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Oral Answers to Questions
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)
Dean Russell (Watford) (Con)
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)
On 31 January, the Government confirmed a total police funding settlement of up to £17.2 billion for 2023-24, an increase of up to £287 million on this year, providing the police with the resources to fight crime and keep the public safe. As a result of our police uplift programme, we are on track to meet our target of 20,000 new police officers, meaning that England and Wales will have the most police officers ever.
Sara Britcliffe
I welcome the work this Government are doing to increase police resources and tackle antisocial behaviour, with many initiatives—such as the youth investment fund, the youth justice sport fund and the safer streets fund—acting as preventive policy measures. However, in my constituency of Hyndburn and Haslingden, it is not just individuals who are impacted by this; it is also businesses, which have associated costs and fear for their staff. Will my right hon. and learned Friend work with me to see how we can address this issue for businesses on our high streets?
Suella Braverman
I share my hon. Friend’s deep concern about antisocial behaviour, and I was pleased to discuss the issue with her very recently. She will obviously be aware of the 435 new police officers on the ground in Lancashire, thanks to this Government. She will also be aware of the 18% fall in neighbourhood crime in Lancashire since 2019, thanks to this Government, and the £1 million safer streets funding in Lancashire, thanks to this Government. Lancashire police are building a specialist antisocial behaviour unit to make the most of those extra resources, and have already had some progress with Operation Propulsion, aimed at tackling nuisance bikes. There is more to do, and that is why I will be setting out the antisocial behaviour plan in due course.
Dean Russell
In Watford, I have been fortunate enough to join dawn raids and have seen at first hand the important work the police do in tackling serious and organised crime. However, once the police successfully carry out these types of operations across the country, often with extensive multi-agency work, it is important the right support is in place to maintain security within the community. Will my right hon. and learned Friend please confirm what further support is in place to ensure the long-term dismantling of these awful gangs and to guarantee that no new criminals take over and reinstate the lines of supply to this criminality?
Suella Braverman
I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent work in Watford, working hard for the communities he serves.
Through our successful county lines programme the police have arrested thousands of individuals and closed down 2,900 county lines. The programme focuses on charging line holders, ensuring we put offenders behind bars and putting deal lines out of action. Together with “Clear, hold, build”, an initiative that I launched recently, we will also be taking more robust action on serious and organised crime gangs that blight communities through drug dealing.
Mrs Drummond
Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabulary is one of the lowest-funded police forces by central Government. Can my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that this historically unfair funding settlement will be looked at, and that the people of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight can look forward to the same levels of funding as similar areas?
Suella Braverman
We will be consulting very shortly on police funding formulas, but I am very pleased that the excellent police and crime commissioner in Hampshire, Donna Jones, has made very good use of the funding flexibility that I brought into force very recently by raising the precept. That will increase the amount of funding available to the frontline in policing, and together with the safer streets funding and millions of pounds for violence reduction units, it will mean more police, less crime and safer streets in Hampshire.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
Linking police records of gun certificates to medical databases was a key ask of the community in Plymouth after the tragedies we suffered in 2021. How is that linking of GP records with police-held databases and other medical records going, and what additional policing resources is the Home Secretary making available to ensure that, no matter where in the country someone lives, if they present to their medical professional with a mental health issue, it will be clear to that medical professional whether they have a firearm?
Suella Braverman
The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point about access to firearms or other weapons for people with a track record or indication of mental health vulnerabilities. We must wait for the coroner report to be issued, so I will not comment substantively, but we are looking very closely at this and I hope to report on it in due course.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
There have been too many examples of misogyny and sexism in public services in recent times, so can the Home Secretary reassure the House that sufficient resources will be provided to clear out the worst offenders and help change the culture so we can once again have confidence in our important police services?
Suella Braverman
The hon. Gentleman is right that recent instances have really shaken confidence in the whole of the policing family throughout the country, and although there are many thousands of professional, expert men and women who put themselves forward every day, it is clear that policing must do better. That is why I have asked the College of Policing to strengthen the statutory code of practice for police vetting, we have tasked the Angiolini inquiry to look into the specifics of the David Carrick case, and we have commissioned the inspectorate to conduct a rapid review of all forces’ response to the inspectorate’s recent review into vetting and counter-corruption. It is clear that standards need to rise so that cases such as the tragic ones we have seen become a thing of the past.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
North Shropshire is obviously a safe place to live, I am very glad to say, but headteachers and health professionals have recently reported to me an increase in county lines drug-running activities and child exploitation. Can the Home Secretary confirm that North Shropshire will receive additional police resource, particularly at night-time, and the multi-agency approach we need to close down these county lines gangs?
Suella Braverman
There has been considerable success through our county lines programme over the last few years, shutting down over 2,000 county lines across the country and making thousands of arrests of those caught up in propagating this evil behaviour of drug supply. It is vital that we go further and that this success reaches every part of the country.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Some Government Members will be celebrating the Prime Minister’s first 100 days—it is remarkable that that is considered an achievement these days—but during those 100 days in office around 30,000 people, mostly women, will have been raped, and 20,000 of those rapes will have been reported while only about 320 will ever lead to a charge. The Home Secretary has responded by slashing Government funding for forensics, cutting this year’s funding for local police forces by £62 million and heaping pressure on to council tax payers to fill the gaps. Is that because of the Government’s disastrous mini-Budget, is it because of the Government’s failure to grow the economy over 13 years, or have they simply given up on tackling violence against women and girls?
Suella Braverman
I must gently point out that the hon. Lady has got to get with the programme, get with reality, and come back down to earth. The facts are that we have increased police funding by over half a billion pounds, I have just brought in more flexibility so police and crime commissioners around the country can increase their resources on the frontline, and we are on track to have the highest number of police officers on the ground in the history of policing. That is thanks to this Government’s funding and policies.
Of course we must do better on violence against women and girls and on rape and sexual offences; that is why we are pioneering the roll-out of Operation Soteria, which will improve operational support for victims of rape and serious sexual offences on the ground throughout an investigation. It is also why we are going to have specialist measures in court so that victims of rape and serious sexual offences give evidence in a much more appropriate manner. We are taking the steps; that is far better than carping from the sidelines.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)
The director general of MI5 recently outlined that, since January 2022, there have been at least 10 Iranian threats to kidnap or even kill UK-based individuals. The level of the Iranian threat is kept under constant review. The Home Secretary and I are working with our partners across Government to ensure that all tools at our disposal are used to protect individuals in the UK against any threats from the Iranian state.
Mr Sharma
It has been patently obvious for years that the whole Iranian Government are rotten. Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders are allowed to travel to the UK and store their stolen wealth almost with impunity. The people of Iran are fighting back. Why do we not stop their abusers stealing the wealth of the country and sanction more than just 50 people at the top of the organisation?
Tom Tugendhat
The hon. Member is absolutely correct: the IRGC is a vicious organisation and its first victims are the Iranian people, who have been brutalised and murdered by that despotic regime for far too long. I hope he will be encouraged by the actions the UK Government are taking at the moment in looking into various of these areas, and also by the work being done by some of our partners. It is interesting to note that, of the so-called E3+3, Germany and France appear to be looking at proscribing the IRGC, as the United States has already done. It seems that not only is there international agreement on the point the hon. Member raises, but that action is absolutely ready to go.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
As part of the sanctions the Government are imposing on this evil regime, will they please shut down the Islamic centre in Maida Vale, which is the voice of the supreme leader in this country? It should not have charitable status and should be shut down.
Tom Tugendhat
My right hon. Friend has raised an extremely important issue, of which I am acutely aware and which has not gone without notice.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
The Minister seemed to say in response to the original question from my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) that we were considering proscribing the IRGC. Is that the case?
Tom Tugendhat
The Government always keep all areas under review, and speculation has certainly been in that direction. What we have already done is sanction various different elements. Any further action will no doubt be announced as soon as it is ready, and we will see as soon as that can be done.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Clearly, the threat from the IRGC to people in this country—be they opposition journalists reporting on what is going on in Iran at the moment or UK citizens—is paramount. Foreign Office Ministers have responded to all the urgent questions the Speaker has granted and the debates we have had, but will my right hon. Friend now take the obvious step, which is supported by all political parties in the Chamber, and proscribe the IRGC in its entirety?
Tom Tugendhat
My hon. Friend will know that it is not me he has to persuade in this matter and that there are many areas where I would like to go. I can assure him that the Government are absolutely listening to exactly what he is saying. The Home Secretary and I are as one on this.
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
The Minister has been explicit, as have others, about the threat we face in the UK from the Iranian regime. I really welcome what he has said, and we stand ready to work with him on this issue, but the truth is that we have not seen anything like the sanctions and immigration controls that have been deployed against Russia being deployed against Iran. Will the Government go further and be clear? Will they proscribe the IRGC using either existing terror laws or new state threat variations to drive out this threat and keep people safe?
Tom Tugendhat
The hon. Lady knows very well that the Government have already sanctioned many individuals inside the Iranian regime and have taken action on individuals who may have had access around Europe and indeed into the United Kingdom. Those people have been either controlled or not allowed permission to travel. She should also be aware that our embassy in Iran is keeping us closely informed of how the sanctions are playing out and making sure that we target appropriately individuals who are a threat to the United Kingdom.
It is completely wrong that any foreign state should be able to threaten anybody in the United Kingdom. Anybody in the UK should have the same protection and be afforded the same rights as anybody else. The action we have taken to protect some journalists in the UK, which was highlighted only recently by some of our agencies, is absolutely vital to the security of our whole society.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)
Our first duty is to break the business model of the people-smuggling gangs, stop the boats and reduce the number of those coming to this country illegally. Alongside that, we are working to ensure that decent but not luxurious accommodation is available while asylum claims are being processed. We are working with local councils and providers to develop regional dispersal plans and are pursuing a range of options to increase supply.
Mr Sheerman
I am very pleased to hear what the Minister says. When the dreadful invasion of Ukraine took place, many people welcomed with open arms refugees from Ukraine. Does he agree that it is still not safe for many of them to go home? Many have outstayed their time with their host, so can we have a coherent plan going forward to ensure that refugees from Ukraine are decently protected and housed?
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Gentleman is right to celebrate the good work that we have done in this country to support people who came here from Ukraine. That has been the largest humanitarian visa effort in this country’s history. I have benefited from that personally, having had a family stay with me, as I know many Members across the House have. Over 500 individuals continue to come to the UK every week under the Ukrainian visa schemes, but he is right to say that the challenge now is as much about ensuring re-matches are available for people who, for whatever reason, are coming to the end of their stay with their original families. We are working very closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ensure that those changes are as seamless as possible so that nobody ends up homeless.
Greg Smith
The Best Western hotel in the town of Buckingham was originally acquired by Clearsprings on a six-month lease, which in theory runs out in March. The loss of the hotel as a valuable local business is noticeable in the town, as is the diversion of precious primary care resources, with an on-site clinic required at least once a week on top of the usual services of the Swan Practice. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the use of the Best Western in Buckingham will end soon, so that Buckingham businesses can get back to normal and health resources are freed up?
Robert Jenrick
The Home Secretary and I are as frustrated as my hon. Friend that too many people are staying in hotels, costing too much money to the taxpayers of this country. We want to ensure that hotels such as the one in his constituency are exited as swiftly as possible. That is why we are pursuing a full dispersal model with local authorities and considering a range of other options, including larger sites. The enduring solution to this problem is to break the business model of the people smugglers and to stop the boats. It is for that reason that the Home Secretary and I will shortly bring forward further legislation, which I hope will command support across the House.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
Do the Government have any plans to make use of the former Atkinson Court care home in east Leeds as part of their dispersal policy?
Robert Jenrick
I am not aware of that site, but I am very happy to look into it and revert to the right hon. Gentleman. The mandatory dispersal model we are pursuing is one of agreement with local authorities, where every local authority works with the Home Office and our providers to agree a number of bed spaces in their local area and then to choose appropriate ones that meet the needs of the local community. I am happy to revert to the right hon. Gentleman on that.
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, given the severity of the risks, it would not be appropriate to house asylum seekers in a Pontins holiday camp in my constituency? Will he take the opportunity to confirm at the Dispatch Box the reports at the end of last week that the site will not be used?
Robert Jenrick
The Home Office is reviewing a range of options and having exploratory conversations with a number of local authorities. If the local authority, Sefton Council, does not wish to proceed On the Pontins site in my hon. Friend’s constituency then the site will not proceed, because it is the freeholder of that site. He should really speak to Sefton Council to get that assurance, but the task for all of us is to stop the boats, or else we will continue to have troubles like this in the years ahead, with thousands of individuals crossing the channel illegally and placing unbearable strain on our asylum accommodation.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Home Office accommodation provider Mears has made significant profits providing substandard facilities for asylum seekers. Community InfoSource in Glasgow has found that Mears’ practices are retraumatising and causing unnecessary stress and suffering. Mears is now back to using hotels such as the Muthu in Erskine, which the Park Inn incident in Glasgow proved to be entirely unsuitable for vulnerable people. Why are the UK Government encouraging rapacious companies to profit from misery, rather than investing in community-based alternatives and more effective decision making?
Robert Jenrick
If the hon. Lady has specific allegations, will she please bring them to me and I will be happy to investigate them?
The answer to this issue, in Scotland as across the country, is for local authorities to step up and make more accommodation available. As I have said many times at the Dispatch Box, including to the hon. Lady, the Scottish Government are taking fewer asylum seekers and refugees than any other comparable part of the United Kingdom. The SNP’s record on this issue is frankly shameful. It was, after all, the Scottish Government whose failed Ukrainian scheme meant that they had to house Ukrainian refugees in cruise ships.
Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
I know that questions about policing in Lancashire are of particular interest to you, Mr Speaker.
I am pleased to report that since 2015, there are 467 more police in Lancashire. Next year, the available funding will increase by £12.3 million. Over the last three years, Lancashire police have had £5.5 million for their violence reduction unit and £4.7 million for their hotspot policing. I met this morning with Lancashire’s excellent police and crime commissioner, Andrew Snowden, who talked to me about Operation Warrior, which has seen on average each week 2 kg of drugs being seized, 17 arrests and £55,000 of illicit cash being taken off the streets.
Cat Smith
When I tabled my question, I had planned to raise the issue of rural crime in the Wyre area of my constituency, but events over the last few days have changed that. As part of the intensive search for Nicola Bulley, Lancashire police are asking drivers for dash-cam footage from the Blackpool Lane and Garstang Road area of St Michael’s from Friday 27 January between 9 and 10 am. Will the Minister echo my request for people from the local community to come forward, even if they think their dash-cam footage does not contain anything of interest—the police will be able to make that decision—and for all of us to do our best to find Nicola and bring her home?
Chris Philp
I completely echo what the hon. Lady says about this awful, tragic case. I agree with everything she said and I join her in urging anyone who thinks they may have any information, however innocuous it may seem, to come forward, including dash-cam footage and any other information that may be relevant. The whole local community and the police are desperately doing everything they can to find out what happened, and I urge everyone to help them in that endeavour.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
It almost seems like Lancashire day today, Mr Speaker.
I join the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) in praising the hard work of our constabulary and the many local people, particularly my constituents, who have been out searching the river banks of the Wyre estuary looking for clues as to what has happened. Will the Minister join me in imploring people to avoid the speculation, gossip and guesswork that has been going on? People have been descending on St Michael’s on Wyre and it is hampering the investigation and causing inordinate distress to Nicola’s family.
Chris Philp
I agree completely with my hon. Friend. It is important that the public respect the family’s need for privacy at what is obviously an extremely difficult, upsetting and unimaginably distressing time. It is important that the public let the police and the local authority get on with their work. I repeat what my hon. Friend said and what the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) said a moment ago: if anyone has any information, however minor or innocuous it may seem to them, I ask them to share it with the local police. Anything at all could help them to get to the bottom of this, and I urge people to do everything they can to help the police at this terribly difficult time.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Miss Sarah Dines)
Domestic abuse is an abhorrent crime and tackling it is a priority for this Government. Our tackling domestic abuse plan, which was published last year, is clear that our response to perpetrators will be uncompromising and relentless. We are investing unprecedented amounts in perpetrator interventions and technology for the police to identify abusers. We are also considering the feasibility of putting dangerous offenders on the register.
Ellie Reeves
In response to a recent parliamentary question, the Minister admitted that the Home Office does not routinely collect data on the number of domestic abuse victims killed by a partner who had previously been convicted of domestic violence. When domestic abuse offences reported to the police have doubled in the past five years while charges have nearly halved, this puts lives at risk. Will the Minister back Labour’s call for a domestic abuse register to track offenders, protect victims and help prevent more crime?
Miss Dines
The feasibility of such a register is being looked into. I remind the House that 911,000 reports of domestic abuse are made to the police every year. The Government are carefully considering technological answers and ensuring that police forces look carefully at the situation. We are looking at multi-agency forums for improving the track record on this issue. The Government are spending unprecedented amounts in a cogent, targeted way and I am proud of the commitments so far.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
I was pleased to see that last year’s tackling domestic abuse plan recognised the link between domestic abuse and child abuse. My hon. Friend will be aware of the horrendous child sexual exploitation case in Rotherham and will agree that we need to end child abuse of all kinds. Does she agree that we need a child criminal and sexual exploitation commissioner, working alongside the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, to stop CSE, punish perpetrators and ensure that anyone linked to CSE has no link to public office ever again?
Miss Dines
I know my hon. Friend is a strong campaigner on this issue and that it is very important locally, but it is also hugely important nationally. I was privileged to visit the National Crime Agency and other groups that work in the field. A huge amount of work is going on. It is clear that the Government need to have a detailed response to the recent report to ensure that we have joined-up thinking across all Departments to stamp out child sexual abuse, because it is a dreadful crime.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Miss Sarah Dines)
The role of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, as set out in the Modern Slavery Act 2015, is to encourage good practice in the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of slavery and human trafficking offences and the identification of victims. The Home Secretary recognises the importance of the role of the anti-slavery commissioner and has committed to running a new competition to recruit for the role. The process will begin imminently.
Mr Carmichael
I thank the Minister most warmly for that answer. She illustrates perfectly the need for my private Member’s Bill, which would allow Parliament to make this most important appointment, rather than the Government. The post has been vacant for 10 months already. In the third quarter of last year, no fewer than 4,586 potential victims of modern slavery were referred to the Home Office—38% up on the previous year. What is it about their record on this issue that makes the lack of scrutiny so attractive to the Government?
Miss Dines
I do not accept that narrative. The competition is opening shortly. There will be a large number of very good candidates, and there needs to be a proper process. These things cannot be rushed. Sometimes the best things come to those who wait.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
In the third quarter of 2022, over 4,500 potential victims of modern slavery were referred to the national referral mechanism—a record since its introduction—and 43% of those were children. Just last month, people up and down the country were shocked to learn that over 200 children seeking asylum have gone missing from Home Office hotels. The Home Office ignored repeated warnings that the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 would make things worse. What have we seen since then? A failure to appoint a new anti-slavery commissioner and just one conviction for child trafficking last year. Does the Minister think that that one conviction shows that the Government are on top of this? Does it not show that they are continuing to let dangerous criminal gangs get away with their crimes?
Miss Dines
There is a big history with trafficking, and dangerous gangs have to be looked at. However, it is this Government who have the confidence to do something about it. There are issues that other Members of this House were reluctant to look at. It is important, for example, that the ethnicity of each and every alleged criminal in the field is noted, so that greater statistics and knowledge can be held. A commissioner will be appointed at the appropriate time, as soon as possible.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
We are in the middle of recruiting an extra 20,000 police officers. We are on track to deliver that by March, in just a few weeks’ time. As of December, we had recruited over 16,000 of them. When we hit the target in a few weeks, we will have more police officers than at any time in this country’s history: approximately 148,000.
Liz Twist
Neighbourhood policing is vital in cracking down on antisocial behaviour. I am very glad to say that our excellent police and crime commissioner, Kim McGuinness, is fully aware of that issue and is addressing it. Nationally, why have we seen an overall drop of 8,500 in the number of police community support officers over the past 13 years? Locally, in Northumbria, there has been a drop of 395, and we are still down by 565 police officers since 2010.
Chris Philp
As I explained a moment ago, we are on track very shortly to have more police officers than at any time in this country’s history, but let me tell you what has dropped since 2010, Mr Speaker. According to the crime survey, criminal damage has dropped by 65%, domestic burglary has dropped by 56%, robbery has dropped by 57% and violence has dropped by 38%. That, Mr Speaker, is what has dropped.
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
In Kent, burglary has decreased by 41% and crime overall has decreased by 7%. I am pleased to report that by the end of next month, we will have 358 extra officers operating across Kent. However, in Medway we have been blighted by the new phenomenon of car racing and car meets, which have created terrible antisocial behaviour and lots of problems for local residents. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Kent police working with the council to implement a public spaces protection order is a great way to tackle this nuisance, which is a very dangerous activity?
Chris Philp
I am happy to confirm that the county of Kent already has a record ever number of police officers. I pay tribute to its fantastic police and crime commissioner, Matthew Scott, who is doing great work—along with Kent’s MPs, of course. I agree with my hon. Friend that public spaces protection orders are a very good way to combat antisocial behaviour, whether it is antisocial racing or nitrous oxide consumption. I encourage all local authorities to use PSPOs.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)
We have committed to clearing the backlog of asylum applications over this year and to introducing a faster, more productive system. Since making that commitment at the end of 2022, we have made excellent progress: recruiting more caseworkers, working towards a doubling in their number, establishing dedicated caseworkers per nationality and designing a more streamlined process, which is already raising productivity substantially.
Rachel Hopkins
Luton is a compassionate town and is always proud to support those seeking sanctuary, but the backlog and delays in the Home Office’s asylum system have led to Luton receiving a disproportionate number of dispersal placements in comparison with the rest of the east of England. Luton Borough Council’s services are already stretched beyond their means, following a decade of Government cuts, so how is the Minister working with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ensure that councils receive clear funding settlements to cover the costs of the increased impact on local services?
Robert Jenrick
We provide funding for every asylum seeker who is in a local authority’s care of about £3,500, and we work closely with local authorities through the mandatory dispersal system to make sure that each one plays a fair and equitable part. However, the answer to this problem is not more accommodation; it is stopping the boats and ensuring that we have some of the most robust laws in the world, so that those who come here illegally do not find a way to a life in the UK. I hope that the hon. Lady will support us when we introduce our legislation.
Vicky Foxcroft
My constituent arrived here from Syria and claimed asylum in July 2021. He is a doctor and applied to volunteer with the covid vaccination programme, but was turned down because he had no documentation. After more than a year and many interventions by my office, he finally had his asylum interview and was given a job as a healthcare assistant, but that was delayed because he had to wait for his national insurance number. The NHS is crying out for staff. When will the Government sort this out?
Robert Jenrick
We are working to bring down the backlog of cases. Let me gently point out that the last Labour Government left a backlog of cases of not 450,000, as I said during the last session of Home Office questions, but 500,000, as has been shown by further research. So bad was the backlog that there was even a room colloquially known as the “room of doom” into which cases were put. We will get the backlog down, and create a streamlined and efficient asylum system.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Tensions in the community are rising in my constituency owing to the use of hotels to house asylum seekers in and around Cannock Chase and, in particular, in Bridgtown. There were protests in Cannock at the weekend. Will my right hon. Friend join me in thanking the local police, who are doing everything they can to respond to issues as they arise, and will he meet me to discuss the situation and ways in which we can alleviate the concerns of my constituents?
Robert Jenrick
I should be pleased to meet my right hon. Friend and work with her to ensure that that hotel, like others, is cleared as quickly as possible. I hope she will see from the work we are doing that we are straining every sinew to tackle this issue. For example, following the communiqué that was signed with Albania at the end of last year and is now being implemented, we are seeing weekly return flights of illegal migrants to Albania and a faster process, involving 400 caseworkers dedicated to those Albanian cases.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
One group with a strong claim to be here are the former interpreters in Afghanistan and other locally employed civilians who helped our armed forces. Will the Minister explain to the House whether such applications are caught up in the general collection of applications made by people who have come here illegally, or whether any form of priority and extra attention is given to those very deserving Afghan refugees?
Robert Jenrick
My right hon. Friend has raised an important issue. We take our moral commitment to those who supported our troops and our efforts in Afghanistan extremely seriously. We have helped more than 20,000 individuals to come to the UK, some before Operation Pitting, some during that operation and some since, under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and subsequently the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme. The Foreign Office is drawing up a further list of individuals for the ACRS. The people to whom my right hon. Friend has referred should be applying to that scheme, and we hope we will be able to bring them to the United Kingdom as soon as possible, if they are not here already.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
In 2019, the then Conservative Home Secretary said that she would end small boat crossings in a matter of months. Since then, the number of crossings has increased from 1,000 to 45,000, with the criminal gangs laughing all the way to the bank. Last year, Ministers promised that the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 would deal with the crisis, but in fact it has caused the asylum backlog to spiral out of control, forcing the British taxpayer to foot the bill for an extra £480 million in six-monthly accommodation costs. Now, Ministers are making all the same empty promises again. The Refugee Council says that the latest Government proposals will cost the taxpayer an extra £1 billion every six months, without anyone being returned anywhere. Does the Minister agree with Albert Einstein that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a definition of madness?
Robert Jenrick
The problem with the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues is that they vote against every step that we bring forward. In an age of mass migration in which millions of people are on the move and want to come to our country, either as economic migrants or asylum shoppers, we have to take the most robust action we can. The system we are building is a simple one in which those who want to come here illegally in small boats will find no way to a life in this country. They will be returned home, or to a safe third country such as Rwanda.
We will fulfil our commitment to those fleeing genuine persecution, war and human rights abuses, such as through the schemes that we have created for Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine, but we on the Government Benches are capable of seeing the difference between genuine asylum seekers and economic migrants. I hope the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues will join us in voting for that further legislation when we bring it forward shortly.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Delays even when decisions have been made are all too common. To give an example, a constituent had his appeal allowed but is still waiting for the tribunal’s decision to be implemented nine months later. He cannot get on with his life. In a written answer to me, the Minister for Immigration was unable to provide my constituent with a timescale, or to establish the longest time that people have been waiting, or even how many appeals are still in Home Office limbo. Can he tell me what is the longest time that people like my constituent will have to wait, or is Home Office bureaucracy now completely out of his control?
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Lady does not want us to tackle this issue because she believes in open borders. We want to take action to ensure that this country is not somewhere where economic migrants and asylum shoppers seek to come. That means suffusing deterrents throughout the system. She should support plans such as Rwanda and our efforts to bear down on illegal migrants. We will bear down on the backlog of cases. As I said in answer to an earlier question, we will clear it over the course of this year. We are ensuing that productivity rises every week.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)
The Government have committed substantial extra funding to invest in policing and to reduce crime, including the recruitment of an additional 20,000 police officers by March. We recently confirmed a total police funding settlement of a maximum of £17 billion for 2023-24. We have seen great results: a fall in overall crime since 2019 thanks to this Government, a fall in domestic burglary since 2019 thanks to this Government, and a fall in violent crime since 2019 thanks to this Government—more police, less crime and safer streets.
Dr Offord
Hendon Police College was once an exemplar of British policing, but there have been accusations of police staff officers being assaulted, inappropriate use of pain compliance techniques and multiple cases of cheating in exams, where the perpetrators subsequently lied about it—all by trainee police officers. How can there be trust in the police to protect the public when the recruitment process fails to identify the fundamentally dishonest?
Suella Braverman
My hon. Friend is right to raise that point about standards in policing and, in particular, the recruitment methods used to increase the forces. That is why we need to improve our standards. I am glad that many forces have committed to a face-to-face interview—that is absolutely vital to weed out the inappropriate applicants. We need to ensure that there is a rapid review of all forces’ responses to the inspectorate’s recent report on vetting and counter-corruption. I know that the Met commissioner is taking this issue incredibly seriously and has put in place a rigorous plan to improve standards and restore confidence.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Kids in my constituency are razzing around the streets illegally on motorbikes. Sadly, two have died as a consequence of accidents they were involved in. The worst of it is that, on both occasions, the police have been caught on the hop by impromptu vigils that have taken place at the accident spots. Hundreds of other kids are defacing public and private property and intimidating residents, and the police are powerless to act. That shows that turning the police funding taps off and on has lost us experience. What will the Home Secretary do to get that experience back?
Suella Braverman
I will tell the House why the hon. Gentleman is absolutely wrong in his analysis. We are on track to recruit 20,000 police officers. That is the highest number of police officers ever known in this country—higher than in the Labour years and higher than in the 1990s, so I am sorry, but the facts do not support his accusation of reduced funding and reduced resources. He raises an important point about antisocial behaviour, and that is my priority: graffiti, vandalism, drug dealing, nuisance boy racers—they all have to be stopped. That is why increased numbers of police officers and neighbourhood policing on the ground are going to be able to tackle exactly the problem he talks about.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Suella Braverman)
I am going to make a short topical statement.
It is very important that our passport system runs as efficiently as possible. This is an issue that matters a great deal to our constituents. Covid had a global impact on passport processing times. In 2022, His Majesty’s Passport Office served more customers than ever before. Staff numbers have increased by over 1,200 since April 2021 and many staff have been trained to deal with a broader range of applications. I note that last spring there were serious concerns about the performance of the Passport Office, which prompted the Home Affairs Committee to inquire into the issue. I have made it a priority to fix that issue since I became Home Secretary, and I am pleased that since September the team at the Passport Office have worked hard to reduce processing times and that, despite very high demand so far this year, last week, approximately 99% of all UK applications were completed within 10 weeks. Indeed, last week, approximately 97% of all UK applications were completed within three weeks. We expect elevated demand for passports throughout the year, so customers should continue to allow 10 weeks, and I urge people to apply in good time, not at the last minute, to avoid delays.
Mr Speaker
I say to the Home Secretary that it is not appropriate to make such statements at the start of topicals. If there is a statement, she should come to the House. Topicals are meant to be short bits of business, not to be dragged out. If we stay long today, she will understand why. If there is an urgent question tomorrow, she should not be shocked if somebody has to answer it.
Jason McCartney
Whereas most countries have police forces, we are proud to have a police service in Britain, with police officers playing an integral role in the communities in which they live and work. That is why I particularly welcome the 16,000-plus police officers who are being recruited. In West Yorkshire, in my patch, that means 589 additional police officers. What extra will the Home Secretary do to ensure that we recruit high-quality police officers while also retaining those experienced officers in our local forces?
Suella Braverman
West Yorkshire police have recruited 837 additional police officers to December, against their total allocation of 852. This is an unprecedented recruitment drive and it gives forces the opportunity to recruit the brightest and the best into policing. It is thanks to this Government’s commitment to policing, to police numbers and to funding that we are on track to recruit a historic level of police officers on the frontline, something that the Labour party has failed to support.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The whole House’s thoughts will be with Turkey and Syria after the terrible earthquake.
Sentencing is under way today for David Carrick’s truly appalling crimes. It is shocking that he was able to serve as an officer for so long, and we think of his victims. After Sarah Everard’s murder, Ministers said “Never again”, but barely anything changed. Can the Home Secretary confirm that, if a police officer is under investigation for rape or domestic abuse, there is still no requirement for them even to be suspended, and that many, like Carrick, are not?
Suella Braverman
We are going through an overhaul of our processes when it comes to disciplinary procedures applying to those officers who are under investigation. That is why I have announced a review and am looking into measures over the disciplinary process, so that we make it easier for chief constables to exclude those officers who have fallen short, whether that is criminal behaviour or other professional misconduct. It is right that we change the system and, if necessary, I will act.
Yvette Cooper
But nothing has changed in two years. Everything the Home Secretary has said is too little and too late, and far, far too weak. I have been contacted by a woman whose police officer partner was actually charged by his force with domestic abuse, but he still was not suspended and he is still a serving officer. This kind of thing is too unfair on victims and on police officers working hard. Labour will change the law to bring in compulsory standards for policing and to tackle abuse. Why won’t the Home Secretary change the law?
Suella Braverman
I think the right hon. Lady needs to keep up, because we have the College of Policing already strengthening the statutory code of practice for police vetting; we have tasked the Angiolini inquiry to look at the specifics of the Carrick case; and I have launched a review into the disciplinary process.
But let us be clear: the right hon. Lady is trying to talk tough and to sound robust on the issues, but her actions and those of her party have completely fallen short of protecting the British public. It is the Labour party that has voted against police funding for several years now, and it was the Labour party that voted against our legislation that would have given the police greater powers and increased sentences.
Mr Speaker
Home Secretary, these are topicals. You took advantage; don’t take it on every question, please.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point. It is something we work on regularly via the police covenant oversight board, which I chair. One of the steps we have already taken is to appoint a chief medical officer for the police, to deal with exactly the issues that he rightly raises.
Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)
Chris Philp
Yes, there is an intention to consult on the police funding formula in the near future. That is very important, but I ask the hon. Lady to join me in welcoming the fact that Bedfordshire now has about 150 more officers than it did in 2010.
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
Suella Braverman
Tackling antisocial behaviour is a priority of mine, and my hon. Friend is right to mention this issue. When it comes to retail staff—people who are on the frontline of our public services—we have taken steps to protect them. We introduced an aggravating factor in legislation, so that an assault on a retail staff member will be taken into account at sentencing; we have a retail crime group within Government chaired by the Policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), to bring together the relevant agencies; and ultimately, more police and less crime is going to do the job of protecting those in retail.
Mr Speaker
Can I say that I am quite serious about trying to get through topicals? When the right hon. and learned Lady is still here much later than was expected, do not try and complain.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Suella Braverman
I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman is living on another planet if he thinks that everybody who is coming to this country on a small boat—breaking our laws, putting themselves at risk, and paying huge amounts of money to unlawful and criminal people smugglers—is welcome. Those people should not be taking that journey, and there will be a robust response from our laws if they continue to do so.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)
My right hon. Friend is right to ask the question, because fraud has been a blight on too many communities. I assure him that the fraud strategy that many of us have been working on for a number of months is coming out very soon.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Suella Braverman
The hon. Gentleman is talking about industrial action, and there were instances of that by Border Force officers in the run-up to the new year. I was very grateful for the preparation and planning by Border Force management, and for the incredible support from members of the military to enable swift operations at the border, despite the industrial action.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Miss Sarah Dines)
My hon. Friend represents a seat in an interesting county, and I know that she works hard on this issue. I believe that there are three projects of the kind that she mentions in Derbyshire, on which more than £1.5 million has been spent. These projects do level up, and they include spending on measures such as closed circuit television and street lighting. Crime has fallen in her constituency, and that is partly due to her work with the outstanding Conservative police and crime commissioner, Angelique Foster. I urge my hon. Friend to continue that work.
Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)
Following the news this week that Australia’s medical regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, has moved to reschedule psilocybin for medicinal use from 1 July, when can we expect the Home Office to finally reschedule psilocybin, so that people with conditions such as treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder do not have to travel to Europe, the United States or, now, Australia for psychedelic therapy treatment that they should be able to access safely, where appropriate, here?
Chris Philp
The hon. Lady is raising an important and reasonable point. I have carefully read her moving letter on this issue. We are getting advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and will act on this as soon as we can.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)
We introduced the health and social care visa to make it easier for the NHS to recruit internationally. A benefit is that there is an enhanced service standard of 15 working days for extensions to those visas. That is being met at present. If my hon. Friend has concerns, I would be happy to look into them.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Will the Minister meet me to discuss the continued pressures arising from the use of hotel accommodation in my constituency and others across the Liverpool city region?
Robert Jenrick
I would be happy to. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support our legislation in due course, which will tackle the root cause of the issue.
Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)
Over Christmas, a 17-year-old boy in Leigh-on-Sea was able to buy a terrifying 2-foot “zombie knife” machete online and have it delivered directly to his door. Does the Minister agree that we need to close the loophole regarding the definition of zombie knives, and get them out of circulation once and for all?
Chris Philp
Yes, I entirely agree. I thank my hon. Friend for drawing this issue to my attention a few weeks ago. We are looking to consult in the very near future to make sure that the law prohibits dangerous weapons where necessary.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
A man was stabbed to death outside Asda in Walsall town centre, and an 18-year-old was stabbed to death in Cook Street, Darlaston. What discussions has the Home Secretary had with the new chief constable about reducing serious violent crime in Walsall?
Suella Braverman
Violent crime is devastating, which is why we need to get knives and other offensive weapons off our streets. I am pleased with the targeted interventions made through violence reduction units, hotspot policing and, of course, increased police resources, which are all working towards a reduction in knife crime and violent crime.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is quite extraordinary that Members of this House complain about the number of asylum seekers, but oppose all measures that the Government bring forward to tackle them coming here illegally? Will she therefore join me in encouraging all Members to back our plans to stop small boats, which is what my constituents and the British public so manifestly want to happen, so that we can save lives and break the model used by illegal people traffickers?
Suella Braverman
My hon. Friend puts it incredibly well. The tragedy is that Labour Members have opposed every measure that we have proposed. They voted against our Bill, which would have provided tougher penalties for people smugglers. They voted against our measures to improve the situation. We delivered the ground-breaking partnership with Rwanda and they would scrap it. Labour’s plan is to invest more money in the National Crime Agency. Let me tell Members that we are already doing that. The reality is that Labour has no plan. It has no idea, and, frankly, it is not on the side of the British people, because all it wants is open borders.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
South Caernarfon Creameries is Wales’s oldest and largest dairy co-operative. It is investing in Project Dragon, an ambitious expansion programme that involves investing £8 million in a factory plant from Turkish technology leaders, Gemak. Contractual deadlines are at risk as a result of delays at the British consulate in issuing visas for key staff who are essential to installing and handing over the equipment. Will someone from the Secretary of State’s Department meet me at their earliest convenience to resolve this situation?
Robert Jenrick
I would be happy to look into the matter for the right hon. Lady. I would say, however, that the visa service is now working within its service standards in all respects.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
How many Albanians last year claimed to be modern-day slaves, and what are we doing to encourage the processing of their claims back in their country of origin?
Robert Jenrick
The published figures to September last year show that 3,400 Albanians claimed to be modern slaves. Of course, some within this number will prove to be so, but many will not, which is why it is right that we tackle abuse of the system. We have already taken substantial action by increasing the reasonable grounds threshold and reducing the minimum recovery period. If we need to take further action, we will.
Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)
Around 40,000 people seeking asylum are stuck in hotels. However, Home Office policy allows decisions on refugee status to be communicated only to those who have been dispersed. Surely that is absurd and counterproductive. When will the policy change?
Robert Jenrick
We are considering this issue. The policy was put in place some time ago, for good reason: so that those local authorities that were bearing a disproportionate number of the individuals in hotels and temporary accommodation did not take a corresponding number of people were they to be granted asylum. We are looking into that at the moment.
Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
The skilled worker visa system simply is not working for many businesses in Milton Keynes North. Despite having a licence, small businesses find that it takes ages to get a decision, and then either the visa is denied, or they pay extortionate fees for a service that does not materialise. Can we get on this immediately, because our businesses are crying out for skills? Will my right hon. Friend commit to resolving these issues?
Robert Jenrick
I would be happy to look into any specific cases, but overall, the skilled worker system is operating well. We have more than 48,000 registered sponsors, mostly small and medium-sized businesses. In the year to September last year, almost a quarter of a million work-related visas were granted, and the standard processing time is three weeks for those applications.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
The graduate visa route enables international students to work in the UK for up to two years after their study. Curtailing or removing this route would deter international students from studying in the UK, but their net contribution to the UK economy is more than £25 billion per year. Does the Minister recognise that international student fees cross-subsidise teaching fees for British students?
Suella Braverman
We very much welcome the best and the brightest students from all over the world to our world-leading universities. Our points-based system was designed to enable graduates and undergraduates to come and study at UK universities. We are always looking at our visa routes to make sure the right balance is struck between the resources we can provide for people coming here and the numbers coming here. That is the same across the board, whichever visa route we look at.
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
I welcome the extra funding from the safer streets fund and the shared prosperity fund, but does the Home Secretary agree that we also need a zero-tolerance approach to tackling antisocial behaviour? Many of my constituents—long-term residents—are concerned about going into our town centre because they do not feel safe. Does she agree that it is time for a hands-on, and not a hands-off, approach, so that where there are groups of men in the town centre blighting the experience of most of my residents, we clear them out?
Chris Philp
Yes, we agree entirely. That is why my hon. Friend’s county and his town have had safer streets funding, and why they are getting extra police officers. The Government completely agree that zero tolerance to ASB is exactly what we need.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The biggest criminal in Europe, with the most blood on his hands, is Vladimir Putin. We have frozen his Russian state assets in the UK; will the Home Secretary support my Bill tomorrow to allow us to seize those assets and give them to the Ukrainian people, so that they can rebuild their country?
Tom Tugendhat
Going from freezing to seizing, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is a slightly difficult procedure under our laws, due to the rights that people have. We have looked at that matter with partners, particularly in common law jurisdictions, and I hope to have further conversations on the subject with the United States when I go there tomorrow.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
My constituents remain concerned about the victims of people-smuggling gangs. Can my right hon. Friend advise how many people smugglers have been caught and arrested under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, and confirm that the Government will continue to act with vigour against people smuggling and illegal immigration?
Robert Jenrick
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. We are implementing the Nationality and Borders Act as swiftly as possible, and it is already having a real impact, with more than 190 people having been arrested since it became law.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
Aviation is hugely important to the UK economy, but the Government have neglected to recognise the worker shortage in the sector. Does the Home Secretary plan to include aviation in the skilled worker visa shortage occupations list?
Robert Jenrick
We work with the Migration Advisory Committee to keep the skilled worker list under review. We work closely with the Department for Transport on issues such as wet licensing, which was raised recently. It is important to make sure that we have the correct workforce, but we also have to crack down on abuse where we see it.
Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
Is it not obvious from today’s exchanges that many of those who oppose the UK-Rwanda migration and economic development partnership have no idea about Rwanda, have probably never been there, and are wholly wrong to condescend to and disparage Rwanda? Above all, they have not the ghost of an idea how to solve the problem of cross-channel gangs putting people at risk at sea. The difference between the Government side and the Opposition is that we have a plan and they do not.
Suella Braverman
My right hon. Friend puts it very well. Let me put on record my thanks and appreciation to him for all that he has done to try to fix this incredibly difficult problem. He is absolutely right: the Labour party complains and sits on the sidelines, criticising, opposing and voting against every measure that we put forward. I urge Labour to back our Bill, back control over our borders, and back the British people.
Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)
East Devon’s farmers rely on a skilled domestic and foreign workforce to put their fantastic produce on our tables all year round. What reassurances can my right hon. Friend give that he will work with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to ensure that the seasonal agricultural worker scheme will be extended beyond 2024?
Robert Jenrick
We review the seasonal agricultural worker scheme every year, working closely with DEFRA. We have extended it for this year, as my hon. Friend knows, and increased the numbers permitted under that scheme. That is quite right, but it is important to balance that against the need to ensure that British workers find their way into the workplace and are trained, and the need to invest in British farming, so that we do not need to reach in the first instance for foreign labour.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
It is quite right that police forces are under significant scrutiny at the moment, but I commend Humberside police force, which has recently been assessed as “outstanding”, and, in particular, its Grimsby-born chief constable, Lee Freeman, who was recently awarded the King’s Police Medal. Will my right hon. Friend outline the steps that excellent police forces such as Humberside can take to share good practice so that every police force across the UK can become outstanding?
Suella Braverman
I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Chief Constable Lee Freeman for his rightly deserved award for excellence and leadership in policing. Humberside police force is a great example of how standards in policing are improving and strong leaders are turning things around. That force’s recent inspectorate report is testament to its excellent work. Humberside police has been pioneering best practice when it comes to police treatment of and resolution for victims and people with mental health issues. Its pioneering programme of “right care, right person” is being rolled out throughout the country and is sought after by other forces. It is an example of excellence.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
It was worth waiting for, Mr Speaker.
I have recently written to the Minister about the Great Northern hotel in my constituency, which is being stood up to accommodate migrants who have crossed the channel on small boats. I asked him if he would give a timeframe for when the hotel will be stood down. I do not expect him to give me that timeframe from the Dispatch Box today, but can he at least guarantee that when he responds in writing, there will be a timeframe so that we can give certainty to the police, support services and the people of Peterborough?
Robert Jenrick
The Great Northern hotel in Peterborough is ingrained in my mind as a result of my hon. Friend’s assiduous lobbying. That is quite right, because we share his frustration; we want to see such hotels returned to use by the local community and for the benefit of the economy. I will write back to him to set out our plans—as far as I can at this stage. I know that he will support us in all our efforts to stop the boats.
NHS Strikes
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care if he will make a statement on the NHS strikes.
The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Will Quince)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for his question, which I am taking on behalf of the Department as the Secretary of State is attending a COBRA meeting focused on minimising the disruption experienced by patients because of today’s walkouts.
In preparation for today’s industrial action, we have again drawn on extra support from a range of places, including military service personnel, volunteers and the private sector. People should continue to use NHS 111 if they need medical help and to dial 999 in the event of an emergency. Yet even such strong contingencies, including more people trained to drive ambulances and doctors redeployed to other parts of the system, are no replacement for having the right people doing the right jobs.
Any strike inevitably means that some patients will have their treatment delayed, and I know that people are being contacted if their appointments need to be changed. About 88,000 procedures or outpatient appointments have been postponed as a result of industrial action over the last eight weeks, so I am disappointed and concerned that patients are facing disruption once again, especially because strikes by Royal College of Nursing members have now come together with action by GMB and Unite members in eight ambulance trusts.
I recognise that there have been efforts on behalf of unions to ensure that derogations are in place to keep people safe, and I acknowledge that some aspects of that can indeed be challenging, but it is essential that all unions adhere to a set of derogations at a national level so that we can plan and act with certainty. I have also been heartened to hear that on previous strike days, some devoted ambulance workers and nurses who received calls while on the picket line returned to work where derogations were not going to be met. That is a real tribute to the care and dedication we see on the frontline day in, day out.
Ultimately, both staff and the public should no longer be in this situation, because we all know that industrial action is in nobody’s best interests, especially given the collective challenges we face to help the NHS recover from the pandemic. Despite what the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) might imply, there is much common ground, not least our shared desire to improve the NHS and deliver better care. Last week we announced our plan to recover urgent and emergency care—the second of three plans to cut waiting times in the NHS, including our elective recovery plan and our primary care recovery plan, which will be published in the next few weeks. With such important missions ahead of us, and fewer than two months left of this financial year, it is time to move forward, to look ahead and to come together in the interests of the patients we all serve.
Wes Streeting
This week will see the biggest strike in the history of the NHS, with nurses, ambulance workers and physiotherapists all driven to walk out. Some 88,000 appointments, including 10,000 operations, have already been cancelled, with much more disruption to patients expected this week, yet Government Ministers still speak as if they are mere observers or commentators, not leaders key to solving this dispute. This is the cost of the Prime Minister’s failure to sit down and negotiate with nurses, paramedics and other NHS staff.
Let us be clear about this fact: there has not been a single minute of negotiation on pay. NHS leaders are asking the Government to negotiate. Chief nurses are desperate for the Government to negotiate. The unions have offered to call off the strikes if the Government are willing to negotiate. The public cannot understand why, even now, they will not get around the table to sort this out. What on earth are they playing at?
Developments in Wales show that there is a deal to be done. The general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing has written to the Prime Minister, but she has not heard anything from the Government for weeks. It looks to the country like the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary are the ones on strike. Where is the Prime Minister? Where is the Health Secretary? In the week of the biggest strikes in the history of the NHS, during the biggest crisis the NHS has ever faced, the Health Secretary was not available for interviews this morning and he is not available to MPs today. Are we meant to believe that at 4 o’clock in the afternoon he is talking about how to avert disruption that has been taking place all day? Don’t make me laugh. Perhaps the Health Secretary is busy briefing against the Chancellor, just as the Chancellor is busy briefing against him. All the while, the Prime Minister is too weak to do anything about it.
The power to stop these strikes is in the Government’s hands. Patients have suffered enough disruption as it is. Is it not time for the Prime Minister to swallow his pride, sit down with NHS staff and negotiate an end to these strikes by paying NHS staff fairly?
Will Quince
I am not going to engage in the playing of party politics on this. The hon. Gentleman already knows that the Secretary of State is due to attend a Cobra meeting, which he and I rotate, and the hon. Gentleman may have missed it, but this morning the Secretary of State did do a media clip, and Members will have seen that across multiple outlets.
Where I do agree with the hon. Gentleman is that he is right to talk about the amazing job that our NHS colleagues do on the frontline. I know he does that, and I thank him for that, but that is even more reason why we must find a fair resolution, and NHS colleagues certainly will not get one from those on the Opposition Benches. The Opposition say that they back the independent pay review process, while disagreeing with the body’s decision when it does not suit them. They say they would not increase public spending, while failing to set out any plans for how they might pay for unaffordable pay increases. They say they believe in public safety, too, while criticising the common-sense steps we are taking to ensure safe minimum staffing levels, just as they do in many other European countries. We have got a plan—they do not.
More than 1 million NHS staff have been given at least a £1,400 increase in their pay, representing a 9.3% rise for those on the lowest salaries. NHS staff also received a 3% pay rise last year—even when pay was frozen across the rest of the public sector. We have done this because we know how hard NHS colleagues work and we recognise that there are cost of living pressures on NHS staff.
Our goal has always been a resolution that is fair for colleagues and for the country: to find a way forward that ensures we are spending money where it is needed most, and helping the NHS to recover from the pandemic, but not on pay hikes that would stoke inflation and ultimately make us all poorer. I met GMB members last week, and—together with my ministerial colleagues—I remain fully committed to working together with the unions, the NHS and others to find a responsible and fair way forward.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
The NHS Pay Review Body was in front of my Select Committee last week, but it will not produce its report for 2023-24 until the end of April. Surely the longer this process goes on, the slower the resolution will be for those on Agenda for Change. Does the Minister agree that a much earlier remit letter would have been helpful, and when does he expect the Department to produce its evidence to this year’s pay review body round?
Will Quince
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his question. He is right that we are committed to the independent PRB process, which is the right way to set public sector pay and has operated successfully for over four decades. We are not changing that process, but we decided to take the step to engage with the unions on our respective evidence so that it can be as informed as possible, and we very much thank the trade unions for working with us in that spirit. We need to wait for discussions with unions to finish across Government, so I hope I can use the word “shortly”; I am mindful that we want to get this done as quickly as possible.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
What does the Minister think when he looks across the border to Scotland and sees that Unison, Unite and other unions representing the majority of NHS Agenda for Change staff have accepted the 7.5% pay rise offer? There are no planned strikes in Scotland while pay deals are being considered, which clearly illustrates that negotiating with the unions is a better way of ending strikes than picking fights with them. The UK Government are unique among the four Governments of the UK in that they are the only ones who have full financial powers, and therefore the only Government who are not acting with a hand tied behind their back in offering pay uplifts to their NHS staff. Why is it, then, that the UK Government are facing the greatest number of strikes and have failed to settle any pay disputes?
Will Quince
I remember another Scottish National party Member making a similar comment in a previous urgent question, crowing about how Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, was directly negotiating with the unions and that they had paused their industrial action, but only a handful of weeks later that industrial action was renewed. Pay is of course a devolved matter for Scotland and for Wales.
I will not make unfunded promises or pledges from this Dispatch Box. I want to have an honest and open dialogue with the unions about what is affordable for the NHS, where we recognise and reward NHS staff—who do the most incredible job day in, day out—with one eye to recruitment and retention, but it also has to be fair to taxpayers; and that is the spirit in which I approach this matter.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Can senior managers of NHS England and its various trusts make more use of pay gradings, job evaluations, promotions and increments, using pay flexibilities so that staff who are doing a good job feel valued and can be paid more?
Will Quince
That certainly is an option. My right hon. Friend talks about NHS managers. Understandably, the Opposition focus on nurses and paramedics, but let us not forget exactly who we are talking about: the entire Agenda for Change workforce, which is 1.245 million people. That is exactly why every 1% equates to £700 million. My right hon. Friend is right that pay is a factor, but it is not the only factor, which is why we also focus on working conditions and environment.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Taxpayers want NHS staff to be there when they need them, but as more and more staff leave the service, flipping over to work for agencies because they simply cannot afford to work for the service on their salaries, their money is being spent in the wrong way. On Friday, when I met NHS staff who came in on their day off, they said that the thing that is breaking them is the Government’s contempt for them. They simply want the Government to negotiate—so why will they not?
Will Quince
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but she could not be more wrong. I was in Darent Valley hospital today and I was in Watford hospital last week, and I have the utmost respect for all those who work in our NHS. Everybody in this Chamber wants those who work in our NHS—in fact, all public sector workers—to be paid more, but the independent pay review process is a tried and tested process that has been used for more than 40 years, and it is important that the unions engage with it so that we get this right from April.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Due to the covid pandemic, the NHS has a large care backlog, which my constituents in Kettering are keen to see addressed. Will the Health Minister confirm that spending on the NHS is at record levels and that the Government have a plan to reduce NHS backlogs, which the strikes are disrupting? For every day of NHS strike action, how many NHS operations and procedures are lost?
Will Quince
I will gladly write to my hon. Friend on the specifics, but he is right to point out that NHS spending in England this year is about 11.4% higher in real terms than it was in 2019-20. He is right to point to his constituents on the waiting lists, and I want to get the numbers down as quickly as possible, particularly for those who have been waiting the longest. On top of a £2 billion recovery fund, we have invested £8 billion over three years; we have already opened 92 community diagnostic centres, and we will open 160 by March 2025; and we have opened 89 surgical hubs, with an aim to open 140. Our aim is 9 million more treatments and diagnostic appointments by 2024, so that constituents of my hon. Friend who have been waiting too long get that service.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Ministers are hiding behind the independent pay review process. The Minister knows that recommendations have been ignored when it suited the Government in the past. NHS employers want negotiations, the unions want negotiations and the public want negotiations. The Minister says it is time to come together in the interests of patients. He is right, so why do the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister not come together with the unions and sort it out?
Will Quince
I have met employers, and I believe in open and honest dialogue. What the hon. Gentleman has not accepted—and I appreciate that being in opposition is the easiest job in the world—is that, as I have pointed out, every 1% is £700 million. I have a budget this year of £153 billion and, yes, that is rising, but I have some huge challenges. We have huge challenges to tackle within our NHS. The hon. Gentleman the shadow Secretary of State just says, “Negotiate, negotiate”—
Will Quince
Yes, yes—but where exactly is the funding coming from? The hon. Gentleman rightly pushes me on the elective backlog and he rightly pushes me on urgent and emergency care, but every 1% is £700 million that I would have to find from our NHS budget. That is exactly why we have to ensure that the pay review body makes the recommendation from April that is affordable to the NHS and recognises and rewards NHS staff, taking account of recruitment and retention and some of the challenges that we face, but that is fair to taxpayers too. That is why I would encourage the unions to get involved and take part in that pay review body process, so we can get it right.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The Minister says that opposition is the easiest job. Well, we are hoping he is soon performing it. When he opened his response this afternoon, he said that the Secretary of State was at a Cobra meeting, but would it not be more worthwhile if he negotiated and met the unions themselves? In advance of the next meeting for discussions of wages, maybe he could visit a picket line, because if Conservative Members visit the picket lines, they will find groups of staff—nurses and ambulance workers—who are extremely distressed. I have met many of them who were in tears—tears because they are worried about the patients whom they want to support, but also tears because many of them cannot survive doing the service they want to provide due to their low wages. Unless negotiations are started soon, the Government could do irreparable damage to the national health service, so the Secretary of State needs urgently to leave the Cobra meeting, sit down with the unions and start negotiating.
Will Quince
The right hon. Gentleman says that many who work in the NHS are worried about patients: I spend every single day worrying about patients; I spend every single day ensuring the NHS has the resources it needs to provide the level of care and service our constituents rightly expect. I have a budget, and that budget has already taken into consideration a 4.75% on average pay award, with more than 9% for some of the lowest earners. There is an independent pay review body process for a reason; it is only two months away, in April, and I encourage the unions to take part in it. Of course I meet with unions, and of course I do and will meet with nurses and those who work in our NHS. I believe some of the points the right hon. Gentleman makes are correct, and I know those who work in the NHS genuinely want to ensure we are attracting and retaining the very best; that is all the more reason for us to get it right, and the way to get it right is the independent pay review body process.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
There were no strikes in the NHS over 13 years of the last Labour Government, and the cavalry is coming to rescue our health service with the next Labour Government. The Minister just asked where the funding is coming from to pay for NHS staff: we will train a new generation of NHS staff paid for by abolishing non-dom tax status so that the NHS has the workforce it desperately needs. Why will the Government not do as the Chancellor has suggested and adopt this policy now?
Will Quince
The hon. Lady says the cavalry is coming; how many more unfunded pledges—[Interruption.] Labour Members say they are fully funded: absolute tosh. I have heard the Opposition spend that non-dom money more times—
Will Quince
Once? The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has spent it twice over already. And that is if indeed it would raise any money; I know I look very young, Mr Speaker, but I am old enough to remember a former Chancellor, one Ed Balls, say he did not believe taxing non-doms would raise any money whatsoever.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
I declare my interest, Mr Speaker.
We have spent a lot of time talking about pay, but making working conditions for frontline staff much better is key, so what are the Government doing to focus on improving the simple things in a clinician’s life such as joining up testing, improving prescribing, and making sure that 10% to 15% of a GP’s workload is not spent chasing admin? These are simple things that would make a huge difference and improve outcomes for both patients and staff.
Will Quince
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Ensuring that we support the mental health and wellbeing of NHS staff and that working conditions and working environments are the best they can possibly be is how we can attract and retain the best. Measures such as wellbeing champions, training for line managers, occupational health services and flexible working are very important, but the key to this is having conversations with the unions, because they are the representatives, ambassadors and advocates. That is why I very much hope they will engage in the pay review body process and continue to have those conversations with me, not just about pay, but about how we can improve working conditions and working environments and reduce the bureaucracy that makes the job so difficult.
Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)
It is now clearly established that the workforce crisis in the NHS is mirrored by vacancies in adult social care. There are more than 165,000 vacancies in social care, up by 52% in a year. The Liberal Democrats are calling for a carers’ minimum wage of £12.42 per hour from April; will the Minister support a £2 per hour uplift in that minimum wage for care workers by doubling the tax on the profits of online gambling companies?
Will Quince
The hon. Gentleman got a plug in for his policy there, but I am not entirely sure how relevant it is to this statement. On NHS staffing, we have 10,500 more nurses and 4,800 more doctors than last year. But I know adult social care represents one of the biggest challenges for our NHS, and it puts pressure on the rest of the system. That is why in the autumn statement the Chancellor put in place £7.5 billion, the largest ever investment in adult social care.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
The Minister will know about the ministerial code and about keeping the House updated, so will he tell us when the Secretary of State for Health met Pat Cullen of the RCN? If cannot tell us now, will he write to us and put that letter in the library, please?
Will Quince
Of course I am happy to do that, and I think these things are put on the public record in any event. I do not know when the Secretary of State met specifically with the RCN, but I can tell the House that I have met the unions, I believe, on 9, 12, 25 and 31 January.
Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)
I have just come from the nurses’ picket outside St Thomas’s Hospital, on the other side of Westminster bridge, where nurses made the point that they were not striking against the NHS but to save the NHS. They have been underpaid and overworked for too long; their pay is down 20% on what it was when the Tories came into power, and now there are a record 50,000 nursing vacancies in England. That is not just unfair but incredibly unsafe. As one nurse said, “Patients aren’t dying because nurses are striking. Nurses are striking because patients are dying.” Will the Minister finally listen to NHS staff, get around the table to talk about pay and give them the pay rise they deserve?
Will Quince
Despite what the hon. Lady says, there are 47,100 more nurses this year than there were in 2010 and 10,500 more than last year, and we have 72,000 nurses in training. The Government hugely value the work not just of nurses—I remind the hon. Lady that she is also talking about the 1.245 million people who work on the Agenda for Change contract. She is right that we have to get pay and other matters right, and that is why we have an independent pay review body process where we look at affordability, reward and recognition, and pay, alongside recruitment and retention and achieving a package that is fair to taxpayers. That independent pay review body will make a recommendation, and it is then for the Government to look at it and accept it or reject it.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
I stand in solidarity with nurses and other NHS workers who are taking action in their fight for fair pay and improved patient safety. Miriam Deakin, the director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, has said that its key ask is that
“the Government does sit down around the table with the unions for formal negotiations on pay, and for that to be applied to pay this year.”
She has described the absence of formal negotiations as “very worrying”. Does the Minister accept that responsibility for the continuation of strike action by NHS staff lies firmly with the Government? Does he agree with Pat Cullen, the general secretary of the RCN, that
“this government has chosen to punish the nurses of England instead of getting round a table and talking…about pay”?
Will Quince
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but nothing could be further from the truth. We accepted the independent pay review body’s recommendation of an average of 4.75% in full. That is over and above a 3% pay award last year, when the rest of the public sector saw a freeze. The hon. Lady, like me, will have lots of other public sector workers, and indeed private sector workers, in her constituency who will also earn between £30,000 and £50,000 a year. They will also have seen pay awards this year of between 4% and 6%, but they will not have 20% pension contributions or up to 33 days of annual leave a year. We have to keep these things in context, and any award also has to be fair to taxpayers more broadly, which is why we have an independent pay review body process. I want to address many of the issues that the hon. Lady has raised. We have that process; it is important that we use it, and I hope that the unions and others, including providers, will engage with it.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Our NHS staff—all of them—saw us through the pandemic, many without proper protective equipment. They have now seen us through the catch-up exercise, and they are working hard, but they are at the end of their tether. Meanwhile, the Minister says there is no money, but the Government wasted £15 billion on personal protective equipment—money that could have given everyone a 20% pay rise. Is it not time that the Government understood the issues in this strike, got around the table and talked about pay to the nursing unions?
Will Quince
First, let me correct what the hon. Lady said about PPE. I was not a Health Minister at the time, but let us not forget that 97% of all PPE was usable. Despite being a Minister in another Department, I remember that those on the Opposition Front Bench rightly agitated on this issue, saying, “Do anything, strain every sinew and take a risk, but make sure you get PPE as quickly as possible.” It was the most desired global commodity, and Governments around the world were fighting for it.
Nevertheless, the hon. Lady raised a good point, and of course NHS staff got us through the pandemic. That is exactly why we accepted the independent pay review body recommendation in full. It is exactly why we accepted the recommendation last year of a 3% award when the wider public sector was frozen. Of course we value all those who work in our NHS, and that is exactly why have to get this right for the next independent pay review body. That is why we have to ensure that not just the Government but the unions, providers and others give evidence to that body.
Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)
Just over two hours ago, I joined Lorraine and other colleagues from the Royal College of Nursing over the bridge at St Thomas’s Hospital. They do not want to be on strike and they do not want to be on a picket line, but they want a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. A key message from them to the Minister is to get round the negotiating table and give them a fair deal.
Will Quince
Opposition Members keep saying, “Get round the table and negotiate.” I encourage the next one who says that to tell me exactly where each block of 1%, each £700 million, will come from out of our NHS budget. [Interruption.] They point at me, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that we accepted the independent pay review body’s recommendations in full. We stand ready to look at the independent pay review body’s recommendations for next year, which of course is only two months away, because it starts in April. It is really important that we all engage with that process, so we can get it right and address many of the issues the hon. Gentleman and others raise.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
What is the Minister’s estimate of the number of people in England who have had their appointments or operations cancelled today, compared with Wales and Scotland where there are no strikes? Why are the Conservative Government so indifferent to the suffering of patients in England that they refuse to do what the Governments in Scotland and Wales have done, which is to get round and negotiate a settlement?
Will Quince
We do not, as yet, have the details of today’s and tomorrow’s industrial action, but we will certainly be able to publish that information in due course. I can tell the right hon. Gentleman, as I mentioned in my opening response to the urgent question, that over 88,000 appointments have been rescheduled so far and over 58,000 shifts have been missed. Of course I deeply regret that and wish that there was no strike action. [Interruption.] Of course I do.
If we had not accepted in full the independent pay review body’s recommendations, the right hon. Gentleman and others would have an argument to make to say that we had not, but we did accept them in full. We accepted them in full last year, too, despite them being over and above the evidence submitted by the Government in respect of affordability. That is why I look forward to the next independent pay review body process, and why it is so important that the unions and others engage with that process so that we get it right.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
I have more than enough cause to thank my local NHS for the lifesaving treatment it has given me, but so has every single family in this country. Why do the Government not get it, as the public clearly do, that our health workers, like all public sector workers, are at the end of their tether? Get round the table to resolve these disputes and give them the proper wage rise they so desperately need and deserve.
Will Quince
First, let me agree entirely with what the hon. Gentleman said about NHS staff and how we all owe them a debt of gratitude for the service they have given, not just to us but to all our families. Again, he may have missed it when I asked that if any Opposition Member was going to raise the same question, they might also stand up and say exactly where each block of £700 million would come from, out of my £150 billion budget. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) says, “Show us the books.” She knows exactly where the NHS funding goes. I want to ensure that we have an open and honest dialogue. I have been having those conversations with the unions and I have set out exactly the challenges we face. Any pay has to be affordable not just to the NHS but to the wider budget. It has to recognise and reward those who work in the NHS. Of course I want to retain and attract the very best, but it also has to be fair to taxpayers, and that is the point I think the hon. Gentleman and others are missing.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his answers. For nurses and many others in the NHS, striking is not what they want to do: all they want is dialogue and to try to move forward with an agreed wage structure. They have been left vulnerable by understaffing on the wards, and the pressure that adds is repugnant to them. The Government must move from their entrenched position to find a workable solution. Will the Minister commit to reopening dialogue and looking at the situation, not from the angle of enshrined principle but from a safety angle, which concerns us all?
Will Quince
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We accepted in full the independent pay review body’s recommendation this year of 4.75%, which was over and above last year’s figure of 3% when the rest of the wider public sector was frozen. He asks about dialogue. Of course I am happy to have dialogue with the unions; my door has always been open and it will continue to be so. What I am not going to do is reopen this year’s pay review. We have the independent pay review body process and we accepted that recommendation in full. What I am willing and happy to do is to have that dialogue about next year’s independent pay review body recommendation. Let us not forget that it is in only two months’ time that the new financial year starts, and we have to get that right. I hope that he will encourage unions and others to take part in that process so that we can get it right, because we all want to ensure that NHS staff get the right pay rise that recognises the huge service they give.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
Half of the successful revised offer by the Welsh Government is in the format of a one-off payment. Will the British Government confirm that that element of the pay settlement will be recognised as cost of living support and not as income, and treat it as such for tax and benefit purposes?
Will Quince
Pay is a devolved matter and I understand that the full details of the Welsh offer are yet to be finalised. They will include a number of non-pay commitments, and I understand that the cost of those measures could be substantial. I will look carefully at what the hon. Gentleman says. In any event, it would not be a matter for me as a Health Minister but for the Treasury.
Prepayment Meters: Ofgem Decision
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy if he will make a statement on Ofgem’s decision to suspend the forced installation of prepayment meters.
The Minister for Energy and Climate (Graham Stuart)
As I have set out to the House previously, it is critical that our most vulnerable energy users are protected, which is why we have already put in place a generous package of support to help people with their energy bills this winter. I was appalled, however, to see reports that vulnerable customers struggling with their energy bills have had their homes invaded and prepayment meters installed when there is a clear duty on suppliers to provide them with support. Since those reports came to light, we have acted swiftly and we will not hesitate to go further to protect consumers.
The Secretary of State has called for more robust Ofgem enforcement on those issues, as well as, more importantly, action from suppliers. It is right that Ofgem has now taken the steps it has, including asking suppliers to pause forcible installation and to conduct a thorough review of processes, and I welcome steps from those suppliers who have already announced that they will do so. I welcome the move by Lord Justice Edis today, ordering magistrates courts in England and Wales to stop authorising warrants for energy firms to forcibly install prepayment meters with immediate effect.
The Government expect strong and immediate action where suppliers fall short of their obligations. I discussed these matters with the chief executive officer of Ofgem this morning, and I met the CEO of British Gas on 1 February to tell him of the strength of the Government’s concerns at the distress that his company has caused to customers. The Secretary of State has asked suppliers to set out by the end of the day tomorrow how they will make redress to customers who have inappropriately had a prepayment meter fitted, including the possibility of compensation, and I look forward to seeing the responses from suppliers.
I thank the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) for raising this issue. I remind the House that I have committed to meeting the all-party parliamentary group on prepayment meters, where I can keep Members updated on the issue as we move forward after today.
Edward Miliband
I thank the Minister for his reply, but it is simply not good enough. The story of this scandal is of a Government sitting on their hands and being far too slow to act. Ofgem did reviews in September and November and highlighted the problem—where were the Government? In early January, Citizens Advice reported that 3 million people have been disconnected by the back door. Even after that, he came to the House and refused an outright ban. Now we know the result of his inaction: 30,000 people have had warrants issued for the forced installation of prepayment meters in the past month alone, and 6,000 in the past week since he said no to a ban—thousands of people who are victims of Government negligence.
Let me ask the Minister some questions. First, how long will this pause, which has finally been put in place, last? Will he pledge that it will not be lifted until this discredited, rotten system is properly reformed? Secondly, he mentioned compensation as a result of remedial action for those adversely affected. Will he tell us how this compensation scheme will work? Thirdly, will he look at the case for energy companies having to supply a minimum amount of power to all customers, as in France, so that nobody is cut off—just like we do not cut off people’s water supply in this country? Fourthly, this crisis is happening against a backdrop of energy bills being due to rise 40% in just eight weeks’ time because the Government say there is nothing more they can do. This is the next looming scandal. Will he finally end the loopholes in the windfall tax, including billions being siphoned to fossil fuel companies, to stop bills rising?
Energy companies forcing their way into people’s homes, millions getting disconnected by the back door, no proper windfall tax on fossil fuel profits—this is Britain under the Tories. There is no one else to blame; it is long past time they got a grip.
Graham Stuart
The right hon. Gentleman asks how long the pause will last. That is up to Ofgem, as the regulator. It looked at this process before, as he rightly said, and it had assurances that have not proven to be accurate. Ofgem needs to ensure that the processes are properly observed, because it should be an absolute last resort that a prepayment meter is forcibly installed. He asks how compensation will be worked out. That is a matter for Ofgem. As is proper for the regulator, it stands between the Government, consumers and the suppliers in delivering that.
I have asked officials to look at providing a minimum amount of power, like France does. There are a lot of technical and other challenges to such a system. One of the benefits of having a prepayment meter is that it allows someone who is not engaging with their supplier and is running up debt to none the less have a supply continuing in their home. Having people cut off completely if they fail to manage that is not something we would want to see.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about the position from April. I am proud that the energy price guarantee will continue after April, providing support for households right the way into 2024, and we have committed to consult on a new system to look after vulnerable consumers after that date.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the windfall tax and loopholes. We are investing in our energy security. While we are importers of oil and gas, as we will be under net zero all the way to 2050, the absurd position set out by the Leader of the Opposition is that Labour will oppose any new oil and gas licences, meaning that we pay billions to other countries to import it. There is no magic bullet to stop us using fossil fuels immediately. This Government have accelerated the move to renewables as fast as possible and will continue to do so, but it is absurd to have a policy under which we pay billions to countries abroad to produce oil and gas that we could produce at home to ever higher carbon standards.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
An Englishman’s home is his castle, so it is disgusting that British Gas is forcing its way into people’s homes. What is especially galling is that, five years ago, Ofcom sent a missive to British Gas warning it not to do this, and British Gas is clearly ignoring Ofcom—[Hon. Members: “ Ofgem.”] Ofgem. What further powers can the Government give the regulator to ensure that British Gas and other such companies cannot do this again and to protect the sanctity of people’s homes?
Graham Stuart
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We should all be grateful to The Times and its journalists for going undercover and revealing such behaviour—the processes were not followed. Ultimately, as a final resort, we need a forcible installation of prepayment meters in order to ensure that someone is not cut off entirely; that is necessary, but every effort must be made to support people, offer them payment plans, provide them with emergency credit and the like. We are ensuring that we have a system that does that. Ofgem has therefore since announced that it will conduct a further assessment of supplier prepayment meter practices, and we will back Ofgem to have all the powers it needs to hold suppliers to account.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
It should never have got this far. We should never have ended up in a situation in which we are now talking about compensating people for something that should never have been allowed to happen to them in the first place. Nor would it have happened if the Government had listened to the many voices who have been telling them this for months. Since I first wrote to the Secretary of State in September—I am still waiting for a reply, incidentally—prepayment meters have been mentioned 450 times in this place and the other place, so the Secretary of State feigning surprise at the weekend is just not acceptable. Nor is stopping at this one aspect of forced switching, and nor is compensation alone—these meters need to be taken away.
Why are we so appalled? It is because prepayment meters are unfair, full stop. Whether they are forced on vulnerable people or whether people choose to have them, they are unfair because someone who is on one will pay more per unit of energy than those who pay in arrears, which is most of us; they will pay more in daily standing charges; and they will be automatically disconnected the second they run out of money. That is why these abhorrent practices, which have been going on for a very long time, are so unfair: prepayment meter customers are treated unfairly, full stop. Will the Minister ask the Secretary of State to look at all aspects of prepayment meters with a view to radically overhauling the entire unfair system? Does he believe that energy should be a human right?
Graham Stuart
The hon. Lady says that prepayment meters are unfair, full stop. That is clearly not true: they have a great use. What they should do—
Graham Stuart
Where the charges are higher, it is because the system, which I think was last changed when the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) was Secretary of State, has meant that Ofgem is under an obligation to ensure that suppliers match charges to the actual cost of serving a customer. That was the principle established under the last Labour Government, and it subsists today, but I tend to agree with the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) that we need to look at this again. That is why we are looking at a reformed system for the treatment of vulnerable customers from April 2024.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
It is welcome news that forced prepayment meters have finally been stopped, but that is only half the story. The premium paid by those who are on prepayment meters is also a scandal. The least able to pay are paying the highest tariff because they cannot afford the cheapest tariff—you couldn’t make it up. Will the Minister update the House on what Ofgem is doing to radically and quickly look at the matter so that this injustice is finally put to bed?
Graham Stuart
As I said, the system for a long time has been that charges should be cost-reflective, and it is more expensive to service prepayment meters. We need to look hard to ensure that the increase in prices, which has come as energy prices have gone up, is commensurate with that before we look at the position of PPMs overall, which we will do as part of our overall reform of the treatment of vulnerable people. It is worth pointing out that the last time a survey was done, only 30% of those who are in fuel poverty had a prepayment meter, while 70% did not. Ensuring that we have a system that is fair to all is really important; that is why it is quite a complex job to make sure that we have a better system than the one we inherited from the Labour party.
Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I am very disappointed in the Minister’s reply to the question that my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) asked about a minimum level of supply. It is utter nonsense to hide behind the idea that it is complicated. I am sure that energy companies could find a way of doing it. When will the Minister make them?
Graham Stuart
It is worth pointing out that emergency credit should be supplied to customers and support should be put in place for those who get into arrears. It is a failure of the existing processes and duties that has been highlighted and has caused us to come before the House today. We must make sure that companies do that which they are obliged to do.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Can we be clear about the fact that, inexplicably, what has been happening has been completely legal? Nothing has changed since the gas and electricity Acts of the 1980s, and, indeed, the Rights of Entry (Gas and Electricity Boards) Act dates from 1954. Can the Minister explain whose decision it was that the courts should start issuing warrants for the forcible fitting of prepayment meters online, with no judicial oversight or scrutiny? Applications have been submitted in their thousands, and granted in their thousands, without even a magistrate looking at each case. Whose decision was that?
Graham Stuart
Of course I welcome the move by Lord Justice Edis to order magistrates courts to stop the authorisation of warrants for energy firms, and I will write to my hon. Friend if I can identify the root cause of the original decision.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
On 7 December, I presented a private Member’s Bill to ban the installation of prepayment meters this winter, but the Government chose to ignore me, and since then nearly 60,000 people have been put through the misery of prepayment meter warrants being issued against them. Will the Government now apologise to all the households who had prepayment meters wrongfully installed, will he force the energy companies to remove the prepayment meters, and will he personally commit himself to ensuring that the companies pay back the poverty premium that so many vulnerable people have been forced to pay this winter?
Graham Stuart
I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. That is exactly the sort of development we want to emerge from what has happened. We want to ensure that prepayment meters are removed when they should not have been installed, that people’s rights are respected, and that if the processes that should have been followed have not been followed, compensation is provided as well.
Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
It is clear from the evidence received by the Justice Committee only last week and, now, from the statement made by the senior presiding judge, Lord Justice Edis, that—leaving aside the merits or otherwise of prepayment meters—the agreement by the judiciary to deal with warrants in bulk resulted from their reliance on assurances given by the energy providers that they had complied with Ofgem’s requirements and that the representatives of the energy providers, giving evidence in relation to each bulk application, would swear on oath that the requirements had been met. It is clear that in many cases they cannot have been met. That must surely indicate, first, that the process itself is flawed and should not be continued and, secondly, that there must be an inquiry into not just the process itself, but the suitability of some of those who are representing the energy suppliers and Ofgem in court. Either they gave misleading information by inadvertence or, potentially, they did so deliberately, which, on oath, amounts to perjury. That is a very serious matter which brings the court process into disrepute, and it needs to be investigated too.
Graham Stuart
I thank my learned hon. Friend for his typically erudite question, and I agree with him. That is why, two weeks ago, we said that we would work with the Ministry of Justice to look into this and ensure that the processes were suitably robust. It is clear—not only, potentially, from court proceedings but from evidence given to the regulator—that some suppliers did not provide evidence on which we could rely.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister will know that prepayment customers, many of whom are the least well off in society, are charged a higher rate for their energy; that has been mentioned by Members on both sides of the House. Does he recognise the injustice of thousands more families being forced on to prepayment meters, on his watch, and on to higher rates at a time when so many are facing severe cost of living pressures? Does he not accept that it is time for him to step up and act further and faster, because this country needs that?
Graham Stuart
As I have said, that situation has obtained since the Labour Government introduced the current regime, and it is that cost-reflective principle which leads to prepayment meter customers being charged more. That was the position when the right hon. Member for Doncaster North was Secretary of State, and it still exists today. However, I agree with the hon. Lady, which is why, within the existing system, I have asked Ofgem to seek to ensure that not a penny extra goes beyond what is necessary to reflect cost. We are undertaking to look again at the whole system to ensure that it is fair to all, and most of all to the most vulnerable.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
There are concerns that some of the poor practices around prepayment meters may have been going on for some time. How far back will the investigation look into these matters? Will it look at some of the historical issues, particularly abuse of those vulnerable people?
Graham Stuart
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government will support the regulator to look into this matter thoroughly because any injustice done to any consumer must be identified and redressed.
Alison Thewliss
My constituent Mr Valmassoi has to move out of his home at the end of the month because Utilita has taken so long to investigate a potential fault with his prepayment meter that saw his bills soar by over 400% in 14 days, despite no increase in usage. What can the Minister do? Mr Valmassoi says that a refund nine months later will not replace losing the flat that he has made his home for the past few years. What can he and others like him, who have been ignored and let down by providers such as Utilita, expect from the Minister?
Graham Stuart
It is precisely for people who have been ill-treated such as the hon. Lady’s constituent that we need to reform the system and ensure that suppliers meet their licence obligations. It is the job of the independent regulator to work with suppliers and ensure that we minimise that. We would encourage anyone to pursue the system of redress to make up for that as best they can. But no one can make up for the fact that someone lost their flat and home. They should not have done so if the supplier had acted as it was under a duty to.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Figures from the Ministry of Justice show that, between July 2021 and December 2022, magistrates granted 536,139 warrants and refused 75—0.014%. It is inconceivable that none of those people and families had vulnerabilities. I welcome the fact that the Minister has said that the meters will have to be removed and that compensation should be paid, but many of these poor and vulnerable people are suffering now because they do not have heat and electricity. What will he do to ensure that those people get immediate redress?
Graham Stuart
That is exactly the purpose of the further work undertaken by the regulator: to ensure that we have a system that is fair to all and that, if there has been a failure of due process by suppliers, it is rectified.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
On “Sophy Ridge on Sunday”, the Secretary of State said that Ofgem had had
“the wool pulled over their eyes”
and had been taking companies “at face value”. Who was pulling the wool, and what penalty should they face? Is the regulator that allows the wool to be pulled over its eyes and takes companies at face value—and the Secretary of State who failed to deal with that in time—fit for purpose?
