. I said in Committee that the judges could be trusted. The Government might have had a little doubt about some of it but, with the changes to the clause, I cannot see what greater protection any Government could legitimately seek.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, I added my name to this amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and we wholeheartedly support it. My particular concern is around the planning issue, which the noble Lord, Lord Duncan of Springbank, has rightly articulated. My worry is that the Government have introduced the provisions they have because they fear that there is currently too much weight given to environmental protection in the planning system. That is something we must oppose. In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said that it
“biases the scales of justice”—[Official Report, 30/6/21; col. 810.]
and changes the balance away from the environment. That is the problem and that is why we on these Benches support this amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I add my voice in support of these amendments. We very much concur with the arguments put forward this evening. We agree that these proposals are quite modest. I think the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has been quite modest in his redrafting. I hope, as I said in the previous group, that if these amendments are passed this evening, the Government will use the opportunity to have a proper dialogue with those who have been working on these issues. I am sure the Minister has got the sense of the strength of feeling on this and we hope that we will not see these amendments in any shape or form coming back at a later stage. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their brisk contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Khan, is looking hungry. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Anderson of Ipswich and Lord Krebs, for their engagement throughout the various stages, including a number of discussions with me and separate discussions with officials. I have carefully considered the government position on these clauses and I hope I can persuade noble Lords that the approach we are taking is the right one.
First, on Amendment 26, the Government support the intention to ensure that the OEP’s enforcement procedures resolve issues as efficiently and effectively as possible. However, it is only right and appropriate that before the court is asked to examine issues in an environmental review, the OEP has given the public authority adequate opportunity to respond and to remedy the problem directly. This follows a similar principle to the pre-action protocols which must be followed for other types of legal proceedings, including, for example, judicial review, as well as personal injury and clinical negligence proceedings, where issues are set out in writing prior to court action.
Many issues will be resolved through constructive dialogue in the course of an OEP investigation and through the serving of an information notice. That is what we want. Where required, this would then be followed by a decision notice. This will ensure that potential failures are resolved at the earliest possible opportunity, avoiding the need for time-consuming and costly litigation in most cases, and better enabling the OEP to drive systemic change.
Turning to Amendment 27, I reiterate the importance of the existing provision under Clause 38(8). We have to recognise the unique context in which environmental reviews will be occurring, potentially many months after decisions were taken and outside normal judicial review time limits. Providing protection for third parties who may have acted in good faith on the basis of certain decisions is therefore essential to protect fairness and certainty, values that lie at the heart of our civil justice system.
As I have outlined before, judicial discretion alone would not be sufficient to provide this certainty, as the strict time limits to bring a judicial review themselves demonstrate. We do not solely rely on the courts to balance the impacts of delay against other factors in this context, as the resulting uncertainty would be too great and unfair on third parties. Environmental reviews will be taking place outside judicial review time limits, so alternative protections are necessary.
Furthermore, the provision in Clause 38 to protect third-party rights is not novel. Indeed, it is an extension of the existing position for challenges—for example, under Section 31(6) of the Senior Courts Act 1981. Some noble Lords have argued today and in previous debates that the provision in Clause 38(8) renders the OEP’s enforcement framework redundant but that is absolutely not the case. It is important to note that restrictions in Clause 38(8) are unlikely to be triggered in most cases that the OEP will take forward.
In response to comments by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, the Bill guides the OEP to focus on cases of national importance. Therefore, individual local planning decisions most likely to impact third parties are unlikely to be pursued. Even if they were pursued, the Bill sets out that the court is restricted from granting remedies only where to do so would cause “substantial” hardship or “substantial” prejudice to the rights of any person, or be detrimental to good administration. The court will have discretion to consider and apply the test as set out in the Bill, not Ministers or the Government.
Cases where remedies could require a change in policy or in the way in which legislation is to be interpreted would be unlikely to invoke those safeguards. Those are the cases that we expect the OEP to focus on. Take, for example, an alleged failure by government to meet a statutory environmental target. A court could consider granting a mandatory order requiring government action, and although that may have some impact on third parties such as local businesses, it is unlikely to amount to substantial hardship or prejudice. As I have tried to explain before, an individual or business must reasonably expect some changes in an evolving regulatory landscape. But that is different from the question of the status of an existing planning permission, for example, where there is a greater expectation of certainty. As such, the existing provision is appropriate, and this proposed amendment could cause damaging uncertainty.
Finally, I turn to Amendment 28. Clause 39(1) is vital to providing clarity when the OEP is considering enforcement action. The concern is that removing the urgency condition would create confusion and uncertainty as to which route the OEP should pursue for any given case. To enable the OEP to bring standard judicial reviews during the normal time limits would limit the possibility of the wider benefits that could have been delivered through the OEP’s bespoke notice stages.
By liaising directly with public authorities to investigate and resolve alleged serious breaches of environmental law in a targeted manner, the OEP will be able to drive systemic environmental improvements. This will lead to better outcomes for complainants, the public and the environment, wherever possible without the need to resort to costly or time-consuming litigation. Unlike judicial review, there are no time limits in which the OEP can apply for an environmental review. This is to allow the OEP sufficient time and opportunity to resolve the issue through its notice processes. It will give complainants the confidence to attempt to resolve matters through the internal complaints procedures of public authorities in the knowledge that, if the matters were not resolved, they could bring them to the attention of the OEP, who could bring legal challenge if necessary. The proposed amendment would therefore lead to unnecessary litigation, which would ultimately limit the OEP’s ability to effectively focus its activities on holding public authorities to account on serious breaches of environmental law and achieving long-term systemic change. I should again emphasise that the Government have taken considerable time to consider these matters, but we are confident in our position.
Before I conclude, I should emphasise that the OEP’s enforcement powers are different from, and will operate more effectively than, those of the European Commission. That point has been made by a number of noble Lords as a counterpoint. The OEP will be able to liaise directly with the public body in question to investigate and resolve alleged serious breaches of environmental law in a more targeted and timely manner. In environmental review, the OEP can apply for judicial review remedies such as mandatory quashing orders, subject to the appropriate safeguards, which will work to ensure compliance with environmental law. The EU Court of Justice cannot issue those kinds of remedies to member states.
I hope that I have at least gone some way towards reassuring noble Lords and I urge them to withdraw or not move their amendments.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this short if somewhat one-sided debate and, of course, to the Minister for his characteristically courteous and speedily delivered response.
In view of the time, I do not seek to summarise the excellent points made in support of these amendments. I simply pick up one point made by the Minister when he spoke of the need for certainty, which, as our Amendment 27 accepts, is an important factor in the court’s discretion. The need for certain outcomes needs to be balanced against the need for lawful outcomes, which is I think the point that the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, was making; that balance can be performed by the courts only in the individual case and not by preordaining the result.
Having listen carefully to the Minister, I see a stark contrast between the wish to portray these clauses as an effective series of remedies and the reality that they fall well short. I regret that the Minister has not been able to give the requested assurances and, for that reason, I propose to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 27.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
We are considering Amendment 26.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
I am so sorry. I meant to move the amendment but put only Amendment 27 to the vote. I must apologise that I did not rehearse myself in the proper language.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
I only need the noble Lord to move formally Amendment 27.
Amendment 27
Lord Anderson of Ipswich
“(8) Where the court makes a statement of non-compliance it may grant any remedy that may be granted by it on a judicial review other than damages.(8A) In determining whether it would be in the interests of justice to grant a remedy, the court must have regard to—(a) the nature and consequences of the authority’s failure to comply with environmental law, and(b) the likelihood that the grant of a remedy would cause—(i) substantial hardship to, or substantial prejudice to the rights of, any person other than the authority, or(ii) any detriment to good administration.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the restrictions on the discretion of a court to grant a remedy where the court has found there to be a breach of environmental law, while requiring the court to have regard to relevant factors. The bar on awarding damages to the OEP is retained.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
On this amendment, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
““25A OEP independence in Northern Ireland(1) The OEP has complete discretion in the carrying out of its functions in Northern Ireland, including in—(a) preparing its enforcement policy,(b) exercising its enforcement functions, and(c) preparing and publishing its budget.(2) In making and terminating appointments under paragraph 2(2B) and paragraph 5(8B) of Schedule 1, the Northern Ireland Department must obtain the consent of the Committee for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs of the Northern Ireland Assembly.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment aims to ensure that the OEP is as independent as possible in Northern Ireland.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
Amendments 31 and 32 have been pre-empted so I shall not be calling them.
Universal Credit: People with Mental Health Problems
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Davies of Brixton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of (1) the report by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute Set Up To Fail: Making it Easier to Get Help with Universal Credit, published on 26 May, and (2) any barriers to people with mental health problems receiving support for the management of their Universal Credit accounts.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, one in four of us will experience a problem with our mental health at some stage in our lives, and we know that concurrent financial problems almost always make the problem worse. In particular, experiencing a mental health problem makes it much harder for people to manage their universal benefit account, which is, of course, the background to this debate.
This is a circular problem. If we can improve the support that people with mental health problems receive in handling their finances, we not only help the individuals themselves but creditors and, not least, the National Health Service. We must therefore welcome the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute’s report, Set Up to Fail. Based on detailed research, it is compelling reading. My question, therefore, is: what will the Government do in response?
I am not going to talk about the rights and wrongs of universal benefit today; there will be other opportunities. I shall just concentrate on what we need to do to help people through the current system. But even in a reformed system, the same problems would need to be considered.
The challenge is that people with a range of mental health problems, such as low energy levels, memory loss or difficulties in dealing with complex situations, find it hard to manage their universal benefit account. Claimants report significant mental distress when faced with requirements such as preparing for work, responding to messages and attending appointments, which can be problematic to complete when you are on your own, or simply feeling helpless when dealing with complex situations. Again, we have the circle of cause and effect.
Any failure to navigate the system can have devastating consequences. Sanctions, deductions or lost entitlements mean that people cannot meet their basic living costs, which can further aggravate mental health problems and delay recovery. Faced with these challenges, people with mental health problems are bound to rely on support from family or friends—so-called third parties: typically, but not only, their spouse. From the institute’s survey, we know that more than half of the people affected have needed help from family or friends to manage their account, and more than one in four always or often need such help.
People needing help with their universal benefit are not asking for much; they just want a benefits system that is accessible and empowers them to get support from loved ones when they need it. I spoke to Gary, who told me that he just wanted a little help and some sympathy. He has worked all his life, but now he and his family rely on universal benefit. With his depression, he struggles to cope with everyday life, including managing his universal benefit account. He has help from his wife, but he finds they face a wall of complications.
Based on the lived experience of people in the survey, we know that getting third-party help with managing their universal benefit is confusing and challenging. Third-party help needs explicit consent, which requires claimants to set out precisely what information they want to be shared and what tasks they would like assistance to resolve. The fundamental problem is that the system for giving this consent requires people to undertake the same tasks that led them to need help in the first place. If people in receipt of universal benefit cannot navigate the main system, they are unlikely to be able to navigate the procedures required for accessing help and support. It could all be so much easier.
Without straightforward systems for delegating consent to another person, people find it a struggle to get the assistance they need, compounding the risk of harmful financial and mental health consequences. Almost half of the people in the survey who had relied on help with their universal benefit management had used informal workarounds, such as sharing their usernames and passwords to get the support they wanted. This is risky in itself and should not be necessary. Third-party support should be more straightforward to use, while maximising the control of the people in receipt of the benefit.
I know that some noble Lords are concerned about changes that would increase opportunities for economic coercion, but this is a problem for everyone with universal benefit. The institute argues that giving people more choice and flexibility over what aspects of the account they share with another person and for how long would increase the protection that people can exercise over their account.
The report recognises that the DWP has committed to look at how the consent procedures could be improved, but with the pandemic leading to worse mental health, unemployment forecast to rise and many of those transferring likely to have additional needs, delivering third-party support that lets people get the help they need must be an urgent priority for the Government.
What exactly needs to be done? From the report, we know that those affected want the process to get third-party support to be easier to understand and navigate. Too often, people who need third-party support are not aware of how to arrange it. The institute’s report sets out relatively simple steps for the Government that would make it easier for people to get the support from others to manage their account. This can make a big difference in reducing the stress and difficulty that too many people with mental health problems face when navigating the system. It is not rocket science. First, there are some relatively simple changes that make it easier to designate where help can be provided and who can provide it. Ideas include clearer, more consistent prompts on what information is required when navigating the computer application and drop-down menus clarifying what information claimants wish to share and for how long.
Then there are changes to facilitate how the designated third parties can provide the necessary help both quickly and efficiently. Suggestions in the report include developing a system of view-only access for authorised third parties, which would allow claimants to share specific screens with a friend or family member; introducing a system of duplicate notifications to authorised third parties, alerting both the claimant and their third party about new messages or tasks within their account; and improving the current appointeeship system, which grants great power to third parties. It would be better to make this more proportionate and tailored to the specific tasks and challenges that individuals face while managing their universal benefit.
What is the Government’s assessment of the barriers that people with mental health problems face in the management of their universal benefit accounts and, in particular, the excellent report by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, Set Up To Fail? I look forward to the Minister’s reply. Will she agree to meet with the institute to discuss these issues and its valuable work?
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton for initiating this important debate. I can think of few worse fates than being mentally ill and having to rely on universal credit. Even with the best advice and practical help, there is a 7% chance of a delayed payment and increased stress and anxiety—and, of course, the amounts are totally inadequate.