Graham Stuart
The hon. Gentleman asks a good question. I would not want to encourage focus on anything other than the failure of suppliers to fulfil their obligations. He is right that we also need to ensure that we have a regulatory regime and a system that does its job. As ever, we will keep that under review.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
It is interesting that the Minister is now blaming suppliers; he was blaming Ofgem at the beginning. In the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee last week, we had the retailers’ body Energy UK blaming Ofgem for not enforcing on its members strictly enough. We cannot keep going around this, with Ofgem blaming people who could pay their bills for not paying their bills. The reality is that this is brutal. The Minister may not have noticed, but he is actually in Government. He has to get a grip of this to ensure that people are not in their homes freezing to death. The cost to our NHS will be off the scale. When is he going to take up his responsibilities, stop blaming other people, put an end to this nightmare and make sure that people are not having forced installations?
Graham Stuart
Of course, the Government have stepped up. That is precisely what we have done with the energy price guarantee, providing £900 of support this winter, plus the energy bill support scheme with an additional £400, plus support through the benefit system for those on benefits. The Government have stepped up to help people and we need others to make sure that they step up and meet their obligations. That includes the energy suppliers.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
I hope I can be coherent, because I am so angry. People with disabilities and their families face a monthly cost in excess of £600 a month for a single person and over £1,000 for a family with a disabled member in it. Right throughout this cost of living and energy crisis, they have suffered more than double the amount that normal households have. The Minister says he wants to focus on suppliers who are not doing things correctly, but I want you to focus on people who are—
Marion Fellows
I beg your pardon, Madam Deputy Speaker; I did say that I would try to be coherent.
I want the Minister and the Department to focus on those who are affected by this abhorrent practice and to stop it—not pause it, but stop it immediately. When will he do that?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. As I have said, the legal decision today that no more warrants will be implemented is, I think, the right one and should give her some confidence that between the regulator, the suppliers, the justice system and others, we will ensure that we have a system that is fit for purpose and has the interests of people including the disabled people she has highlighted as its top priority.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
According to information from the Ministry of Justice, on 1 February The Times published a story revealing that British Gas routinely sends debt collectors to break into customers’ homes and forcibly fit pay-as- you-go meters, even when those customers are known to have extreme vulnerabilities. Is this not just another example of the Government’s failure to regulate our broken energy market?
Graham Stuart
I would say no, because there are clear duties on the suppliers, in this case British Gas, which is why I spoke to its chief executive last week to tell him how disgusted the Government and indeed the whole House were with that behaviour, that it was unacceptable, that the proper processes had to be followed and that we had to ensure that people were treated fairly.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I am not sure that the Minister answered the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) on this, so I will try again. Does he think that access to energy and electricity should be a fundamental human right?
Graham Stuart
As the hon. Gentleman will know, my job as the Energy Minister is to ensure that we have a strong, robust energy system that is fair to everyone and most of all to the most vulnerable, and that is what I will focus on. I will leave it to others to decide what is or is not a human right.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Government’s job is to govern, but for months and months the Minister has been sitting on the sidelines watching this car crash happen, and it is the people of our country who are paying for that. Why does he not bring forward legislation right now to ensure that people on prepayment meters do not pay a different tariff from everyone else and that the other corrections can be put in place?
Graham Stuart
As I have said, the situation was created under the last Labour Government in which suppliers have been obliged to charge rates that reflect the actual costs to them of delivering a service to someone. That, at face value, is the correct system. We need to look at whether we need to change that system to be fair to vulnerable consumers, remembering that most vulnerable consumers are not on a prepayment meter. We have to have a system that is fair for all.
Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)
Almost one in five households in Scotland are off the gas grid. Fuel poverty and the use of prepayment meters are greatest in those areas because those households are reliant on unregulated fuels and on electric heating systems, which have always been more expensive. Will the Minister recognise that additional burden, regulate those additional fuels and provide sufficient support in those areas for insulation and alternative heating systems, as well as financial support? The crisis there is even greater due to the double whammy of people being off the grid and in fuel poverty.
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and he is quite right to speak up for people in rural areas who find themselves in exactly the position he describes. I am pleased to say that as of today, credits to electricity bills will be being paid to of people who are on the electricity grid but off the gas grid—they will be appearing from now on. We are determined to help those people, which is why we announced in the autumn statement a doubling of the alternative fuel payment from £100 to £200. That money will be going to help those people, and the portal will also open before the end of the month for those who are not on either the gas grid or the electricity grid, so that they too can apply and get that £200 support.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
It should not take a journalist going undercover for the Minister to finally decide to wake up. I have been campaigning on prepayment meters since 2015, and the Government are still relying on energy companies to do the right thing. They are not going to do the right thing, so the Government need to force them. We have seen how quickly the Government can put legislation through.
Can I ask the Minister to confirm three things? First, in addition to providing compensation, will he remove prepayment meters from vulnerable households? Secondly, will he make prepayment meters cheaper per unit of energy? That is when the energy companies will start changing how they act. Thirdly, the cost has been significantly reduced due to smart meters, so the energy companies cannot use that as an excuse, but the scandal of smart meters is that energy companies can switch people remotely. Will the Government ensure that that can no longer happen and is outlawed?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and I am happy to confirm the compensation. If prepayment meters were made cheaper, we would have everybody seeking a prepayment meter and there would be nobody left to subsidise the vulnerable, and most of the poorest people do not have a prepayment meter. That question is entirely aligned with typical economic policy from the Labour party, but I do not think it contributes usefully to the debate.
However, the hon. Lady is right to highlight the importance of smart meters, and we want to see an acceleration of that programme. Smart meters provide a much better service and are cheaper to run, and I hope that as part of our plans for April 2024 onwards, when the Government support ends, we will have a system that encourages the installation of more smart meters and is much fairer to vulnerable users.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
Analysis by Citizens Advice Cymru indicates that around a third of prepayment users in Wales have been disconnected at some stage during the past year. Furthermore, there has been a threefold increase in the number of consumers being switched to prepayment meters. Do those stats alone not indicate that there is a real issue with the way in which energy companies use prepayment meters?
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. The cost of energy has gone up, and despite extraordinary interventions by the Government, families are none the less finding it harder as a function of the Ukraine war and of global energy prices. That is why this Government have gone so fast in moving ourselves to cheaper renewable energy and away from the—what was it?—just 7% of energy that came from renewables when the right hon. Member for Doncaster North left office. Now that figure is well over 40%. We are going to move to a cleaner, greener and cheaper system that will be better for consumers in Wales.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
My constituent had fallen into arrears with ScottishPower, but he was complying with his repayment plan when ScottishPower demanded the full settlement of his debt in December. When he could not do that, he was forced on to a prepayment meter, which of course compounded the problem.
I have two questions. First, the Minister has mentioned that only 30% of the most vulnerable are on prepayment meters. I would like to know when that data is from, because it would be useful to have a more up-to-date figure than that; I struggle to believe that is still the case. Secondly, if energy companies are forcing the installation of these prepayment meters, can the Minister give the House an assurance that it will not be the vulnerable customers who end up footing the bill—that those costs will be absorbed by the massive profits that the energy companies will make—and that prepayment rates will be on par with other energy rates?
Graham Stuart
I will write to the hon. Lady with the exact date—I believe it may have been 2020 or so—when 30% of those deemed in fuel poverty were on prepayment meters and 70% were not. It is highly unlikely that that would have materially changed in the period since so that the ratios are reversed. I can give her the assurance that there is no way that people who have been subject to the wrongful installation of prepayment meters will be picking up the tab. However, a complexity worth highlighting in the House is that although energy generators may be making record profits, energy suppliers have not been making profits in recent years, and we need a system that is fair to consumers and ensures stability in the energy supply market.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
We have heard that the people who are struggling most to pay their energy bills are often the most vulnerable in our society, and they are being forced on to a higher tariff. We have also heard that the appeals system is cumbersome and people may even lose their house. The Minister has blamed the utilities companies and Ofgem, neither of which have covered themselves in glory. He has even blamed the previous Labour Government, of 13 years ago. Does he not think that perhaps now is the time that this Government should take their responsibility?
Graham Stuart
Under this Government, not only are we seeing the transformation of our system to being greener, but we have seen the contracts for difference, which are of course reducing the costs to consumers, as those generators pay hundreds of millions of pounds into the pot to help lower bills for everybody. This Government have taken forward the greening of our energy system and at the same time we are working towards a sustainable future that will be fair to everyone, most of all the most vulnerable.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his answers. Does he not agree that this treatment of customers—of the disabled, pregnant women and single parents with young children, some of whom were in hospital when they were moved to prepayment meters—if not already illegal, should be? What further steps will he take to prevent the big companies from being able to trample all over the little man and the little woman, not simply in this one aspect, but in the overall treatment of the ill and the vulnerable?
Graham Stuart
The hon. Gentleman may always come at the end of the questions, but his are rarely the weakest ones. He is absolutely right on this. If we need to do more to strengthen the regulator, we will do so, to make sure that, as he says, the people who feel themselves to be at the bottom of the pile are not ill-treated—we cannot have a system that does that. We have to have one that puts their interests at the top of our list of priorities.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the Minister for answering the urgent question.
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That, at this day’s sitting—
(1) Notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 16 (Proceedings under an Act or on European Union documents), the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on—
(a) the motions in the name of Guy Opperman relating to (a) Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2023 and (b) Benefit Cap (Annual Limit) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, and in the name of Laura Trott relating to (c) Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2023 not later than three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for this Order; and
(b) the motion in the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer relating to the Charter for Budget Responsibility not later than 90 minutes after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for that Order;
proceedings may continue, though opposed, until any hour, may be entered upon after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply; and
(2) Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply to the Motion in the name of Secretary Grant Shapps relating to Energy.—(Penny Mordaunt.)
Social Security and Pensions
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Employment (Guy Opperman)
I beg to move,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2023, which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.
Madam Deputy Speaker
With this we shall discuss the following motions:
That the draft Benefit Cap (Annual Limit) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2023, which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.
Guy Opperman
This set of orders will increase state pensions and benefits and statutory payments by 10.1%, and the draft benefit cap regulations will increase each of the four benefit cap levels by the same 10.1% in April 2023. Lastly, the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order sets out the yearly amount by which the GMP, part of an individual’s contracted-out occupational private pension earned by 1988 and 1997, must be increased.
We continue to protect the poorest pensioners through the pension credit standard minimum guarantee. There is also the basic state pension in place, which will increase to £156.20 for a single person, and the full rate of the new state pension will increase to £203.85. The pension credit standard minimum guarantee will increase by 10.1%. The Government understand the pressures people are facing with the cost of living, which is why, in addition to the £37 billion of support last year, we have provided support given the cost of living pressures in 2023 and are now acting to ensure that support continues between 2023 and 2024.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
Is it not the case that the Government introduced the order to target the most vulnerable—those on fixed incomes, who really need the support at this time?
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend is right: these are difficult times for everyone, but the Government have decided to provide the maximum amount of support to the most vulnerable. That is why we are uprating the benefits on an ongoing basis. We also provided a £37 billion cost of living support package last spring and an energy price support package last September, and in 2023-24 we will provide a package that includes uprated support for the most vulnerable and a further winter fuel payment.
The order increases the personal and standard allowance of universal credit by 10.1%. The monthly universal credit work allowance—the amount that a person can earn before their universal credit payment is affected—will also increase in April by 10.1% to £379 for those also receiving support for housing costs, and to £631 per month for those not receiving support for housing costs. The order also increases by 10.1% statutory adoption pay, statutory maternity pay, statutory paternity pay, statutory shared parental pay, statutory shared parental bereavement pay, and statutory sick pay. In addition, in April, the carer’s allowance will increase by 10.1% to £76.75 per week. Unpaid carers also have access to support through universal credit, pension credit and housing benefit, all of which include amounts for carers. For a single person, the carer’s element in universal credit will increase to £185.86 a month from April, and the carer’s premium in pension credit and other income-related benefits will increase to £42.75 a week.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
Can the Minister explain to the House—not right now, but perhaps a little later—the interaction between the changes in carer’s allowance and the number of hours that carers can work, particularly in the light of the very welcome increases in the national living wage? What has been the Government’s thinking on that in recent times?
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend asks a legitimate question: how can we improve the situation for carers who wish to work more hours, long term? It would be wrong to give full disclosure of all discussions, but I will work out what I can say about that in my closing remarks, and I am happy to engage with him privately on the subject as well.
Under the benefit cap regulations, there will be an increase to the benefit cap of 10.1%. That will ensure that all households see an increase in their benefit following uprating. The national benefit cap will be £22,020 a year for couples and lone parents, and £14,753 for single people. For households living in Greater London, it will be £25,323 a year for couples and lone parents, and £16,967 for single people.
Under the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2023, there will be an increase of 3% paid by occupational pension schemes, which means that that part of the GMP will increase by 3% from April 2023. The 3% cap strikes a balance, I suggest, between providing members with some protection against inflation and not increasing scheme costs beyond what can be afforded. I commend the regulations to the House.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
In a few weeks’ time, we will have the latest figures on households below average income. They are likely to confirm what we already know: that poverty will soar as the measures taken during the covid pandemic fall out of the adjustment. The figures will confirm what we see every day, and what the Trussell Trust and others see at their food banks, which is that the cost of living crisis is hurting millions. For those with the least, soaring inflation means hunger, cold, and the fearful wait for the bailiffs, for debt recovery, or for the forced imposition of a prepayment meter. It has meant families being unable to put a school uniform on their child’s back.
There are 4 million children already in poverty; 700,000 more children were in poverty than in 2010 even before the pandemic, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report of a few weeks ago estimated that one in seven families was going without essentials. One fifth of pensioners are in poverty, with older and disabled pensioners being most seriously affected—and there, too, the figures are going up.
In a report published last week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said:
“Although it never sounds the most exciting part of benefits policy, the default indexation of benefits —what happens to their value each year if the government takes no deliberate action—is a first-order issue over the long term, and even over the short term when inflation is high.”
The IFS is right to make the important point that indexation and uprating are assumed to happen if the Government take no deliberate action. The annual uprating of working-age benefits with prices has long been the default in this country. When Governments fail to uprate benefits, that is a deliberate action, although they like to pretend otherwise.
Over the last couple of years, a new ritual seems to have been established in the run-up to the autumn statement: rumours circulate that the Government have not decided what to do, or whether they will uprate; think-tanks work out the implications of a freeze on rates of poverty and living standards; and charities and civil rights organisations urge the Government not to allow the real-terms value of benefits to fall. Uprating becomes a hot topic in the media speculation that attends any fiscal event. Then, at the last moment, we learn that the Government have decided to uprate after all. The Government expect praise for doing the right thing, and nobody considers for a moment what an extraordinary state of affairs this has become. However, it is an extraordinary state of affairs.
How can a social security system carry out its most basic functions if the value of basic entitlements is being eroded by inflation? Previous Governments did not need to spend weeks deciding whether to uprate; uprating was just what happened if they took no deliberate action. The sorry truth is that since 2010, Governments have increasingly treated the annual uprating of working-age benefits as a policy choice rather than a norm—a policy choice driven by short-term considerations, but with permanent effects that they prefer to ignore.
Dr Luke Evans
The hon. Lady is missing the key point that the universal credit taper was changed from 63p to 55p. That is new, and it makes a huge difference; those who are earning have more money in their pocket.
Guy Opperman
There is criticism that this Government are different, but the process has not changed since 1987. It has been exactly the same under 13 years of a Labour Government, under the coalition Government since 2010, and under this Government.
Ms Buck
I am slightly baffled by that. Although we have heard confirmation of the uprating this year, the point is that it comes on the back of years and years of that annual uprating simply not happening. The failure—[Interruption.] It is not a question of process; what matters is the outcome of the process. Over a number of years, the freeze on benefits and the failure to uprate has left us with a rise in poverty, as I have said.
Guy Opperman
I do not want to get too much into a tit for tat, but will the hon. Lady accept that there are 400,000 fewer pensioners in absolute poverty, that absolute poverty has declined by 1.2 million people, and that the living wage is going up?
Ms Buck
The Government have decided to refer to the absolute poverty figures only, which we would expect to go down as the years go by. However, under the standard measure of poverty, the relative measure, there is an increase in poverty. Indeed, if we want to get into the details, the Government’s preferred measure also shows an increase in poverty among families, including families with more children. This year’s uprating will at best serve to maintain the value of benefits, which has been severely reduced over the last decades. The resulting inadequacy of the safety net has played out exactly as one might expect; it contributes to increased numbers of children in poverty, to deepening poverty, and to increased need for food banks.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that the last Labour Government took 1 million children out of poverty, and that we could do with having a Labour Government immediately to take further action?
Ms Buck
I could not agree more. The Labour Government demonstrated what could be done with will, policy and investment; they brought about a dramatic reduction in pensioner poverty and child poverty. A future Labour Government will do exactly the same. Of course we will support the motion, but the Government deserve no praise—
Ms Buck
I have given away enough for the moment. The Government deserve no praise for refraining from a deliberate action that they should never have contemplated taking in the first place.
It is important to recognise the limitations to the uprating order. Although the nominal value of most working-age benefits will increase by 10.1%, there will be no change to the eligible cost limits of two crucial benefits: the childcare element of universal credit and tax credits, and the local housing allowance. Do the Government think that childcare and housing costs are immune to inflation? How does allowing the erosion of the value of childcare support fit with their stated aims of encouraging work progression and helping working parents to increase their hours of work?
Yesterday, the deputy political editor of The Sunday Times reported that:
“Sunak and Hunt want a new benefits crackdown, including”
increasing the
“threshold under which people must attend regular job centre interviews/meet work coaches to be raised to 18 hours”.
If the Government are serious about helping parents to progress, they should ensure that parents are better off working more hours, rather than using the crude and unproven instruments of conditionality. As the IFS has shown, parents in the lower thirds of the earning distribution already stand to lose 58% of their additional earnings when moving from 20 to 40 hours of work a week.
Incentives to progress are already weak, so allowing inflation to erode the value of childcare support makes absolutely no sense. As evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee stated recently,
“The childcare support provided with UC is only sufficient to cover part-time hours, because the cap it is subject to has been frozen for six years”,
and
“A fixed cap amid rising childcare costs means fewer hours are eligible for reimbursement under UC today compared to Working Tax Credit in 2005—potentially restricting parents’ employment options.”
While I am on the subject, we hardly need reminding that the requirement for parents who claim childcare support to pay up front heaps the burden on to low-income parents, and contributes to the nightmare of overpayments and deductions, which contribute to the debt and destitution crisis.
The local housing allowance remains frozen for the third year in a row—at least, that is how everybody apart from the Secretary of State sees it. He said in his written statement of 17 November:
“I can also confirm that the local housing allowance rates for 2023-24 will be maintained in cash terms at the elevated rates agreed for 2020-21.”—[Official Report, 17 November 2022; Vol. 722, c. 24WS.]
Perhaps the Minister can explain how those rates, which are based simply on the 30th percentile of local rents in 2019—since when rents have risen by 8% overall according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and vastly more in some parts of the country—can seriously be described as elevated.
Margaret Greenwood
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way—she is being very generous. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, freezing local housing allowance, as opposed to uprating it to match local rents, will reduce support for nearly 1.1 million households by an average of £50 per month. Does she agree that that is an utterly impossible situation for people to face, and that we need action from the Government on it?
Ms Buck
It is absolutely impossible. Rents are such a major component of people’s expenditure. For that shortfall to first be fixed, and then to grow, is inexplicable. It absolutely eats into people’s residual income.
Nearly 1.5 million universal credit households receive the housing allowance. Of those, 844,000, or 58%, have rents above the maximum that local housing allowance will support. On average, they face a shortfall of £100 a month, which has to come out of their residual income.
Richard Graham
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, with whom I served on the Work and Pensions Committee a long time ago, for giving way. Have this Government not increased benefits by more than inflation, which is something that Labour never did in the 13 years it was in power? Secondly, will those on universal credit not be £1,000 better off as a result of the further reduction of the taper in the universal credit system, which she and the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) continue to insist should be scrapped completely? Where does she think the social justice is in her party’s proposals?
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
If I may, I will just take my hon. Friend back to the point she was making about rent levels, which have gone up extraordinarily in the past six months. London now has the highest rents of any city in Europe, and many people on benefits living in the private rented sector are paying well over £100 a month out of their remaining benefit. Does she not think that there is also a case for looking at local housing allowance levels?
Ms Buck
This freeze in local housing allowance, which is such a critical element of people’s income, is causing such hardship for hundreds of thousands of families. That is not only undermining living standards in the middle of a cost of living crisis, but leading to utterly perverse disparities between areas due to differences in rent inflation. The 30th percentile of rents in Bristol is £100 more than in Newbury, but the amount of housing support that those who live in Bristol can receive is £12.50 less than those who live in Newbury. To quote the Institute of Fiscal Studies again:
“the current approach makes little sense. It permanently bakes in historic information about differences in rents across the country, while entirely ignoring current information about those differences.”
We can see the real-world consequences playing out on our streets as rough sleeping soars and council homelessness units are stretched to breaking point.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I simply want to respond briefly to the intervention of the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who mentioned me in passing—inaccurately, I must say. He was wrong to say that benefits have been uprated in line with inflation. At the moment, the headline rate of benefits is the lowest in real terms for 40 years, following the repeated freezes we have had. Does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Gloucester ought to check the record?
Ms Buck
I totally agree with my right hon. Friend, who speaks with expertise on this issue.
The fact is that we have seen the implications of freezes in benefits. We are seeing it in soaring poverty, and we are seeing support for housing and childcare costs failing. Those things need to be based on real-world prices, not those obtained in the past. Universal credit and legacy benefits need to be uprated with general inflation—not just once in a while, but every year—if their value is not to be permanently eroded. It would be welcome if the Minister could commit to those basic principles at least.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and it is a bit of a pleasure that we are in a better position than we were a year ago, when we were looking at a welfare increase of 3% as we saw inflation forecast to hit 7% by April. We have—perhaps more by chance than judgment—a rise of 10% while inflation is actually 10%, so we at least have an uprating that looks to be the right number. However, the fact is that that is still a bit by chance, because we are still having to use information that will be six months out of date by the time we get there. It shows how strange the system we have is. When the Minister winds up, can they say whether any progress at all has been made in trying to get the systems in a position where we can use a more recent number, so that we do not end up with a repeat of last year, using an out-of-date number that is way below the level of inflation by the time we get into the year?
A 10% rise in benefits and the state pension is extremely welcome, and we should pay tribute to the Secretary of State and the ministerial team for getting that amount of money out of the Treasury, but I suspect that when the Chancellor sat down to do his emergency Budget, or several Budgets back in the autumn, he probably was not overly excited by having to find this amount of money. It was, however, clearly the right thing to do. The idea of putting up the incomes of people on fixed incomes or earning the lowest levels in the country by less than inflation would have been completely ridiculous. I think we have got to the right answer, and I welcome it. The timing of the changes has an unfortunate impact; by the time we get to April we will have had increases of just over 13% for the last two years, while inflation will have risen by about 17%, so people will still be 4% down on where they were before the crisis.
And it is worse than that. The basket of goods and services bought by most people on these benefits tends not to relate well to the consumer prices index. For example, food price inflation is much higher—more like 19%. There is no doubt that the Government have been extraordinarily generous with energy support, but if we factor in the changes to energy price support, what do we see for the coming year? The inflation figure that has been used is from September—before the move to the energy price cap, which started in October—and the price cap that drove that figure was an annual bill of £1,971. We are currently at £2,500, and the Government’s cap will mean that that number will rise to £3,000 from April, so the average household may well be £1,000 worse off on their energy bills. The rise in the state pension of about 10% is a little under that, so will only cover the rise in energy bills from the current financial year to the next.
The support will drop off quite considerably. If we add up the cost of living support, the £400 from the energy company and the £150 via council tax, the average household on the lowest incomes has had £1,200 of support this year. That will go down to £900, and the pensioner support will go down from £850 to £300. Although there will be a rise in the main benefits and pensions income, a cut to the other support and a rise in energy bills will mean that that is all gone, and most households will actually be worse off as we go into the next financial year. I am not sure that is what the Government intend.
The idea that we have to taper off the extra support for households that are earning money is right in principle, but the Government may need to keep a watching brief throughout the year on whether people living on a fixed income in retirement, on out-of-work benefits or on the very lowest incomes, can really absorb a change that could mean—by the time all the extra bills and the reduction in support have been factored in—that they are £1,000 worse off next year than they are this year. Is that what we really intend? Are we in danger of unravelling the incredibly generous support we have given in this financial year by taking it away next year, perhaps a bit too soon?
We all hope that inflation will fall considerably, and we see encouraging signs from the energy markets that prices are coming down. Perhaps by the time we get to April, the energy price forecasts for households for the next year will be a long way below the £3,000 or even below the current £2,500 cap, and this problem will go away. Perhaps the Government will be proven right in taking a more cautious approach to support for next year. Having gone to the effort to create a brand-new benefit for cost of living support, which I think is unprecedented, I hope the Minister can confirm that the Government will keep reviewing that rate to see whether we are giving households enough to get through the next financial year.
I wholeheartedly welcome today’s increases, which are clearly the right thing to do, but there are two things that the Government need to do on top of monitoring the situation. The first is to try to get this decision made on more recent, more relevant data. I accept that the systems are so old and steam-driven that we have to start doing the work in October based on the September number, and that if we do not start that early we cannot get the rises through, but it is a bit bizarre to bring to the House in February an order that we had to start programming the computer to do in November or October, and that we cannot change. If the House voted for something different tonight, it would be too late; this is plumbed into the system. We should either have this debate in November, when we can actually change it, or we should try to move the rise to a more relevant date. Given that we managed to get the £20 universal credit uplift through in a matter of weeks, I really cannot see why we could not be using more modern data. Now that we know that more of the legacy benefits will be continued on late into this decade, surely it is time to try to get a system that means we can do an uprating that reflects the real cost of living at the time that income comes in.
There is a second thing the Government should do, which the Select Committee recommended previously. We have had a slightly haphazard journey of welfare increases in the last 13 years, so it would be quite unlikely to have ended up in the right position, whereby the amount we are giving people in various household scenarios is equivalent to what they need in order to buy the goods and services that we think they ought to be able to buy. It is time to have a rebasing exercise: to go away and do the work, and work out whether we are giving the households of a single person, a couple, a couple with one child or two children, and so on, the amount of money we expect they need to live on—to be able to pay for all the essentials they ought to have. In some cases, perhaps we are. In some cases, we are probably not. But if we are, it is by fluke rather than any sort of planning, and if we are not, we are putting people in a really difficult position.
I hope Ministers can accept that there really needs to be a rebasing at the end of this crisis. If we have been through 17% or more inflation in the space of two years, that must suggest that the cost of living is in a very different position from where it was. Let us do the work. I will be very happy to find out that the benefits are in the right place and there is no need for any further increases. If they are too high—well, that is very generous, although I think it is very unlikely that they are too high. If they are too low, we need a plan to fix that. That would be the right thing to do. Let us do the work and find the evidence, and I hope we will then all be able to take an informed view when it comes to the uprating next year.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), who is always incredibly thoughtful on these issues, and it is certainly a pleasure to serve alongside him on the Work and Pensions Committee.
As we debate today’s annual uprating orders, we do so against a grim economic backdrop and at a time when some of the most vulnerable people in our communities are battling literally to survive this cost of living crisis and make it through the winter. However, I think it is important to recognise that the cost of living crisis is not a new thing. Yes, the war in Ukraine has had a profound impact on the global economy, and I do not think anybody in this House would deny that; and nor is anyone denying that the coronavirus pandemic has left serious scarring on the economy. But the inescapable fact is that poverty in all its forms was in a dire situation pre-pandemic. Let us take child poverty as just one example. Figures from the Child Poverty Action Group show that, pre-covid, there were 700,000 more children in poverty than at the start of 2010. Rising child poverty coupled with a cost of living crisis demands radical action from a British Government who must do more—so much more—to end the scourge of child poverty.
Today’s uprating orders are certainly a step in the right direction. The orders for the financial year 2023-24 are welcome, and we certainly will not oppose them. However, Ministers should be under no illusion that these will make up for four very long years of benefit freeze prior to the pandemic. Data from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s cost of living tracker in October paints a horrendous picture that should shame every single one of us. About six in 10 low-income households are not able to afford an unexpected expense, over half are in arrears and about a quarter use credit to pay essential bills, resulting in over seven in 10 families going without essentials. That, I am afraid, is the stark reality of Tory Britain in 2023, and no alternative facts in the Minister’s red folder can seek to deny that.
I thought it might be a good idea to have a look a bit closer to home—indeed, in the Minister’s own constituency —and see what Tory Britain really looks like in Hexham, so I had a look at the latest available annual report for the West Northumberland food bank, based in the Minister’s own constituency. Page 3 of its latest published annual report—again, I am quoting from the Minister’s own local food bank—states:
“Listening to people’s concerns on the helpline we became increasingly aware of rising child poverty, the two-child policy has plunged hundreds of thousands of children into poverty across the UK, since 6 April 2017. Parents having a third or subsequent child are no longer eligible for support for that child through benefits worth up to £2,830 per child per year”.
It goes on, remarkably, to cite statistics from the Minister’s own Department—this is his own food bank—saying that
“DWP…statistics show that in 2019-20 24% of children in the Hexham constituency were growing up in poverty, that’s almost 3,000 children and it’s increased by 6% since 2015, that’s 738 more children born into poverty in just 4 years.”
They are not my words, but the words of the Minister’s own local food bank’s annual report.
The red folder that the Minister walks about with may contain all sorts of distorted statistics and soundbites, but the problem is that statistics and soundbites do not put food on the tables of people in Hexham, or indeed anywhere on these islands. For example, instead of increasing the benefit cap, which has been frozen since 2016, the British Government should, in my view, just abolish it entirely, because it is pushing more and more people into poverty, and those of us who have surgeries on a Friday morning can see that clear as day.
If history teaches us anything, it is that trying to govern simply to appease headline writers in comics such as the Daily Mail and the Express does nothing other than further cement inequality and poverty, which is rife in Britain today. The reality is that too many households have now been left behind and will not benefit adequately from uprating because the Tories keep refusing to fix known policy failures. For example, the continued refusal of Ministers to fix the extensive known problems with universal credit is unacceptable and is subjecting vulnerable people to additional unnecessary hardship.
Instead of keeping additional pressures on low-income families, Ministers need to urgently address the fundamental issues with universal credit. A recent report by the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe found that the level of support provided under UC was
“a key contributing factor to child poverty.”
The report stated that policies like
“the two-child limit and the benefit cap restrict the amount of benefits that households can receive, regardless of their specific needs, and thereby continue to exacerbate child poverty.”
Therefore, my party stands by its calls to the British Government to reinstate the uplift to UC, and indeed to increase it by £25 a week, and to extend it to means-tested legacy benefits, as well as to extend the benefit cap.
Dr Luke Evans
Has the hon. Gentleman or his party calculated how much that would actually cost the taxpayer?
David Linden
Given the ability of the Government to crash the economy in the mini-Budget by the now elusive right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss)—[Interruption.] Hon. Members have managed to wake up just in time to debate economics. They had nothing to say on food banks or child poverty, but when it comes to money, they are excited. The hon. Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans), who is a parliamentary private secretary, must do better with his interventions if he wants to get into the Government.
Last April, Ministers in Edinburgh called on the British Government to reverse those policy changes. That would have put £780 million into the pockets of Scottish households and it would lift 70,000 people, including 30,000 children, out of poverty in 2023-24.
In its recent submission to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Human Rights Watch also gave a damning review of the British Government’s restrictive social security policies, such as the two-child limit and the failure to reduce the cut to universal credit. It set out the negative impacts on the right to an adequate standard of living, to food, and to housing for families with children. It is a depressing state of affairs that thousands of families with children will be pushed into poverty simply because the British Government refuse to scrap the two-child limit on child tax credits and universal credit. In April 2022, 1.3 million children here in these islands were affected by the two-child limit—that is 8.7%, or one in 12 children—and that number will, sadly, continue to rise as nearly all low-income families with three or more children eventually become subject to the limit.
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that Conservative Members may jeer from a sedentary position, but they have the poverty of people right across Scotland on their hands?
David Linden
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I understand that political ideology will separate us, but in the five years that I have been a Member of this House I have struggled to get my head around the fact that, while the hon. Gentlemen who do their surgeries on a Friday morning see the same people as we do in our surgeries, who come and say that the social security system is inadequate and has left them in dire straits, there is no conviction to come into this Chamber and say to the Government, perhaps as the hon. Member for Amber Valley has done, that this is wrong.
David Linden
I am sure the hon. Gentleman is about to tell us what the Government could do better.
Justin Tomlinson
In the same spirit of trying to help those most in need, why do the Scottish Government not mirror our proposed changes to the terminal illness rules within disability benefits?
David Linden
The hon. Gentleman is missing what is happening, given the limited social security powers that the Scottish Government have. Bearing in mind that 85% of welfare spending is reserved to this place, he will see that we are doing an awful lot to try to help people with social security, but if the Minister wants to back up my calls to devolve all social security to the Scottish Government, that will certainly be welcome.
Research from the Child Poverty Action Group shows that the majority, some 59%, of those affected by the two-child limit are working families. Perversely, some of those families work for the Minister’s own Department, which administers said benefits; that would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. The fact that a few weeks ago the Lords Minister, Viscount Younger, could not justify to the Work and Pensions Committee how the two-child limit is compatible with the Government’s own family test is a damning indictment of a Minister who is not over his brief and whose policies do not even comply with the family test for which he is responsible.
I turn now to universal credit, which should be topical, given Labour’s significant change in stance. That change provides an opportunity to seek cross-party agreement on reform of universal credit, because all three main parties in this Chamber now agree with the broad principles and the aims of universal credit. The challenge for us now is to make it work and to iron out the creases, which are by no means insurmountable. We know, for example, that the five-week wait for a first payment is needlessly pushing people into hardship. That could be relatively easily fixed by implementing proposals to turn advance payment loans into non-repayable grants after a claimant has been deemed eligible.
On sanctions and conditionality, far too many households face destitution, largely because DWP rules are pushing them into debt through sanctions and deductions. Recent changes to the universal credit administrative earnings threshold mean that even more people will risk having their vital universal credit payments sanctioned. These 600,000 people are already working, and there is clear evidence that sanctions do not work in getting people into work or to increase their hours or earnings. To that end, I have tabled early-day motion 715 to annul the relevant regulations, which I hope the Government will grant us time to debate and vote on, and I certainly hope we can count on Labour support in that.
However, there are other problems with sanctions and conditionality. For example, individuals who have had a sanction applied have also been denied the vital cost of living payments the Minister was rightly trumpeting earlier. That demonstrates a fundamental issue with the DWP’s attitude to those on low incomes, because preventing vulnerable families from receiving the social security they are entitled to when they need it most strikes me as somewhat back to front.
I will turn now to the UC childcare offer. If the Tories actually cared about working people, they would want to improve childcare support for UC claimants by supporting them with childcare costs up front and in full. The SNP continues to call on the Government to increase payments for those aged under 25 in line with increases for older claimants. We also continue to call for local housing allowance to cover the average cost of rents and for the shared accommodation rate for those under 35 to be suspended—that age range has always struck me as somewhat arbitrary.
The SNP has called for the British Government to fix these fundamental flaws in social security and to deliver a system that actively tackles poverty and empowers people. However, it is an inescapable and undeniable fact that the Scottish Government cannot change these policies while 85% of welfare expenditure and income-related benefits remain reserved to this institution here in London, and that includes universal credit, which is of course a reserved benefit. The only way to ensure that Scotland has a decent social security system is for us to take all legislative and fiscal responsibility for these issues by way of independence and to no longer hope that the full-fat Tories, or the diet Tories on the Labour Benches, will one day reform the social security system, which is clearly broken beyond repair.
I turn now to the order on pensions, and I start by genuinely welcoming the Pensions Minister to her place. I respect her enormously, and although we will doubtless disagree on aspects of policy, I have no doubt as to her motivations. Where we have common cause and we can agree—for example, on pension credit—she can be assured of SNP support. However, I am afraid that that is probably where the warm words and cross-party consensus will come to a halt for this evening, because the British Government have a serious job of work to do if they are to rebuild credibility among pensioners. Time and again, we have seen the Tory Government short-change pensioners, who are getting a raw deal from a pension system that they have paid into their entire lives.
Pensioners on low incomes are among those hardest hit by the cost of living crisis, and the British Government must do much more to ensure that they are properly supported, so let us start with the state pension. Westminster already provides a lower state pension relative to average earnings than most other advanced economies. Last year’s breaking of the triple lock will cost each pensioner £520 on average during the course of living crisis. The Government’s own Red Book shows that that will take £30 billion in total from pensioners by the 2026-27 financial year. Retaining the triple lock is the bare minimum I would expect, but I rather fear that that policy pledge will not survive the rigours of manifesto writing when it comes to both main parties in this House. However, I would like to be assured on that issue in the winding-up speeches.
A recent report from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association found that the annual income required to maintain a basic standard of living in retirement has massively outstripped the rise in the state pension. For a single person, the minimum income now sits at £12,800, while the state pension will rise to only £10,600 in April for those on the full flat rate. Indisputably, the state pension remains an important source of income for pensioners living in, or at risk of moving into, poverty because of the very low take-up of pension credit, which I accept is the Minister’s biggest priority and one I am certainly willing her on to succeed with. However, Independent Age highlights that 5% of pensioner couples and 19% of single pensioners have no source of income other than the state pension and benefits.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s “UK Poverty 2023” report revealed that 1.7 million pensioners were living in poverty in the UK in 2020-21, the poverty rate for single pensioners is almost double that of couple pensioners, and almost one in seven pensioners overall are living in poverty—something I can see in its rawest form in communities such as Sandyhills, Carmyle and Baillieston in my constituency. We know that pension credit is a vital support for many older people, but only around seven in 10 of those who are entitled to it actually claim it, and up to £1.7 billion of available pension credit is, I am afraid, going unclaimed. In crude terms, that amounts to £1,900 a year for each family in the east end of Glasgow entitled to receive pension credit.
Dr Evans
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Is that not a point that all of us in this House can take away? Pension credit is going unclaimed and all 650 of us could go back to our constituents and encourage them to make sure they check the website and use the phone to get, potentially, that gateway option to £3,000.
David Linden
Yes, I think we are going to have a political “Lady and the Tramp” moment where we actually agree on this. There will be spaghetti across the House. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We need to be in a situation where we encourage all our constituents to take up pension credit. Having met the Minister fairly recently—
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. In my constituency, my staff and I encourage all the pensioners we meet every week to look at pension credit. Some will qualify and some will not. Today, Citizens Advice came to me to say it is going to start a project in Newtownards in my constituency and I look forward to that unfolding. Does he feel that the Government should focus attention specifically on pension credit, because there are many people out there who would apply if they knew more about it?
David Linden
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I think I am unique in that I am one of the few people who serve as a Member of this House who has been in his constituency office and spoken to his constituency staff—some of us go on holiday to places like Newtownards. He is absolutely right. I ask the Government to put just as much effort into advertising things like pension credit take-up as they do into propaganda-like billboards in our constituencies about levelling up. If that amount of resource were put into advertising pension credit, perhaps we would see it go further.
The British Government’s assault on pensioners does not just extend to the pitiful state pension. Let us not forget that the Tories also scrapped free TV licences for over-75s, including in Broadland. People who watch on and see the Westminster incompetence of this place will know that pensioners across these islands have already been short-changed by £6,500 on average due to state pension underpayments. Peter Schofield, the permanent secretary at the DWP, recently told our Select Committee that—
Jerome Mayhew
The hon. Gentleman mentions Broadland and says that pensioners are being short-changed by the Government. How can he reconcile that statement with the triple lock on pensions, which raises pensions year on year by 2.5%, the rate of inflation or average earnings—a ratchet effect increasing the value of pensions when compared with the economy at large?
David Linden
The triple lock the hon. Gentleman refers to is the one that he and his party broke a manifesto commitment on recently, resulting in many pensioners being diddled.
Jeremy Corbyn
I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the huge problem of pensioner poverty, particularly for those who are unable, or do not understand how to access the minimum income guarantee. Does he accept there is also a huge problem for women of a certain age, the WASPI women, who are living in great poverty and great stress through no fault of their own, due to a change they were unaware of?
David Linden
The right hon. Gentleman is spot on. Several of us are looking with great interest at the ombudsman process, which has just finished stage two and will now move to stage three. I hope that the Government will change their tune on their approach to the issue of 1950s born women, because thus far many of those women in my constituency and, I am sure, in Islington North would suggest that the Government are not doing enough on that issue. He is right to put that on the record.
Before the hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) intervened, I was making the point that the DWP has identified a further 100,000 potential underpayments during its ongoing correction exercise, which will now take an extra year to complete. I would argue that that demonstrates that the British Government are unable to effectively run a state pension system, and makes the case for pensions being administered in an independent Scotland, and not by Tory Ministers who are increasingly using pensioners to penny-pinch.
It would be remiss of me not to touch on retirement age, which has been the subject of huge media speculation recently. It appears to be the worst kept secret in Whitehall that Ministers are expected to announce that the retirement age will be increased to 68 at some point in the 2030s, not in 2046 as previously expected. To be crystal clear, my party opposes any further increase in the state pension retirement age. Indeed, the Scottish Government, when they responded to the British Government’s review of the state pension age restated their opposition to any changes to the current timelines for increasing the state pension age. This might seem like an abstract debate, but these things have real-life effects. Recent analysis by Age UK shows that 1.5 million pre-state pension age households have no savings at all. We must therefore avoid the situation faced by the WASPI women, mentioned by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who faced having to work longer with little time to replan for retirement. On the subject of WASPI women, I again make clear my support for their cause.
It is incumbent on the British Government to look at other areas of pension injustice, such as frozen pensions for those living overseas, many of whom are veterans. It is my party’s belief that that is not a sustainable situation and, though complex, it cannot be allowed to just go unchecked while pensioners languish in poverty overseas. That is certainly a unique take for global Britain.
The British Government’s decision to decline a request from the Government of Canada for a reciprocal social security agreement was a peculiar one and I would appreciate the Minister saying more about that during his wind-up speech.
The reality is that tonight’s orders will pass without a vote but this annual debate shines a spotlight on the major holes in our social security system. The UK is blessed with the sixth largest economy in the world, yet —remarkably—soup kitchens up and down these islands will throw open their doors tonight, in record number, to feed people who cannot afford to get by on state support. That poses a much bigger question which this Government have thus far been unable to answer. It is a question which many people in Scotland are concluding can only be answered with independence, because Westminster is not working and Scotland can do better—so much better—than this crumbling Union.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) and I pay tribute to his encyclopaedic survey of the landscape of the Department. It is fair to say that no stone was left unturned, and we are grateful to him for that. It is also always a pleasure to come to the Chamber to support the Minister when he does the right thing—indeed, it is perhaps a pleasure to listen to him here when he does the wrong thing.
I speak today to express my satisfaction—indeed, my relief—at the Government’s decision to uplift benefits by CPI. Over the summer, my most disadvantaged constituents faced real fear from the sudden increases in the cost of living and what was coming down the track towards them. They were perturbed, confused and daunted by the confusion in public messaging from both our leadership contest and the “interim” Government, as I should perhaps call it. They were very worried, so the news that we will update benefits by CPI was a great relief for them, not least because we know that inflation always hits the poorest in society worst, so protecting those in receipt of benefits from inflation is the most important duty of Government. Indeed, it was Milton Friedman no less who said inflation is a tax on the poorest in society. So the Government did the right thing. Inflation does matter. It is not an economic sideshow, and we should always remember that.
I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), the shadow Minister. She may not be aware that a shadow Front-Bench reshuffle is due, but I can only assume that that was the reason for some of her comments—she may get a surprise in a few days—because she was praising the previous Labour Government. It was like an exercise in nostalgia. Her opposition to conditionality leapt out at me. My constituents remember the something-for-nothing welfare state that Labour created in that era, and by refusing to accept the role of conditionality in our welfare system, she is committing the Labour party to that agenda once more; I was very surprised to hear it.
I represent an area that sadly still has high levels of pensioner poverty, so I particularly welcome the Government’s decision to extend CPI protection to those who rely on the standard minimum guarantee in pension credit. It will cost some £700 million above the statutory minimum requirement, so I welcome the Government’s commitment to supporting the poorest pensioners at this time of high inflation. However, like any Back Bencher, I will urge them to do more. Despite the best efforts of many, my constituency still saw a slight dip in the number of pension credit claimants last year, so I urge the Pensions Minister, who has done so much to get people claiming pension credit, to continue those efforts; the battle is not yet won.
I also urge the Government to consider the need for flexibility in our pension system. My favourite statistic of the month is that the old age dependency ratio currently shows 28 people over 65 for every 100 of working age, some of whom are probably not in work. The ratio will rise to almost 50:100 by 2050, causing fundamental challenges for any Government. All those who flatly oppose raising the state pension age need to engage with that, not take cheap positions that involve no thought at all—however encyclopaedic their speeches might be. Raising the state pension age clearly makes sense on one level, but many of my poorest pensioners dropped out of the labour market well before the state pension age. Indeed, my constituency has the lowest healthy life expectancy in the country. Given that people can defer the receipt of state pension in return for higher payments, could those claiming early, whether down to ill-health or physically intensive work, not have a slightly reduced payment? That would strike a fair balance.
The Government are doing an immense amount to support those facing sharp increases in energy bills. I welcome the extra £150 for personal independence payment claimants, and the uprated PIP being discussed today. However, will the Minister please take away from this debate the numerous emails I have had from those reliant on electronic beds, electronic wheelchairs, oxygen concentrators, sleep apnoea machines—all manner of electricity-reliant equipment—to keep them alive? They have seen their bills go up by £150 a month, not £150 a year, and they are deeply concerned at the energy price trajectory not coming down sharp enough.
Our benefits system remains generous, but it could go so much further. Too often it is being asked to bear the weight of other structural inadequacies in the system, where other Departments could or should be doing more, or where the private sector is allowed to shirk some of its moral responsibilities as players in what we ought to call responsible capitalism. The consequence is that people continually ask for more money to be spent by the welfare state, when the solution should be to make that money go further by ensuring that we have better value and a fairer system in which people can spend that money.
The cost of energy for those with complex medical equipment is just one example of the purple pound, where the disabled pay hidden costs over and above what PIP could ever meet, despite its being there to meet the extra costs of disability. The poverty premium is another area where the DWP and the wider state can ensure that the benefits system does not allow and reinforce poor practice elsewhere. For example, inflation is at its highest in the food and retail sector, but it is higher still in the smaller neighbourhood supermarket stores in the most deprived parts of my constituency. Residents relying upon a local One Stop, Tesco or whatever may not be able to afford to go to the large out-of-town supermarket for better-value food. The private sector is obliging the benefits system to take up the slack of the dysfunctional market in which my constituents are trapped.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. He highlights the fact that everyone has individual circumstances, which is why the Government brought forward the £2 billion local welfare assistance scheme. Has he had any success in his casework in getting that additional support for people with additional individual challenges?
Paul Maynard
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He used the phrase “local welfare assistance scheme” which, sadly, could provoke me to speak for even longer than the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), because it is my specialist topic, but I ought not to go there—[Hon. Members: “More!”] Perhaps Members should wait for me and the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) to finalise our report into emergency food aid, where they will be able to see exactly what I think.
To finish on perhaps a more fundamental point, one strength of our benefits system is that sufficient incentives are built into the structures of in-work benefits, along with conditionality—I am sorry to say that to the shadow Minister—to ensure that, as far as possible, work is seen to pay. However, that has been distorted through the more complex pattern of financial support that has emerged during covid and the wider cost of living crisis. Those living just below a particular threshold that qualifies them for extra state support get large payouts, but those just above the threshold feel greatly aggrieved. They regard it as unfair because they are being punished for being seen to do the right thing. The bedrock of our benefits system is a belief in its fairness, not just to those who need support at any one time, but to those who have to fund the system and may one day, of course, require it. Although I strongly welcome the Government’s decision to uprate benefits, we must bear in mind the needs of, and treat fairly and responsibly, not just those who are in receipt of benefits, but those who fund the system and are in work, day in, day out. They are two sides of the same coin.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee.
Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I echo the relief expressed by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) about the uprating decision, and I am pleased to follow his speech. I will begin with some points about the way we uprate benefits and echo some of the important points made by the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), whose contribution to the Select Committee I appreciate.
We now know that legacy benefits will be claimed by some people until at least 2028. The Select Committee, in its report last July, called on the Department to improve its IT systems and increase the speed with which changes can be made to legacy benefit and state pension rates, and the lack of progress has been disappointing. Annual uprating based on the previous September’s inflation is perfectly reasonable when inflation is stable, but it is not reasonable in the current volatile circumstances. The Committee called for a shorter gap—the hon. Gentleman echoed this—between the inflation reference period and the uprating date, preferably using inflation data from the previous quarter, or possibly more recent still.
In the past year, the lag has caused real hardship. Benefits were uprated last April by the inflation rate of the previous September: 3.1%. By the time the uprating took effect, inflation was nearly 10%. The result has been benefits at the lowest real-terms level for 40 years, and a big surge in food bank demand. Like the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys, I applaud the fact that the Government are honouring their obligations this year, and that the uprating will be 10% in time for the new financial year. That should prevent things becoming substantially worse for many in the coming year.
But it is not going to make things much better. Trussell Trust food banks gave out 1.3 million food parcels from April to September last year—more than in any previous six-month period, and 50% more than before the pandemic. At the Liaison Committee in December, the Prime Minister said that he would
“work very hard to deliver”
lower food bank demand by the end of this Parliament. I warmly welcome his adoption of that goal, but it will be achieved only if social security support is increased in real terms. What is the right level for the social security safety net? The Work and Pensions Committee plans in the near future to launch an inquiry into the adequacy of benefit levels, a subject that the hon. Member for Amber Valley spoke about. It seems to me that the safety net is now so inadequate that it is damaging the economic recovery: it is too low to do its job properly.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
The Chair of the Select Committee cites some damning statistics from the Trussell Trust. For all that food bank use is increasing overall, the inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group on ending the need for food banks, which the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) mentioned, has demonstrated that it went down when the £20 universal credit uplift was in place. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we should look at that?
Sir Stephen Timms
I absolutely agree. That was the one point at which food bank demand fell, and of course it went straight back up once the £20 uplift was removed.
The level of the safety net is now too low for it to do its job properly from the standpoint of economic efficiency. People are being forced to accept unsuitable jobs, with no prospect of training or advancement, simply in order to subsist. That is one reason why the UK’s productivity record is so poor, and we will not deliver economic growth until we tackle that productivity failing. Interesting cross-party thinking on the matter is under way, for example in the work of the Poverty Strategy Commission set up and chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud. Our Committee’s inquiry will be able to draw on that and other work.
It is clear that the immediately preceding Administration —the interim Government, as the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys described it—would not have honoured those obligations. The right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) told us yesterday that her Administration was brought down by a left-wing conspiracy in the financial markets. It is not clear whether she regards my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) as having been responsible for organising that.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I knew I’d get the blame somehow.
Sir Stephen Timms
Actually, of course, it was brought down by economic reality. But I do not think that that Administration would have delivered an inflation uprating, so it is to the credit of the current Administration that they have done so.
I also welcome the increase in the benefit cap. The cap was introduced in 2013 and then reduced in 2016; it has never been increased at all. At the beginning of April it finally will be, thank goodness, but only by the overall rate of benefit uprating, which means that in effect it is a standstill increase. The impact of the benefit cap will not get worse in the coming year, but that will not affect the worsening impact of the cap’s falling in real terms every year since it was introduced.
David Linden
Will the right hon. Gentleman go one step further and join those of us who want the benefit cap not merely raised, but scrapped in its entirety because it is having such a detrimental impact on families across these islands?
Sir Stephen Timms
There is a strong case for that. At the time when the benefit cap was introduced, we were told that it was to prevent people from receiving more in benefits than they would if they were working, but any relationship with wage levels has long since disappeared.
In its briefing for this debate, the Child Poverty Action Group makes the point that the increase does not undo the damage of the cap having been frozen since 2016, but
“pushes families who would be in poverty anyway into even deeper poverty.”
It points out that 123,000 households are currently affected by the cap, including 107,000 households with children. That is one reason why, before the pandemic, when the data was most recently updated, 700,000 more children were in poverty than in 2010. The case for the cap needs to be reconsidered.
I want to pick up a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) made about the absence of an uprating to the local housing allowance, which is a very big problem. The LHA will be frozen for the coming year at the level at which it was set in 2020, even though rents are rising fast. When I raised the matter with the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee in December, he replied that the uprating in 2020 represented
“a very significant cash uplift at the time, which it is appropriate to have maintained”,
echoing the wording of the ministerial statement from which my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North quoted.
Jeremy Corbyn
I agree with the Chair of the Select Committee about the rapid increase in rents, particularly in the private sector—it is huge in the big cities. Does he think that the Government should at least reflect on the need for a freeze on private sector rents, and for some serious legislation to protect the now huge proportion of our country’s population who live in the private rented sector?
Sir Stephen Timms
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful argument that the rate at which rents are now rising is devastating household finances in many parts of the country. All the 2020 increase—the much-vaunted “generous uplift”—did was raise the local housing allowance back to the level at which it had been set at the beginning of the decade: at the 30th percentile of local rents. In other words, it was raised to a level at which it covered three in 10 of the homes of that size in each local area, so even in 2020 it was not enough to cover the rent for seven out of 10 of the homes available. Since then, it has been frozen; by the end of the coming financial year it will have been frozen for four full years.
The consequences are becoming clear. Last week, the Combined Homelessness and Information Network reported that up to 3,570 people were sleeping rough in London from October to December 2022—a 21% rise on the same period in the previous year, with a 29% increase in the number of new rough sleepers. The chief executive of Crisis said:
“It is simply disgraceful that the numbers of people forced to sleep on the capital’s streets is very nearly back to the record levels we were seeing before the pandemic.”
Zoopla data shows large shortfalls for the cheapest properties by the end of last year: the shortfall for a one-bedroom home in Southwark had almost doubled in five months to £2,630 a year, while the shortfall for a three-bedroom home in Bromley had increased by more than £1,000 in five months to £3,555. At the start of 2022, some 1.7 million people—more than one in three renters in the private rented sector—were dependent on housing support to help them with their rent. Fewer than one in 12 private homes listed last year were affordable within the local housing allowance level; that figure reduced by a third in just five months last year.
The level of support is now being frozen in cash terms for a further year. Crisis said last week that it was
“particularly concerned that the lack of social housing and the growing gap between overheating rents and the frozen Local Housing Allowance is pushing people towards homelessness.”
That is the reality of the impact of the policy, which should urgently be reconsidered. Ministers say that they are committed to ending rough sleeping, but the policy is driving an increase in rough sleeping.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North for drawing attention to the Select Committee’s recommendation about the cap on the level of childcare support in universal credit. It is regrettable that there is nothing in the present measures that will address that, but I hope we might see something in the Budget on that front, given the cross-party concern about the inadequacy of childcare support at a time when we want to encourage people back into work.
It is a relief that a catch-up uprating is being delivered to the main rates of benefit, but we are a very long way from providing an adequate social security safety net. A large-scale repair job will be needed in the near future. There is growing evidence that disabled people are facing an especially tough time in the current cost of living crisis. Their situation, to which the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys was right to draw attention, has to be addressed.
Most immediately, however, I urge the Minister to take another look at the local housing allowance level. Ministers say that they are committed to eradicating rough sleeping, but it does not look as though they mean it. Keeping the local housing allowance frozen for a fourth year will drive a further surge in the number of rough sleepers, as well as very serious problems for hundreds of thousands of others.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
It is a real pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms). I was proud to serve under his chairmanship for a whole three weeks or so on the Committee, and then to reappear as a Minister some weeks later. He has a formidable knowledge of a broad spectrum of issues, and always chairs the Committee’s meetings in the right spirit to tease out what needs to be done to help some of the most vulnerable people in society.
I warmly welcome the various increases being announced by the Minister this evening, in what must be his 20th of these debates: they seem to come round more quickly every year. Having been a Minister for disabled people, I am pleased that we are delivering record amounts in disability benefits to some of the most vulnerable, and that we are getting better at providing support for those most in need. For example, those with mental health conditions who are receiving personal independence payments are six times more likely to receive the highest level of support than they were under the old legacy benefits.
However, welcome though the additional funds have been, we should also—with one eye on the forthcoming White Paper—think about the wraparound support that is provided. For the purpose of disability benefits, people are assessed before being awarded, for a fixed period, a level of financial support, but we do nothing to signpost the additional help that is available. We are all committed to providing additional support for people with mental health conditions, and the Government receive cross-party backing for that, but it is often difficult to target the support provided by either the NHS or associated organisations because we cannot identify the people who need it. However, having now identified them through the personal independence payment system, we should be signposting claimants to the wide range of support—support from charities or the Government, whether formal or informal—so that they know what is available in their postcode areas. My office hosts monthly Parkinson’s coffee mornings, mainly for carers so that they can share their experiences and discuss where they are able to find support, and they are of huge benefit to those people, but we could be using the data we have to share that best practice.
Let me now say something about the support for those who are receiving unemployment benefit, predominantly through universal credit. I welcome the Government’s moves this year to increase that support, but—again, with one eye on the White Paper—we must not lose sight of the need wherever possible to localise and target the support that is available. We spend billions of pounds on work support programmes, but they involve national contracts covering various regions, which means that only generic offerings are available. We need to set aside some of that money to empower the work coaches in jobcentres to commission support in localities where smaller organisations can unlock people’s undoubted potential to put them on the first step of their careers.
We should also bear in mind that we lose about 300,000 people a year from the workplace as a result of changing health conditions. Our Government have a fantastic record of delivering disability employment, having exceeded the target of 1 million more disabled people in work—the figure is about 1.4 million now—but there are misconceptions surrounding it. For instance, the vast majority of people who have either a disability or a long-term health condition will develop it while they are of working age, and we must get better at providing earlier intervention to keep those people out of the benefits system.
There is nothing worse than a deteriorating health condition, with the added pressure and challenges that it causes, for those whose confidence is then shattered because they have crashed out of work and must suddenly present themselves at a jobcentre. A big business should be investing in access to additional support and healthcare. I had the pleasure of visiting some that paid attention to the welfare of their staff, and that was not just because of corporate responsibility. Recruiting and retaining employees, particularly when there are skill shortages, is a win-win situation. Many small and medium-sized enterprises would not necessarily be able to do that, but again, the Government need to get better at signposting advice and support.
Let me give the example of the Health and Safety Executive. We are world leaders when it comes to safety—the HSE is respected across the board, and commands huge fees from international companies to provide best practice from the United Kingdom—but we need to get the health side right as well, so that fewer people have to rely on annual upratings and counting the pennies because being in work will give them the best chance of improving their lot.
Finally, let me pick up a point made by the shadow Minister about pensioner poverty. Twenty-three years ago, at the beginning of my political journey, I was proud to be elected as a councillor in Swindon, and here I am now as the Member of Parliament for North Swindon. My first election was on the back of a 75p rise in pensions, which is a light year away from the triple lock that has delivered some £2,400 more, in cash terms, for pensioners on fixed incomes.
Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson). Let me begin by saying that 1.7 million people in Scotland are turning down or turning off their heating as their bills rise. More than 70% of the poorest 20% of families are going without essentials, more than 300,000 Scots are cutting back on toiletries and sanitary products, and 42% of adults in Scotland are showering or bathing less. That is only a snapshot of a very bleak situation. Why is it happening? Because of 13 years of Tory rule. Tories are more interested in inciting a culture war than food on tables in Scotland. Scottish National party Members welcome an inflation-related increase in benefits, but why the delay? Why do our constituents need to wait until April? This should have happened immediately, because energy bills, food prices and mortgages have already risen.
Then there is the benefit cap, a grossly unkind policy that is illustrative of this Government—a Government who have removed the cap on bankers’ bonuses but will not scrap the cap on benefits, which has been frozen since 2016 and which dictates the amount of social security that our constituents can claim: meagre, tiny amounts in comparison with the billions that the Government are playing with. They continue to inflict even more hardship on the most vulnerable of families, 70% of whom are single-parent families. Even a glance at the welfare system over which this Government preside shows that people must bargain to access welfare, and they are bargaining with their dignity.
Let us contrast that with the social security system established by the Scottish Government. They introduced the Scottish child payment, which, despite being a brand-new benefit, has already been increased by 25%. That has brought the payments to £25 a week, a rise of 150% in less than eight months.
David Linden
May I point out that the Scottish child payment is not dependent on a family’s having two children, but is per child? Unlike the UK Government and the People’s Republic of China, we care about all children, not just the first two.
Amy Callaghan
My very good friend has made an excellent point. There is no limit on the Scottish child payment, whereas this Government have imposed an abhorrent two-child cap.
Pensioners have been abandoned continually by successive Tory Governments who have broken the triple lock, abandoned the WASPI women, provided a lower state pension relative to average earnings than most other advanced economies, and ended the free television licence. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s recent UK Poverty 2023 report, 1.7 million pensioners in the UK were living in poverty in 2020-21.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
How does my hon. Friend think her constituents who are in that position—people who are struggling on social security payments—must feel when they see all the blatant tax evasion that is going on, depriving Government coffers of money that could go towards providing them with a decent standard of living?
Amy Callaghan
I thank my hon. Friend for making that excellent point. On Friday, in my constituency, I met representatives of Pensioners for Independence, who cannot not understand why the UK Government are contributing such measly sums to our state pensions and our welfare system, and who see independence as a shining light and a way out of this despicable system. The people who have paid into the pension system their whole life are being completely short-changed by this UK Government.
We welcome an inflationary increase to benefits, which is entirely necessary given that inflation rates have soared due to economic mismanagement by this Government and the four preceding ones. But the welfare system in this place is fundamentally broken, potentially beyond repair. Worse yet, this Government are unwilling even to try to fix it. It would be remiss of me not to mention the light at the end of the tunnel for the people of Scotland: an independent Scotland, delivering fairness, equality and a complete social security system that is entirely fit for purpose.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
I am pleased that we are having this debate and that, for once, it is fully subscribed to, which is very welcome. We are dealing with issues of terrible poverty in this country, brought about by a combination of low wages, insufficiency of benefits, very high rents, and inflation driven largely by the greed of the energy companies, which are making so much money. This House needs to reflect seriously on how the fifth-richest country in the world can have more and more people sleeping rough, begging on our streets and trying to eke out an existence.
Guy Opperman
I am listening very closely to the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. Does he attribute any blame for the fiscal difficulties that the country faces to what Mr Putin has done in Ukraine—yes or no?
Jeremy Corbyn
Could the Minister hold in his excitement for one moment? He is the Minister responsible for the inadequacy of benefits; perhaps he should reflect on that. Yes, the war in Ukraine has had an effect on global energy prices, although the effect has been bigger in some countries than others. Countries such as France deal with that by taking energy companies into public ownership to protect their citizens from the grotesque energy price increases that his Government are quite happy to mete out to the people of this country.
Jeremy Corbyn
No, I will carry on with my speech. The 10% benefit rise is obviously better than no rise at all. During the Budget statement, the previous Chancellor would not even answer the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), on whether there would be any increase whatsoever to benefits. A 10% increase is obviously an improvement on what was provided by the last Chancellor, but it does not even meet inflation. It comes nowhere near to meeting the rate of food inflation, which is running at around 15% to 16% per year. Families or individuals who rely on benefits spend a wholly disproportionate amount of their income on food and energy; better-off people spend a much lower proportion on those things. The rate of inflation for the poorest 10% of our country is far greater than the 10% or 11% figure that the Bank of England puts forward.
Many issues could be raised, and I will raise a few very quickly so that all Members who wish to speak can do so. Some years ago, a two-child benefit cap policy was introduced, which many of us were, and remain, concerned about. Those of us who represent constituencies with a considerable number of large families know that they suffer very badly. The two-child benefit cap obviously has a disproportionate effect on the largest and poorest families in our society. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us where the morality is in saying that the third, fourth or fifth child of a family is less important than the first or second. It is a simple moral question. If we want to look after all the people in our society—I like to think that we all do—that should include all children, irrespective of the size of the family. The third, fourth, fifth or sixth child is completely unaware of where they lie in the pecking order when they are born. They find out later that their presence and that of subsequent siblings reduces income for their family. It does not seem morally right that we should pursue that policy.
The question of the benefit cap and its effect on people in our society is massive, as the Chair of the Select Committee pointed out, as did the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) and others. The disproportionate effect on people living in the private rented sector is huge. My constituency is inner-city and has a fairly large number of council and housing association properties in it. Their rents are obviously within the local housing allowance, but the vast majority of private rents are nowhere near within the local housing allowance. I was talking to someone in a hostel who was trying to find a private rented flat to move into. They tried every agency they could find; they walked the streets and scoured the newspapers and goodness knows how many websites to try to find a flat within the local housing allowance in inner London, near their school and support network, but they could not get anywhere near it.
Unless we raise or abolish the benefit cap, we have to intervene in the housing market and freeze private sector rents, so that living in the private rented sector is at least sustainable, and those living there do not have to pay part of their rent out of the benefit that they receive. What is going on is simply unfair. I would hope that the Minister would understand the issue with the cap, and the poverty that it brings for so many people in our society. In my constituency, probably more than a third of the community live in the private rented sector—there are probably more in other constituencies—and they are suffering as a result of this issue.
Another issue that I would like to raise is that of people with no recourse to public funds, and the difficulties that they face in our society. It is a bold, dramatic and strong statement when a Government announce that someone is allowed to enter the country but is not allowed any recourse to public funds whatsoever. This issue was raised two weeks ago at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in the context of our adherence to the Istanbul convention on the protection of women, of which the Minister will be aware. The report that we received raised concerns that in some member countries in which there is no recourse to public funds—the problem is not exclusive to the UK—women in an abusive relationship might not have settled status when their partner does. Those women are unable to gain independent security and safety, and often are unaware of the domestic violence provisions that they might be able to call on. Will the Minister look seriously at the very well thought-out report from the Council of Europe about our adherence to the Istanbul convention, which I am sure he supports? Will he recognise that no recourse to public funds affects not only the individual concerned but the wider family, if there is one?
If hon. Members talk to people who are sleeping rough on our streets, turning up at food banks in our communities or begging on tubes and elsewhere, they should ask them what their situation is. Many have been unsuccessful in their initial asylum application, but may ultimately win on appeal, and they have no access to any benefits whatsoever. They live in the most desperate poverty, are prey to crime and abuse, and can be abused and exploited by those with criminal intent in our society. Through this policy, we are creating an incomeless underclass in the major cities of this country. I know the Minister would not want that to be the case, but unfortunately the implementation of this policy leads to that.
The last point I want to raise is to follow on from what the hon. Member for Glasgow East and others have been saying about the pension level in our society, and the numbers of pensioners who are entitled to support beyond the level of the state pension but are simply unaware of it, do not know how to apply for it and do not get it. I also want to mention the women who were duped by the way in which the state pension retirement age was raised and are now living in desperate poverty—colloquially known as the WASPI women. I think they deserve justice. They were very badly treated and my friend, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), certainly took their case up when he was shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Pensioner households, like everyone else, are facing terrible stress at the moment from food and energy price rises. I heard from the media yesterday that the Government have no intention of continuing the energy price limitation after April, but if I am wrong on that I am happy to be corrected. The protection that exists now is only a protection relating to the 100% increase in energy prices that we have already had. If you go down any street in any poorer part of this country in the evening, you see darkness; you do not see people with their lights on. You see people going to bed early because they cannot afford to heat their home. This is real. Children in the poorest households are underfed and they are cold because their homes cannot be properly heated. Many elderly people are huddling in libraries during the day just to try and keep warm. Is this really a sensible or fair way of going on? Other Governments, including the French Government, have intervened to try to control the energy market and ensure that energy price rises do not get to the levels they are in this country. Our Government are not prepared to do that.
This benefit uprating will no doubt go through this evening, but all it does is meet the headline of inflation that the consumer prices index set last year. What we need is something much more bold, with much more intervention, that recognises energy price rises, food price rises and the enormous rent rises in the private rented sector. Those are the biggest drivers of poverty in our society.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). He refused to give way to me during his speech when he made reference to France being a particularly good example of a country that had reacted well to energy inflation. He forgot to mention that 80% of all French energy is generated by nuclear power and is therefore not affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I look forward to his support for the roll-out of nuclear power stations across the United Kingdom.
Turning to the main body of the debate, I welcome the Government’s draft benefits uprating order, but I stand here to represent an argument that I do not think has yet been made in this debate but that has been raised many times by my constituents and those of other Members, certainly on the Conservative side of the House: is it fair, during a period of full employment, that we should increase benefits at the rate of inflation when those in employment are seeing their wages rise by about half as much? This has been raised multiple times, and forcefully, by constituents of mine. They say that it is simply not fair that people who are just about managing, who are working to support their own families and who are paying tax but also being self-reliant, should have wage rises of about 5% when benefits are being raised by double that.
Jerome Mayhew
I will give way in a moment, because what I am about to say might answer the hon. Gentleman’s question.
I think the answer is: yes, it is fair. That is because it is morally right to protect the purchasing power of those very poorest families at an absolute level, even when other people in employment are suffering as well. I think it is right, because personal inflation is at its highest in the poorest families and food inflation is responsible for a higher percentage of their spending. It was mentioned earlier that food inflation might be running at about 19%, but I think it is about 17.1%. It is morally right for the Government to represent and look after the very poorest in society while at the same time, crucially, always making sure that work pays.
In my constituency we have 2% unemployment. We have a huge demand for staff. I have a very odd situation in a town that I represent called Fakenham. I visited a food bank there that is run by the Samaritans, and it is only a few yards away from a jobcentre where they told me that anyone who had two arms and two legs could get a job. There are lots of jobs available, and I have had meetings with frustrated employers in Fakenham who cannot get enough staff, at every level of the employment sector, including those with no specialist skills other than their natural talent. That jobcentre is 200 yards away from a food bank.
David Linden
The hon. Gentleman and I could probably have a long drawn-out debate about why there are so many vacancies in the jobs market and how the UK Government’s immigration policy impacts on that. I would ask him to reflect on the misconception that food banks are used solely by people who are out of work. We are increasingly seeing people who are in work and suffering from in-work poverty using them. Has his local food bank told him how many of the people using it are experiencing in-work poverty?
Jerome Mayhew
That is an interesting question, and I have asked exactly the same of our food bank. I have asked it to give me the data on how many of the people are on benefits and whether they are in work or unemployed, because it is a mystery to me. It refused to give me that data, which I think is really surprising, because that is important to us as policymakers. We need to know whether people need to use food banks because benefits on their own are the cause or whether it is about in-work benefits and the low level of pay.
Amy Callaghan
Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), it would be interesting to know how many people working in that jobcentre are having to access that nearby food bank. It would be really useful if the hon. Gentleman could inquire about those figures.
Jerome Mayhew
That certainly has not been raised with me. That is not information that I can supply, because I simply do not know the answer, but I would be amazed if they were using it. The people working in the jobcentre are very optimistic about the local economy and the opportunities that are available in Fakenham and more widely.
The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) raised in passing the role of immigration in low pay. In my submission, this is one of the areas where the Government have been right to limit immigration, particular low-skilled immigration, because that gives increased bargaining power to the lowest paid. Anecdotally, I have seen hourly rates across my constituency going up in industries that are seeking to attract harder-to-find staff. The hourly rate is going up to £9, £10, £11 and even £12 an hour for unskilled work in order to attract new staff where they are harder to find. That is a key benefit and a good economic case for taking control of immigration in a way that the SNP would not like to see.
David Linden
I am certainly very much in favour of people in Scotland having control of their own immigration system, because our problem has never been immigration; frankly, our problem has been emigration. The hon. Member talks about how successful the UK Government’s immigration policy has been. Can he explain why there are fields all across these islands where fruit is rotting because we do not have workers coming here to pick it?
Jerome Mayhew
The hon. Member should know that the seasonal agricultural workers scheme allowed, from memory, 40,000 seasonal workers to enter the country last year, and that its application was not fully taken up by the agricultural sector, so that is not the reason why fruit was left rotting in the fields.
Returning to my main point, the Government are right to protect the buying power of the poorest. At the same time, they are also right to ensure that work always pays. The reduction in the taper rate from 63% to 55% is crucial in raising the income of those in work so that they do not need to rely on food banks, as is increasing the work allowance by £500. Perhaps the difference between Government and Opposition Members on this is that we on the Government Benches think that the best solution to poverty is always work—allowing people to get back into work; encouraging them to grow their skills and employability, and the value of their employability, as they progress through their career. I think the Government have got the balance right, supporting the poorest families while ensuring that work continues to pay.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), who made a thoughtful contribution, although obviously there are differences of opinion on some of the things he said.
I am pleased to contribute to this year’s debate. The Minister’s initial contribution was pretty factual and to the point, but these debates are always an opportunity for Members to comment generally on social security and uprating. I am pleased that this year’s debate is slightly less controversial than last year’s. Indeed, I think there has been relief on both sides of the House that the uprating will be in line with inflation. That means we have not seen the triple lock abandoned and benefits will be uprated in line with inflation. However, those conventions have been broken previously, so the challenge is that people are already behind as a result of previous commitments having been reneged on. But I am pleased to welcome this uprating.
In recent years it has become increasingly clear how important the social security safety net is as a public service. As I have said previously, covid has meant that some people who never expected to be supported by the state have had to access that support. That is the reality: we never know when we might need support. We might become injured or ill; the company that we work for might go under, maybe because it cannot get enough staff and cannot open its full hours, and therefore does not have the productivity it needs to keep going; or indeed, we might need to care for loved ones. Social security is, and should be, there to make sure that no one is left behind.
The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who is no longer in his place, mentioned the all-party parliamentary group on ending the need for food banks. I co-chair that APPG, and have been very pleased to have the hon. Gentleman as part of our inquiry team. The final evidence session of our “Cash or Food?” inquiry is tomorrow, and I would be delighted if the Minister could attend our report launch on 22 March—I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies), for her written response to our inquiry. We are looking at that issue because, as I said in my intervention on the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), the only time during the covid pandemic when we saw a decrease in food bank use was when universal credit had its £20 uplift. That suggests to me that people were using those additional moneys for the purpose of putting food on the table.
As I said, this debate is quite factual, but it gives us an opportunity to comment on Government policy and practice. I want to touch on something that the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) mentioned, which is universal credit for the under-25s. It may have been uprated by 10%, but it remains lower than for the over-25s, and I would argue that there is simply no good reason for that. Indeed, about 18 months ago I wrote to the Department for Work and Pensions on this topic in support of a campaign by One Parent Families Scotland. I was told, in terms that, frankly, I found quite patronising, that the reason for the policy is that the DWP believes young people are more likely to live at home—that was assumed even if they themselves are parents—and generally have lower earnings expectations.
That response totally ignores the experience of the majority of under-25s who claim universal credit. Of course, as parents we would hope to support our children as they take their first steps in the world, and to provide a safe haven to which they could return if necessary. However, that does not help the young people who need to leave home because they are looking for work and there are no jobs in their area; the young people who do not come from stable homes and need to support themselves; or the young parents who cannot stay in their family homes with their own children. I hardly want to deign to give a response to the statement about having lower earnings expectations, but I will say that no one who is out of work and receiving universal credit, or who, as has been pointed out, is in work and receiving universal credit, even at the full amount, is sitting idly by, wondering what to do with that excess income.
As many Members have said today, we are in a cost of living crisis. Universal credit is a safety net, and this Government policy assumes that young people deserve less safety than older people. That is the wrong message. Given the ministerial churn within the DWP and, indeed, elsewhere, I hope that we can review that misguided position. At the very least, I ask the Minister to review one aspect in his closing remarks: reinstating the higher rate for young parents, as it was under legacy benefits. Young parents are most likely to be struggling, and surely they and their children deserve the same support as a family where the parents are just a year or two older.
I will highlight a few other issues, starting with PIP. All of us in this place will have a caseworker who spends a lot of time providing support for PIP appeals, the vast majority of which are successful. It is a long, stressful application process, and we have assessors who simply do not understand the process or what applicants are experiencing, resulting in widespread mistakes that we as MPs end up dealing with. It costs the taxpayer more money to reverse those decisions than to get them right in the first place. The stress makes people who are already struggling even more ill, and as we know, very sadly, some people give up as a result. The system does not work. This issue is so important when the Government are currently looking at measures to deal with the economically inactive—I look forward to hearing their proposals. They want to get people back into work. Now is the time to bring those specialist assessors and the assessment process for PIP back in-house, and to stop lining the pockets of private providers with taxpayer money when they simply do not get the job right.
Justin Tomlinson
The hon. Lady raises a very important point about getting the job right. Thankfully, the vast majority of the millions of claims are right first time round, and for those where it sadly goes wrong, on the vast majority of occasions, that is because of missing additional supportive evidence. As such, will the hon. Lady join me in welcoming the Government’s move to a system where, at the mandatory reconsideration stage, rather than waiting for claimants, the assessors have now started proactively contacting them to identify the missing evidence and help them find it? That has seen the number of those able to be sorted quickly more than double.
Wendy Chamberlain
I am happy to support any improvements to the process, but what the hon. Member has done is to point out just how complex these processes are and how difficult they can be for people to navigate. It is only when there is a proactive approach that we start to get things right.
John McDonnell
Part of the problem is the run-down in recent years of advice centres and other agencies that can assist people to get the paperwork right, and to ensure representation at the appropriate stage.
Wendy Chamberlain
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Scotland is not immune from that: with more and more ringfenced spending for Scottish Government priorities, local authorities have less and less discretionary spend to put into areas such as advice and support.
I want to touch on carer’s allowance. It will not surprise Members that I want to talk about carers; I am pleased to say that my private Member’s Bill, the Carer’s Leave Bill, passed its remaining stages in the Commons on Friday and is off to the other place. According to the Government, carer’s allowance aims to help carers keep a link with the workplace, but one challenge I had with my Bill was finding constituents who would benefit from carer’s leave, because so many of them had been forced to leave the workplace due to their caring responsibilities. Simply put, carer’s allowance does not work. Carers need to be allowed to work more before they lose that allowance—that would not cost the Government more, but it would get more people back into work. I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s response to the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller): he is no longer in his place, but he raised that very point. At Prime Minister’s questions in December, I asked the Prime Minister how the Government can believe that £132 per week in earnings is sufficient to live on such that people lose their carer’s allowance, especially when the caring never stops.
The state pension was the subject of a general debate last week. I do not necessarily want to reiterate the points I made on that occasion, but we do know that pensioners face real challenges. In the past year, I have probably done about three letters—articles—to my local paper to encourage people to take up pension credit. As other Members have mentioned, I wish the Government would pledge to follow the ombudsman’s recommendations on compensation for WASPI women, which, as we move into stage 3, would provide some degree of comfort to those campaigners. I refer Members to my early-day motion 814 on that.
When we talk about the pension increases, we need also to talk about errors that mean people do not necessarily get what they are entitled to. The LEAP—legal entitlements and administrative practices—exercise is looking at historical underpayments, and it seems to be forever increasing its remit and timescales. Perhaps one day it will finally look at underpayments to divorced women. Dividing pensions on divorce is incredibly complicated, and the Government have been deliberately blinded by not including that group. I know that the former Pensions Minister in the coalition, Steve Webb, has spoken out about this issue before. I urge the Government to listen to him, if not to me.
I raised this issue at business questions on Thursday: will the Government please tell the truth to the House about what is happening on universal credit national insurance credits? That is another issue where pensioners could go without because of internal DWP failures. Without honesty and openness, we cannot know the extent of the problem or how it will be fixed.
Every Member here knows—simply because of the number of constituents our caseworkers help every day —that there are fundamental problems with how the DWP functions. Sometimes it seems as though it has become a routine part of the process for DWP staff to send people to their MP, and that is simply not good enough. I welcome the uprating orders, but I hope that the Minister will give us some answers on everything else.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I want to raise three issues briefly; some of this has been covered already but I want to reiterate some of it and go into more detail. The first is the benefit cap. The second is the triple lock. The third is the carer’s allowance, where I follow on from the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain).
This debate is primarily about the increase, but in the past these debates have been used to try to shape the debate on social security for the future. Much of what I say, therefore, may be aimed at the Government, but now that the Select Committee has announced its inquiry, part of it is aimed at the agenda for that inquiry.
Those of us who were in the House when the benefit cap was introduced will know that it was born in an era when the debate on poverty had descended into definitions of “skivers” and “strivers”; it was almost a reversion to the language of the Poor Law. We knew what impact it would have and we knew the numbers affected would increase rapidly. Just over 70,000 were being impacted at the start but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) said, this rose to 120,000 and above. The cap hit some areas in particular, including London constituencies. I am a London MP and I know that 44% of those affected are in London. It hit the black, Asian and minority ethnic community in particular; it has hit eight out of 20 from the BAME community, yet they represent three out of 20 in the population overall, so this was discriminatory.