Let me say first that this is not a straightforward issue. Third-party help can be a vital lifeline, provided it is of the right kind. We have all heard how vulnerable people are targeted by drug gangs so that their addresses and resources can be used to further their trade, so it is quite right that any third-party status should be checked on a continuing basis.
However, additional checks should not become additional barriers. It is incumbent on the Government to remove those barriers. Do the Government know what percentage of claimants with mental health issues have lost entitlement or faced deduction or been sanctioned as a result of failing to complete satisfactorily a UC claim? What response do the Government give to the Information Commissioner’s Office about improving routes to set up third-party access? How does the department identify those who are mentally ill? Cases must be on the increase with the pandemic, but not everyone is willing to speak about their problem or even acknowledge it. Without appropriate third-party support, how do the Government decide who is vulnerable? They have indicated that the department gives mental health training to staff. Do we know the extent of this training? Has any study been carried out on the effectiveness of this training, and what outcomes have been identified for claimants?
It is good that the Government allocated funds to Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland, but it was never going to be enough if it did not include a continuing role after the initial claim. Would the Government consider how best to tackle this by asking the CABs for their requirements?
In preparing for this debate, I looked at the Social Security Advisory Committee’s independent report How DWP Involves Disabled People When Developing or Evaluating Programmes That Affect Them—occasional paper 25. It concentrates on physical disability and there is no specific mention of mental health, but I feel sure there are some common themes: the need for relevant groups to be involved, to feel they are being listened to, to improve transparency about future thinking and improving trust. In other words, no decision about us without us. Does the DWP have specific networks with mental health organisations, that are about improving access and transparency? Are they as well developed as the networks for physical disability, given that mental health has always been a Cinderella service and lacks resources? Mental health is sometimes linked with drug addiction and homelessness. Does the DWP have specific policies to identify these links and consult the relevant organisations about how to facilitate claims? Are the Armed Forces veterans’ organisations consulted? So many homeless people seem to have served in the forces and also to have mental health problems.
Finally, on a slightly lighter note, I pay tribute to Martin Lewis’s work in this area. If the Minister is in a position to hand out sainthoods, I think he would be a good candidate.
Baroness Drake (Lab)
My Lords, the question put in this debate is not about attacking Universal Credit or the commitment of the staff at the DWP. It is about a particular group of vulnerable people, whose vulnerabilities mean they cannot fully or effectively engage with the processes and procedures for managing their Universal Credit account and what further action the DWP can take to address what is a distressing problem. Not engaging effectively brings real detriment: sanctions, deductions, lost entitlements, decline in living standards, increased stress and decline in well-being.
Many have recognised the commitment and efforts of DWP staff during the Covid pandemic, particularly in the early months when so many applications were processed. The DWP was an important part of the solution to managing and surviving the pandemic. It has to be recognised that that would not have been possible without utilising the IT systems and digital engagement, given the volumes of claims and the constraints on other forms of contact.
Universal Credit is now digital by default. Indeed, the advances in technology allowed the rapid expansion of digital engagement between businesses and businesses, businesses and consumers, service providers and users, which was fundamental to sustaining the economy over the last 18 months. But digital engagement, particularly when combined with complex processes, can pose problems for those with mental health problems, which are further exacerbated if the decision-making journey is difficult to comprehend or navigate. This is evidenced in the provision of court services, public services and, indeed, commercial services. Increasingly, in the commercial world of financial services, companies are recognising the need to adapt their processes to deal with vulnerable customers, including those with mental health problems, who, sadly, are growing in number. Those difficulties in navigation are spelled out very clearly in the Set Up to Fail report published by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute. The report is particularly compelling because it takes evidence directly from the people who have mental health problems, the majority of whom said they simply could not manage their account without help from family and friends.
The difficulties emphasised in the report include claimants not being told that they can give permission for someone to help manage their account, not being told how to make that request and, when they do, having to specify which exact tasks they want a third party to help them with, without any guidance given on how to do that. Of course the claimants could ring the DWP, but more than half say that they have severe difficulties in using the phone precisely because of their mental health problems, so you have a circle of lockout. The report describes this as an absurd situation whereby those who want to nominate a person to help them have to navigate complex and unclear processes similar to those which they needed help with in the first instance—a Catch-22.
The DWP has introduced measures to assist those with mental health problems but the report argues that they are not sufficient. Many with mental health problems lack social, emotional and financial resilience, and the welfare system should be a critical line of defence for them which minimises the barriers to mitigating that. Many such claimants struggle on alone, incurring the negative consequences. My noble friend Lord Davies detailed what needs to be done to assist claimants, particularly with regard to obtaining explicit consent for another person to help them manage their account.
However, like my noble friend Lady Donaghy, I stress the importance of considering that recommendation of extending the help-to-claim service through the citizens advice bureau to also provide a help-to-manage service for vulnerable claimants with a universal credit account. Managing the needs of vulnerable claimants does not cease when they open an account or when it is set up, and indeed their mental health problems may occur after an account has been opened. People’s circumstances change and the population with these problems changes. There are other publicly funded help and guidance services that do not apply such a cut-off criterion. It seems such an arbitrary thing to do given the nature of the problem that must be addressed. An extension of the service would also help to protect those vulnerable to coercive behaviour, for whom explicit consent for a family member to assist may not be their desired answer to the problems that they face.
The incidence of mental health problems is increasing, even more so in the exceptional circumstances prevailing in today’s world, and if those with vulnerabilities are not given more help and guidance then a welfare system that is intended to support them could contribute to a further decline in their mental and financial well-being. If the department can introduce further measures to assist claimants with mental health problems then, as my noble friend Lord Davies argued, they can trigger a virtuous circle of preventing people becoming more stressed and unwell, assist the NHS, contribute to the community, and increase the prospects of people’s engagement with the world of work.
I have three questions for the Minister. Will the Government further consider introducing measures to improve the experience of claimants with mental health problems? Will the Government consider the recommendations in Set Up to Fail, particularly those directed at improving and simplifying the process whereby explicit consent to third-party support in managing a universal credit account can be secured? Will the Minister commit to taking away the proposal that the remit and role of the help-to-claim service is extended to provide a help-to-manage service for these most vulnerable clients?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton on securing this debate and on his introduction to it, and all my noble friends who have contributed this evening. I also commend all those involved with the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute for their work in high- lighting these issues.
Ever since its inception, I have had a steady stream of people telling me how hard they found it to navigate the online pathway to getting and maintaining universal credit. This is a particular problem for certain categories, such as those without ready access to the internet and those for whom their mental health makes the process of applying seem insuperable. If they do push through, it can aggravate their mental health. When I raise this, Ministers normally say that most people have no trouble at all. I have never been entirely persuaded by that, but even if I were, it does not seem grounds for not doing more to help the rest. After all, even a small percentage of 6 million people is a lot of people; it is not a small percentage. This report suggests that
“nearly 1.3 million UC claimants … report experiencing significant mental distress”.
For them, the requirements of UC are difficult to complete on their own.
As my noble friend Lady Drake said, most UC claimants with mental health problems who were surveyed say they have needed help from family and friends to manage their accounts at some point, and a quarter have needed it often. However, involving others is not straightforward because of the issues around explicit consent, which my noble friend Lord Davies explained very well. As both he and my noble friend Lady Drake have said, the whole process of delegating explicit consent online or over the phone ironically requires claimants to navigate the very tasks which led to them needing help in the first place. Any IT specialist will tell you that, if you make security issues too tough, people just find workarounds. My noble friend Lord Davies is quite right, as half of respondents simply shared their login details with somebody else. That is not helping in any way, so we have to find a better way of dealing with this.
The report notes that
“Symptoms of mental health problems can make it harder”
to make and maintain a universal credit claim. It talks quite interestingly about pain points in the UC system where a significant number of claimants started to struggle. These included, for example, trying to understand how their awards were calculated and which changes in circumstances they had to tell the DWP about. Confusion there is really dangerous as a failure to report a relevant change could lead to underpayments or overpayments and even being prosecuted—so that is really bad. It also included trying to challenge deductions or sanctions and renegotiating their claimant commitment.
The charity Rethink Mental Illness did a little briefing for this debate. It agrees that third-party access is vital, since its mental health and money advisers report that a lot of people severely impacted by mental illness cannot access their online journal. I realise that privacy is really important and appropriate safeguards need to be put in place. Yet, when I raised via a Written Question that both partners can see any messages exchanged by either one of them with a work coach on their journal and that this could be an issue in relation to domestic abuse because it had been raised by a claimant, I got a fairly dusty answer saying simply that people should not share sensitive information. Of course, all kinds of information can be sensitive in the context of domestic abuse. I think we are getting stuck both ways. Has the DWP investigated whether there could be a more nuanced way of treating issues around access to information which provides more protection for privacy, supports those needing assistance and works for those with fluctuating capacity? That is one of the issues.
I will be interested to hear the response to the question from my noble friend Lady Donaghy about CABx and the roles they might be able to play. I thought that was a marvellous speech and I commend all three of my colleagues for some very serious research and work that has gone into preparing for tonight. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to my noble friend Lady Drake’s question about the idea of a new help-to-manage service. If the DWP invested the best part of £40 million in the help-to-claim service, it is an awful shame to spend that getting people on to universal credit if they then fall off because they cannot manage their claims. What are the Government doing about that?
I have a couple of quick questions for the Minister. First, does she accept the principle that a significant minority of people find the universal credit system difficult to navigate, both in terms of applying and maintaining their claim? I think it is helpful for the debate for her to answer that question directly. Does she accept that there is a problem for a significant minority in claiming and staying on?
Secondly, does she think the situation will get worse with managed migration? Can she tell us when that is going to happen? There are around 1.9 million people on ESA. If they move to universal credit and the report is right in that two-thirds of those are considered to have mental health problems, that is quite a problem coming down the track in terms of scale. I think that figure of two-thirds, from looking at the report, was from a 2014 study. If the department has more recent figures, perhaps the Minister could share them with us. Rethink hears from people who are scared to move on to UC from legacy benefits precisely because they are afraid of using the online system. The charity is calling for improvements to online accessibility before managed migration is rolled out further. Does the Minister think there is an issue here? If so, what is being done about it?
Finally, the report makes an impressively modest number of recommendations, but they are quite specific and practically addressed. My noble friend Lord Davies summarised them well. Given that the title of the report was in the title of this debate, the department has had plenty of time to look at the recommendations. Given that, and that my noble friend went to all the trouble of getting the debate and of researching the recommendations, I hope that the Minister can at least give a comment on each of them. If she cannot today, could she write to address each? There are not very many. If the department really does not like them, it is only fair to explain whether it thinks there is not a problem or that this is not a good way to solve it. If so, what else is it doing?
With that said, a lot of work has gone into this report, and I commend my noble friend and all those involved in it, especially the interviewees. I think of Gary, who was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Davies. If all he wants is a little help and some sympathy, surely that is not beyond us, is it?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, for securing this important debate, and all those who have contributed to today’s discussion of this important question. In answer to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, I would be foolish to stand here and say that there is no problem and that everything is perfect. I am not saying that. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, made a point about meeting the group who wrote the report. I put this on the record now: I am always happy to meet, and I will meet that group. I would be happy for the noble Lord to join that meeting and for us to explore further what we could do and learn to make the system better. I have never been asked to hand out sainthoods, but nothing would give me more pleasure. I can think of few people who better deserve one.
I thank the noble Lord for bringing this report to my attention, so that I can go into further detail about the support the department provides for those experiencing mental health issues. I am pleased to say that my officials have already met the authors of the report, on 1 July 2021, and discussed its findings in great detail. They found the report very informative and helpful, partly because it confirms information of which we are already aware and know we can improve, but also because it highlighted some new problems to investigate, especially the concern that claimants without a clear method of granting permission to an informal third party to act on their behalf may be put off making a claim for universal credit. Noble Lords have made that point and it is helpful to be in continuing dialogue with them.
The department does care about the most vulnerable in society, including those with mental health issues who have barriers to accessing the universal credit service. We have a number of measures in place to support and protect our claimants. For example, our work coaches are doing their utmost to ensure that claimants with mental health issues are provided with tailored support and can manage their claim via the telephone, if they are unable to access our digital service.
The impact of a health condition on an individual—a point that was made this evening—varies from person to person. The claimant is the expert on their condition and they know how it affects them. The most important thing the work coach can do is to build trust with their claimant so that the claimant feels confident to fully explain their circumstances and needs.
We have reviewed our approach to health conditionality for those on the health journey, and work coaches are now able to utilise an approach in which claimants can start from zero mandatory requirements and build up based on their health condition and personal circumstances when setting out work commitments. This allows the claimant to move at a pace that is comfortable for them, as their confidence builds.
There are a number of key findings in the report in question which I will address. As the report focuses mainly on third party consent and recommendations to improve the process of obtaining consent, I will outline the current process. This was a point that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Drake and Lady Donaghy, raised. Noble Lords will be aware that there is a raft of support available for those who are unable to access the universal credit service; for example, claimants are able to grant third party consent. Universal credit is structured around an online personal account that contains all the information relevant to the claim. This includes claimants’ bank account details, savings, capital, medical history, family relationships and address information, which means that we have a responsibility to ensure that a high level of security and protection is in place and that we take all reasonable steps to protect our claimants and their data, which includes ensuring that consent is explicitly given. I know from all that has been said this evening that there are issues around this. I am very happy to talk to officials and come back to noble Lords on the specific points that have been raised.