Jeremy Corbyn
My right hon. Friend is making a strong point. Does he agree that the cap has also been a major driver in forcing working-class communities out of inner-city areas, where there are now huge levels of private landlord speculations going on?
John McDonnell
I hope that Conservative Members and others who may not have had the experience of this recognise how it has affected our communities. I do not use the word lightly, but some of us have experienced what are almost forms of social “apartheid” within our communities, where certain sections of housing are no longer available to working-class people. In some instances, fenced communities have developed as a result. I highlight reports of what happened in my constituency as regards the Ballymore housing development.
I come back to the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham made, which is that the cap has had an impact on a large number of children, with the last calculation being 308,000; 70% of the people affected are single parents. As he said, this pushes people into deep poverty. I was looking at the figures and they show that the average capped household with two children is now £150 a week below the Government’s own poverty line. Scrapping the cap would increase benefits to them by an average of £65 a week; the cost would be £500 million, which is 0.2% of the total spending on social security. A marginal increase in the efficiency of tackling tax avoidance, an increase in national insurance beyond getting rid of some of the limits at the higher levels—that would easily pay for this marginal improvement but would have a dramatic effect on the living standards of so many people.
I campaigned against the breaking of the link between pensions and earnings when Mrs Thatcher introduced it, so I wholeheartedly welcomed the triple lock when it was introduced by a Conservative Government and I made that point in this House. I regretted bitterly, however, that the Government broke their pledge last year, because once the link was broken, a debate was opened up among some Members about the triple lock being no longer necessary. I am hoping that the statement about social security and pensions today reaffirms the message across the House that the triple lock is here to stay.
When we look at the figures, we see that one in five pensioners is in poverty; 2.1 million older people are in poverty; they get £40 a week less than the Government’s own poverty threshold; 1.3 million older people are now categorised as suffering forms of malnutrition; and we have always had a high level of excess deaths in winter among older people, with on average between 25,000 and 30,000 dying unnecessarily. I looked at the figures showing what has happened since the break with earnings. The proportion of those people living in severe poverty is five times higher than it was in 1986—we have had the largest increase in western European countries. So I make an appeal to Members from across the House. The triple lock was a major reform, and I thought we had built consensus on it. It should not be in any way undermined in the future.
I think the triple lock should apply to all benefits, and I hope the Select Committee will have that debate. I asked the House of Commons Library to give me the figures on what would have happened to carer’s allowance if the link had been kept since the 1980s. It is now at £76.75 but it would have been £146.42. Invalidity benefit is now £130.20, but it would have been £233.55. If we look at unemployment, we see that jobseeker’s allowance is now £84.80 but it would have been £185.49. There is a moral argument for maintaining the protection of benefits over time and trying to build consensus across the House on that, in the same way in which it was eventually built on the triple lock for pensions.
Finally, let me touch on carer’s allowance. I have been chairing meetings of unpaid carers or informal carers, as they describe themselves, over the past 18 months, and I just want to get the stats on this out there. I pay tribute to what the hon. Member for North East Fife has done with her legislation and the campaign she has waged. Some 8% to 10% of the adult population are informal carers; two thirds of carers are in employment—that is the whole point here; six in 10 of those who are caring for 35 hours a week or more are workless, which is three times the rate of those caring for less than 20 hours a week; and about 25% of informal carers are living in poverty, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest figures. Another figure, which I believe she has quoted in the past, is that it is estimated that unpaid carers across the UK provide £135 billion-worth of caring in our society, and that largely falls upon the shoulders of women. It is now time to recognise the significance of the role that these carers play and the fact of the poverty they live in.
As for Northern Ireland, the Carer Poverty Commission was established last month and it is chaired by Helen Barnard of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Research from Carers Northern Ireland showed that nearly one in three unpaid carers in Northern Ireland were struggling to make ends meet, with one in four cutting back on essentials such as food or heating just to get by. I believe the situation is exactly the same across the UK for carers.
Let me make this suggestion: the unpaid carers I have met say that, like everybody else who works, they should be paid a living wage. They should at least get the minimum wage so that they can get by. At the very least, let us take the first step in that direction, which would be to recognise that maternity allowance is paid so that people can care for a child. Perhaps carer’s allowance should at least go up to the level of maternity allowance. If we can increase carer’s allowance in that way, it will enable at least some of those informal carers to be lifted out of poverty. I put that suggestion on the table for the Government to debate and for the Select Committee to look at as well.
As the WASPI women have been mentioned, I cannot help but do so too. This is an injustice that needs to be redressed, and it needs to be redressed soon, because many of the women who were affected are now late in life. We have already lost some of them, and many may not live long enough to see the recompense that they deserve. However, I fear that those who are placing their hope in the ombudsman’s assessment will be sorely disappointed by the levels that are recommended. If that is the case, I commit to returning to the matter on the Floor of this House to make sure that the campaign continues and succeeds.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). When he was talking about the invalid care allowance, which was the predecessor to the carer’s allowance, I recalled meeting people at that time—I was dealing with these matters professionally then—who were working 60, 70, 80, or 100 hours a week and were in absolutely no position to take on paid work to supplement the meagre level of their allowance.
On behalf of my own party, I welcome the decision to uprate most benefits in line with inflation. However, given the desperate situation facing millions of people on benefits, this is simply not enough. Reference has already been made a number of times to reports by the Child Poverty Action Group that costs for low-income families have risen by 21% in the past two years, which is more than the 14% rise in benefits. This gets to the heart of what I wish to say in my contribution, which is about the inadequacy of benefits.
Since 2010, austerity has caused huge increases in child poverty. The CPAG estimates that, pre-covid, 700,000 more children were in poverty than at the start of the 2010s. Wales currently has the highest level of child poverty, at a shocking 34% of all children. There needs to be urgent investment into the system, far above what is being proposed at present.
Looking at what life is really like for those claiming universal credit, it is plain that current benefit levels, even those matching inflation, will not be enough. A snapshot of poverty in Wales this winter produced by the independent and impartial Bevan Foundation revealed some shocking findings—I have a report here that I can recommend to anyone who is interested in the situation in Wales. In Wales, people on universal credit are five times more likely than the general population to report that, sometimes, often or always, they struggle to afford the basics. Furthermore, 52% of disabled people whose condition limits them severely have gone without heating in their home over the past three months.
It is no wonder that Public Health Wales recently said that the current cost of living crisis is not a short-term economic squeeze. It is having, and will continue to have, wide-ranging and long-term impacts on the health and well-being of the people of Wales. Those impacts have the potential at least to be on the same scale as those of the covid-19 pandemic, which has already exacerbated existing inequalities in Wales. The Government must meet this challenge, go beyond treading water and implement at least a substantial uplift to universal credit and legacy benefits.
Universal credit may not meet a claimant’s needs in full due to the barriers and restrictions on entitlement built up over the years. This has been referred to already by a number of Members. The Government should scrap these restrictions, starting with the pernicious two-child limit, which has also been mentioned today. The benefit cap is being uprated, but it should not exist in the first place. There is, quite obviously, a differential effect on communities that place a high value on having more children, perhaps because of their particular religious or cultural beliefs. Those people are being scapegoated, and they are the poorest in society.
As the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington mentioned, removing the benefit cap would cost 0.2% of all social security spending. That is a flea bite, given the beneficial effect that it would have. It would be a price well worth paying to remove this vicious and unfair penalty on ordinary families. Sometimes I reflect on my own family’s experience. I am one of six, brought up after the war when the benefits of the post-war settlement meant that we had so many advantages when it came to health, universal benefits, family allowance and education. Looking at the situation now, the deterioration since the post-war settlement is clear.
Deductions in benefits are also a huge problem facing claimants. It has been estimated that more than four in 10 households receiving universal credit had money automatically taken off their benefit entitlement. The average amount deducted was £61 a month, or £14 a week. As with many social and economic matters, there are no statistics published for Wales, but estimates suggest that 88,000 households in Wales do not receive their full universal credit entitlement because of automatic deductions.
Turning to the local housing allowance, which has already been mentioned, the autumn statement is clearly a driving factor in the growing gap between rents and housing benefit. In my own county of Gwynedd, 35% of households receiving housing benefit face a shortfall in rent. Clearly, although there is an urban element to this, as has been mentioned already, there is a particularly acute and real problem in rural areas of Wales. Estimates suggest that the shortfall is higher than in Wales’s cities, where local housing allowance better reflects local rent levels and there is also a wider range of housing stock to meet people’s bedroom requirements. I join the calls on the UK Government to unfreeze local housing allowance and uprate it annually, so that it keeps pace with rising rents.
There is far more that the Government could be doing to help those on social security. For example, will they commit to looking at the adequacy of benefits? The all-party group on poverty is currently running an inquiry into the adequacy of benefit levels, so will the Government engage with the findings at all? The Resolution Foundation has highlighted the lag in the uprating mechanism and has suggested ways in which it could be more responsive, such as multiple upratings per year or bringing forward the uprating month. Those are just two of the possibilities. There is also an inconsistency as to why certain benefits are enshrined in law to rise with prices and others are not. What is the Government’s rationale behind that?
Finally, I ask the Government to bring forward the cost of living payments. Although they are, at best, a sticking plaster approach, as highlighted by the Work and Pensions Committee, they should none the less be brought forward so that poor claimants, particularly disabled people, are prevented from falling into debt and destitution, as many cannot wait until spring for more support.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and add a Northern Ireland perspective, as I always try to do both here and in Westminster Hall. Right hon. and hon. Members have set out well the state of the country’s finances for many people. I wish to put on record, and I think it is right that I do so, my thanks to the Government, and the Minister in particular, for coming forward with proposals that help.
I want to make four points in my contribution. A Presbyterian sermon is three points, and I will make four; I am not sure whether that makes my speech a sermon, but it is Presbyterian plus one.
Jim Shannon
You be careful, boy.
I am very pleased to add my contribution to the debate. Inflation and the cost of living are really hurting people in Northern Ireland. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) set the scene when he referred to child poverty and adult poverty in Northern Ireland, and he was right. I have a staff member who deals with nothing else but benefits, five days a week, and other staff members fill in. That gives an idea of the poverty and disability issues in Northern Ireland and why it is important for me to sow into this debate.
While I thank the Government, and the Minister in particular, for what they have put forward, and it is good to have that, I must first make the point from a Northern Ireland perspective that—as has probably become accepted in this House after so many debates—the Northern Ireland protocol has increased our outgoings substantially more than those anywhere on the mainland UK. The haulage costs and the prices of covering payroll have lessened the numbers of suppliers who will ship to Northern Ireland. That being the case, it becomes much harder to source competitively priced items. While this debate is about how we can help people on social security and improve their standard of living, we must recognise that costs in Northern Ireland are higher than anywhere else.
I read an interesting report back in October in the Belfast Telegraph that stated:
“Average weekly grocery spend is the third highest in the UK for shoppers in Belfast and Derry, according to new research by financial hub Admirals Group.
Shoppers in Northern Ireland’s two biggest cities are reportedly paying £77.70 on average for their weekly grocery shop in 2022, forecast to rise to £179.06 by 2030”—
well over twice the price. The report added:
“Only shoppers in London and Southampton are said to be paying more for their weekly shopping”.
That illustrates clearly that we in Northern Ireland are paying more. When it comes to social security and the benefit cap, we must register our concern that it is more costly to live in Northern Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom.
The lowest prices were said to be in Leeds and Sheffield—so at least they will have some benefit—and the same report stated:
“In 2021 the average British household spent £69.20 on groceries each week…If inflation were to remain constant at 11%, by 2030, the average grocery shop for a UK household could cost £177.02 per week, £771.28 per month and £9,204.84 per year.”
Those on benefits in Northern Ireland face a real anomaly. It is dearer to live in Northern Ireland; it is dearer to warm our homes and it is dearer to buy our groceries. That means that someone on benefits in Northern Ireland cannot expect their money to go as far as someone in one of the other constituencies in the UK represented in this House today.
While it is right and proper that benefits are uplifted to enable people to buy the bare necessities, the protocol means that those are not even covered by this uplift. The girls in my office referred almost double the number of people to the food bank coming up to Christmas this year, an indication that for many people any additional pressure on finances, such as to buy a small gift or a special meal, just cannot be managed.
The first Trussell Trust food bank that ever came to Northern Ireland came to Newtownards in my Strangford constituency. It has found a place and it is doing excellent work, and I support it very much, as indeed does the community. I am one of the referral points, so when it comes to understanding why people are going to food banks I can categorically state that it is not just those on the minimum wage, but those in the middle class, who I refer to as the working poor. The extra referrals, and we have had somewhere in the region of 30% or 35% extra just this last Christmas, tell me not only that the work of the food bank is important, but that there are different people going there. Again, that comes down to the cost of living, especially for those on benefits in Northern Ireland.
I am thankful for the food bank and to the social supermarkets, which are also doing fantastic work in seeking to help people make their money stretch further by teaching budgeting and different ways of purchasing. However, money is not elastic—it can only stretch so far. It is clear that the Government must bridge the gap, and by the same token we must lower the threshold to allow more people to access the help they are entitled to.
Having posed my first question to the Minister on behalf of the citizens of Northern Ireland about how they are finding it harder to beat the inflation that makes foodstuffs and heating more expensive there, I have a second question for him. For example, someone who is £5 above the threshold for universal credit will have missed out on the cost of living payment and will need the same help to pay the same amount for groceries as someone who is just below that threshold. We often find people who fall between two stools, and clearly those people do, so I want to make the point, as others in have in this debate, that they need help. I know the Minister always tries to respond, so I look forward to his response.
My third point is that I will hopefully bring a ten-minute rule Bill to the Floor of this House at some stage in the near future to make meaningful change to the child benefit threshold. Those disingenuous thresholds, which bear no relation or relevance to the cost of living and life, must be reviewed, and the same consideration must be given to the benefits threshold. We had a debate in Westminster Hall last Thursday, led by the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), in which he raised a clear issue: two people in one house can earn £49,000 each, or collectively £98,000, and their child benefit will not change. However, one person in another house who earns £52,000 and whose partner earns £10,000, so that they earn £62,000 collectively, will see their child benefit change. There is clearly an anomaly in the threshold, and there needs to be a change of direction and some clarity to ensure that those who find themselves disadvantaged in that way are taken care of.
I make a special request, as others have done. Last week, we had a Westminster Hall debate on cystic fibrosis and living costs. Those with disabilities, such as those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or those who need oxygen 24/7, have higher costs. I quote some figures from that debate:
“People with CF have higher food bills because they need a higher calorie intake to maintain a healthy weight, and higher energy bills because they need to keep their homes warm to stave off lung infections and they may need to power an additional fridge to store sterile medications or essential medical devices such as ventilators.”—[Official Report, 2 February 2023; Vol. 727, c. 169WH.]
While this 10% increase is welcome, I ask the Minister very respectfully what can be done for those people with disabilities who are feeling the pain more than most.
In my opinion, and I believe others agree, a society is always marked by how it looks after those who are less well off. Our job in this House is to ensure that those who are finding these times particularly difficult—there are many of them across the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—are looked after. That is my fourth request of the Minister.
While I welcome the increase, we are missing out those middle-of-the-road working people who are struggling and scraping by, week to week. I ask the Government to make their next priority the squeezed middle class, and those who need help and just cannot get to the level they would expect.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in this debate on uprating benefits. Today, Members have the chance to vote on Government spending on supporting the vulnerable, and this debate takes place at a time when families and pensioners across the country face an unprecedented cost of living crisis. We have an important opportunity to debate the Government’s response. However, I am afraid that, based on the Government’s actions and what we have heard today, that response has let down both families and pensioners. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said, this year’s uprating will at best maintain the severely reduced real-terms value of benefits, which has been eroded over the last decade.
The inadequate safety net provided by the Government has, as expected, contributed to an increased number of children living in poverty, to a deepening poverty, and to an increasing need for food banks. It has also led to pensioners having to wait months for the state pension to be increased in line with inflation, and to those approaching retirement being placed under unnecessary stress and uncertainty as the Government have floated the idea of bringing forward the increase in the state pension age to 68. That has been suggested in the media but without proper consultation, breaking the long-standing convention that pension policy is developed by consensus.
The Government’s response to the cost of living crisis has been deeply disappointing. While I have the opportunity, I will ask the Minister a question about a particular aspect of policy. When one member of a couple is on universal credit and the other receives the state pension, the pensioner is not allowed to claim pension credit, which may have a significant impact on the couple’s income. Will the Minister explain that to me, and write to me about it? Will he also consider changing that harsh and unnecessary policy?
It was clear in contributions made by Members from across the House that there was a great deal of feeling about and interest in this matter. We have discussed the cost of living crisis, child and pensioner poverty, the prices of food and fuel rising faster than the uprating of benefits, and pensioners needing more support. Many speakers criticised the Government for disapplying the triple lock, and called on them to speed up the take-up of pension credit.
Let me be clear: we will, of course, support the motion, but the Government deserve no praise for their actions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North said. I urge the Minister to rethink the Government’s approach both to the annual uprating and more generally. The Government have let down some of the most vulnerable people in the country, at a time of great financial pressure. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that when he responds.
Guy Opperman
Notwithstanding Putin’s invasion and the war in Ukraine, the impact of the covid pandemic and the great efforts made by the Government to support this country through it, and any fiscal difficulties caused by those efforts, this Government are supporting the most vulnerable and uprating benefits by in excess of 10%. That is on top of the cost of living support to the tune of £37 billion provided last May, and what will be provided in this coming year. I am proud to make the case for universal credit, unlike the Labour party. We support people who are out of work, and as they progress in work, through reforms brought forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), which I believe were the right way forward.
On pensioners, it is rich of the Labour party to criticise. I continue to defend Labour’s actions during its 13 years in government in respect of the women’s state pension, but I was reminded of the 75p increase, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) highlighted in his outstanding speech. Bear in mind that in 2009-10, the state pension was worth less than £100, and that as of April this year, it will be worth in excess of £200. That is a massive increase under the coalition and Conservative Governments.
On pension credit, I put on record my thanks for the work of my the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), and my thanks to Mr Len Goodman, who is not often cited in this House as a supporter of all matters to do with this Government, for his outstanding work in making the case for pension credit, which has, of course, seen a 177% increase in take-up—that is a fantastic success—[Interruption.] There are several sevens in there, as I am being reminded from behind.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) made an outstanding speech—it was a pleasure to listen to. I will write to him on a couple of issues. He is right to continue making the case for pension credit. The message is of course, “Don’t be shy: please apply”, and the freephone number is 0800 99 1234. We want people to continue applying.
It is right to make the case for the cost of living support—there is £37 billion of support in this financial year—including support for energy bills for all households and cost of living payments. We are now seeking to ensure support going forward. That will include up to £900 in cost of living payments, £300 in cost of living payments for pensioner households, an extra winter fuel payment on around 25 November of this year, and the £150 disability cost of living payment. We can also take funding and support from the household support fund, and there is also the flexible support fund and many other additional ways in which support can be provided.
We continue to provide support to all households with a domestic electricity connection through the energy price guarantee, which caps the price paid for each unit of energy. From April, the typical household will pay on average £3,000 a year, saving the average UK household £500 in 2023-24. From April 2023, the national living wage will increase by 9.7% to £10.42 an hour for workers aged 23 and over. Again, that is the largest ever cash increase for the living wage.
The Government believe that the best route out of poverty is through work. We are committed to a sustainable long-term approach to tackling child poverty and supporting people on lower incomes to progress in work. My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon rightly made the case for the disability confident campaign, which has resulted in more than 1 million more people being in work in this country over the last few years, and he rightly made the case for additional medical and other support by private sector organisations for their staff.
I will briefly touch on the contributions from the Opposition parties. The Labour party had no answer for my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on whether it still supports universal credit. It is quite clear, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys highlighted, that Labour now opposes any conditionality whatsoever in benefits. That is a startling admission. I believe that Labour Members will live to strongly regret that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) made a number of points. I would merely say that all fiscal decisions are made by the Chancellor—to whom I obviously bow on all matters—and I cannot change his policies in any way at the Dispatch Box. If my hon. Friend can wait, he will know more on 15 March.
The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) accused this Government of policy failures. Given the failings of the Scottish First Minister, and her recent about-turns, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is any position to lecture us on any policy failings.
Guy Opperman
No. We listened with great humility to the hon. Gentleman’s 24-minute diatribe about this country. He had no answer to the argument from my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) about funding; his inability to make any case or policy on pensions is well known; and his inability to answer any of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon also spoke volumes.
The reality of the situation is that the Government are doing a huge amount for the vulnerable, and are increasing support through the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2023, the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2023, the energy price guarantee and the draft Benefit Cap (Annual Limit) (Amendment) Regulations 2023. I commend the instruments to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2023, which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.
Draft Benefit Cap (Annual Limit) (Amendment) Regulations 2023
Resolved,
That the draft Benefit Cap (Annual Limit) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.—(Guy Opperman.)
draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2023
Resolved,
That the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2023, which was laid before this House on 16 January, be approved.—(Guy Opperman.)
Charter for Budget Responsibility
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
I beg to move,
That the Charter for Budget Responsibility: Autumn 2022 update, which was laid before this House on 26 January, be approved.
Before I start my remarks, I pay tribute to my predecessor, Mr Robert Key, the former Member for Salisbury, who sadly died on Friday. Robert was a Member of Parliament for 27 years, a distinguished parliamentarian and former Minister, and a dedicated Anglican. I put on record my affection for him; my thoughts and prayers are with his wife Sue and the rest of his family.
The charter for budget responsibility is, at its heart, about how we chart a course for growth. It is a blueprint for managing the public purse responsibly. It is a path to cement stability in our economy and invest in public services. It is, in the current economic climate, about acknowledging that public finances remain vulnerable and knowing the risks that arise from debt being close to historic highs. This Government take these risks extremely seriously and believe that stable public finances are a key ingredient in the success of our economy, both today and in the future, in the south and the north, for the elderly and our youngest. This charter sets out this Government’s approach to managing the nation’s money so that everyone can see we are being prudent with the nation’s finances.
We debate this charter today in the face of difficult economic times. Like many countries, the UK faces the twin challenges of a recession and high inflation, as global energy prices have been exacerbated by Putin’s war in Ukraine. We have turned the corner in the fight against inflation that has plagued nations across Europe. Inflation has now started to fall, with inflation in the UK lower than many EU countries. A warmer winter has helped keep a lid on energy prices that jolted upwards following Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine. There is, however, a challenging road ahead. The International Monetary Fund says that 90% of advanced economies are predicted to see a decline in growth this year, and that is why we are taking action to support the economy through these extremely challenging times.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Does the Minister not think there is some difficulty in trying to steer the economy on the basis of a five-year forward debt forecast when the official forecasters have been more than £100 billion out in two of the last three years, and £75 billion out this year with a one-year forecast?
John Glen
I will address the provisions of the charter and my right hon. Friend’s point directly in a few moments. As the Chancellor set out last week, we have a credible plan to generate economic growth by getting people back into employment, reinvigorating a culture of enterprise and continuing to drive up standards in education, and ensuring that that happens everywhere. The Chancellor’s plans to generate growth need to be underpinned by sustainable public finances, but the global economic shocks we have faced mean that borrowing remains high. We are expected to borrow £177 billion this year—double pre-pandemic levels. That is contributing to ever larger public debt.
Along with high debt in a time of rising inflation and interest rates comes the £120.4 billion we are projected to spend this year on debt interest alone. Let me remind the House why that is. For almost two years, in the face of a historic pandemic, we took unprecedented, bold, decisive action to support people, jobs and the economy. We rolled out vaccines at a world-leading pace, we paid 80% of people’s wages, and we gave grants to businesses to help cover their bills. The costs of inaction in the face of covid-19 do not bear thinking about. I am proud to represent a Government who took the big decisions to keep the public and the economy healthy.
As inflation rose to figures we have not seen in more than 40 years, led primarily by increasing energy prices, we again took action to safeguard the nation by contributing to people’s bills. Nobody in this Government would argue that that is not money well spent, but we are also cognisant of the facts. At nearly 100% of GDP, public debt is at its highest level since the early 1960s. It would not be sustainable to continue to borrow at current levels indefinitely. If debt interest spending were a Department, its departmental budget would be second only to the Department of Health and Social Care. Not only does that direct our resources away from vital public services, but for those of us who have paid attention to the economy, it is clearly unsustainable in the long run. It is unsustainable because increasing debt leaves us more vulnerable to changing interest rates and inflation. For every percentage point increase in interest rates, the annual spending on debt will increase by £18.2 billion. That is money we could be using to invest in schools or hospitals and in the transition to net zero.
Aside from investing in the services that we need and that so many rely upon, there is another important moral point to debt. Letting our debt increase is simply racking up debt on the nation’s credit card and handing the bill to our children and grandchildren. We are not alone in our ambition to reduce debt as a share of GDP over the medium term—Germany, Canada and Australia have made similar commitments. It is not just numbers on a spreadsheet; it will have a material impact on the lives and living standards of those who have not yet been born.
Instead, we choose a responsible, fair approach. We are demonstrating fiscal discipline, which will support the Bank of England in bringing inflation down. That is carefully balanced against the need to support the most vulnerable and to protect vital public services. At the autumn statement we announced a series of difficult decisions worth around £55 billion to get debt down, while ensuring that the greatest burden falls on those with the broadest shoulders.
All Members will hope that, having faced the pandemic, war in Europe and a bout of rising prices, we will have seen the worst of this economic storm. The truth, however, is that we do not know exactly what lies ahead, and we need to create the room to respond comprehensively in the future, should another shock occur. Last year my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) came to this place to approve rules to guide us on a path to strengthen the public finances after the worst of the pandemic had passed. By the third year of the forecast, in 2025-26, those rules require underlying debt—that is, public sector net debt excluding the impact of the Bank of England—as a percentage of GDP to be falling and everyday spending to be paid for through taxation by the same year.
Since then the context has changed yet again. To continue protecting the most vulnerable and investing in public services, the Chancellor updated the fiscal rules at the autumn statement, and we are updating the charter for budget responsibility. It will give everyone the confidence and certainty that we are going to repair our public finances. It will provide the foundation for long-term growth. In following them, we will be able to get debt down while protecting the public services upon which we all rely. The rules require that we reduce the deficit so that debt falls as a share of the economy in five years’ time. Expenditure on welfare will continue to be contained within a predetermined cap and margin set by the Treasury unchanged from the level set in 2021. I am pleased to say that the Office for Budget Responsibility confirmed in November that we are on track to meet all our rules, with debt falling and the deficit below 3% GDP in the target year of 2027-28.
Aside from the fiscal rules, the charter remains unchanged. We continue to be at the forefront of financial management through our monitoring and management of the broader public sector balance sheet. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility provides transparency and credibility via its economic and fiscal forecasts. Many colleagues have remarked on the important principle that our fiscal plans are transparent, fully costed and accompanied by an independent assessment of the economic and fiscal implications. The Government agree with this principle. There may of course be extraordinary circumstances where that cannot be the case, as we saw during the pandemic, and it was right not to delay announcing critical help for households and businesses, but in normal times major fiscal announcements should be made with one of the OBR’s two forecasts. As is usual, the spring Budget on 15 March will be accompanied by a full OBR forecast.
This updated charter puts stability first. It sets a credible plan to deliver on the Prime Minister’s key promises to get debt falling and to halve inflation, and it fosters the conditions for growth. It continues our historic support for households, as it allows us to increase the national living and minimum wage and pensions. It maintains gross investment at record levels in innovation, infrastructure and education. We have protected the most vulnerable and vital public services, and we are protecting the economy. After making the difficult decisions at the autumn statement, today we have a choice: we can sit idly by and let our economy slip into disrepair, or we can secure the foundations of our future by protecting the foundations of our economy. For those reasons, I commend this motion to the House.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
May I begin by echoing the Chief Secretary’s condolences to the family of Robert Key, his predecessor as MP for Salisbury?
It does feel like this is the time of the year when we have the annual George Osborne tribute debate. This exercise began in his period as Chancellor, but little did we know—and, I suspect, little did he know—that when he started this exercise more than a decade ago, he would end up being denounced as part of the left-wing economic establishment. The purpose of the exercise has always been more political than economic. It was to show that no matter how much the Government had set everything on fire, they could turn up here and portray themselves as paragons of fiscal rectitude—a little bit like angelic choirboys smelling strongly of petrol. The trouble for Ministers is that since this exercise was first conceived over a decade ago, there is now a long economic record for everyone to see and, perhaps even more seriously, a bitter economic reality and present that people are living through.
The UK is the only G7 country not to recover its pre-covid economic position, under the stewardship of the Conservative party. Controlling debt was supposed to be a big part of this exercise. Debt used to be numbered in the billions. It now stands at £2.4 trillion. So successful has this exercise in controlling debt been that we need a whole new word to describe it; it is now counted in trillions. Of course covid added to this, as it did in all countries, but lest Government Members claim this is all about covid, let us remember that most of the increase was built up before the pandemic.
There really is a gulf—one the size of the Grand Canyon—between the statements of fiscal probity and sound financial management, and the reality of the economic performance. When we look to the future, we see that this Government have earned the very dubious distinction of the UK being downgraded by the International Monetary Fund in its growth forecast, while the rest of the world has been upgraded. It is one thing to move in line with others, but to move in the opposite, downward direction is an achievement we should not want.
Mr McFadden
I am happy to—I thought mention of the IMF might bring the right hon. Gentleman to his feet.
John Redwood
I would like to know the Labour position. The European Central Bank is not selling debt at a loss into the market because it does not want the losses. The Americans are selling debt into the market at big losses, but they do not send the bill to the taxpayer. Only the Bank of England insists on both making huge losses and sending the bill to the taxpayer for immediate payment. Who is right?
Mr McFadden
I suspect that the Bank of England will not be the only institution attacked by the right hon. Gentleman tonight, but I remind him that part of the purpose of the charter is to restore our faith in the economic institutions, after what happened less than six months ago.
The IMF has forecast that the UK will have the lowest growth among developed countries for the next two years: bottom of the league on the record and bottom of the league on the forecast. And yet still the Government come along tonight and table a debate supposedly designed to enhance their economic credentials.
Well, what will the effect on those credentials be of the re-emergence of the former Prime Minister at the weekend? I have to give her 10 out of 10 for timing. What better time to write an article saying that her mini-Budget was right all along than the day before the Chief Secretary has to come here and stand up for the Government’s fiscal stability record? What better moment for her to say to members of pension schemes that had to be put on life support as a result of her mini-Budget that it was not her fault? No contrition for trying to borrow from my constituents in Wolverhampton South East in order to pay for a tax cut for people earning over £150,000 a year; not a word of apology to the millions of mortgage holders left paying a Tory mortgage penalty because of the reckless irresponsibility of the Conservative party. Just when the Government were trying to bury the memory of that mini-Budget under 10 feet of concrete, up she pops—like one of those hands coming out of the swamp at the end of the film—to tell us it was all someone else’s fault.
For me, the best bit in the article was when, in a long list of culprits, other than the Government that actually introduced the mini-Budget, the former Prime Minister blamed the Treasury civil servants for not warning her about the impact on pension schemes. I had to ask myself, were these the same Treasury civil servants that she had spent the whole summer scorning and disparaging? Were they the same Treasury civil servants whose boss was shown the door on the first day of her premiership? In what world are we expected to believe that the former Prime Minister, her Chancellor and the Government would have listened to a word those civil servants said, when all along she defined them as being part of the problem and not part of the solution?
The real problem for the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Treasury is that this is not going away. The last Prime Minister is not a lone voice, and the more that Conservative Members realise the Government have nothing left in their tank and are resigned to managing decline, the louder the drumbeat will become; and it will be cheered on by the same newspapers that gave such a warm welcome to that mini-Budget in the first place. The Prime Minister, demonstrating the sureness of touch with which we have come to associate him by now, has labelled those on the Government Benches calling for tax cuts “idiots”. That is his phrase, not mine—about those on his own side. And yet today, fearful of them, the Prime Minister now says he will listen. Which is it? Are they idiots or is he listening? This weekend’s intervention, and those who cheer its argument, will have the Prime Minister and the Chancellor looking over their right shoulders every day between now and the election, when they should be focused on the needs of the country.
This debate is supposed to be about all of us swearing fealty to fiscal rules, but there is another problem: since this Government came to office, they have broken their fiscal rules 11 times. They have had even more sets of fiscal rules than they have had Chancellors and Prime Ministers over the past year. If you don’t like one set, don’t worry—there will be another one along in a while! The Chief Secretary himself outlined how these rules were different from the ones we debated this time last year in the George Osborne tribute debate of 2022, and each time we are expected to treat the new rules as though they were the ten commandments.
The second part of this is about respecting the role of the Office for Budget Responsibility. The document before us is very clear about that. It talks in great detail about the importance of that role. Indeed, when it was first launched, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury of the time set out the benefits of the OBR, making clear the value of its
“strong, credible, independently conducted official forecasts”—[Official Report, 14 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 747.]
She said that the establishment of the OBR and its independence from the Treasury meant that
“Governments will be reticent about introducing policies that seem to take them off course”—[Official Report, 14 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 749.]
Well, there was not much sign of that reticence last year as the Government crashed the economy, caused a run on the pound, caused mortgage rates to rise and put pensions on life support. Indeed, we had a real-time lesson in the cost of disparaging our institutions—institutions that the Conservative party used to care about. But tonight, even after that experience with chapter 4 of the charter, we are back to a hymn of praise for the OBR.
The real problem here is not just inconsistency, but credibility. I am afraid that the many-year record since the idea of this charter was first conceived a decade or more ago has meant that the Conservative party has now forfeited the right to call itself the party of sound management; it has forfeited the right to call itself the party of growth, because the record on growth has been abysmal; it has forfeited the right to call itself the party of low debt, because debt has rocketed; it has forfeited the claim to careful stewardship of the public finances, with billions lost in bounce back loan fraud, personal protective equipment waste and tawdry stories of one dodgy contract after another; and it has forfeited the right to call itself the party of low tax, because the tax burden is at its highest for decades.
What, after all that, has this been for? We have record waiting lists, trains that people cannot rely on, and delays and backlogs everywhere. In fact, there is not a single public service that runs better now than it did 13 years ago, when the Tories took office. Low growth and high tax for a worse outcome—that is the record. When people are faced with the question, “Are you and your family better off?”, the answer is no.
Two weeks ago, we had the Chancellor’s speech on the way forward. He had four Es, and more than one person said that the biggest E was for empty, because the real problem for the Conservatives is that, when it comes to growth, the only policy they reach for is unfunded and untargeted tax cuts, and when they tried that in September, it blew up in their faces. Growth is the right question for the country, but it does not come from the discredited idea of trickle-down economics. It comes from the efforts of all of us—from every businessperson with a new idea and the drive to make it happen, and from making sure we use the UK’s strengths to make the most of the green transition that is coming, rather than standing back and allowing those investments to go elsewhere. It comes from every teacher equipping a pupil with new skills and knowledge, and from not having 7 million people on NHS waiting lists, keeping many of them out of the labour market. Talking of former Prime Ministers, it does not come from saying “F*** business”, but from a modern partnership with business that brings in the long-term investment the country needs. Most of all, in a knowledge economy like today’s, growth has to come from everyone, not just from a tiny proportion of people at the top.
Fiscal stability is an essential foundation for what we have to do—I agree with the Chief Secretary on that—but it is not an end in itself. It has to be the foundation for meeting the challenges the country faces and for giving people a more prosperous future. After many years of this debate, we look less at the latest version of the rules and more at the gap between claim and reality, because after crashing the economy and leaving the British public to pay the bill, the Government have no credibility to come forward and claim to be the champions of fiscal stability.
The idea for this charter was born in another political time, as I said at the start, and if it did have a purpose, events since have rendered it an unconvincing exercise to say the least. It certainly has not kept the Government to their fiscal rules, which have been broken many times, and it is unlikely, particularly after recent months, to convince anyone outside this Chamber that the Government have got the economy back on track.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
If I may slightly abuse my position in this Chair, let me say that I only heard from the Minister on the Treasury Bench at the start of this debate of the death of Robert Key. He was a dear personal friend, an excellent and dedicated constituency Member of Parliament, and a first-rate Transport Minister. I know that those in the House who knew him will wish to share their thoughts with Sue and his family.
I call the Chair of the Treasury Committee.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, and may I associate myself with those passionately expressed words from the Chair?
I did think there might be a few more people here this evening to talk about the charter for Budget responsibility, after we have had so much debate across the country about the Office for Budget Responsibility and its forecasts over the last year or so. This was the year when the Office for Budget Responsibility made it into the headlines on numerous occasions, so I thought there might have been a bit more of a heated debate. I listened to the words of the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), and I am not sure I understand at the end of his speech whether the Opposition are in favour of tonight’s motion and of the charter. I am not sure whether they are in favour of Budget responsibility. In fact, I did not hear any suggestions at all for solutions to the criticisms that he raised.
This evening, I reiterate, for those who were not here in early 2010, the rationale for the setting up of the Office for Budget Responsibility. It was because, in the Treasury of 2008, 2009 and early 2010, it was far too easy for the Government simply to make their own forecasts and to mark their own homework. I think there is merit in having someone external to the Treasury and oblivious to ministerial pressure come up with a set of forecasts. We all acknowledge that none will be perfect, or have perfect foresight about the future, but that externality means there is a way of marking the Treasury work and the Treasury projections. A Chancellor can certainly make an argument about why they may take issue with some of the elements going into the forecast, and there is often a more dynamic quality to tax revenues than is perhaps put into some of the external forecasts referenced this evening. A Chancellor can certainly have a debate about the numbers, but we do need to remind ourselves of the importance of this process and its external nature.
The other point I want to raise is about the fiction, which the Treasury Committee highlighted in one of our recent reports, that clouds the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts for fuel duty. Again, this practice goes back many Chancellors and many Governments, and it is about putting into the projections for future tax revenue a ratchet up every year of fuel duty, yet for the last 12 or 13 years, every Chancellor coming to the Dispatch Box has decided not to implement it. It would be astonishing—I note that the Chief Secretary gave me a little cheeky smile—to see what is currently projected for fuel duty in the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast, which is for an extra 12p to go on to fuel after the Budget if the Chancellor does nothing. I think we can all agree that that is fiction. I cannot see the Chancellor coming to the Dispatch Box on 15 March and increasing fuel duty by 12p—I would be astonished—because the temporary one-year reduction of 5p will expire and there is the cumulative impact of the ratchet over the years.
I just wanted to highlight that there is some element of a work of fiction in the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast. It would be healthier for all concerned if a more realistic approach could be taken to the forecast for fuel duty not just in the short term, but in the medium term, because I think we all recognise that there will have to be a change, as more and more people are buying electric cars, in how we tax transport and drivers. I also wanted to publicise how our Committee has come together on a cross-party basis to make that point.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
May I also offer my condolences to Robert Key’s family at this terribly sad news?
I say to the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), that I was a big supporter of the creation of the OBR, and I very much agree with her that an independent look at Government economic plans, when it is in full possession of all the information, remains a very sensible thing to do.
I start by thanking Richard Hughes, David Miles and Andy King at the OBR for their autumn 2022 “Economic and fiscal outlook”. However, it is worth noting, as they did, that this particular forecast, with its seven forecast rounds, was under three Prime Ministers, three Chancellors and three official forecast dates. I suspect that at least part of the reason why the numbers and forecasts in the report are so gloomy is the sclerotic and, one could argue, rather shambolic way in which the Government—the last set and the one before that; Prime Minister and Chancellor—have played fast and loose with the UK’s economic health over the past year.
What does the OBR tell us about the health or otherwise of the UK economy as measured against the new fiscal rules? Before I say a little about that, I point out that there are many ways in which one can have fiscal rules: forward-looking ones against forecasts, like this one, will tell us something; backward-looking ones measured against outturns will tell us something else; measing over a fixed timescale, or in this case a five-year rolling timescale, also is useful, as of course is a measurement over an economic cycle. Unfortunately, however, that tends to be a moveable feast, as it is not always clear when the cycle actually starts and ends. I am sure those on the Labour Front Bench will remember many happy debates over that particular set of circumstances in the past.
The OBR tells us that inflation is set to peak at a 40-year high and that wages and living standards are set to be squeezed by 7%, wiping out all of the growth for the past eight years. So the combination of external shocks, inflation, poor economic management and a series of policy decisions—some good, like the energy price support that the Minister mentioned; some bad, like the medium-term fiscal loosening, almost all of which has been reversed; and some modest, like the medium-term fiscal tightening, most of which was necessary—have led to an increase in borrowing of over £100 billion this year and next, and an additional £420 billion in debt by ’26-’27. The consequence for the economy is likely to be the central bank rate being higher than the March forecast, the exchange rate lower than the March forecast, and gilt yields, which are the real driver of the cost of borrowing, higher than the March forecast.
The good news from the OBR is that inflation is due to fall steadily until the end of 2024, but with mortgage rates on average still close to double where they were less than a year ago, constant vigilance from the central bank, the Financial Policy Committee and the Treasury is still required.
However, even with that it will be a long, hard road to recovery. The OBR reports that real household disposable income has seen the largest fall since ONS records began in 1956. As to what needs to be done to grow the economy, again the OBR tells us that it expects capital deepening to contribute only 0.3% to potential output growth over the next two or three years, lower than in the March forecast. It says that that reflects weaker business investment, which it expects to persist over the coming years.
So while, for example, the maintenance of the annual investment allowance at £1 million was welcome, there is still much more to do to attract big investment into the economy. This is one the most troubling things that the OBR reports. The output gap is not even expected to return to the March 2022 levels until 2027, towards the end of the forecast period. It is equally troubling that the trade current account balance is forecast to “widen sharply” from 2.2% of GDP in 2021 to 5.8% in 2022. That is the highest full-year deficit since ONS records began, and is mainly driven by a widening trade deficit.
Yet the Government appear to be in denial about the self-inflicted economic harm of Brexit, and it is against that backdrop that the Government have introduced the new fiscal charter: net debt falling as a share of GDP in 2027-28, the fifth year of the rolling programme, and public sector net borrowing not to exceed 3% of GDP in the same year. While the OBR reports that both of those are to be met, the truth is that both are only just met: public sector net debt by 0.3% of GDP; and public sector net borrowing by 0.6% of GDP—from memory, £9.5 billion and £18.6 billion. At the end of the forecast period GDP will be almost £3 trillion—that is 12 zeros.
There is no fiscal headroom; the margins are absolutely tiny. So one missed step, one missed calculation, one policy error—my goodness, we saw plenty of those two Prime Ministers and two Chancellors ago—or one external shock, and that either renders the targets unmet again or requires new targets to be put in place, or, frankly, means that the brutal cycle of cuts and austerity starts all over again simply in order for the Government, to meet a target irrespective of the consequences for the real economy.
I will end with this, which is said in sadness more than anger because I like the OBR and I like the idea of fiscal rules: we have no target for growth, for job numbers, for increased living standards, or for a boost in exports; rather, success will be measured by a Government avoiding a debt target by 0.3% of GDP. That is not, as the Minister said earlier, charting a path to growth; that simply demonstrates a crushing lack of ambition.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I have seen many displays of nerve in this Chamber over the last seven years, but I congratulate the Labour Front-Bench shadow, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), on his sheer chutzpah this evening. He was part of a Government who exploded the deficit under Gordon Brown, having been bequeathed a golden financial legacy, and then drove us off an economic cliff with a crash the like of which this country had not seen since the second world war. I draw attention to my entry in the register, because I still own the business that almost went to the wall during that crash, and I determined then, as I do now, to make sure that the right hon. Gentleman and his party never have stewardship of the economy of this country for fear of what they may repeat.
Before the Minister panics, I will say that I am here this evening to support the motion and the charter. While others have mentioned the renewal and the evolution of the charter over the years, it is a useful instrument that George Osborne introduced, albeit that I think he probably did so in contemplation of uncertain victory in 2015, wanting to jam an otherwise profligate and untrustworthy Labour party into a little more discipline for the future. But it is useful in giving guidelines to the wider world, and indeed the markets, about the Government’s intentions in the short and medium term. However, I have some questions for the Minister on this year’s mandate.
The first is about the independence and role of the OBR. As the Minister knows, there has been a lot of concern in the media and elsewhere about the role the OBR has played in the financial turbulence over the last few years, and in particular I want to talk about independence, accountability and its role in the formation of fiscal policy.
On independence, I must express to the Minister, an old friend and constituency neighbour, some concern about the evolution of the role of the OBR. The charter points out at paragraph 3.13:
“The government has adopted the OBR’s fiscal and economic forecasts as the official forecasts for the Budget Report.”
That means the Treasury is not now making its own forecasts; it is relying entirely on the OBR’s forecasts. In my view, that creates an element of conflict. I would hope that the Treasury would produce its own forecast driven by what the Chancellor wants to do, and the OBR would produce a parallel forecast, and then differences between the two could be highlighted and justified or argued about. Then those of us who rely on forecasts for policy making or investment decisions could decide where the fan chart of growth or of debt was likely to go. I am sure the Minister has the charter in front of him. It says in this paragraph that the Treasury still retains the analytical capability to produce those forecasts and reserves the right to disagree with the OBR, but in truth, because it is not producing a forecast, it does not and cannot.
At paragraph 4.11 the charter states that
“the OBR will provide independent scrutiny and certification of the government’s policy costings.”
Certification is an interesting word in this context, because it means that the OBR is basically approving the Government’s policy costings, which implies an element of negotiation and justification rather than assessment and opinion.
Paragraphs 4.20 and 4.21 on page 16 then say that there will basically be an iterative process between the OBR and the Treasury—and presumably the Chancellor—over the formation of the forecasts. That implies an element of negotiation—that the Chancellor will go to the OBR and say, “This is what we’re planning to do. What do you think?” and the OBR will say, “Well, we’re not sure this is going to produce quite the number you need.” So policy is formed in an iterative process.
I might have expected the Chancellor to ask his analysts in the Treasury what the impact of certain policies might be on forecasts. However, doing that directly with the OBR, which is supposedly independent, draws it into the policy formation process in a way that may not be helpful to its sense of independence or, indeed, to our sense of its assessment of the Treasury rules. Effectively, that imbues the OBR with an authority that should, in theory, bring with it an element of accountability.
Forecasts that should and could be produced by the Treasury would be produced under the name of the Chancellor, so if they are proven to be wildly wrong, there is direct accountability in this House through him or—hopefully in time—her. However, that is less the case with the OBR. It will appear periodically in front of the Treasury Committee, which is ably chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), who is here this evening and who has spoken. Other than that, however, the House will have no opportunity to properly scrutinise, test and understand why the OBR thinks the way it does.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
If I might paraphrase, Treasury officials have Ministers by the short and curlies, which is perhaps not the best position for them to be in.
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend puts it in a pithy way, as he often does. It is not so much that there is some kind of trap or problem here; it is that a situation has evolved—probably more by accident than by design—whereby the OBR has been drawn into the machinery of the Treasury and therefore acquired an authority and an effective veto, in a way that is perhaps not helpful.
The reason that is a problem is that economics is an inexact science—if we put three economists in a room, we will have five opinions. Economics is not delineated in the way chemistry is; it is as much an art as it is a science, and much of it is actually psychology. So if the OBR is to be so involved in policy making, it is important that we understand the economic basis of its assessments. For example, do the people who produce these now Treasury —but actually OBR—forecasts appreciate, understand and believe in the Laffer curve? Do they think that if we reduce taxation, income will rise? That sits at the heart of the argument the Conservative party has had over the last few months about corporation tax. If we cut it, will we collect more money? Seemingly, the forecasts say not. Those are the kinds of judgment that anybody forming economic and fiscal policy must make.
There are also more fundamental issues—about, say, the operation of capital. If the head of the OBR is going to be so involved in policy formation—if there is to be a negotiation between the Chancellor and the OBR on an iterative basis—will that person be operating on the same ideological basis in terms of capital versus labour? Are they a Keynesian? Are they a monetarist? What is the impact of those kinds of belief system? Drawing the OBR into the Treasury machine therefore creates some difficulty for an organisation that, as I know the Minister will agree, has value because of its independence and its alternative view of what the Treasury is trying to do.
The second issue I want to raise is about the mandate. The previous charter contained a point about balancing the budget within three years; that is omitted from this charter. As the Minister said, things have changed, so that has been dropped. When we are effectively chasing a ratio as measured against GDP, we are chasing a moving number, which may make our lives more difficult. For example, if we are chasing a debt-to-GDP ratio, and our GDP is falling, we have to work ever harder to hit our target. The things we have to do to hit that target may also, paradoxically, reduce GDP even further, so we end up chasing ourselves down a spiral against a moving target. That is why, in last year’s charter, which has changed, the idea of balancing the budget within three years, and ensuring that our expenditure did not exceed our income, was quite helpful; it meant that there were two absolute numbers over which we had some control.
Fortunately, in its February forecast, the Bank of England says that if there is a recession, it will be shallower than we thought, which is good. That is not least because last year’s Budget represented a mild fiscal loosening in its initial stages, although not so much later on, with the energy price cap and all the rest of it. That may have helped with aggregate demand, making the recession less severe. However, if GDP does fall, the ratio that the Treasury is chasing will worsen, unless there are significant spending cuts or yet more tax rises, both of which may exacerbate the fall in GDP. That is why I am nervous about the mandate. The objective of reducing debt against GDP is absolutely right, but I ask the Minister to guard against the issue that I have raised.
Finally, I want to say something about the longer term. As politicians, we often focus naturally on a three to five-year horizon. We do that because, guess what, there are elections in a three to five-year horizon, and it is a horizon that is understandable and controllable. However, as the Minister will know, there are significant long-term issues for this country, which are driven by demographics and the nature of our economy. He will know that there are alarming reports that look way into the future, and if he has looked at the significant work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) before he was a Minister, he will know what I am talking about.
To take an example, the Government Actuary’s quinquennial review of the national insurance fund basically says that it will run out of money in about 20 years’ time. Indeed, the rise in the pension age that we have just put through may mean that that period will be shorter, unless there is significant Government intervention in the form of more money going into the fund, which will basically mean tax rises. In addition, the OBR’s financial stability report from last year—it now does a long-term financial stability report—forecasts that, on the current trajectory, although our debts will start to fall in the short term, by the time we get to the middle of the century, they will be well above 200% of GDP and heading towards 270%, and we will be running at a deficit of 10% of GDP.
These long-term trends are driven fundamentally by demographic issues. As a country, we are growing older. We have fewer workers per pensioner, and we are not replacing ourselves from a birth rate point of view, and that will cause an enormous problem. Other countries are in a worse situation. In Japan, on current rates, the population will have halved by the end of this century, which will be economically catastrophic for the country. Unless we start chasing our tail—raising taxes to pay more in welfare and Government spending—we will be in big trouble, which may exacerbate our GDP issues. When we put together the whole cocktail of forecasts—short, medium and long term—they scream out at us to think about the model we are operating.
The wealth of this country was built on three great leaps forward in growth. We had the industrial revolution. That was followed at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century by mass industrialisation, and since the ’70s we have had the IT revolution. In some of those periods, particularly the last, growth was quite turbulent, but throughout them, there was a very high average level of growth; 3%, 4%, 5% or 6% a year was not uncommon. We stand on the verge of another technological revolution—a great leap forward with automation, artificial intelligence, the way we do things and the green economy. We are on an ellipse of scientific discovery. Life sciences are a particular passion of mine, because there are a number of companies on the verge of curing cancer.
If we are to capture this upswing in human ingenuity, we have to think about the model of our economy and the operation of capital within it, and whether we have the right fiscal measures to encourage the kind of buccaneering capitalism that took advantage of those three previous upswings. We did less of that in the third period, the IT revolution. We went through a period of what I suppose we could call centre left or socialist Governments, and it was not de rigueur until the ’80s to be an entrepreneur. We sat on the operation of capital and, as a result, we missed the swing. That is why we do not have an Apple, a Microsoft, a Facebook or a Google. We have some companies coming, and we had some nascent companies. Some Members will be old enough to remember Acorn. For a while it was going to be a great world-beating company, but it fell by the wayside.
The Minister thinks about these issues carefully, and is conscious of the need to energise capital in a way that will build the businesses, products and jobs of the future. I urge those on the Treasury Front Bench to reflect on the longer-term issues that I have raised, and to recognise the kind of straitjacket that we are putting ourselves in. That, and the debts we incurred during covid, may well mean that we miss the next upswing in the world economy, unless we are willing to take risks with the mandate. There has been much debate in this House, and certainly in the media, about going for growth, but if we miss this upswing in growth, we really will miss a huge opportunity for the next generation of our fellow countrymen.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) makes some powerful points. He is right that if we cut certain tax rates, we collect more revenue, not less. The historical evidence is very clear on that, but OBR and Treasury models do not capture that. He is right that if we try to guide our economy by a debt-to-GDP ratio and we go into recession, the ratio gets worse. We are then advised to take exactly the wrong action, and intensify the downturn by trying to chase the radio with tax rises that will push the economy lower; it is an extremely foolish thing to do.
My right hon. Friend is right that the Treasury needs its own independent forecasting, and needs to be able to say sometimes that the independent OBR forecast may be wrong. If it is genuinely independent, why should the Chancellor have to defend it? When it is as wrong as it has been at points in the last three years—for example, as wrong as it was on the deficit—it would be extremely helpful if the Chancellor was encouraged to disagree with it, because it is sending him exactly the wrong signals. For two years running, it grossly exaggerated the deficit and debt at a time when we could have done more to promote growth. This year, predictably—indeed, I did again predict it—it got it wrong; it understated what would happen, because it did not understand that its other policies would slow the economy so much. My right hon. Friend is right about the longer-term issues, but time does not permit me to go into that, as people apparently want to go home this evening.
On the control framework, I will be the one person who says that I do not think that this control framework is good. It clearly has not worked in the past, and it is fairly unlikely to work in the future. We have one extremely important control, which is not mentioned in this document: the 2% inflation target. That should be even stronger and better enforced. It is very worrying that the Bank of England, which seems to have the main responsibility for it, allowed inflation to reach over 10% when it had a clear target of 2%. It would not listen to those of us who said that if it carries on printing too much money and buying too many bonds at ever higher prices, it is very likely to have inflation. I hope that it does not cause the reverse problem, and put everything into reverse, giving us a bigger recession than we need. We do not want any recession at all, but clearly a slowdown was needed to correct the extra inflation as the Bank tried to correct its past mistakes.
It would be good to complement the 2% inflation target, which should apply to the Government as well as to the Bank of England, with a 2% growth target. We would then have the balanced model that the Federal Reserve is wisely given by our American friends and colleagues. The Fed is told both that it must keep inflation to around 2% as a priority, and that it must maximise employment in doing so. A balanced mandate of 2% inflation—it would be nice if we could do 2% growth, but the current official forecasts are way below that—would provide the right kind of signals, and give us more chance of a sensible economic policy.
This is our one chance to remind ourselves of the big issue of how we manage this enormous debt, bearing in mind that about a third of state debt is owned in accounts by the Bank of England, which means that it is owned by the taxpayers and by the Government. When I last looked, the Bank of England was 100% owned by taxpayers and the Government. Every pound of that debt that was bought up, was bought up on the signature of Labour, coalition and Conservative Chancellors, with this House agreeing that we would indemnify the Bank against all losses. Indeed, the Bank of England understandably put on its website that the whole of the bond portfolio is held with it acting as an agent for the state. These are joint control decisions, and the Government are clearly the senior partner, because they have to pay the bills.
It is quite wrong that we should have this uniquely difficult treatment when it comes to handling the rundown and the losses, when the European Central Bank and the Fed made exactly the same mistake of buying too many expensive bonds . There is a lot to be said for the ECB idea that the rundown should take place as the bonds naturally repay. One does not go charging into the market to undermine one’s own bond prices by selling even more of them at a loss. If we want to be ultra-tough on money, like the Fed—it probably has more of an inflation problem than we did—then if we sell the bonds into the market, why send the bill to the taxpayer? Why does the bill not rest with the central bank, which can actually stand that kind of thing? As the Fed constantly points out, the fact that it is sitting on a lot of losses does not matter, because it can always print dollars to pay its bills—it is not like a normal company. We should look again that this particularly hairshirt treatment, whereby the Bank of England expects taxpayers to send it money every time it sells a bond at a loss—and it wants to sell a lot of bonds at a loss, when there is probably no need to do so for the sake of the conduct of monetary policy.
I hope that the Government look again at those issues, because we have a very difficult nexus between decisions taken jointly, decisions taken by the Government, and decisions taken by the Bank of England. The treatment of this debt is having a big impact on the Budget judgments that the Chancellor comes to.
My final point is on the strange treatment of debt interest. As the Minister pointed out, the debt interest programme has shot through the roof to extremely high levels, but the bulk of that is, of course, the indexation provisions on the index debt, which in the UK is a rather high proportion of the total debt. None of that requires cash payments, so it is not a bill that we have to pay today. In practice, it will wash through by our simply rolling over the debt when the bonds fall due. We will re-borrow the real amount rather than the nominal amount, so we will not actually feel it. It is very odd that we put that as a cost against the accounts. The great news, however, is that as a result of that strange accounting treatment, we will have a great bonanza, apparently, because I think the forecasts are right, and that inflation will come down quite sharply over the next two years—indeed, the Bank of England thinks it will go well below 2%. The debt interest programme will absolutely disappear through the floor, given all this so-called debt interest throwing out the figures. I hope some of the proceeds will be used for a sensible policy to promote growth.
John Glen
It is a privilege to close this debate on behalf of the Government. I thank those who contributed to the debate, including the distinguished Chair of the Select Committee, who highlighted some of the issues and presumptions of Government policy. I cannot comment on what will happen with fuel duty, as that will be the Chancellor’s decision. I thank the right hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) for his contribution, in which he seemed to suggest more targets and a poverty of ambition on behalf of the Government, and I can assure him that that is not the case.
I would like to respond to my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), who made a number of observations about the independence of the OBR; its certification and validation role; and the iterative process and whether that compromised the apparent independence of the Treasury. He described economics as not just an art or a science but even psychology. I can confirm that the OBR’s remit is unchanged: it is the Government’s official forecaster. But—as he notes and I am pleased to confirm—the Treasury maintains considerable analytical capability to support the policy advice to Ministers, and it does a very good job of it too. There is a clear separation between the OBR and policymaking, but it is a matter of securing credibility for those policies, and I think he would agree with me that that is a very important point.
Kit Malthouse
I guess the issue is: whose forecasts are they? If the OBR produces forecasts and Treasury officials say, “Well, Chancellor, we have looked over the forecasts and we think they are right,” that is qualitatively different, in the public’s mind, to the Treasury producing a forecast and the OBR saying to the public, “Well, we have looked over them and we think they are right.” While it does say that the Treasury reserves the right to disagree with the OBR, the nature of the iterative process presumably means that will never happen, because they agree before anything is published.
John Glen
What we can agree is that the budget responsibility committee has discretion over all judgments underpinning its forecasts. Of course, there is obviously a range of views—my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) is always clear in his disagreements with what the OBR may or may not forecast—but what we are saying is that there is validity in and a need for an official forecast, and that is what we have.
With respect to the shadow Chief Secretary, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), before he gets a little too complacent he should be wary of the £90 billion of uncosted net spending commitments that his party has made since the turn of the year. I think the OBR would be very interested in what we would find there.
The charter represents our bedrock to prosperity. It will get debt falling but invest in the future. It will rebuild our fiscal buffers, bolster our economic fundamentals and deliver for the whole country. A vote for this charter is a vote for sustainable public finances, and that is why I commend the motion to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the Charter for Budget Responsibility: Autumn 2022 update, which was laid before this House on 26 January, be approved.
Business of the House (8 fEBRUARY)
Ordered,
That at the sitting on Wednesday 8 February, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 16 (Proceedings under an Act or on European Union documents), the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on
(1) the Motion in the name of Secretary Suella Braverman relating to Police Grant Report not later than three hours after the commencement of proceedings on that Motion, and
(2) the Motions in the name of Secretary Michael Gove relating to Local Government Finance not later than three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the first such Motion or six hours after the commencement of proceedings relating to Police Grant Report, whichever is the later; proceedings on those Motions may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Penny Mordaunt.)
Business without Debate
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With the leave of the House, we shall take motions 6 to 8 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Police
That the draft Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Code H) Order 2023, which was laid before this House on 12 December 2022, be approved.
Building and Buildings
That the draft Higher-Risk Buildings (Descriptions and Supplementary Provisions) Regulations 2022, which were laid before this House on 19 December 2022, be approved.
Environmental Protection
That the draft Packaging Waste (Data Reporting) (England) Regulations 2023, which were laid before this House on 9 January, be approved.—(Steve Double.)
Question agreed to.
Committees
Mr Deputy Speaker
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 9 to 11 together.
Ordered,
High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill (Select Committee)
That Wayne David be discharged from the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill (Select Committee) and Tahir Ali be added.
International Trade
That Tony Lloyd be discharged from the International Trade Committee and Andrew Western be added.
Human Rights (Joint Committee)
That Dean Russell be discharged from the Joint Committee on Human Rights and Dr Caroline Johnson be added—(Sir Bill Wiggin, on behalf of the Selection Committee.)
Probationary Police Officers: Cost of Living
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to introduce the Adjournment debate this evening, and I thank the Minister for being in his place at the outset. It is important to set the tone for this important issue, and that is that in Northern Ireland we have a police service that is in crisis. It is in crisis for several reasons, which need to be addressed if the problems with the recruitment of police probationers, and of new blood into the service, are to be thoroughly and properly addressed.
The crisis is such that it is not unusual to hear statements in the local media, from Police Federation chiefs and other senior police officers, about their concern that the growing levels of criminality in Northern Ireland are because the police have a budgeting crisis. That deepening budget crisis needs to be nipped in the bud before the policing crisis becomes so deep that we cannot deal with it.
Let me set the scene. The Police Service of Northern Ireland faces an unprecedented operating shortfall of some £226 million for the next three years. There will be a net loss of more than 300 officers in this financial year alone. But that tells only half the story. On average, 36 officers leave the PSNI every month. Many of those officers are probationary officers who joined the service wanting to make a difference, but who then realised that they cannot afford to do the job. Unlike any other service, they are being squeezed from both sides. The arrangements that we have in place say that there should be 7,500 police officers in Northern Ireland, and we are about 1,000 short. So officers are squeezed because they have to do more duties to try to keep up—they are running just to stand still and maintain where we are. On the other side, they face a budgetary crisis which means that they are not properly rewarded for the extra hard work that they are doing.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend my hon. Friend for introducing the debate. This is a big issue, which is why we are all here to support him. We all hear of young PSNI officers leaving to work in car dealerships and even, in one case I heard of, in Tesco, because of what was described to me as “low morale”, but in fact it is clear that the stress of working for the PSNI is not compensated enough. Many realise that the negligible pay is not enough and we must urgently review that. In other words, we must provide better wages to retain the quality officers that we now have.
Ian Paisley
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. In setting the scene, I will come on to some of the detail in a moment, but he has put his finger on what police officers are being forced to do in their private lives to try to make ends meet.
Northern Ireland now has the lowest number of officers since the formation of the PSNI. I remember being on the Police Board at the time when the PSNI came into existence, and we were promised that the number of police officers would keep pace with the developing needs of the community. We reduced the service from between 12,000 and 13,000 officers right down to 7,500. Today we have between 6,700 and 6,800 officers, which frankly is not enough.
We should recognise not only that are we 800 below where New Decade, New Approach tells us that police levels should be, but that Northern Ireland’s population has risen in recent years. In fact, it has risen by 300,000 people since the Patten report recommended that police numbers should be cut from that high point. If we were doing a fair calculation, a more realistic revised figure, against the backdrop of Northern Ireland becoming a peaceful society without terrorism, would be having 8,600 police officers, given the size of our population, but that is not the case. Police officers, including young officers and probationary officers, joined the service and realised that they are being squeezed because there is an insufficient number of colleagues to do the work and they are not being properly rewarded for doing the job.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this Adjournment debate. He is right to outline the figure of 7,500 officers provided in New Decade, New Approach. Contained in New Decade, New Approach was also a commitment from the UK Government indicating that the PSNI would receive the appropriate and necessary levels of funding to continue its efforts in tackling paramilitarism and organised crime, and to continue the work of the paramilitary crime taskforce, yet the Government have been found wanting on that taskforce. Does he agree that that commitment needs to be delivered by the Government and that, while policing and justice have been devolved, there are commitments on terrorism and paramilitarism that the Government still need to be honour?
Ian Paisley
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point; he makes it well. The fact of the matter is that policing in Northern Ireland cannot be done on the cheap, and that is essentially what has been asked for. Not only do we have to tackle the crimes that are prevalent across this part of the United Kingdom, but we have an added layer of serious and organised crime that derives from paramilitary activity. That puts even more pressure on the policing budget. My hon. Friend is quite right to outline that this additional pressure makes the PSNI like no other police service in the United Kingdom. With 42 other comparisons to look at, the issues that our officers have to tackle are completely unique. They operate in a unique environment and under unique circumstances. With a hangover of policing the past, as well as trying to cope with the present and laying sound foundations for the future, it is almost impossible for them to do it on a shoestring budget that needs to be agreed year on year.
Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. I want to highlight the number of young officers who come into the force and are left having to do additional duties, which is driving down morale. They do not have a proper work-life balance; never mind just the pay issue, the work-life balance is a serious issue for young officers.
Ian Paisley
Of course, if there was not the opportunity for overtime, police officers in Northern Ireland would absolutely be on the breadline.
Again, in setting the scene, let me add a layer that is unheard of and rarely reported in this part of the United Kingdom. Last year there were 2,500 assaults on police officers in Northern Ireland. Of a force of 6,800 officers, 2,500 of them were seriously assaulted, with broken bones or having to be off duty. In fact, 900 of them are unable to serve at present because of injuries. That is a serious pressure on our police. There have been four attempted murders of police officers in the past 12 months. One of them from earlier this year we cannot talk about—it is subject to a court case—and there were other very serious ones, including a stabbing, a bomb under an officer’s car and an attempt to fire a projectile at a station where an officer worked.
Our officers in Northern Ireland work under a unique set of circumstances where the threat against their lives and the targeting of them continues when they leave work and go home to be with their partner and family. That is a very different stress level from that of other officers. Not only do we have that aggressive targeting and attacks on police officers; we also have what I can only describe as a woke culture developing in Northern Ireland that says the police should not be allowed to use certain weapons to defend themselves from attacks. We all know of the benefits that Tasers give to police officers in the United Kingdom. If a police officer feels they are under attack, they can use a Taser to keep the assailant at a distant and under control. We have only 100 officers in Northern Ireland who are allowed to use a Taser, and the Taser has been deployed on only 21 occasions in the past year. Why has it been deployed so rarely, when we have so many attacks on police officers? Because there is an agenda to stop a Taser being rolled out to every single officer so that they can use it in a proportionate and balanced way when they face a threat.
Water cannon, which are not regularly used on the British mainland, are used for large crowd dispersals in Northern Ireland. CS spray is offered to our police officers; they also have baton rounds and are routinely armed with sidearms, but they do not like to use or deploy them because that would mean a fatality. In the past year, there were 400 withdrawals of a sidearm from a holster to point at a person, so severe was the threat to our police officers. Let me just put that into context: there have been 400 withdrawals of a gun from a holster, to point at a citizen of the United Kingdom, because there was a threat so serious that an officer felt his life was in danger. Thankfully, because of good, proportionate policing, there was only one discharge of a weapon.
We need something in between. Tasers may be one of those things; I certainly encourage the Chief Constable to apply for Tasers to be used and to make sure that they are widely issued. The Home Secretary offered £6.7 million to the other 42 United Kingdom police services to look into using Tasers as a proper mechanism for defending police officers. That offer was made to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, but it has not yet been taken up. I encourage the PSNI to take it up, so that we can create an atmosphere in which young police officers feel confident, in which their morale is not under threat and in which they feel able to use everything in their quiver to properly defend themselves and their actions.
I turn to the key issue, which is how young probationary officers are being treated in such a way that the cost of living crisis is putting real pressure and a real squeeze on them. It is important to put that into context. There is a benevolent fund in the police service that is run by the Police Federation. It was essentially set up to assist retired police officers and their families after they leave the service, but in the past year, more claims on and payments from the fund have been made for serving officers than for retired officers. That includes payments for home heating, for food for children and to assist with getting through the month. More currently serving officers than retired officers are having to rely on the police benevolent fund—that is an appalling picture for police officers.
I was chatting to an exceptional probationary police officer who lives in my constituency. He serves in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), but he was seconded to do some work in a market town in my constituency while he was operational out of another part of the country. He was, quite frankly, brilliant. His conduct was brilliant, and so was his ability to deal with the public, help to resolve crimes and get on with doing the ordinary job in which every police officer takes regular pride.
That police officer came to see me in my office one day and said, “I want to show you my bank account.” He had 17p left in it. He is not a drinker, he is not a smoker, he is not a gambler; he has two young kids, and he was trying to organise his kid’s birthday party the next week. He had to drive a 45-mile round trip every day to do duty. He said, “I’ve maxed out my credit cards. How am I to get to work, let alone care for my kids and do this job? As a probationary officer, I’m on less than £26,000. My buddy who lives a few houses away works in a supermarket and is paid £7,000 or £8,000 more a year. He doesn’t face the same problems and stresses that I face”—the picture that I have outlined of the conditions under which police officers are operating. That story, unfortunately, could be repeated over and over again.
My hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned officers taking second jobs. This month, in the news magazine of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, there was an account of a police officer who had to get a second job as a delivery van driver. That might be okay here in Great Britain, but the one thing that I am told, our colleagues are told and police officers are told in Northern Ireland about our security is “Do not engage in any regular activity. Do not allow anyone to say, ‘On such-and-such a day, that person does such-and-such.’ Change your system: change the way you operate.” A regular van driver cannot change the way he operates, and is therefore an easy target for those who wish to target him; but this is what that officer had to do in order to make ends meet. What is more, according to the article, he referred eight colleagues to the same job, encouraging them to earn extra income in order to live. It is not appropriate, in this day and age, for police officers to need to do that. It sends a clear signal that they are not being properly rewarded.
Last month the chairman of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, Liam Kelly, wrote to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee outlining what an ordinary constable would receive. I am pleased to report that at the weekend there was an uplift in policing budgets, although they are still behind where they need to be. A probationer who would normally be on about £25,000 a year is now on about £26,500, a trainee officer who was on £21,500 is now on about £24,000, and an officer must reach year 5 after being a probationer to earn about £30,000.
It is a huge struggle for those people to remain in the job, survive and pay for the upkeep of their families and their homes, and they do so at a time when, as we all know, the cost of living crisis is upon us. Food prices are rising faster than they have for 45 years, inflation has reached 16.2%, and the pressures on everyone’s home budget is increasing. Apparently the average disposable income of a police officer in Northern Ireland who is in rented accommodation and paying for a car—officers have to live in certain areas and police other areas—is about £108 a month. We could not live on that, Mr Deputy Speaker, and we should not be asking our police officers to live and raise their families on that.
The Police Federation also kindly produced for the benefit of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee a series of alternative jobs—equivalent in terms of training and skill level—with which Northern Ireland police officers are competing. After year 3, a software engineer is making £43,500, a software developer about £33,500, a deputy principal—a middle manager in the Northern Ireland civil service—about £39,500, and a security guard about £28,500, and we are asking people who are genuine security experts to do their job for about £6,000 less. From day one, police officers in Northern Ireland face a terrorist threat and are under immense pressure. For the past five or six years, pay awards that should have been effective from 1 September have been delayed for months.; often, when discussions on the following year’s pay award have begun, officers have not yet received the previous year’s award.
I appeal to the Minister not to stick to a brief that says, “If we had devolution, all this would be sorted out.” That will wash with no one, because this problem has been building up for six years, and we had devolution for half that period. This is a problem of how we manage policing resources and whether or not we have devolution, and we need it to be addressed with a much sharper answer than “Well, if you had an Executive in Northern Ireland, all these things could be sorted out.” I wish that the answer were as easy as that, but I fear that it is not, and I fear that giving such an excuse for an answer will only fail to answer the pertinent question of how, in this day and age, we can properly reward our police officers and find the resources that will enable us to do so, and what we can cut in other sections of governance to ensure that they are properly paid.
These are national, not local awards for police pay. As my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) identified, we must make sure that the policing budget is strengthened in Northern Ireland, so that the issues that I have put on the agenda tonight can be properly addressed once and for all.
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
Let me start by thanking the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) for securing this evening’s debate and for setting out the issues with such care, thoughtfulness and compassion, clearly based on personal experience of talking to police officers in his constituency and in Northern Ireland more generally.
As a Home Office Minister I have responsibility, primarily, for policing in England and Wales. I will make some remarks about policing more generally and about police officers’ salaries, which broadly speaking are the same in Northern Ireland as in England and Wales. I will then touch on some issues more specific to Northern Ireland although, being a devolved matter, they fall more properly within the responsibilities of my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office, one of whom, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), is with us in the Chamber.
Starting with policing more widely, in England and Wales we are well on track to recruit an extra 20,000 police officers by the end of March 2023. Once we have done that, we will have a record number of police officers. Never in the history of England and Wales will we have had more police officers than we will have by the end of March. That goes to show that the package offered has some attractions and merits.
In the most recent pay awards, police in England and Wales received a flat, consolidated increase for this financial year effective from 1 September of £1,900, as the hon. Member for North Antrim said. I believe that in the last day or two it has been confirmed that that will apply to police in Northern Ireland as well, and will be backdated, so officers such as the one he described should get all that money in their March pay packets. For officers with children to look after such as the one he mentioned, that will be a welcome payment.
That £1,900 equates to an average of 5%, but for officers on lower salaries it represents a lot more. For entry-level officers such as those the hon. Gentleman described, it equates to 8.8%, because it is a fixed proportion of a smaller number. The view was taken that it was important to try to direct the increase disproportionately towards officers on entry point wages, for all the reasons that he set out with great eloquence. That means that since 1 September last year, officers have had a basic starting salary of between roughly £23,500 and £26,500. That is typically an 8.8% increase.
A median police constable will receive £41,000. The hon. Gentleman mentioned comparisons with other occupations; the police salary review body stated that median full-time gross annual earnings—not officers starting out at the beginning of their career—are 33% higher than the whole economy, 26% higher than so-called associate professional and technical occupations, and about the same as professional occupations. I am speaking about median earnings across the whole police force, not entry-level salaries, which are lower.
In addition to the 8.8% annual pay increase for people on starting salaries, there is incremental annual pay progression as officers get more experience. Those increases are at least 2%, and can be between 4% and 6%, on top of the regular annual increase. As an officer—like the young officer he mentioned—stays in the force, they will get not just the regular increase but the progression as well, so they will not have to stick with it for too long before they start seeing some meaningful increases coming through. I hope that the hon. Gentleman can pass on that message to officers in their first couple of years.
Ian Paisley
I thank the Minister for setting that out. That is helpful, and the timing could not be better because of the award that was made at the weekend. I also thank the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) for being here. The fact that he is here says a lot, and officers will be grateful that he has turned up for this debate. He did not have to, and I know that he is very busy with other responsibilities.
On the point that the Minister has made, keeping pay parity with the rest of the UK should be a principle, and making the award to PSNI officers on 1 September each year is also critical. We are now at the beginning of February and the award has just been made in Northern Ireland. That has not really helped, and I hope that that lesson can be learned by the civil servants who help the Minister with this.
Chris Philp
The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. Salaries are not exactly the same but they are pretty much the same in Northern Ireland as they are in England and Wales, and the settlement that has just been announced is exactly the same. That is an important principle in relation to Northern Ireland in particular.
I emphasise again that this is a matter for my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office. As the hon. Gentleman has said, policing is a devolved matter in Northern Ireland, and it is not in my area of ministerial responsibility as the Policing Minister for England and Wales. A functioning Executive would give more flexibility and freedom to Northern Ireland to determine its own path and how it chooses to allocate money between different budgets. I understand that the Secretary of State, in setting the budget for Northern Ireland’s Department of Justice this year, has given a 3.1% increase—a total allocation of about £1.2 billion—but as the hon. Member knows, the freedoms available to Northern Irish civil servants are limited in the absence of an Executive, so the sooner we can get an Executive up and running, the more flexibility and autonomy the people in Northern Ireland and the elected representatives of the people in Northern Ireland will have.
The hon. Member made some comments regarding security, and he is quite right to draw attention to that. The UK Government provide the PSNI with additional security funding to tackle the obvious threat from terrorism in Northern Ireland, and the amount of money being paid over for that purpose in the current financial year, 2022-23, is £32 million, which is the same as it was in the previous year. In addition to that, there is a security funding payment of £8 million a year towards the tackling paramilitaries programme, which is designed to match the funding that comes from the Northern Ireland Executive. That money designed specifically to tackle terrorism, which has a unique Northern Ireland element, is continuing.
Gavin Robinson
I hope that the Minister will able to go back after this debate and ensure that tat frequency of funding for the tackling paramilitarism and crime taskforce will remain, because as I understand it, the Northern Ireland Office is tapering that money off, which would have an impact on the delivery of service.
Chris Philp
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I am assured by my colleague, the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe, that he and his NIO colleagues will write to confirm the position on that in the very near future.
I think we are coming to the end of our allotted time, so I want to thank the hon. Member for North Antrim once again for raising this important issue. All of us obviously back our police forces and want to ensure that they have the funding, the salary and the resources to do their job. It is probably appropriate to close by extending, I hope on behalf of the whole House, our thanks to officers the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, but in this evening’s context, particularly in Northern Ireland, for the work they do in keeping us, our constituencies, our constituents and their families safe.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments and National Insurance Funds Payments) Regulations 2023
Draft Tax Credits, Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Regulations 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Victoria Atkins)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments and National Insurance Funds Payments) Regulations 2023.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Tax Credits, Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Regulations 2023.
Victoria Atkins
It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I hope the Committee will forgive me for putting these two important sets of regulations together. They will be of considerable benefit to all our constituents who rely on both child benefit and guardian’s allowance, but also, importantly, to constituents who pay national insurance contributions.
In his statement in November, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out the difficult decisions that the Government have made to support stability, growth and public services. As hon. Members know, he made those decisions against the backdrop of significant economic challenges, including high energy prices—partly as a result of Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine—which have driven inflation across the world; rising interest rates; and higher levels of Government debt.
Despite, or indeed because of, the challenges we face, the Government are supporting working people and the most vulnerable in society, so today we are setting a number of national insurance contribution thresholds for the next financial year in order to continue supporting working people. In fact, in July last year, we increased the primary threshold and lower profits limit from £9,880 to £12,570 to match the income tax personal allowance, which is the largest ever increase to personal tax starting thresholds. I am proud that, through the regulations, we are supporting the most vulnerable in society, including by uprating child benefit, the guardian’s allowance and most rates and thresholds of tax credits by 10.1% from April this year. That is in addition to our wider uprating by 10.1% of benefits that are administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, including the state pension, and the cost of living support that the Government have provided and will continue to provide into the future.
The social security regulations set the national insurance contribution limits and thresholds, as well as the rates of a number of national insurance contribution classes, for the 2023-24 tax year, and make provision for a Treasury grant to be paid into the national insurance fund, if required, for the same tax year. Although the scope of the regulations under discussion is limited to the 2023-24 tax year, the Chancellor has also committed to maintain certain thresholds at their current levels in future years.
The primary threshold and lower profits limit—this becomes a bit technical; I hope that Committee members stay with me as I set out the details—are the points at which employees and the self-employed start paying class 1 and class 4 NICs respectively. The change meets the Conservative party manifesto commitment to ensure that the first £12,500 earned by individuals is tax free; it does not affect an individual’s ability to build up entitlement towards contributory benefits, such as the state pension, and I know that Committee members want to ensure that that is the case.
At the spring statement last year, the Government announced that self-employed individuals with profits between the small profits threshold and the lower profits limit will continue to build up entitlement to certain contributory benefits without paying any class 2 NICs. Class 2 NICs are now paid above the newly introduced lower profits threshold, which is set at £12,570 to align with the NICs lower profits limit for class 4 NICs. This change contributed to the Government meeting their manifesto commitment to ensure that the first £12,500 earned is tax free.
The upper earnings limit, which is the point at which the main rate of employee NICs drops to 2%, and the upper profits limit, which is the point at which the main rate of self-employed NICs drops to 2%, are aligned with the higher-rate threshold for income tax, at £50,270 per annum. As well as class 4 NICs, the self-employed pay class 2 NICs above £12,500. The flat cash rate of class 2 NICs will increase to £3.45 in 2023-24, in line with inflation. Self-employed people earning below £6,725 may pay class 2 NICs voluntarily to protect their entitlement to certain contributory benefits. Class 3 NICs allow people to voluntarily top up their national insurance record. The rate for this will increase in line with inflation to £17.45 a week in the relevant tax year.
I turn now to employer NICs. The secondary threshold is the point at which employers start paying employers NICs on their employees’ salaries. In the autumn statement, the Chancellor announced that this threshold will remain at £9,100 in 2023-24 and will be fixed at this level until 2028. This supports the public finances while still ensuring that the largest businesses pay the most. The employment allowance, which the Government raised from £4,000 to £5,000 last April, means that the smallest 40% of businesses with an employer NICs liability pay no NICs. The thresholds at which employers of employees eligible for NICs reliefs—for example, those with under 25 apprentices, those employing veterans or those with new employees in freeports—have also been fixed in these regulations.
The regulations also make provision for a Treasury grant of up to 5% of forecasted annual benefit expenditure to be paid into the national insurance fund, if needed, during 2023-24. A similar provision will be made in respect of the Northern Ireland national insurance fund. This is purely a precautionary measure. We note that the report from the Government Actuary’s Department forecasts that such a grant will not be necessary, but we consider it prudent to make such a provision at this stage, in case it is needed.
I turn to the second set of regulations. As hon. Members know, the Government are committed to delivering a welfare system that is fair for claimants and taxpayers, while providing a strong safety net for those who need it most. These regulations will ensure that tax credits, child benefit and guardian’s allowance increase in line with the consumer price index, which showed inflation at 10.1% in the year to September 2022.
In summary, this proposed legislation makes changes to the rates, limits and thresholds for national insurance contributions, makes provision for a Treasury grant, and increases the rates of tax credits, child benefit and guardian’s allowance in line with prices. I very much hope that the Committee will find agreement on these regulations.
Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins, and to consider these regulations in Committee.
I thank the Minister for her comments. As we have heard, the draft Social Security (Contributions) (Rates, Limits and Thresholds Amendments and National Insurance Funds Payments) Regulations 2023 give effect to the annual rerating of a range of national insurance contribution rates, limits and thresholds, for the purpose of calculating liabilities for the tax year beginning in April. This process, as the Minister mentioned, occurs annually and is primarily designed to take into account the rate of inflation, which is at a record high, causing much concern and hardship across the country.
The Chancellor announced at the autumn statement that most national insurance rates, limits and thresholds would be fixed at their 2022-23 levels for the coming tax year. The only rates that will increase in line with inflation, measured at 10.1% for the year to September 2022, is the flat cash rate of class 2 and class 3 contributions. This change is expected to bring 55,000 individuals into paying national insurance by the tax year 2027-28. Given the pressures facing households across the country, this rise will be alarming for many, as I am already seeing in my constituency cases. The explanatory memorandum to the instrument states:
“Increasing the rates of Class 2 and 3 NICs will be a small tax increase in cash terms for individuals.”
Will the Minister take this opportunity to let us know the exact figure or estimate that the Treasury has produced for the rise?
The instrument also allows for payments of a Treasury grant to be made into the national insurance fund. Could the Minister set out why this year’s figure, which must not exceed 5% of the estimated benefit expenditure for the tax year, has significantly decreased from last year’s figure of 17%? What is the significance of that difference?
The second instrument sets out the annual rates of working tax and child tax credit, and the weekly rates of child benefit and guardian’s allowance for the coming tax year, which I note is also an annual process. This instrument looks more promising, as the rates have been increased in line with CPI. Labour welcomes the increase and will support the instrument; we welcome any help for people struggling in the face of soaring energy bills and inflation.
I have one question for the Minister, on which I hope she can shed some light. Published alongside the instrument was a review of tax credit monetary amounts, as required by section 41 of the Tax Credits Act 2002. It sets out each element of the various tax credits discussed today, listing the 2022 rates and 2023 rates and making it clear whether they have been adjusted in line with inflation. Almost all the rates are rising by CPI, or 10.1%.
However, the family element of child tax credits and the income disregard element of tax credits do not appear to be rising with inflation, with the proposed 2023 rates unchanged from those in 2022. The report states that if inflation is taken into account, the former should be set to £600, but instead it will be £545, and that the latter should be set at £2,755, but instead it will be £2,500. Will the Minister inform us why these rates are not being adjusted for inflation?
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead for her thorough examination of the regulations. It is a pleasure to respond to her; this is not usually her portfolio, but it is very nice to be appearing with her.
The hon. Lady asked a number of questions. I hope she will forgive me, but it is taking a little time to get the technical answers to those. In particular, she asked for the exact figure for the class 2 and class 3 increases. I am told that for class 2, it is 30p a week per person. For class 3, it is £1.60 a week per person. I hope that helps her.
The hon. Lady also asked why we are paying less into the fund this year. The Committee may recall that the Government Actuary’s Department predicts that we will not have to use the fund; none the less, as part of prudent housekeeping, we will set some money aside. The Government Actuary’s Department forecasts that a Treasury grant will not be needed for the relevant tax year, as I said, and the 17% figure was set due to the uncertainty around the impact of the pandemic on the economy.
We know how successful Government interventions were in supporting more than 11 million jobs in our economy and keeping millions of businesses afloat in each of our constituencies, but, of course, that comes at a price, which is one of the factors that we in the Treasury must grapple with as we plan for the future. This year, we do not believe that such a high rate is required, because of some of the steps that we have taken to set the economy back on the right track, so 5% has been set on a contingent basis. As I said, however, we do not expect to have to use it.
The hon. Lady asked about a review of tax credit monitoring. She rightly asked why the family element of child tax credit is not rising. The family element is an additional amount paid on top of an individual child element. It has never been uprated in the same way, and it is more sustainable, we say, to handle it in this way. None the less, I know that we all welcome that element as part of our efforts to support families with their finances—at any time, but particularly with the cost of living crisis.
Abena Oppong-Asare
I thank the Minister for clarifying those points; it is helpful to find out why the family element is not increasing. Could the Minister clarify whether the case is the same for the income disregard element?
Victoria Atkins
I know that the answer will come to me quickly, because we in the Treasury pride ourselves on reacting and responding quickly to the circumstances. The hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent was also trying to catch my eye, so now may be an appropriate time for him to intervene, then I can try to answer both questions at the same time.
Nick Smith
I thank the Minister for giving way. I am just going through the explanatory memorandum to the draft Tax Credits, Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Regulations 2023. The consultation outcome on page 3, paragraph 10 says that there was no consultation because of the Treasury reviewing the rates. Families in these circumstances faced particularly high energy costs last year, so would it not be valuable, for fairness, for the Treasury or the Department for Work and Pensions to look at the other measures tackling high energy costs and their impact on families to ensure a fairer outcome for families from this important measure?
Victoria Atkins
I know that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the uprating by 10.1% of that particular allowance. It is a vital allowance for those who play such an important role in our society. On the impact of high energy prices, we are not just relying on the uprating of this particular type of tax credit; we are bringing in a whole range of measures, primarily through the Department for Work and Pensions. For example, we are giving a £900 one-off payment to people who are on means-tested benefits, and additional money for the elderly and for those on disability benefits. This uprating is an annual event and, precisely because the CPI was as high as it was in September, we are uprating —rightly, in my view—all these sensitive benefits and allowances to help those who are the most vulnerable in our society.
Nick Smith
I accept that there have been extra measures on families’ energy costs, and I welcome the increase by CPI, or 10%. My point is that there are other inflationary measures, including the higher energy costs, that this group in particular faces. Could those measures be looked at as part of the consultation, either now or in the future, given the extraordinarily high energy costs for such families?
Victoria Atkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that interesting point. We have settled on CPI as the preferable rate of inflation, because it ensures the fairest outcome for those receiving help from the state and for the taxpayers who enable benefits and other public services to be funded properly. Indeed, we changed to CPI from the retail price index some years ago. The Government keep other measures of inflation under review. We think CPI is the most appropriate index at the moment, but we will keep that under review.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the recent observations of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which thinks that the energy price guarantee has had a powerful buffering impact on the rate of inflation in recent months—as much as 2% or 2.5%. As well as helping our constituents with their bills in the immediate term, we hope that the guarantee will have a longer-term impact on getting inflation down. The impact of inflation on our economy is stark, which is why the Prime Minister is rightly focusing on it and, indeed, why it was the first promise in his new year speech. Inflation hurts everyone, but it hurts the poorest in society the most.
Before I sit down, I am keen to answer the question from the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead. I am told that income disregards are conventionally frozen, but I want to get some more information to her, so I undertake to write to her on that important point.
Question put and agreed to.
DRAFT TAX CREDITS, CHILD BENEFIT AND GUARDIAN’S ALLOWANCE UP-RATING REGULATIONS 2023
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Tax Credits, Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Regulations 2023.—(Victoria Atkins.)
Energy Bills Support Scheme and Alternative Fuel Payment Pass-through Requirement (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Chair
Order. There will be no further debate on these regulations as they were debated last week, so when I call a Minister to move the motion, I will put the Question immediately, and when the Question is agreed to, if it is agreed to, the work of the Committee will be over.
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the Energy Bills Support Scheme and Alternative Fuel Payment Pass-through Requirement (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023 (S.I. 2023, No. 10).—(Steve Double.)
Draft Nuclear Regulated Asset Base Model (Revenue Collection) Regulations 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 9 / Noes: 1 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Minister for Energy and Climate (Graham Stuart)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Nuclear Regulated Asset Base Model (Revenue Collection) Regulations 2023.
It is a great privilege to speak under your chairmanship, Dame Caroline. The regulations were laid before the House on 15 December 2022. On 31 March last year, following constructive debates and wide support in the House, the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Act 2022 received Royal Assent. The Act provides the legislative framework to implement a regulated asset base—or RAB—funding model to support the financing of new nuclear technologies.
Since the passage of that legislation, the Government have taken the historic step of investing in Sizewell C —our first investment in a nuclear project for 35 years—and designated it as the first project to use the RAB funding model. The regulations implement the legislative framework behind the RAB revenue stream. Although they are not specific to Sizewell C, approving the draft instrument is a further step towards establishing a model that could support the development of the Sizewell C project and multiple nuclear projects in the future. That will ultimately contribute to a resilient, affordable and low-carbon electricity system, helping us to achieve our net zero ambitions and providing energy security for the British people.
Let me set out the legislative framework for how the RAB revenue stream will operate. Once a nuclear company has been designated for the purposes of the 2022 Act by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State is empowered to modify the company’s electricity generation licence to incorporate RAB terms and conditions, permitting it to receive regulated revenue overseen by Ofgem, the regulatory authority. That revenue will cover activities in respect of the design, construction, commissioning and operation of the project, and activities pursuant to an approved funded decommissioning programme.
The company’s revenues will be funded in part by levies on all licensed electricity suppliers in Great Britain, which may choose to pass those costs to their consumers. As we discussed during the passage of the 2022 Act, the use of a RAB funding model can help to drive down the overall cost of new nuclear projects for consumers. In accordance with section 18 of the Act and subject to relevant Government approvals, including in respect of value for money, the Secretary of State will direct the revenue collection counterparty to offer to contract with a nuclear company. The revenue collection contract terms will be negotiated with the Government for each project.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
The Minister said that the RAB model could be cheaper for delivering nuclear compared with a strike-rate model. Paragraph 18 of the impact assessment says it is estimated that it could save
“between £30bn and £80bn in present value terms compared with a CFD.”
Does that mean that, by default, the Government are saying that Hinkley has wasted between £30 and £80 billion —money that could have been saved on our bills?
Graham Stuart
As the hon. Gentleman will know, Hinkley was done on a different basis, with a strike price that was agreed with EDF Energy, CGN Europe Energy and others. It is completely different. I would have thought the hon. Gentleman knew that, with the close interest that he takes in knocking nuclear at every effort without ever reading the science or seeing the importance of nuclear to delivering the net zero future that we all hope for.
Graham Stuart
I will make a little more progress, if I may.
Once the nuclear company accepts the offer and the revenue collection contract is entered into, the draft regulations will establish the mechanism for electricity suppliers to make payments to the revenue collection counterparty, so that it can pay amounts owed to the nuclear company. The revenue collection counterparty can also return money to suppliers, hold sums in reserve and cover its losses through requiring suppliers to post collateral and undergo a payment mutualisation process in the event of supplier default.
The regulations also set out arrangements for the collection of a levy from suppliers to pay for the counterparty’s operating costs. In developing the regulations, we sought to replicate the revenue mechanics under the legislative framework for contracts for difference, with differences to account for the specific features of the RAB model. This is because the revenue stream for CfDs was designed with similar considerations in mind to the nuclear RAB revenue stream—that is, incentivising private sector investment in low-carbon electricity, which I hope we all devoutly wish for. More significantly, the regulations will put in place a recognised and reliable revenue model that investors and electricity suppliers are familiar with, which we anticipate will minimise the impacts of introducing such measures on suppliers and their consumers.
Alan Brown
Will the Minister give an example of where a RAB model has worked successfully for the delivery of a new nuclear power station?
Graham Stuart
I will wait for historic refreshment, if such there is, although I am sure the hon. Gentleman recognises that the RAB model is designed to ensure that, given the capital requirements and intensity, it lowers the cost of capital, thereby making the investment more desirable, which it does by sharing some of the risks. Our calculation is that it therefore leads to a lower cost to the public purse in the long term.
The draft regulations have been informed by a full public consultation—undertaken last year between 14 June and 9 August—which sought views on the proposals to replicated the CfD framework and the various differences needed for the RAB model. We received 40 responses from organisations and members of the public, who were, for the most part, supportive of the proposals.
During the passage of the Act, Members of this House and the other place raised some concerns in respect of which I hope I can offer suitable reassurance. Perhaps most important were the concerns about the potential impacts of RAB levies on consumers. Through our consultation, we sought views on the inclusion of measures to prevent suppliers from passing on the costs to vulnerable consumers. Having considered the responses, we remain of the view that it would be better to mitigate potential impacts on vulnerable consumers through holistic measures that deal with people’s overall energy bills, rather than tying actions to these regulations specifically. We do not believe this is the appropriate point in the process to bring in measures to protect vulnerable consumers.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
By mentioning “holistic” arrangements, the Minister gives me the opportunity to ask one of my questions now rather than later. What on earth does that mean? What are the Government proposing to do with their holistic examination of measures across the board, rather than going through the regulations? If they are going to do a holistic examination, will that have any impact on anyone in particular, and will it be publicised?
Graham Stuart
Like the hon. Gentleman, when I hear the word holistic it tends to get my nose twitching. To use other language, the point is that this is not the appropriate moment to address that. However, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, we are consulting and will come forward with a new system to protect vulnerable consumers from April 2024 onwards. We feel that it is elsewhere in the overall energy system that we are best able to intervene to protect vulnerable customers from such costs, or indeed other costs in the system, whereas to come in specifically at each structure we set up to encourage generation would create a system that is over-complex and might, through that complexity, not deliver in the way that both he and I would wish to protect the most vulnerable.
Relevant measures include those recently announced in the November autumn statement—this is where I fill out the hon. Gentleman’s holistic insight—such as the cost of living payments to households on means-tested benefits and for pensioners, not to mention the £37 billion of Government support for the cost of living previously announced in 2022. I hope this is getting more and more holistic for the hon. Gentleman.
Members should be reassured that the likely impact on household bills because of the nuclear RAB would be low. We have estimated that for a generic project approved in this Parliament, it would cost each typical household dual-fuel bill approximately £1 a month on average during the construction phase. I believe, given the scale of this project, that that is proportionate, given the benefits nuclear offers for our electricity mix. Ultimately, by having nuclear power we will deliver a lower-cost system for consumers than if we relied on intermittent, low-carbon power sources alone.
To touch briefly on scope, the regulations will not apply to suppliers in Northern Ireland.
Graham Stuart
I will give the hon. Gentleman one more opportunity to justify his clearly unreasonable opposition to nuclear, even when it offers a clean, net zero-compliant future and lower bills for people up and down the country, including in Scotland.
Alan Brown
I thank the Minister for giving way. If he bides his time, I will give him plenty more about my opposition to nuclear. He was talking about estimating the impact on bills of the RAB construction period, and he obviously estimated that that would not cost billpayers much. Is it not the case that the Government do not even know how much a new nuclear power station will cost? In the documents accompanying the regulations, it says they have commissioned a consultant to provide up-to-date estimates of the true cost of nuclear.
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. As I have shared with the Committee, we expect that the cost would be around that level of £1. That should provide reassurance. For those who have an ideological opposition to nuclear, there are no numbers that would provide reassurance. We have those who are on the side of science on the one side and those on the side of ideology on the other, and it is quite clear where the hon. Gentleman sits.
The regulations provide the Government with a unique opportunity to deliver a number of benefits, helping us to create a resilient, low-carbon energy system, delivering value for money for consumers and creating thousands of well-paid jobs across the country. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Dr Whitehead
It is a pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of my near constituency neighbour and central south co-ordinator, Dame Caroline.
We are not talking about the principle of RAB this evening, because we discussed that at some length in our deliberations on the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill —or the 2022 Act, as it now is. Some Members will recall that at the time I had considerable reservations about not necessarily RAB in its entirety, but how it would actually operate in the context of a really large, complex, long-lived project in a way that had not been tried before. Even when programmes have been tried before, such as the Thames Tideway project, they were about raising money for a project that is finished and done and that is the end of it. In this instance, we are committing ourselves to provide support over not just the construction phase but the operational phase and most of the life of the project. In addition, we are putting in a mechanism that will be funded—sort of—through the RAB mechanism for the low-carbon contracts company administering the project. Perhaps I shall say more on that in a moment.
The big issue in all this is with the complicated, long-term and expensive scheme. As the Minister said, the RAB method essentially does not exactly share the risk of the project but puts most of it on the customer. Effectively, the customer underwrites a lot, and not just the cost. Indeed, the theory goes that if the customer underwriting is well spent, well sorted out and known to be reliable, it can reduce the cost of capital and the outcome of the project in the price that customers eventually pay for energy, if all goes really well. If things do not go so well—this is one of the things discussed in the deliberations on the 2022 Act—the customer can pay a huge amount of money to deal with cost overruns, the possible cancellation of the project and all those sorts of things.
Some of the issues were addressed at the time in amendments to the Bill, but others remain a considerable risk for the customer over a long period of time. This statutory instrument is about putting the scheme in place so that it runs for the whole course of the project and runs, we hope, as well as it possibly can in terms of making all those things work. It does not actually add anything to the customer protections that a number of us asked about at the time of the 2022 Act and continue to question now.
The issue that is related to that and that the Minister has mentioned this afternoon is that the RAB proposal as we discussed it—so I understood—in the deliberations on the Bill was about, shall we say, getting a way of supporting one particular nuclear power station, namely Sizewell C. It was pretty much designed for that particular purpose. Indeed, most of the material relating to impact assessments and so on related to the RAB scheme as it applied to Sizewell C, and that has been carried through in, among other things, the impact assessment relating to this SI, which says, among other things:
“The illustrative modelling assessing the opportunity cost of the reserve fund and collateral is based on the potential impacts of one new large-scale nuclear power plant built using the RAB model.”
However, the Minister has characterised this model as one that can be applied to the new generation of nuclear power stations, a fleet that the Government have already said—for example, in the energy security policy paper—is their ambition for the future. But we have nothing in the impact assessment, which has ducked the issue, and we have had no further discussion on the impact that a number of new nuclear power stations—perhaps having a long-run RAB behind them—all at the same time would have on customer bills overall.
The Minister said that he thinks the cost of the RAB would be about £1 on customer bills. I do not in any way want to suggest that the Minister has not put the entire picture to us, but as I understand it the cost of £1 is at the beginning of the curve of the RAB process as it goes through the entire construction and operational life of that particular power plant. The £1 cost is only the cost at the very beginning of that process, when we are just beginning to get the construction phase under way. A cost of at least £10 and probably much higher than that—indeed, £10 was a figure put forward by the promoters of Sizewell C—would be the more likely level on bills as the construction phase came to an end and the operational phase began. Then, over a long period of time, that might degrade.
It is at least £10 and perhaps more like £20, so it is important that we put the record straight on what the customer cost is likely to be from this project alone, let alone from other projects that may come up in future. Of course, that £10 per annum is based on the project going well and there being no overruns, no possible cancellations and so on; it could be a lot higher, so it is very important that we keep a very close eye on what the customer cost will be over the period as far as the RAB is concerned. Will the Minister comment on that when he responds?
I note that, as the Minister has also said, the mechanism of the RAB’s operation is akin in many ways to, but not quite the same as, contracts for difference. Of course contracts for difference are managed, in terms of the levy that is collected to pay the people who are constructing and running facilities—mainly wind—by the Low Carbon Contracts Company, which is the company in the middle of the whole process, as it were; it collects the money and disburses it.
At the moment, the LCCC has rather an issue with the fact that the inversion between strike price and reference price means that it finds itself sitting on a huge pile of money. By the way, that is a good thing; it is a good way of CfDs working if money comes back to the LCCC when the relationship between the strike and reference prices is inverted. However, does that money sit in LCCC’s reserves, or does it go back to customers? In this instance, there is a suggestion that the extra money should go back to customers, but there is no mechanism to allow that to happen. There is a suggestion that the money goes back to the supply companies that have been levied to raise the money for the CfDs in the first place, but there is no requirement for those supply companies to pass the money on to customers.
The reason I raise that is because it is more than possible that a similar situation could arise with the Low Carbon Contracts Company in the event that the cost of projects at various stages is less than has been budgeted for. Under those circumstances, the LCCC, being the agent for the collection of the levy for RAB and the dispersal to the Sizewell C company, in this instance, could find itself sitting on large surpluses. There is no mechanism in regulations to cover how those surpluses should be judged, such as if they should be considered as something on account. If the surpluses are deemed not to be on account, what happens to them? Does the Low Carbon Contracts Company just sit on customers’ money, rather than handing it back to them, even though there is a surplus, or does it have an obligation to hand it back? I would be grateful for the Minister’s comment on that potential problem; I am not saying that that will necessarily occur, but it is a distinctly possible.
Dr Whitehead
Well, just two years ago we thought it was highly unlikely that the LCCC would be giving away £1.4 billion with CfDs, so there we are.
On the subject of the LCCC, we have observed something that the Minister did not really give prominence to: we are actually talking about two levies. There is a support levy and an operational cost levy, both of which are separate—they are calculated as separate—but collected by the LCCC.
The interesting thing about the operational levy is that it is effectively collected by the LCCC to pay itself. The pay under the operational levy is by no means minimal; indeed, the impact assessment puts it as rising to about £700 million a year by 2024-25. That is an LCCC estimate, but it is the cost that the LCCC will recover through the operational levy, which the company itself sets.
There appears to be a bit of solipsism at work. The LCCC seems to be responsible for deciding what it will collect, for collecting it, and then for deciding on the next levy and so on. What regulation will be in place to ensure that the operational levy is collected in a reasonable manner, providing for reasonable operational costs, rather than being a subjective levy on the basis of what the LCCC thinks it is going to do?
Alan Brown
The shadow Minister is right to highlight the strange position that has been established. Was he as surprised as I was that the estimated payroll costs for this financial year—2022-23—are £400,000, with a total spend of £560,000, as we debate these regulations today in February 2023?
Dr Whitehead
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention; he is quite right to be a little surprised about that. This might be what is called anticipatory investment—the LCCC giving itself a lot of expenditure and, indeed, collecting it back, in advance of determining what its work will actually consist of. I understand that, of course, it has to gear itself up, staff itself and so on. It is interesting to see the figures for the considerable staff cost for the LCCC, which is what most of the levy will go towards. I, too, am a little surprised that it starts from quite a high point and runs up to a rather higher point, rather than starts from nothing much and then goes up from there.
I asked in an intervention what the Minister means by a holistic appraisal, which is a particularly unfortunate way to describe what the Department proposes to do in terms of appraisal, particularly regarding vulnerable people. I hope that the Government will better spell out, in the not-too-distant future, what that holistic appraisal will consist of and how it is going to work.
Finally, paragraph 14.5 of the explanatory memorandum talks about the monitoring and evaluation of the system. It is suggested that this will be a matter for review in 2025. For the Committee’s convenience, let me read out the statement from the Secretary of State about the fact that this instrument does not include a statutory review clause. He says:
“It is not considered appropriate to include a statutory review clause for policy reasons—in order to retain confidence in the stability of the revenue stream.”
I see what he means: if there was a statutory review clause, the investors who are going to pour in to support Sizewell C might think that the rug could be pulled from under them, so there should not be one.
However, the Secretary of State also says in his statement:
“There are existing review plans for the operational costs levy rates to be next reviewed in 2025, and internal plans to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the RAB policy as necessary or appropriate.”
There will, then, be a review, even though there is no review under the instrument as it stands. Is it the Minister’s intention that that non-review review, which will apparently take place in 2025, should be public, on the record and published in some form, so that we are all party to how the RAB performs and to whether anything needs to be done to it as it goes through its life?
Alan Brown
It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Dame Caroline.
As the Minister hinted at, very slightly, my party is opposed to new nuclear power stations. From our point of view, the reality is that there is no longer any need for large-scale nuclear, especially given that more renewable technologies are emerging and improving over time. Renewable energy, harvested with storage, is the obvious future. Tidal stream is developing and tidal range is emerging, and both those technologies can assist with baseload or predicted generation. Battery technology is also moving at pace.
The thing is that the fabled baseload from nuclear cannot be guaranteed in any event, given that there are outages every year, often unplanned. Over a 10-year period, each nuclear reactor has been offline for nearly a quarter of the year on average, so even nuclear cannot be guaranteed to be operational if the wind is not blowing. That is why storage and green hydrogen represent better bets and complement each other much better, because they remove the ludicrous prospect of constraining wind generation and paying companies not to generate.
I opposed the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Act 2022 mainly on principle, but also I raised real concerns about the lack of detail and the powers given to the Secretary of State to sign up for new nuclear using an untested model of finance, or at least untested in the UK, as the RAB model for new nuclear had been shown to fail in the United States. My concerns about the powers lying with the Secretary of State and the continued lack of transparency continue with the regulations.
Following my intervention on the Minister, does he now have an example of a RAB model operating successfully elsewhere for the delivery of a new nuclear power station? That is what the regulations are all about. We keep being told that a nuclear power station will be an attractive investment, but what lessons has the Minister learned from the failure of plants such as the South Carolina plant in the United States, which was supposed to be delivered under a RAB model, but was left abandoned at a cost of $9 billion to US taxpayers? How do we know that such a thing will not happen under this legislation? UK taxpayers could be exposed to such risk but not get the project delivered. It is fine for the Minister to talk about adding only £10 a year to bills but, as the shadow Minister highlighted, that is over the initial period, and a long-term liability will be added to our bills.
It is often said that the devil is in the detail, but in this case, the devil is in the lack of detail in the regulations, or the lack of good information. It beggars belief that the primary legislation, the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill, was 58 pages, yet the regulations we are considering represent 50 pages. It requires 50 pages just to provide a methodology for collecting money from electricity suppliers to pay a counterparty to hand over money to a nuclear licensee during the construction phase. We are always told it is for the construction phase, at least, but is it purely for the construction phase, or can moneys be collected to pay for the initial design period? Paragraph 7.2 of the explanatory notes mentions that a revenue stream can be provided during the design period, so is it possible that the RAB model, once instigated, will start paying for the upfront design of Sizewell C before we even get to a final investment decision?
The regulations require 50 pages to ensure that electricity suppliers are paying their dues for a new nuclear power station. They make sure that electricity suppliers create a reserve so that the nuclear power station is funded in a cash-positive manner. Electricity suppliers will be liable to pay interest on any debts accrued by not paying upfront. The documents explain that there is a review mechanism regarding the performance of the revenue collection model, but there is nothing in the documentation about properly reviewing the actual success of the physical project. There is nothing about measuring the financial performance of the RAB model with regard to successful project delivery. There is nothing about construction delivery, and nothing about reviewing whether the revenue model attracts investors or not, or brings down the financing costs of delivering a nuclear power station.
On top of that, there is an outrageous lack of detail about costing. There is contradictory information on costings for a new power station. More likely, it is smoke and mirrors as the UK Government desperately try to justify their nuclear obsession. That obsession might be delaying other projects and taking investment away from those such as pumped storage hydro. It should be obvious to us all how powerful the nuclear lobby is. It is no small irony that these regulations are being considered just after Nuclear Week was held in Parliament.
I still cannot understand why—the Minister has not made this clear—if nuclear is so good and delivers cost-efficient electricity generation, and if it is the answer for the future, we need these new regulations to facilitate a RAB model to deliver it? If nuclear was so good, the private finance market would be all over it. Does the Minister not have any concerns that the market is no longer able to facilitate new nuclear, although it is somehow still deemed so important that bill payers should take on the financial risk?
We know that Hitachi and Toshiba have already walked away from the private market so, again, there is no competition going forward. The Government have put all their eggs in one basket. Paragraph 7.34 of the explanatory notes state:
“these Regulations establish the RAB model as an investible option for funding future projects by enabling investors to share some of a project’s construction and operating risks with consumers and taxpayers.”
We still do not know what those risks are. Will the Minister explain what risks he envisages the taxpayer or bill payer taking on board to make the project more attractive to investors? That is the key aspect of the attractiveness of a RAB model, but the detail is not yet forthcoming. Will there be any parliamentary scrutiny of the risk assessment, or will it and the final costings be backroom deals? I do not see how parliamentarians will get to understand that under the regulations.
If the purpose of the regulations is to make the project an investible option, why are there media reports that the BT pension scheme and NatWest have now told campaign group Stop Sizewell C and the Daily Mail that they do not plan to support Sizewell C? According to the Daily Mail, an industry source said Sizewell C is not an appropriate investment for
“typical big-name UK pension schemes”
due to the risk of cost overruns and delays. It is also reported that Nest and Legal & General have said they do not plan to provide funding. Can the Minister therefore confirm that these regulations to make the RAB model an investible option for the delivery of a new nuclear station will do what he thinks they will do? What does he say about the apparent lack of attraction for major pension funds? Have the Government had any discussions with investors, or has that been left to EDF?
On costings, annex 3 in the impact assessment gives a range of hurdle rates modelled, which equate to potential returns for investors. It is stated that the hurdle range assumed and modelled is 4% to 6%—on a par with
“a number of allowed returns in other regulated industries within GB”.
I agree with the Government that unreasonably high returns are to be avoided, especially when the taxpayer or bill payer is taking on project risk to reduce the risk to the investors. But if returns from a project type—a new nuclear power station—notorious for overspend and construction overruns, as demonstrated by Hinkley C, will be capped at the same hurdle rate or return rate as other infrastructure projects with less risk and more certainty, why on earth would pension funds and other investors want to get involved in this RAB nuclear model, when there are better options elsewhere without that risk? Those better options are in the global market, not just the UK. For example, in the US, the Inflation Reduction Act is making investment in infrastructure and renewables there much more attractive than the UK market in general, notwithstanding the fact that the Government are trying to chase investment in nuclear.
We still have no clarity about the stakeholder arrangements. What happens if EDF cannot get enough private investment? Are the Government so desperate that they will sign taxpayers up to a shareholding of the capital cost?
I have already hinted at this, but I have real concerns about the cost and construction periods laid out in these documents, and I want to look at them in more detail. It is clear from the detail in them that the Government have no idea what the true cost of a new nuclear power station will be, yet they have committed £700 million of taxpayers’ money to the design and development of Sizewell C. That money would pay for half the cost of the new hydro pumped storage scheme proposed at Coire Glas, yet for nuclear that is for design and development, up to final investment stage.
Footnote 29 on page 18, in annex 3 to the impact assessment, states that, in their analysis, the Government have used an initial estimate of £18 billion, converted to 2021 prices. That means they have taken the initial 2016 estimate for Hinkley, which was £18 billion back then, and uprated for inflation, but Hinkley has already overrun so much that the current estimate is £26 billion. That should be the starting point, not £18 billion.
Interest rates for borrowing are now much higher and construction inflation is rampant, so it seems to me that the Government’s starting point in this model and analysis should be an initial capital estimate of the order of £30 billion—£12 billion more than they have stated in these documents. On the other cost assumptions in the documents, page 19 tells us that the modelling is based only on the construction of a new station. It does not allow for its running or decommissioning. Not allowing for the decommissioning costs is, frankly, utter folly. It paints a completely false picture of the true cost of the delivery of a nuclear power station, and I would argue it is negligent. Why does the Minister think that is an acceptable approach?
According to paragraph 7.37 of the explanatory notes, it is a legal requirement
“to have a Secretary of State approved Funded Decommissioning Programme (‘FDP’) in place. The purpose of the FDP is to ensure that the nuclear site licensee meets their full costs of decommissioning and waste management and that the recourse to public funds is remote”.
That is sensible and says that there is a legal requirement to try to protect the taxpayer from being left to foot the bill for future decommissioning costs. But if there is that legal requirement, why are the Government not including that cost in their modelling and estimates of the total cost of a nuclear power station? Why do they not use the data that should be available from Hinkley Point C? Given that legal requirement, that project should have a fully-funded FDP in place.
There is another anomaly with Hinkley, which is the most recent project that has been delivered. On costs and construction period, annex 3 states:
“There is no publicly available data on the level of risk contingency which was applied to Hinkley Point C at FID.”
When it comes to construction period, it states:
“Therefore, everything else being equal, the 13 and 17 year construction period figures are expected to be overestimates.”
How can a Government have signed off a contract through which bill payers are signed up to an extortionate strike rate for 35 years, but not have the data available on the risks and contingencies allowed for in that project, which could be fed into the modelling and the information that is before the Committee now? It makes no sense that the Government signed a contract for 35 years. It is the most expensive power station in the world, and yet we do not know what risk and contingencies were included in that price, and the Government have not brought that forward that information to put in front of us.
Why do the Government state that the 13 to 17-year construction period is an overestimate, when the facts before us about Hinkley demonstrate otherwise? Hinkley started in 2016 and was supposed to be operational in 2025; obviously, that is a nine-year construction programme. Now, Hinkley’s reactor 1 is estimated to come online in autumn 2027 at the earliest, with a possible 15-month delay, so it will more likely be 2029, and reactor 2 falls a year later.
At the moment, even with the information available from the Government, that is a 14-year construction programme, except the Government agreed that the backstop contractual dates for Hinkley C could be put back six years. That means contract termination for non-completion of Hinkley has moved back from 2032 to 2039, which allows a possible maximum 23-year construction programme. How can the Government state that a 13 to 17-year estimate is over-cautious? It is clear from the information we know about what is happening with construction at Hinkley Point C, the information we have in annex 3 is completely wrong and the Government’s modelling for costs and the construction programme is completely wrong. What is the Minister doing to resolve that?
Paragraphs 49 and 50 confirm that the UK Government have no up-to-date cost analysis. As I alluded to earlier, Frazer-Nash Consultancy has been asked to provide updates on cost estimates. But that is happening right now, so why have these regulations come before this Committee before the Government’s consultant has reported back on what it believes the true cost of our new nuclear power station will be?
While we are looking at understanding costs, after throwing £700 million at Sizewell C, this is really like throwing good money after bad. Yet, somehow, the Government tell us in these documents that the RAB model could save between £30 billion and £80 billion compared with a strike-rate model. If they do not know what it will cost at the moment and there are no up-to-date costings, how can they tell us how much money the RAB model will save? The Minister said I did not know what I was talking about, but I actually do. If the Government are arguing that a RAB model will deliver savings of between £30 billion and £80 billion compared with the strike-rate model that was delivered for Hinkley, then by default they are saying the bill payers are paying way more for Hinkley than they otherwise should have done, and that Hinkley was delivered under the wrong model.
In terms of cost, the previous impact assessment for the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Act 2022—which is cross- referenced in these documents accompanying these regulations—estimated the upper cost of a new nuclear power station under post-1990 optimism bias assumptions could be £63 billion. Again, that is a previous estimate that needs to be updated. In today’s money, uprated for inflation and construction inflation, that £63 billion is well over £70 billion. Will the Government look at that as part of the work that the Frazer-Nash Consultancy is carrying out?
The reality is that there has not been a successful EPR nuclear power station anywhere in the world, and the RAB model will not change that. The Government tell us that it will make new nuclear more investable, but the evidence is that pension funds are running a mile. It is a pig in a poke, and that is why I oppose the regulations. The Government do not have the information or the understanding of what the true cost will be, and they are going to tie taxpayers in, long term, for a white elephant.
Graham Stuart
I thank the hon. Members for Southampton, Test and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun for their contributions.
It is clear that our electricity system must be resilient and affordable as well as low-carbon, and that means that we need nuclear power. The regulations are required fully to establish the RAB model and enable sufficiently advanced nuclear projects to benefit from this new funding model, which can support our ambition to reach final investment decision on new projects, subject to relevant approvals, and to secure a low-carbon, low-cost and resilient electricity system to ensure our energy security and prosperity.
Let me reply to some of the numerous questions that have been asked. On the issue of investment in Sizewell C, we know from conversations with multiple investors that there is a strong interest in supporting infrastructure that delivers energy security and net zero. The importance of nuclear has been made even clearer by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and we are not exactly alone in holding that view. Among others, the Climate Change Committee, the International Energy Agency and the UN Economic Commission for Europe have all highlighted the role for new nuclear electricity-generating capacity. The UN Economic Commission was particularly clear—perhaps the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun will take it up with them—that
“the world’s climate objectives will not be met if nuclear technologies are excluded”
from decarbonisation policy solutions. His ideological opposition to nuclear flies in the face of the science, global opinion and the UN, among others.
The hon. Member for Southampton, Test raised the issue of the LCCC’s running costs. A robust internal governance and approvals process was completed before finalising the operational cost levy rates that are included in the draft revenue regulations, which are intended to meet their operating costs. We consulted on the levy, and the total annual impact of the levy on household electricity bills over financial year 2022-23 to 2023-24 was estimated to be negligible. If LCCC expenditure is less than income from the levy, any surplus would be refunded to suppliers and then on to consumers, which is how that system works.
The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun asked about the impact assessment. Hinkley Point C was the right deal, struck at the right time, to support the UK’s first nuclear power station in a generation, using a new reactor technology, as he rightly said. The National Audit Office has identified that risk-sharing models such as RAB could deliver better value than contracts for difference, and Hinkley Point C is delivering multiple benefits, including 15,000 job opportunities and £4 billion spent with companies in the south-west alone. Many Scottish consumers will wish that the ideology of the Scottish nationalists did not get in the way of them also having such opportunities.
Graham Stuart
With respect to the hon. Gentleman and the Committee, I will move on.
Future new nuclear projects will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis and be subject to value-for-money tests. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun—I hope I am doing him justice; I am trying to anyway, as I always would—asked whether RAB had already been tried and had failed in the US. There are multiple important differences between the projects in the US, which used early cost recovery models, and our proposals for RAB in the UK. We assessed those US projects, to ensure that we learned the lessons, along with other international approaches to nuclear project financing when developing our policy for the RAB model for nuclear.
The hon. Member for Southampton, Test asked about the holistic approach. Notwithstanding his dislike of the nomenclature, I set out how we are supporting constituents in various ways going forward.
On decommissioning, details of the costs for Sizewell C are subject to ongoing development and are commercially sensitive. Both the FDP and the full value-for-money assessment will—or would—be published at the point of a final investment decision, if indeed that is reached, as we hope that it will be.
A further question was asked about design costs and whether the charge could come then. On average, for the entire construction period, it will be about £1 per week for a dual-fuel household, as I set out earlier. That is not when operational, when producing energy, but in those early stages.
Graham Stuart
Design costs will be agreed with developers in negotiations. Published non-statutory guidance on how Government will assess day one RAB costs, including design costs, will be developed—[Interruption.] I should have said £1 per month, not £1 per week—I have been corrected and suitably refreshed. On that basis, I am delighted to commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Question put.
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Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered e-petitions 589667 and 597840, relating to assessments for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. Let me begin by reading out the prayer of the petitions. Petition 589677 reads:
“The Government should create an emergency fund to deal with the massive waiting lists for autism & ADHD assessments for children AND adults. This would provide resources for local health services to deal with current waiting lists and new patients.”
It received over 21,000 signatures, including 29 from my Carshalton and Wallington constituency. Petition 597840 reads:
“The Government should commission a review of how Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) assessments are managed by the NHS, including through Shared Care Agreements, and increase funding to reduce waiting times.”
The petition reached over 10,500 signatures, including eight from Carshalton and Wallington. I want to put it on record that although the petitions did not reach the usual 100,000-signature threshold for a debate, the Petitions Committee felt that the issue was important. We have been busy working our way through the 100,000-signature petitions and we have managed to catch up, so we thought that this was an important topic for us to discuss.
I thank the numerous campaigners and organisations that have met me and provided me and hon. and right hon. Members from across the House with briefings in preparation for the debate. They include the petition creators, Jessica and Lisa; TV and radio host and autism activist Melanie Sykes; Christine and Henry from ADHD UK; and Sarah and Tim from the National Autistic Society. I will go into more detail later about their experiences and recommendations. I also thank the Petitions Committee team, which has, as always, worked incredibly hard behind the scenes to make the debate happen and has also conducted an incredible survey to ask the petitioners to share more about their experiences and views of autism and ADHD assessments, which received over 7,000 responses. I will share some of the findings of that survey later.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I am sorry, Ms Fovargue, that I will be unable to stay to make a speech of my own. I thank my hon. Friend and all those he is working with for helping us in Parliament to put neurodiversity on the map, because it is not unusual. It is part of what is usual.
Elliot Colburn
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am glad that he used the word neurodiversity because I think that that will be a common theme of many of our speeches, along with an understanding of diversity in autism and ADHD diagnoses, which is very important.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
My hon. Friend will know that the Health and Social Care Committee, which I chair, is undertaking a major inquiry into the prevention of ill health. Given the rather shocking statistics about the harm that adults with ADHD can come to—attempting suicide, for example—does he agree that answering the petition positively is a key prevention issue in healthcare?
Elliot Colburn
The Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee is absolutely right and I commend the work that the Committee has done in this area. I look forward to reading its report. Later in my speech, I will cover the wider health effects that waiting times can have on parents and adults waiting for assessments, so I am grateful to him for making us aware of that.
When I first agreed to open the debate, I initially took a personal view from my constituency. I have stood in this Chamber many times to talk about the poor experiences of parents in Carshalton and Wallington in attempting to secure education, health and care plans, or EHCPs, for their children due to the poor management of Sutton Council’s arm’s length organisation, Cognus, which was recently the subject of a BBC “Panorama” exposé. Barely a week goes by without a parent coming to talk to me at my surgeries about the poor experiences they have had when waiting for assessments or the inadequate assessments they have had—and this is the case not just for children, but for adults as well. Over recent weeks, in preparing for the debate, it became to me that assessment times are simply not fit for purpose.
Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)
I thank the West Yorkshire ADHD Support Group, a brilliant local organisation in my constituency that helps families through the diagnosis pathway. As the hon. Gentleman said, parents are finding waiting times for a diagnosis painfully long—it can be 18 months, two years and longer. Does he agree that that means many wasted years of education, leaving children in danger of falling behind their peers? We are setting them up to fail. Surely we need to think about diagnosis within weeks, not years.
Elliot Colburn
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. Many people have said that to me, and I am sure that many other right hon. and hon. Members will say the same. This is a complete waste of opportunity and talent. Indeed, when I met with the TV host Melanie Sykes, that was one of the central things she said to me. This is a wasted opportunity and wasted talent, and we are wasting the lives of young people with these waiting lists.
Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an absolutely excellent speech. The delay in diagnosis for autism and other neurodiverse conditions is having an impact on young people and families but, more than that, it is having an impact on UK plc. We are denying our businesses and public services the talent of neurodiverse individuals, which is of course having an effect on UK plc. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Elliot Colburn
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. There are some shocking statistics about the sheer lack of neurodiverse people in the UK workforce. That is nothing to do with people receiving a diagnosis; it has everything to do with the fact that we are wasting that opportunity.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
On that point, I welcome the fact that the special educational needs and disability review is imminent, as we heard from the Minister last week. Let us wait and see what it says. Of course, this is about autism and ADHD. Waiting times are causing havoc everywhere, but people cannot necessarily get medication or treatment for a particular condition until it has been diagnosed. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need early diagnosis as quickly as possible so that parents and others can be assisted with the provision of the appropriate medication?
Elliot Colburn
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, and he is absolutely right. The delay in diagnosis also means a delay in treatment. We have debated this topic many times; just last week in this Chamber, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) led a powerful debate on waiting times. I thank colleagues who have shared their stories individually.
I want first to touch on ADHD as a neurodiverse condition, which is believed to impact over 3 million people in the UK. However, there is substantial evidence that it is vastly underdiagnosed.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
I was fortunate enough to chair the debate led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). Does my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) agree that this is not just about delays and a lack of proper diagnosis? There is a real and crucial problem, which came out in last week’s debate, about women and girls being less likely to be diagnosed than their male peers.
Elliot Colburn
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her intervention; she has nicked a later part of my speech. I commend her for the amazing work she does chairing the Women and Equalities Committee, which has done amazing work looking at the impact on women and girls in the equalities space. She is absolutely right, of course.
There is a lack of understanding about what ADHD actually is, how it affects people and how it can be treated. The best example is the common stereotype that those with ADHD are all hyperactive. That is a common misconception; only about 15% of patients diagnosed with ADHD have hyperactive tendencies. GPs and teachers hold the responsibility, in essence, for being gatekeepers to assessments, but there are significant issues with training and awareness, which I will go into in more detail. The single biggest issue I have had feedback on from those who have briefed me is the complete lack of data on ADHD care.
When I met with ADHD UK last week, I asked about national data on assessment waiting times and the number of individuals diagnosed. The answer I got was, quite simply, “We don’t know,”—or, at least, the NHS and the Government do not know. ADHD UK has done an extraordinary job conducting its own extensive research and, as an independent charity, it can provide partial answers based on information it has gathered through freedom of information requests to integrated care boards. The Government, however, do not collect national data, and it is therefore hard to have true oversight of the state of waiting times for ADHD assessments in the UK. I know the Minister is very much aware of the problem, so I hope she will provide more information on the steps the Government are taking to gather and assess data on ADHD.
Based on the data available to us and the anecdotal evidence shared with us by those who have gone through the system, we know that ADHD waiting times are indeed in a poor state. The average adult assessment waiting times are believed to be around six months in Scotland, a year in England, nearly two years in Wales and four years in Northern Ireland.
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)
My hon. Friend mentioned assessment waiting times. Does he not agree that that problem is compounded by the time it can take to get EHCPs from local councils, which can lead to further waiting times on top of that?
Elliot Colburn
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am sure that just about every Member present has received in their postbag requests for help from people who face delays in accessing EHCPs. That demonstrates the failure in the system, because when parents go through the complaints process, go to the ombudsman or go to a tribunal, the data is clear: between 90% and 100% of cases are found in the parents’ favour. It is clearly a systematic failure.
Some 34% of respondents to the Petitions Committee survey agreed with the data I have just read out, stating that they had waited between one and three years for an assessment. The average child waiting times are believed to be approximately seven months in England and Scotland and 1.6 years in Wales, while there is absolutely no data for Northern Ireland.
I want to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who could not be present as she is chairing the Foreign Affairs Committee at the moment. She informed me that the waiting time for a referral to a community paediatrician in her constituency is approximately two years. I am sure many other hon. and right hon. Members will have similar experiences. This echoes responses to the Petitions Committee survey from the parents and guardians of children with an ADHD diagnosis. Some 17% said that their child had to wait between six months and a year for an assessment, 28% had to wait between one and two years, 21% had waited between two and three years, while 7% said that their child had waited for more than five years.
Those examples involve people with suspected ADHD who are referred, but many more slip through and are completely missed by GPs and teachers or are rejected from being referred prior to assessment—I believe that applies to in the region of 46% of all cases. As the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), quite rightly says, young women and girls in particular are likely to be underdiagnosed, with a male-to-female ratio of 3:1. Again, that highlights the need for better training and understanding of neurodiverse conditions. The misconception that ADHD is exclusive to hyperactive young boys is rife, and is another contributing factor to the failure to assess ADHD properly and in time.
The statistics regarding diagnosis are concerning, but the real-life implications of inadequate and late ADHD diagnoses are really quite harrowing. Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Lisa, one of the creators of the petition calling on the Government to tackle ADHD waiting lists. Lisa’s son was one of the many people to visit their GP in the hopes of receiving a swift diagnosis and support. Instead, however, the GP’s referral was delayed, because the documentation was not submitted by the surgery following a consultation. The family were then informed that getting an assessment could take up to three years. Sadly, last year Lisa’s son took his own life. I thank Lisa for the courage she has shown in sharing her story with me and allowing it to be told in the Chamber today. I am sure we all agree that it is a story she should not have had to tell.
Although ADHD is not a mental health condition, it does have close links to mental health conditions. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) pointed out earlier, those who do not receive support are more vulnerable to trauma, which can trigger depression. In fact, adults with ADHD are five times more likely to take their own lives than those without it.
The repercussions of inadequate and delayed support for those with ADHD are deadly. When we consider the lack of available data on ADHD diagnosis and waiting times, we can only guess at the true extent of the effect on society. For those who do receive a diagnosis, support is often inadequate because of the lack of training and understanding of ADHD in hospitals, schools and wider society. I hope that the Minister can update us on what plans the Government have to improve waiting times for ADHD assessments and support for those living with it.
Although the state of play for autism diagnosis is a lot clearer, the outlook is no less bleak. Thankfully, data for autism exists on a national level. There are over 700,000 autistic adults and children in the UK, and the latest NHS data suggests that over 120,000 people are waiting for an autism assessment in England alone. Despite guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence stating that no one should have to wait longer than three months between referral and first being seen, more than 100,000 people have waited longer than that. The Petitions Committee survey echoed that, finding that 43% of adults and 47% of children have been waiting for between one and three years for an NHS autism assessment. As with ADHD, long delays risk people’s needs escalating and autistic people falling into crisis unnecessarily. That ultimately ends up putting more pressure and costs on other services, including mental health services.
I had the pleasure of meeting Jess, the co-creator of the petition calling for action to reduce ADHD and autism assessment waiting times. She shared her family’s experience of trying to get diagnoses for her children and her partner for ADHD and autism. Her frustrating story demonstrated an all-too-familiar experience of someone waiting multiple years for an assessment, waiting multiple years for an EHCP and waiting multiple years to receive support for her child’s deteriorating mental health.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
My postbag has been full of people writing in with examples of how their child has suffered from a late diagnosis of autism. Does my hon. Friend accept that the younger the child is, the greater the problem for the parents and the greater the loss for the child?
Elliot Colburn
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, that all comes back to the very important point that early intervention and diagnosis are key, because then there is the potential to prevent problems from escalating to crisis point.
One of the respondents to the Petitions Committee survey echoed Jess’s story, saying:
“My daughter has been waiting almost 4.5 years for an NHS ASD assessment. In this time, she has spent 1.5 years out of school, 6 months being unable to leave the house, had no social life, had severe anxiety, is depressed and had suicidal feelings.”
Jess also shared with me her experience of the referral consultation and the assessment itself. She described the process as “antagonistic” and said it was
“almost like the parents are on trial”.
Many parents, like Lisa and Jess, have also described the questions asked during the assessment process as a box-ticking exercise that played heavily on stereotypes about autism and ADHD. An example I was given by another witness I spoke to included a question asking the patient if they liked to put things in order.
As with ADHD, autism can be misdiagnosed or overlooked. Often autism exists alongside other conditions.
Mark Eastwood
My hon. Friend makes a good point about the conditions being overlooked and about the attitude of the services dealing with them. Does he agree that there needs to be better training for people involved in those professional services, including in child and adolescent mental health services and in the councils, for EHCPs?
Elliot Colburn
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He is absolutely right: more and better training is definitely needed.
When diagnosing autism, there is often a big focus on the anxious behaviours that some people display. When a person does not display those behaviours—that template example of what an autistic person looks like—they are unlikely to get a diagnosis. I again thank the petition creators for sharing their courageous stories with me, and all those who responded to the Petitions Committee survey.
In the national autism strategy, published last year, the Government promised:
“By the end of the strategy”—
by 2026—
“we will have made demonstrable progress on reducing diagnosis waiting times and improving diagnostic pathways for children, young people and adults”.
I would appreciate it if the Minister could update the House on the strategy and, in particular, on the steps the Government are taking to bring down waiting times and improve training for assessments.
Many Members want to speak, so I will bring my remarks to a close. There is clearly a systematic failure at the heart of ADHD and autism diagnoses. Millions of neurodiverse people are left undiagnosed and wait years to be assessed. Training on and awareness of ADHD and autism are lacking, resulting in misdiagnoses and inadequate support post diagnosis. For some, support is almost non-existent. I commend the brave families who are being failed by the system but have taken the time to speak out and speak to us about the issue. I look forward to hearing the contributions from other right hon. and hon. Members, and I very much look forward to the Minister’s response on some of the good news we can look forward to on improving diagnosis and support.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I thank the Petitions Committee for granting this important debate and all those who signed the petition to make it possible.
As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on attention deficit hyperactive disorder, I am proud to speak in today’s debate on behalf of all those with ADHD and autism. I want to raise the enormous challenges and barriers they face daily and the importance of improving resources, training and access to diagnosis and treatment.
On 13 September 2017, in a debate I secured in this very Chamber, I spoke about waiting times, and diagnosis and treatment following a diagnosis of autism or ADHD. It is very disappointing that, six years on, ADHD and autism remain significantly underdiagnosed and undertreated in the UK, at great cost to individuals, public services and the workforce. I will focus my comments on ADHD.
ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that results in a group of behavioural symptoms, including difficulty concentrating, inattentiveness, hyperactivity, impulsivity and difficulty sleeping. The symptoms affect people’s everyday lives—their development, education, work, relationships and family life. According to the ADHD Foundation, one in 20 people in the UK has ADHD. Although the disorder is associated with children and young people, up to two thirds of cases persist in adulthood. There is a growing understanding of the challenges that ADHD causes for adults.
Although awareness has increased and a lot more people—especially women—are openly talking about ADHD and seeking a diagnosis, there remain severe delays and barriers to diagnosis and treatment for ADHD in the UK today. That is leaving people in limbo and in need of support, and means that enormous untapped potential is restricted and hidden away.
Others have rightly mentioned that an early diagnosis of ADHD has a transformative impact on individuals. For someone with ADHD, a diagnosis can help them to understand their symptoms and gain control over behaviours such as inattention and impulsivity, allowing them to fulfil their potential. Diagnosis is absolutely crucial in enabling people to access treatment and get the support they need.
Although one in 20 adults is believed to have the condition, only 120,000 have had a formal diagnosis. There are many reasons for that. One is stigma, which manifests itself in many different ways, not least in societal attitudes to ADHD and the misconception that it affects only boys and young men. Others dismiss ADHD as an undeserving drain on health resources.
Kim Leadbeater
My hon. Friend makes the valuable point that sadly we still have a lot of work to do to reduce the stigma associated with ADHD and autism. Does he agree that we need an education system and, indeed, a society that celebrate neurodiversity and all the wonderful things it brings with it?
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We need education in society, and the acceptance of people with ADHD and autism, to ensure that people with those neurodiverse conditions are able to flourish and live to their full potential.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
That is twice that the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) has intervened and I have agreed with what she said. As Chair of the Select Committee on Education, I am passionate about ensuring that we have the provision to address children’s needs. One challenge with the current delays in diagnosis is that although local authorities have the statutory duty to measure where provision is needed and to provide places accordingly, if children are not getting the diagnoses, they do not have the statistics. One thing that we can perhaps do with this debate is encourage faster diagnosis so that we can help to meet that need and ensure that, where specialist support is needed, it is provided .
Bambos Charalambous
The hon. Member is absolutely right: faster diagnosis is needed to ensure that the resources go to those who need the support the most. I very much look forward to the publication of the special educational needs and disabilities paper, because it might be a game changer if it delivers.
The inadequate services available for ADHD are another key barrier. As more people seek referrals for ADHD, there just is not the service capacity to match the demand. This is also an issue with staffing levels with regard both to people who can assess ADHD and to the support that is given after an assessment has been made, because there is a need to recruit people with those skills.
People are waiting years for an ADHD diagnosis, as access to services and treatment in the UK is limited and inconsistent. Indeed, according to survey data published in the ADHD Foundation’s “Born to Be ADHD” report, more than a third of adults and children diagnosed with ADHD had to visit their GP at least three times before being referred to a specialist, with 28% waiting two or more years before receiving a diagnosis. In advance of today’s debate, the Petitions Committee carried out a survey and found that most people who responded to the petition had had to wait more than a year for an assessment of ADHD or autism.
The impact of the delays cannot be overstated. The long-term effects of untreated ADHD are documented and include increased rates of other health problems, poor social functioning and antisocial behaviour. For example, those with ADHD are twice as likely not to take up full-time employment. It is also estimated that 24% of the prison population has ADHD, so intervention and diagnosis of ADHD would clearly improve the life chances of people with ADHD who fall into the criminal justice system.
Another problem is the inconsistency—what has been described as a postcode lottery—in support for people with ADHD. Where someone lives is critical in determining how long they are likely to wait to be referred.
Mark Eastwood
The hon. Member mentions a postcode lottery, dependent on where people live. Is it the case that that applies in the school system as well, and that some schools within a postcode even are better than others when it comes to looking after special educational needs?
Bambos Charalambous
The hon. Member is absolutely right: getting the resources after a diagnosis has been made is affected by which school the child is at and what resources it has available to provide the support needed.
As I was saying, where someone lives is critical in determining how long they are likely to wait to be referred for an assessment or diagnosis of ADHD, especially given increasing demand. As we know, there is no NHS waiting time standard for ADHD assessment, which means that waiting times are not measured and reported. Last week the Minister, in response to a Westminster Hall debate, pledged to look into national data collection for ADHD assessment waiting times. That would be a positive step forward and I urge the Government to take it. Will the Minister confirm today that she will ensure that that data is publicly available so that we can start accurately to measure waiting times and standards, and end the postcode lottery that exists in ADHD support?
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
May I ask the hon. Member, who is clearly something of an expert in this area, how reliable he thinks the diagnoses are when people eventually get their appointments? Two of the three cases brought to my attention feature quite strongly a resistance to making the diagnosis of ADHD, even though in these cases—one involving a child and the other a young adult female—they were absolutely convinced that this was the answer. All sorts of reasons are found, including a lot of misinformation, for not making what we think is the correct diagnosis.
Bambos Charalambous
The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point about the inconsistency in diagnosis. The unwillingness to give a diagnosis impacts on people’s ability to get on with their lives, which also needs to be addressed. On that point, will the Minister see what can be done to ensure consistency across the board on diagnoses?
I end by paying tribute to the incredible work of those involved in ADHD support: the charities, including the ADHD Foundation and my local National Autistic Society group; clinicians in the NHS; and members of the public who are pushing for change in how we think about and support people with ADHD so that those with the condition can thrive. As chair of the APPG, I know that the work of the ADHD Foundation and others is incredibly valuable. I hope that today’s debate, with the many excellent contributions that will follow from Members from all parties, will show the breadth of support in this place for ending the delays and barriers in ADHD diagnosis and treatment. It is time for the Government to act so that we can break down the barriers to success that thousands across the country continue to face in their everyday lives.
Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for his excellent leadership of the debate. I also thank the 38 people of Darlington who signed the petitions. In addition to those signatories, I have had correspondence from more than 40 constituents who have faced issues with assessments for autism and ADHD.
Since being elected to Parliament in 2019, I have engaged with many families in Darlington who have children with autism or are awaiting a diagnosis. We must do more to improve the speed of the assessments and improve our guidance to parents on the support and help available when a diagnosis is given. From the many conversations that I have had on this issue, I know that families feel alone and are often unaware of the full range of support that is available to them, either pre or post diagnosis. More than 300 people in Darlington under the age of 18 are awaiting an assessment. Some 40% of them have been waiting for less than a year, 40% have been waiting for up to two years and 20% have been waiting for almost three years. That is just not good enough. In the absence of a diagnosis, these families’ lives are on hold and these children’s lives are not progressing as they should.
On average, there are 40 referrals per month in Darlington, but as each month ticks by the number assessed is always less. The backlog of cases awaiting assessment will never go down, and that is simply unacceptable. I am aware that the petitions we are debating call for more funding—indeed, the answer in this place to every problem seems to be more funding—but this issue is about more than money alone. There are insufficient numbers in training, and recruitment to these challenging roles is not sufficient. Questions have to be asked of local service providers. What more could they do? For example, could weekend working or evening assessments help to clear the unacceptable backlogs?
Last Friday, I was pleased to visit Daisy Chain to learn about the services that it provides across the Tees Valley, and I place on record my thanks to Daisy Chain for all it does to help families in Darlington.
I regularly engage with Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust on this issue. As the Minister is aware, we cannot underestimate the challenges and circumstances that TEWV service users and their families face. I have raised concerns about the need to improve TEWV’s services on many occasions, in particular in the light of a recent unannounced inspection by the Care Quality Commission. Following the inspection, some services at TEWV’s mental health trust improved, but the trust’s overall rating remains “requires improvement”. The Minister is aware of the problems faced by my constituents, and I thank her for her extensive engagement with me on that issue. I hope she Minister will confirm that the Government will keep a laser-like focus on TEWV and do everything in their power to ensure that the trust continues to improve, as it is so desperately needed.
I warmly welcome the recently published review of special educational needs and disabilities. With the majority of children with SEND attending mainstream schools, it is right that the review proposes to improve the mainstream provision for children with SEND, including through an overhaul of the training for special educational needs co-ordinators. I also welcome the fact that more specialist places for children needing non-mainstream support will be made available, alongside an improvement programme for alternative-provision schools.
Last year, I tabled a number of written questions regarding the number of teachers and teaching assistants in each constituency who have undergone autism-related training and was disappointed to learn that the Government do not collate or collect any data on this issue. I ask the Minister to recognise the benefit of collecting that kind of data, which would show us where the educational system requires further work in providing support for children with autism, and I encourage holding data on teachers who have received specialist ADHD training, for the same reason.
The CQC’s report on TEWV, “Out of Sight”, acknowledges the shortcomings of some of our mental health facilities, the challenges they face with patients—particularly those who suffer with autism—and the sense that places designed for care are not therapeutic. I firmly believe that it is vital to embed a culture of learning, safety and improvement across the mental health care sector. I welcomed the recommendations from the report, which would address some of the shortcomings, and ask the Minister to update us on what action the Government took following the report.
When it comes to people with complex needs, I believe that a conversation is required with our local authorities, which are paying massive sums of money each and every month to out-of-area providers. In my view, some imaginative and collective commissioning could put an end to seemingly ever-increasing costs, much of which are taken up by astronomical transport costs.
We can go so much further for children with complex needs to ensure that there is proper support in place to allow them to flourish, but it starts with prompt diagnosis. I trust that the Minister has listened closely to all the contributions today and that she will do everything in her power to end the excessive waits and give these kids a chance.
Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)
It is nice to see you in the Chair today, Ms Fovargue. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for leading this vital debate, and my constituents in Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill who have signed both of the petitions.
In 2018, NICE updated its guidance for the diagnosis and management of ADHD, yet the provision of services for adults with the condition is not well understood across all the nations of the United Kingdom. The long-term consequences of failing to treat ADHD effectively are well known and well documented. Up to 65% of adults with ADHD who were undiagnosed in childhood tend to suffer from myriad mental health conditions such as mood and anxiety disorders, leading to clinical depression and even suicidal thoughts, as we have heard. A combination of poor understanding and delays in diagnosis means that 120,000 adults across the United Kingdom are currently waiting to be assessed. By improving the identification, care and management of ADHD in adults, we could reduce the number of adults reaching a point of crisis and developing the significant and myriad mental health conditions I have mentioned.
The Scottish Government fully understand the situation I have outlined and have committed to deliver a learning disability, autism and neurodiversity Bill, which is coming through the Scottish Parliament. As with every single piece of proposed legislation, working with those affected and those with lived experience will be at the heart of all that we do. The Scottish Government are currently actively recruiting neurodivergent people to take part in a panel that will help to design an inclusive consultation for the proposed new Bill. That is how real, effective policy should be made: through engaging with those persons who are most affected in their day-to-day lives. Of course, the final situation is problematic, but the Scottish Government have allocated £46 million to improve the delivery of mental health and psychological services, including CAMHS, psychological therapies, treatment for eating disorders, and neurodevelopmental services. A report by the National Autistic Society Scotland and Scottish Autism found that 96% of people surveyed support the introduction of the Bill both to promote and to protect the rights of autistic people.
In order to promote instrumental change, the UK Government must invest in early diagnosis and mental health support, and follow the lead of the Scottish Government with the introduction of a new Bill. Collectively, across the four nations of the United Kingdom, we must all do better in advocating for early diagnosis and ensuring that waiting times are lowered to encourage access to diagnosis and support. We must ensure that those who are disabled have their rights adhered to and fully respected.
In the proposed Scottish Government Bill, the SNP will pledge to create a learning disability, autism and neurodiversity commissioner, yet the UK Government have no plans for an equivalent position here in England. I ask the Minister: why not? Under the UK Government system, the position of Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work is a mid-level ministerial post in the Department for Work and Pensions, which has responsibility for every realm of legislation affecting disabled people. I do not think that is good enough.
There are potential merits to having a separate commissioner, independent of any Government, who may improve the lives of disabled people and better scrutinise the Government, leading them to act on health, education, criminal justice and other areas of society for neurodivergent people. There are similar roles in other countries, such as the health and disability commissioner in New Zealand and the mayoral office for people with disabilities in New York. I urge the UK Government to take urgent action and give those with neurodevelopmental disorders the attention and legislative commitments that they truly and rightly deserve.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I thank the Petitions Committee for scheduling the debate on these two petitions and I congratulate everyone who signed them.
I take a close interest in diagnosis and support for autistic people, because early assessment and diagnosis can make a huge difference to people’s lives. As we have heard, we do not identify autism quickly enough at any stage in life, despite the increased awareness of and focus on autism in recent decades. In my work as an MP, I have seen what a difference diagnosis and support can make to the lives of autistic people, unlocking their potential and further improving our understanding and treatment of the condition.
I remember clearly one woman who came to my surgery very concerned about how her daughter was getting on at secondary school. I tentatively asked her whether she had thought about a diagnosis of autism, and she said she had not. A couple of years later, I got an email from her thanking me for changing their lives. The daughter received a diagnosis of autism and is now getting the help she needs. Apparently she is a completely different person now.
Undiagnosed autism has a huge impact on education. I was chair of governors at Milton Park Primary School in Portsmouth, which has autism provision in its dedicated inclusion centre. Crucially, the centre works with children undergoing assessment, as well as those who have been given an education, health and care plan. Autistic children often struggle in mainstream education settings and specialised support is important. We must ensure that this area is properly resourced.
Autistic people face stigma and a lack of understanding in education, work and society. It can affect their socialisation and how they handle transitions from familiar surroundings to unfamiliar ones. Mental health conditions are an increased risk for autistic people. Even now, there are still cases of autism being mistaken for a learning disability, which is a concern because of the different kinds of support the two conditions need. While it is possible for someone to be autistic and have a learning disability, the two are distinct conditions.
I know from my own casework and research that the process of getting an EHCP for any condition can be long and difficult, even in areas such as that covered by Hampshire County Council, which has an outstanding child services team. Diagnosis and support for autistic people later in life is even more fraught with difficulty. Often people are diagnosed having faced barriers to employment or career development, but eventual diagnosis still makes a huge difference to the rest of their lives and can allow them a new start and a better understanding of who they are.
We are around halfway through our national autism strategy, launched in 2021, and I appreciate the additional funding and improvements to the diagnostic pathways that it brings. However, like everything in social services, autism services have been set back by the covid pandemic. Research by the Autism Society shows that the waiting list for autism assessment has grown by nearly 40%. Autism, as we have heard, is not a mental health condition, but it falls within the scope of the NHS mental health services dataset, as well as the community services dataset. Will the Minister look at setting up a separate dataset for autism and related conditions to give us a clear picture of the time from first referral to diagnosis and the beginning of support? I know that other Members have talked about that, too.
Can the Minister also assure me that, as part of our catching up in education, we will have further support for autism diagnosis and support in schools? We cannot afford to allow young people to slip through, because that would amount to a loss of support for them.
Mr Robin Walker
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She will recognise that we are launching an inquiry into persistent absence from school. Does she share my experience that so many children are away from school because their parents do not feel that they are getting the support that they need? In many cases, clearer, earlier diagnosis and getting the right support in place would help us to solve that problem and help to make sure those children get the right support in the safest place for them to be.
Mrs Drummond
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am also asking for a register of home-schooled children so that we can look into that and identify them quickly.
We need support for autistic children and autistic people generally so that society does not lose their potential and value, which would be much missed.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
I will speak mainly about ADHD because we have limited time, but I want to put on the record that autism services need more resources, and autistic people deserve support and aftercare following diagnosis.
Currently, as we have heard, there is no NHS waiting time standard for ADHD assessment. It is not generally measured and reported, so we have to use anecdotal evidence. In Leeds the waiting time for the first appointment is a minimum of two years, although it is often much longer. Adult ADHD services are a postcode lottery. Some areas have no adult ADHD service at all, and many others have waits of five years-plus.
On top of long waiting times and limited support, people with ADHD are often stigmatised. I have heard people deny its existence, claiming that children with the condition are simply not disciplined properly, and that adults just need to grow up and take responsibility for their shortcomings. Others say, “Everybody has those symptoms.” Of course, anyone can struggle to concentrate or might sometimes act impulsively, but having numerous symptoms present from childhood that are so intense and frequent that they take over your life is a very different thing. Neuroimaging studies have shown that there are structural differences in ADHD brains. ADHD is real, and without treatment it can ruin lives. Why, then, are clinical staff not routinely trained in adult ADHD?
One person I know was told that their GP refused to refer them for an assessment because they had what they considered to be a “good job” and so could not possibly have ADHD. I am sure that the academics, authors and MPs I know with ADHD would disagree. I want to share something that a constituent told me:
“As a child I was always the class clown type, constantly in trouble. At 9 years old I was taken to the doctors, who essentially told my mum that ‘boys will be boys’. As the years passed, my life became progressively more unmanageable. I drank and took drugs to excess, was unable to manage my finances, and ruined many of my relationships and friendships. The cycle repeated endlessly, until one day a friend who taught at a college said she reminded me of a few of her students who had ADHD. I looked into it and realised I ticked so many boxes, so approached the NHS for a diagnosis, and was put on a lengthy waiting list—with no information about how long I would have to wait for my assessment.”
They went on:
“A few months later, I was handed a short prison sentence after a violent offence. After getting out a few months later, I tried once again to contact the NHS team, but to no avail. It didn’t take long for the drink, drugs and reckless spending to start again. I was also made homeless. Eventually, a support worker got me an appointment with the NHS ADHD team. I was told that I did have ADHD but that my life was too chaotic to start treatment. Shortly after, I ended up back in prison. After getting out I managed to find a flat, got a really good job, met my partner and my life was going well. But as anyone with ADHD will attest to, healthy routines are almost impossible to keep up without proper support, and it wasn’t long until old habits crept back in.”
Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I listened very carefully to that story. The hon. Gentleman’s mention of the criminal justice system allows me to intervene to say that there are grounds for hope, because 48 neurodiversity support managers have been appointed in our prison system, with more to come, to screen and identify people with neurodivergent conditions. Does he agree that that is a step forward that is long overdue?
Alex Sobel
Absolutely. In a BBC interview in 2019, I called for compulsory screening and diagnosis for everybody who received a custodial sentence. So many people in our criminal justice system have ADHD, and we would save far more money if we screened and gave people treatment, rather than making them go through the awfulness of that experience.
My constituent continued:
“I realised I needed help, and contacted the NHS ADHD team that gave me my original diagnosis. I was told that even with the diagnosis, it would be an 18-month-plus wait and I would have to start the process all over again. In the end, I went private, which is extremely expensive. I pay a monthly fee for the calls with my doctor, a fee for the prescription, and a fee for my medication. It comes in at around £500 a month, which I can only afford because my mum died last year and left me some money. It was a struggle finding what worked for me, but I’m now on a treatment plan, which has changed my life. I don’t drink anymore, my relationship with my partner has improved dramatically. I’m managing my finances better and my performance at work is a level I’ve never hit before. Life is just so much easier and happier now.”
For so many, their ADHD is not known to them. They are not aware that they have it, but it is sitting there undiagnosed. Someone may know something is different about them, but they do not know what it is. Some people cope, but others just do not. My constituent’s story shows the transformative power of an ADHD diagnosis and treatment. It shows how people are increasingly turning to the private sector for help. I have to say that that appears to suit the Government’s agenda—to encourage provision out of the NHS and into the private sector.
ADHD and autism services are in crisis. They need proper funding for training, screening, diagnosis and aftercare. I do not want to live in a country with a two-tier healthcare system, where those who can afford it get support and the rest are left to suffer. I hope the Government will heed the calls made today and act to fix their broken system.
Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)
As we can see from the number of Members present, this is a really important issue. It is quite a personal one for me, my wife and my family. My heart goes out to everyone affected, including parents of children with autism and ADHD.
Most of us have experienced the despair of being at the school gate and having to drag our child out of the car and into school. It is agonising. There is guilt as well. When parents are focusing so much attention on one child, the others feel left out. Parents feel guilty about that. It puts pressure on marriages and on people’s relationships with their family and their children. Worst of all is not knowing where to turn to or who can help. A diagnosis is the starting point on the path to getting crucial help for both children and families. Waiting months—sometimes years—for a diagnosis is frankly unacceptable, and that theme has been picked up by Members.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on his opening speech. As I say, this debate is quite personal to me, but I do not want to be too emotional about it in front of everyone here. The reason the debate is so crucial is that delays in assessments for diagnosis are one of the main reasons families contact me from across Dewsbury, Mirfield, Kirkburton and Denby Dale. Some families have waited up to two years for an CAMHS assessment, which has a significant impact on children’s ability to receive the support they need to access their education.
That is further compounded by delays in obtaining education, health and care plans in my constituency. An EHCP should be completed in 20 weeks. That is rarely the case, although it depends which council is involved. For example, Bradford issued 80.6% of EHCPs within 20 weeks and Leeds around 88.7%, but Kirklees—I see the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater)—issued only 40.6%. That needs to be addressed. Why is Kirklees Council not performing as well as others? I am not making this issue political; some of these are Labour councils and they are doing better than us. I might be going out of scope, but the point I am trying to make is that, given the waits for assessments and EHCPs, children and families can wait three years or more to get the complete support that they need, and they definitely need it.
There is help at hand from some fantastic volunteer groups, in particular in my constituency and across West Yorkshire. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen has mentioned it already, but I have had various meetings with the West Yorkshire ADHD Support Group. I had the pleasure of being with it at the Make A Difference awards in Leeds, when it was presented with a volunteer award, which was well deserved, because it does great work. I do not like to mention the hon. Lady again, but we were both at the Christmas party in my constituency when Santa turned up, to meet the kids and their parents, and we went through all their experiences.
Last year, I met parents and children at Growing Works, which runs two-hour, weekly outdoor social support groups at weekends for families who have children with a range of additional needs. That is called the Sprout—Strong Parents Reaching Out—project. It is a vital support network for those undergoing this process.
In 2020 I wrote to the Department for Education to highlight the severe impact of CAMHS diagnosis delays on mental health and educational development as part of my submission to the SEND review, which, as has been mentioned, is coming out next week. My submission outlined the importance of a co-ordinated effort between school SENCOs—special educational needs co-ordinators —local authorities, health professionals, CAMHS, children and their families.
I therefore welcome that the total high-needs budget of £9.7 billion announced in July 2022 has been increased by £400 million to £10.1 billion as a result of additional schools funding included in last year’s autumn statement. That does not include the £325 million allocated for 2022-23 under the schools supplementary grant. I also welcome Kirklees’ designation as an education investment area in the levelling-up White Paper, with £30 million allocated to councils across the UK for positive opportunities in SEND support.
I am sympathetic to the petitions about increased funding but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) said, a change in finances will not necessarily resolve the issue. Instead, I look forward to working with the Government to ensure that we have a system that is fit for purpose, and suitable for the applicant, their family and the educational support network.
Finally, I have a message for those who are experiencing the challenges of getting a diagnosis or an EHCP to get their child to the right school: with the help of the right people, a positive outcome is possible. Your child could even end up completing a master’s degree at university—with a distinction, no less.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue.
I congratulate the Petitions Committee on not just scheduling the debate, but the surveys and outreach work it has done, which has come a long way since the Committee was first set up. What it does is really valued. I also think that the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) once again did justice to the topic that he presented.
Over recent years, awareness of neurodevelopmental conditions such as ADHD and autism has improved massively. I am slightly worried that we are seeing a bit of push-back, with people saying it is fashionable to have ADHD because a number of celebrities have come out and said that they have it, and almost casting doubt on the diagnosis behind that. We have heard people’s stories about how much they have gone through, wondering what is wrong with them or why they do not fit into society, and about the obstacles that they had to get through to get a diagnosis, so no one should say that this is something people do just on a whim, because they want to look cool. It is unfortunate that people say that.
Of the constituents who have come to me about this, a lot were diagnosed as adults. They had years of being misunderstood and having their abilities underestimated. A lot of them started out as very bright kids at school, but had something go wrong at secondary school, just because it was not designed to fit how they learned or how they conducted themselves in the classroom. They were often misdiagnosed as suffering from anxiety or depression, for example.
One of the things that struck me when constituents told me how they got their diagnosis is the role of GPs. It was sometimes very perceptive GPs who spotted that it might be ADHD after other people had not, and that was the gateway to a life-changing diagnosis. As well as talking about what mental health services can do, and about SEND and EHCPs, we need to ensure that GPs have the time to spend with their patients. They should be able to see their patients face to face if that is what is needed so they can play that crucial role.
There is wider understanding about children, but that does not always translate into practical knowledge of how to manage their needs, particularly if they have complex backgrounds. The mother of one of the children in my family was told that her child did not need another diagnosis because she already had physical disabilities linked to learning disabilities—it was like she had enough wrong with her, so she did not need something else. It was only when it reached crisis point that it was accepted that a physical disability is not treated in the same way as autism. Parents who come to us because they are struggling to get EHCPs really are at their wits’ end because of all the obstacles and the number of times they get pushed back by the system, particularly when they are suspected of being over-anxious parents.
In Bristol, we are seeing some progress in EHCPs. The number of children waiting for autism diagnostic assessments has gone down fractionally, and the health service is trying to recruit extra staff to carry out the assessments. For adults, particularly when it comes to ADHD, it is still pretty bad. At the moment, the waiting lists are about 14 months for children to be assessed for ADHD and autism. For adults, it is 12 months for autism but four years for ADHD.
I met a constituent, Jacob, who goes by the name adhdfatheruk on Instagram and TikTok. He was diagnosed as a teenager and often struggled at school. Many labelled his hyperactivity as bad behaviour, and his inattentiveness was put down to laziness. He is very keen to press for greater awareness of ADHD in schools. He thinks that training teachers to recognise the signs of neurodivergence could mean that children’s needs are picked up sooner, so they might face less stigma and be mislabelled less often. I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that. Obviously, she is a health Minister, but that role in schools is really important.
My constituent Laura recently appeared on ITV News to talk about her son Zac, who is eight years old and has autistic traits. He was referred by his school in December 2020 and still does not have a diagnosis. When I raised it with the local autism hub, it said it was expecting to see him by summer 2022. Well, he has still not been diagnosed.
I tabled a written question to the Minister last month, and I was told that between July 2021 and June 2022, more than 95,000 children were in a position similar to Zac’s, with an open referral for suspected autism. That could be more than 95,000 children in limbo, up and down the country, just like Zac’s family. As I understand it, the Department of Health and Social Care does not collect data on ADHD assessments, so it is quite possible that many more thousands of parents of children with ADHD may be waiting.
I know many other Members want to speak, so I will conclude. We have heard from other Members how much more likely people with ADHD are to attempt suicide. One study showed that 35% of autistic people have at some point planned to take their own life.
It was very interesting to hear what the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) said about assessments in the prison system. We know that about a quarter of the prison population meets the threshold for an ADHD diagnosis, and up to 19% may be autistic. Particularly at young offender institutions, we need to crack that if we are to stop that lifelong criminal offending.
Finally, we are still waiting to hear about the SEND Green Paper and the improvement plan. The consultation document was co-authored by the Department of Health and the Department for Education, but there was not much in it about the overlap with CAMHS. My final plea is that we need to ensure that, particularly in the case of children, we look at this as a SEND issue and are getting the EHCPs, but that, where mental health support is needed, the two organisations are talking to each other.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
I thank the Petitions Committee for agreeing to the debate. This is a bittersweet moment for me: I brought a debate on this issue to this Chamber exactly one year ago. You were in the Chair, Ms Fovargue, and the same Minister was in her place. The kernel of my argument was that children in West Berkshire were waiting far too long for diagnoses of autism and ADHD, with sometimes devastating implications for their educational and social development.