As the amount of personal data available on universal credit is far greater than in the legacy benefit systems, any data breach has far-reaching consequences for claimants, so we need to balance consent against this risk. Therefore—as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said—a policy of explicit consent exists to help reduce the risk of fraud by ensuring that claimants’ data is kept safe from unscrupulous organisations and individuals. The emphasis here is not to hinder people receiving support but to help them make and manage their claim.
Where explicit consent is needed, it can be quickly given in different ways: over the phone or via the online journal, at any time during a universal credit claim. This is a far simpler and more straightforward process than in the legacy benefit systems. Once consent is given, we will work with claimants’ representatives. We really do want to make it as stress-free, simple and helpful as possible.
The universal credit product team are currently conducting discovery work to fully understand all the issues around why and how a claimant may need extra support with their claim, with a view to developing this further in the next phase of development, which will be next year. The findings from this helpful report will be used as part of the discovery phase. I cannot confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, that they are talking to Citizens Advice, but I will go away and find out—and, if not, I will encourage them to do so.
Universal credit provides personalised and tailored support for all claimants and work coaches are available to discuss any queries they may have about their online accounts. Noble Lords raised the Help to Claim service, and I am pleased to say that this service has been extended. I will take away the point that the noble Baronesses, Lady Sherlock and Lady Drake, raised, about whether it is possible to do something on a “help to manage” service. I cannot promise anything—it would be crazy to do so—but I will make sure that the point is raised.
Time is against us. With the leave of the House, because we have not had many speakers, may I just do a bit more? Can I have a few more minutes? I hear “Yes”—magic.
I cannot answer the question on managed migration right now, but I will go back to find out and write to noble Lords, as I have done on many other occasions.
The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, raised the point about bodies that represent people with mental health problems. We work with the operational stakeholders forum and the accessibility forum, including representatives of people with access requirements.
The issue of mental health training has been raised in relation to work coaches. Since August 2018, mental health training has been included in work coaches’ learning packages. They complete training in two sessions as regards complex needs and learning. We discuss what the claimant is struggling with and how we can best support them. A second session of training consolidates the learning from the first session.
Noble Lords raised the issue of mental health networks. As regards local networks of mental health providers, jobcentres use their flexible support fund to buy provision and support. For example, in Cornwall we have had mental health experts in our jobcentres, which is really good and has improved the situation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, gave a good speech and raised many points, including assessment of people with mental health barriers. I have already talked about the tailored support that work coaches are able to give and we would always look to support claimants in our jobcentres, should there be an issue for a claimant who is unable to access online services. We also have vulnerable customer leads on hand to provide support. All the time we are trying to improve the service that people get. If any noble Lords know of a situation in which that has not worked, please tell me—first, because we want to get it right and, secondly, because we want to learn in order to make the situation better.
I must draw my remarks to a close, but I want to come back to the point the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, made about a help-to-manage service. It is a very good idea, and I should emphasise that I am going back to the department with it.
Again, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, for providing the opportunity to set out the vital steps that the Government are taking to support those claiming universal credit who have mental health issues. I understand only too well the impact of mental health problems on individuals, I really do. I know that their situation is difficult, and we want to help them all we can. However, as I have outlined, a tremendous amount of work is going on to ensure that we continue to support all claimant groups, including the most vulnerable, in accessing our services with ease.
I know that I have not answered all the questions, but my track record is that I always write when I need to do so. We will meet with the group and it is up to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, as to who he wants to invite to that meeting if others would find that useful.
Environment Bill
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Member’s explanatory statement
Farmers and landowners currently have to pay for the removal of all fly-tipping. This amendment is intended to extend the ‘polluter pays’ principle to fly-tipping.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, in speaking to this group of amendments in my name, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for adding her name to Amendments 33, 37 and 41. I will deal with the fly-tipping amendments first.
Fly tipping, and its effect on our environment, especially in rural areas, is a scourge, unsightly and extremely costly for landowners and farmers to remove. I am grateful to the Minister for his amendment to Schedule 10, but fear that it does not go far enough. Amendment 33 adds the words, “including fly-tipped items”; Amendment 37 adds the words:
“to remove all fly-tipping at the expense of the manufacturer or producer”.
Both amendments seek to ensure that the “polluter pays” principle applies to fly-tipped items. Amendment 39 allows farmers and landowners to install CCTV cameras where fly-tipping has occurred in the past. This very small suite of amendments allows the principle of the “polluter pays” to become a reality.
Currently, it is far too easy for those who have large, redundant items in their home or large amounts of green waste to fill up their trailers, cars or vans and travel around the country looking for some likely green lane, gateway or field in which to dump their waste. They do not wish to pay for legal disposal. The cost to the farmers and landowners is enormous, running into several thousands of pounds each year.
There are those who ditch ordinary household waste in the same way and pollute the countryside with what could be toxic chemicals. There are the professional criminals who cruise around villages and housing estates, spotting who is having a clear-out, and offer to take the waste away for a small fee. The householder jumps at the chance of not having to deal with the problem themselves and pays up, thinking that it is all sorted. These criminals then go on to a site which they have used before, often on many occasions, and dump the waste on the landowner and farmer’s land. The installation of CCTV at sites which are used more than once is essential to help farmers and landowners deal with this problem by identifying those responsible and bringing them to account.
The NFU is supportive of this group of amendments and hopes that offenders caught dumping waste illegally should see fines as a proper punishment, which will therefore act as a deterrent. Fly-tipping figures have increased to 1 million during lockdown and are likely to have risen as the country came out of lockdown. The eagle-eyed among you will note that I withdrew my amendment that asked the Government to recompense farmers and landowners for the costs of clearing up fly-tipping; this was a blatant attempt to make the amendment acceptable, at no cost to the Government. I hope that the Minister can accept these three amendments, which would benefit those who clear up the waste that others leave behind and allow for measures to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.
Before I move on from this group, I refer to a small article in the Metro newspaper from 8 July, which I read on the tube. A farmer caught several fly-tippers in the act and
“blocked them in with a car, tractor and forklift truck”.
He was
“fed up with rubbish being left on his land, so set a trap”.
He said:
“‘Fly-tipping is regular here, so I parked the car across the gateway’ … One of the tippers threatened him, saying: ‘I’ll just smash my way out.’”
The farmer replied:
“‘That’s why I bought a £200 car.’ The dumpers left their truck at the scene and it was seized by the police who are investigating”.
I hope that a prosecution resulted from that incident.