I have been campaigning since then for no child ever to have wait more than one year for an initial diagnosis. That may sound as if it lacks ambition, but the reality for many children in West Berkshire is that the wait is more like three years. I would like to be able to say that there has been some progress. I had West Berkshire CAMHS in the dock last year, but I pay tribute to the service. I have spoken to the service a number of times this year and have relayed the impact of waiting times. The service has assured me that by March 2023, which is next month, it will have capped waiting times at two years, and by March 2024—in 13 months—it will have capped waiting times at 12 months, so my campaign will have eventually got there. But I regret to say that, of the many parents who wrote to me in advance of the debate, far too many still say that they have been waiting for much longer than that.
I will give a couple of examples; I could not possibly fit everybody in, which says something in itself. One lady, Kathleen, who looks after her two grandsons, told me about the 12-year-old boy, who is now approaching three years on the CAMHS waiting list:
“He is no longer in education. If I don’t get help soon I feel he is in danger of being criminalised due to his anger and behaviour being out of control”.
Another lady, Vanessa, told me about her eight-year-old son. She was initially told to expect a three-year wait, but says her GP pushed to get that reduced. She described filling in endless forms, and ended by saying:
“We are crying out for help he is 8 years old and seeing him so angry, upset and hating life is breaking our hearts.”
I know that the Government understand the impact of this issue, because they wrote about it, sensitively and with real understanding, in their SEND review, which was published last year. I look forward to hearing what they have to say about that, because I know there is more coming soon.
One of the petitions calls for an emergency fund. I can talk only about my local service. West Berkshire CAMHS received an extra £1.6 million in April 2021 to reduce waiting times. At the time, the service told me that it hoped that that would enable the recruitment of an extra 27 members of staff to help with diagnoses, and it has now recruited those people. None the less, it does not disagree that families continue to face long waits. The service has had an awful lot of extra money. I wonder whether there are other issues; I will touch on them today and invite the Minister to respond.
First, I wonder whether the system for diagnosis is too complicated. I know that the system falls between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education, and that there has been a surge in demand for diagnostic services of this kind. However, I find it surprising that the experience of every single parent seems to be the same, irrespective of whether the child is still in mainstream school. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether there could be a flagging system at the initial point of triage, so that a child who is failing to access the curriculum or at risk of exclusion could be prioritised for diagnosis.
Another route I wanted to ask about stems from something that West Berkshire CAMHS said to me. I do not know whether this is true, but I will repeat what the service told me verbatim, which is that schools erroneously say that they cannot help until there is a diagnosis, although in fact they can on the presentation of need. If a school is confronted with a child who is presenting with typical ADHD-type symptoms, could there be an online tool, perhaps run by CAMHS, that would allow for a preliminary “We think it’s ADHD”? The child could then progress down that pathway while they wait. I do not know whether that is possible.
I also invite the Minister to comment on whether there could be better joined-up work between health and education services. In preparing for this debate, I refreshed my memory as to what she said when she responded to my debate last year. In that debate, the Minister talked about a £600,000 autism early diagnosis pilot taking place in Bradford that was creating testing facilities in
“at least 100 schools over the next three years to assess whether new approaches to…faster diagnosis can be rolled out across the country.”—[Official Report, 9 February 2022; Vol. 708, c. 382WH.]
That is a commendable pilot. By now, it must be at least a year in. After the debate, I went to see Ministers at the Departments of Health and for Education to see whether West Berkshire schools could join the pilot. Unfortunately, I did not get anywhere with that, and I have not had much of an update on the pilot either. I would be interested to know whether on-site testing in schools is now ready for roll-out, or at least how the pilot is going.
My final point about CAMHS is something that other Members have touched on. When I visited the Downs School—a secondary school in Compton—last Friday, a pupil told me that one of the limitations of CAMHS is that mental health issues such as anxiety and depression are bundled together with neurodiversity diagnoses. While there is sometimes an overlap between the two, they are, in fact, distinct areas. Could the Minister comment on whether she thinks the neurodiversity aspect of CAMHS would work better if it was completely separated from the mental health element?
I know there is no magic bullet for any of these issues, but the solutions and ideas I have presented, some of which come from CAMHS professionals and teachers, suggest a simplified, more streamlined and accountable approach to ADHD and autism diagnoses. I would like to hope that this time next year, we will not need to have this debate again.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on introducing this debate and on the many important points he made. I will certainly not repeat all the statistics that have been stated, as it is clear from what Members have said that there is a very serious issue here.
Instead, I want to focus on one particular statistic, quoted by the chief executive of the ADHD Foundation, which suggests that there has been a 400% increase in the number of adults seeking a diagnosis nationally. Between July and September alone, an estimated 170,000 people were prescribed at least one drug for ADHD, a 20% increase on the figure for the previous year. That is a huge increase in one year, and services have clearly been unable to cope with that increase. We have heard of some horrendous waiting times—I know that a recent FOI request by The Guardian showed that some people were waiting up to three years for an ADHD diagnosis.
However, I am afraid that in my part of the world it is even worse than that. My local adult ADHD service, provided by the Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, has been closed to new referrals since April 2019. Despite the trust saying that it would be taking new referrals from last year, we are yet to see any notification of that happening. It is really letting down people who need help. I have been informed that part of the reason why the trust closed its doors to new referrals was that the funding it was allocated between April 2018 and March 2019 was enough to provide capacity for 79 assessments, so when it received 362 referrals in that period it was clear that it would not be able to manage. However, to close altogether to new referrals is completely unacceptable.
The fact that the trust was telling people that they might wait up to five years for an assessment is also completely unacceptable. We would not accept a five-year wait for a physical condition, so we should not accept it for ADHD. We certainly would not close our doors altogether to new referrals in that case. Could the Minister indicate whether action will be taken to ensure that my constituents can be seen in a timely manner, and actually seen at all, when GPs are referring them for an assessment? Surely refusing to see patients or assess them for specific conditions is discrimination. It is certainly against the founding principles of the NHS.
Once we realised that that was a problem, we noticed that it was not only a problem with adults. As we have heard, there is a huge issue in education. The fact that more adults are now seeking diagnosis points to past failings in the education system. There is certainly increased awareness in our school system now, but that begs the question of what opportunities have been lost because people were not diagnosed or identified as needing assistance at an earlier stage.
However, as hon. Members have said, not everything is rosy in the education system now. Every Member of Parliament will be able to tell us about how parents feel they have to fight every step of the way just to get a referral. Then they have to fight to get adjustments in the school and seem to have a constant battle to ensure those provisions are maintained.
When the umpteenth constituent came to see me this year about delays in receiving an EHCP, I looked into why that was the case and found there is a huge shortage of educational psychologists. When one constituent was recently informed that their child could not have the assessment within the legal timeframe required because there were no educational psychologists available, I decided to look into the numbers. I discovered that the ratio of educational psychologists covering the Cheshire West and Chester area was one for every 5,822 children and young people.
That is a stark comparison to figures from 2017 to 2019, when a report from the Department for Education found that the average number for the whole country was one for every 3,500 young people, and in the north-west it was one for every 3,900. I would be interested to see whether those national and regional figures have changed in the last two or three years; I suspect they have gone in the wrong direction. I know the Government have spent around £32 million on more support and on training for educational psychologists, but if we do not have the people able to undertake the assessments, we will never get the backlog sorted.
I want to say a little about some of the impacts that is having on constituents. An individual who has a child with ADHD came to see me. They have just begun the EHCP process, which they understand will take a number of months, but in the meantime they are struggling to find a school that will take their child. The child has already been removed from one school because of challenging behaviour, and now they are being kept off school for their own and other children’s safety. My constituent has had to give up work, meaning both she and her child are losing out. From talking to parents, it seems that more and more children are dropping out of the school system altogether for a whole range of mental health issues. The number of pupils who are no longer on any school roll is a national scandal on which we need far more concerted action.
To end on a more positive note, I have heard from people with ADHD how transformative a diagnosis can be—the difference it can make to their lives and the sense it brings to some of the issues they have been struggling with, possibly for many years. That shows the importance of putting investment into diagnosis, to ensure that everyone gets opportunities to fulfil their potential. The waiting times we are talking about—five years, in some cases—are cruel and inhumane.
Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I have had the good fortune of working with the ADHD Foundation, thanks to the work of my constituent, Jane Roberts, which culminated in my following quite closely some of the ins and outs, successes and not, of work on neurodiverse conditions. We had a beautiful display in Stroud to raise awareness, with a number of colourful umbrellas throughout the town. Many constituents asked, “What are these umbrellas?” and we were able to have conversations about what ADHD is and what needs to change to support people with the condition.
Day in, day out, I am battling for Stroud district parents of children with special educational needs. I am talking to the Government, local authorities, councillors, Ministers and health teams, but my efforts are nothing compared with those of the hundreds of Stroud families who are battling every single day to be heard. There are some really worrying decisions being made and situations for children, particularly those waiting for diagnosis or for an EHCP. One mum told me that her little lad with autism has an hour in a mainstream school, so by the time he has got his little coat off, he has to put it back on again and leave. We all know that a feature of autism is the need for stability and a steady day, which is absolutely not what this child gets.
Many parents are waiting for diagnosis for ADHD and autism. They are fighting to be listened to and to get a way forward. They are fighting to find the right person to talk to, or even to get a response in some cases. They are fighting for funding, they are fighting for dates, they are fighting to understand timelines and they are fighting against delays. All too often, they are being pushed into tribunals and getting into debt in the process, but they keep going because they are fighting for their children. Parents do not want their children to be labelled or medicalised, as is so often mentioned in response to these discussions; they want them to be understood, and they want to have the right support in place so that their children can thrive.
I am in my late 40s, so I went to school in the ’90s—Oasis, Blur, Kula Shaker and the Spice Girls. It is a long time ago now, and many of my peers are in all sorts of jobs. I have often wondered how many of us would have benefited from an early diagnosis of autism or ADHD when we were kids. Such conditions were not discussed when we were at school. It was not something that was raised or thought through. I am not surprised, therefore, that there has been a 400% increase in adults obtaining an ADHD diagnosis; it is because, unfortunately, this is quite new to many adults I talk to.
The parents and adults in Stroud who talked to me about these conditions said that there is nothing more discombobulating than constantly feeling that they are in the wrong job or career and do not understand why. They are never quite able to get the right help and are constantly changing things, such as diet and exercise; they will suddenly get medication, then come off it, but nothing helps. Again, adults who have had late diagnoses of autism and ADHD told me that they did not want to be medicalised or labelled; they wanted answers.
Mark Eastwood
My hon. Friend mentions the delays to adults getting a diagnosis in years gone by. Is it not the case that that is because there has until now been a misconception that ADHD is a sign of bad behaviour and not a medical condition?
Siobhan Baillie
My hon. Friend is completely right, and he spoke movingly about his own family’s experiences of these conditions. It is incumbent on all of us in this place to try to raise awareness of what these conditions are and how they affect people. Of course, with every individual being so wildly different, people will have different outcomes and different behaviours. We should not write anybody off or put them into one single bucket.
For the parents and adults I have spoken to, it is a complete relief when they finally receive a diagnosis and get to talk to somebody. One woman said to me, “Of course, when I looked up the condition, everything in my life made complete sense.” We should have got there earlier in her case.
When the Government look at this, I know that Ministers will carefully study the evidence, the data and the targets—the very smart people in the civil service will be doing the same—but the data is wanting, as we have heard from many hon. Members, and so much is hard to quantify. How many jobs and careers have been lost through the failure to diagnose autism and ADHD early? How many opportunities lost? How many people are on depression and anxiety medication, when clarity about their health through an early diagnosis could have helped them? How many people are secretly self-harming, and how many have taken their own lives?
That leads to my constituent, Jane, whose son, Ben, sadly took his life in 2020. I remember early conversations with Jane on Zoom during the pandemic, when we were on lockdown. I would have fallen apart; she obviously has had incredibly dark moments, but in response to Ben’s death she has dedicated her life to trying to raise awareness about ADHD. She has invested £30,000—probably even more now—to ensure that there is early diagnosis for other children, and she funded the Umbrella Project I mentioned in Stroud.
Another constituent, Zaphira Cormack, has written to me about this issue. She founded the ADHD Hub in Gloucestershire last year. Since lockdown, she has seen an influx of adults seeking diagnosis, and daily she receives calls from parents struggling with children who are self-harming or suicidal. There was no pathway for children and young people in Gloucestershire, although this has now been commissioned for Gloucestershire, so we are hoping to see change.
I will be interested to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister, who is a hugely compassionate and knowledgeable Minister, and a nurse by background. I want to hear her views in response to some of the questions asked by hon. Members. Many people talk to me about the lack of understanding and awareness at primary care level, as GPs are often the first port of call when people have concerns. Parents are concerned in particular about lack of training, so I would like to know whether this is a feature of the work of the Department and whether anything is being done about training in primary care. I would also like to know how the Department of Health and Social Care is working with the DFE and local government, because we know that waiting times and the daily experiences of parents often do not sit with her Department when it comes to education.
I am very interested in the pilots that my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) mentioned. We would very much like some pilots in Stroud, if there are any going. I would like a comparison study to be done: when there are swift and early diagnoses, how many children and adults are found not to have ADHD or autism, because they had early treatment? My biggest fear is that people are waiting so long that they are ending up in a very difficult place, and they may go without education in the meantime.
My approach to politics is quite simple. Once we strip away all the drama in this very beautiful building, with political parties shouting at each other, saying that the other side does not care or does not have the right ideas, at the very core of this job is spotting problems and solving them. When family after family are telling all of us, across the House, that, at a time when we want everyone to be more productive and active, GPs, the NHS, central Government and local government do not have quite the right policies to ensure that children and adults can thrive in this country, we absolutely have to act, and we have to get in earlier. I am really looking forward to hearing from the Minister today.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to be here under your guidance, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn), who introduced this debate, and the Petitions Committee on organising the debate, even though the petitions had not reached 100,000 signatures. This is a very important debate. We have heard heartbreaking stories from Members across the House. I am sure that the Minister will have noted the unity across the House on this matter and will respond appropriately.
I argue that there is a crisis in our country. It is a crisis for millions of individuals. I think it was said that there are 3 million people—children and adults—with ADHD and nearly three quarters of a million, at least, with autism. For each one of those people and for each of those families and households, this is a personal crisis. Of course it is a crisis brought on by the way in which we organise our society, but I will come back to that in a moment. I want first to record the experience of one family, although of course we all have many similar stories.
This is a family with a three-year-old son awaiting assessment for autism, sensory processing disorder and ADHD. He is non-verbal at three years old and has high sensory needs; he receives the high rate of disability living allowance. The referral in this three-year-old boy’s case was made in March 2022. As of two weeks ago, he had had no access at all to any support. The family are managing on two to three hours’ sleep a night. The mother felt it was necessary to give up her job to care for the boy—no doubt there are many mothers, fathers and grandparents all over the country doing similar things. The family spent every penny of their savings on home adaptations, and now there is no money left. The mother has had to go on to universal credit. Even if they wanted to go private, they could not afford it, and they should not have to do so.
[Dame Angela Eagle in the Chair]
There is a second case, on which I do not want to spend long because it is neither autism nor ADHD—it is dyspraxia, which is a related condition. A daughter was diagnosed and received some support, but the system failed to allow for her transition from school to university, which caused a great crisis in the family. We are seeing problems all over the country but, as I said in my opening remarks, these personal, familial and household crises are brought on by the way in which we organise our country.
We have heard these figures before, so I will be brief, but in England alone 120,000 people are currently waiting for an autism assessment, and 100,000 have waited more than three months, which is an important moment because NICE says that people should be seen within three months. That is a huge increase in the number of people waiting for assistance, diagnosis and treatment—a 40% increase in a single year. This problem exploded during the period of lockdown. No doubt there are a number of reasons for that, but these are individual human beings whose lives could be transformed if an early diagnosis was made and treatment recommended.
Late diagnosis causes problems for children in school, for the other children, for teachers and for parents and families. These children would be less likely to develop mental health issues later in life if they are diagnosed early, and the same is true of adults who are awaiting diagnosis. Both sides of the House agree that is clear.
I congratulate everyone who signed the petitions asking for Parliament to debate this subject, and I look forward to the Minister’s response. I do not want to strike a discordant note, but two Conservative Members raised the question of money. I am from Yorkshire, and Yorkshiremen and women do not like spending money, although it is occasionally necessary—moths fly out of my purse if I ever manage to take out a £5 note. ITN and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism did a careful analysis across the country, and they estimate that the true scale of the SEND funding crisis, the true financial black hole facing councils, is more than £1 billion, which is a staggering amount of money. It would be interesting to know whether the Government have an accurate assessment of how much it would cost to resolve these issues. After all, the Government can make a difference to people’s lives if they choose to act, which is what they should be doing.
I looked at the national autism strategy, which was published last year and offered peanuts to try to resolve some of these problems. I understand how difficult this is, and how we have to train skilled professionals; none the less, it offered peanuts. The Government promised that by the end of the strategy in 2026, which is years away, they would have made
“demonstrable progress on reducing diagnosis waiting times and improving diagnostic pathways for children, young people and adults across the country.”
That is not an ambitious statement. I do not want to be too discordant, because there is agreement on both sides of the House that this problem needs to be addressed and that we can transform lives. I am sure the Minister is fully conscious of that, given her professional background.
I will not continue too long, because a number of Members still want to speak, but I want to say that is important that we reflect on school admissions and exclusions. I wonder whether school academies, which are relatively autonomous and self-governing, have sufficiently strong guidance relating to children and young people who have what is called “challenging behaviour”. It may well be that some of them are challenging, but many of them have undiagnosed neurodivergent issues that need to be addressed. Is the Minister satisfied that there are sufficiently strong processes in place to prevent the exclusion, sometimes from more than one school, of young pupils who are neurodivergent? Eventually they either abscond or truant from school, or are simply kept at home by their parents because they feel that the system is almost abusive to their child. I say that because I have become aware of large numbers of people over the years whose children have been excluded from school and who subsequently said that they realised that their child had undiagnosed and unaddressed health problems. I have to say that it seemed to be a particular issue in school academies. I wonder whether the Minister has had a look at that and whether she could write to the relevant Committee with any data on that matter.
Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. I thank the petition organisers and the many people who signed it for ensuring that we could debate this incredibly important subject today. Many lives have been affected by delays in diagnosis, as evidenced by the huge number of MPs we have heard speak today. We talk about numbers and timeframes, but the thing that makes this situation entirely unacceptable is the scale of impact on all these individuals, their lives and the time they spend without the support they need.
One of my constituents shared his story with me. Around six years ago, Ben began having increased periods of depression, which eventually led to a situation in 2019 where he went through weeks of being unable to sleep and being confused and distressed, with suicidal ideation. Ben was referred by his GP for an autism assessment. It took more than three years for Ben to be diagnosed—three unbearable and unpredictable years of miscommunication, waiting and suffering for him and his family.
It is not just about the time. It is about the fact Ben continued to live undiagnosed with unmitigated challenges that impacted hugely on his work, social life and family life. It had a huge impact on his ability to focus and sleep and on his concentration and memory. He also suffered from rejection sensitive dysphoria. Ben has managed to turn the pain of his experience into energy. Alongside his wife, he has set up an autism charity to support other families dealing with the impact of autism. Too many people like Ben are left waiting, wondering and suffering for way too long. We must do more.
In my part of the world we have some incredible charities that work to support people with ADHD and autism. Daisy Chain is a fantastic Stockton charity that was set up by the late Lesley Hanson when her son was diagnosed with autism. It started life as a small charity but has gone from strength to strength. It now offers the lifeline of life-changing specialist provision to more than 3,000 families and neurodiverse individuals every year. I recently met with Daisy Chain and heard about the incredibly work it is doing to support people and ensure they can live their fullest lives.
I have also met representatives of the Stockton Parent Carer Forum, which supports families of children with special educational needs, providing an incredibly valuable place where parents can share experiences and seek advice. Importantly, it helps signpost parents to support and helps to try to mitigate any impact on children’s development and education. All of these specialist organisations deserve our thanks. They make an incredible difference to the lives of many people across Stockton, but they all share concerns about waiting times and the support made available to those suffering from autism and ADHD.
In the last five years, the number of people being treated for ADHD has risen by 80%. People with ADHD are five times more likely to commit suicide than somebody without the condition. That is why reducing waiting times for diagnoses and providing support for people with ADHD is so important. Currently, one third of adults awaiting assessment have been waiting for longer than 13 months. Those people are unable to receive much-needed support and medication while awaiting diagnosis.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to addressing the issue and improving the diagnostic pathway and care for people with ADHD. By 2023-24, children and young people with a learning disability or autism—or both—with the most complex needs will have a designated key worker. That will improve the care and support they receive. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about what the Government are going to do to drive down unacceptable waiting times and improve the support available so that those with autism and ADHD can live their lives to the full.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Angela. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for opening this afternoon’s debate, and the constituents from Rutherglen and Hamilton West who signed the e-petitions. Although health is a devolved policy area, this issue affects people right across the United Kingdom. It is with that in mind that I speak here today, and I will focus specifically on the impact on women and girls.
Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder and autism are chronically underdiagnosed and misdiagnosed in women and girls. Primarily that is because, broadly speaking, the conditions present differently than in males. There is also the fact that owing to societal pressures and expectations, women often become adept at masking, developing techniques to hide the conditions from others to avoid being stigmatised, or to feel accepted.
For the most part, women are into adulthood by the time they receive a diagnosis. One of my own staffers is a prime example and she has given me permission to mention this today. She was not diagnosed with ADHD until she was 24, and it was another year before the service she was under could provide her with a treatment plan, because slots were so limited.
Sometimes it is only after women have had their own children, usually sons who receive a diagnosis, that they begin to realise they share the traits and pursue a diagnosis for themselves. Even when that is not the case, diagnosis is often delayed by years because girls and women are highly likely to be misdiagnosed with a mood disorder such as depression, bipolar disorder or anxiety disorders. Both autism and ADHD are often viewed through the lens of mental health, but they are not at root mental health issues. The brain is literally wired differently. It is neurodevelopmental.
The image we conjure up in our minds when we think about ADHD is probably an outdated stereotype—a naughty little boy disrupting a classroom. We are more likely to focus on the H in ADHD—hyperactivity in its most obvious sense. Women and girls are more prone to an inattentive or combined type of ADHD where the hyperactivity is not external but internal. Many women and girls describe a constant and endless stream of thoughts and ideas that never quieten, never stop. Naturally, that is very distracting. So how does that manifest itself?
School-age girls might be dubbed daydreamers. School reports have comments such as, “Bright, but needs to apply herself better”, “Clever, but makes silly mistakes”, or, “Needs to stop chatting”. It is often dismissed as just that: “She needs to try a bit harder, concentrate a bit better”, but rarely is it looked at any closer. That constant over-thinking, never-ending activity in the brain as they start to get older often starts to spark secondary symptoms or conditions. That is where the misdiagnoses of depression, anxiety and more come in. They are treated for the secondary symptoms that are much more easily identified, but unfortunately rather ineffectively. If someone is not looking at the underlying cause, it is just plastering over the cracks.
If a woman or girl does not suspect that they have ADHD or autism, they are reliant on their GP picking up on the signs. In a short 10-minute or so appointment, a GP does not have the time to dig deeper than the surface level and recommend a referral to a specialist service. Those specialist services with psychiatrists qualified to assess, diagnose and support patients are few and far between.
When access to the right support is so life changing and necessary, it is downright depressing for someone to be told that they might have to wait a year, 18 months or two years before they will even get in front of the right person to start the process. The cost of an initial ADHD assessment appointment is somewhere between £500 and £800, but it can be up to thousands and several appointments are often required to make a diagnosis. The average monthly cost of a private prescription for ADHD medication is around £100. The average cost of an autism assessment is around £2,500. Even when we are not facing an economic crisis, those are huge amounts of money that most people and families just cannot spare.
It is important to recognise that diagnosis is just the beginning. People with both conditions benefit from treatments, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, and the state of the waiting lists for those is equally as dire. Sometimes CBT is essential to the development of coping mechanisms and strategies that allow neurodivergent people to get their lives in order for the long run.
The prevalence of illicit drug use in people with undiagnosed ADHD is not spoken about often because of the stigma, but it is essential to understanding what a lack of resourcing in the healthcare system can lead to. ADHD is often treated with stimulants, which are controlled drugs. Stimulants affect the neurodivergent brains of those with ADHD differently from those without it. The length of waiting lists inevitably means that people will want to find alternative ways to relieve their symptoms. People with ADHD are more likely to have addictive personality types, which can lead to tricky territory. Illicit stimulant drugs, such as cocaine and amphetamines, can have a similar positive-feeling effect on the ADHD brain in a way that they do not on others, so when those with undiagnosed ADHD try those drugs for the first time, they may be surprised at the effects. For that reason, cocaine use in university students with the condition is not uncommon. They make the connection and realise they have found a way to relieve symptoms to allow them to study. With earlier access to the right support, that would be avoidable.
It is really concerning that illicit drugs are easier to access than a diagnosis and a treatment plan. We do not want to see situations where, once diagnosed with ADHD, people are not allowed to access the right medication because of previous drug misuse, which could have been avoided with earlier intervention and access to prescribed treatment. It is really important to point out that ADHD medication is carefully monitored through titration and beyond, while self-medication is not.
The petitions are calling for access to urgent support. I wholeheartedly support those calls. So many constituents are under immense pressure as a result of completely unacceptable waiting times. Waiting lists have been creeping up for years. Improving recognition of the conditions in women and girls, which has led to more requests for assessments, may be part of the reason, but the biggest reason by far is the lack of funding.
I hope that the Minister will be in a position to provide more than just assurances. I hope she can provide a funding commitment for those in England. I hope she can tell us what discussions the Government have had with the Scottish Government about service provision and how funding will be replicated in the devolved nations. I hope that the Minister will be able to shed some light on the Government’s work to support NHS boards to recruit and retain expertise.
Children, adults and parents cannot wait endlessly for someone to address what is now beyond a crisis. They deserve better recognition and support, and they deserve it urgently.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I have learned a great deal from so many of the speeches that it seems invidious to pick out anyone, but I would like to compliment the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) because of her concentration on treatment. We have heard a great deal about diagnosis, but I was interested to hear about what the treatment options are.
I have no medical expertise or qualifications, but it is fairly obvious even to me that although many people who experience severe sleep disruption are not suffering from ADHD, people who are suffering from ADHD also commonly seem to have the terrible burden of a huge shortage of high-quality, slow-wave, deep sleep. Anyone who knows anything at all about the methods of interrogation and torture used by totalitarian regimes will know that the strongest and bravest person alive can be broken if they are incessantly deprived of decent, slow-wave, restorative sleep. It is appalling that young people and older people struggle for years before they receive a diagnosis that might lead them to the sort of treatment that could ameliorate the suffering described by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West and many others, so I hope and trust that this debate will go some way towards alleviating that situation.
In the short time available, I will touch on the three cases that I alluded to earlier in a brief intervention. They are all different. The first case is of an 11-year-old boy who was correctly diagnosed as having ADHD three years ago. His mother says that the problem is that CAMHS locally has no full-time psychiatrist who can provide the medication that he needs. Admittedly, the letter about this case came to me only within the last few days, so my office and I have not yet had the chance to find out if that statement is in fact correct, but if it is, that is obviously a serious gap in the system.
The second case is worrying because it involves the consistent refusal to give an ADHD diagnosis for a 12-year-old boy whose widowed mother, after a very long delay, finally gained access to the notes of his previous assessments, which were clearly full of demonstrable inaccuracies. For example, it was suggested that it was the loss of the husband and father that was causing the child such disturbance, when in reality the child had been struggling with his symptoms since the age of three—long before the loss of his father. Indeed, the notes also suggested that the child was affected by having to move out of the family home to live with grandparents, when in fact no such thing had happened. So, even allowing for the fact that I am hearing only one side of the story, it seems unlikely that my constituent could misreport such incontrovertible issues of fact.
I will finish with the final case, which involves a young lady who contacted me specifically to urge me to take part in this debate. I spoke to her on the telephone just before it began and I have her permission to quote from her letter to me, in which she says:
“I was recently diagnosed with ADHD myself, having been able to access an assessment through private medical insurance. Not only are the waiting lists for NHS assessment unduly long but the knowledge and experience of doctors and psychiatrists of the condition is, in my experience, severely lacking.
My mental health first deteriorated to the extent that I needed psychiatric intervention in 2018. At this point, I was suicidal. I had read about ADHD and mentioned to the psychiatrist that I believed that I had it. His response was, ‘I don’t know a lot about it, other than that it’s very difficult to diagnose as an adult and the medication is amphetamine, so you probably want to think very carefully about pursuing that.’”
She then gives a long list of severe symptoms and difficult experiences through which she had to pass, culminating in her making plans to end her own life. She says:
“If it weren’t for one GP questioning the dosage of the aforementioned antidepressant”—
which she was being incorrectly prescribed—
“and actually listening to me, I would probably have spent the last 6 months taking medication I didn’t need and still not have an answer. And there is a distinct chance that I might not be here at all.”
She concludes, and I endorse her point, that she was in the fortunate position of being able to get a private diagnosis. Celebrity cases are frequently diagnosed on the basis of a private diagnosis. There is something wrong if we have a two-tier system whereby those who can afford to pay can find out what is wrong with them, while those who cannot have to carry on thinking that they know what is wrong but without ever getting a diagnosis until perhaps, in some cases, it is too late.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Angela, and to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), who made a powerful speech advocating on behalf of his constituents. I thank the Petitions Committee for granting this debate, and congratulate the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) on leading it.
In the UK, as has been said, about 700 people have autism and about 3 million have ADHD. The average waiting time for a diagnosis is far too long, with some adults having to wait up to seven years for an ADHD diagnosis. Barnsley East is in the top 10% of constituencies with the highest rate of special educational needs. A number of local people have contacted me about their struggles to get the right diagnosis, especially for children, in an appropriate timeframe. They are frustrated with a system that seems to hinder access to support. In Barnsley, the average waiting time for an ADHD diagnosis for under-fives is 10 months, and the average waiting time for those aged five to 16 is among the highest in the country, at two years and four months. Until 2021, Barnsley had a funding black hole of more than £35 million for SEN provision. There is a desperate need for more resources and for the Government to act to enable local authorities to deliver for their communities.
The NHS suggests that the wait for an ADHD diagnosis can be damaging to children, as in the meantime they are likely to miss out on education due to wrongfully being punished for symptoms of undiagnosed ADHD. They also often suffer with anxiety, depression, dyslexia and even epilepsy. Those with undiagnosed autism are likely to struggle living independently, maintaining employment and creating interpersonal relationships. It is clear that the system for diagnosis is inadequate, and it is unfair that people are suffering because of it.
A number of people have been in touch with me over the past few years to share their experiences, especially as parents seeking support for their children. I and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) recently held a meeting in Barnsley to speak with parents who are trying to navigate the system and secure support for their children. They told us that they experience difficulty in getting a diagnosis and in accessing specialist provision, and they also spoke of ongoing care issues. This included but was not limited to ADHD and autism provision.
NICE recommends that the maximum wait for the commencement of an assessment should be three months for autism. However, even if an assessment has begun, that does not mean that a diagnosis will be achieved quickly, as we have heard in this debate. Many are stuck in the system for months or years after the process has started. There is currently no advisory wait time for an ADHD assessment. The Government do not even include data on ADHD diagnoses and waiting times, and have expressed no desire to do so, even though, as has been said, there was a 34% increase in the number of people waiting for an ADHD assessment between 2021 and 2022.
For both conditions, there is a postcode lottery of assessment and diagnosis, meaning that access to much-needed services is effectively restricted depending on where someone lives. Most respondents to the Petitions Committee survey stated that waiting times for assessment for both ADHD and autism are inadequate.
This, of course, speaks to a larger issue of worsening regional inequality over the past 13 years. As the backlog of urgent healthcare cases gets longer, assessment and support for long-term conditions such as ADHD and autism are pushed further backwards. The majority of respondents to my local SEN survey said that it was either difficult or very difficult to access SEN provision. This must change. More data on waiting times for neurodivergent conditions needs to be collected. We need to end the postcode lottery of assessment and diagnosis. Most importantly, to achieve that, more resources must be committed so we can speed up diagnosis and provide the support that is needed for people with ADHD and autism.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
What a pleasure it is to close for the Opposition with you in the Chair, Dame Angela. I thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) and the Petitions Committee for securing this incredibly important debate. I also thank every person who signed the two petitions, and everyone in the Public Gallery for their time, patience and commitment to the cause, which has led to them to sit here for a number of hours. We are all very grateful to have them here.
Normally, when we close, we pick a few comments from those on our own side to praise, but every single contribution to this debate has been heartfelt. Many have been personal, and every single one has added a great deal to the discussion. It is always a pleasure to see cross-party agreement in this place that an issue absolutely needs to be dealt with.
Some of the take-homes, which are really stark, are things that I knew already but which have been brought to the forefront of my mind yet again. For example, hon. Members raised the increased suicide rate among those with ADHD and autism. It is a wasted opportunity for a life well lived when someone takes their own life. That could have been avoided if they had early diagnosis and treatment, and that is why it is so important that we are here today.
On the postcode lottery, it is alarming that there is a real divide based on where someone lives, how much money they have and their ability to access private care. As a parent, I understand the desperate feeling—although not with regard to autism and ADHD—of just wanting the best for one’s child. I have many friends, colleagues and constituents who live in purgatory—they just want to know when they can get help and support for their child. The feeling of being at the school gates and not knowing what kind of day their child is going to have stays with them for the entire day, so they cannot even concentrate at work. Many parents take time off work, so are unable to contribute to the economy, to raise children who will never fulfil their potential because they have been let down.
In 2021, the Government committed to making progress on reducing diagnosis waiting times in their national autism strategy for England. However, the latest data shows that more than 125,000 people are currently waiting for an autism assessment—an increase of more than 30% in the past year alone. The vast majority of those people are waiting longer than the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s recommended 13-week wait, and far too few have a care contact each month.
Far too often, there is sadly a postcode lottery when it comes to access to a timely assessment. Waiting times are still far too long in many parts of the country, leaving some autistic adults and children waiting many months or even years for a diagnosis.
A constituent of mine, a woman in her late 20s, will not mind me telling the House of the letter she sent me to confirm that she had been accepted on to the waiting list, but it is expected to be 36 months before she is seen. That is 36 months of insecurity in the workplace, in her marriage and in her life.
Reports are emerging of patients having to spend thousands of pounds on private healthcare to get a much-needed assessment and diagnosis. Frankly, patients and their families are being failed. That is simply not good enough. A diagnosis of autism or ADHD is vital to accessing appropriate support, which we know can make such a difference. Concerning reports have emerged recently of people waiting up to five years for an ADHD assessment. That is five years without the crucial support that they need and access to services.
For ADHD assessments, there is no NHS waiting time standard. How can it be right that we have no idea of the number of people waiting for assessment? Without routinely published figures, we cannot get a handle on the scale of the issue. Will the Government please reconsider that?
Without a formal ADHD or autism diagnosis, many people will struggle at school, in the workplace and at home. It is crucial to understand that people with autism or ADHD are more likely to experience mental illness and, all too often, end up in crisis and, at the very worst, taking their own life. Imagine the desperation someone must feel to do that.
Over the past few months, I have been honoured to sit on the Joint Committee on the reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. In an evidence session, we heard from Alexis Quinn. Her evidence cut to the core of how patients are being failed and why the Government must act. For anyone present who does not know, a misdiagnosis meant that Alexis was locked inside in-patient mental health settings for three years. Eventually, she had to flee the country to get help. It is inhumane that autistic people can end up detained in inappropriate settings because they are incorrectly diagnosed. I thank the National Autistic Society for feeding into the draft Bill and for its input during the pre-legislative Joint Committee —its evidence was vital.
I appreciate that this debate is specifically about assessments, but I would like to hear from the Minister about what the Government are doing to provide tailored, appropriate care for people with autism or ADHD after the assessment stage. Speedy access to an assessment is prevention in action—prevention of worsening mental health in people with ADHD or autism—yet the Government fail to ensure that assessments are readily available. How many more people with ADHD or autism will be left behind, stuck on long waiting lists with their mental health steadily worsening, before this Government finally get their act together?
I know that we do not like to play political football in this place—well, we do, but this is not one of the issues on which we ever like to do it. I know that the Minister is full of integrity and cares greatly about this issue, but we need the Government to take their head out of the sand and to take action on waiting lists. The NHS does an incredible job with the resources that it has. However, long waits for treatment have a considerable impact on patients and families. It is heartbreaking to hear Members in this Chamber talk about constituents who have lost children—children who felt that there was no other option but to take their own life. That is a failing of what we can do in this place to make things better. There is a moral imperative on us to do that.
When will the Government increase capacity and resourcing to ensure that waiting times for assessment can be reduced? It is unacceptable that a six-month wait has become the standard for autism referrals, with many adults waiting years to be seen. The Government keep kicking vital health strategies into the long grass, with yet another new strategy scrapping those that came before it. There is no clear message from the Government about what that means for people living day to day with autism or ADHD. Will the Government please now outline whether future work on major conditions will tackle waiting times for assessment of autism and ADHD?
I truly believe, unfortunately, that the longer the Conservatives are in power, the longer patients will wait, because a 13-year track record has nothing to show us other than that fact. Labour will lead on early intervention and prevention by providing a mental health specialist in every school, allowing children with ADHD or autism—who disproportionately experience mental illness—the ability to access mental health support in their school. This debate is timely, because it is Children’s Mental Health Week, and perhaps that policy could be adopted in a cross-party way to ensure that children do not have to wait in the way that they are doing. For people with ADHD or autism, receiving an assessment is the first step to accessing often life-saving support. We cannot allow people to be failed at the first hurdle.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. I take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for introducing this important debate, and I thank the wider Petitions Committee. I also echo the words of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), in thanking those in the Public Gallery who have listened to the debate.
This debate is the second on this issue; we had one on ADHD specifically in Westminster Hall last week, secured by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). One of the key points made in that debate was about the lack of data collection on ADHD, and we have heard from many Members this afternoon about the impact of that. Although the data is there, it is not pooled together at a regional or national level, and I gave a commitment in that debate that we would look at a data dashboard so that, for ADHD, we can start to piece together who is waiting, where and for what.
I thank all the Members who have taken part in this debate. The fact that we have heard from more than 15 right hon. and hon. Members from different parts of the country and different political parties shows the sheer scale of the problem. I thank everyone for the tone of the debate and for raising these serious issues so well.
Public awareness of autism and ADHD has grown over the past decade, and that is really welcome. The National Autistic Society estimated that 99.5% of the public is now aware of autism. We have a wide range of people to thank for that, from public figures who are increasingly open in the media about their experience, to advocates such as the petitioners, who have helped to bring this debate to this Chamber, and right hon. and hon. Members, who keep neurodiversity firmly on the parliamentary radar and high up the priority list.
The more conversations we have, the more people are empowered to recognise that they or a loved one could be autistic or have ADHD. While this is positive, the debate has been focused on the challenges people face. As I said last week, I am not going to duck away and pretend that there are not significant problems with diagnosis, assessment and getting help and support for ADHD and autism. My own postbag as a constituency MP in Lewes reflects much of what has been said about not just waiting times for referrals but difficulties getting EHCPs—and about the high refusal rate, which we did not hear a huge amount about this afternoon. It might be my particular area, but we have a high number of tribunals in my part of the country. Around 90% of the cases are successful at tribunal, which tells me that there is a problem with parents having to fight tooth and nail to get plans in place.
We have heard about the impact of not getting the help and support that is needed. Early intervention and support avoids a child, young person or adult going into a crisis where even more intensive support is needed and in which damage is done during vital years of their life. That is particularly the case for young people, who should be in school getting educational support but cannot be because they do not have the help and support they need.
My hon. Friends the Members for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood) and for Darlington (Peter Gibson) talked about whether there is enough funding. That is an interesting debate. Funding is going in like never before, including over £74 million to the autism strategy. Specifically on autism diagnosis, £2.5 million has gone in in the last year to improve autism diagnostic pathways, but it is about how that money is spent and whether it is making a difference. We are putting in more funding, because the issue is significant.
For too many people, the path to diagnosis is too long. There is a great deal of frustration from patients and professionals alike. NICE has a recommendation that autism assessments should be done within 13 weeks of referral and we know that in many cases that recommendation is not being met. For ADHD there are no recommended waiting times for diagnosis, and we are committed to looking at that specifically. NICE sets out for ADHD who should make a diagnosis and the criteria that should be followed. In the absence of a physical test for diagnosis, it can be challenging, especially when other conditions are at play that may overlap and mask symptoms. However, that does not mean we should accept the current long waiting times as the norm.
As many have said this afternoon, we have over 125,000 people waiting with a referral for suspected autism who have not yet received a diagnosis. Only 8.5% of referrals are within the 13-week wait, which is completely unacceptable. We have heard that there are challenges in Wales, as there are in England, and I am absolutely happy to work with colleagues from all the devolved nations to improve assessment, diagnosis and services across the board. However, there are opportunities coming through and a number of colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), mentioned some of the pilot studies.
NHS England has developed a framework that is transforming learning from autism and ADHD pilot schemes into scalable action, which will improve support and care for people across the country. Last year, part of the £13 million autism funding enabled 72 pilot tests for improvements in diagnostic pathways, and these pilots are now helping NHS England to develop a national framework on autism that will improve assessment across the country for people of all ages. I am happy to send colleagues the details of those pilot studies, the initial findings and their potential scope as we roll out them out further.
We now expect integrated care boards, which were set up in July of last year, to lead the charge on how pathways can be best delivered in local areas. The guidance will provide signposting at each stage of the assessment process, helping to map out a clear route for diagnosis. We now expect every integrated care board to have an executive lead for learning disabilities and autism, and there was talk in the debate about having a national lead. Actually, we want leads at every single local integrated care board to be the lead person to whom MPs can go if assessments are not being done on time, to hold local services to account, to compare best practice and to make sure it is happening in every part of the country. We are putting in the investment needed to meet the demand, because further investment will be needed. This year, we have committed an extra £2.5 million to the scheme, which will help roll it out further.
Many Members have talked about CAMHS. Although autism and ADHD are not mental illnesses, we know that people with such conditions are often more at risk of mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression. One of the key things that is making a real difference for young people is the introduction of mental health support teams in schools. The shadow Minister touched on that earlier, and we currently have 287 mental health support teams offering support to about 4,700 schools and colleges around the country. That is making a difference by supporting young people with mental health issues, but it is also about identifying whether they could have an ADHD or autism diagnosis and getting them into the system much more quickly.
Mr Robin Walker
I welcome the expansion of those teams and the fact that we have more mental health support in schools, but does the Minister recognise that one of the big challenges, particularly with children waiting a long time for diagnosis, is children who are out of school and who are remote from the system, where parents do not feel that their needs are being met and children can wait a very long time for an EHCP? Does she agree that the system as a whole would benefit enormously from faster diagnosis to address that problem?
Maria Caulfield
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The mental health teams will support children in schools so that, we hope, we can get in at an earlier stage and children are not excluded in the future. For too long, appeals from parents for assessments and diagnosis have gone unheard. I talked about my own constituency, where tribunals are very frequent, which means that children escalate, get into crisis and are excluded far more often than they should be. The teams will make a real difference by signposting for the children and getting them assessed much more quickly, and we will continue the investment to roll out support more widely. Last year, we invested £79 million to give around 22,500 more children and young people access to community services, which will make a long-term difference.
The pilot in Bradford was mentioned. We are investing in identification in educational settings and committing £600,000 to expand an autism early identification pilot to at least 100 schools over the next five years. I am keen to ramp that up further and faster if we can. Again, positive early findings from that pilot have seen staff reporting that they are better able to identify and support those children.
A number of Members mentioned the interworking between health and education—I admit that it has not been great up until now. We are working to improve that. I hear from teachers who take up the heavy lifting of supporting children and their parents and they often feel that healthcare does not do its bit in terms of getting assessments done quickly. That is why we are working jointly on the SEND review, for which the Green Paper was published last year. We are hoping to update colleagues imminently on the implementation of that. It will make a strategic difference with getting people assessed, diagnosed and supported as quickly as possible. That review is on top of our national autism strategy, which was published last year. We are working up the guidance that will implement that strategy on the ground to improve access to services that people expect.
I hope that I have outlined some of the work that has been done to manage demand, cut waiting times and deliver meaningful change for both autistic people and those with ADHD. I am the first to admit that we are not where we want to be, and that there is a lot of work to be done. With health and education working together, the SEND review, and our autism strategy, as well as by collecting data so that we know what services are where, setting the standards we expect to be met and working with local integrated care boards, we can ensure we improve the experience for everyone.
I will touch on a final point, raised by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), which was that ADHD is under-diagnosed in women and girls. She is absolutely right, and that is because the symptoms and signs are very different in girls as opposed to boys and men. We are looking at that in the women’s health strategy. We see a number of young women taking their own lives because they have not been diagnosed in time and given the support they need. That is a priority area for the Government.
I thank colleagues for a very constructive debate. I hope I am not here again next year, and that we see the improvements we are determined to make. I am encouraged, but I realise that it has to feel different for parents, children, young people and adults who are waiting for an assessment and the care they need to improve their experience of living with autism and ADHD.
Elliot Colburn
I do not want to detain Members much longer, as we have had a long debate. I thank the Minister for being so honest and up front about the scale of the challenge. I know that is greatly appreciated.
The scale of the challenge has also been felt throughout the huge range of contributions we heard. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar), my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood), the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie), the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers), the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock).
I am grateful to hon. and right hon. Members for their attention to detail. In particular, I thank the petitioners for bringing us here today to talk about this important issue. I thank the representatives from ADHD UK and the Autistic Society, and the many charities who have helped and briefed us in advance of today’s debate. I thank the TV and radio host Melanie Sykes for all of her input and briefings, as well as the creators of the petition, Jess and Lisa.
It is very clear that the situation with waiting lists for autism and ADHD assessments is desperate and requires urgent attention. These are waiting lists that we would not accept in any other area of the NHS. We are poorer as a country for not taking full advantage of the talents that neurodiverse people can bring. That was illustrated by the fact that there were interventions from the Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), and the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes).
There is still a lot of work to do. I hope we do not have the same discussions next year, and instead can come back to celebrate success. I am grateful to Members for their attention and to those in the Public Gallery for their attendance.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered e-petitions 589667 and 597840, relating to assessments for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Written Statements
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Resilience and Security of Software: Call for Views
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Julia Lopez)
I am pleased to inform the House that the Government have published a document entitled “Call for views on software resilience and security for businesses and organisations”. This document sets out the Government’s existing assessment of the cyber-security risks posed by software and seeks responses from industry, academia and other organisations over a 12 week period. These views will help to formulate UK Government policy in this area.
Digital technologies play a crucial and ever-increasing role in the UK economy, and in the day-to-day lives of citizens. Increasing digitisation brings huge economic and social opportunities, and the UK is well placed to take full advantage of this. Embracing digital technologies across our economy is crucial to delivering the ambitions we set out in the National Cyber Strategy and UK Digital Strategy to secure the UK’s prosperity, national security, global competitiveness and geopolitical standing in the world.
To achieve these aims, we must ensure consumers and businesses feel confident in the use of digital technologies, which means the foundations of our technology must be secure. Software is a fundamental building block of all digital environments, and is often the point of entry for a cyber-attack. Over the past 3 years, there has been an average annual increase of more than 700% in the number of software supply chain attacks globally. Incidents in recent years, such as the 2020 SolarWinds attack and the discovery of the Log4j vulnerability in 2021, have demonstrated the widespread impact that software incidents can have on national security as well as businesses, charities, educational institutions and other organisations operating across the UK. Strengthening the resilience of software is an important part of strengthening organisational cyber resilience more widely. This will help reduce the cyber threat to the economy and prevent harm to businesses, UK citizens and the UK’s worldwide customers.
As such, we have launched this 12 week call for views process, where we welcome views on the key risks linked to software, and where the Government will be best placed to help mitigate them. These views will help shape UK Government policy, and ensure that our resources are directed at the highest priority areas. We look forward to working with organisations, policy makers, academics, international partners and other interested parties, to make the UK a stronger and more secure place for organisations to do business.
I will place a copy of the “Call for views on the resilience and security of software used by businesses and organisations” document in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS544]
Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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The Minister for Security (Tom Tugendhat)
Section 19(1) of the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIM) Act 2011 (the Act) requires the Secretary of State to report to Parliament as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of every relevant three-month period on the exercise of her TPIM powers under the Act during that period. TPIM notices in force (as of 30 November 2022) 2 Number of new TPIM notices served (during this period) 1 TPIM notices in respect of British citizens (as of 30 November 2022) 2 TPIM notices extended (during the reporting period) 0 TPIM notices revoked (during the reporting period) 0 TPIM notices expired (during reporting period) 0 TPIM notices revived (during the reporting period) 0 Variations made to measures specified in TPIM notices (during the reporting period) 1 Applications to vary measures specified in TPIM notices refused (during the reporting period) 1 The number of subjects relocated under TPIM legislation (during this the reporting stage) 1
The level of information provided will always be subject to slight variations based on operational advice.
The TPIM Review Group (TRG) keeps every TPIM notice under regular and formal review. TRG meetings were held on 19 and 26 October 2022.
On 4 October 2022 one individual pleaded guilty to one count of breaching the residence measure of the TPIM notice. The individual was sentenced to a four week night-time curfew and a fine of £100.
[HCWS543]
Local Government Finance Settlement 2023-24
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Michael Gove)
Introduction
Local government plays a vital role in supporting, improving and helping communities up and down the land. Councils do amazing work, every day and often away from the headlines, on a huge range of many different subjects and important issues.
This settlement will ensure that councils across the country have further resources available to deliver services to their communities.
Today I am laying before the House the Local Government Finance Report (England) 2023 to 2024, the Referendums relating to Council Tax Increases (Principles) (England) Report 2023 to 2024, and the Referendums relating to Council Tax Increases (Alternative Notional Amounts) (England) Report 2023 to 2024. Together, these form the final local Government finance settlement for 2023-24.
Total funding—core spending power
In recognition of the work undertaken by councils, this settlement makes available an increase of 9.4% in cash terms of national level core spending power. This makes available £5.1 billion in additional resources, to help local authorities to support their communities through challenging times.
Funding guarantee
Local government delivers a broad range of services for all our communities. That is why we are supporting all tiers of local government through this settlement with a new, one-off funding guarantee that ensures all local authorities will see a minimum 3% increase in their core spending power before taking any local decisions on raising council tax.
Council tax
The Government manifesto commits to continuing to protect local taxpayers, in normal circumstances, from excessive council tax increases. The package of referendum principles we are proposing strikes a fair balance. This settlement confirms our intention for referendum principles of up to 3% for core council tax and up to 2% for the adult social care precept in 2023-24, significantly below headline rates of inflation. These provisions are not a cap, nor do they force councils to set taxes at the threshold level. When taking decisions on council tax levels, I expect councillors, mayors, police and crime commissioners and local councils to take into consideration the pressures many households are facing.
The Mayor of London has requested flexibility to levy an additional £20 on band D bills to the Greater London Authority (GLA) precept to provide extra funding for Transport for London (TfL). The Government have expressed ongoing concern about the management of TfL by this Mayor, and it is disappointing that London taxpayers are having to foot the bill for the GLA’s poor governance and decision making. While the Government will not oppose this request, any decision to increase the precept is solely one for the Mayor, who should take into account the pressures that Londoners are currently facing on living costs and his decision to raise his share of council tax by 8.8% last year.
Social care
This settlement ensures a significant additional taxpayer subsidy for social care services. Ahead of any consideration of council tax, it provides around £2 billion in additional grant for social care in 2023-24. This includes:
£300 million discharge funding to be pooled as part of the better care fund to get people out of hospital on time into a care setting.
£1.3 billion to be distributed to councils through the social care grant for adults’ and children’s social care, on top of the rollover in funding from 2022-23.
Adult social care market sustainability and improvement funding of £400 million, which will be combined with the existing £162 million in fair cost of care funding.
I am also pleased to announce that we have published an explanatory note on social care funding today, setting out more detail on the different social care grants provided for through this settlement.
Changes following consultation and engagement
We received 157 responses to the provisional local government finance settlement consultation, and I am grateful to everyone who took the time to respond. Following the consultation and engagement process on the provisional settlement, we have made the following changes:
New homes bonus allocations
Alongside the provisional settlement, we asked local authorities to check the accuracy of homebuilding data they have returned to us and tell us if it is inaccurate. Following these representations, we have increased new homes bonus allocations by £0.63 million and funded this through contingency set aside at the provisional Settlement.
Rural services delivery grant
In recognition of specific cost pressures in rural areas the Government are increasing the rural services delivery grant by £10 million, bringing the total value to £95 million. This is funded through contingency set aside at the provisional settlement.
Contingency funding
Increasing services grant by £19.1 million above the provisional settlement proposals, by distributing unused contingency back into local government as proposed at the provisional settlement, through the services grant. To account for changes between the provisional and final settlement, the funding guarantee has been recalculated to ensure that all authorities will see at least a 3% increase in their core spending power before any decision they make about organisational efficiencies, use of reserves, and council tax levels. Any funding no longer going to the funding guarantee has been allocated back through the services grant.
Thurrock, Croydon and Slough Councils
Following significant failures in their local leadership, governance and financial management, the Government received requests from Thurrock, Croydon and Slough for the flexibility to increase their council tax by an additional amount, to provide extra funding to support their financial recovery. This is on top of the significant additional support Government have already granted through the exceptional financial support process. Given the exceptional circumstances of these councils, including unprecedented financial deficits driven by poor decision making in the past and the need for ongoing Government intervention to drive their improvement and recovery, the Government have decided not to oppose the requests.
In line with their requests, Thurrock and Slough will be able to raise council tax by an additional 5% above referendum principles applied to other councils, and Croydon will be able to raise an additional 10%. The Government are of course conscious of the impact on local taxpayers, particularly those on low incomes, of having to foot part of the bill for their councils’ very significant failings. We have been clear to each of the councils that in implementing any additional increases, they should take steps to mitigate the impact on those least able to pay.
Other
Every authority in England will receive a share of the accumulated surplus currently held in the business rates levy account. I can confirm that £100 million will be returned to the sector on a one-off basis to be distributed based on each local authority's 2013-14 settlement funding assessment.
The services grant allocation for the Isle of Wight council includes an additional £1 million that was allocated to the council for 2022-23 and 2023-24 in recognition of the unique circumstances facing the Isle of Wight and its physical separation from the mainland. This funding is reviewed each year as part of the local government finance settlement.
We have also seen the representations from local authorities facing significant increases in internal drainage board levies and will commit to working with the most affected local authorities ahead of the new financial year.
These changes seek to address some of the concerns raised during the consultation period on our proposals, and to even better provide local authorities with the tools to support their local communities, continue to reform their services for the long term, and to help communities prepare for the future.
[HCWS545]
Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)
My Lords, I am advised that if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Financial Services and Markets Bill
Monday 6th February 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 View all Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 80-IV(b) Amendments for Grand Committee (Supplementary to the Fourth Marshalled List) - (6 Feb 2023)
Lord Moylan
“(3A) In section 2B (PRA’s general objective), insert—“(3A) In advancing its general objective, the PRA must act so as to minimise barriers to the wider ownership of regulated investments by the general public consistently with its general objective in subsection (2).””
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 241, also in my name. I hope this will be the least controversial mini-debate on the Bill, because I do not think anybody in the Committee is other than opposed to financial exclusion. We favour financial inclusion, especially in a modern digital age. What is normally meant by financial inclusion is the opportunity for people of limited means or living in marginalised circumstances to participate in the financial and banking system—something that is all the more necessary now that people are so dependent on access to it, not least for benefits but also for other, ordinary means of getting about in life and so forth. Who can be against that? A number of amendments in this group tend towards strengthening the obligations on the regulators to promote financial inclusion, and I am happy to lend my general support to them.
Amendments 55 and 241 in my name relate to a different sort of financial exclusion that has grown up over the last 25 or 30 years: the general tendency to exclude the retail investor from the opportunities to invest in regulated products. For example, we have gone from a situation 30 years ago where it was possible to buy gilts—UK government bonds—at the Post Office, or to bid for new issues of gilts at an average price through cutting out a coupon in the newspaper, to a situation where it is very difficult for ordinary people to buy government bonds.
In the case of highly rated corporate bonds, an EU regulation incorporated from its prospectus directive has set the minimum denomination of new issues of bonds at €100,000, which we have applied of course. The result is that very few sterling bonds are in denominations small enough for ordinary investors to buy, and even they are long-dated issues that are running off, so soon there will be no more unless we take some action.
The days of Sid are long gone. Nowadays, when companies do new share issues—what have come to be known as IPOs, initial public offerings, or even subsequent offerings—corporate treasurers are simply uninterested in engaging with retail investors, partly because the burden of additional regulation involved deters them from doing so. Shares are generally placed in private placements with institutional investors, because it is easier and quicker—no room for the retail investor.
There have been two reasons for this. The first is overcaution on the part of regulators. They feel responsible for regulated investments, so they do not want anyone to lose any money unless they are a really big player. The easiest way of preventing smaller players such as retail investors from losing money and complaining is to prevent them from investing in the first place. The second is the reluctance of corporate treasurers to engage with the retail market, because they have no incentive to do so, only additional burdens.
This might have been motivated by a good sentiment for protecting investors, but the results have been completely perverse. Nothing prevents retail investors investing in unregulated investments, so we see people out there quite freely putting their money into spread-betting; contracts for difference, which are similar to spread-betting; and even some things misleadingly known as mini-bonds, on which they regularly lose their shirts. Indeed, one issue of mini-bonds, from London Capital & Finance, was unregulated; it was ambivalent whether or not the regulator had actually regulated it. Noble Lords will recall that, last year, we had to pass a special Act of Parliament to allow the Treasury to indemnify those investors, because they had potentially been misled on the legal position. The core point is not that we had to indemnify them; it is that they were perfectly able to invest and to lose their shirts. But we stopped them—regulators and the circumstances prevent them—from investing in much safer, regulated products.
Amendment 55, in my name—I am grateful for the support of my noble friends, Lord Trenchard and Lord Naseby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer—puts a new objective on the Prudential Regulation Authority to ensure that, as part of its work, it aims to minimise the barriers to retail participation in regulated products in the financial market.
Amendment 241 deals specifically with the narrow point that denominations of corporate bonds are required at the moment to be a minimum of €100,000 and replaces that with what we were used to many years ago, by having £1,000. That would make them accessible to retail investors.
I have had conversations with brokers—and I am grateful for them—who deal with retail investors in the City. I know that they are already in contact with the Treasury and that the Treasury is sympathetic to these arguments. There is nothing in what I say that will come as a surprise to the Minister, and I hope that, when she stands up, she will say many warm words in support of both my amendments, which I would appreciate. But I am concerned that there should be more than simply warm words and unbankable promises about what regulators might be asked to do in the future, so my inclination at the moment is that legislation would be a jolly good way forward. I beg to move.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as a director of two investment companies, as stated in the register. I support my noble friend Lord Moylan in his Amendments 55 and 241, to which I have added my name. My noble friend has explained the purpose of his amendments very well and he spoke persuasively on this subject at Second Reading.
I was involved in much of the privatisation programme of the 1980s, and the Government’s efforts to increase the shareholder base, especially the retail shareholder base, were rather successful. Regulation has increasingly stymied retail investors’ ability to buy equities and bonds since that time, and I strongly support my noble friend’s wish to bring back Sid. New issues of equities used to be widely available to retail investors, but additional regulatory requirements now discourage corporate treasurers from including retail tranches in public offerings.
Amendment 55 requires the PRA, in advancing its general objective, to minimise barriers to wider securities ownership. This will create a better balance of factors, which it must take into account without in any way weakening the stability of the UK financial system.
As my noble friend mentioned, the prospectus directive is a strong candidate for early reform, in particular its requirement for a minimum transaction amount in a corporate bond issue of €100,000, which obviously excludes most retail investors from the market.
I also support Amendment 241, for the reasons that my noble friend has well explained to the Committee.
My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond proposes a new financial inclusion objective for the FCA. I welcome the steps that the Treasury and the DWP have taken to support financial inclusion. Could my noble friend the Minister tell the Committee how the welcome decision to release £65 million of dormant assets funding to Fair4All Finance has improved access to fair, affordable and appropriate financial products for those in financial difficulty? How do the Government intend to honour their commitment to protect the long-term viability of the UK’s cash infrastructure as we move inexorably towards a cashless society.
The Money and Pensions Service, in its national well-being strategy published in 2020, set out an agenda for change containing various ways in which to help people manage their money more effectively. I welcome this and other steps that the Government are taking in this area. I am also mindful of the fact that the Government have legislated to create a consumer financial education body, and I ask my noble friend what plans the Treasury has for that body. I welcome what is being done, and I am not sure that it is sensible to give a further objective to the FCA in this area, because it would dilute the attention that the FCA must give to its existing objective and two new ones—both the one already included in the Bill, the competitiveness and growth objective, and that proposed by my noble friend Lord Lilley, the predictability and consistency objective.
I also have sympathy with Amendment 75, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, on financial inclusion, and I look forward to what he has to say. When I look at the matters to which the FCA must have regard in furthering its consumer protection objective, I am surprised that retail investors are allowed to invest at all. I am not sure that Amendment 75 would help reduce the barriers to market participation by ordinary investors.
I have sympathy with Amendment 117, because I think it will help if the FCA has a duty to address the issue. But I cannot support Amendment 228 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, because it may unfairly prescribe a bank’s ability to decide within reason the businesses that it wants to undertake, and its obligations to its shareholders and depositors to invest their money wisely. I am also not sure how the noble Baroness would define low-income communities. Our markets have been adversely affected both by the impediments to new authorisations and by unwarranted restrictions on the businesses of licensed banks. The result of this is often the reverse of what is intended, by dissuading new entrants from seeking authorisation, which negatively affects competitiveness and consumer choice.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
I rise to speak to this group, particularly my Amendments 75 and 117. The group contains the important amendment which would give the FCA a “have regard” duty for financial inclusion within its existing consumer protection objective. The FCA’s and the Government’s argument is that its consumer duty means that it does not need a financial inclusion “have regard”, but there is a fundamental difference between the two. A consumer duty deals with people who are able to access products. I want to know how the FCA—and, incidentally, the Government—will be required to consider those who are not yet consumers.
We are not arguing for a new primary or even secondary objective, and very much want to wait for the outcome of the FCA’s consumer duty work. A “have regard” duty is the proportionate approach to ensure that those who are currently excluded are supported to become consumers and begin to benefit from the new consumer duty that we have heard so much about. We are not being radical or party political in this; we have Lib Dem and Cross-Bench support for Amendment 75. Nor are we alone: the Phoenix Group, a FTSE 100 company, is also arguing for the FCA to have regard to financial inclusion.
I hope that the Minister will consider this amendment favourably and, if she does not, I want to know why not, and what the Government will do to tackle financial inclusion issues, including the poverty premium—the fact that people who can pay for things only monthly rather than in an annual lump sum pay more.
We also have in this group Amendment 117, which
“would require the FCA to report on financial inclusion”
yearly. Perhaps the Minister would value having evidence on how to fix the manifold problems in this area, enabling HMT and stakeholders to feed in too.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Moylan for tabling these amendments and digging fairly deep in this area. There is a lot happening in the City of London and in the whole financial world. There are opportunities for people who want to stay but, at this point in time, the windscreen is pretty misty as to what exactly is out there and whether or not it is regulated. What my noble friend has done is draw attention to this important area.
I talked to my two granddaughters, who take an interest in financial affairs, about what they think about their savings. What is interesting to me is that, for sixth-formers today, maths is absolutely key to their progress. Secondly, somebody is making them take an interest in their futures. That says a lot.
I support Amendment 55; I am very much behind it. I should mention—I think the Committee already knows this—that I have been deeply involved in the mutual movement, which wants to go into new waters to look at what is available and sensible within its clienteles. The same applies to the credit unions.
Noble Lords have spoken about financial inclusion. It is very important. However, I am not sure that there needs to be a report every 12 months. I can see that it should be so initially, but it seems like quite a burden on the authority to produce what I assume would be a long and detailed report.
As regards Amendments 228 and 241, I will wait to hear what my noble friend the Minister says but, in my experience, the joint-stock banks and anything with the Royal Bank of Scotland are in a pretty disastrous state at the moment. Branch after branch is being closed. People are not answering the phone. Emails are not being responded to. The banks do not even tell us when a branch will be closed; they forget then apologise afterwards. It is an absolute, unmitigated disaster; I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will try to get a grip on it.
I make no comment on Amendment 241 other than to say that I am really interested to hear the answer on it from my noble friend on the Front Bench.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in day 4 of the Committee’s deliberations on the Bill. I declare my financial services interests as set out in the register.
I agree with all the amendments in this group. My noble friend Lord Moylan’s amendments are clear, and I ask my noble friend the Minister to answer him in the affirmative when she comes to respond and to say that legislating in this area would be helpful on whatever agenda it was measured against. He also reminded us of Sid, who was the poster child for British Gas. It seems only appropriate, in that I find myself sitting next to a former prima ballerina, for me to say that I seem to remember BT using the music from “Swan Lake” for its initial public offerings—all to the good. It must be right that people have an opportunity to take part, with all the correct safeguards and rails around it, in these activities. I very much support Amendments 55 and 241.
Similarly, I support the amendments around the “have regard” duty for the FCA. My noble friend the Minister will be familiar with these arguments; we talked about them very much in our debates on the 2021 Bill, now an Act. We have had Oral Questions and Written Questions on the subject, so she will be well rehearsed in her answer on a “have regard” duty.
For this reason, I tabled Amendment 67A. It is time for the FCA to have a financial inclusion objective. That is in no sense to fetter the regulator’s independence or existing objectives. The financial inclusion objective could only be additive and assistive to its existing objectives on consumer protection, market integrity and competition, and to any potential future objectives as set out in the Bill.
Following the intervening two years since we last discussed financial inclusion in detail on the 2021 Bill, are there now more or fewer bank branches and ATMs? Is there more or less cash acceptance and financial inclusion? Whatever government agenda we consider—growth, levelling up, or increased connectivity and creativity for our citizens, communities, cities and country—a financial inclusion objective for the FCA makes sense. Will my noble friend agree that it is now time to enable the FCA to play a spearheading role in financial inclusion, and to accept Amendment 67A?
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, as this is my first intervention in Committee, I refer to my interests in the register as a member of the Financial Inclusion Commission and as president of the Money Advice Trust.
I will speak to Amendments 75 and 117 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, to which I attached my name, and Amendment 228 in the name of my noble friend Lady Kramer, to which my name is also attached. I also support Amendment 67A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, who we have just heard from. Indeed, I would have been pleased to add my name to his amendment had I been able to do so.
In its 2017 report, the House of Lords Select Committee on Financial Exclusion, which I had the privilege to chair, recommended on a unanimous, cross-party basis that
“the Government should expand the remit of the FCA to include a statutory duty to promote financial inclusion as one of its key objectives.”
These key recommendations were reiterated in the 2021 follow-up Liaison Committee report, so this issue has been around for quite a long time. In my view, the Bill is an excellent opportunity finally to make some progress.
Amendment 75 would mean that the FCA must “have regard” to financial inclusion in the consumer protection objective. Amendment 117 would insert a statutory duty to report to Parliament annually on the state of financial inclusion, measures that the FCA has taken, and any recommendations to the Treasury that the FCA wants to give. I know some have argued that that would be onerous. I see it as adding a critical layer of parliamentary scrutiny and accountability to discussions on financial inclusion—something, frankly, that is sorely lacking at the moment. It has been a key theme of many of our deliberations on the Bill.
Whether through a primary duty, as in Amendment 67A from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, or as a must “have regard” duty, as in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, such a duty would directly remedy the fact that the FCA’s consumer duty, which we will look at in a later group, deals primarily with existing customers—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. The consumer duty does not address the needs of the customers whom the market views as more expensive and less profitable to serve and who are therefore excluded from the market.
This proposed new duty would also future-proof policy decisions made after the Bill passes. This would ensure that financial inclusion issues, such as free access to cash, which featured so heavily in our Second Reading debate, are dealt with as they emerge rather than dragging on for years, resulting in a race against time before the cash delivery infrastructure disappears completely.
Our previous debates on people’s need to have free access to their own cash are an excellent example of how the regulator is currently unable to act early on such financial inclusion issues, because they are viewed as outside its remit. The heart of my argument is that, by giving the FCA a cross-cutting “must have regard to” duty, with a requirement to publish findings, it will have the ability, and perhaps more importantly the incentive, to ensure that the needs of those currently denied access due to affordability issues are considered.
Why is this so important? Briefly, in a competitive market firms will naturally design a market around the people who are the most profitable. Certain consumers—we need to be honest about this—are seen as not desirable. These consumers tend to be those who are the most vulnerable and equipped with the least resources. That has consequences for those on the lowest incomes: they struggle to afford or have to pay extra for particular services or products and, if they cannot, they are often unable to access these products at all and are therefore excluded altogether.
Essentially, these amendments seek to remedy that harm. We have already heard a couple of examples of this: some people are paying more for insurance because of where they live, and some are excluded from credit or are paying more for credit due to their credit rating or, frankly, because they cannot benefit from direct debits or they need to use cash. We all know what has happened with the terrible scandal of forcible entry to install prepayment meters.
I will finish by talking briefly about the black hole between the FCA and the Treasury, and why what are seen as social policy issues too often fall through the cracks. That point was repeatedly made by witnesses giving evidence to the Select Committee. In essence, the problem is that industry is just not providing products to meet the needs of all consumers, and some customers it will never be profitable for the industry to serve. If consumer representatives take the issue to the Treasury and the FCA, the Treasury says that it requires more data to act. It sends consumer representatives to the FCA, which says that it is not its responsibility to investigate issues that touch on social policy, so it sends consumer representatives back to the Treasury. That is a totally Catch-22 situation.
It is not just people like me banging on about this. I was very pleased to speak last week to a senior representative of Phoenix, a FTSE-100 company focusing on savings and pensions, which is also calling on government to add a new regulatory principle so that the regulations must have regard to the need to tackle financial inclusion. I thought it was very telling that the company saw this as critical to the growth agenda.
I want to explain briefly why I have added my name to Amendment 228 in the name of my noble friend Lady Kramer. It very ingeniously adds a clear financial inclusion element to the authorisation or renewing of a bank’s licence, while requiring the FCA to have regard to a bank’s services to low-income communities. Major banks, frankly, have had little interest in people on low incomes and were, in my view, dragged pretty reluctantly into having basic banking accounts. That has got a bit better but not an awful lot. If we use bank licences, that gives banks another way to provide such services by supporting credit unions and community banks—institutions that are often better placed to provide banking that is properly tailored to low-income and excluded people.
There is a lot of scope for expansion here. The UK has a far smaller community bank and credit union sector than many other countries. I will not go through all the figures, but certainly the penetration rates in the USA, Canada and Australia are far bigger. Having this sort of arrangement in place is also very much linked to people's desires to have continuing access to face-to-face services, something that we have heard so much about, particularly from the excluded groups, older people and others. Although the banking industry has made some limited progress in addressing this issue, particularly through the launch of shared banking hubs, it has, frankly, been pretty glacial so far. As this amendment so cleverly says, however, there are other things that banks can do to ensure the provision of services, including face-to-face services in low-income communities, and that is why I support it.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 75, to which I have added my name, and in support of Amendment 117, which complements Amendment 75 by looking to provide greater clarity and transparency on how financial inclusion issues can be effectively tackled in future. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, have said all there is to be said, so I will be very brief. I also support Amendment 67A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, which makes many of the same points.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 55. I broadly support the other amendments on financial inclusion and will perhaps say a bit more about that aspect when discussing the amendments in later groups. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for explaining many of the points on which I had questions about his amendment, although I am still unclear what is covered by the term “regulated investments”. I do not think it is defined in the legislation, so perhaps it could be clarified.
I want to add a note of caution. I am not against the idea—obviously, it is motherhood and apple pie, and we are all in favour—but our old friend shareholder democracy is coming up again, and we should recognise that it has a political subtext. The truth is that, unfortunately, that ship has sailed, the bus has left the stop and it has gone the other way. Quite rightly, reference was made to our old friend Sid: the “Tell Sid” campaign was a masterpiece of promoting a policy that has had a lasting legacy, but that legacy has not been greater share ownership—greater ownership of regulated investments. In fact, we have seen the reverse, as the noble Lord mentioned in his introductory remarks. The whole thing has gone into reverse such that now, according to the ONS, only 12% by value of UK shares, for example, are owned by individuals, with the majority of shares owned by overseas entities. It is true that other shares are owned through other bodies, such as pension funds and unit trusts, but, in total, that is less than 10%, which I do not believe provides the individual holders with any sense of ownership.
There are many reasons for the shift away from individual ownership, and I think the attitude of the regulator is only a very minor part of it. In a sense, the objectives set out in the amendment have been overwhelmed by bigger forces. There are many reasons why people do not have individual ownership; many people are too poor and simply do not have the money. Even those who have some money in savings—this is a bit of a caricature—have it for rainy days. Regulated investments are not necessarily, depending on the definition, the best place to put your rainy day money.
My concern is the extent to which this amendment suggests it is advisable for people to use their money in this way. It would be very unfortunate and of great concern—perhaps the noble Lord can give me an assurance on this—if the regulatory bodies by implication were providing investment advice. I certainly do not think investment advice belongs in an Act of Parliament.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as London’s Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience, as risks associated with access to cash were noted as a risk to financial inclusion in the London City Resilience Strategy published in 2020.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for allowing me to add my name to their excellent Amendment 117 on financial inclusion. I will speak particularly on digital inclusion. The other signatories have already outlined in much better words than I could why this amendment is required. This amendment would ensure that the heart of this legislation takes account of the needs of the most vulnerable and that we have the opportunity to mitigate the risk that a significant minority of the population may be unwittingly left behind or excluded from crucial financial services. This amendment would be an important addition to the legislation. I agree with my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe that this is not party political. It is a really sensible and pragmatic measure which should afford significant protection.
On financial inclusion, I ask noble Lords to note specific issues of digital inclusion. This relates to financial inclusion as, without access to a smartphone or computer, it is almost impossible to carry out online banking or transfer money to a family member or a business.
I apologise for using a string of statistics, but beneath them there is a significant minority of the population whose stories and suffering because of financial exclusion often get missed. These people may be unable to access basic banking services online, relying heavily on cash or even cheques, and may struggle to pay for very basic things we all take for granted—for instance, automated parking.
Latest figures from the ONS estimated that, in January to February 2020, 96% of households in Great Britain had internet access. This increased from 93% the year before and 57% in 2006, when comparable records began. Although this number is increasing, and statistically it looks as if there is not a huge number of people without internet access, in the same period 76% of adults were using online banking. This leaves a significant minority who still do not. Estimates suggest that over 7 million adults in the UK—around 14%—could be classed as potentially financially excluded, with around 5.8 million having no record of an open or closed bank account. There are well over 600,000 people who could be classed as credit invisible, with the issues that causes for affordable credit.
Digital exclusion’s effects fall disproportionately, and research by the Centre for Social Justice has found that digital exclusion is significantly higher among those on the lowest incomes. It has a disproportionate impact on those who can least afford it. A fifth of adults with a household income below £15,000 are digitally excluded, compared to just 1% of those with an income of £50,000 or more. In turn, this adds to the poverty premium they already pay, as they cannot access the best prices or deals. This poverty premium, which has already been mentioned in this debate, includes borrowing and other financial services, so the proposed duty to be placed on the FCA would ensure that it, as well as the Government and the banking sector, can act to mitigate the risks posed by increasing digitalisation of the sector.
I note that technology often moves faster than we can imagine, Covid changed behaviours that now cannot be unchanged, and any duties imposed on the FCA in relation to financial exclusion will need to assume that the discussion about cash versus card that we are currently having will move to card versus phone, as well as include other technological approaches. Ensuring that the FCA has oversight over that would provide additional protection for the most vulnerable in our society, and I hope the Minister sees the merit of safeguarding which this amendment would provide and agree to include it in the Bill.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
I shall combine speaking as a winding speaker with addressing the amendment that sits in my name. I added my name to the two amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, Amendments 55 and 241. Like him, I am very conscious of many of the recent scandals we have seen—he mentioned London Capital & Finance, but there is also Blackmore Bond and mini-bonds, to mention just two of the most recent. They were fuelled by ordinary investors looking for improved returns. I would hope that with easier access to regulated markets, which typically come with information and analysis by independent entities such as the rating agencies, an investor would be far less likely to fall into unscrupulous hands. That is a consequence that neither the regulator nor the Government have been fully aware of. They are always surprised when an unscrupulous product appears, and they should not, given the general track record.
I also join the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, in their amendments to insert at least “have regard” for financial inclusion and for proper reporting on financial inclusion. I also support Amendment 67A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, to turn that into an objective.
My biggest gripe with the FCA on the financial inclusion agenda is that it is passive. If a new product or organisation were to come forward serving part or all of that community, it would of course appropriately regulate it. The problem is that it does not use its incredibly powerful and influential role as a regulator to spearhead the actual change—to pick up the words of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. It does not, for example, ask the competition to come up with a product or even look at mechanisms such as bank in a box, which is very popular across the globe. That makes it very easy for new entities to come to market, because the whole core regulatory piece comes off the shelf. That changes the dynamic dramatically. It does not take the initiative and, until it does, I can see that no one else will.
All of that in a sense leads me to my Amendment 228. Others have talked about the intractable problem of financial inclusion, and I suspect that many in this Room, like me, have been to round table after round table, meeting after meeting, conference after conference, with banks, credit unions, mutuals, fintechs and civil society groups to hear proposals for cracking the financial inclusion problem. Year after year, it is the same conversation, with relatively little headway. Others may correct me, but the number I have is that we still have 1.2 million people without a bank or credit union account, and in modern society that means that you simply cannot function.
I have huge respect for credit unions; I am delighted that there are amendments to support them and mutuals in the Bill. However, only 1.4 million people in the UK actually use them. That is a fraction of those who could benefit. Other forms of community development financial institutions are scattered, tend to be small and have limited scope. Local and community banks, as well as the old savings and loans, have largely been absorbed by the high street banks. In turn, as others have said, they have rapidly closed branches and anyway rely on a centralised system of decision-making that does little for local businesses or circumstances; we saw that graphically after the 2007 crash. There is a regional mutual bank movement—the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, addressed this in our debate on a previous set of amendments—that is trying to build, but the lack of capital is a major hurdle. Again, my noble friend Lady Tyler referred to the banking hub scheme driven by the access to cash task force, but it is growing exceedingly slowly.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Penn) (Con)
My Lords, I will speak first to Amendments 55 and 241, tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan, before turning to Amendments 67A, 75, 117 and 228, tabled by my noble friend Lord Holmes, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer.
On Amendments 55 and 241, I am happy to report that action is already being taken to reduce barriers for retail investors, while ensuring that appropriate consumer protection measures are in place. The Government are reforming the UK prospectus regime through the powers that are being legislated for as part of this Bill. These reforms will remove barriers to retail participation in equity and bond markets by removing the duplication and disincentives that exist in the current regime. Additionally, the reforms will require the FCA, as the responsible regulator, to have regard to the desirability of offers of securities being made to a wide range of investors when making rules in this area.
Separately, the Government appointed Freshfields’ partner Mark Austin to lead the secondary capital raising review and have accepted all his recommendations addressed to the Government. One of the objectives of the review was to promote retail shareholders’ inclusion in further issuances by listed companies. I assure my noble friend that this is not jam tomorrow; the reforms to the prospectus regime are set out in a draft statutory instrument published alongside the Edinburgh reforms. Taking that SI forward is part of the first-priority tranche of work that will happen once we have passed this legislation. We have a very clear plan.
The remaining amendments in this group relate to promoting financial inclusion through a different lens from that put forward by my noble friend. The Government seek to ensure that people, regardless of their background or income, have access to useful and affordable financial products and services. We work closely with regulators and stakeholders from the public, private and third sectors to improve people’s access to useful and affordable financial services, and we are taking a significant step to protect the most vulnerable by legislating to protect access to cash through this Bill—something noted by my noble friend Lord Trenchard and others.
Amendments 75 and 67A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and my noble friend Lord Holmes, respectively, seek to add financial inclusion to the FCA’s objectives. While I commend these amendments and agree with their intention, the FCA’s objectives are core to its functions and should not be changed lightly or without detailed consultation, given the complexity of, and the risk of unintended consequences for, the way financial services are regulated in the UK.
Where there are gaps in the market that mean that some consumers struggle to access appropriate financial products, it is right that the Government, not the regulator, take the lead on action to address them. The Government have done this by, for example, requiring major banks to provide basic bank accounts for those who might otherwise be unbanked.