Amendment 41 does not really fit with the other amendments, but in the interests of moving things along I agreed to group it with the others. This articulates an extremely important point of principle about compostable packaging. Big brands are expanding their use of these materials in the search for alternatives to plastics. Meanwhile, consumers seek out compostable packaging, with 83% of them saying in polling that they prefer it to traditional plastic. The question is how the materials are then composted. Food waste schemes provide the means for compostable materials to be disposed of safely and efficiently, but only if there is consistency across England, so that consumers know that these materials should go in their food waste bin.
The amendment refers to flexible materials, properly certified to internationally recognised standards. The items that we are really concerned with are films, which are very difficult to recycle. Indeed, the amount that is recycled remains stubbornly low, at only 6%, according to WRAP figures. In Committee, the Minister said to me:
“If a plastic is genuinely compostable and not going to break down into small particles of plastic that will do even more harm, including it in food waste to compost would make perfect sense. However, we are not there yet from a technological point of view. We certainly do not have the confidence to do that.”—[Official Report, 30/6/21; cols. 916-7.]
At that time, I asked the Minister for a meeting, to which he agreed. Despite pressing his private office to arrange this, there has been no offer of the promised meeting to discuss the straightforward difference of understanding between us on this issue. Evidence from the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, whose members include composting and AD plants, shows that 42 composting plants and some of the 90 AD plants treating food waste are currently able to accept and process compostable packaging. These plants would welcome a visit from the Minister.
The UK Plastics Pact sets a target to ensure that 70% of plastics are effectively recycled or composted by 2025. That cannot happen while a quarter of plastic packaging is flexible material but only a tiny fraction can be recycled, particularly where the film is very thin and where it is food-contaminated. Compostables must be part of the picture. In answering Amendment 41, would the Minister please agree to meet compostable film producers, as well as those composting them successfully, and to visit one of the sites where this is happening? If he is not satisfied with the current evidence, would he commission research, through Defra, to look at how bioplastics are processed in composting plants here in the UK? It cannot be right for these materials to be stripped out by processing plants and incinerated or sent to landfill. This is betraying the customer and the consumer. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I apologise for not having signed the CCTV amendment; I did not spot it. Fly-tipping is something that I do not think any of us would support. Of course, it has inherent dangers, not only to the public but to wildlife in affected areas, especially if it contains toxic materials such as asbestos. There can be damage to watercourses and soil quality from the dumped waste.
Greenpeace has some quite interesting stuff on this. It has been checking areas and samples of materials resembling topsoil, covering large areas of the ground at sites where plastic waste has been burned because people do not know what to do with it, were found to be composed of shredded plastic and not earth at all. That then just gets washed out everywhere. We all know what microplastics are doing to our ecosystem.
I shall keep my remarks brief because we are all tired, but I point out that the Local Government Association is also urging people to dispose of their waste properly, which is fair enough, using the nearest household waste and recycling centre. It has worked tirelessly to keep these open during the pandemic. It also talks about wanting furniture and mattress companies, for example, to do more to offer take-back services to reduce the amount of waste produced. That is something we have not explored enough. In places such as Germany, they take back lots of packaging and so on, and they will take back items. We are very behind on that in this country.
Amendment 41, about plastic, deals with a very complex area. A lot of the plastics that are called biodegradable, disposable and so on are actually not. We have to be very sure: what we need are definitions of what “biodegradable” and “compostable” mean. We need plastic—so-called plastic or whatever it is—to be compostable in average situations; that is, in my compost heap and not necessarily under ideal temperature- controlled conditions. I would argue that these amendments are very valuable and give all sorts of good ideas to the Government. I hope they take them up.
The Duke of Montrose (Con)
My Lords, I am very glad to join in this debate on fly-tipping, spilling over into the world of plastic disposal. I am a farmer, and the NFU has voiced its support, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned, because it is a huge problem in some areas, along with all anti-social behaviour. Around where I am, the anti-social thing tends to be people taking things away rather than bringing things along, but that is another topic. They come and chop down trees to have bonfires and so on.
Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, can tell us what she has discovered about restrictions on having CCTV. It is very easy nowadays. We have done it already. We have a movement-sensitive camera that can be set up anywhere. It will record whatever can be seen in infra-red so that you can do it at night. I do not know if there is a restriction in law that prohibits this being used as evidence, but it would be an important thing to do.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to all the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, who has very passionately illustrated the scale of the problem and the urgent need to address it, both in Committee and today. Fly-tipping not only affects the hard work of our farmers in producing food and caring for the environment but takes a huge toll on farming families, both emotionally and financially.
As I have said, any type of fly-tipping is unacceptable, and it is key to prosecute fly-tippers and recover the clearance costs where possible. We also need to ensure that councils provide advice and guidance on measures that can be taken to prevent further fly-tipping. Those who produce pollution should bear the costs of managing it and preventing damage to human health or the environment. The polluter pays principle is part of a set of broader principles to guide sustainable development worldwide. This principle should extend to farming.
We are disappointed that the Government have not taken the initiative to fix this and respond to these amendments in a clear and direct manner. I remind the Minister that new data from the Environment Agency shows that farmers are the group most affected by large-scale, illegally dumped rubbish. The NFU’s recent rural crime survey revealed that fly-tipping was the most prolific crime experienced by its members, with 48% of those surveyed saying that they had experienced it in 2020. The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, reminded us of that point in relation to the concerns of the NFU. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, also mentioned it.
Nearly 50,000 people have signed an open letter demanding immediate action to tackle fly-tipping in the countryside, following a surge in waste crime during the Covid-19 lockdown. In an Oral Question on fly-tipping in the House of Lords on 23 June this year, I was very reassured to hear the Minister talk about launching the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. How has this worked out in terms of enforcement, specifically in relation to fly-tipping in rural communities? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the amendments. How will she reassure farmers who are calling for urgent action on the fly-tipping crisis in rural communities?
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for her amendments. I can only apologise that no meeting has taken place between her and the Minister; we have had a lot of meetings over the summer break, and it is a bit of a mystery to us as to why we have not followed up on this. We will investigate and a meeting will be expedited.
I begin by emphasising our commitment to tackling the crime of fly-tipping. We appreciate the difficulty and cost that fly-tipping poses to landowners. We expect all local authorities to exercise their power to investigate fly-tipping incidents on private land, prosecuting the fly-tippers and recovering clearance costs where possible.
Regarding Amendment 39, landowners are already permitted to install CCTV on their land. I am grateful to my noble friend the Duke of Montrose for his contribution. Defra chairs the National Fly-tipping Prevention Group, which has published advice for private landowners on dealing with fly-tipping. To reassure my noble friend, the NFU works very closely with Defra in this endeavour. It actually recommends that landowners consider installing CCTV to protect their property. Subject to data protection laws, landowners may also provide footage to law enforcement authorities to support prosecution cases.