The FCA plays an important role in supporting this work. In his evidence to the Public Bill Committee, Sheldon Mills, the executive director of consumers and competition at the FCA, highlighted the proactive approach that the FCA takes on this issue, in line with its existing objectives, working in partnership with Fair4All Finance and others, and using the FCA’s innovation labs to explore how innovation can promote financial inclusion.
Amendment 67A also highlights the important issue of the accessibility of financial services products. I know that my noble friend Lord Holmes is a champion of consumers in this area. I agree that it is important that this continues to be an area of focus for industry. I am pleased that UK Finance has been working closely with the Royal National Institute for the Blind to develop accessibility guidelines for touchscreen chip and pin devices, as well as an approved list of accessible card terminals. The Government’s Disability and Access Ambassador for the banking sector, Kathryn Townsend, is encouraging firms to drive a more consistent consumer experience, as well as continuing engagement with deaf advocacy groups to identify opportunities for improved accessibility. The Economic Secretary will shortly convene the next Financial Inclusion Policy Forum with senior representatives from across financial services and the third sector, which will include a discussion specifically on accessibility in financial services. I hope that this provides reassurance that the Government are taking this issue seriously.
Amendment 67A raises financial literacy. My noble friend is right to recognise the importance of financial literacy, and financial education forms part of a broad and balanced school curriculum. However, it is the Government’s view that delivery of financial literacy in primary and secondary settings is a matter for government, rather than for the financial services regulator.
The amendment refers to digital inclusion, an issue also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross. Again, we absolutely recognise that digital skills and access to technology are increasingly required to take full advantage of services made available by financial services providers. Some examples of action in this space are that the DCMS has negotiated a range of high-quality, low-cost broadband and mobile social tariffs for those in receipt of universal credit and other means-tested benefits. Libraries are also a key focus, able to serve as an alternative point of internet access with in-person support. The digital entitlement allows for adults with no or low digital skills to study for new essential digital skills qualifications for free. There are also banks and financial services providers taking their own action to promote digital skills with their customers.
Amendments 67A and 117 would require the FCA to report on financial inclusion, but that would largely duplicate existing publications, including the FCA’s annual reports, its comprehensive Financial Lives Survey, and the Government’s financial inclusion report, which details joint work with the FCA to promote financial inclusion. On digital inclusion specifically, Ofcom’s latest data on digital equality was published on 30 January.
Finally, I turn to Amendment 228, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. While I sympathise with the intention of the amendment—and I hope that I have set out some of the ways in which the Government are seeking to tackle some of the issues that the noble Baroness raised today—it has the potential for unintended consequences which could harm consumers. As part of the authorisation process, the regulators already take into account a range of different objectives, such as promoting effective competition in the interests of consumers, including those in low-income communities. Adding additional complexity to the process of acquiring a banking licence could create barriers to entry and therefore harm the consumers we are trying to help by reducing the provision of services in the market and limiting competition.
As I have noted already, there are other policies in place which will do this without creating potentially burdensome expectations, particularly on new entrants to the market—for example, through the provision of basic bank accounts. We have also taken action to increase the provision of affordable credit for vulnerable consumers, including those on low incomes, such as providing £3.8 million of funding to pilot a no-interest loan scheme.
I hope that I have set out for noble Lords the wide-ranging government work on the issue of financial inclusion—
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, it is obvious that there is a problem, because virtually everybody has spoken to a problem and said that it must be addressed. It seems to me that the speech the Minister just made was that it is all right, because all these things that the Government are going to do will make it all right. The beauty of the amendments that have been put forward is that somebody is expected to do something. If government has such an important role, who in government will be personally responsible for delivering the improvement that we all seek?
Baroness Penn (Con)
In government, the Financial Inclusion Policy Forum is jointly chaired by my honourable friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and a Minister from the DWP; I will confirm who to noble Lords, because I would not want to get it wrong. That is the forum by which the Government drive the work and bring other actors into this space to co-ordinate on issues.
We recognise financial exclusion and the need to promote financial inclusion as an important area of policy work. We recognise some of the gaps raised today. I would point noble Lords towards progress that is being made in some areas.
We have also heard today about a changing landscape and how we will need to continue our work to keep up with it. As use of cash changes, we are legislating to protect access to cash, but we also need to consider how we can promote digital inclusion, so that, as services move online, people can access them in the same way as they have been able to previously.
The point of difference is not whether there is a problem but whether it is for the Government to lead on co-ordinating the response to that programme, with an important role for the regulators, or whether it is the regulators that should have more emphasis on driving this work.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
Can I put in a real request to the Minister? I understand that she is keeping to her brief, but could she get back to the department and tell it that it is time to do something about this, not just to have endless meetings, gatherings, reports, reviews or pieces of minor tinkering at the corners about it? This needs a driven central initiative. If she can answer me at all, can she take that on and go back to the department to tell it that it is time to do, not just to talk?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I will absolutely take that back to the department, but I disagree with the noble Baroness that no action is happening on this issue. We talked about access to cash; that is being legislated for in the Bill. On access to low-cost finance, I have talked about the money that the Government have put in to pilot a programme of interest-free finance for those who are most vulnerable. We have talked about access to bank branches. I acknowledge that the initiatives on banking hubs have not been as fast as people would want, but they put forward a solution to an issue that we face. We agree that it is a common issue. I have given examples of what we are doing on digital inclusion. In a later group, we will discuss the importance of mental health. We have put in place the Breathing Space scheme for those who are in problem debt and have mental health problems.
Yes, there is a lot more action to take. I recognise the problem and I will take the noble Baroness’s words back to the department, but we are legislating on some measures in the Bill. I have set out very specific measures that we are taking in other areas. It does not mean that the job is done, but it does mean that action is happening.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate and for the support that has been given generally for the amendments tabled. It is true that one or two noble Lords have quibbled about the detail of particular proposals in the amendments, but I think there was universal support for the general principles underlying them.
It falls on me briefly to deal with the quibbles raised by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, because they were pointed directly at amendments in my name. First, he is right to say that over a period of 30 or 40 years there will be a large number of sociological and economic changes that might explain the appetite for different types of investment among the population at large, but surely he will accept that these are completely dwarfed and made irrelevant if the fact is that you are not allowed to purchase the investments in the first place. The object of the amendment here is to allow this to happen. If you have to put €100,000 on the table to buy a corporate bond, people are excluded in very large measure, and questions of their appetite for different types of risk simply do not arise. If there is routinely no retail element to a new issue of shares, retail investors will not be able to buy those shares, so that is that.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, also picked me up on what I meant by regulated investments. It is true that if the amendment were to come back on Report, it should perhaps be drafted more carefully to say, “investments traded in regulated markets”. I accept that it might have been infelicitously drafted but, to give a more substantive answer, perhaps one should take a more apophatic approach and define what non-regulated investments are. They are things such as betting, spread-betting, contracts for difference and mini-bonds.
The noble Lord is concerned that putting your money into highly rated shares, corporate bonds or gilts might be a little risky and inappropriate for somebody setting aside money for the future, but he has not tabled the amendment that I would hope to see in that case that would have prevented them investing in all these different products, which are there freely available and which people invest in. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, pointed out, the mini-bond crisis was about perfectly respectable people believing that they were investing in something that looked like a bond, when it was not at all, for a return that appeared attractive. If we do nothing for them and allow that, why are we worried about them investing in real bonds?
Finally, there is the question of whether by agreeing such an objective for the regulators they would in effect be giving advice. I simply refute that: to remove a barrier to investment is not to give advice. I do not know where the noble Lord keeps his money for a rainy day. Perhaps it is all in a savings account somewhere, but I would encourage him to think a little more broadly and to look upon various safe and regular opportunities that would be available to him for his spare cash if he were to swing in behind this amendment. I am sure he would benefit in many ways from that.
I turn briefly to the remarks of my noble friend the Minister. I am grateful to her for the encouragement she has given and will look carefully at what she has said. I am still not wholly persuaded that proceeding on the basis of the Treasury’s current work, rather than by way of legislation, is entirely the best way. I will consider whether these amendments, or one of them, might come back on Report.
On the broader question of the financial inclusion of people who are marginalised by the financial system—I hope I am not presuming too much if I speak for the Committee at large—my noble friend might want to reflect a little further on whether a process of engagement with noble Lords on all sides of the Committee who have brought these issues up would be beneficial between now and the issue returning on Report. I know that it is not in her personal nature to sound negative and unwelcoming, but her speech had that tone of saying that everything was a little too complicated and might have an unintended consequence. Well, anything might have an unintended consequence; by definition, one would not know. I wonder whether she might consider some process of engagement on the issue, because I think the feeling around the Committee is quite strong. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
“Prevention of fraud objective
In section 1B of FSMA 2000 (FCA’s general duties), in subsection (3) at the end insert—“(d) the prevention and detection of fraud perpetrated in or through financial services.””
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, in this group, we return to the issues of fraud and encouraging the financial regulators to be more active. Fraud now accounts for nearly half of all crime and there are still issues around ensuring that there are preventive steps.
I have three amendments in this group, which I offer in order to probe the best way to engage the regulators more actively in matters of fraud. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, for his support on two of my amendments; I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, for his support on one of them. I note the overlapping of some of my amendments with those in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.
My first amendment in this group, Amendment 67, would add an additional operational objective for the FCA in
“the prevention and detection of fraud perpetrated in or through financial services.”
As I have indicated on previous days of our debates, there are questions about where best to place requirements so as to ensure that they are effective. In this case, I put it high in the layering of the objectives, although the requirement of the FCA is in fact only to do things that advance one or more of its operational objectives. As has been said previously, this allows the regulators to pick and choose, and underlies what the public and many parliamentarians see as manifest failure.
With that in mind, I concluded that it perhaps needed to be a strategic objective because that cannot be dodged. After all, fraud is already a significant factor undermining payment systems—in particular, the faster payment system—and calling into question the general sustainability of instant payments.
With that strategic thought, I proposed Amendment 73, which would add to the definition of “relevant markets” in the FCA’s strategic objective. My addition—proposed new paragraph (d)—would include
“the financial markets and the markets for financial services, whether regulated or not, in matters of fraud.”
Given the role of banks, the PRA should also have a similar objective, although my thinking is that it would need to be wider than its applicability to rule-making. I hope that, collectively, we will be able to return to the issue of best placing when it comes to Report. The fact is that our financial services regulators are, or should be, well placed to discover fraud beyond the confines of specifically regulated financial services. There may be freedom in those services being unrestrained, but that does not mean cheating and fraud, as with the Libor rigging case, for example, and other matters that have been discussed earlier.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I have Amendments 71 and 210 in this group, which deal with financial fraud. I very much support what the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, said, and am sure that, between now and Report, there can be further discussions about the best way to embed in the Bill the tackling of financial fraud. As she said, we have two pieces of legislation going through in parallel, and we need to ensure that at the end of the day there is a concerted strategy to deal with financial fraud, which has been lamentably missing from our affairs over many years. The Bill certainly provides protection for victims of authorised push payment scans, but little else to address the growing and worrying problem of financial fraud.
We had a canter round some of these issues last Monday, when the Minister was very reassuring. She said that
“tackling fraud requires a unified and co-ordinated response from government, law enforcement and the private sector”;
that
“strong punishments … already exist under the Fraud Act”;
that
“the police and the National Crime Agency already have the powers to investigate fraud, with the FCA providing strong support”;
and that
“The Home Office is investing £400 million in tackling economic crime over the spending review period, including £100 million dedicated to fraud.”—[Official Report, 30/1/23; cols. GC 123-24.]
She mentioned the Joint Fraud Taskforce on a number of occasions and said that the Home Office will shortly publish a long-awaited new strategy—which I think was briefed out in some of yesterday’s Sunday newspapers.
That is all well and good. The problem is that one needs an act of faith to believe that the Government have finally recognised that they have to grip this in a much stronger way than has been evident over the last 12 years. The figures from the NAO are stark: in the year ending June 2022, fraud represented 41% of all crime against individuals, and there were an estimated 3.8 million incidents of actual or attempted fraud against individuals. Yet the number of fraud offences resulting in a charge or summons was paltry. In the year ending March 2022, 4,816 fraud cases resulted in a charge or summons. Less than 1% of police personnel were involved in conducting fraud investigations in the year ending March 2020. The public know that it is just hopeless going to the police; the default position is that they have no interest and want to give no help whatever, apart from encouraging you to go to Action Fraud—which your Lordships’ Select Committee on fighting fraud renamed “Report Fraud”, because it is a completely useless organisation.
I am particularly concerned about the financial abuse of older people, and noble Lords will see that my second amendment in this group is tailored towards that. It struck me that the previous debate on inclusivity is very much related to some points that I wish to raise this afternoon. The excellent organisation Hourglass has pointed out that the impact of financial abuse on older people can be devastating, especially as so many of them are on limited incomes such as the state pension. There are so many examples of frail older people losing large sums of money or property that they have lived in for years, or incurring large debts.
In September 2021, Hourglass and Hodge Bank collaborated on a survey to gain insights into the scale of financial and economic abuse and the impact of the digital divide. The report noted that 14.1% of respondents indicated that an older person they knew or cared for had been a victim of financial abuse in the past year. Research also pointed to a significant number of older people falling victim to economic abuse, in part due to the digital nature of banking and the digital divide.
Your Lordships’ Select Committee report, Fighting Fraud: Breaking the Chain, published only last November, was explicit about the scale of the problem generally. It said:
“A person aged 16 or over is more likely to become a victim of fraud than any other individual type of crime, including violence or burglary”,
and that
“Even though fraud is a massive problem,”
it is hardly given any priority at all. Indeed, my understanding is that fraud statistics are removed from public statements on crime rates. I wonder why that is. We know that law enforcement is hopelessly underresourced for the fight against fraud. Law enforcement agencies and digital investigation remain outside the capacity of mainstream policing, despite police forces operating in a highly digitalised society.
The Select Committee points out that
“The organisational structure for policing fraud is complex and confusing”—
it certainly is for members of the public seeking to report fraud—and that
“The criminal justice system has also failed to keep pace with the threat, resulting in a significant decrease in the prosecution of fraudsters over the last decade.”
The Select Committee warns that
“The telecoms sector has no … incentive to prevent fraud and has allowed blame to be placed elsewhere for too long.”
Similarly, the tech sector does not do anything like enough to
“slam the brakes on fraudsters using online advertising and social media platforms to reel in consumers”
and must
“do more to verify the identity of those using online dating platforms before they commit romance fraud.”
The Select Committee makes the point that all these industries, which are doing very well and enable fraud to take place, do not fear any significant financial, legal and reputational risks for failing to prevent fraud.
When fraudulent payments slip through the net, it should not be the sole responsibility of the financial services sector—in particular, the victim’s bank—to pick up the bill, although I believe that banks need to do much more than they do at present. All stakeholders in the fraud chain, including the payee’s bank, must know that they have a duty to prevent fraud and to address their failings and the victim’s losses once it has occurred. Despite the Minister’s confidence, the Government have shown very little enthusiasm. It has taken so long to even produce a strategy, that one really doubts the commitment to taking this forward.
My first amendment would add to the list of regulatory principles to be applied to the FCA and PRA
“the need to promote the detection, prevention and investigation of fraud in relation to the provision or use of financial services.”
In a sense, this can be seen in parallel to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles. My Amendment 210 complements and adds to my noble friend’s amendment by emphasising the strategy he proposes, which I very much support, but there are some special arrangements in relation to older people.
I am sure that we will want to come back to this on Report. I am sure that noble Lords with an interest in this can come together with a unified amendment—I almost said composited amendment, but I hesitate to use those wonderful words in your Lordships’ Committee. We have to persuade the Government that, once and for all, we take fraud seriously. We need to kick a lot of the regulatory bodies, including the police, into taking this seriously.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 209. This Committee is unusual, in that the level of consensus seems enormous. A lot of the differences are around how to achieve where we want to go, but the coming together should worry the Government.
I will say a word or two about fraud. My noble friend has set out the fraud world. The two features, certainly of personal fraud, which are supposed to solve the problem are compensation, and investigation and prosecution. I am not against the idea of compensation being clearer and more open, but this has the potential for moral hazard. I will say no more than that. The problem with the compensation solution is that it takes the incentive away from proper investigation into criminality and prosecution. That is a bad thing.
There is so much fraud that there is an industry, and that industry breeds its own criminality—I fear that somewhere in the Bahamas they are setting up a university course on it. That spreads the atmosphere or culture more widely. We know that London has a horrible reputation for financial criminality in general—for example, money laundering. This is bad. We do not want big chunks of our society, particularly bright, competent people, involved in criminality. From every point of view, we must up the effectiveness of prosecution—treating the fraudsters as criminals and, where appropriate, locking them up.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Hunt, I make a point in my amendment about the link between financial fraud—in practice this now broadly means “online scams”—and mental health. I made this point last Wednesday, in dodging between the Committee and the House, when I raised this issue in the context of the Online Safety Bill. The same issue arises under this Bill and should be dealt with.
There is no doubt that people who have problems with their mental health are, for a variety of reasons, more vulnerable to fraud than people generally. According to a recent survey, people with mental health problems are three times more likely to say that they have been the victim of an online scam than people generally. In reverse, scams are a threat to people with normal health that risk their mental health.
I will talk about this in a bit more detail during debate on the next group of amendments, but we must understand that the result of fraud, however perpetrated, is much misery, destroying people’s finances, in many cases their families and, in some cases, tragically, their lives, so the Bill should address the issue and face up to the need to provide adequate protection. Anyone can fall victim to a scam, but people with mental health problems are at particular risk and can suffer more as a result. We must do what we can, therefore, to improve scam protection and ensure that, when people fall victim to scams, they receive adequate support.
I must pay tribute to the great work being done on this area by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute. It has drawn attention to the fact that although harm can arise in diverse areas—gambling, retail and scams—across them all, including financial services, there are recurring themes. There is the lack of friction in transactions, advertising of investment opportunities, and high-pressure techniques applied which can put people under pressure, particularly in online spaces.
The institute concludes that these concerns have, up to now, gone relatively unchecked and underexamined, with current regulation either lacking or poorly matched to the real environments in which people find themselves. Although the Online Safety Bill has an important role in this area, it needs to work with the regulations in this Bill to address the problems that cause so much misery.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, might there be a case for the regulators to play a more active role in addressing fraud?
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
My Lords, I want to make just four points on fraud, which damages the markets so greatly and damages individuals. The amendments reflect the four points. First, we need a strategy. I do not see how we can go forward any longer without one. I have two comments on strategy. First, the bodies to be consulted should include lawyers and accountants, not because there might be a bent lawyer or bent accountant in the fraud but because often it is their failure to see a flaw in the system that has caused the fraud. Therefore, they need to be part of those consulted. Secondly, five years is a long time for a new strategy. We need some form of accountability for the performance of the strategy in the meantime.
My second point is the object, the principle or the duty—however you put it—of the regulators looking into fraud. This seems critical, and there are two primary reasons for this. First, there is the prevention of fraud. I have too often been told after a fraud has come to knowledge and things are being done about it by those in the market, “Oh, the return was too good to be true. Him? We would not have touched him with a bargepole.” Regulators ought to be able to pick that up, and the duty on them ought to emphasise that responsibility.
Secondly, if fraud occurs—and it is bound to—the expertise of the regulators is needed to guide the way in which prosecutions take place. These days, because virtually everything is documented, you cannot move money. In the old days you could take a suitcase of cash somewhere, but you cannot do that any more. You need someone who can interpret what is usually the defence, “Yes, I did this but I wasn’t dishonest”. The skill and expertise of those in the market who can point to and make clear why it was so obviously dishonest are critical.
Thirdly, dealing with fraud is expensive. If you are accused of fraud, you have nothing to lose by spending all you have in defending yourself. If you fail, that was the end anyway, so you might as well have tried to save your money. If you are successful, you generally get most of it back. In a sense, there is an imbalance. Therefore, I warmly support the amendment saying that the Treasury should hand over the cash. There is no conflict of interest there, because the decision on the level of fine is made by the court. That is a good idea.
Fourthly and finally, the idea of criminalisation is essential. It is often nice to be able to pay tribute to the wisdom of His Majesty’s Treasury. One of the most effective tools in its armoury in relation to sanctions has been criminalisation, because that is what frightens people. Therefore, criminalising the failure to act would be a welcome step, and is something that I hope His Majesty’s Treasury, with all its wisdom, will see the force of.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendments 67 and 75—obviously, as I added my name. I will speak only to Amendment 67. I have spent nearly 50 years in Parliament, legislating on issues that needed urgent attention. I cannot think of any issue more important in monetary affairs, now or in previous years, than the one before us in this group of amendments.
In particular, I am very grateful to the UK Finance Annual Fraud Report, which highlights in some detail what is happening. Indeed, one of the paragraphs at the end says that the Bill before us, which the Government proposed, will legislate to deal with it. Look at the figures and the sheer scale of it:
“Most notable is the rise in impersonation scams and in authorised push payment (APP) fraud overall. In 2021 communications regulator Ofcom found that eight out of ten people that were surveyed had been targeted with scam texts or phone calls, intended to convince them that they were from trusted organisations such as banks, the NHS or government departments.”
The report goes on to say:
“The majority of APP fraud starts with some type of social engineering. As well as scam texts, phone calls and emails, more and more of us are paying for goods and services remotely”,
which opens the door to the fraudsters.
I will say no more other than this. My friend the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles—I greatly respect the work she does in this area—has produced a very simple amendment, but it is very powerful and clear and I highly recommend it to His Majesty’s Government.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I find all the amendments and all the arguments made by various speakers very persuasive, and I hope the Government take note of that.
I have some concerns that I do not think have yet been aired. Do we have the regulatory architecture to deal with fraud? There are at least 41 financial regulators. Just think about the duplication and buck-passing. Is it not time for us to have a British version of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or something equivalent, to deal with that? It may help not only to save resources but to have a co-ordinated approach.
The people perpetrating banking fraud do not live in one particular district of the UK; they are spread all over. The police in Bristol cannot go and raid somebody in Reading or Glasgow; they need permission from and to co-ordinate with somebody there. We do not have a national police squad to look for or investigate fraud. They are utterly fragmented. That itself encourages buck-passing.
Lord Northbrook (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a consultant to an FCA-regulated investment management firm. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and others I find it disappointing that the Bill fails to address the growing problem of financial fraud.
There was an interesting article in the Times on Saturday. It said that
“according to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, in the last 13 months there has been a reported loss of £4.3 billion from fraud and cybercrime. That is an eyewatering amount of money going into the pockets of criminals … Criminals are getting away scot-free but what is even more worrying is that they know that it is unlikely that any law enforcement are looking for them. This is not because the police are not interested, but simple maths. According to the Social Market Foundation, in 2021 in England and Wales just 1,753 officers and staff were dedicated to economic crimes such as fraud. That equates to just 0.8 per cent of the total workforce and yet”—
as other noble Lords have said—
“fraud accounts for 40 per cent of all reported crime. In many cases … the victims were simply given a crime reference number by the police and told there was nothing more they could do. It remained up to them to try to get their money back from their bank.
If one is determined to find the culprits, an alphabet soup of crime agencies such as the NCA, NECC and NCSC, all with different remits and jurisdictions, awaits. Most people give up and the scammers get to keep their cash.
Unless we increase the number of officers and staff that investigate fraud to reflect the amount of fraud reported we will continue to lose billions to criminals.”
Clause 62 addresses the issue only partly. It enhances protections for victims of authorised push payment fraud, which, according to the shadow Treasury Minister in the other place, quoting UK Finance figures, reached an all-time high of £1.3 billion in 2021. In the other place, the Government promised a review without giving a timescale, but more immediate action is needed.
The Bill ignores the fact that digitally savvy criminals are increasingly exploiting a range of financial institutions, such as payment systems operators, electronic money institutions and crypto asset firms, to scam the public. As my noble friend Lord Naseby mentioned, UK Finance pointed out that, in 2021, 44% of fraud was authorised push payments, about 40% was payment card fraud and 15% was remote banking.
As several noble Lords have already stated, last November, our House of Lords Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee released a report stating that the Government should introduce a new corporate criminal offence to ensure that big tech platforms and telecom companies tackle financial crimes. Under the Online Safety Bill, which is currently going through its stages, online platforms will face a duty of care to protect their users from fraud, but that Bill does not cover telecoms and other related sectors. It is a very good step but more needs to be done, including requiring tech companies to publish data on the nature and volume of scams on their platforms.
Of the amendments in this group, I am very much in favour of the all-encompassing Amendment 209 from the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, particularly as it includes, under the proposed new subsections (3)(d) and (e),
“telecommunications stakeholders, and … technology-based communication platforms”.
I have been disappointed by the Government’s reaction so far. Although Mr Griffith said in the other place that the Government
“are dedicated to protecting the public from that devastating and sadly growing crime”,
he also said that the Government want
“to be right rather than quick”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/22; cols. 446-47.]
Well, one can be right and quick. As with several other points on this Bill, such as credit card monitoring, the Government do not seem to be moving very fast at all. If we believe the Sunday press, something may be happening, but I await the Minister’s response with interest.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will have picked up the mood of the Committee and I hope she takes it into consideration when she looks at and decides on her remarks. The concern that has been expressed from all sides of the Committee on fraud and the absence of action on it is loud and strong.
I support all the amendments in this group, including those from my noble friend Lady Bowles, and the noble Lords, Lord Hunt, Lord Davies and Lord Tunnicliffe. I particularly recommend my noble friend Lady Bowles’s Amendment 214, which goes after the enablers and facilitators with a “failure to prevent” clause. This group is continuously overlooked and is absolutely pivotal. Action in this area could be really effective and leverage some significant change.
My Amendment 217, in a small way, tries to counter one of the reasons why financial fraud flourishes: the lack of resources for investigation and enforcement against the perpetrators. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, has addressed some of this.
I, too, am a great fan of Anthony Stansfeld and his personal courage in deciding, as the then police and crime commissioner of Thames Valley Police, to pursue the HBOS Reading fraud case when others had turned it away. That fraud amounted to £800 million and six people—I thought that it was five but the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, said six—went to prison. However, the fine that was levied on Lloyds, as HBOS’s parent, was £45 million. As the noble Lord said, not a single penny of that went back to Thames Valley Police even though the pursuit of the case cost that force £7 million. The consequence of that was heard loud and clear by police forces across the country. They expected that, because of its success, Thames Valley would end up getting reimbursed, and saw clearly when it did not. Since then, no police force has taken on a major case of financial fraud; that dates back to 1977. Frankly, it is a failure of duty. I hope that the Government will finally understand the consequences of that kind of funding decision.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I will first cover Amendments 67, 71, 73 and 214 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. The question of the FCA’s powers on fraud has been raised before in this Committee, as noted. Before I address the detail of the amendments, it may be helpful if I set out for the Committee the FCA’s role under FSMA in relation to fraud. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked me specifically about this last Monday. I will write, but I thought it might also be useful to set it out in the context of these amendments.
Although FSMA does not provide the FCA with an express power to prosecute fraud, it is able to prosecute fraud if it furthers its statutory objectives. If fraud is committed by an authorised firm in the course of a regulated activity, or if it carries out a regulated activity without the correct authorisations, the FCA will be able to take action against the firm on the basis of a breach of the FCA’s rules or other FSMA requirements. If a senior manager within the firm is responsible for the fraud or has culpably failed to prevent one occurring within the area of their responsibility, the FCA can take action against that firm and senior manager.
Where a firm is authorised for one activity, but is also carrying out an unregulated activity, FCA powers in relation to the unregulated activity will depend on the specific details of the case. In the case of a serious fraud, the FCA is able to take action, including on the basis that the firm or the senior manager is not fit and proper. If a firm provides regulated products or services without being authorised, unless exempt, it may be carrying on unauthorised business in contravention of the “general prohibition” in Section 19 of FSMA.
The FCA does not have powers to investigate a firm that is unauthorised and not carrying out any regulated activities unless, for example, that unauthorised person is carrying out market abuse—where the FCA has a specific role. In these circumstances, where problems fall outside the FCA’s statutory remit, the FCA assists other agencies and regulators wherever it can. That is important context for the noble Baroness’s amendments.
As I said last week, the Government take the issue of fraud very seriously. I repeat the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that the prevention of fraud is a cross-cutting policy that requires a unified and co-ordinated response from many stakeholders. However, I acknowledge that the financial regulators, including the FCA, play a critical role in that, but many levers for change also sit elsewhere.
The Government’s view is that the FCA’s broad existing remit in relation to reducing and preventing financial crime, including fraud, allows it to take proactive steps to tackle fraud and wider financial crime, while driving a whole-system approach with relevant stakeholders. The FCA is an active and named agency in the national economic crime plan and the soon-to-be-published fraud strategy. Most crucially, the FCA and the PRA require regulated financial services firms to maintain effective systems and controls to prevent their being used to further financial crime, including fraud. In the first half of 2022, UK banks blocked over £580 million being stolen from customers. In its 2022-23 business plan, the FCA announced that it was developing its approach to supervision to include further oversight of firms’ anti-fraud systems and controls.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked about the number of vacancies in the FCA for those working on fraud. I will write to the Committee to provide that detail. Under the FCA’s existing remit, it is able to have a leading role in this important issue. It does not require further powers to pursue fraud, but I will come on to address other points raised in the Committee about what more must be done overall about fraud.
In respect of Amendment 214, as noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, the Government are currently assessing options presented by the Law Commission for strengthening the law on corporate criminal liability, including for fraud. This includes committing to address the need for a new offence of failure to prevent fraud through the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill. I note the differences highlighted by the noble Baroness, but the Government believe that that Bill is the right approach and vehicle for dealing with the failure to prevent offence.
Amendments 209, 210 and 211, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and Lord Davies of Brixton, respectively, relate to a national financial fraud strategy. As I have said, the Home Office will shortly publish a new strategy that will set out the Government’s plan on fraud, including fraud prevention, consumer protection and criminal prosecution. I am afraid that I did not read the Sunday papers as closely as other noble Lords, but I hear, understand and note the great interest in the strategy from this Committee and a desire to see it published as soon as possible. I reassure noble Lords that that continues to be a key priority for the Home Office, which is working closely with the Treasury and other government departments to make sure that we get it right.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. As part of this work, are the Government looking at the costs to the various statutory agencies of pursuing fraud? The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, raised the example of the cost to Thames Valley Police—I think—of a prosecution, which on their budget was enormous. The fine was substantial, but there seemed to be no way of compensating the police for those costs. Can the Minister say whether that will be looked at within the strategy?
Baroness Penn (Con)
Funding is of course an important part of any strategy, and I have set out to noble Lords previously the increased funding that has gone to the specific issue of tackling fraud. I will turn to the specific proposal from the noble Baroness a little later, but I understand the point about not just the amount of funding but the incentives that different approaches can create.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and other noble Lords talked about the devastating personal costs that fraud can have and the societal costs that having high levels of fraud in our society can bring. I agree with noble Lords on that. The noble Lord spoke about compensation not overshadowing the need for investigation and prosecution, and I also agree with that. Those considerations are all being taken forward through the strategy.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
I am encouraged by the Minister’s determination to tackle fraud. Can she answer the three specific questions I asked? First, can she give us a commitment that a copy of the Sandstorm report in relation to BCCI, which is now more than 30 years old, will be placed in the Library of this House? Secondly, can she make a statement now or come to the House soon to tell us why the Government covered up criminal conduct by HSBC in the US and how many other instances there are of that kind of cover-up?
Thirdly, in this country we have virtually eliminated the risk of bankruptcy for major banks and insurance companies. That then raises questions about the pressure points on directors to behave and act honourably. Fines are fairly puny and have not made much of a difference. Personal prosecutions of directors of banks hardly ever take place, and neither do they face any personal fines. Can the Minister explain what the pressure points are on the directors of major financial institutions to act with honesty and integrity?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I am afraid I will not be able to address the noble Lord’s first two points, but I will happily write to him. On his third point, I referred to the fact that, as part of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, we are looking to take forward the issue of corporate criminal liability and the offence of failure to prevent fraud, which would strengthen action in the areas he talks about.
I was talking about our work with other sectors. My noble friend Lord Northbrook and the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, raised the issue of online fraud. There is an intention to bring forward a tech sector charter with industry, to include public and private actions to drive down fraud in this area. Of course, fraud has been brought into the scope of the Online Safety Bill to better protect the public from online scams through, among other measures, a new stand-alone duty requiring large internet firms to tackle fraudulent advertising, including that of financial services.
The Government also recognise the particularly devastating impact that fraud can have on the elderly and the most vulnerable people in society and on people’s mental health. They have taken various steps, including banning cold calls from personal injury firms and pension providers and supporting National Trading Standards to improve the quality of care available to vulnerable fraud victims. More broadly, the FCA’s guidance on vulnerability explores how firms can understand the needs of vulnerable customers. This includes those who are older or have mental health conditions and sets out how the sector can provide targeted services for this cohort, including in the context of fraud. Where firms fail to meet their obligations to treat customers fairly, the FCA will take further action. I hope noble Lords are assured that further work is being taken forward on data sharing and on supporting older people and those with mental health conditions who are victims of financial fraud.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, mentioned measures in the Online Safety Bill, as have I. I have also mentioned the measures in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill and revisions to the Data Protection Act. I am cognisant of the need to ensure that this work is well co-ordinated and that the progress we are making in other Bills is co-ordinated with the work we are doing on this issue more generally.
I turn finally to Amendment 217. Currently, the proceeds of such fines imposed by the courts must, by law, be paid—
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister again, but her comments have prompted a thought. Many of us are trying to cover, albeit not always successfully, three or four different Bills that are running through your Lordships’ House with slightly similar amendments around this issue of financial fraud. I do not know whether it would be possible for the Ministers dealing with all these Bills to come together at some point for a more general discussion; it might make this easier for us all. The Minister will know that these debates are going to be repeated on a number of occasions.
Baroness Penn (Con)
I will absolutely take away the noble Lord’s suggestion. I cannot speak for others but I would be happy to engage further on this before Report, drawing on the other strands of government work; I agree with the noble Lord that it might be useful to have other Ministers there too. I recognise that the other Bills are not as far along as this one is, so we will not be able to pre-empt some of that work, but I think we can co-ordinate it for noble Lords if that would be helpful.
Finally, I was dealing with Amendment 217 and noting that, by law, income from fines imposed by the courts needs to be paid into the consolidated fund. That income is not ring-fenced but is used towards general government expenditure on public services. The Government agree that it is important for bodies responsible for investigating and prosecuting fraud to be appropriately resourced to discharge their responsibility. The NCA’s budget is made up of a number of different funding streams. That budget has increased every year since 2019-20 and, as part of the 2021 spending review, it was allocated a settlement of more than £810 million. This represents an uplift of approximately 14%, or £100 million, compared with the previous spending review. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked me a few more specific questions beneath those headline figures; perhaps I can write to her and the Committee with that information.
The FCA and the PRA are operationally independent regulators funded by a levy on the firms they regulate. I would like to reassure the noble Baroness that the regulators already have the power to ensure that they are resourced appropriately, without the need to divert funds away from general government expenditure. As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I recognise the important principle behind this amendment—that consideration should be given to how the proceeds of fines can support the costs of enforcement activity.
Lord Northbrook (Con)
Can the Minister address the point about Thames Valley Police not being reimbursed for the £7 million it spent, which has discouraged other police forces from carrying out those sorts of investigations? Will there be any sort of move to reimburse police forces investigating crimes of this sort?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I have heard the point and I acknowledge the principle that this amendment seeks to explore in terms of those incentives, but I point to the NCA’s budget and the regulators’ budgets. We seek to ensure that enforcement agencies have the proper money available to them to take enforcement activity. I also point out that, while the funds currently go into general expenditure, that funding is spent on other public services, so it does not go unspent elsewhere.
Lord Flight (Con)
This point seems absolutely central to me. Unless police forces have either a strong negative or a strong positive incentive, they are not going to be bothered, if you like, to prosecute serious fraud crime. I do not know what the Government’s preference is, but it has to be one way or the other.
Baroness Penn (Con)
I have listened very carefully to the debate, and I see the point that noble Lords are making. This operates in other areas of government—there is the Proceeds of Crime Act and how that operates—but I slightly counter leaning too heavily into the fact that the police would have no incentive to investigate serious organised crime unless the costs of the investigation and the prosecution are reimbursed to them. Their fundamental role is to investigate and prosecute crime. I understand that there is a complex landscape when it comes to investigating and prosecuting fraud, and that is something that the Government have tried to tackle with the establishment of the economic crime command at the NCA—but it is ongoing work for us. The challenge before me today is that the funding that comes from these fines currently goes to the consolidated fund and is spent elsewhere on public services, so any change of this nature would have implications that go—
Baroness Kramer (LD)
If the Minister is able to persuade the Treasury or the Government to look again at this issue, can she make the point that, if you can get much more activity from the police forces on pursuing fraud, you end up with much more coming in in fines? To look at the US example, it makes far more money out of financial crime because it prosecutes financial crime far more extensively.
Baroness Penn (Con)
I absolutely note the noble Baroness’s point. That same principle has informed our approach to proceeds under the Proceeds of Crime Act, so this has happened elsewhere in Government.
I was going to note that, previously, the FSA was able to keep all the income it took from penalties and use it to subsidise the levy it charged on the firms it regulated. That was changed because, when the regulators took a large amount of money from those they had fined, they reduced the charges they made on those firms. In thinking about these issues, we would want to avoid similar unintended consequences in the future.
I close by saying that I have heard noble Lords’ strength of feeling on this debate. As I said on the previous group, I am always open to meeting noble Lords to discuss issues further. We have different ways in which we think those issues can be tackled, but it is always right to see what more we can do. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, suggested perhaps having a co-ordinating meeting on fraud, particularly to cover the specific issues raised in the different Bills before your Lordships. I will endeavour to take that forward ahead of Report.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
Your Lordships will be pleased to know that I cannot possibly go through everything, yet again, that has been spoken about. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. The Minister must have heard the concern from all sides of the Committee.
The only bit of good news that I can hang on to from what was said is that more work is being done on data sharing between banks. That is important. The list of roles of the FCA just proves that it does not have a great deal of power to do things within financial services in general. It can do things with regulated bodies, but that is very limited, as we discussed previously, so I will not go into it again. It can do things with bodies that are pretending to be regulated but are not, but we are for ever bashing up against this regulatory perimeter, one way or another. That just does not deal with fraud, because fraudsters are well aware of it and are going to use it.
We have tried to cover various different types of fraud. Fraud by and in financial services surely should be caught, even if it is by a regulated entity but in an unregulated area. The financial services regulator should still be able to prosecute the entity, not just through cases that deal with criminal matters which it can take; there should also be some regulatory approach. Then there is fraud in which financial services are the final vehicle. Financial services are in a special place because, ultimately, how can you monetise your fraud? You have to put it through a bank or somewhere else, no matter whether it was started or perhaps enabled by a telecoms company, online platform and so on. Ultimately, financial services firms have a special duty for extra vigilance, because that is where this all funnels down.
I agree that probably more has been done to capture these things in financial services than in some of the online platforms and telecoms companies. I will not go through the whole of the very thick fraud report, but there are issues in it that go across the piece. That is part of the problem. We have this complete alphabet soup of organisations that are supposed to be helping us address crime, and fraud in particular, in different ways. However, it is not well co-ordinated, and fraud falls between the gaps, and so it is with the financial services side of it.
One thing that was in the report from the Fraud Act committee was about engaging regulators more in the fight—that is, regulators in general—through having regulatory offences. Here, the imagination has to be used. We should not just pin down regulators to doing very small things within a tiny regulated bit, while everywhere else people can either get away with it or it has to go over to less specialised people to deal with. There are big holes, and we will have to come back to this.
At the bottom of it, there are issues around the funding. You will have to fund regulators more if they are to address fraud more. I do not see any harm in the recycling of fines. They should not be recycled so as to say “Right, now the levy is less”, but they could be recycled specifically for prosecutions. Given that you can turn a profit from them and that you are helping individuals who have had their money stolen, it is very bad if the Treasury does not look at that more favourably. Everybody is crying out for this, but we acknowledge that you have to have money to do it.
For now, I will obviously withdraw my amendment. However, we will have to come back on Report with one or two amendments aimed at furthering things, unless the Minister is able to persuade the rest of the Treasury that it needs to act in this area, as there would be ways in which it could ring-fence the financing and turn a net profit.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)
At this point, it might be convenient if the Committee were to adjourn for 10 minutes.
Lord Sharkey
“Duty of the FCA to make rules introducing a duty of care to replace the Consumer Duty
(1) After section 137C of FSMA 2000, insert—“137CA FCA general rules: duty of care and replacement of the consumer duty(1) The power of the FCA to make general rules incudes the power to replace the consumer duty with a duty of care owed by authorised persons to consumers in carrying out regulated activities under this Act.(2) In this section—“consumer” has the meaning given in section 2(3) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (key definitions);“consumer duty” means the rules and guidance contained in the FCA’s Policy Statement PS22/9 and in the FCA’s Final Guidance FG22/5 of July 2022;“duty of care” means an obligation to act in consumers’ best interests and to exercise reasonable care and skill when providing a product or service.”(2) The FCA must make rules in accordance with section 137CA of FSMA 2000 which come into force no later than six months after the day on which this Act is passed.(3) In section 138D of FSMA 2000 (action for damages), omit subsection (3).(4) The FCA may not make rules which change or qualify the definition of “duty of care” as provided for by virtue of subsection (2), reduce its scope of applicability, or disapply or fetter the private right of action afforded to consumers by section 138D of FSMA 2000.”Member’s explanatory statement
This is a probing amendment to allow debate on the FCA’s new Consumer Duty and a replacement Duty of Care and on a Private Right of Action.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 76 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield—I am very grateful for her support and look forward to hearing her speak later on in our debate—would require the FCA to make rules replacing the new consumer duty that it has devised with a duty of care. This duty of care would be
“owed by authorised persons to consumers in carrying out regulated activities under”
FSMA 2000. The amendment also makes provision for redress via a private right of action; it does this by removing the barrier contained in Section 138D of FSMA. Finally, the amendment contains provisions to prevent the FCA using its rule-making powers to
“change … the definition of ‘duty of care’ … reduce its scope of applicability, or disapply or fetter the private right of action afforded to consumers by section 138D of FSMA 2000.”
This last bit is to ensure that Parliament’s intentions are rigorously carried out and reduce the opportunities for dilution.
The questions of imposing a duty of care on financial services providers and creating a private right of action have been debated in this place many times. The last time was during the passage of what is now the Financial Services Act 2021. In Committee on that Bill, I proposed the introduction of a duty of care in terms that were very similar to the text of the amendment before us; that amendment had strong support. I closed the debate by setting out the five key reasons for adopting a duty of care:
“The first is that FSMA does not protect consumers adequately; the second is that the FCA is always playing catch-up. The third reason is that poor behaviour by firms continues … The fourth is that getting redress after the event is time-consuming and very stressful, and the fifth is the incentive for real and lasting cultural change in our financial services industry.”—[Official Report, 22/2/21; col. GC 120.]
All those points remain valid today. Indeed, the FCA has openly acknowledged the need for significant improvement in how consumers are treated.
At the Report stage of the same Bill, in March 2021, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, put forward a duty of care amendment in terms nearly identical to the one that we debated in Committee and nearly identical to the text now before us. All the speakers in that debate—apart from the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn—were in favour of the amendment, which was passed in the House by 296 votes to 255—a majority of 41. The Commons removed our amendment and, in ping-pong, proposed an amendment in lieu. This amendment required, among other things, the FCA to carry out
“a public consultation about whether it should make general rules providing that authorised persons owe a duty of care to consumers.”
It was also required to consult on whether it
“should make other provision in general rules about the level of care that must be provided to consumers by authorised persons, either instead of or in addition to a duty of care.”
Whether that actually happened in any meaningful way is strongly contested. The Transparency Task Force has long argued that the consultation was deeply flawed. It has argued, and continues to argue, that the FCA only ever really consulted on its proposed new consumer duty and not, since the 2021 Act was passed, on a duty of care. It is a contentious area, but there is merit in these criticisms. At the very least, I understand how the impression might form that the FCA had it regulatory thumb firmly on the scales.
This matters because the FCA’s new consumer duty is not a duty of care; it is significantly different and significantly weaker. These differences can be summarised as follows. First, there is no private right of action for breaches of the consumer duty. This means that the FCA will not be able to implement a redress scheme using its powers under FSMA if there are breaches of the consumer duty. This lack of a power to order redress will weaken the incentive to comply with the consumer duty.
The second flaw in the consumer duty is the lack of disclosure of information about how firms are complying with it. A firm’s board is required to assess only annually whether the required outcomes under the consumer duty are being achieved and agree any actions needed for compliance, but the firm will be able to keep that assessment secret from its customers and shareholders and will not have to publicly disclose any action it has taken. That is hardly transparent. For example, Which? has noted that:
“Without some kind of compulsory form of publication, it’s very hard to see how industry commentators, stakeholders and consumer representatives will gain an insight into the impact of the consumer duty.”
The third flaw in the consumer duty is that the standard required by firms to comply with its terms is based on the “reasonable expectation” of consumers. All this brings to mind the Equitable Life debacle and the difficulty of imposing a regulatory standard based on the reasonable expectations of consumers. In 2001, Sir Howard Davies described the concept as having a “chequered history” and as
“lacking in clarity and definition.”
The concept was also described by the then Treasury Minister as “nebulous”. The concept was eventually removed from the FSA’s regulatory framework in 2001-02. With the new consumer duty, it will be impossible to measure what the “reasonable expectations” of consumers are in any particular case. There would be obvious problems if the FCA or firms believed that consumers could be treated poorly because they had low expectations.
When the Government proposed the reintroduction of the concept of “reasonable expectations” during the passage of what became the Financial Services Act 2012, the Joint Committee that examined the Bill noted that the concept would make it difficult for the regulator to be clear on the meaning of its duties and near to impossible for consumers and Parliament to hold the regulator to account. The Joint Committee described the concept as “problematic” and concluded that its reintroduction would be unwise. Yet here it is again.
The final flaw is that the fair value assessment that firms are required to do under the consumer duty allows them to consider
“The market rates and charges for comparable products or services and whether the product is a significant outlier compared to these”.
There is a significant risk that this will allow firms to continue to exploit trapped customers as long as other firms are doing it at the same time. For example, in the case of mortgage prisoners who are trapped with their existing lender, a firm will say that they are being offered the “market rate” because they are being charged a similar rate to other mortgage prisoners at other vulture funds. All the customers across many firms are being exploited, but it is not a breach of the consumer duty.
The FCA’s proposed new consumer duty is deeply flawed and is not a duty of care. It is an enormous addition to the box-ticking culture and the antithesis of an aid to judgment. The new rules and feedback run to 161 pages with a further 121 pages of guidance to help. Diligent application of all these rules and guidance notes will not produce the required consumer benefits, nor drive a change of culture in the regulator or the firms it regulates.
The fact is that FSMA does not adequately protect consumers. Malfeasance continues and is unlikely to be much influenced by the new consumer duty. Under the new duty, redress is patchy, lengthy, uncertain and not really available to those who need it most. We should return to what this House originally voted for: a statutory duty of care. I beg to move.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, this group contains Amendment 120, signed by me, my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and the noble Lord, Lord Morse. Our amendment would facilitate further parliamentary and public
“scrutiny of the work of the FCA to protect consumers by requiring the Financial Services Consumer Panel to lay an annual report before Parliament outlining”
the extent to which the FCA is successfully fulfilling
“its statutory duty to protect consumers.”
We have included the provision that the Consumer Panel must comment on the “adequacy and appropriateness” of its use of its powers; the measures it
“has taken to protect vulnerable consumers, including pensioners, people with disabilities, and people receiving forms of income support”;
and its “receptiveness to the recommendations” of the panel. We need a mechanism to encourage the FCA to exercise its regulatory duties more readily and consistently.
This is all in the context of very serious FCA failings. I am thinking particularly of the British Steel pension scheme scandal to which the FCA was found to be “slow to respond” at every turn, according to the Public Accounts Committee. If the Government are inclined to reject this amendment, I would appreciate further work in this space in the interests of all those who have fallen foul of FCA failures. I urge the Minister to look seriously at this amendment, given its cross-party support across the House and in the other place.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, I am speaking a little earlier than I usually do on my amendments in case others want to join in on the Equitable Life issue. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, for signing my first amendment; it is hard to tell what happened with the second. I hope she signed both of them. Yes? Fantastic.
I want quickly to follow up on the comments from my noble friend Lord Sharkey. Perhaps the Minister can clarify this for me. She will remember that the PPI scandal was widely spread across the industry. It was not unique to one or two companies, therefore no company that invested in that mis-selling was behaving as an outlier. Again, when interest rate caps were inappropriately sold to small businesses, it was not the action of one or two particular banks. It was industry-wide, therefore nobody was the outlier. Can she explain to me what this new consumer duty will contribute to enabling the FCA to act on these kinds of abuses? She will note that the FCA did not act until there was a major scandal and a huge amount of public pressure and pressure in Parliament because, when it looked at it, it could see no basis for action. Perhaps she might tell us how the consumer duty would have worked in those two key cases. I am sure that the Government must have tested those cases in coming to their decision to support the consumer duty, so I think she will be able to give us clarification on that.
Both of the amendments in my name arise out of the Equitable Life policyholder cases. I thank the Equitable Members Action Group, which has been frankly magnificent in support of the victims of the collapse of Equitable Life. It has fought for them in the past and continues to fight for justice.
Amendment 225 is a direct plea for compensation. When Equitable Life collapsed, 1 million people lost a significant part of their retirement savings. In 2008, the Parliamentary Ombudsman concluded that the victims’ losses were directly attributable to a decade of serious, serial regulatory maladministration.
The ombudsman made 10 determinations of maladmin-istration: one against the DTI; four against the Government Actuary’s Department; and five against the FSA, which
“resulted in the true financial position of the Society being concealed and misrepresented”.
I cannot think it extraordinary that, in a situation such as that, one would have expected the loss to the victims to have been remedied in full. In recommending redress, the ombudsman said that she would
“normally expect that, where appropriate, such a loss should be remedied in full”
and she called for the Government to
“fund a compensation scheme to put those people who have suffered a relative loss back into the position that they would have been in had maladministration not occurred.”
The Government later accepted that the amount of compensation to achieve that would have amounted to £4.5 billion but only £1.5 billion in compensation was announced by George Osborne. Some 37,000 with-profits annuitants were fully compensated but a further 10,000 received only £5,000—or £10,000 if they were on pension credit—because they took their annuities before September 1992. The vast majority of the victims—895,000 people who were not with-profits annuitants—received only 22.4% of their acknowledged losses. My amendment would carry out the recommendation of the Parliamentary Ombudsman and put everyone back into the position that they would have been in had maladministration not occurred.
This leads to my second amendment, Amendment 226, which would establish in law a requirement that, when the ombudsman finds maladministration by the regulators or government departments, all consumers affected
“are put back into the position they would have been in had that maladministration not occurred.”
Just imagine how we would react if a bank decided that, instead of paying the full compensation it owed, it would pay just a portion of it. I cannot see why the Government should be treated differently from an entity such as a bank. We would expect compensation to be paid in full.
How can we ask people to turn with confidence to the Parliamentary Ombudsman when recommendations are watered down after the fact? How we ask people to save when a rogue society—I think that describes Equitable Life quite well—cheats them? The Government make appalling mistakes to the level of maladministration —that is a very high bar; it is not a low bar—and then will not make it right. Many of the victims are now in their eighties and nineties so time is running out for justice; indeed, many have died without justice. That is the reason behind my two amendments. I very much hope that there is support for that perspective; indeed, I hope that we will finally see support from government.
In making a brief comment on the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Sharkey, on a return to a proper duty of care—it is one of the most important amendments that we are considering today —I want to stress, in this context, the private right of action. It seems to me that, without a proper duty of care or private right of action, we can never make banking institutions or other regulated financial services sector institutions live up to their full responsibilities to consumers.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group. I dipped down the order a little because I wanted to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, would say on Equitable Life. I have nothing to add. I was an Equitable Life policyholder twice over and no one came out of that whole sorry saga well. I do not think that all the necessary lessons have been learned, but that is perhaps for another debate.
I will address my Amendment 77. I am sure all noble Lords accept the principle that financial regulation should pay regard to the particular problems faced by people who have problems with their mental health. The issue is not about the principle but about whether it requires or deserves a place in Section 1C of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. I think it does, which is why I start by re-emphasising something. Many noble Lords might have heard this part of this speech before, because it has arisen in debates on the Online Safety Bill and on the last group—although the personnel attending this part of the Committee has changed somewhat, so I am not that embarrassed at repeating myself.
There are strong links between having a mental health problem and experiencing worse financial outcomes. Either a financial problem leads to poor mental health or pre-existing poor mental health leads to financial problems. Either way, mental health difficulties all too frequently make it harder to earn money, manage spending and get a fair deal on products and services. Life is likely to cost more precisely when we have less money available to spend.
Facing financial difficulties should not result in needing mental health treatment, but too often these things come hand in hand. Financial difficulties do not just cause stress and anxiety; this is often made worse by the follow-up actions—collections activity and having to go without essentials. It is not just an occasional problem. Here I must pay tribute again to the work of the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, which in a series of reports has amply illustrated the scale of the problem and the relationship between good mental health and well-regulated financial markets.
Common symptoms of mental health problems, such as low motivation, unreliable memory, limited concentration and reduced planning and problem-solving abilities, are just the things that make managing money significantly harder. These symptoms can also make it more difficult to interact with financial services firms. For example, people with mental health problems are three and a half times more likely to be in problem debt than those without. Just under half of adults in problem debt also have a mental health problem. In nationally representative polling from November last year, the institute found that around half of those who were behind on multiple bills have had suicidal thoughts as a result of the increasing cost of living. More than 100,000 people in England attempt suicide while in problem debt.
A problem we face is that communicating with financial services providers can be particularly challenging for people with mental health problems. Three-quarters of people with mental health problems found at least one communication channel difficult to navigate, with four in 10 saying they found it difficult or distressing to make phone calls, for example. This has to be taken into account in FCA guidance. Part of the problem is that providers simply do not have the information about their customers to enable them to make better decisions. That is a crucial issue that will have to be addressed.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
I support Amendment 76 in the name of my noble friend Lord Sharkey, to which my name is attached. I will say briefly that I support Amendment 77, which we have just heard set out very persuasively by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton. The links between money problems and mental health are now very well established. They were covered in some detail by the 2017 Lords Select Committee on Financial Exclusion, which I have already referred to. We had a number of recommendations in this area. Five years on, the case is stronger than ever. I hope the Minister will be able to respond sympathetically to that point.
Turning to the duty of care to replace the consumer duty—indeed, having a duty of care was another of the Select Committee’s recommendations—I concur with the sentiments expressed by my noble friend Lord Sharkey. A consumer duty of the sort in the Bill and which was brought forward for consultation by the FCA is not a duty of care. The former has many exemptions and, critically, does not provide wronged consumers with the right to secure monetary redress through litigation. This point was made very compellingly by my noble friend. While the purpose of the consumer duty is to deliver improved outcomes for consumers, because the proposals are diluted from the duty of care—which was voted on in Parliament and enshrined in the Financial Services Act 2021—we have to ask why this has happened.
The external bodies calling for a duty of care, the financial services Consumer Panel, many consumer organisations and the House of Lords Liaison Committee were all clear that what they wanted was a duty of care, not a consumer duty. I would be grateful to the Minister if in summing up she can explain why this move from a duty of care to a consumer duty was made and why it was allowed to happen. In terms of accountability and parliamentary sovereignty it is of real concern that, after Parliament passed the Financial Services Act 2021, the regulator chose to consult and bring forward rules on something different. This amendment provides an opportunity to remedy a very unsatisfactory state of affairs.
In my view, the consumer duty provides little more consumer protection than is in the existing “treating customers fairly” principle. Nor do these proposals really help to rebalance the power and information imbalance between financial services providers and vulnerable customers, which is a real concern of mine. We need a convincing explanation of how the consumer duty enhances the “treating customers fairly” principle and how this new approach will provide the regulator with more of an ability to ensure better outcomes for consumers than at present. I must say that is not at all clear to me.
Finally, the problem is that, as currently drafted, the consumer duty places the responsibility on consumers to understand the benefits and risks of different products and services. There needs to be less emphasis on what consumers should be able to discern for themselves and more emphasis on what should be in place to stop firms exploiting that power and information imbalance between themselves and customers. This is something that a duty of care amendment would do.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 229 to 231. They overlap with the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey; I congratulate him on his excellent speech and the wonderful case that he made for a duty of care.
The key theme of these three amendments is the empowerment of consumers—that is, enabling consumers to secure redress from negligent authorised persons for failure to act with due care as well as enabling them to seek compensation from regulatory bodies for their failures. Empowering consumers generates pressure points for regulatory bodies and authorised persons to ensure that they act diligently, efficiently, honestly, fairly and with some care.
The key element in these amendments is a duty of care, about which the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, has already said a few things; I will add just a few more. The FCA has failed to carry out the mandate given to it by Section 29 of the Financial Services Act 2021. The consultation was fundamentally flawed; indeed, the wording of its questions indicated the bias against its mandate to create a duty of care.
I have time to go through only one example. Question 12 on the consultation paper was very badly designed. As an academic, I have carried out many questionnaires over the years, but I have never written a question like this with so many questions in one:
“Do you agree that what we have proposed amounts to a duty of care? If not, what further measures would be needed? Do you think it should be labelled as a duty of care, and might there be upsides or downsides in doing so?”
That is supposed to be one question. This question and the accompanying information provided in the consultation paper are severely misleading. The FCA asks, “Do you agree that what we have proposed amounts to a duty of care?” Does it not know what a duty of care is? Has nobody there ever studied any English case law from the 20th century to understand what it is? What a strange question to ask.
First, it was not for the respondents to inform the FCA whether or not it had proposed a duty of care; that was for the FCA itself to do. Secondly, if it is not a duty of care but the majority of respondents believe it to be one, does that make it so? Thirdly, if it is a duty of care but the majority of respondents believe it not to be, does that mean it is not one? It is very strange. Fourthly, if it is a duty of care then the FCA has proposed such a duty without asking the question, specifically mandated by Section 29 of the 2021 Act, as to whether there should be one. Fifthly, if it is not a duty of care then the FCA has proposed that there should not be one. If you look at it on logical grounds, none of it makes any sense. The questions and the accompanying statements do not make any sense, so the FCA has not really consulted on a duty of care.
The FCA’s consultation paper says that a duty of care “may have different meanings”—in other words, that is why it did not really want to go down that route. That is misleading. Just because the meaning of duty of care evolves does not mean that the FCA should not carry out its statutory duties. The principle of duty of care is well established in English law, especially since the 1932 case of Donoghue v Stevenson. It is found in fields as diverse as sale of goods and professional negligence, but it seems to have eluded the FCA.
The FCA has failed to create a duty of care as that phrase is commonly understood in law. What it has done is propose general rules about the level of care that must be provided to consumers by authorised persons. That is not a duty of care. Principle 2 of the FCA’s handbook does not create a duty of care because a breach of the FCA’s Principles for Businesses does not give rise to a right of private action by parties injured by a breach thereof. That has already been commented on; unless consumers can enforce something, it is not really a duty of care.
The FCA’s chair, Charles Randell, rejects the commonly accepted legal definition of the term “duty of care” and states that, for the FCA, it means nothing more than
“a positive obligation on a person to ensure that their conduct meets a set standard.”
That does not sound like a duty of care. Randell further commented in relation to the consultation paper that
“whether or not a private right of action for damages should attach to the duty … there would be alternative ways of enforcing such a duty. These include not only voluntary redress or a restitution order, but also our routine supervision and enforcement activities. And individuals have the ability to seek compensation by referring complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which would have regard to the duty in its decisions.”
In a sense, I have no problem with regulatory remedies being in place in addition to the private right of action—I welcome them—but they cannot be a substitute for that right, which is what Amendment 229 calls for. There are two reasons for rejecting the FCA’s position. First, elsewhere—for example, in the sale of goods or professional negligence—a breach of a duty of care is by definition actionable, so why is that prevented in the world of finance? Why are the financial services and the FCA an exception to it? Secondly, the alternatives listed by Randell and the FCA have consistently been shown to be unsatisfactory. Individuals are therefore left in the lurch with nowhere to go.
A right of private action is desirable and creates a pressure point for financial services providers. While the consumer duty has many exclusions and qualifications I do not welcome, attaching a private right of action to it would materially strengthen consumers’ rights in relation to wrong scores and be of benefit to consumers. A right of private action would enable consumers to seek redress and compensation in the event that they are dealt with badly by a financial company. In the absence of that right, consumers, investors and pension savers remain dependent on the FCA. As we have already heard, the FCA is always dragging its feet to do anything. We need to set consumers free. In essence, I am supporting what the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, I added my name to three of the amendments in this group. I will speak to Amendments 225 and 226 first. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, has expertly explained the issues surrounding the Equitable Life compensation scheme and the problems suffered by more than 1 million people who lost money through what was reputed to be an extremely strong and stable investment company. Even though the Parliamentary Ombudsman ruled that this was due to official maladministration across a wide range of actors, about 900,000 people have received only 22% of the compensation due.
I understand that taxpayer money is not a bottomless pit and that it is difficult when there is such an enormous number of people involved for any Government to consider this kind of compensation, but we have a Parliamentary Ombudsman for a reason. If a Parliamentary Ombudsman rules in a particular direction, it is troubling to me that the Government would suggest that they disagree with their own referee and therefore are not going to comply. The amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, would require the Government to honour the recommendations of the ombudsman. I urge my noble friend to look seriously and carefully at how much has been paid out and to whom, and whether the Government can justify not complying with the recommendations of their own ombudsman.
I have personal experience in the case of the Financial Assistance Scheme where the Parliamentary Ombudsman ruled that government must compensate. The then Government in 2005-06 simply said that they were not going to and that they disagreed. We had to take the Government to court. They lost in the High Court and then in the Court of Appeal. It was only after that and at the risk of the complainants losing their homes and everything else, after also having lost their pensions, that in 2008, thankfully, a proper redress scheme was set up. So it is possible, but it was very much dependent on the Secretary of State at the time being willing to agree.
Amendment 120 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, to which I added my name too, refers to the Financial Conduct Authority’s Consumer Panel. The amendment would like to see the Consumer Panel reporting to Parliament. At the moment this excellent panel is doing quite a bit of work trying to look at the interests of consumers. Clearly, consumers as a group and individually do not have the resources that the financial services industry has in order to promote their interests relative to those of the financial services companies. The Consumer Panel has often come up with important recommendations to the board of the FCA to look at and act on behalf of consumers who have been wronged in different ways. But Parliament generally does not tend to hear about what the Consumer Panel says, and the board of the FCA is at liberty not to agree or comply with recommendations of the Consumer Panel.
It would be helpful for parliamentarians, particularly Members in the other place representing their own constituents who may have been wronged in these cases, to know what has been considered by the Consumer Panel. I hope that my noble friend might consider this very reasonable amendment, which is just asking that Parliament is directly informed by the Consumer Panel of its concerns at actions taken by the financial services industry to the detriment of consumers.
That leads me finally to the other amendments in this group. The Consumer Panel has recommended that a duty of care is required in the financial services industry. As we know, Section 29 of the Financial Services Act called for a duty of care, and Parliament was supposed to introduce a duty of care, yet what we have is this consumer duty rather than a fully fledged duty of care.
Amendment 76 calls for a duty of care, and the amendments tabled and so eloquently explained by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, Amendments 229, 230 and 231, also represent what could be considered a duty of care—as, indeed, does Amendment 77 from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, which talks about consumers with mental health issues, and how the industry looks after them. These are all extremely important for the Government to consider in strengthening the protection for the public.
To give one brief example, if noble Lords will indulge me, most recently we have had the problem of liability-driven investments and the dislocations in the government bond markets caused by the market turmoil a few months ago. For many investors in personal pensions—where the Financial Conduct Authority oversees the supposed “know your customer” and new duty of care requirement—the products and offerings given to ordinary members of the public in pensions under auto-enrolment and in other areas have default options, which the majority of workers are put into. They typically use what is called a life-styling or target date approach, which means that, in the approximately 10 years running up to retirement, those customers are switched out of assets with higher expected returns such as equities into what are meant to be safe assets such as bonds, in the expectation that they will buy an annuity when they reach retirement—and annuities are priced relative to bonds, so everything should be fine.
There is no duty on those pension providers to ask a customer once a year, for example, if they are planning to retire at the date that they are gearing towards or if they plan to buy an annuity. They may plan to keep the money invested. If that is the case, we have seen millions of people—potentially, certainly hundreds of thousands, although we do not have the number—who have been coming up to retirement and lost a huge chunk of their pension, because the price of those supposedly safe assets has fallen significantly. They were never asked whether they were going to buy an annuity, and the majority of them will not do so. No provider had any requirement to check with their customer, on something as fundamentally important as this, whether they planned to buy an annuity or even to take out any money at all at the date that the product automatically switches them to. Nothing has been updated on that since the pension freedoms were introduced.
That is just an example of where, I hope, my noble friend will understand that a duty of care must extend beyond where the industry is today, so that the interests of individuals are taken into consideration by the financial services industry.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, let me start by dealing directly with Amendment 76, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and spoken to by many other members of the Committee.
I assure noble Lords that, in coming to this debate, I took the time to remind myself of our debate on the then Financial Services Bill in 2021; it is either an advantage or disadvantage, depending on your perspective, that I participated at the time. It is worth going through what that Bill, now the Financial Services Act 2021, required. It required the FCA to consult on whether it should make rules requiring regulated financial services providers to owe a duty of care to consumers. It also set out that the consultation must include
“whether the FCA should make other provision in general rules about the level of care that must be provided to consumers by authorised persons, either instead of or in addition to a duty of care”.
The then Bill further set out that the consultation must be carried out by the end of 2021 and any new rules introduced, if considered appropriate, before 1 August 2022. The FCA publicly consulted on its consumer duty in May 2021 and again in December 2021, and issued its final consumer duty policy statement in July 2022. In its consultation, the FCA noted that its proposals met the requirements in the Financial Services Act 2021.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
I think the Minister said that the legislation, as it finally went through, gave the FCA the option of either a duty of care or something else. Did that imply that it could be much weaker than a duty of care—and did anybody signing up to it understand that?—or was there a sense that it might be done in a different way but would be equally as strong and effective as a duty of care?
Lord Flight (Con)
The other fundamental point is that it is not the law; it is a sort of quasi-law that does not have the same power as law.
Baroness Penn (Con)
If I may, I will come on to address the noble Baroness’s point and the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on why the FCA took the approach it did in selecting the consumer duty approach rather than a duty of care. It is the FCA’s view that it provides not a weaker response but a stronger one; I will set that out in more detail.
The consumer duty sets a higher and clearer standard of care that firms owe their customers than now, and includes a new principle requiring firms to act to deliver good outcomes for customers. It is a package of measures comprising an overarching principle, cross-cutting rules and four “outcome rules”. It is also accompanied by extensive guidance, as noble Lords have noted, to provide clarity for firms on what is expected from them.
The FCA developed the consumer duty following extensive consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, including consumer representatives. Noble Lords may be aware that, in its consumer duty consultations, the FCA specifically sought views on whether the new principle should instead require firms to act in customers’ best interests. On balance, the FCA concluded that requiring firms to act to deliver “good outcomes” was the most appropriate approach. The FCA explained that “good outcomes” best reflects the outcomes-focused nature of the consumer duty and underlines that firms should not focus simply on processes but on the impact of their actions on consumers. The FCA also noted concerns raised by some stakeholders that “best interests” language could be confused with a fiduciary duty or a policy that required the best outcome to be achieved for each consumer, potentially resulting in unintended consequences concerning the availability of products and services to some consumers.
I hope noble Lords are therefore assured that the FCA carefully considered the wording of its consumer duty in the manner proposed by Amendment 76 and concluded that a different approach would deliver better outcomes. As the UK’s independent conduct regulator for financial services, it is responsible for developing its rules independently of the Government.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked about the potential for the consumer duty to operate in the context of past problems. She highlighted the mis-selling of PPI and interest rate hedging products. As I said, the consumer duty sets clearer and higher standards for firms to follow, and that means clearer and higher standards for the FCA to supervise and enforce, which will enable the FCA to act more quickly and assertively where it identifies poor practice. However, within this system, even the best regulators doing everything right will not be able to, and cannot be expected to, ensure a zero-failure regime.
In respect of the two specific cases of PPI and interest rate hedging products, the Government have always been clear that mis-selling financial products is unacceptable. That is why we supported unequivocally the FCA’s work on PPI to ensure that consumers who were mis-sold PPI receive appropriate redress, and the review process into the mis-selling of interest rate hedging products, which saw over £2.2 billion of redress being paid out to almost 14,000 businesses.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
Before the Minister moves on, what are her views on the point I made about “reasonable expectations” for consumers, which is the standard required by firms to comply with the terms of the new consumer duty? The Minister will have heard the historical criticisms of the notion of reasonable expectations for consumers. How would she feel about having this concept at the heart of this new duty?
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Lord gave other examples of the concept in the past, but it is important to root it in this particular context. Perhaps I can write to the Committee to expand on that point.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
Can I ask the Minister to follow up seriously on this? The reasonable expectation point matters so much. If it is a case only of outcomes, but that is then qualified by reasonable expectations, the reasonable expectations provide a complete out for PPI, interest rate swaps or virtually anything else that we see. The core concept of the consumer duty is that somebody has to be behaving outside the norm within the industry. The problem is that the norm within the industry was abusive.
Baroness Penn (Con)
The points that I gave in reply to the noble Baroness’s specific question on PPI and interest rate hedging products were in the context of the consumer duty as written, with the reasonable expectations provision in there. However, of course I take seriously the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and I will write to the Committee to further expand on that.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My recollection from the passage of the 2021 Act was that the final wording was government wording, put in as a concession to amendments from my noble friend Lord Sharkey. The government amendment said that a duty of care, or variations thereof, could be consulted on. Was it the Treasury’s, or the Minister’s, expectation at the time that it would be severely diluted? Was that the point of those extra bits?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I think I said directly what was required of the FCA, and the FCA has fulfilled its obligations under that Act. Furthermore, the FCA is not of the view that it has diluted the approach; it has taken a different approach from the duty of care. I have attempted to set out some of the reasoning and thinking behind the approach it has chosen to take versus the alternatives that were put to it. I am happy to write further.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
I am afraid to say that I am not sure I take much comfort from the FCA saying that it is right. Mandy Rice-Davies would know how to deal with that. My next question is about the lack of redress provided by the new consumer duty.
Baroness Penn (Con)
With apologies, the lack of redress is around the right to private action. I will come to that point and, when I have said my piece, the noble Lord can intervene, if it is not sufficient.
Amendment 231 from the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, is similar in intention and would introduce a statutory duty of care owed by authorised persons to consumers. Again, this proposal was considered by the FCA, and it sought views from stakeholders through its consultations. As noble Lords have noted, this issue has been under consideration for some time. In its 2019 feedback statement on a duty of care and potential alternative approaches, the FCA explained that most respondents, including industry stakeholders and a number of consumer groups, did not support a statutory duty of care. Of course, the two subsequent consultations were undertaken by the FCA in response to the amendment put down by Parliament and included in the Financial Services Act 2021.
The new consumer duty comes into force on 31 July for new and existing products. It represents a significant shift in regulatory expectations, and there is a large programme of work under way within the sector to implement it. It would be wrong to seek to replace it now or seek to duplicate it with an additional statutory duty of care before it has been given a chance to succeed.
Amendment 229, along with Amendment 76, seeks to attach a private right of action to the consumer duty. This is an issue that the FCA has considered and consulted on extensively as it developed the consumer duty.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
Could the Minister clarify something? If I buy a bar of chocolate, the producer owes me a duty of care and, if I get injured, I have a right of redress. If I buy financial services, why can I not have the same rights?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the concept of a duty of care in financial services may be different to the concept of a duty of care in other contexts. This was considered very carefully and consulted on by the FCA in 2019 and in 2021. It considered these questions and the issues we have discussed in the Committee today.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
I thank my noble friend for giving way. On these consultations, did the financial services companies generally respond not wishing to have the right of redress? Were the consumer organisations in favour of it?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I do not have a breakdown of the different responses to the consultations. However, as I said, in its feedback statement on a previous consultation on the duty of care, the FCA noted that industry stakeholders did not support a statutory duty of care. It also noted that a number of consumer groups did not support a statutory duty of care. I can point back to when that was considered in 2019 as not being a single view from a single source of consultees.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
One is a number, as I was always taught when I was training as a patent attorney. It might mean that one consumer organisation did not agree, but the vast majority did.
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Baroness has made her point.
I was turning to the private right of action, which was also consulted on by the FCA. It has concluded that it will not be beneficial at this time to introduce a private right of action, as it sees benefit in giving firms time to implement the significant changes that the duty entails without the threat of private action.
However, the FCA has committed to keeping this matter under review. The FCA has the power to introduce a private right of action through its rules, without the need for legislative change, if it considers it appropriate to do so in future. In addition, as noble Lords know, consumers will remain able to seek redress via the Financial Ombudsman Service where they believe a financial services firm has breached the consumer duty.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
I thank the Minister for that reply. It is hard to understand exactly what the defence of the new consumer duty is, and why the private right of action is not included. I am very grateful for all the contributions made. I note that the Minister did not really address the defects of the consumer duty that we set out in detail, and I hope she will write to me and explain her views on that.
I close by saying that there is a slight Alice in Wonderland quality to this argument because, essentially, it boils down to something that we have discussed before: that it is not in the consumer’s best interests that financial service providers act in their best interests. That simply cannot be right. There is something fundamentally wrong with all this, and I look forward to having more time on Report to return to the issues.
House of Lords
Carrier Strike Group
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord West of Spithead
To ask His Majesty’s Government how they intend to achieve Full Operating Capability for the Carrier Strike Group operating within a Maritime Task Group configuration by December 2023, given the requirement for 36 F-35B Lightning aircraft.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as a serving Army reservist. However, I am today responding in my capacity as His Majesty’s Government’s spokesperson for defence. The definition of “full operating capability” for the carrier strike group includes 24 UK Lightnings or 36 Lightnings with partner nations when operating within a maritime task group. The programme is designed for the flexible usage necessary in a modern defence capability, including transporting a mix of fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, but the composition and size of an embarked air group in a deploying carrier will be tailored to meet the operational requirements.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for the Answer, but it just adds to the confusion. When on 8 September I talked about 36 aircraft being required for an FOC, I was told that the MoD did not recognise the figure of 36— which surprised me because I had written it into the requirement for the aircraft carrier when it was built. On 23 December I was told, “Ah, for a full FOC, we do need 36 of these aircraft”, so there is a certain amount of confusion. I am confused and I am meant to know about aircraft—as well as ships, I hasten to add—so I imagine the House is very confused. I will ask the Minister a couple of questions, and if he does not know, maybe he could write to me. First, is the full operating capability of the carrier strike group to be reached by December 2023, as I was told by the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, on 12 December? The other day somebody said, “No, it has changed to 2025”, and I would like to know whether it has not. Secondly, if yes, how is it possible, because we will have only 33 F35s in our inventory in this country, so we cannot possibly put 36 of them to sea? Lastly, will 809 Squadron—
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
I will stop there: I think that is enough questions. For an Army officer, the Minister has made a great start.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, there are currently 29 UK F35Bs in service. The complement of assets deployed on the carriers will be flexible. The air wing will be configured to meet defence needs for each operation or deployment.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
Could my noble friend arrange with his colleagues for us to have a full report of the lessons from the last carrier strike group deployment, which I think ended in December, in the Indo-Pacific and the Far East, including the unfortunate loss of one F35B? What lessons arose from working with the Japanese navy? Once we had that report, we would be able to judge more effectively how things were going to go with the next deployment, which will of course involve the “Prince of Wales” when it is ready.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, we welcome the findings of the interim report into the loss of the F35B aircraft in 2021. While it would be inappropriate to comment fully until the final report is published, we can confirm that immediate steps are being taken after the crash to ensure the safety of earmarked flying operations.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I will add to the list of things on which the noble Lord will write to the House, or perhaps he can tell us today. Can he say when HMS “Prince of Wales” is likely to be operational again? Are we likely to have two ships in the Queen Elizabeth class that are both seaworthy?
Lord Harlech (Con)
HMS “Prince of Wales” is expected to commence her operational programme as planned in autumn 2023. However, an issue has been identified with her port shaft. To prevent a similar defect occurring, rectification of this issue is expected to be completed prior to her planned departure. The defects with the shafts of HMS “Prince of Wales” are not believed to be a class issue, and HMS “Queen Elizabeth” will continue to undertake strike carrier duties until 2024, when HMS “Prince of Wales” will take over as strike carrier at very high readiness.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, I did not quite catch the Minister’s Answer on the date of full operating capability. Can he reassure the House that, when it is declared, the F35B Lightning force will be fully supported by all the logistics and the depth and quantity of weapons supplies necessary for high-intensity conflict, which is certainly not the case for most of our force structure at the moment?
Lord Harlech (Con)
I understand the point that the noble and gallant Lord is making. In 2022, the number of UK F35Bs available for embarked operations to support routine carrier deployments was a squadron of up to 12 jets. This number will increase to the full operating capability for F35Bs, currently scheduled for 2025, which is up to two UK squadrons. The Royal Air Force intends to continue upgrading these aircraft in line with the wider programme and to equip them with UK weapons, including the UK-developed SPEAR Cap 3 and Meteor.
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
My Lords, what is the present size of the Royal Navy and is it sufficient for the purposes referred to in this Question?
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, I will have to write to my noble friend on the exact size.
Lord Naseby (Con)
Will my noble friend clarify the numbers on F35Bs? The noble Lord, Lord West, clearly could not tell from the authorities whether the date was December 2023 or 2025, so will my noble friend clarify when we will be fully up to complement? Given the tense situation because of Ukraine and our role as a maritime nation, should we consider some form of lend-lease in the short term so that we are up to full complement as quickly as possible?
Lord Harlech (Con)
I understand what my noble friend is saying, but the CSG21 deployment saw the US Marine Corps F35 squadron integrated throughout, which is a tangible demonstration of the UK-US special relationship and our united efforts to ensure stability, security and freedom of the seas. A further tranche of additional F35 aircraft has been announced; once complete, it will bring the total UK fleet up to 74 aircraft.
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)
My Lords, the original intention was that the United Kingdom should take 138 of the Lightnings. Is that still the Government’s intention?
Lord Harlech (Con)
On current plans, by the end of 2025 the UK will have procured 48 F35B Lightning aircraft, which are capable of operating from both land and the UK’s Queen Elizabeth-class carriers. As I said, the intention to buy a further tranche of additional F35B aircraft has been announced; when complete, this will bring the total UK fleet up to 74.
Lord Ricketts (CB)
My Lords, the UK and France are the two European nations with more than carrier strike capability, along with Indo-Pacific nations. We have a UK-France summit coming up on 10 March. Is there any intention to announce co-ordinated deployments of our carrier strike capabilities towards the Far East?
Lord Harlech (Con)
I would not wish to comment on specific locations of operations for reasons that I am sure the noble Lord would understand. I can say that we are always training and working with NATO and other allied partners.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
When will the refit of HMS “Vanguard” that has been going on since 2015 be finished? It was recently discovered—just before the engines were about to be fired up, as it were—that Babcock’s workers had superglued bolts on it instead of replacing them. How much has that put back the deployment of this ship?
Lord Harlech (Con)
The noble Lord is correct that, as part of a planned inspection, a defect was found. It was promptly reported and fixed. In light of this issue, my right honourable friend the Defence Secretary spoke directly with the chief executive office of Babcock to seek assurances about future work. It is UK policy that we do not comment on specific details of submarine activity or operations; however, I can confirm that there were no nuclear safety implications or risks associated with the identified defect at any point.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, it has been reported this morning that the expected update of the integrated review—which may address the concerns around the carrier strike group—may now be delayed because the initial draft failed to reflect the transformed security environment in Europe. Was that not the main reason for it being updated or are these reports wrong?
Lord Harlech (Con)
As your Lordships are aware, the integrated review refresh is an ongoing process and it would not be appropriate for me to prejudge the outcome.
Children: Bereavement Support in Schools
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of support for bereaved children in schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, losing a loved one is a devastating loss for any child. Schools can play an essential role in supporting a pupil through grief and preventing longer-term emotional distress by providing effective pastoral support and ensuring there is a supportive school culture. It is for individual schools to decide what pastoral support each pupil needs. We have invested £10 million in senior mental health leads training to help schools put informed support in place, drawing on specialists and working with families as needed.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that helpful and sympathetic reply. There is clearly a lot of good practice. But recent research has found that bereavement support in primary schools is varied and inconsistent. My own family experience reinforces that. There are long waiting times for counselling, and how schools deal with anticipatory grief is particularly neglected. One in every 29 children will be bereaved of a parent: that is one in every classroom. The research shows that teachers and schools are crying out for guidance and training. Is it not time for DfE to have national bereavement policy, including a mandatory requirement for each school to have such a policy? Will the Minister agree to meet the Ruth Strauss Foundation and other charities who are doing such formative work on this issue?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness will be aware that there is a cross-government bereavement working group. This issue, as the noble Baroness understands well, cuts across both education and health, as well as other government departments—hence our cross-government group. I would be delighted to meet with the Ruth Strauss Foundation and hear about its work. This is something we take extremely seriously, hence our focus on ensuring that schools provide a truly compassionate culture for whatever is going on for the children within them.
Lord Storey (LD)
One hundred children every day are bereaved of a parent. From my own experience, I remember my two nephews losing their dad when they were seven and nine. There was little to no support from their primary school, and that is quite endemic to the problem we now face. Would the Minister agree that we need, as we have heard, every school to have a policy on bereavement, staff to have training on bereavement and, thirdly, a commitment to every school having full-time or part-time professional mental health support in the school?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am sorry to hear of the noble Lord’s nephews’ personal experience of this. Of course, many of us in this House have been touched in different ways by the issues raised by the noble Baroness’s Question. The Government are doing many of the things the noble Lord points to. I mentioned training; every state school is being offered a grant, as are colleges, to train a senior mental health lead so that we have an effective response to these issues. Of course, education staff are not mental health staff in general, and nor are they bereavement or trauma specialists, but they are very well placed to observe the behaviour of children day to day and respond to that.
Lord Lexden (Con)
Are the improvements to training to which my noble friend referred being overseen by officials at the highest level, with just the right kind of approach to these deeply sensitive and important matters?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I am happy to share with my noble friend in a letter more detail of the training, but it is something the department takes extremely seriously.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, when I was still teaching, I was privileged to be able to attend bereavement training in order to be able to deal with that in primary schools—although I was part of a peripatetic team rather than attached to an individual school. Can the Minister say whether she believes that, actually, there is a need for peripatetic teams? Not all teachers will be able to be trained to the same level and, increasingly, they are trained in schools where the training might be of a variable standard.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I do not think we would want to be prescriptive about peripatetic teams. The point the noble Baroness makes is that schools need to be aware of what resources are available in their communities to support a range of issues, including bereavement. Your Lordships have focused a lot, rightly, on primary school, but I should add that the department is extending the early years professional development programme, with the aim of reaching up to 10,000 early years practitioners. That includes a module developed in partnership with the Anna Freud Centre, which allows them to identify acute stress and trauma in the children in their care.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, would my noble friend agree that every case will be different as to how this comes about? While certain guidelines from the centre would be useful, it is absolutely essential that there is no straitjacket for how schools feel they should act on this particular subject, and that there is discretion allowed, so that head teachers and teachers can best judge how to approach each individual case, which will not be identical.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My noble friend is spot on and has probably put the Government’s position rather more eloquently than I have. It is critical that the school creates a culture where children feel able to talk about what has happened to them and what their feelings are, and that it can use its discretion and judgment in responding to that and accessing specialist resources. The Government are supporting this through our work, and signposting to the Childhood Bereavement Network, Hope Again and a wide range of other resources.
The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham
My Lords, the Church of England educates over 1 million children in its schools and has produced highly accessible guidance and training for its school leaders on supporting students and families through grief, bereavement and loss. Recognising in particular the barriers to learning and flourishing that trauma may cause, would the Minister meet with the Church of England’s education team to see whether these outstanding resources could in fact help other students, teachers and families across the country?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for the invitation; I would be delighted to meet with them.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister will know, the Government’s £8 million Wellbeing for Education Return training programme was launched in 2020, with the aim of helping children to process the impacts of the pandemic. What is the Government’s assessment of equality of access to this programme between deprived and affluent areas across the United Kingdom?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I do not have the breakdown that the noble Baroness refers to. She referred to the 2020 return programme, which was followed by the recovery programme in 2021. Looking at those two years, I am aware that 14,000 schools and colleges, out of roughly 22,000 nationally, got those resources.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, the Minister well understands that teachers are faced with a range of very human situations. Could she use her good offices to ensure that Ofsted inspections place an emphasis not just on learning but on the pastoral responsibilities that schools have, particularly in these very emotionally disturbing situations?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I hear what the noble Lord says. I am slightly surprised, because I think there has been a real focus by Ofsted on safeguarding in its broadest sense and the important pastoral role that schools provide—but I will, of course, take what he says back.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness’s answers, and indeed the questions, have focused, understandably, on the impact on individual bereaved children. What is the Government’s view of the impact on the classes of which those children are part? Very often, the distress exhibited by one child can be transmitted to others, who often do not fully understand what they are witnessing and sometimes have great difficulty in managing it.
Baroness Barran (Con)
The noble Baroness makes a good point. Indeed, in thinking about this, I was also thinking about situations which affect the whole class—for example, where a member of the class tragically is killed. The very valid point she raised also affects teachers, not just pupils. I come back to the fact that schools need to implement a strong, pastoral approach across their school community, balancing their own insight and the relationships and trust they have with pupils and colleagues with the resources in their local community and the national resources that we signpost and provide.
Police Misconduct Cases
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord Lexden
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the work of legally qualified chairs in police misconduct cases.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)
My Lords, the Government have launched a review into the process of police officer dismissals to ensure that the system is fair and effective and removes those who are not fit to serve. This will include an assessment of the composition of misconduct panels, including the impact of the role of legally qualified chairs.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, is it not astonishing and deeply disturbing that in Cleveland, a legally qualified chair whose name is unknown to the public is holding up a gross misconduct hearing, announced in August 2021, at which Mike Veale, the discredited policeman who besmirched the reputation of Sir Edward Heath, will finally be called to account? When asked about this, Ministers say that an anonymous chair may delay proceedings when it is in the interests of justice to do so. They also say that it would be inappropriate to comment further since proceedings are ongoing. Proceedings are not ongoing—they have not even started. How can it possibly be in the interests of justice to delay indefinitely this hearing while giving no explanation at all as to the reasons? The Home Office will surely have made full inquiries about this matter since I have raised it several times. What does my noble friend have to say about the extraordinary state of affairs in Cleveland?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I am afraid that I will have to go over old ground. The arrangements for the misconduct hearing of the former chief constable Mike Veale are a matter for the Cleveland police and crime commissioner, and the management of the hearing itself is the responsibility of the independent legally qualified chair appointed to it. My noble friend is right that legally qualified chairs must commence a hearing within 100 days of an officer being provided with a notice referring them to proceedings, but this period may be extended when a legally qualified chair considers that it is in the interests of justice to do so. I am afraid that I will have to repeat the old mantra that it would be inappropriate to comment further while these proceedings remain ongoing.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, given that the Leicestershire PCC, Mr Matthews, refused the chair of the panel’s request for Mr Veale to be interviewed by the panel, as the law demands he should be, what is HMG’s view of Mr Veale’s resignation last week from his post as interim chief executive officer of the OPCC?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, the appointment of staff is a matter for police and crime commissioners but, as the noble Lord is right to point out, they are required by legislation to seek the views of their police and crime panel when appointing to senior positions within their office. I note Mr Veale’s resignation but the Home Office has no role in such appointments and it would therefore be inappropriate for me to comment on this matter directly.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, in matters of police misconduct, there is a delicate balance to be drawn between local accountability and local flexibility on the one hand and consistency in dealing with these cases on the other. Does the Minister agree with the inspectorate that there is a need to standardise decision-making processes when dealing with misconduct, and do the Government accept all the recommendations contained in the An Inspection of Vetting, Misconduct, and Misogyny in the Police Service report?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, on the latter point, I think the police forces have accepted all the recommendations. As regards the consistency of decision-making, that is one of the things that the dismissal review panel is going to consider. The first term of reference is to:
“Understand the consistency of decision-making at both hearings and accelerated hearings”,
so the answer is yes.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a legal assessor for regulatory panels. My noble friend will know that Parliament has established an independent regulatory panel in respect of almost every profession that exists. Those regulatory panels have the power to make interim orders of conditions and suspension when appropriate, and they can very often make their interim order within a few days of the referral of the complaint. Should the police not consider that model?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, again, I refer my noble friend back to the fact that the dismissal review is ongoing. It would be foolish of me to pre-empt the outcome of the review’s findings.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, in the circumstances of the case raised by the noble Lord, is the Minister saying, in effect, that there are absolutely no circumstances under which the Home Office will intervene, even though this case is continuing not to be dealt with, month after month? He will know that under Section 40 of the Police Act 1996, the Home Secretary can intervene if a PCC is not being effective. Why will the Home Secretary not intervene?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, as I say, I am unable to comment on ongoing cases. I know that irritates the House and I apologise for doing so, but there are specific circumstances which make me unable to comment.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, it is now almost two and a half years since the Independent Office for Police Conduct found sufficient evidence for there to be a misconduct hearing. I see that the Government cannot intervene in police conduct itself but will they encourage the police to speed up the handling of these misconduct hearings, which have now drifted on for so long and so inadequately?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My noble friend makes an extremely good point. I certainly encourage them to speed this up. Having said that, this is a particular case. It is considered to be in the interests of justice for the legally qualified chair to go beyond the normal 100 days. Beyond that, I cannot go.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, twice said that the legally qualified chair in this case was anonymous. That is not universally the case. In many other forces, legally qualified chairs are named. Indeed, proceedings describe who is on the panel. Why is Cleveland different?
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, can my noble friend find out and tell the House? Does he not realise that every answer that he has given in this stonewalling performance has been utterly unsatisfactory? He has made the Home Office seem completely impotent. At the very least, we need to know who this anonymous man or woman is.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I thank my noble friend for not accusing me this week of being incompetent, at least. I will do my very best to find out the answer to that question.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
My Lords, would the Minister like to address the question asked by my noble friend Lord Hunt? It was not about an ongoing investigation. It was a point of principle. Does he accept that there are circumstances under which the Home Secretary can carry out an investigation under the statutory powers already available? As a matter of principle, does he accept that?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
As a matter of principle, yes, I do.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (Non-Afl)
Do the Government agree that the chairmen and members of police misconduct panels should never be open to any suggestion of conflict of interest arising from their previous careers?
Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)
My Lords, is it not possible for the Secretary of State to carry out the implementation of what is being delayed? Why is it not being done now?
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I am unable to comment on ongoing cases.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register, particularly as past chairman of the Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation. None of this would have happened if the disgraced policeman, Mike Veale, had faced an independent inquiry into his witch hunt against the late Sir Edward Heath, as this House has repeatedly demanded. The Home Office keeps referring to all these inquiries, but they were all carried out by the police themselves, marking their own homework, and are no substitute for a judge-led review of how the good name of a distinguished former Prime Minister was deliberately besmirched—at great cost to the taxpayer.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I thank my noble friend. He makes some extremely good points, which I will take back.
Cancer Therapies Access
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord Aberdare
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to increase the access to minimally invasive cancer therapies.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I declare my registered interest as a trustee of the UK Focused Ultrasound Foundation.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
NHS England’s specialised commissioning team has been undertaking work to expand the number of providers offering minimally invasive cancer therapies such as selective internal radiation therapy. The market engagement and prior information notice aspects of this have now been completed, with regional teams now putting in place the necessary contractual arrangements with NHS trusts.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer and welcome him to the Dispatch Box. Minimally invasive cancer therapies such as focused ultrasound, SIRT, which he mentioned, cryoablation and radioligand therapy, offer significant benefits both to patients to the NHS: faster recovery times; reduced pain; fewer side effects; and less pressure on NHS facilities and staff. How will the 10-year cancer plan reflect the need to increase awareness of these therapies among patients and clinicians and increase access to them? Will the Government’s proposed workforce plan ensure the availability of enough interventional radiologists to deliver MICTs at the scale needed?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord and the work that he has done on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Minimally Invasive Cancer Therapies. In 2022-23, Health Education England is continuing to take forward priorities identified in the cancer workforce plan phase 1 and is investing an additional £50 million in 2022-23 to further expand the cancer and diagnosis workforce. Spending plans for individual budgets in 2023-24 to 2024-25 inclusive are subject to a detailed financial planning exercise and will be finalised in due course.
Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has already pointed out, interventional radiologists are essential to being able to provide minimally invasive cancer therapies. What is the Minister’s response to the Royal College of Radiologists’ 2021 census report, which painted a picture of growing concerns about the availability of interventional radiologists, as supply is not keeping up with demand? Will this particular shortage also be covered in the workforce plan? We will keep going on about the plan until we see it.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, NHS England commissions selective internal radiation therapy as a treatment of choice for patients with unresectable advanced hepatocellular carcinoma in accordance with technology appraisals and metastatic colorectal cancer in accordance with the NHS England clinical commissioning policy. It should be noted that the market engagement and prior information notice process permitted any NHS trust that hosts a specialist liver service and multidisciplinary team to put themselves forward, either independently or in partnership with other NHS trusts.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, Cancer Research UK published a report last week that shows that, by 2040, we will have half a million new cases of cancer. Considering that the UK has the worst record on cancer outcomes in western Europe and that we are not likely to meet the Government’s target of diagnosing 75% of new cancers at stage 1 or 2, why did the Minister in the other place state that the Government are to abandon the 10-year cancer plan, particularly when the previous Secretary of State wanted a new plan which was more challenging and robust?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, improving early diagnosis of cancer is a priority for the NHS. That is why one of the core ambitions of the NHS’s long-term plan is to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028. November 2022 saw the highest number of urgent GP referrals for cancer ever, with nearly 265,000 patients referred, representing 125% of November 2019 levels on a per working day basis, compared to the pandemic low of 80,000 in April 2020. It is a priority of this Government for the NHS.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of Genomics England. Will the Minister join me in welcoming the announcement of the UK cancer vaccine launchpad? It aims to rapidly identify large numbers of cancer patients who could be eligible for trials and to explore the potential of cancer vaccines among multiple types of cancer. This is vital research if we want to have any hope of identifying and tackling the challenges mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Patel.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My noble friend raises a very good point. One in two of us will develop cancer in the future, so we need to explore all therapies or vaccines wherever possible.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, Cancer Research UK has shown that the annual rate of cancer diagnosis will increase by one-third over the next two decades, rising to nearly half a million. It takes 15 years to train an oncologist, pathologist or surgeon. In the light of previous questions, will the Minister assure the House that the long-awaited NHS workforce plan, when it is finally published, will address these particular shortages? How will the workforce plan dovetail with the also promised major conditions strategy, which the Government have announced that they are now putting in place of the 10-year cancer strategy, as we previously heard, which itself was long overdue?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, I can assure the noble Baroness that the new major conditions strategy will set out a strong and coherent policy agenda that sets out a shift to integrate whole-person care. Interventions set out in the strategy will aim to alleviate pressure on the health system as well as support the Government’s objective of increasing healthy-life expectancy and reducing ill-health-related labour market inactivity. We will cover the patient pathway from prevention to treatment and set out the standards patients should expect in the short term and over a five-year lifetime. Many stakeholders have already responded to the Government’s call for evidence on cancer.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, we now know that there are drugs that attack cancer cells directly, without damaging the surrounding tissue. These literally non-invasive treatments are available to some, but can the Minister assure the House that these drugs are now available to every trust throughout the country?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, I do not have a specific answer to that question, but I can certainly respond in writing.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, behind this Question lies an even more worrying fact, which is that the NHS is very, very slow to adopt new medicines and new treatments. Does the Minister accept that our very poor outcomes for cancer in relation to many OECD countries are partly down to this lack of adoption of proven new treatments? What are the Government doing to turn this around?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, looking ahead, a number of specialised services will be delegated to integrated care boards, which in turn will want to work with and through local cancer alliances to plan and organise access to cancer services, including specialised services such as SIRT and non-specialised services such as highly intensive focused ultrasound. Following delegation, NHS England will remain the accountable commissioner for all prescribed specialised services and will continue to determine national standards, including new treatments.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I am sorry to come back, but the Minister did not answer my question, which was: why are the Government abandoning the 10-year cancer plan? Is it to be replaced with a new plan, or is it totally abandoned?
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, we have not abandoned anything. It is all part of the Government’s strategy to improve cancer outcomes.
Turkey: Earthquake Relief
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
To ask His Majesty’s Government what immediate assistance with lifesaving, recovery and long term rebuilding and reconstruction efforts they are offering to the Government of Turkey and non-governmental organisations following recent earthquakes.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, I am sure that I speak for all in your Lordships’ House in offering condolences to all those impacted and affected by this tragedy in Turkey and Syria. Our thoughts and prayers are with all. Our embassy in Ankara is in direct contact with Turkish authorities and is supporting British nationals. We are also in contact with British humanitarian workers in Syria. I can share with your Lordships that the United Kingdom is sending immediate support to Turkey, including a team of 76 search and rescue specialists as part of our international search and rescue team. They are being dispatched to Turkey as I speak. They will have equipment and rescue dogs. In Syria, the UK aid-funded White Helmets have also been mobilised, and we are working closely with our UN partners to understand the direct impact and options.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I am grateful, as always, to the Minister for his helpful response. I am sure we all share in sending condolences to those who have lost their lives and their relatives. However, this is not just one but two of the strongest earthquakes ever in an area that is already coping with hundreds of thousands of refugees, so we need to do a great deal. I am glad to hear that the immediate rescue effort has been mobilised. Can the Minister tell us which NGOs are involved with that? When will they leave the United Kingdom for Turkey? What kind of help are they going to give? Will there be specialised equipment as well as men? Will we provide dogs or other assistance? Can he say what skills and equipment we are able to provide?
This is going to be a huge effort. It needs international support from every organisation and every country. Everything that we can do we should be doing. We cannot overestimate the devastation that has taken place, the death and destruction in Turkey. I hope that we will get a clear assurance that the United Kingdom Government, irrespective of the cuts we have sadly seen in the development budget, will make sure that as much money and help are available to Turkey as we can give.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord. He asked some specific questions. We are working directly with the United Nations. I hope to speak to the UN co-ordinator, Mohamed Haji, later today within the context of Syria, but communications are quite challenging, certainly in Syria. The noble Lord is right to ask what we have deployed immediately. A UK international search and rescue team will be deployed today and commence life-saving activity within the critical 72 hours. They will depart on a charter flight from Birmingham at 1800 today and will arrive in Turkey by 2300 UK time tonight. They are working in a co-ordinated fashion with the co-ordinating agency in Turkey. I am sure all noble Lords appreciate that it is an evolving situation. Even as I was leaving the Foreign Office to answer this Question, tragically we saw the reported casualty figure reach 2,000—or a tad just under—and this is after just a few hours. The noble Lord is correct that there were two earthquakes, one of 7.8 magnitude followed by one of 7.5 magnitude, impacting not just Syria and Turkey but further afield, including in Israel and the OPTs.
I assure the noble Lord that, as my right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have said, we stand with Turkey and the agencies working on the ground, and, importantly, with the UN within the context of Syria, to make sure that what is required immediately and in the medium and long term can be addressed directly. I assure the noble Lord that, as more details evolve, I shall be happy to update your Lordships’ House accordingly.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned one concern, which is the efforts to get humanitarian aid across the Turkish border to Syria. Syria obviously is in a particularly difficult situation. Will he tell us what steps the Government are taking to support the safe delivery of aid into Syria over the next few days and how they will support the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2672 during recovery, which facilitates cross-border aid going into Syria?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, within the context of the United Nations, first and foremost we have been working to broaden the scope of humanitarian corridors into Syria. It is regrettable that because of Russia’s actions that has not been possible. However, we will continue to work within the parameters and restrictions that apply. I assure the noble Lord that, for example, with the White Helmets, we are already mobilising additional funding and we are in direct contact with them. Notwithstanding the issues and challenges posed, I hope to speak with their representative, Raed Al Saleh’s deputy, in the coming hours to be updated on what is required. The noble Lord will also be aware that within north-west Syria we are working with key NGOs. For example, we have been equipping key NGOs on the ground to ensure that volunteers are already trained to deal with the kind of tragedy that has unfolded. As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, pointed out, this tragedy took place where plates meet. It is a one-in-100-year event, and it happened this morning.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, the reports and pictures of this earthquake show it to be truly apocalyptic, on a scale that is probably unprecedented in our lifetime. I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the response we have made. In the past, the UK had the capacity to provide a very fast, comprehensive response and to co-ordinate international action. Do we still have that capacity, and are we able to provide leadership to get to people quickly so that we can save lives and ensure that needless, endless suffering can be relieved before it is too late?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I assure the noble Lord—and our response reflects this—that we have the specialists required and they have been mobilised very quickly. The noble Lord has raised the importance of co-ordination on the ground. We are working directly with the Turkish authorities, the co-ordinating body and our international partners to ensure that we identify and address what is required immediately. As I am sure the noble Lord has picked up, we were the first of seven or eight countries to respond directly; messages have also been relayed to the Turkish Government at the highest level.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, having travelled in the areas around south-east Turkey that have been affected, to the east of Diyarbakır into Mardin and Tur Abdin, where the ancient Assyrian and Chaldean communities are, I would ask the Minister not to lose sight of those very vulnerable people who are not in the towns and cities but are also deeply affected by the appalling events that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has described. Can the Minister tell us two things? First, in such circumstances, the UK Disasters Emergency Committee usually co-ordinates the giving of donations. Is that happening at the moment, and will the UK Government provide match funding for every penny and pound generously given by UK citizens? Secondly, given the sanctions that have been imposed on Syria, to which the noble Lord, Lord Collins, alluded, will we ensure that humanitarian needs are met regardless of any sanctions?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, on the noble Lord’s second point, of course, any sanction applied has provision for humanitarian support; we will certainly ensure that continues to happen. On the noble Lord’s earlier point about vulnerable communities, the challenges are of course immense. As we look at the situation in Turkey as pointed out by the noble Lord, and towards Syria—Aleppo has been impacted in a devastating way notwithstanding the devastation it had already suffered—we will seek to prioritise the distribution of support accordingly. However, it needs a level of co-ordination; that is why I have alluded to what we are doing both with the aid agencies on the ground in Turkey and with the White Helmets. On the DEC, I assure the noble Lord that one of the last actions I left for the team as I departed the Foreign Office was a full submission on the very points that the noble Lord has raised. I do not have those details with me, as this has been a very fast-evolving situation, but that is high up my agenda; I will update the House accordingly.
Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)
My Lords, it is very good news that the Minister has responded as he has so far. Do I take it for granted that the Royal Auxiliary reserves, who are wonderful people trained specifically for operations like this, are totally involved? Also, do we intend to send out a field hospital, set up with highly trained people, which would be of great use?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I assure my noble friend that we are looking to ensure a whole-of-government response, so that every asset will be provided to the Turkish Government, as well as to assist on the ground in Syria. As to additional support, those details are being finalised. As the requirements are made clear to us, we will deploy what is necessary to ensure that the objectives of the relief efforts can be met.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for giving us an update. He will appreciate that the magnitude of this earthquake is truly devastating and terrifying. Many in the Turkish diaspora in this country—I include myself—are personally affected by this tragedy. What support can the Government give to the diaspora here, who are desperately trying to find out what has happened to their family and friends in Turkey? Communications are hampered by the sheer scale of this disaster and the terrible weather. People are under many feet of snow; 10 densely populated cities have been affected. The diaspora here are desperate for news. What support can the Government give to the communities here trying to get more information?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I am sure I speak for all noble Lords when I extend my condolences to the British-Turkish diaspora here, of which the noble Baroness is an exemplary part. She is using her good offices, and I welcome her direct advice and input on what more can be done. I will get back to her with further details as they evolve. My understanding is that in Turkey itself, certainly in the 10 cities impacted, the communications are still stood up and we are able to get information both in and out, but we will look at how we can strengthen some of the communication channels. If the noble Baroness can identify particular problems being encountered, and if they are in the scope of the FCDO or other government departments, we will look to assist.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, what are we doing about aerial damage assessments? Now that we are not in the EU, I presume that we do not have access to the Copernicus satellite. How are we coping with that? Are we co-ordinating with European neighbours?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, the EU has also mobilised to this effect. I assure the noble Earl that, as I said earlier, we are co-ordinating with all our international partners and, importantly, that includes members of the EU.
Lord Kilclooney (CB)
My Lords, the damage has been considerable in Diyarbakır in Turkey, which I have previously visited. It is right on the border with Iran. Have there been any reports of damage in Iran? If so, are we helping them?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, specifically on Iran, I will have to update the noble Lord. I am aware that the impacts have been felt further afield, particularly in parts of the Middle East. Thankfully, even in places such as Lebanon, which is a very fragile country at the moment, the impact has been limited, but we are continuing to monitor the situation. Tragically, the earthquake hit at 4 am, which was probably the worst time. I have been updated on the net effect on buildings and how they folded—what I believe is called the pancake effect, where they just collapse on each other. If that impact were felt further afield in places such as Lebanon, which is extremely fragile, it would be devastating. I will update noble Lords as details emerge on what is an evolving situation.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, some years ago, I worked in a refugee camp along the Euphrates, very close to the epicentre. It is impossible not to be moved by the brisk, unfussy and uncomplaining way in which Turkey has handled the arrival of millions of Syrian refugees into its territory. The United Kingdom is perhaps the most engaged supporter of Syrian refugees on the borders of Syria. Can we leverage that status and transfer our aid to the Syrians who are now fleeing this second devastation?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend is correct that the UK has been and is the third-largest bilateral donor to the Syrian crisis, having committed over £3.8 billion to date, our largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis. We are supporting Turkey, Lebanon and indeed Jordan when it comes to the issue of Syrian refugees. The impact of those seeking to leave Syria from this devastation is not yet clear, but we stand ready to help those within Syria and Turkey with the support that they need. As I said, and I am sure noble Lords appreciate this, it is a situation that occurred this morning. We have responded immediately—as required—and in a co-ordinated fashion to the information that we have received, and we will continue to do so.
Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Bill
Monday 6th February 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023 View all Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text
Carer’s Leave Bill
Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill
Monday 6th February 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 View all Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 3 February 2023 - (3 Feb 2023)
Business of the House
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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The Lord True
That Standing Order 73 (Affirmative Instruments) be dispensed with on Monday 6 February to enable a motion to approve the Energy Bills Support Scheme and Alternative Fuel Payment Pass-through Requirement (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023 to be moved, notwithstanding that no report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments on the instrument has been laid before the House.
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Code H) Order 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord Sharpe of Epsom
That the draft Order laid before the House on 12 December 2022 be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 31 January
Energy Bills Support Scheme and Alternative Fuel Payment Pass-through Requirement (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord Callanan
That the Regulations laid before the House on 11 January be approved.
Relevant document: 26th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Instrument not yet reported by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 30 January
Environmental Improvement Plan 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, last month the Office for Environmental Protection warned of a serious failure to deliver on every one of the goals set out in the Government’s own 25-year environment plan. The body said:
“The situation is poor across the board, with adverse trends across marine, freshwater and terrestrial environments.”
It added that progress towards 14 of the 23 targets was “off track”, while a lack of available evidence meant that progress could not even be measured for the remaining nine.
Against this backdrop, we welcome Defra publishing its environmental improvement plan, and actually managing to publish it on time. There are some promising-looking targets in the document. However, the Government have generally been pretty good at setting themselves targets; for example, at COP 26. The problem is that Ministers have not been so good at taking the action needed to actually achieve them.
Dame Glenys Stacey, chair of the OEP, has welcomed the environmental improvement plan but also warned that:
“It’s all about delivery now.”
So I ask the Minister: what are the Government going to do differently this time around to actually deliver on their commitments? Members of this House have expressed concern regarding the long-term environmental targets contained in recent SIs we have debated, and we are concerned that some of the interim targets may not be ambitious enough.
I ask the Minister: does Defra accept the observation of Philip Dunne MP, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee in another place, that
“the targets are only worthwhile if they are met and have the backing of all departments across Government”?
This has also been stressed by the Office for Environmental Protection in its recent report, where it stressed the need for better
“alignment and co-ordination at all levels—
of government—
“local and national, and actions that extend beyond Defra”.
I have a number of other questions for the Minister and am happy for him to write, if he is unable to address some of them this afternoon. What did the Secretary of State, Thérèse Coffey, mean when she said in a recent letter to Mr Dunne that, after publication of the EIP, she intends
“to undertake a series of deep dives on priority issues so we can get on and deliver”?
Can the Minister outline the areas that she will be focusing on and what form these “deep dives” will take? Will they just be reviews of the current situation or are they likely to lead to policy change and/or actual legislation? How does Defra intend to work with local government and other departments across government to ensure a commitment to deliver?
The Secretary of State’s letter also says that Defra is on track to legislate for an alternative transition registration model for UK REACH in 2024. Can the Minister provide any information on what that will look like? Is it likely to be primary or secondary legislation, for example? If primary, is there not a case for bringing forward a broader piece of environmental legislation?
Concerns have also been raised about the lack of new money to assist with delivery of the EIP. The Secretary of State herself confirmed that there will be no major new funding, beyond a dedicated pot to protect some species including hedgehogs and red squirrels. Although, of course, we welcome this increased protection, some farming leaders have said that new sources of funds are needed to encourage farmers to take up environmental land management schemes.
The Public Accounts Committee made a series of recommendations to Defra in its report on ELMS, which said:
“The Department is over-optimistic about what it will be able to achieve by when”.
The report went so far as to question the Government’s readiness to deliver their policies—sadly, not a new occurrence for Defra. So what action is the department taking in response to these concerns? Has Defra made any bids for extra funds from the Treasury in advance of March’s Spring Budget?
As well as considering what is in the plan, we must also acknowledge what is missing. For example, although it contains stipulations for fitting dual-flush toilets, it does little to force water companies to deal with other issues, such as stopping pouring sewage into our rivers. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, recently asked what happened to the dedicated soil health strategy, which was a promise made by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, during the progress of the Environment Act. Despite that pledge, it appears that soil-related issues have simply been wrapped up into the EIP. Can the Minister explain why the target of bringing 40% of agricultural soil into sustainable management by 2028, and 60% by 2030, is now tied into “new farming schemes” and nothing else?
Finally, with the Second Reading of the retained EU law Bill later today, what guarantees can the Minister give that Defra’s existing environmental regulations will be maintained and not ditched or watered down? I hope he can understand our scepticism about this, when he says that the Government will keep green regulations by default and yet there is no final figure for how many actually exist.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, the nine actions listed in the Government’s statement of achievements and implementations in the first 100 days of this Government appear to be impressive on paper, but a little digging into the reality reveals a very different picture. Much is made of the ban on single-use plastics from October 2023. Two years have passed since the statutory instrument to bring this into effect was agreed in this Chamber. At the time, those of us involved in the debate pressed for a much earlier implementation date but were unsuccessful. Even now, with so much notice, industry is complaining about the cost. It was widely publicised at the time, so there was plenty of time to plan and even to implement before the cut-off date this year. However, I welcome the Government’s co-operation in persuading other countries to agree a new legally binding global treaty to end plastic pollution by 2040. Does this apply to all plastic in consumer items only, or will it include plastics used in manufacturing industries as well?
I read with interest the environmental principles policy statement when it was first released, but I fear I found the principles underwhelming in the extreme. If government departments choose to ignore them, there appears to be absolutely no redress to bring them into line to consider and protect our dwindling biodiversity. How will Defra ensure that all government departments fully embrace the environmental principles?
Of course, it is important that children and adults have access to green spaces and coastal areas for leisure activities. I look forward to the implementation plan for ensuring that everyone in the country can be within 15 minutes’ walking distance of blue or green spaces for relaxation and enjoyment. How will this be achieved? What is the exact timeframe for the delivery? In what form are the Government engaging with landowners, local authorities and other agencies to ensure that this happens in the most built-up areas?
I turn to the thorny issue of fly-tipping. I see from the Statement that the intention is to ask local authorities to deal with the problem. During the passage of the Agriculture Act, the debate demonstrated across the Chamber that fly-tipping on agricultural land costs the farming community dearly. Affected farms have to pay to clear up the waste tipped, regardless of what it is—garden waste, retail and industrial waste, building waste—costing farmers thousands of pounds. However, the then Minister rejected the suggestion that CCTV on farms would be extremely helpful, despite much of the support for CCTV coming from his own Benches. Can the Minister say when the Government will publish what they intend to do to tackle that scourge and what they consider to be best practice?
I turn briefly to the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund. The Statement indicates that £39 million has been invested in the project. Can the Minister say exactly when the £39 million was released and how much of it has been allocated so far? Does the fund have a time limit for applications? As the fund is focused on the illegal trade in wildlife, can the Minister also say whether any of that money is allocated to tackling and imposing heavy sanctions on the importation of ivory? It is illegal to import ivory products into this country, but that has not made a significant difference to the African elephant. Can the Minister please give an update on the effect of the Ivory Act?
I agree with the Statement from the Minister in the other place that Defra will have to work across the whole of government, Natural England, the Environment Agency, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, communities and businesses to achieve the measures set out in the Statement. Given the huge loss in biodiversity and the levels of plastic and chemical pollution in our landscapes, coastal areas and waterways, does the Minister believe that this is achievable in a realistic timeframe?
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)
My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register. I am very grateful to the two noble Baronesses for their questions on the environmental improvement plan. As they know, it was published last Tuesday 31 January and sets out the action we are taking to implement the 25-year environment plan, leading on from the work your Lordships did in this House to make that ground-breaking legislation law. Each chapter of the EIP describes the progress we have made in realising the 10 goals of the 25-year environment plan. It also sets out our plans to continue to deliver those goals and to achieve legally binding targets that support them.
Our most critical goal is to achieve thriving plants and wildlife by halting the decline of nature by the end of this decade. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, rightly asked whether there is any real prospect of achieving that, and we think that it is achievable. It is difficult, but we can achieve it if we work really hard. We said that we will create and restore habitats the size of Dorset, we will invest more than £750 million in tree planting and peatland restoration, and we will protect 30% of our land and sea for nature by 2030. The EIP sets out how we will achieve clean air by cutting emissions from domestic burning appliances and by reducing ammonia emissions through farming incentives and investments in slurry storage. Our goal of clean and plentiful water is vital for a healthy natural environment, and we will deliver that by upgrading 160 wastewater treatment plants by 2027 and promoting sustainable agriculture, restoring 400 miles of rivers and reducing water company leakages by 50% by 2050.
Addressing one of the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, we will continue to manage exposure to chemicals and pesticides. We will develop a chemical strategy and prioritise the sustainable use of chemicals through UK REACH legislation. We will achieve the goal of minimising waste by implementing the extended producer responsibility, introducing a deposit return scheme for plastic and metal drinks containers, and banning single-use plastics; similar schemes have been extremely successful in other countries. The EIP sets out how we will achieve the goal of using natural resources more sustainably and efficiently by growing the long-term UK timber supply, bringing 40% of our soils into sustainable management by 2028, and tackling illegal deforestation in our supply chains.
In delivering our goal to mitigate and adapt to climate change, we recognise the two-way relationship between climate and nature, and we will prioritise the use of nature-based solutions. This embeds changes that were made at COP 26, and underpinned at COP 27 and CBD 15 in Montreal just before Christmas, which have hard-wired nature into the whole climate piece. It is absolutely vital that we reflect that in the United Kingdom as much as we are globally.
This approach is at the forefront of our goal to reduce the risk of harm from environmental hazards by investing in flood defences, rewarding our farmers for actions to reduce the risk of floods, droughts and wildfires. To restore our biodiversity, we will continue to deliver the goal of enhanced biosecurity. We will implement the five-year action plan of the 2023 Plant Biosecurity Strategy for Great Britain and seize the opportunity of Brexit to tailor our border import controls with a new risk-based target operating model.
Our final goal, woven through all the others, is to enhance the beauty and heritage of, and engagement with, the natural environment. The key point that everyone should live within 15 minutes of green or blue space is really important to Ministers. To address the point made by the noble Baroness, an enormous amount of data is held by Natural England and others. We are using it to identify the communities that are most economically challenged with the highest levels of deprivation, which are often the hardest ones to connect to nature. There are good examples right across the country of how that is being achieved, and we want to see that rolled out nationally.
To address the other points that have been made, I think the targets are achievable. I entirely agree with my colleague in the other place, Philip Dunne, that they must be met and that nature underpins everything right across government, be it the NHS, our defence forces, how we educate our children, heal our sick or support our vulnerable. Nature is at the heart of it, whether in the provision of drugs, through the health and well-being that can be created, how we can divert people away from our health service—nature is the deliverer of that. If we are not supporting nature, nothing else fits in.
The Secretary of State is determined on delivery. We spend a lot of time holding ourselves to account, but also those delivery agencies that we need to work properly to make sure that this plan is delivered. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that this is not a matter only for Defra; it is a matter for all aspects of government, including local government. We are putting huge burdens on a variety of different agencies, professions and individuals to make sure that this is successful, and we are determined to work with them to make sure that that is achievable.
On environmental land management schemes, we have ring-fenced the £2.4 billion a year that goes into supporting farmers in England, and that is a commitment up to the end of this Parliament. Of course, parties will be discussing among themselves how we take that forward, but every major economy in the world supports agriculture in different ways. What we have done in recent decades has caused huge problems for our environment and for the well-being of precisely those businesses we want to see flourish. Now there is an opportunity to pivot and to make sure that we are supporting farmers who are doing the right things for the environment—investing in soils and in the natural capital for which they are responsible, and which will underpin the long-term benefit of their businesses.
The noble Baroness asked about soils. This is absolutely fundamental to turning round our environment so that we can reverse the decline of species by 2030 and increase the potential of the farmed environment. So yes, tied into the targets is improving and protecting soil health. It is a key part of this document. By 2028, we will bring at least 40% of England’s agricultural soil into sustainable management through our new farming schemes, increasing this to 60% by 2030. We will do this in a variety of ways, which I probably do not have time to go through today. However, I am happy to take the noble Baroness through it, along with my noble friend the Earl of Caithness, who is rightly concerned about this.
I will make just one further point to the noble Baroness: there is no way we could achieve what we have tied into law, and into our targets through the Environment Act, if we were to somehow, as has been suggested, be about to trash our environmental protections. We cannot do it. It is absolutely vital that we use the sensible ones that are relevant to our natural environment, that we can discard ones that have nothing to do with these islands at all, and that we can work with people to do that. I implore the noble Baroness to join me, if she wants to, in the process part, but it is the outcomes that matter, and the outcomes are set out very clearly in this document. We have to achieve them, and we will not do that by somehow getting rid, as has been suggested, of all these protections.
On the key point to the noble Baroness made on fly tipping, I would add litter. I live the distance away from a McDonald’s drive-thru that it takes to eat a McDonald’s drive-thru, and what people then do with the rest of their McDonald’s drive-thru causes me to fulminate in a way that alarms those around me. I think the state of some of our highways and roads is absolutely disgraceful. We can talk about government and their responsibility for this, but we still have to talk about a culture, where people have so little regard for the natural environment and where they seem to have lost a sense of place, that allows this to happen.
We have given powers; powers are available to local authorities to deal with this. We want to make sure that they are using them, that we are encouraging people not to throw litter and that we are able to support those authorities that need to clear it up. Yes, CCTV is absolutely available. The Environment Agency has the means to record what is happening at key hotspots and it has taken forward prosecutions; but we, as Ministers in Defra, really want to get behind those efforts of society and those who share our views that the state of some of our countryside through litter is unacceptable.
On the illegal wildlife trade, the Ivory Act is an exemplary piece of legislation. It became law in all its measures relatively recently, and of course we are not a range state. We have to accept that we can only do our bit to stop the importation of ivory, but we are putting huge resources into assisting range-state countries to make sure they have the means to prevent poaching—with some success, I have to say. I agree with the noble Baronesses that it does require a whole-government approach to implement these targets, and that determination exists very clearly within Defra.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
Will my noble friend reassure this House that the UK production of foodstuffs—preferably an expansion in the UK production of foodstuffs—remains a priority for this Government?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I can assure my noble friend that it does remain a priority for this Government. If he looks at the very first few lines of the Agriculture Act, he will see that it is beholden on the Secretary of State of the day to make sure that farmers are able to produce food sustainably. That remains an absolutely determined view right across government, but we also want to make sure that we are accepting that, if you deplete your natural capital, you are destroying the life chances of farmers of the future and you are not allowing the industry to produce the kind of food that the public want to eat. So we want to assist farmers, where they need it, to go on that journey to produce food sustainably; it is absolutely at the heart of our agricultural policy.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, the Statement refers to the fact that, 70 years ago, people were waking up to the great flood of 1953, which caused great loss of life and great damage in Millbank, outside this House. One of the consequences of that great flood was to begin the planning that eventually led to the Thames Barrier. Will the Minister share with the House the current thinking about the need to look ahead for an additional protection for London with a second barrier? Given the time involved in planning such a thing, can he give us any indication of what the department’s thinking is about the need for it and how long it might take to bring about?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Viscount is absolutely right to raise this. That storm flood, which was a perfect storm in every sense of the word, combined a tidal surge with very high water levels. It led to some visionary thinking right across government and saw that measure put in. There is work going on to factor in long-term rises in sea levels, as have been predicted by a number of different organisations. I am not up to date on where those are, but they are very real and we want to make sure that we protect one of the great cities of the world from all future risks. If I can get back to the noble Viscount with more details on precisely where the Environment Agency, Defra and other parts of government are working on that, I will.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I urge my noble friend to look at outcomes in the water efficiency of new developments. Undoubtedly, building 300,000 houses a year is contributing to sewage outfall from inadequate pipes. Can I instil in my noble friend a degree of urgency in ensuring that the very welcome mandatory requirement to fit all new developments to sustainable sewage systems is brought forward, so that we can have a consultation and implementation before December?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I share my noble friend’s delight that we are taking forward this part of the Flood and Water Management Act. I know that it has been a long time coming. There are a lot of different players in this and we want to get it right, but we are now on the home run. I will be able to give her more details on timings in the very near future.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister explain why the Government have decided to relicense neonicotinoids for this year? They were banned here and are banned across other countries that have similar soil structures to ours. As I understand it, this was brought in a few years ago only as an emergency, yet now they have been relicensed again. That slightly goes in the face of what the Minister was saying about banning chemicals.
Lord Benyon (Con)
We have certainly not gone back on the commitment to ban neonicotinoids. As has happened in the last two years, we have given an indication that we might be in favour of the application of something called Cruiser SB, a plant protection product containing the active substance thiamethoxam, for the sugar beet industry. It will be allowed to be applied only if winter data shows that there will be a considerable loss of crop. If there is a considerable loss of crop, the sugar that would have been produced would have to come from other parts of the world at a higher carbon cost, and probably grown in circumstances where neonicotinoids are allowed. We will not allow spraying when the plant is in flower, so it will not be as damaging as the seed dressing that caused such a problem. It is a very rare circumstance; in the years in which this derogation has been allowed, on many occasions it has not actually been used because the threshold of potential crop loss was not reached.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
I make my regular plea to the Minister—I think he took this point once before—that the term “storm overflows” of raw sewage should be discouraged. It does not happen in storm conditions or even in heavy rainfall; moderate rainfall causes these overflows, which exist because of a lack of investment in sewage treatment capacity. I learned that from a tip-off from someone in the Environment Agency 18 years ago when I was campaigning for what became the Tideway Tunnel.
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. It takes just a few millimetres of rain to fall on London for sewage outflows to start pushing sewage straight into the Thames. That is why, two decades ago, we were taken to court by the European Union for failure to comply with the urban wastewater treatment directive. That led to the investment of £1.4 billion in the sewer currently under construction. There are other storm overflows—or whatever they should be called; perhaps just “overflows”—where it takes a similarly small amount of rainfall to cause a problem. That is the low-hanging fruit that we want to see targeted, where we would see the quickest results from the £56 billion investment we will see made in our sewerage network—the largest since privatisation.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, in responding to the Front Benches, the Minister said that soil is absolutely fundamental to the Government’s environment plans. It is therefore a bit of a pity that the word “soil” does not appear anywhere in the Statement to the other place introducing the environmental improvement plans. None the less, I refer—as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, did—to the Government’s former promise and quote a Defra blog from 9 September 2021, which announced:
“Soil Health Action Plan to be launched”.
We are told that the soil health action plan has been rolled into this plan. There is, as the Minister said, a target of 40% of soils being in sustainable management by 2028. The only action I can see in the plan is to create a baseline map of soil health by 2028. Do the Government not plan to take any actual action on soil health until after that map has been created?
Lord Benyon (Con)
As the noble Baroness will know, the Government—whether Ministers or civil servants—do not save soil; farmers do. We want, first, to incentivise them to do the right thing where possible. Secondly, we want to mandate doing the right thing. In our 300-page document on improving and protecting soil—it is not possible to mention everything in it in a Statement—we say that we will
“monitor soil health as part of the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment”
and
“on top of this Defra will … Establish a soil health indicator under the 25 Year Environment Plan Outcome Indicator Framework … Publish a baseline map of soil health for England by 2028 … Support farmers and land managers to establish their own soil health baseline, so they can best manage the health of their soil … Provide a methodology and tools to collect consistent information about the health of the soil under all land uses … Share current guidance and best practice with farmers and land managers to improve their knowledge and work with them on how to improve soil health.”
We will also prevent
“valuable soil resources from being sent to landfill”
and secure
“the integrity of future soil carbon codes”
so that we can unlock the trillions of dollars of ESG money sloshing about in investment in the City and other investment centres to make sure that we are focusing it on our natural environment. Soil health will be fundamental to that. We want to increase organic matter to make soil function as an ecosystem, so that it does not leach what we do not want to see going into our rivers, along with soil itself. Soil is finite natural capital and, after a heavy rain storm, you can often see plumes of soil going into our seas. We want to stop that happening.
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, the Minister will be pleased that I am not going to ask a question about sewage. One of the targets in this lengthy document—which strikes me as remarkably unambitious—is for water companies to cut leaks by 50% by 2050. Surely we can do better than that.
Lord Benyon (Con)
I refute the idea from the noble Duke that this is not ambitious. I urge him to read all 250 to 300 pages of the document and see the lengths that it goes to to put our natural environment first in a way that we have not done for decades. This really is a moment when we can do this. The noble Duke will remember from the debate on the Environment Act that a crucial part of it says that the targets we have must be achievable. The Secretary of State of the day must believe that they are possible. To an extent, we cannot do more than what the scientists say is achievable and we have set out how we can do this.
On the data on leakage, I assure the noble Duke that it is not just this target that is pushing that goal. We are giving direction and encouragement to Ofwat and our water companies to invest more in preventing leakage. Of course, it is not a single line going to 2050; there will be a dramatic increase in improvements from the investment we are putting in—in the easier-to-target areas first. We will then see that target of 2050 being met, we hope, before that date.
Lord Swire (Con)
Will the Minister commit to providing continuing assistance to South West Water? In the south-west, we have a disproportionate amount of the country’s beaches and there has been support from the Government in the past. Will they continue that support?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I was the Minister responsible for delivering on the coalition Government’s clear commitment to reduce bills for water charge payers in the south-west because of the extra effort they had to make to protect their bathing waters and waterways. I do not know what plans there are for the future but it has certainly been extremely successful, particularly for those on low incomes. We still have measures to provide for those who are very challenged economically, so that they can have a social tariff. We will continue to work with South West Water and all MPs in that area, who are lobbying hard on this issue.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, given the importance of putting the environment right across government thinking, it is welcome that the environmental principles policy statement was published. But the Minister said “defence” and, as I am sure he well knows, the MoD is exempt from the provisions of the EPPS and it is unclear how it will take forward the environment in its future provisions. Why, if the Government have produced the EPPS now, will it not come into force for another ten months? If the Minister is going to say it is about process, I have two further questions. First, the Office for Environmental Protection offered to advise the Government on creating the processes for the training of Ministers and civil servants. Have they asked the OEP for advice? Secondly, following the question that got no reply for the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, there seem to be no means for this to be anything other than a box-ticking exercise, because we will not be able to see how these EPPSs are delivered. What is the process for Parliament and other people to see that these EPPSs are doing what they need to do?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Baroness is right: the Ministry of Defence was carved out of the provisions in large areas. However, I urge her to look at what it is doing by way of tree-planting and moving to net zero where it can on its very large estate. We want to make sure that we assist the MoD in doing that.
On the noble Baroness’s other point, about measurement, I hope that throughout this the ideal work of Select Committees and more informed groups of your Lordships will be to delve into this and hold Ministers to account in future years. I entirely believe that these targets show where the Government can explain how it wants to hit those targets and achieve them in a way that holds them accountable throughout. The end date is not necessarily the date that will be of particular interest to the noble Baroness; she wants to know about progress towards it. That is why there are interim target dates throughout, some coming up very soon, which will show the path towards achieving what we set out in the provisions.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, goal 9 of the plan is “Enhancing biosecurity”. It mentions the grey squirrel action plan, which is as yet unpublished. Of course, grey squirrels are the number one threat to tree health in our country and the number one threat to our great desire to increase afforestation for sound, green reasons. Is the new grey squirrel action plan in final form, and when will it be published?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I am not sure of the exact date, but the noble Earl, who is very close to these issues, will be the first to know. He and others have taken forward so much work by producing this contraceptive and, further down the track, the possibility of a gene driver, which may or may not be a solution. That and a range of other issues will go to the eradication of this pest, which is damaging for biodiversity and tree health. You see people virtue signalling about what they are planting, but it will grow to have no effect on carbon sequestration or the delivery of biodiversity unless we deal with this pest. It is of massive concern to the Secretary of State and her Ministers.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, as part of the commitment to clean up our rivers, what checks will be undertaken on the levels of industrial toxins in silt in rivers in industrial areas, which can be disturbed in dredging and enter the sea in coastal areas? Is the Minister confident that there are enough regular checks on industrial toxins in silt in some of our older industrial areas?
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Lord raises an important point. First, it surprised a number of people that one of our targets on water quality was based around the release of toxic substances from old mine workings, but it had emerged that this is a serious problem in certain parts of the country. That is why we have a very clear target to deal with that difficult issue. I think the point the noble Lord is really raising is around port developments, possibly in the Tees area. This is a matter of great concern to us, and to everyone, because of the horrendous deaths of crustaceans on 70 miles of coastline in the north-east. As he knows, we have carried out a panel inquiry under the auspices of the chief scientific adviser at Defra, Professor Gideon Henderson, so some of the best people in the business are looking into this. It is of great regret that we have yet to pin down what caused this tragic occurrence in the ecosystem of the North Sea, but I assure him that all dredgings in that area—and indeed anywhere else—will be subject to the most rigorous inspections. We will do all we can to get to the bottom of what caused this, but the information we have is that there was not enough possibility of pyridine being released into the sea to cause deaths on this scale. We remain determined to find out what happened.
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, the Government have ambitious and admirable targets for tree planting, but what assessment has Defra made of our nursery capacity here in the UK to provide all the native saplings we will need in order to avoid importing trees, with the risk of importing tree pathogens? Past experience has shown us that this can negate all the benefits of reforestation.
Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Lord is entirely right. We are doing all we can to increase the capacity of our native tree nursery sector to produce what is needed for the very ambitious plans we have for tree planting. Our reliance on imports in past decades has contributed to some of the diseases we have seen come our way, with tragic consequences. We are doing a lot through a variety of different grant schemes, but we are also showing that the market is there for the sector to expand. Our requirement that trees planted on public estates through public procurement have to be from Plant Healthy-registered nurseries only will encourage a great many more nurseries to go into that scheme. That will ensure that only those plants we can guarantee the health of will be sold in those public procurement contracts.
Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill
Monday 6th February 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 View all Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 18 January 2023 - (18 Jan 2023)
Lord Callanan
That the Bill be now read a second time.
Relevant documents: 28th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, 25th Report from the Delegated Powers Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, before I get into my speech, I note with great anticipation that we will be hearing not one but two maiden speeches today. We are indeed blessed. Let me first warmly welcome my noble friend Lady Bray of Coln and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway. I am delighted to note that Lady O’Grady has come from advocating for a people’s assembly in 2013 to joining us here today—quite the journey. I look forward to both their contributions to this debate.
First, I thank the Minister for Industry and Investment Security for ensuring that the Bill has been sent to us in this place following much reasoned and thorough debate in the other place. At all stages there were commitments made across a number of issues, including our international obligations, employment rights and environmental protections. I reiterate those commitments now and of course will continue to do so throughout the passage of the Bill.
The retained EU law Bill is the next step in reasserting the sovereignty of Parliament and untangling the United Kingdom from nearly 50 years of EU membership. Retained EU law was never intended to sit on our statute book indefinitely. Indeed, the time is now right to review retained EU law and end it as a special legal category. The Bill will achieve this by enabling the Government to more easily amend, revoke or replace retained EU law by the end of 2023. This will ensure that the Government are able to create legislation which better suits the UK without taking decades of parliamentary time to achieve.
The Bill enables the UK to fully grasp the myriad opportunities to create modern and agile regulation, to support the ambitions of our sovereign nation. There are countless opportunities for reform ahead of us, ranging from financial services to data, and from artificial intelligence to transport and energy. Through the Bill, the Government will work to develop a new, pro-growth, high-standards regulatory framework that gives businesses the confidence to innovate, invest, scale up and therefore to create more jobs.
Clause 1 lays the groundwork for an ambitious and efficient overhaul of all retained EU law. It establishes 31 December 2023 as the sunset date on which retained EU law will cease to exist, unless there is further action by government and Parliament to preserve it as “assimilated law” without its special EU law features. In this way, the sunset ensures that outdated and unnecessary laws are quickly and easily repealed. It will also provide government departments with a clear timeline to seize reform opportunities. Indeed, a sunset is the quickest and most effective way to accelerate reform across over 400 policy areas and deliver the rapid repeal of retained EU law.
It is only right to set the sunset of retained EU law as the default position. This ensures that we are proactively choosing to preserve laws inherited from our membership of the EU only where they work in the best interests of the United Kingdom. Some retained EU law is of course inoperable and removing it from the statute book is merely good democratic governance.
The sunset extension mechanism, found in Clause 2, will allow specified instruments or specified descriptions of retained EU law to continue in force beyond the sunset date where that is necessary and in our interests. The sunset date cannot be extended beyond the end of 23 June 2026. It is my hope that this clause proves unnecessary, but it would be irresponsible not to include a clause to allow for unforeseen circumstances. Together, these two clauses will facilitate reforms that will help to grow our economy, deliver the opportunities Brexit provides and support advances in technology and science.
From the end of 2023, the Bill will end the special status of retained EU law on our statute book. Clauses 3 to 5 will ensure that EU rights, obligations and remedies retained by Section 4 of the withdrawal Act will cease to apply and that the application of the principle of supremacy and general principles of EU law as rules of interpretation will end. The retention of these principles provided legal continuity at the end of the transition period, but it would be constitutionally inappropriate to leave these retained EU law principles on the UK statute book in perpetuity. In many cases, the principles and rights in question already overlap with well-established provisions in domestic law. This has the potential to undermine the clarity of our law. To reflect these changes, Clause 6 renames retained EU law which has not been sunset as “assimilated law” after the end of 2023. This is not, as some have said, a simple “rebranding” exercise but is a new body of law without the EU law rules of interpretation.
Where further provision is necessary, the Bill provides powers in Clause 8 and Clauses 12 to 14 to codify specific rights and interpretive effects clearly and accessibly in domestic statute. We are proud of the history of the UK legal system, in which common-law principles and legislation are well established. These reforms will continue that tradition and ensure that our law continues to develop as one best suited to the UK context.
Past judgments of the courts have set too high a bar for UK courts to depart from retained case law and the judgments of EU courts. Now that we have left the European Union, we must reassess when it is right to depart from retained case law and establish more UK-focused precedents. The retained EU law Bill will free our courts to develop case law on retained EU law in a way that is right for the United Kingdom. Clause 7 introduces new tests for higher courts to apply when considering departure from retained case law. The tests give higher courts greater clarity on the factors to consider, and greater freedom to decide when it is appropriate to depart from that retained case law. The clause will also facilitate more decisions on departure from retained case law. It empowers lower courts to refer points of law to higher courts for a decision on whether to depart. It also confers on the law officers of the UK and on the devolved Governments similar reference powers and gives them the right to join cases to argue with regard to departure from retained case law.
Clause 9 gives the judiciary powers in connection with the ending of the supremacy of EU law. Courts and tribunals will issue incompatibility orders and will be able to grant appropriate remedies in legal proceedings where retained direct EU legislation cannot be read consistently with other pieces of domestic legislation.
Retained direct EU legislation, composed mainly of EU regulations over which the UK Parliament had no real say, often does not reflect the UK’s priorities or objectives to drive growth. We are currently forced to treat some of this legislation as equivalent to an Act of Parliament when amending it. This limits our ability to make vital reforms and is constitutionally inappropriate.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
In respect of the legislation that is to be revoked or re-enacted, is my noble friend going to tell the House what consultation there will be with the various stakeholders, who must run into the thousands?
Lord Callanan (Con)
When secondary law is implemented there is a well-established procedure for appropriate consultations, which of course will take place. All those stakeholders are able to have their say through many Members of both Houses of Parliament as well.
Clause 10 will therefore ensure that retained direct principal EU legislation and Section 4 EU withdrawal Act rights are downgraded, ensuring that they are treated as equivalent to secondary legislation for the purposes of amendment.
It is critical to ensure that this body of law can be updated, amended and reformed using appropriate delegated powers. Without these measures, thousands of regulations will become stagnant—unable to stay up to date, react to new information or implement new international agreements without requiring a new Act of Parliament. Clauses 10 and 11 support this Government’s commitment to taking the necessary steps to put the UK statute book on a sustainable footing, guaranteeing that we can seize all the opportunities that leaving the EU supplies.
The powers in the Bill, combined with the downgrading of retained direct principal legislation, will make it easier for Ministers to amend or repeal retained EU law without the need for primary legislation. The powers have also been designed to deal with matters arising in relation to the sunset and the ending of retained EU law as a legal category at the end of 2023. It has become increasingly clear that there is a lack of subordinate legislation-making powers to remove retained EU law from the statute book. It is appropriate to take powers in the Bill to address this.
The retained EU law dashboard has identified over 3,700 pieces of retained EU law across 16 departments. While some of these laws will be preserved, of course, many are outdated, some are unduly burdensome, and others are increasingly unsuited to the UK’s economic circumstances. Therefore, it is necessary to have powers in the Bill that are capable of acting on a wide range of retained EU law covering a variety of different policy areas. This is not a power grab by the Government.
Lord Callanan (Con)
Rather, the powers in the Bill will enable us to seize the opportunities of Brexit through reviewing the laws that were imposed on us by Brussels during our membership of the European Union. Sectoral-specific legislation simply cannot be passed in a timely enough manner to ensure that these regulations are made suitable for the United Kingdom.
The powers in the Bill will enable the Government to more easily replace retained EU law with domestic laws that are tailored to the UK and, importantly, work in the interests of the United Kingdom, while the power to update will ensure that the UK keeps pace with advances in science and technology over time.
The Government recognise the importance of ensuring that legislation undergoes the appropriate level of scrutiny.
Lord Callanan (Con)
Well, it is more than some of the EU legislation did. I did not mean to start a debate on this.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, while not forbidden, it is considered discourteous to interrupt the Minister in his opening speech. If the noble Lord wishes to speak, he should put his name down for the gap.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
I merely want to ask the Minister: what proportion of the legislation was, as he described it, imposed? Presumably, it was only the laws that we voted against.
Lord Callanan (Con)
Given his direct experience, the noble Lord knows exactly how the procedures work in Brussels. The point I was making was that the vast majority was introduced into UK law directly, without any appropriate scrutiny from Parliament beforehand. Obviously, there were lots of discussions in Brussels. He took part in some on behalf of the Council, and I took part in many in the European Parliament as well. But there was no scrutiny in this Parliament for much of that legislation.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
I do not mean to be discourteous; I really am not. But the European Union Committee of this House and the European Scrutiny Committee of the other place sat for nearly 50 years doing the scrutiny that the Minister is saying did not take place. It was very heavy: it used 72 Peers from this Chamber in its structure. There was quite a lot of scrutiny going on.
Lord Callanan (Con)
There was scrutiny but no ability for Parliament to amend any of it, of course.
Lord Callanan (Con)
We will have this debate as we progress with the legislation, I am sure.
As I was saying, the Government recognise the importance of ensuring that legislation undergoes the appropriate level of scrutiny. The Bill has been drafted to ensure there are robust scrutiny measures and safeguards in place. This includes a sifting procedure for regulations proposed to be made under the powers to restate and the powers to revoke or replace.
Now that we have left the EU and regained our sovereignty, it is important that the UK has a regulatory system designed to benefit UK consumers and businesses. To ensure that the UK makes the most of the opportunities outside the EU, and as outlined in the The Benefits of Brexit report published in January last year, the UK is reforming how it monitors and evaluates future regulation.
It is important that we repeal the business impact target, which has too narrow a focus on the impacts of regulation. Our new system will ensure earlier scrutiny of proposed regulation; a more holistic assessment of its impacts on UK households, businesses and consumers; and a regulatory framework that is therefore fit for purpose.
We have seen how our legislature has evolved since leaving the EU. It is right that we now take the next step and relinquish from our statute book retained EU laws that do not work in the interests of the United Kingdom. The Bill ensures that we can achieve that, by seizing the freedoms afforded to us by Brexit.
The Government have read with interest the reports from the DPRRC and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I look forward to hearing reasoned comments on these from many noble Lords, particularly my noble friend Lord McLoughlin and members of both of those committees.
The Bill will benefit people and businesses across our country, reassert our sovereign approach to law and regulation, and support the interests of our United Kingdom, rather than those of Brussels. I know that many noble Lords in this Chamber will agree with me when I say that, in this current climate, protecting the UK’s best interests is of the utmost importance. We must therefore continue to surge forward to ensure that our statute book is put on a sustainable footing for all four sovereign nations of the United Kingdom. I beg to move.
Lord Fox
At end insert “but regrets that the Bill (1) weakens the scrutiny role of Parliament and proposes unparalleled delegated powers be given to Ministers of the Crown, (2) does not respect the constitutional role of the devolved administrations, (3) sets an arbitrary deadline for the revocation of many hundreds of laws protecting the United Kingdom’s high environmental standards, as well as employment and consumer rights and safety standards, with no indication of the rules that will replace them, and (4) imposes a cliff-edge at the end of 2023 that will create uncertainty for people and businesses”.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I draw attention to my non-pecuniary interests as a vice-president of the German-British Chamber of Commerce and a director of the German British Forum. I associate my thoughts with the Minister in anticipation of the two maiden speeches by the noble Baronesses.
As we have heard, the Bill seeks to make major changes to the body of retained EU law in UK domestic law. It aims to automatically revoke, or sunset, most retained EU law at the end of 2023. Any retained EU law that still applies after the end of 2023 would be renamed as assimilated law. At this point, I stop agreeing with the Minister, because this Bill hands huge powers to Ministers at the expense of elected MPs.
Your Lordships might have become immune to the Henry VIII clauses that have been propagated by Bill after Bill coming before this House, but this Bill represents a new, unprecedented level of transfer of power from Parliament to the Executive. It gives Ministers powers to legislate in areas that affect every aspect of our daily lives without any meaningful democratic input. Far from creating new high standards, as has been promised by Minister after Minister, the replacement legislation cannot increase standards: it can only keep them the same or make them lower. Moreover, the impractical timetable imposed by the sunset clause indicates clearly that this Government know that their race is run.
The reaction across key communities and committees across Parliament is very clear—I have never received so much comment from civil society as I have on this Bill. It is not only anti-democratic; it is ill thought through and badly drafted. For example, the impact assessment was roundly criticised by the Regulatory Policy Committee. Then, just last week, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee issued its verdict, which is damning. I am sure your Lordships will refer to it in more detail, but crucially, to my mind, the DPRRC highlights the false dichotomy epitomised by the Bill.
As the committee explains, the Government create such a dichotomy by saying that replacing all retained EU law purely through sector-specific primary legislation would take decades. That might be so, but the committee also notes that this is a false choice between replacing all such legislation with primary legislation and replacing all of it with regulations made by Ministers. There is another way. The choice is not all primary legislation or all ministerial edict. The advice of the Bar Council is a useful suggestion for the way we should go forward. It says of the legislation under review
“the question should be whether it remains fit for purpose: would alternative UK regulation achieve different and preferable goals, be better or more cost-effective in achieving its goals, or more certain in its application?”
In other words, this approach is to improve legislation where appropriate, which reflects the thinking on these Benches.
The Bar Council also outlines two overarching concerns regarding the Bill. First, it says, as do many others, that it is anti-democratic, noting:
“Important changes to our law should be made by Parliament after proper consultation, public debate, and scrutiny.”
This echoes many of the comments that we have heard. Secondly, the Bar Council says:
“The Bill and the attendant legal uncertainty that will follow its adoption as currently drafted will damage the UK’s reputation for regulatory stability, predictability, and competence, on which growth-promoting investment in critical sectors of our economy depends.”
I will be interested to hear what the lawyers in your Lordships’ House have to say about the need to establish brand-new case law right across the piece. For my part, I note that the Bill also grabs back power from the devolved authorities. I am sure my noble friend Lady Randerson will expand on that theme later today.
However you look at it, this is an unprecedented upheaval of the nation’s laws, yet when I listen to the Minister and his colleagues across Parliament, somehow it is depicted as a sort of tidying-up process. Indeed, Jacob Rees-Mogg described it as a “technical tidying up operation”. I do not know what tidying up looks like in the Rees-Mogg household, but this is not light dusting. To stretch a metaphor, it is the equivalent of tidying up the family nursery by completely dismantling Casa Mogg brick by brick and then putting it back together again. That is quite a task, and there is no guarantee of what comes out at the end.
In this case, what is rebuilt is up to Secretaries of State and them alone, and we all know how such grand designs end: in cost overruns, changes, delays and unexpected problems, but, unlike with the TV programme, there is no guarantee that this real and present story has any pleasing outcome—none whatever.
The tidy-up story would perhaps have a shred of credibility if Ministers were not at the same time pandering to the likes of Sir Bill Cash, who expressed the views of the ultras very well when he said that retained EU law is
“a massive ball and chain”,—[Official Report, Commons, 18/1/23; col. 419.]
implying that the UK must remove this regulation. Only last month, we also heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer talking up the need to remove, reform and take away regulations. This Bill makes all that possible without Parliament and elected MPs getting in the way, which is music to the ears of Sir Bill and his deregulating colleagues.
Of course, this process also effectively does away with much of the legislation delivered by thousands of statutory instruments passing through your Lordships’ House. As your Lordships no doubt recall, these incorporated retained EU law into British law to avoid what was then described as a chaotic bonfire of regulation as we left the EU, but it seems we delayed that bonfire a few years because a bonfire is what is now proposed in this Bill. This fire will impact a vast range of areas, including consumer rights, safety regulations of all kinds, protecting the environment and, of course, employment rights. No doubt many noble Lords will have detailed examples of these issues as we debate the Bill today.
As well as a power grab and a deregulator’s paradise, this Bill is also likely to deliver something that this Government have excelled at, which is chaos. The Bill, say Ministers, is designed to support business interests—indeed, we heard the Minister say that just now—but we hear from business that it will create chaos and poor governance, rather than stability. This will undermine confidence and will be likely to have a negative impact on business investment in the economy, something I am sure the Minister would prefer to be going in the opposite direction.
Speaking last month, Tony Danker, the director-general of the CBI, argued that scrapping these 4,000 or so EU-derived laws by the end of 2023, as facilitated by the Bill, was
“creating huge uncertainty for UK firms”.
As he put it:
“Do we really want to subject the public—and industry—to another round of mass confusion and disruption, just when we’re trying to exit recession?”
In his view, and ours, EU laws should be reviewed and, where needed, repealed as part of a wider strategy to deliver smart and better regulation. He noted that the Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, is currently reviewing how the UK can better regulate emerging technologies—for example, some of those that the Minister reeled off. The sensible thing, said Danker, would be to wait for that review and act on it systematically. We see the same attitude and response across business. The Federation of Small Businesses, the car makers and most of UK manufacturing do not want the confusion that this Bill will deliver.
Your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has worked fast, and should be credited for that, to ensure that its extensive report is available to inform this debate. The committee focuses on the sunset provisions and the lack of effective scrutiny of secondary legislation, but in a broader sense, its view is important and something I would like your Lordships to take on board. It said:
“Amending the Bill so that the shift in power between Parliament and the executive is reversed will require a great deal of thought and creativity, and commitment to the overarching aim of redressing the current imbalance of power.”
In other words, there is a lot to do to this Bill to make it acceptable. We agree that this going to be a difficult job, but we commit to doing it, because we feel it is vital to ensure that MPs maintain a grip on the legislative process rather than, as the Bill commands, hand decisions solely to Ministers.
This amendment highlights why this Bill is wrong. It is wrong because it weakens the scrutiny role of Parliament and gives unparalleled delegated powers to Ministers. It is wrong because it does not respect the constitutional role of the devolved Administrations. It is wrong because it sets an arbitrary deadline for the repeal of numerous laws that protect the UK’s environmental standards, safety standards, employment rights and consumer rights, and it is wrong because it creates uncertainty for businesses and individuals. I beg to move.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Bray, and my noble friend Lady O’Grady; I look forward to their maiden speeches. I take this opportunity particularly to welcome my noble friend, who has been an inspiration to women throughout the labour movement for many years—especially since she spent time in the 1980s with my husband organising members to join the T&G, some of it spent hanging around outside the back of hotels and other such salubrious places. I know that she will never forget her roots; her being here today just goes to show what a great engine of social mobility the trade union movement can be. I very much look forward to her speech.
Six years ago, when the Government introduced the then European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which ensured that EU-derived law was incorporated into UK law, I sat in the other place and listened carefully to the Secretary of State as he laid out the Government’s case. That day, he told us:
“The key point of this Bill is to avoid significant and serious gaps in our statute book. It ensures that consumers can be clear about their protection, employees can be clear about their rights, and businesses can be clear about the rules that regulate their trade.”—[Official Report, Commons, 7/9/17; col. 334.]
Somehow, incredibly, the Government have come full circle. This new Bill does the exact opposite. Faced with no external pressure or deadline, the Government are willingly creating their own cliff edge: generating uncertainty rather than reducing it; creating gaps in our legal framework rather than filling them; bringing chaos to the structure of rights, protections and standards on which so much business, trade, employment and environmental protection depends. That is why the opposition to the Bill is so broad and has come from such diverse quarters. It is no mean feat to unify the CBI and the TUC, industry and environmentalists, farmers and factory owners, twitchers and anglers, doctors and lawyers, national parks and the National Trust, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd, and many, many more. All are united in opposition to this Government’s plans. The CBI says that the Government is subjecting
“the public—and industry—to another round of mass confusion and disruption, just when we’re trying to exit recession.”
The TUC has called the Bill a “recipe for chaos”. The Institute of Directors says that it
“will impose a major new burden on business”.
The Federation of Small Businesses wants the sunset provisions removed. The National Farmers’ Union fears that it could unintentionally remove important regulatory safeguards. The Marine Conservation Society says that it
“poses a huge threat to marine life and environmental protections”.
The RSPB says that it will put at risk thousands of crucial laws that protect the natural environment and public health. The Government’s own Regulatory Policy Committee has called the Bill “not fit for purpose”.
It would be hard to find a less popular proposal but, despite the warnings of this unprecedented coalition, the Government plough ahead regardless, closing their ears to warning and criticism, with a Bill that is reckless, unpopular and—worst of all—unnecessary. The Bill is not about Brexit. We have left the European Union; we have been out of the EU for three years and the referendum was the best part of a decade ago. These questions are nothing to do with leave or remain; they are not even principally about our future relationship with the EU, although that too, like so much else, could be affected by this legislation. Principally at issue are how we govern our own country, how we regulate our economy, how we ensure rights for workers, how we protect the environment, and the proper role of this Parliament in making those decisions.
No one could reasonably object to revisiting specific laws derived from the EU in a sensible, orderly fashion. It is right and reasonable to ask whether there are areas in which we can do things differently or better—that is the essence of competent government—but what is needed is a smart approach to regulatory change. Ensuring that workers’ rights, consumer protections and environmental standards are maintained or indeed enhanced; carefully considering where we might do things differently and what should stay the same, on a case-by-case basis; listening to stakeholders from business and civil society; respecting the proper role of the devolved Administrations; and promoting a race to the top, not to the bottom—that would be the approach taken by a Labour Government. Instead, we have this uniquely reckless and wrong-headed approach to legislative change.
The Bill is unlike any other that I have seen in my time in either House. There are multiple reasons why in its current form it does not deserve to be on the statute book, but I shall focus on four. The first is the dangerous presumption in the Bill to remove all law which is not specifically retained; the second is the legislative cliff edge created by the so-called sunset clause; the third is the risk that it poses to rights and protections in countless fields; and the fourth is the extraordinary and unjustifiable powers given to Ministers of the Crown, and the disrespect shown to Parliament. I will take each in turn.
First, the upshot of the intention to remove all EU-derived law by default is one simple and absurd fact: no one knows exactly what laws will be revoked at the end of the year. The Government certainly do not know. They are still merrily adding new legislation to their online dashboard, checking behind government sofas for some other scroll of vellum that they may have overlooked. Nothing illustrates this farcical process more than the fact that, between the Bill passing Third Reading in the Commons and arriving before noble Lords today, another 1,000 pieces of legislation were added to the pile. Some may still be removed without being identified first, with indeterminate consequences. This is legislative Jenga. Never before in my time in either House have a Government brought forth a piece of legislation whose legal scope they are unable to define. The Government’s proposal is that this House should give Ministers the power to remove laws without them being able to say which laws will be removed. That is a nonsensical way to govern.
The second objection is to the sunset clause. All EU law that is not specifically retained will be revoked by the end of the year. That creates a completely arbitrary and unnecessary regulatory cliff edge at a time when business is crying out for stability. In fact, the Bill in effect contains three sunset clauses—2023, 2026 and for ever—since, under Clause 1(2), Ministers can choose to retain EU law until they choose to change it. If you were trying to design a Bill to undermine business confidence and inward investment, it would be hard to do a better job than this one. The Bill says to business, “The current rules that you operate under—the rules that you understand, rely on and are compliant with—may cease to exist at the end of the year. We can’t say which rules for certain yet, we can’t say what they will be replaced with, and the decision will be made by the Business Secretary on a whim.” If the Minister disagrees, could he tell the CBI, the FSB, the British Chamber of Commerce and the Institute of Directors why it is them who are wrong?
The cliff edge will generate an extraordinary volume of work for civil servants, especially in those departments with a large body of retained EU law, such as Defra. According to the Government’s own dashboard, Defra will have to assess, revise or amend more than 1,700 pieces of law—more than four pieces of law every day between now and the end of the year. That is not achievable. As the consumer watchdog Which? has said, this time pressure creates the risk of mistakes or errors that could have serious consequences. It is also a massive opportunity cost. That is why the RSPB says that the Bill will
“derail urgent action to tackle the nature and climate crisis”
by consuming the resources of departments. Amid a recession and a cost of living crisis, can frantically combing through a back catalogue of law against a self-imposed deadline really be the right use of Civil Service time? I know that many members of the Minister’s own party share these reservations about the sunset clause. It is not a partisan point; it is about competent government—and that brings me to my third principal objection.
This Bill puts at risk many crucial rights and standards and expects trust in the Secretary of State to be a substitute for legal protection. Let us just consider some of the areas covered by retained EU law, such as environmental protection, food safety, civil aviation codes, noise pollution, biosecurity, vehicle standards and employment law. Many of these protections were hard fought and hard won. They cannot be crudely dismissed as abstract red tape. Protections for pregnant women from workforce discrimination, paid annual leave, parental leave, protections for part-time employees, limits on weekly working hours—many of these rights and protections disproportionately affect women and the impact assessment recognises in three separate paragraphs that the Bill contains a threat to equality.
We cannot accept a situation in which these vital protections could be changed at the whim of the Business Secretary. This is made worse by Clause 15, which confirms that rights and protections can go in only one direction: down. The requirement to not increase burdens ensures there can be no race to the top on standards and rights. We must be clear that diminishing our standards could have serious implications for trade. It will complicate the issues created by the Northern Ireland protocol, make it harder to remove barriers in the Irish Sea and could create new difficulties in our trade with the EU.
Finally, I want to address the lack of scrutiny and accountability. This is another Bill brought forward in the name of Brexit that, rather than restoring parliamentary sovereignty, continues a trend of growing executive power. The Bill sidelines Parliament, minimises scrutiny, weakens accountability and hands Ministers unreasonable and unjustifiable powers. To do so in the name of democracy is double-speak.
The Bill contains no requirement for public consultation or impact assessments of proposed changes. Any parliamentarian who wishes to scrutinise or object to future legislation replacing retained law will be taking a gamble because, unless that legislation is passed in time, the current law in its entirety will simply fall away. The sunset clause puts a gun to Parliament’s head. This cannot be the right way to make law in our country.
While we acknowledge that the Bill has passed in the other place and will not frustrate it, we continue to have grave concerns about this legislation. It threatens workers’ rights, environmental standards and consumer protections. It puts our country on course to a self-imposed cliff edge. It undermines scrutiny and accountability and will weaken Parliament. We will seek to amend the legislation to address these issues.
This Bill rests on a fundamentally simplistic and inaccurate view of what regulation is and who it is for. The Government are trying to please some fantasy version of business, still fighting Brexit ghosts in their heads. But business does not want an uncontrolled bonfire of regulation. The truth is that good regulation enables business and trade. It creates stability and predictability. It raises standards. It protects companies as well as consumers, employers as well as workers. The truth is this Bill is a political hangover—the last promise of a Government who collapsed as they made contact with reality. While people are still paying the price in higher mortgage bills, the Government can still spare the public and business the disruption this Bill will generate. I urge them to change course now.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to have the chance at last to speak again on one of my favourite subjects: getting rid of retained EU law from our statute book and supporting the Bill. It is also a pleasure to speak straight after the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman; I very much enjoyed our discussions across the Dispatch Box in 2021, but I am also glad that her undoubted eloquence, of which we have just heard another sample, and her untiring efforts have not yet succeeded in slowing the progress towards getting rid of the effect of EU law in this country.
I make that point because the immediate origins of the Bill lie in decisions I took as a Minister in 2021. But the real origins obviously go much further back: they are part of the logic of delivering a meaningful Brexit in which we have extricated ourselves properly and fully from the EU legal framework, and of the vision on which this party won an election in 2019.
We know the situation: we have on our statute book virtually all the laws we took on in the period of EU membership, thanks to the 2018 withdrawal Act. This came with all the related interpretative concepts: the supremacy of EU law, ECJ jurisprudence and so on. We even upgraded those laws to the status of primary legislation and prevented British courts from reinterpreting EU law doctrines. The effect has been to create a defined body of law, with its own concepts and rules, within the UK statute book. Obviously, such an arrangement can only be provisional; it can only ever be a “short-term bridging measure”, as I described it in a Statement in December 2021.
When it passes, the Bill will bring that situation to an end. It is the product of the work that began in 2021, when I announced that the Government would conduct a review that would start the process of removing the special status of retained EU and reviewing its content comprehensively. That review is complete, and the corpus of law is known. The Bill gives Ministers the necessary powers not only to deal with law on the statute book but to remove interpretive principles, such as those in Clause 4 of the 2018 Act. It is worth dwelling on that point: it is not even clear what law was retained by that clause, as has been noted. It simply enables lawyers to say, “Whatever the law was before, it now is afterwards”—and we cannot live with that sort of uncertainty on our statute book.
Getting this right is necessary to make Brexit work properly. It may be that some noble Lords in this Chamber opposed Brexit and do not want it to work—
Lord Frost (Con)
I know it is hard to believe. I would understand their opposition to the Bill. But noble Lords who profess to accept Brexit surely must accept the logic of the Bill. It makes no sense for this whole body of rules with special status to remain in place on our statute book for a prolonged period. Practically, our lawyers, judges and civil servants cannot deal with two separate statute books, with completely different interpretive principles and case law. We must find a way of changing this and assimilating these laws into our legal system, adjusting and redrafting as necessary.
I recognise that some critics of the Bill will say, “We accept that, but the pace and the process are the problem”. Responding to that, I point to the nature of the powers that will be granted, the criticism of which has been absurdly exaggerated. They are targeted at a specific set of laws, and they exclude any powers to deal with the fundamentals of primary legislation; they are about secondary legislation changing secondary legislation. I cannot see the difficulty with this. It is relevant that this legislation was passed by a body outside this country, often against the opposition of this Government.