The Environment Bill will give enforcing authorities more powers to tackle fly-tipping and other waste crime, including so-called Facebook fly-tippers operating from their homes. It also grants regulators additional charging powers that will enable them to raise extra funding to tackle waste crime and poor performance in the waste industry.
Turning to Amendments 33 and 37, extended producer responsibility clauses in the Bill already include provisions which could enable asking companies to take full responsibility for their products when they become waste, including when they have been unlawfully discarded. This can include the costs of removing littered or fly-tipped items, including from private land. Measures in the Bill on deposit return schemes will also allow the deposit management organisation to use money received under a scheme for the protection of the environment. This could include costs associated with the removal of littered or fly-tipped items. We have recently consulted on a deposit return scheme for drinks containers to help reduce littering and improve their recycling. While we are not currently considering introducing a deposit return scheme for other items, measures in the Bill will allow us to set up more deposit return schemes for other items, which could include those which are frequently tipped—for example, fridges and mattresses.
On Amendment 41, on compostable plastic, I sympathise with the concern of the noble Baroness. However, the infrastructure to process compostable plastic is not currently widespread enough to include these materials for collection with food waste. We just cannot be certain that compostable plastic can be treated at anaerobic digestion plants or composting facilities in a way that does not increase the plastic contamination in compost. However, I can confirm that the Minister would be delighted to meet representatives of one of these facilities in future. I should also reiterate that we can add compostables as a recycling stream on its own later, when we have the evidence. Evidence suggests that compostable and biodegradable plastics do not fully break down in the open environment and must be treated in industrial composting facilities to be broken down. There is also a lack of strong evidence that compostable plastics provide benefits to soils when successfully composted.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is correct that at present there is no reasonable certainty over whether there are benefits to the final digestate—which I understand is a fertilizer—and compost products resulting from the inclusion of biodegradable and compostable plastic materials as feedstock. However, there are provisions in the Environment Bill to add additional waste streams, provided that they meet the conditions set out in the Bill and that we are clear on the environmental impacts. This will involve further necessary work to understand whether compostable packaging can meet the conditions set out in new subsection 45AZC(4). This must be met before further recyclable waste streams can be added for collection. We are currently analysing responses to our recycling consultation on reforms to recycling consistency, which sought views on the use of compostable caddy liners. I hope this reassures the noble Baroness of the Government’s intentions and I ask her to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, referred to local authorities urging householders to use household waste recycling centres, taking mattresses and other items there. That is really useful. The household waste recycling centre in our area is very well used. It has a camera feed on its website which shows what the queues are like, so that if you are at home and waiting to see what time to go in, you will usually find that you can get in between 5 pm and 6 pm without having to queue. Not enough people use those centres.
The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, spoke about movement-sensitive cameras. I am not convinced that they would be sufficient as evidence in court for a prosecution. However, the Minister said that Defra produces guidance for using CCTV in a way which would be sufficient evidence for a prosecution.
I welcome the deposit return schemes. I am very interested in their possibly including fridges, and they could probably be extended to washing machines, which often find their way into the countryside.
The noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, referred to the petition which people have signed to say that they are outraged by fly-tipping. It is undoubtedly true that, as people walk or drive around their local areas, they are pretty disgusted by the amount of fly-tipped rubbish that has been left.
On compostable film, I am grateful to the Minister for the offer of a meeting and hope that this can now take place without delay. There is obviously some discrepancy between the information we have received from different sources, and it would be good to have it cleared up.
Having said that, I am satisfied with the response that I have received and am pleased to withdraw my amendment.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment enables regulations to make provision for the appointment of an administrator for extended producer responsibility.
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, I am pleased table Amendments 34, 44 and 45, which will support the swifter and more effective implementation and operation of extended producer responsibility measures.
In Committee, we recognised that a priority of the House was to ensure that we are able to get extended producer responsibility regimes up and running as soon as possible. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, highlighted this on Monday. These amendments will save both time and money when setting up and running new schemes and will apply right across the UK.
The amendments allow us to adjust the provisions for appointing scheme administrators from a solely competitive procurement process to allow for the appointment process to be set out in regulations. This increased flexibility will benefit smaller schemes such as for single-use products. We anticipate in these instances that a process which would have previously taken 12 months could now take four.
Amendment 44 gives the Environment Agency, the Natural Resources Body for Wales and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency the same charging powers in relation to Schedule 5 as they have for Schedule 4, which is granted through Clause 64. This amendment allows them to make one scheme with both provisions from Schedules 4 and 5, as opposed to having to have two separate charging schemes.
Amendment 45 provides for the same powers for the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. As a package, these amendments will enable the swifter establishment of extended producer responsibility schemes. I beg to move.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, the last time I spoke at this Report stage was on Monday, when we were talking about very macro issues around the emergencies of biodiversity and climate change. Those are really important, and I was very glad that the House saw that. However, we all know as well that the minutiae—the micro side—of how this Bill’s provisions are delivered are equally crucial to its success.
We also know that, on extended producer responsibility, the circular economy and making consumers fully informed about what they want to do and how they can make the right decisions for the environment they live in, those small issues are really important to make this Act—as it will be—a success in terms of its delivery.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 125 in my name, kindly supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, noted—it is a pleasure to follow his contribution—these two amendments fit together well, because they are talking about consumers who desperately want to do the right thing, but we are simply not giving them the tools to make that possible, at the moment. Noble Lords may remember the background to this amendment, and it was just referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. In Committee, I moved a broad-ranging amendment addressed particularly at disposable nappies and an encouragement to replace them with reusable nappies. The Minister at that time kindly acknowledged how much larger this issue is than perhaps people think.
Since then, at this stage of the Bill, we have seen the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, table an amendment that covers part of the same territory as mine and which seeks to promote reusables. I was delighted to attach my name to that and I am sure the House will be a little surprised, and perhaps pleased, to see the noble Baroness and me co-operate on this.
I want to look at the other side of this, which is the problem with the grave misuse and abuse of language that we see in the labelling of nappies now. Speaking as a former sub-editor, it particularly offends me. Proposed new subsection (2) of the amendment sets out the way in which phrases such as
“reusable … biodegradable … eco-friendly … environmentally friendly”
are put on nappies, because there are no legal limits to how those words can be used, and they are used misleadingly. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, we have a problem of sham competitiveness. The market is out of control and regulation has failed to control the market.
To be concrete about what this means, a study carried out by YouGov at the start of the year found that 7% of nappy users wrongly put their disposable nappies into the recycling. In London, 11% of disposable nappy users were putting their nappies into the recycling. Among younger people, aged 18 to 24, 15% were putting their disposable nappies into the recycling. What does that mean? In Buckinghamshire, to take one example, 13% of lorry loads of recycling contained disposable nappies. It was estimated that, in Leicestershire, up to 4,000 disposable nappies were being removed from the recycling every day. They spoil all the material with which they come into contact, and they have to be removed by hand once they reach the sorting facility, which is extremely unpleasant and unhygienic for the person having to work in that recycling facility.
Why is this happening? A survey from 2019 carried out by the North London Waste Authority found that more than one-third of people who were doing this said that there is a recycling logo on the packaging. That may indeed mean that there is recycled plastic in the wrapping or something like that. One-fifth said it was because of the use of the term “disposable”, which they thought meant that the nappies could go into the recycling. We have to focus on how people desperately want to do the right thing and put as much as they possibly can into the recycling. Behind this, we have an industry-driven and company-driven approach to push recycling rather than reducing and reusing, which are the top two elements of the waste pyramid. We have a huge problem here.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I do not intend to push my amendment to a vote tonight, but I do think we have to see much faster, more effective action from the Government. I suspect I shall hear in the Minister’s response terms such as “discussion”, “consultation” and “talking to the industry”. The industry is the problem. The solution is the Government putting down a line and saying, “You cannot use these words in a way that costs all of us money”. A few people and companies are profiting, and the rest of us are paying in all kinds of ways—environmentally, financially, through our local government costs and in the encounters we have, unfortunately, with nappies in places where they simply should not be. It is late. This is a big issue that covers a small area. I really would like to hear some progress from the Minister.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I am in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on this amendment about nappies. Three billion a year are used in Britain. It is roughly 6,000 a baby and 8 million a day. It is a staggering number. The Ethical Consumer has found that only four brands in this very crowded market are genuinely recyclable or reusable.
I really urge the Government to take on this amendment because, especially in any area to do with babies—which I know very well from the world of baby food—the terms “sustainable”, “organic” or anything that makes you think it is all right always sells. It is a free for all, wild west market out there and, frankly, nappies are money for old rope for these companies, so they want to stick on incredible claims of all the things parents want to believe. Accepting this amendment would be doing everyone a huge favour. This is something we can do something about and we do not need to waste our time on it.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to those noble Lords who have spoken in this debate at this late hour. First, we support the Government’s amendments that the Minister has introduced, and we are grateful to him for his meeting on some of these subjects.
Secondly, I have every sympathy with Amendment 35 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, which would require
“clear, consistent and validated labelling”
on goods to ensure that consumers can make informed choices and care for their purchases in the most energy-efficient ways. He has given some excellent examples of the challenges consumers currently face with competing styles and content of labels. In particular, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, drew attention to the criteria for labelling which already exist in the United Nations Environment Programme and Consumers International.
In his response to a similar debate in Committee, the Minister said:
“The precise design of future labels or other means of communicating product information will be subject to further policy development, including evidence gathering, analysis and consultation.”—[Official Report, 30/6/21; col. 880.]
In his follow-up letter, he set out how the Government were looking closely at how best to enable consumers to make more sustainable purchasing decisions. I simply say to the Minister that there is some urgency in getting on with this work. I hope that if, as we have heard, standard labelling systems are already available on an international level, we will take the opportunity to embrace those standards and apply those lessons, rather than creating a whole new system from scratch.
Finally, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for once again raising the important issue of single-use nappy waste, the need for incentives for individuals to use reusable nappies, the need for a better campaign to inform users of the environmental damage caused by disposable nappies and the ready availability of eco-friendly alternatives. As we have heard, there are some shocking statistics about the adverse impact of millions of disposable nappies on the environment. They are being dumped in huge quantities into landfill and being misplaced into recyclable waste streams, where they contaminate whole batches of otherwise recyclable materials. As the noble Baroness rightly said, there is considerable misinformation among parents about the content of nappies and how they should be disposed of. We agree that there is a need for a huge information campaign and a cultural shift in attitudes, as well as help for those who cannot afford reusable nappies in the first place.
In the Committee debate, the Minister made it clear that Defra is taking this issue seriously, both by taking powers in the Bill to act and by commissioning an environmental assessment of the waste and energy impacts of washable and disposable products. I say to him simply that those actions cannot come soon enough and I hope he is hearing the strength of feeling and unanimity of noble Lords who have contributed to this debate.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate.
I begin with Amendment 125, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. We are very much aware of the environmental issues associated with absorbent hygiene products—which makes them sound a lot nicer—including those relating to incorrect disposal. We recognise the importance of the issue and have commissioned an independent environmental assessment of the relative impact of washable and disposable nappies. With that research added to the evidence base, as well as the powers in the Bill to make secondary legislation, we will be in a good position to take action where necessary and appropriate. I assure the noble Baroness that this includes action along the lines set out in her amendment.
I also assure the noble Baroness that the powers we are seeking through the Bill will allow us, among other things, to set standards for nappies and introduce labelling requirements. We will be able to mandate product labels to require specific information about products such as nappies; for example, regarding their environmental impact or how best to dispose of them. We will also be able to introduce a requirement for products to have marks or symbols signifying that they meet certain standards.
Briefly, in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, on a point also made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, new guidance to be produced shortly by the Competition and Markets Authority will address issues relating to environmental claims. That, we hope, will help business to both understand and comply with its existing obligations under consumer protection law.
I turn to Amendment 35, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I reassure noble Lords that the powers he is asking for in his amendment are already covered by the powers set out in Schedule 6. In fact, it is fair to say that the powers in the Bill are broader than the amendment specifies; for example, we are able to regulate how information might be provided. I agree that it is essential for labelling to be consistent, simple, clear and understandable, and that will be a central consideration as we develop and introduce regulations.
I end by agreeing and very much empathising with the frustration expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Like all my colleagues in Defra, we want this work to happen very quickly. There is an unavoidable process but we are pushing as hard as we can. I hope that I have managed to reassure noble Lords that the Government are aware of the environmental issues associated with absorbent hygiene products as well as the importance of clear, consistent labelling regimes. That is why we have included powers in the Bill to tackle those specific issues. I ask noble Lords to not move their amendments.
Lord Teverson (LD)
I understand that this is Report and I seek clarification. The problem is that this is a broader issue, as the Minister said. I am just trying to clarify whether the Government are committed to a single, consistent system of labelling in terms of recycling and extended producer responsibility. Will there be one system or is it still open for there to be multiple systems?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
I can confirm to the noble Lord that we will do everything we can to ensure a simple, understandable and clear system. I cannot tell him whether there will be a single system but clarity, simplicity and transparency are absolutely the driving considerations.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
The Minister said that the Government would seek to help businesses understand their obligations. I hope—perhaps he can reassure me—that the intention is to regulate the activities of businesses so that they do not continue to profit while the rest of us pay.
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
The goal is to ensure that businesses understand their obligations under existing law and to avoid the problem of misleading labels around environmental performance. If the evidence points us towards regulation, then that is what we will do.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their brevity in the last two groups.