To finish, these inherited EU laws have little real legitimacy now that we have left the system that created them. We cannot leave them there for decades while we get around to passing endless primary legislation to replace laws that never came in in that way in the first place.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
The noble Lord really must draw his comments to a close.
Lord Frost (Con)
I will do. We lived for 47 years under a system in which we did not control our own laws. The Bill is not only necessary and essential; it is unavoidable and part of the logic of Brexit. I look forward to supporting it now and in Committee.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
Your Lordships’ House has been sent the Bill by the elected House of Commons to, in effect, snuff out the elected House of Commons from its role in primary legislation and to subordinate Parliament to Ministers in respect of nearly 4,000 items of legislation, in which the elected House will have no role. I was not sent to this House in 2001 to oversee the dismantling of the accountability of the Government to Parliament in order to make Parliament accountable to Government.
The Government’s delegated powers memorandum indicates in paragraph B that a key role of the Bill is
“restoring the primacy of Acts of Parliament in UK statute.”
That is not achieved by the Bill. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 made repeated references to Parliament making the changes to law after the exit from the EU. However, according to the Bill, Ministers alone will decide what happens to retained EU law, with no role for Parliament.
Members will have seen the delegated powers report on the Bill. Our approach is meticulous and concerned not with policy but with the use of delegated powers. These are constructed in a way to remove power from Parliament. In fact, the Bill is the concluding evidence that the Government have not intended, are not intending and do not intend to pay the slightest attention to the reports debated as recently as 12 January, Democracy Denied? and Government by Diktat. There is one group that ignores the reports at its peril and ours: the group drafting the legislation. Its members are clever and know what they are doing: they are following orders from Ministers in a way that their predecessors from a couple of decades ago would not recognise. Those who drafted Bills were a constraint on Ministers stepping over the line—not any more. Parliamentary counsel are wholly owned by the Government; they work for, and are accountable to, the Government and not Parliament. They are currently located in the heart of government departments, rather than in their own buildings. In July last year at a joint meeting of the Delegated Powers Committee and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, when I asked the First Parliamentary Counsel about the current process, Dame Elizabeth Gardiner said:
“I think things have changed a lot.”
Yes, they have; and the Bill is proof that government counsel are not fit for purpose as far as the primacy of Parliament and the House of Commons is concerned. I do not buy the “only following orders” defence given by Dame Elizabeth when she said that
“we have a key role in what the Bill looks like, but we do not decide on its contents”;
it is
“a political and policy decision.”
If they had any professional self-respect, there would have been a resignation of counsel on a par with that of Sir Jonathan Jones, the former head of the Government Legal Service, in 2020. Anyone associated with drafting the Bill should not be welcome in a regime that believes that the Government are accountable to Parliament.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, the sheer number of speakers is an indication of just how concerned Members of this House are about this legislation. At the time of the Brexit vote, the Government promised that reforming the laws previously vested in Europe would rest solely with Parliament, giving both Houses the opportunity to review legislation suitable for the country. However, what we have before us is the exact opposite: the power to restate, revoke, replace or update retained EU legislation will rest entirely in the hands of Ministers. That is neither what the public voted for in 2016, nor what was contained in the Brexit Bill of 2018. The DPRRC is damming in its 25th report; other speakers will doubtless refer to it.
There is widespread concern that the Bill, in its current form, does not have the support of environmentalists across the country. Given the earlier short debate on the environmental improvement plan, which promises much, it is disappointing that the Bill makes little attempt to support the EIP.
The Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 protect more than 50 native UK species, many residing in special protection areas and special areas of conservation. These habitats will need protection if the UK is to meet its obligations under the GBF’s 30 by 30. Revoking this piece of legislation will have a catastrophic effect on endangered species.
In four minutes, it is impossible to deal with how concerned those involved in animal welfare, biodiversity, farming and food production are about the loss of legislation which has helped to protect our health and countryside. Some 44 existing laws concerning animal welfare could all be deleted by this Bill in a single stroke.
The NFU, while welcoming a review of retained EU laws, is very concerned at the speed with which it is proposed this will be carried out and that any EU-originated law that exists beyond 2023 will be referred to as “assimilated law”. It has disquiet that legislation will be discarded without a proper assessment, including vital stakeholder consultation.
Will the Government give firm assurances that this process can be undertaken with due care and attention, while properly involving stakeholders, in the short timeframe proposed? Will the Government also ensure that sufficient parliamentary oversight will be provided, given the significant impact on farming businesses, so essential to food production?
The Government’s dashboard gives a rough indication of the number of pieces of legislation to be dealt with. This started at 2,500 and has risen to over 3,500. Of these, Defra has the largest group of all. Some of the briefs I have received set this figure at 1,700. If we assume that the process of sifting through begins the moment the Bill finishes its passage in approximately mid-March, taking every sitting day from Monday to Thursday until 23 December—approximately 107 sitting days, excluding Fridays—and if Defra has 1,700 pieces of legislation to review in under 300 days and MPs and Peers have 107 sitting days to oversee the legislation and make any corrections necessary, it is quite clear that this quart is not going to fit into the pint pot and there will be very considerable spillage.
Lord Judge (CB)
My Lords, I think I am the only Member of the House who received this letter by special messenger. Having received it, I think I had better read it to your Lordships. It is from the Executive and it is called “Restoring Parliamentary control”. This is how it reads, ignoring the introductions:
“To achieve the object of restoring control back to Parliament, please would you surrender to the Executive powers to repeal or otherwise nullify or dispose of as we think fit some 4,000 or so statutory instruments of great public importance, such as employment laws, environment laws, food safety laws, et cetera (which covers existing laws of which we are still unaware)? These laws were imposed on us by the European Union, but we do have to admit that was with your consent in 1972 in primary legislation. In any event, that is a long time ago and we can reduce the troublesome processes of consent to a virtual formality which would save you all much time and work.
We shall exercise these new revocation powers by the end of the year, but we do not yet know what we shall replace them with. But if we do not manage to replace them or any of them, notwithstanding the urgency, we shall do so by June 2026 or whenever.
Now we must clarify the replacement process. Please would you also surrender to the Executive powers to decide which of three distinct processes may be used for the replacement process for each individual statutory instrument? These are: first, power to decide not to replace any of the relevant laws that we have revoked; secondly, on whatever basis that we think appropriate to replace such laws to achieve their or similar objectives; and, thirdly, to make fresh new laws to cover the topics addressed in the 4,000 or so statutory instruments which have been revoked and make alternative provisions, whether or not the provision achieves the same or similar objectives, as we think appropriate.
Finally, we ask you to surrender power to us to enable the use of secondary legislation to change any existing statute which may have any bearing on the exercise of any of the powers you have surrendered to us in relation to the 4,000 statutory instruments. PS Existing statute includes this very Act itself.
By agreeing to all these separate surrenders, Parliament will have taken back control. We trust you agree.”
Lord Lilley (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the very witty speech from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. Whenever I negotiated laws in Brussels, my ministerial brief usually began, “We don’t want this measure, Minister, but we cannot stop it. The best we can hope is to negotiate one or two amendments from the long list we have proposed to you”. I therefore fully support the need to revise, retain or repeal EU law and I urge Ministers to rake out these old negotiating briefs, which will reduce the burden of work on departments when deciding what revisions to propose.
That said, I largely share the concerns expressed by noble Lords about the constraints on parliamentary scrutiny and the limited time to complete this process. I understand their fears that this could result in poor revision, and even wholesale repeal of necessary legislation. However, I also understand the fears that led the Government to adopt this tight timetable, and I think the latter fears negate and should dispel the former. Let me explain why. As parliamentarians, especially in this Chamber, whose only power is to make the other House consider our amendments and arguments, we are bound to want the maximum time and strongest procedures to fulfil that function. It is true that almost all these 4,000 laws went through Parliament under the biggest Henry VIII clause of all time—the European Communities Act 1972—with little debate and without a vote, and they would have become law even if every Member of this and the other House had voted against them.
Many noble Lords now calling for more scrutiny never complained about that lack of scrutiny in the past. I rejoice in their damascene conversion to the supremacy of Parliament—there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth than 99 just men who need no repentance—but when they suggest that taking back control is meaningless without maximal parliamentary scrutiny, they are exaggerating the purpose of Brexit with the zeal of converts. Brexit was, above all, about the British people getting back control. As my referendum leaflet put it:
“In a democracy, if the Government does not deliver ... the people can throw them out.”
The Government will be accountable to the British people at the next election, not least for how they handle these 4,000 laws, and that is the accountability that lies behind the timetable the Government have set for getting this done. I was surprised by the timetable and when I asked Ministers to take it at a more leisurely pace, they explained that it is essential to complete this process before the next election, not because we promised to get Brexit done but, above all, because this is the only way we can prove to the electorate that the scare stories about the process that we heard today are false. Completing the process will show that the Bill was not about removing workers’ rights or demolishing environmental protection or safety standards; nor will it result in huge gaps in our law book. The fact that the Government intend to complete this process in time to face up to their accountability to the electorate makes most of the scare stories ring hollow.
If we had world enough and time, we would undertake this process in a more leisurely fashion, but we do not, so I entirely support my noble friend’s wish to get it done as speedily as possible by processes that are as rigorous as those by which the legislation was introduced, and thereby demonstrate that all the scare stories are untrue.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, with the agreement of the usual channels, I have swapped places in the batting order with my noble friend Lady Andrews. I look forward with great pleasure to the maiden speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Bray, and, in particular, my noble friend Lady O’Grady. She has done a lot for this country; the calm, decent way in which she has expressed common-sense views has raised the stature of the trade union movement in British society. That is one reason why, in the present wave of industrial unrest, the Government cannot pin the blame on the trade unions as they have so often successfully done in the past.
This must rank as one of the silliest pieces of legislation ever to come before Parliament. I was surprised to see the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, in his place to defend the Bill, because the strategy it sets out is completely different from what he advocated when he presented the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill to us some time ago. I do not know quite how he justifies this change of position. This legislation is not necessary to get Brexit done. That legislation was. He put forward the withdrawal Bill and we retained in British law the legislative output of nearly 50 years of EU membership, the vast majority of which—with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley—the British Government certainly agreed to. In some cases, such as that relating to the single market, they pioneered and promoted it.
The approach now being adopted is quite different. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said that we would incorporate EU law and take a rational, sectoral approach to trying to change it in the light of what we thought the main challenges of Brexit would be. That rational approach has been abandoned. I would have hoped that this sectoral approach would continue; I am glad that the Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, is conducting these studies—that is fine—but to put an atomic bomb, totally irrationally, under what is in our statute is ridiculous.
When we debated Brexit, the Government told us that we would have higher standards in a lot of areas than we had enjoyed in the EU. Michael Gove was adamant on this in terms of environment and farming, and the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, was always telling us how we would have higher standards in employment. However, the fact is that this legislation does not permit higher standards; it allows only a lowering of standards. That is why it is so objectionable.
I am out of time but could go on about this for ever. It is a disgraceful piece of legislation and I hope that this House will tear it apart.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, “Take back control” was a tempting offer. EU processes are often slow and frustrating; Brexiteers call them undemocratic but, if anything, they suffer from democracy overload—layers of decision-making subject to repeated democratic checks and balances. On the plus side, so many cooks stirring the broth rarely get the recipe wrong. However, with this Bill, all pretence has been dropped. The DPRRC calls it a “hyper-skeletal” Bill giving “extraordinary powers” to Ministers and, importantly, says:
“Ministers, not Parliament, will be responsible for determining what stays, what goes and what, if anything, is to replace what goes.”
I wish to touch on two issues, the first of which is devolution. The Bill does not just take powers from Parliament; it also takes powers from the devolved Administrations. It un-devolves powers. Clause 2 allows UK Ministers to defer the guillotine until 2026, but Ministers in the DAs, which have previously held powers over many of these areas, are not able to defer the guillotine. I realise it will not worry the Government, but it is almost certain that the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament will not grant legislative consent.
On transport, this massive clearance sale of EU laws creates uncertainty. We do not know which will go and which will stay. The dashboard currently has 424 transport laws. When will the full list be published? Businesses must know where they stand: lack of democracy is compounded by a lack of transparency. How can we be debating a Bill which gives Ministers powers to change or repeal thousands of pieces of legislation, but we do not know how many and we do not know which ones. Clearly, the Department for Transport does not have the capacity to deal with this avalanche. This is the department that got 20 years behind in updating maritime legislation in line with our international treaty commitments. Rail cancellations and delays are at an all-time high, but the department does not have the time to introduce the Williams-Shapps reforms. It cannot find the time for long overdue legislation to regulate e-scooters. Our vehicle manufacturing industry risks terminal decline, but the Government cannot find time to update our vehicle standards legislation to bring it into line with the suite of EU vehicle safety regulations introduced last year. Those regulations save lives, and they help our manufacturers who need our standards to mirror those in the EU, which is their main export market. Over 4,000 pages of this legislation relate to aircraft safety, and I have yet to find anyone in the aviation sector who wants a comma of it changed. But the Government did find time last year to consult on their proposal to reduce our right to claim compensation for cancelled internal flights—an example, I think, of one of our Brexit freedoms.
Three years ago, the Government embarked on creating 32 common frameworks to regulate the way this legislation is dealt with alongside devolved Administrations. It was supposed to take a year; it has taken more three years. Finally, transposing EU law into UK law over a period of years is a reasonable aim; dealing with 4,000 pieces of legislation in 10 months by ministerial diktat is not. Either this Bill is a result of massive incompetence, or this is what totalitarianism looks like.
Lord Wilson of Dinton (CB)
My Lords, like previous speakers, I welcome the maiden speeches we are going to hear and say that this is a very friendly gathering, and they will find they enjoy taking part in it.
I regret to say they have chosen to speak on what, in my view, is a bad Bill. There is no way you can get away from it. It is a bad Bill because it will create uncertainty in business and in our communities, and your Lordships have heard about the number of organisations which have made that clear. It is a bad Bill because it could do real harm in all sorts of areas by meddling very fast with things that matter to the community. Above all, it is a shocking Bill because it will undermine Parliament to a degree which, I think, is unprecedented by giving sweeping powers to the Executive. It will make important changes as a precedent to the way we do legislation. It is very important that Parliament asserts itself. If we are going to restore power and sovereignty to Parliament, this Bill is not restoring sovereignty to Parliament but taking it away.
What is the strategic objective that this Bill is meant to serve? I cannot see one. The only one is the wish to purge our statute book of EU-derived law and get rid of a ball and chain. That is an emotion. It is a strong emotion, but there is a policy void, and most good legislation comes in a context that makes sense. The body of EU-derived law that we have in this country, which is going to be abolished, has been built up and assimilated with the British legal system over 40 years or longer, in close consultation with businesses and communities affected, environmentally and otherwise. To throw it all out overnight will create a huge void in our legal system. There is not enough time for government to devise new measures to fill that void, let alone consult with business and others about them. This is a task for 10 years, not 10 months. It will take a huge amount of Civil Service time, which I would have thought, if I was head of the service still, was needed for other things that are also high priorities in our community.
Does all the law need to be replaced? Does it all need to be abolished in this time, aside from the law that is exempted? Let us be honest: some of the things the EU made us do over the years has been good. I am not going to embarrass my former Ministers, but I have had Ministers who have been delighted that the EU has pressed the British Government to do things they could not get their colleagues to do. That happened more than once. There are many examples where we have benefited from EU law, not least in facilitating trade. I find it very hard to understand. The EU is why we want to diverge from our largest trading partner. Why are we so intent on creating trade barriers? Why do we want our legal standards to diverge and make trade more difficult? Why are the Government so determined to make life difficult for British business, which is what this Bill is actually about?
If the EU-derived law is doing harm, let us identify that, have legislation and talk about it. Here, as so often, the hard work has not been done. Brexit is past; what we need to do now is find ways of exploiting the opportunities. Positive, hard work needs to be done: we need to go through the legal system to work out strategies for those industries that could benefit and bring legislation forward to Parliament, restore parliamentary sovereignty and work out ways to take advantage of Brexit—not just express emotion about Europe. I have learned through my career that there is such a thing as good government and there is such a thing as bad government. This Bill, I am sorry to say, is bad government.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I must begin by welcoming the maiden speakers to this debate this afternoon. Thinking about the subject of our discussion, I cannot recall from my experience a more spurious case for legislation than the one advanced in support of this Bill. The reason I say that is that the legislation subject to the provisions of the Bill was put on the statute book by the British Parliament in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act. That is how we do these things in this country. It is a British law, like any other, subject to all the usual, time-honoured mechanisms, procedures, safeguards and conventions. The Bill adds nothing to what can be done already. It merely threatens further weakening of the checks and balances of our constitutional arrangements, as has been pointed out from all around the House, including by the Minister.
I probably ought to sit down having said that. But there is a lot of contextual noise that has a bearing on our debate. As the noble Lord who spoke before me said, Brexit is done. Brexit is now the one of the “vanished pomps of yesterday”—
“one with Nineveh and Tyre!”
What matters is the future. A Government’s convenience matters—particularly to the Government—but it is not a reason in itself to change our nation’s constitutional equilibrium and balance. What I might describe as “shorthand” legislation on contentious issues undermines the workings of our democratic process, which provides political legitimacy to our Governments and, in particular, to the acceptance of legislation with which one disagrees.
As has been said already in this debate, the relationship between the Executive and Parliament has already moved too far away from Parliament and should not be allowed to go further. Speakers have commented that many businesses of all kinds are, in the face of very considerable adversity, trading into the single market, albeit considerably less than hitherto. Gratuitous divergence from single market standards threatens industry and commerce, particularly those involved in supply chains.
The country is in a mess of all kinds. Resolving that should be our national priority, not promoting this particular piece of self-indulgent and frivolous distraction, trying to build a New Jerusalem in a few months. In short, it is simple: as has been said, reasoned change, good; what is proposed, bad. In a form of words I never thought I would use in this House, the case for this legislation is collapsing under its own internal contradictions; it should not be resuscitated and should be allowed to die where it falls.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak with mixed emotions on this piece of legislation. On the one hand, I voted to leave, and I have had no reason in my mind to change that view. I think the world order based on the individual nation state, which emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, has still some time to run. It may come to an end, but the nation state remains the basic building block, and that is why I voted to leave. As a result of that, my noble friend will be pleased to hear that I enthusiastically support the purposes behind this Bill—the “untangling” I think was the phrase he used in his opening remarks. But I am also a democrat, and I believe very strongly in maintaining an appropriate balance of power between the Government and Parliament.
Members of your Lordships’ House will be aware that, until Tuesday a week ago, I was for three and a half years chair of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and some of our work has been very kindly referred to already this afternoon. During that three-and-a-half-year period, I am afraid I saw the Government begin to accrete powers at the expense of Parliament in various ways, but specifically by the use of what I call framework or skeleton Bills, in which only the broadest sense of the direction of policy travel is given, and all the detail is given in secondary legislation. Of course, we know that secondary legislation has a much lower level of scrutiny and, in particular, that it cannot be amended. Over the past year, the SLSC has produced a number of reports detailing this. Government by Diktat has been referred to already. My last task as chairman was to sign off the report we made on this Bill, which we titled Losing Control?: The Implications for Parliament of the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. From that, it will be seen that I am not entirely happy with the position we now find ourselves in.
There are three things my noble friend could usefully think about to try to bridge the gap with those who would wish to support the principle and yet have some difficulty with the practice. The first would be the establishment of a proper triaging process to distinguish what is serious from what is trivial. Of the 600 or 700 regulations the SLSC looks at every year, probably more than two-thirds are quite uncontroversial, and I dare say the same will be true when we come to consider the 4,000 or so EU regulations that will come before us. There is no need, in my view, to get the vapours about that. But we definitely need a better procedure to examine that small number of regulations that carry significant policy implications. The procedure should, in my view, at the very least carry the opportunity for Parliament to ask the Government to think again.
I have two further quick suggestions in my last 45 seconds. First, I hope the Government will undertake to produce impact assessments for all the regulations they intend to change. It is important, because good impact assessments are not just about the money; they are how we learn about the thinking that went on, how the Government reached the decision they did and why certain policy options were adopted and others were not. Finally, we need a statutory undertaking to undertake post-implementation reviews—PIRs—on all regulations. PIRs show what happens when hope meets reality, and it is an important part of good governance that Governments should learn from past mistakes. It will be exceptionally important that we do that as we enter this new phase in our way of governing ourselves. I hope my noble friend can consider those as a way of meeting some of the concerns around the House without losing his particular objective.
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I thank your Lordships for the warmth of your welcome. In particular, my thanks are due to my noble friends Lady Prosser and Lord Monks, who guided me through my introduction, which was no easy task. I am all too aware that I have a lot to learn. I also thank the House of Lords staff for their support. As a former TUC leader, it is good to know that so many brilliant staff here are proud trade unionists too.
Many of the rights and liberties we cherish as a country began with working people standing together. In 1968, Rose Boland and the Ford sewing machinists went on strike for equal pay, which was a catalyst for the introduction of the Equal Pay Act. Many years later, their story was made into a popular British film, “Made in Dagenham”, which opened to rave reviews right across the media. But back in 1968, some of those same newspapers were far from sympathetic to the women’s action—a reminder that those who demonise workers on strike for fair pay today may well find themselves on the wrong side of history. Of course, the UK’s Equal Pay Act proved limited. It took EU directives to introduce the much more ambitious principle of equal pay for work of equal value, so I am grateful for the chance to contribute to this important debate about a Bill which the RPC has deemed, in terms of its impact assessment, “not fit for purpose”.
So many of the rights we rely on as workers were derived from the EU—for example, maternity rights. It is true, as we have heard, that the UK now provides more weeks of paid maternity leave than the minimum the EU set back then, although, shamefully, UK maternity provision is still a lot less generous than in many other European countries. In any case, this is not the whole story. EU law introduced other vital protections, including paid time off for antenatal appointments; new health and safety rights; and, where reasonable for new mums, the right to return to the same job. For pregnant women and new mothers, these rights really matter too and should not be casually overlooked. There are many other examples where EU-derived law lifted standards here, such as protection for workers whose jobs are outsourced or whose company becomes insolvent; equal pay and pensions for part-time workers; and, of course, limits on dangerously long working hours.
Good law is rarely made within arbitrary deadlines, without proper parliamentary scrutiny, and without listening to organisations that have real-world experience, expertise and—if I dare say it—a bit of shop-floor wisdom. Instead, as parliamentary committees have warned, the Bill gives Ministers unprecedented powers to disappear vital laws from the statute book, or to replace them with something worse. Ministers promise that there is no intention to rip up or water down rights, but the Bill prohibits the inclusion of so-called burdens ordained to be an obstacle to “profitability”. If that is the test, it is no wonder that workers are worried.
There could be implications for Britain’s trade, and therefore jobs, too. No doubt this House will keep a close eye on the “level playing field” labour clauses enshrined in the agreement with the EU that the UK Government signed up to. Back in 2019, Ministers also promised a new employment Bill which many hoped would tackle the British disease of zero-hours contracts, bogus self-employment and fire and rehire, but we are still waiting. It seems that there is a difference between a promise and a guarantee.
From Carillion and Amazon to Sports Direct and P&O Ferries, many working people feel that the scales of workplace justice are rigged against them. Profits, boardroom pay and shareholder payouts are up, but real wages are down. Surely the priority should be stronger collective rights for workers—ensuring that the decent employer is not undercut by the bad—and growing a greener economy built on fair trade, fair taxes and fair shares of the wealth that workers create.
I am a girl from Oxford—town, but not gown. Early in my working life, I was employed serving tables in Oxford colleges, but thankfully not in the Bullingdon Club. Ever since, I have always believed that whatever our race, religion or background, everyone should be treated with dignity and respect at work. I know that these are values which many across this House share, and I hope they will guide us when considering this bad Bill’s threat to rights which workers across generations and borders campaigned so hard to win.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to congratulate my noble friend on her marvellous maiden speech. It could not have been better. It was much anticipated, and she lived up to every expectation. It was inspirational, because that is the business she has been in all her life. Her speech told us as much about her character as her career and convictions and the way she lives her values. She spoke with huge authority about the long fight for fairness in the workplace and for equal rights, but she did not, because she is so modest, tell us about her own role over the years in achieving so much. She brings all that together with moderation and real-world knowledge, which is a winning combination in this House. Above all, as the first woman leader of the TUC, she knows what it takes to change things for the better, which is probably why her choice of discs on “Desert Island Discs” included Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”. I think we had a taste of that in her maiden speech, and I am sure that is what we can look forward to in her role in this House. We are proud not just on these Benches; she will be an asset to the whole House.
I turn after that moment of optimism to the grim realities of the Bill in front of us. In the words of one Minister in this House, the scale of the task it represents against a disingenuous and unachievable timeline is “herculean”. The deliberate risks that the Government are prepared to take in the face of huge public anxiety, with the rush to the cliff edge over which many vital laws will be thrown because they will be misjudged and misplaced—just lost in chaotic processes—are unconscionable.
The Bill tells us nothing. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has had to invent a special term for it: “hyper-skeletal”. It seems to be just a bundle of twitching nerve ends. As for being surprised that there are so few impacts, how can they be assessed? Nobody knows or can predict at this moment which laws will survive or not, or why, whether and how they will be replaced or amended. We are looking at a dystopian future when we will know how bad the damage is only when it is done and it is too late to put it right. The president of the Law Society describes this dislodging of the law as “devastating”.
Some things are certain: first, that the task of choosing the fate of SIs has been delegated to civil servants across Whitehall, who will in effect have the power to decide on behalf of Wales and Scotland as well. Secondly, of course, as many noble Lords have referred to, the Bill gives Ministers undreamed-of powers to abolish and make laws without accounting for how they will work, powers that are justified, frivolously, as being driven by urgency—the only urgency being ministerial ambition and, clearly, the electoral timetable. In its report, the DPRRC simply calls for the removal from the Bill of those clauses which give excessive powers to Ministers. I hope the House will support that; does the Minister intend to follow the recommendations of the DPRRC?
Further, the Bill attacks the devolution settlement in principle and practice. Ministers in Wales and Scotland have not been consulted and they cannot extend the sunset clause. The Bill fundamentally invites and accelerates divergence and, with it, the further fragmentation of the UK. It includes the possibility of a UK Minister making regulations that impact on policy areas that have been devolved, with no requirement to consult or consent. It is hardly surprising that Wales and Scotland may well withhold consent.
Common frameworks have already been touched on—I speak personally this afternoon and not as chair of that committee. They are the positive and practical expression of how the union is building co-operation as the four countries work together across the internal market, enabling each country to make different choices without disruption. They affect everyday life, for everything from environmental safety to public health. They are underpinned by a cat’s cradle of hundreds if not thousands of complicated, interrelated SIs. Ministers tell us that if anything should go wrong with the judgment afforded these SIs, the disputes process in the frameworks will resolve any future problems. That is nonsense. If common frameworks are destabilised, there will be greater threats to the internal market and the devolution settlement. Will the Minister answer my other question tonight? Does he intend to press ahead with the Bill without the consent of Wales and Scotland, and will he, for safety’s sake, exempt common frameworks from the Bill entirely?
The explanatory memorandum says that the Bill is intended to return lawmaking powers to Parliament—a travesty of language and logic. The Bill empowers Ministers to make laws while leaving Parliament powerless. It is indefensible and must be changed in this House.
Lord Beith (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, on her maiden speech. Her experience and knowledge of the world of industrial relations will be of genuine and timely value to this House in current circumstances.
When we left the EU, it was pretty obvious what we should do about European law. We should take a snapshot of it, which we now call retained European law, and amend it, as need and as changing circumstances dictated, much as we would other forms of existing law. We should bear in mind that this law had not been handed down like tablets of stone; it had been the subject of extensive processes of amendment and examination in the European Parliament in which British MEPs played a significant part—including, I trust, the Minister when he was in that role. Instead, however, we have a triumph of dogma over common sense, in which all this European law is supposed to be junked by Christmas, except perhaps for those laws that will appear on a list, which either exists and is not disclosed by Ministers or is a blank sheet of paper—which, in a way, is a little more worrying. However, their unwillingness to tell us what will be on the 2026 list illustrates the contempt with which Parliament is viewed in this whole process. This is not taking back control but is a massive surrender of parliamentary sovereignty and is augmented by numerous other provisions in the Bill allowing for statutory instruments to change the content of retained EU law.
What are the processes by which Parliament will make changes to retained European law? It will be via negative instruments, which are not even guaranteed a debate in the Commons, and affirmative instruments, which are subject to a vote in both Houses but cannot be amended in any way. In this House, there are those of our own Members who question whether we should reject a clearly and plainly defective statutory instrument because of the primacy that is supposed to attach to the elected House. If we accept that view, the process is null and void. If there are no circumstances in which the instrument can be rejected for lack of appropriate amendment, the power is not a real one. EU law covers areas where detailed discussion and assessment will be required—environmental standards, consumer protection and water quality—and the only real negotiations may be between the Government and the very interests we are trying to regulate, some of which have close links to this Government anyway.
I have described the process as a triumph of dogma over common sense. That is also illustrated by the name change, “assimilated”—of course, we have to describe it as that because there are those who cannot bear to admit that these laws were made in Europe. They were—it is a fact; it is history; get over it and accept that they are currently part of our system. The other weakness of the Government’s position is that they have set themselves an examination that they are bound to fail. The department simply does not have the qualified personnel to rewrite between 3,000 and 4,000 pieces of legislation, primary and secondary—it is not there. Week by week in the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, I have observed what effort is required to make secondary legislation compliant with the parent legislation and to make it good law capable of being used by those among whom it will be enforced. We saw during the Covid period that if the time pressure becomes severe, serious mistakes are made. We saw serious mistakes being made, with people being arrested who should not have been. That kind of consequence will follow if we rush this process through.
It is difficult to find anything favourable to say about the abandonment of a fairly sensible process of gradual modification of law where required for one which junks laws and has no adequate process for replacing them. I am afraid that the Executive have put their tanks on Parliament’s lawn, and they should be taken away.
Lord Janvrin (CB)
My Lords, I too offer a warm welcome to our two maiden speakers in this debate this afternoon.
As the debate is undoubtedly demonstrating, there are many features in this deeply controversial Bill which will merit a lot of discussion in this House, not least the pressures of the sunset clauses and the interests of devolved Administrations. In the limited time available I want as a member of the Delegated Powers Committee to concentrate on the issues raised by its report on the Bill.
One of the more compelling political arguments deployed in favour of Brexit was that the European Union lacked democratic accountability. It is ironic therefore that the Bill gives, in the words of the Delegated Powers Committee report, “a blank cheque” to Ministers to revoke, replace or update retained EU law by statutory instrument—a form of legislation which is subject only to limited scrutiny by Parliament. The Delegated Powers Committee report sets out at some length why this blank cheque is unacceptable and why some of the key clauses in the Bill confer inappropriate powers on Ministers.
The House will no doubt explore these issues at length in Committee, but I want to make a wider point. Many of the concerns expressed in the Delegated Powers Committee report would not arise if secondary legislation was subject to a process of more effective scrutiny by Parliament, both by the Lords and the Commons. If ever there was a reason for updated procedures to empower Parliament—in particular including the Commons—to sift, scrutinise, debate and, where appropriate, amend secondary legislation, it is surely this Bill.
Effective scrutiny makes better law. This issue affects every citizen—all of us. We need a new approach and we need a new Statutory Instruments Act. We can perhaps discern something of a drumbeat in favour of reform in the recent reports from the two scrutiny committees and the debate we had on them last month in this Chamber. The Hansard Society will set out its ideas later this week.
Whatever else it does, the Bill highlights dramatically the need for effective scrutiny of secondary legislation. This issue goes to the very heart of the balance of power between Parliament and the Executive. It is ultimately about public trust in our democratic system, and we ignore it at our peril.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, for a number of years I was a member in the other House of the European Scrutiny Committee, under the formidable chairmanship of Sir William Cash—I expect that he will be a noble Lord eventually. I say “formidable” because he had a fervent eye for transparency and detail and a determination for scrutiny to be carried out with an attitude almost of zealotry. Sadly, the scrutiny that we had there did not mean that we could amend or stop the huge weekly package of new EU directives and regulations that came through. Occasionally, we would get a debate, if we or another Select Committee could manage it, but the result was always, as we know, that once the EU had agreed to something, it was difficult to change it. Therefore, I welcome a Bill that abolishes the supremacy of EU law.
I find it a little depressing that many in your Lordships’ House seem to have more faith in the European Union to deliver than in our own country’s ability to decide its own laws. There seems to be this misty-eyed view that the only institution that could really be trusted could never be our Government—of whatever political party—but could only be the European Union. Yet we know that so many of the rights that we got came originally from the campaigning of trade unions, which got Labour and Conservative Governments to bring into law some of our rights. It was not just about the EU.
rule of a foreign institution. Already we have seen dozens of changes to regulations brought in which have had no discussion or democratic consent in Northern Ireland. Even if the Assembly was sitting, it would make no difference. The EU makes changes which GB does not have to follow, but in Northern Ireland they do.
Noble Lords will be fed up with me saying this, but I reiterate that we in Northern Ireland had the same ballot paper on the referendum. Yes, there was a majority to remain, just as there was in Scotland, but at least Scotland is covered by this Bill under the arrangements for devolved Administrations, while Northern Ireland cannot benefit from any of it. The protocol carefully plotted by the EU, encouraged by the Irish Government and, sadly, agreed to by our Government, was not about trade; it is about trying to ensure that the divergence between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is reduced. By retaining Northern Ireland in the same single market as the Republic, under the same customs code and VAT regime, and being governed by the same laws, Northern Ireland is slowly being pushed away from Great Britain, our biggest market, and forced into an economic Ireland, which is, of course, a foreign country. This may have been a grave mistake by our negotiators, but it was certainly not a mistake by the Irish Government. It was an assault on Northern Ireland’s constitutional position and, sadly, our Government naively went along with it.
Obviously, in Committee there will be changes to this Bill, and it might get greater scrutiny. However, I say to those here who are concerned about the scrutiny of this Bill—and plead to noble Lords to remember—that, while we are talking about scrutiny of something that Ministers at least can get involved in, in Northern Ireland we are putting through more and more regulations from the European Union that nobody in this House, nobody in Northern Ireland and nobody in the Assembly, if it was sitting, has anything to do with. That is a disgrace for anyone who calls themselves pro-union.
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
My Lords, this Bill has come in for sustained criticism, not least from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which I have the privilege and honour of chairing. I would like to say a few words about the report that we published last week but also say that I hope that the Government are very much in listening mode. I very much welcome the fact that the Attorney-General has been at the Bar of the House for a very long time during this debate.
This Bill represents a significant departure from the line that the Government have taken since 2018. Once we had left the EU, they said that it would be for Parliament, rather than just Ministers, to decide which elements of EU law would be kept, amended or repealed. The Government have now backtracked on that, which I very much regret.
Secondly, we felt that the Bill was so lacking in detail that it was not possible to describe it as skeleton or skeletonian; it is basically just a framework for allowing Ministers to decide what happens to whole swathes of EU-retained law. The devil will be in the detail and, unfortunately, the detail does not appear in the Bill. It will be in unamendable statutory instruments later this year and possibly even up to 2026. From the Government’s point of view, all the scare stories that will arise during that period as to what changes may or may not take place will cause them a great deal of trouble.
Thirdly, Parliament is very much bypassed. The main constitutional argument for Brexit, for that utopia that was going to be reached, was that Parliament would take back control of making our laws from the EU. However, many of the changes to the EU-retained law foreshadowed in this Bill will not be for Parliament in primary legislation but for Ministers—and Ministers come and go, as we have seen. Civil servants and parliamentary counsel stay there for a very long time, able to apply the slant that they wish. There must be a way in which scrutiny takes a much stronger role in these matters.
Fourthly, talking of scrutiny, the delegated powers in this Bill are only subject to the negative procedures unless they amend an Act of Parliament, in which case affirmative procedure will apply. I am glad that the Government have been applying the affirmative procedure where statutory instruments amend Acts of Parliament, and I am glad that there is a sifting procedure enabling negative legislation to be upped to the affirmative procedure. However, there are likely to be many important and controversial changes in the pipeline that will not amend Acts of Parliament. In those cases, and only subject to sifting, will the negative procedure apply, meaning that changes will not be debated in Parliament at all.
There is talk of this Bill being extended to 2026. Obviously, a general election will fall in 2025 at the latest. The Government should think very carefully about what is already in the Bill. A lot has come forward from this debate so far which shows how very unsatisfactory this is. Everybody accepts that new procedures will now be necessary, but they should be procedures which enable Parliament to have some scrutiny. At the moment, this Bill is an “all powers, no policy” Bill. That is not acceptable and should not be acceptable to Parliament.
Lord Monks (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted to welcome my noble friend Lady O’Grady, my close colleague and friend. She will continue to liven up our debates with her passion and commitment, as she has done this afternoon, and we look forward to many future contributions. We also look forward to the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Bray, shortly.
As the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, said, the Government have produced a blank cheque for themselves to obliterate most of the 40 years of UK membership of the EU. Because of the skeletal nature of that Bill, we do not know what we are approving today except for some procedural issues which we will debate as this Bill goes through the House. A purge is going on: a purge of what the EU years did for this country. I happen to think that most of them did very well—plenty probably did not—but surely the resources that are going into this purge could be better deployed. By the way, perhaps we could be told how many civil servants have been transferred to work on this Bill, because it seems that a lot of people and resources are being thrown at a problem which is being totally exaggerated.
My focus today is on employment law, a topic that I am sure the Government have in their gun-sights—they have ever since the Maastricht treaty. In recent debates on EU employment law, the Minister has liked to downplay the EU influence on workers’ rights in the UK. He is right that many of the UK’s positive employment laws are homegrown: in fact, they were enacted by Labour Governments. But it is completely wrong to downplay the EU influence at the same time.
There are 60-odd laws on employment with an EU origin, but I will quickly pick out four areas that I want to focus and comment on. The first is TUPE, the regulations on transfer of undertakings. They protect workers’ terms and conditions on a change of employer; for example, under a privatisation. Is that really for the chop? Are the Government going to come forward on that issue?
The second is working time, which was a controversial issue in its day but is not any more. I draw particular attention to the provision on four weeks’ paid holiday. As the Minister has pointed out previously to the House, the average Brit might get more than that, but there are many who do not. By the way, before that was introduced, British workers were lucky to get three weeks’ paid holiday a year. Is that underpinning to be binned? It is not archaic or out of date.
The third is the requirement for a company to provide information and consult on changes in company strategy and key issues such as redundancy, and the related provisions for large multinational companies to have European works councils. When I left the European Trade Union Confederation in 2011, we had about 750 EWCs, with UK companies and workers playing a prominent part in 500. Are those very positive processes—European works councils, and information and consultation—to be consigned to the knacker’s yard in future?
Fourthly and finally, the EU took a particular interest in vulnerable workers: part-timers, fixed-term workers and agency workers. Are they now at risk?
The Government are very good at inventing problems, when they have enough problems of their own to deal with. Noble Lords will have a crucial part to play in combating that tendency, playing their part with vigour and commitment in getting a better outcome than this Bill will ever do.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, for those people who voted for Brexit to take back control and for sovereignty, this Bill shows what a threadbare bargain they received: it completely sidelines Parliament and gives power into the hands of the often nameless and faceless—not bureaucrats in Europe but equally unknown to the man and woman on the Clapham omnibus—Ministers. Others have made that case far better than I can. I want to concentrate on the environmental impacts of this legislation, which the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, so powerfully described as “bad government”.
As others have said, over half of all the pieces of legislation on the dashboard come down to Defra, a small department in the scheme of things. The opportunity costs are really far too high at a time when our environment here in the UK is so under threat and has been laid bare by the OEP to such a degree, particularly when you consider that environmental legislation is difficult, complex, interconnected and long-term.
Equally, we do not know what the process is. There is no guarantee that some of the very powerful protections that the EU has given us over the last 50 years will remain. We may see more people swimming in sewage on British beaches. The Minister may shake his head, but I pick up the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, who asked: why do we say that Europe has done so much for us? Before the EU, we were known as the dirty man of Europe when it came to beaches. We might be able to do better, but the Bill stops us getting better legislation. I will come on to that in a moment.
Our bees and pollinators may be subject to neonicotinoids, which kill them. We may get cattle-fed beef in British farming, let alone it being imported, if we get rid of the hormone regulations. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, rightly said, the regulations on habitats are critical pieces of legislation which fundamentally protect our wildlife. It is no good for the Government to set brilliant targets to reverse the effects of species decline—I applaud them for doing so—if we do not protect the habitats where those species live, breed and feed. It is absolutely critical.
As I have said, and as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, said so powerfully in her excellent maiden speech, the Bill says that we cannot make legislation better. That applies to workers’ rights and environmental rights, because of the fundamental point in Clause 15 about how profitability is the underlying element. Indeed, the Minister talked about profitability in his opening remarks. So we have no guarantee that we can improve our legislation in the future. I am delighted that the Minister is shaking his head. Perhaps he can give us in his summing-up some firm guarantees that we can find ways within the scope of the Bill to enhance legislation. That would be an important statement if he could make it.
Other noble Lords have made the point that businesses do not want this. I will not repeat the point, but I will add another person who has said that they do not want this legislation: Chris Skidmore, who was commissioned by this Government to look at how we will bring forward the net-zero targets. This Government desperately need to do this, and I know that the Minister is personally very committed to it. Chris Skidmore’s review said that the Government wants consistency in regulation, yet the Bill does exactly the opposite.
I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Bray of Coln. I am sure we may not always agree, but I look forward to speaking to and debating with her as she joins our Environment and Climate Change Committee.
The Bill is putting ideology above Parliament, people and our precious planet. This House must muster all its efforts to oppose it.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, I will address matters concerning devolution and the trade and co-operation agreement. I have noted before that the number of pieces of law concerned is a rapidly moving target. There were 2,400 in the Explanatory Notes accompanying the Bill into the other place in September, 3,200 in the revised notes for us in January, and 3,745 as I speak today. But the explanation on the first web page of the dashboard notes that the dashboard
“is not intended to provide a comprehensive account of REUL … that sits with the competence of the Devolved Governments.”
So the dashboard will never be a complete catalogue of REUL and cannot be relied on by the devolved Governments.
The week before last, I visited the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments with the European Affairs Committee. In both places, we had detailed discussions about how the Bill affected them. It was clear that an unknown proportion of the unknown number of REUL pieces of legislation are wholly or partly devolved matters, and that at least a part of the unknown unknown pool of REUL yet to be discovered seems certain to include things that affect the devolved Governments.
For the partly devolved REUL, clearly and case by case, a careful discussion needs to take place among the Governments concerned. Can the Minister assure the House that this is taking place? Can the Minister tell us how that process works for wholly devolved REUL that was made before devolution? For wholly devolved REUL made after devolution by the devolved Governments, can the Minister describe how support to the devolved Governments is being given, to identify, analyse and, if need be, help to legislate?
In any event, like many here today, I am highly concerned about the capacity of Whitehall to deal with matters in the timescales. Following my visits to Cardiff and Holyrood, I am certain that the necessary capacity in the devolved nations is simply not there.
I finish on my home territory—and a point at least as important as the devolution one that I have just made. Clearly not all REULs are about reindeer movement, the example that the Minister wittily gave recently. I am very concerned that some of the REULs could be directly relevant to our treaty arrangements with our closest neighbours and biggest trading partners under the trade and co-operation agreement. Of especial concern is the potential to interact with the level playing field provisions, particularly those on employment and environmental standards. I feel that anything of that nature would naturally need to come before Parliament for scrutiny and agreement, and those REULs would need separate treatment under the Bill.
In the materials accompanying the Bill, we have no document detailing how the Government are ensuring that the Bill will not lead to any breach of the trade and co-operation agreement or describing the process that all the various UK Governments will go through to ensure that. I have asked my three questions already, but here I would urge the Minister to commission such a document forthwith.
Lord Heseltine (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I salute the two excellent maiden speeches that we have heard today. I am one of the few surviving members of Margaret Thatcher’s first Government and I am amazed to find myself sitting here listening to the arguments from the Front Bench as to why her greatest achievement should be sacrificed. I remember Arthur Cockfield: he is not, perhaps, a household name today, but if you look him up in Wikipedia, you will see him described as the “father of the Common Market”, and that is right. Margaret—not a natural supporter of foreigners—saw very clearly that the mistakes of the common agricultural policy must not be made again, so she sent Arthur Cockfield to Brussels as a commissioner in order to make sure that British self-interests were dominant in the negotiation of the single market.
The single market was historically, perhaps, one of the most extraordinarily successful concepts ever developed by humankind. The implementation was difficult, against difficult economic circumstances and endless forms—small employers at night, having done all the work themselves, finding yet another form—and the flame was fanned by those two great arbiters of British self-interest, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. There was a growing resentment, and John Major inherited the problem. “Go to it, Tarzan”, he said to the Tory Party conference.
I was entrusted with the first serious attempt to look at the real effect of all these wealth-destroying, uncivilised, burdensome regulations. I went to it with all the enthusiasm that I hope noble Lords would expect of me. What did I do? I was entrusted with a Minister of State in every department to worm away, dig it all out. I set up public/private-sector committees for each field of activity, led by some of the most strident critics of the regulatory process. I actually published 3,000 of these regulations, so that nothing was hidden from anybody. “Let’s know what we’re all talking about in detail: here they are, great volumes of stuff”. I did something else: I wrote to every trade association and I said, “Look, I’m your man. All you’ve got to do is send me a regulation as drafted that is holding your members back and undermining the country, and send me an alternative draft”. I did not get any replies.
The issue is, of course, central to Brexit. Once the decision was taken—I was rather against it—it was important to get on and do something about the new world, because the uncertainty was bound to be burdensome and frustrating. I thought it was absolutely right that the principal Brexiteers were put in charge of the show: Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox. They, after all, presumably knew what the opportunities were, what needed to be done and what was holding us back, so they were in charge. Well, that did not last long. We had Jacob Rees-Mogg, with his Robespierrean fanaticism, and a whole new government department called Exiting the European Union. Let us not get carried away: the nameplate on the door changed. With Robespierrean fanaticism, he threw himself into the task. There was an uncharacteristic lack of history here, because of course Robespierre followed Louis XIV to the guillotine. Well, it is a more generous and kinder world that we live in today. Four Prime Ministers later, Jacob Rees-Mogg is back on the Back Benches. Dozens of Ministers have lost their jobs. I say to my noble friends on the Front Bench, “Beware: here today, gone tomorrow”. That has an ominous ring for anyone who becomes mired in this Brexit saga.
Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)
My Lords, I am so sorry—the noble Lord’s time has run out.
Lord Heseltine (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am in favour of free and open discussion. I do not want the noble Lord silenced in any way: the Floor is his.
Well, here we are, another vacuum in the Brexit debate.
The essence, of course, is that, for all the empty generalisations, all the promises and all that new world, there was nothing there. This Bill demonstrates beyond peradventure that they did not know what they were doing. Six years on, they did not know what they were doing. They have now actually created a giant question mark over a whole realm of regulations that are the custodian that separates us from the law of the jungle. They are what defines a civilised society. At a time of economic stress, when we need desperately to increase the levels of investment in our economy, what have they provided? A giant question mark for anyone seeking to know whether to spend a penny piece in the United Kingdom economy. I beg noble Lords not to let this legislation leave this place unscathed.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Heseltine. Like him, I am a fellow survivor of Margaret Thatcher’s first Administration—although I was but a humble spear carrier at the time. I look forward to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Bray who, like me, before she came here represented Ealing and Acton in another place—a constituency of beauty and contrast. As I remember it, all the beauty was in Ealing and all the contrast was in Acton.
About two hours ago, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, in introducing this debate, said that it was not about Brexit versus Remain: it was about the Executive versus Parliament. Control may well have been brought back, but it has been delivered to the wrong address: to Whitehall instead of Westminster.
Following what my noble friend has just said, I have left the Government five times—more than anyone else in this Chamber—but only once voluntarily. That was when Boris Johnson illegally prorogued Parliament. My concern then, and my concern now, is that, in the legitimate delivery of the referendum decision, the Government have done, and continue to do, injury to Parliament. They are repeat offenders, and we got used to this under the last two Prime Ministers, but the present one has inherited this poisoned pill and we should help him by amending it.
Last Thursday, I tuned in to a Zoom call organised by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and listened to Ruth Fox of the Hansard Society. Her verdict in a nutshell was that the powers in the Bill transfer future democratic oversight of any changes to REUL away from Parliament. The Bill itself does not specify the Government’s intended policy changes in respect of any area or piece of REUL. We are being invited to give Ministers a cliff-edge power without knowing what, if any, pieces of REUL may be thrown off the cliff on sunset day.
So far, no one in this debate has explained the indecent haste proposed in the Bill. Everything else to do with Brexit has taken some time. It has taken about seven years to get this far, but we now have this mad rush to disengage from inherited legislation, contradicting, as we heard from the DPRRC, pledges by the Government that Parliament would be the agent of substantive policy change in these areas. Noble Lords do not have to read its report; they just have to look at the headings: “Bypassing Parliament” “Uncertainty” and “Lack of justification for the powers”. The Regulatory Policy Committee said that the Bill’s impact assessment is “Not fit for purpose.” It said that the Government needed to
“provide a stronger argument for why the sunsetting of REUL is necessary, as opposed to merely setting a deadline to complete the review.”
Grant Shapps told the Regulatory Policy Committee:
“Efforts are also underway to understand the potential impacts of sunsetting.”
That is an astonishing confession. Those efforts should have preceded the introduction of the Bill, not followed it.
We are all entitled to have reservations about this Bill, but I read in the Telegraph on 28 January that my noble friend Lord Hannan believes that those who do so are “demented”. He wrote:
“To overcome the bureaucratic inertia, ministers came up with the sensible idea of a sunset clause, whereby all EU rules would lapse at the end of this year unless expressly readopted. The demented response to that proposal, not just from Opposition parties but from civil servants, is revealing.”
I say to my noble friend that it is not just opposition parties and civil servants who suffer from this sad lack of short-term memory loss and an inability to articulate themselves clearly, but two Select Committees of this House, about half the Conservative Peers speaking in this debate, the CBI, the City, constitutional experts and the law. I suspect that the last person who called the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, demented was sent down for a few hours to cool off. If ever there was a Bill the second Chamber should revise, it is this one.
Baroness Crawley (Lab)
My Lords, it is a delight to have heard from my noble friend Lady O’Grady, and I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Bray.
The Bill has already achieved a great deal: it has brought together the UK business sector, trade unions, environmental organisations, Justice, the consumer protection world and Chester Zoo in one almighty cry of, “No, no, no.” As we have heard from many noble Lords, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee have also not pulled their punches in their withering verdict on the Bill.
Let us get this right. At a time of unprecedented economic woe in our country, with food banks doing a roaring trade and exporters on their knees, the Government think it is a good idea automatically to revoke or sunset most retained EU law at the end of the year, law which underpins so much of the daily life of the country. It is law which underpins the common framework, the process by which the new UK internal market is being built post Brexit; consumer laws which protect consumers from scams and rogue traders—as a vice-president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, I see that the Bill as it stands could make convictions for consumer rights offences unsafe—as well as laws on food safety, product safety, animal health, intellectual property and weights and measures regulations. If I remember rightly, it was a row over weights and measures in a market square in Tunisia that led to the Arab spring. Goodness only knows what this reckless legislation will lead to.
We have no idea, as the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, said, what the final law count will be. It is 3,745 and counting. Goodness knows what it will be by the end of this debate. The retained EU law dashboard on GOV.UK talks about an “authoritative” catalogue of law up for review. It fails to say that it is a “comprehensive” catalogue, however, because new laws are being found almost all the time. The hapless Minister in charge of this sunsetting exercise in each department may well be pushed to leaving their clothes in a neat pile on a beach in Florida, John Stonehouse-style, through the sheer pressure of it all.
My opposition to the Bill is based on the harm it will do to our country and this Parliament. The TUC is, of course, worried about the potential loss of worker’s rights, including the loss of protection for pregnant women and rights to maternity and parental leave. Thirty years ago this year, the EU maternity leave directive became law against the ludicrous obstruction of the then Conservative British Government first opposing it, then watering it down, and then delaying it as much as possible. As chair of the European Parliament’s women’s rights committee at the time, I played a small part in getting it through, and millions of British women have subsequently benefited. So when Ministers say, “Your rights at work are safe with us in this Bill”, I know from experience that they have form and that we have every right to be concerned about the Bill.
Deregulation in order to compete—the famous Singapore-on-Thames—is at the heart of the Bill. Call me old-fashioned, but I will oppose the Bill on the basis that to be a leading force in the world in 2023 we need to be the best: the best in standards and rights for the British people, and the best for our accountability to our Parliament.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, the Bill we are debating today surely represents the triumph of ideology over common sense and pragmatism. A huge number of existing laws are to be scrapped at the end of this year not because they are bad laws or inadequate laws, but simply because they are laws based on decisions taken collectively by EU institutions of which we were a full and active part when they were adopted. They are to be scrapped irrespective of whether by that date they have been replaced by a new statute or not.
To look first at the quantum of laws to be scrapped in this way, even the Government do not know the exact number. It is somewhere in the region of 3,000 to 4,000, and the figure is augmented by new discoveries in the National Archives which means it keeps going up. To initiate a vast scrappage scheme without knowing what you are scrapping is surely unprecedented. Whatever the final figure turns out to be, the replacement of this massive body of law will absorb the Civil Service and Parliament to the exclusion of other, perhaps higher, legislative priorities. Is that a sensible choice of priorities? If an oversight is discovered later this year or after the guillotine comes down at the end of it, there will be a void in our statute book on a matter that could be of great significance and importance for people’s everyday lives.
Secondly, look at the replacement process proposed in the Bill. This represents a massive extension of executive power, with Parliament having little or no say given the inadequacies of parliamentary oversight in the statutory instrument process. You might think it is an odd interpretation of taking back control. There will be little or no time to conduct the wide consultancy processes which ought to precede legislating on complex or sensitive matters.
Add to those drawbacks a third category: the implications for devolution and the relationships with the devolved Assemblies. Many of the laws to be scrapped cover matters that have been devolved to Scotland and Wales. What say will they have in the decision to scrap one of their laws? They will have none, so those devolution complications will necessarily take a good deal of sorting out.
Fourthly, what will be the implications for our relationship with the EU if the replacement legislation diverges too sharply from that of the EU on matters that fall within the ambit of the trade and co-operation agreement? That agreement has provisions for what is known as a level playing field, and it has provisions for the other side to compensate itself for any failure to maintain that, possibly leading to worsening of the already suboptimal conditions for trade between us in goods and services for what remains our biggest overseas market.
Of the four major categories of defects in the Bill I have identified, on not one are the Government in a position to provide clarity or reassurance at this point in time. They really are offering an irrevocable leap in the dark with this overhasty legislation. What will be the consequences for investment, so necessary if we are to achieve the growth the Government are promising? Sharply negative if the view of the director-general of the CBI is anything to go by.
The conclusion surely is that this Bill in its present form, with its detailed provisions and cut-off deadlines, requires meticulous scrutiny and, very probably, considerable amendment. No one, so far as I can see—and no one who has spoken—is arguing that no retained EU law should be replaced. This is simply not the best way to do it. Would not a sectoral approach be better than this sledgehammer method? Would not a longer timetable make sense? If we legislate in this way in haste, repentance will be painful and durable for an economy not currently in particularly robust condition.
Baroness Bray of Coln (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I start by thanking noble Lords for the wonderfully warm welcome they have given me since I arrived here just a few weeks ago. It has meant a great deal to me. My special thanks must go to my mentor, my noble friend Lord Ashton of Hyde, and to my two supporters, my noble friends Lady Finn and Lord Maude of Horsham, for whom I worked as his Parliamentary Private Secretary when he was Minister for the Cabinet Office and responsible for the coalition Government’s world-leading efficiency reforms.
I also offer huge thanks to all the staff here, who have been so helpful in every way. I single out the doorkeepers, who have always been ready to redirect me as I try to find my way around the building—I still have not been entirely successful—and the digital services team, who continue to show the patience of Job as I come seeking help with my iPhone and iPad, yet again.
My journey to this place really started when I was around 12 years old. My father loved politics and was always keen to discuss the latest issues, especially over Sunday lunch. My mother and older sister were not at all interested, so he settled on me to show an interest. He loved picking a subject to debate and then putting me on one side and himself on the other. I did my best. The next Sunday, he would announce that we were going to do the same subject again but we were going to swap sides. Well, I certainly learned that there are at least two sides to every issue, and I began to rather enjoy it all.
After leaving St Andrews University, I went on to train as a radio journalist, working first for British Forces Broadcasting in Gibraltar and then LBC Radio in London. From there I was asked to join Conservative Central Office to head up the broadcasting unit in the press office. I met so many talented and interesting politicians while doing that, quite a few of whom I have met all over again here.
I later became leader of the Conservative group, having been elected in 2000 to one of the first tranches of the London Assembly at the GLA for the seat in which I live, London West Central. This was my first experience of proper, elected political life. I was learning it at the feet of possibly London’s most prominent and canny politician at the time—Ken Livingstone, London’s first elected mayor. As I said, I later became leader of the Conservative group. It was a great honour and also quite a challenge, but I like to think that the nine of us were quite an effective force at City Hall.
I stood down from the GLA before the 2008 London election because, by then, I had been adopted as the parliamentary candidate for the newly created constituency of Ealing Central and Acton. It was, I was told, the most critical marginal seat in the country, but Labour-leaning; so no pressure then. I won the seat in 2010, then Labour won it back off me in 2015—but what a five-year term it was. I loved every minute of it. The constituency is a fascinating mix: some communities are wealthy, some are a lot poorer, many different languages are spoken and it is wonderfully diverse. It was a great education for me as I sought to help my constituents on a huge variety of issues.
And now, I am honoured to be standing here in this place. As to the debate in which we are participating, I am in danger of being in a bit of a minority, but I fully support what the Government are aiming to achieve with this Bill—which is, essentially, to cut back on unnecessary rules and regulations so that we can more easily and successfully grow and flourish as a nation. I applaud the ambition of cutting red tape where it is not needed, to ensure that businesses can spend more time transforming and growing their business rather than filling out forms.
I know some may worry that this Bill may weaken the laws that protect our environment but, at Second Reading in the House of Commons, the Minister made clear that the Government will
“use the powers in the Bill to ensure that our environmental law is functioning and able to drive improved environmental outcomes, with the UK continuing to be a world leader in environmental protection.”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/10/22; col. 186.]
Let us also focus on some of the additional benefits that our renewed freedom outside the EU has already brought us. For instance, it allowed us to develop and roll out our highly effective Covid vaccination programme at critical speed, long before the EU had got its act together. I appreciate that the process of disentangling our laws will not always be easy, but it would be extraordinary, surely, if, after all we went through with the referendum, ultimately choosing to leave the EU, we then decided that we were quite happy continuing to live under EU law after all. I am confident that we can successfully take control of our legal affairs once again as an independent nation state.
Baroness Lea of Lymm (Con)
First, I want to say how delighted I am to follow the excellent maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Bray. I very much congratulate her and, given her illustrious career, I am sure she has much to contribute to this House. I look forward to being her colleague for many years to come—although I am not sure whether that is a threat or a promise.
Moreover, I wholly concur with my noble friend’s comments on the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. We left the EU over three years ago and the transition period ended over two years ago. It is surely right that British authorities should be able to decide which rules they wish to retain, scrap or change for the benefit of the country. I do note the concerns over parliamentary scrutiny that have been expressed here this afternoon.
The Government’s policy paper The Benefits of Brexit, issued in January 2022, discussed the potential new freedoms. It said:
“We now have the opportunity to set ourselves apart and deliver bespoke UK-orientated regulation that is primarily focused on delivering growth, innovation and competition while minimising burdens on business.”
I pretty well agree with that. The Chancellor’s Edinburgh reforms relating to financial services, part enabled by Brexit, and the Financial Services and Markets Bill, are also encouraging developments.
To put the Bill in a wider context, quite simply, we now have freedoms that we did not have in the EU, and not just regulatory freedoms. Trade is clearly, potentially, a significant winner. The free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand are our first “from scratch” FTAs in over 50 years; I remember 50 years ago. And membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—try saying that when you cannot speak—currently being negotiated, should deliver notable benefits.
If I may be allowed to digress into broader economic issues, there are, of course, many who voice concerns over the economic impact of Brexit. It is reasonable to suggest that the introduction of various trade restrictions following Brexit has dampened trade; but the trade data are not easy to interpret—and my goodness me, have I spent my life doing that. The extended lockdowns, supply chain disruptions and the global recession have had a major impact on trade, and data collection changes by HMRC have muddied the waters even further. But the latest data from the ONS—the Office for National Statistics—show that goods trade picked up very strongly in 2022, despite Brexit, after weakness in 2020 and 2021.
Concerning the economy more generally, I remember well the Treasury and the Bank of England uttering dire warnings about Brexit’s impact back in 2016; and the IMF and OECD chimed in. Suffice to say, “Project Fear” did not materialise, but identifying Brexit’s economic impact now is fraught with difficulties, not least because of the disruptive lockdowns and the sharp increases in energy prices, exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Any assessments, therefore, must be treated with the greatest caution. Let us note that the OBR’s much-quoted 4% negative impact on productivity is basically an assumption based on external forecasts. I suggest that the analysis of data outturns is potentially a more constructive way forward. OECD data show that the UK and Germany have grown at very similar rates since 2016: faster than Italy, a bit slower than France. That does not suggest a major Brexit hit.
In the meantime, I look forward to Brexit’s potential benefits, including those flowing from the retained EU law Bill—that is why I support it—and, indeed, the major savings on our contributions to the EU.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my environmental interests that are in the register.
In my 25 years in your Lordships’ House, I do not think I have ever heard a Bill so roundly condemned from all quarters. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, who, although he supported Brexit, is clear, as was his committee, that the Bill itself is unsupportable.
Lots of other noble Lords have said that the Bill takes powers from Parliament and hands them to the Executive, that it is a super-framework Bill or that it is super-skeletal, but I have a simple term for it: it is a pig in a poke. We are buying something that we do not know what it is going to be when we vote it through.
It is basically a deregulatory measure. The Clause 15 measures have been paraphrased as, “Ministers can do anything provided it doesn’t increase regulatory burden”, which is defined as
“a financial cost; … an administrative inconvenience; … an obstacle to trade or innovation; … an obstacle to efficiency, productivity or profitability”.
That is pretty clear and no-bones. It is about deregulation, despite the fact that regulation is often most simple and efficient way of achieving environmental outcomes.
I shall focus on the environmental issues in the Bill. Of the 3,700 pieces of EU retained law—as is currently the case; we have seen the dashboard wobble about quite a bit regarding the number of pieces of legislation that is estimated, so I do not think 3,700 is the last word—1,781 are in Defra’s court, four times more than any other department. This is the department that has already been ticked off twice in the last four months by its new environmental regulator, the Office for Environmental Protection, for not meeting the targets and deadlines that Defra itself set. So I do not really have a lot of confidence that Defra is going to be able to cope with reaching decisions about four times more pieces of EU retained legislation than any other department.
I am a very sad human being and I have read the list of 1,781 pieces of Defra legislation. I would agree with the Minister, were he to say this, that some are indeed minor, some have lost their relevance as a result of us leaving the EU, and some of them are a bit tech-y. I am sure the Minister will agree with me on that. For example, I enjoyed reading the one on
“additional guarantees regarding salmonella for consignments to Finland and Sweden of laying hens”.
That looked like a showstopper to me. However, some pieces of retained EU legislation in that list are substantial, long-standing and deeply woven into the fabric of environmental protection in this country at national and local level, and are accepted by many people as vital, operational and well constructed.
I know that the habitats regulations are a bogeyman for deregulators, but the one thing that we have to remember is that they are effective because we invented them. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, talked about safeguarding British self-interest—although I disassociate myself from Mrs Thatcher in that. We showed British self-interest in negotiating and leading the EU into adopting a highly effective protection system for biodiversity of species and the habitats on which they depend. We were a mover and a shaker in the EU; this was not stuff that was done to us.
I thank the Minister for meeting us last week over the Bill. When pressed, he will tell us that alternatives to the habitats regulations have already been devised in the Environment Bill and, now, in the levelling-up Bill, but that has not been made clear while we have debated these Bills. Not once during the passage of the Environment Bill was it stated that its priorities were—
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
Will the noble Baroness conclude her remarks?
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
I will finish in two seconds. Not once during the passage of the Environment Bill was it stated that its provisions were intended to replace the habitats regulations. This is no sort of process, where alternatives are inserted piecemeal rather than laid out to show how they match up to what is being done away with.
The Bill is cosmetically and disastrously aimed at getting rid of EU legislation before the next election at any cost.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
The noble Baroness has exceeded the speaking limit by some margin. It is time for the noble Baroness, Lady Jones.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
I recommend that your Lordships’ House not amend the Bill but not pass it.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I congratulate our two new noble Baronesses on their excellent speeches. I think they will both be an incredible asset to their parties. I will welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Bray, into the Opposition over here when the Tory Government fall.
Some 2,000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Cicero said, “The closer the collapse of an empire, the crazier its laws”. That is what we have here. There are families who are starving, people who are freezing in their homes and workers rightfully striking on the streets, but we are in here debating this dross. I do not know how the Government can face us when they send us legislation like this. Just as the Public Order Bill is an attack on democracy in the streets, this Bill is an attack on democracy here within Parliament. Rather than taking back control, the Government are seeking to take away Parliament’s sovereign power of voting for or against laws and to hand that power over to a chaotic Executive of right-wing Ministers and their civil servants. We have reached the slash-and-burn stage of Brexit cultism, which will certainly throw this country into a state of legal uncertainty.
The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 provided a comparatively sensible way for the Government to transition out of the EU with a functioning body of law, with the ability to identify opportunities outside the EU and pass new laws accordingly. This is not the same by any means. We do not have a list of laws that are going to be deleted by the Bill; it gives carte blanche to delete all, and it is going to be an absolute mess. It will be at the discretion of Ministers, who will choose to delete—or not—some parts of EU law without further scrutiny, either parliamentary scrutiny or scrutiny by the electorate.
The electorate have not voted for this Bill. It is not in the Tory party manifesto. Voters have never been asked about the approach that the Government want to take to retained EU law. It is not part of the oven-ready Brexit that we were promised, which was cooked up last year with a poison pill. It will mean that important decisions on which laws are retained will have been made by the end of this year before the general election, and then some other political party will have to pick up the mess and try to cope with the disaster.
The Bill gives the legal mechanisms but no political mechanisms. Only Ministers will choose the fate of 4,000 pieces of legislation. It seems crazy that we are handing that power to Ministers. We did not trust them before this came and we certainly will not trust them afterwards.
Our future relationship with the EU is important. There is a growing recognition that leaving the European Union has not delivered the benefits that we were promised. The Bill is proof that even this Government cannot find any benefits to boast about. There will soon be a public debate about our relationship with the European Union, and the Green Party has decided that the relationship should be as close as possible until the political circumstances are right for us to rejoin. I say that as someone who voted for Brexit. What I have seen is destruction by this Government, and they are not delivering on all their promises.
My feeling is that the only sensible thing now is to cut our losses and rejoin the EU, and I think many others, some inside this building but many outside, will agree with me.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, and my noble friend Lady Bray. They made excellent maiden speeches, and I am sure they will bring great expertise and enhance our proceedings in the future.
In 2018, we passed the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, which made it absolutely clear that we were going to review all the EU legislation. You would have thought that that would have been a signal to the civil servants of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, to start sorting out what this actually meant and how much EU legislation they had in their departments. In fact, as far as I can make out, almost nothing happened at all. They thought, “Well, we needn’t bother about this. It will never happen and, anyway, most of us voted remain and we would quite like to rejoin the EU anyway.”
It is an absolute disaster that we are now having to impose sunset clauses in this Bill which has galvanised the departments to produce the EU retained law that they have. They are even sorting out in archives and so forth to bring this stuff out. The briefing that we got said that there were 2,000 bits of EU retained law. That then went up to 3,300; now we have heard today that it is 3,700. Most people think it is going to top out at 4,000. I only hope they are right, as it seems to me that there is no limit to the amount that this number might grow.
When we come to review it, it seems to me that there are a number of options in front of the Government. We could retain the laws from the EU and, presumably, it would be pretty uncontroversial with most of your Lordships in this House if we retained the law intact and unamended.
We could repeal some of the law. As my noble friend Lord Callanan said last week, some of the bits of EU law involve—and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, made light of this—movement of reindeer between Denmark and Sweden. That is of no concern to this country whatever. What we need to know is how many more bits of legislation there are which are as irrelevant as reindeer in Denmark. I would ask my noble friend to give us the percentage. But I am afraid that, as he does not even seem to know the number of bits of EU law there are, the chances of him knowing the percentage that are completely irrelevant to this country probably are not very great.
Other bits that we would want to repeal are ones where EU provision is actually less than what we provide already in this country in our legislation. Presumably, that would be relatively non-controversial if it could be proved that we make greater provision for workers’ rights or whatever than under the EU law. If we follow the suggestion from my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts to somehow filter this stuff, then it would be quite possible to say that it could go through under a statutory instrument because it would be basically non-controversial.
We then come on to the more difficult areas where we are revising legislation to bring it up to date. They are technical changes. As we well know, technical changes can be a number of different things. They can be very dramatic changes or just genuinely technical, and that is why once again I support my noble friend’s suggestion. We have to filter out genuinely technical changes from those that are not.
What is very bad news about this legislation that we have in front of us is that it enables Ministers to completely change legislation altogether, and that is something that we did not vote for in the referendum. When we wanted to get our powers back, we certainly did not say, “We will bring undemocratic edicts from Europe and enhance the power of Ministers and increase the powers of the Executive.” That is not what we are here for and not what we should be voting for.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Bray, and my noble friend Lady O’Grady on their excellent maiden speeches.
As a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I of course agree with its report on the Bill and that of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Both reports reflect the statement of principles in their 2021 reports, Democracy Denied? and Government by Diktat.
I want to focus on one aspect of the Bill: the sunset clause which facilitates the removal of our employment rights without parliamentary scrutiny, as there will be no draft legislation to scrutinise. Twice in recent weeks, my noble friend Lord Woodley has asked whether the Minister will retain the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations. The Minister declined to say. If he sits tight and does nothing, that important suite of rights will evaporate on New Year’s Day and the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, will not be able to oppose, amend or even debate it.
The Minster claimed on 23 January that:
“UK employment rights do not depend on EU law.”—[Official Report, 23/1/23; col. 3.]
He repeated the claim on 1 February. The truth is that some do not but most do. My noble friends Lady O’Grady, Lady Crawley and Lord Monks have mentioned some. I will mention some others. The right to a safe place of work, system of work, safe equipment and competent colleagues is a homegrown common law right originating in 1837 and articulated in the case of Wilsons & Clyde Coal v English in 1938.
The Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations were made under our domestic Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. Their provenance was one of the recommendations of the Piper Alpha disaster inquiry. However, the Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations, which make similar provisions about safety representatives and safety committees where no union is recognised were made under the European Communities Act to implement EU law. In fact, most employment rights and health and safety are EU law.
I will give some examples to illustrate the scale of this. We are talking about regulations on: management of health and safety, workplace health and safety, work equipment, PPE, manual handling, display screen equipment, carcinogens, biological agents, construction, safety signs, pregnant women, drilling, mining, chemical agents, dangerous substances, explosive atmospheres, fishing vessels, ionising radiation, lifts, machinery, biocidal products, major hazards, transport, working time, work at height, temporary and mobile worksites, explosive atmospheres, young persons, physical agents, noise, vibration, and offshore installation safety cases.
Clause 1(4)(a) of this Bill will sweep away regulations made under the European Communities Act. But the regulations I have mentioned will survive because they are made under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. The fate of regulations made under both Acts such as the Control of Asbestos Regulations is not clear. The answer, however, is academic. All these statutory instruments will be caught by Clause 1(4)(b) since they were made to implement EU law, whatever their statutory foundation.
Consequently, all the Minister has to do is to sit on his hands and all these vital protections hitherto enjoyed by our 30 million workers will disappear in a puff of smoke without parliamentary scrutiny. That is unacceptable and also appears to be a flouting of the obligations we undertook to maintain and implement health and safety laws under Articles 386 to 388 and 399 of the trade and co-operation agreement.
Baroness Humphreys (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, of which I am a very new member, for its report on this Bill and to Senedd Research for its informative legislative consent memoranda and other documents.
As the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee highlights, in 2018 the European Union (Withdrawal) Act promised that Parliament and the devolved legislatures would be able to decide which elements of some 3,000 or 4,000 pieces of retained EU law to keep, amend or repeal once the UK had left the EU. This retained EU law Bill cuts across that pledge and makes a mockery of the supposed argument for Brexit that the UK Parliament would be supreme and would be responsible for making our laws once we had left the EU.
The Bill, however, gives unfettered authority to Ministers through secondary legislation, bypassing both the UK Parliament and the Senedd in Wales. Such a blatant attack on the powers of the UK Parliament might be unusual but in Wales we have become rather used to this type of treatment, especially since 2019. Giving evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee in November, the Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford, reflecting on the relationship between the two Governments and the increasing problems around the Sewel convention, said:
“We had engaged relationships with Conservative Governments from 2010 to 2019. We did not agree on many things, of course, but we were always around the table together talking. The exception in this … rule is the period from 2019 to earlier this year.”
The retained EU law Bill is a child of the Brexit Government who came to power in 2019. Since then, emboldened by their majority in the other place and fuelled by a unionism sometimes described as “aggressive”, they have ridden roughshod over the Sewel convention, they have usurped the powers of the Senedd and, in the Bill, they will also blatantly usurp the powers of the UK Parliament.
The Delegated Powers Committee’s report concludes:
“We have recommended that, of the six most important provisions containing delegated powers in this Bill, five should be removed from the Bill altogether. The shortcomings of this hyper-skeletal Bill justify our approach.”
The Welsh Government go further: I believe they have now recommended that the Senedd withholds consent for the Bill. The Welsh Counsel General and the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture have published a joint letter in the Financial Times, calling for the Bill to be withdrawn. The devolved Administrations are preparing lists, reviewing thousands of pieces of retained EU law and seeking the Government’s help in ascertaining whether some laws are devolved or reserved, all in what appears to be a state of uncertainty, confusion and chaos.
The Bill allows an extension, to 2026, for the UK Ministers to complete their work, but Ministers in the devolved Administrations are restricted to the 2023 deadline. Welsh Ministers have requested an amendment to address this anomaly, but we still await a response. Will the Minister explain why there has been no response, address the anomaly and assure me that an amendment will be tabled by the Government? If he cannot do the latter, I will happily do so.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
My Lords, this afternoon, we have had the glorious sight of many noble angels dancing on the head of a pin, effervescing with enthusiasm for the virtues of parliamentary oversight. Of course, they are absolutely right, but I just wonder where this particular angelic host was hiding during the previous 40-odd years, when rule was piled upon regulation and then dropped from the commanding heights of Brussels on to this so-called sovereign Parliament. There was not much debate then, or much protest from the usual suspects. There were not many Tarzans swinging through the jungle, if I may put it that way. You do not get back in your car, with your windscreen smothered in almost 50 years of parking tickets, and then decide that you can drive away while peeling them off one by one—although some noble Lords have come up with an answer: they want to drive away in reverse gear. That is what a good deal of the criticism is really about: going back to the future and reliving the glorious past, with all its myths, fantasies and metric martyrs.
It is suggested that the Bill is a cut-and-paste exercise. Thank goodness for that, because, while we use paste, the EU uses superglue. We can move things around, but it cannot: once you are in, you are stuck. We have a dashboard. We have this debate, we will have a stringent Committee—I hope it will be prosperous—and future Governments will be able to have their way, too. So, yes, let us defend the rights of Parliament against the Executive, but let us not forget that the Bill has already passed through our elected House of Commons. Yet we have heard threats from Opposition Benches today that they intend to tear the Bill apart—that is unacceptable, irresponsible and utterly undemocratic.
Sadly, politics is not the pursuit of perfection; it is usually a choice between the unappetising and the totally inedible. What is inedible, and impossible to stomach, is that knot of prejudice that simply refuses to accept Brexit. I will not point a finger at anyone in this House, although I suspect that some volunteers may like to step forward, but I will point a finger at Guy Verhofstadt—Mr Europe—who, the other day, offered the conclusion that Putin invaded Ukraine because of Brexit. Perhaps his foie gras had gone off or something. There was me thinking that independent post-Brexit Britain had pulled Europe towards its senses on Ukraine and into action, just as we did with Covid vaccines. Thank goodness we were able to make those decisions with some speed then. Mr Verhofstadt’s words are truly appalling.
Other words I find more compelling are those of Jonathan Reynolds, the Labour spokesman on the Bill in the other place. I was glad to hear them echoed today by the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman. During the Commons Second Reading, Mr Reynolds said that this Bill
“is not about Brexit—Brexit has happened; it is a fact.”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/10/22; col. 191.]
So we must stop pretending that the European parliamentary system was so much more democratic and its laws so much better considered. Brexit is a fact—a democratic fact—and it is our duty to get on with it.
Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am afraid I agree with a lot of the criticisms and concerns that have been expressed by many noble Lords, although not the noble Lord who just preceded me. I regret to be in this position because I support the idea that there should be a review of retained EU law, and I also support the principle that retained EU law should be fully assimilated as UK law. Clauses 4 to 6 are not perfect, but they are not the main problem that the Bill presents.
As explained by a number of noble Lords, the two main concerns are the Bill’s impact on legal certainty and its impact on the integrity of the legislative process. We have all read about the uproar of concern from businesses and professional and social organisations about legal certainty in particular. I do not think that behind this reaction there is a concerted attempt to create a permanent shrine for EU law within our legal system. The need for legal clarity is prompting these concerns, and I hope that, in Committee, we will be able to consider ways in which the operation of the sunset clauses in particular can be improved to satisfy this basic requirement.
It is in the Government’s interest to proceed in a clearer and more systematic way. According to the calculations of the Law Society, which I believe are based on the latest available figures, it would be necessary to review 13 pieces of legislation per working day from today until 31 December. Even if this were just a tidying-up exercise—I do not think it is or that it is being characterised as such; otherwise, it would not offer all these opportunities—it would be a huge task. It is precisely because I agree with the Government that this work could present opportunities that I think it is important to get it right, even if it takes a bit longer.
There are other aspects of the Bill that affect legal certainty that I look forward to considering more fully in Committee. For example, I am a bit perplexed by the system of references by law courts, tribunals and law officers envisaged in Clause 7. In the Bill, of all places, I did not expect to find any EU law input; I would have thought it preferable to leave the process of assimilation of EU law into UK law to the forces of the common law under clear legislative guidance—but without a procedural mechanism that is convoluted and risks generating delay and uncertainty.
Briefly, on the integrity of the legislative process, I too share many of the concerns that have been expressed about the power clauses, and in particular Clause 15. The Government and a number of speakers have a point when they say that the legislation with which we are dealing came into our legal system via the old European Communities Act 1972 and was subject to very little or no scrutiny—although I hear different views on that. It seems to me that the key point is that the European Communities Act did not exist in a vacuum; it was predicated on the delegation of legislative competence to international institutions which had their own legislative processes, governed by treaties to which we had acceded. I was never a fan of that legislative process—I was certainly not misty-eyed about it—but, even so, I cannot agree with the proposition that the delegation of legislative power under the European Communities Act can be compared with the delegation proposed under Clause 15 in particular. For this reason, and on this point, I too would very much welcome constructive and sensible proposals for improving the Bill.
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
My Lords, Monsieur Barnier recently warned Britain not to tear up EU laws—well, he would, wouldn’t he? This should come as no surprise. For all its trumpeted advantages, the EU is performing worse than Britain. Whatever way you look at it, Britain is doing better. As Britain escapes the cloying and destructive stranglehold of EU regulations and red tape, we will leave the EU trailing even further behind. It is no wonder that Monsieur Barnier is nervous.
Many claim that Britain has suffered economically from leaving the European Union. That is nonsense, driven by those who wish for us to rejoin the European Union. Last year, Britain’s GDP grew faster than those of Germany, France and Italy. Our economy has grown by 5.7% since 2016—the same as that of Germany, the financial powerhouse of the EU. Yet, in 2022, real wages fell further in Germany than they did in the UK. While food prices are up by 19.9% in Britain, they have risen by 21.1% in the eurozone and 24.1% across the whole of Europe.
However badly the British economy might be faring in these challenging times, the European Union is doing worse. That is in relation not only to economics; our Covid vaccine development, procurement and rollout is a good example of what can be achieved free from EU restrictions. It was such a success that the EU tried to keep it for itself and to block shipments to Britain. By March 2021, Britain had vaccinated 40% of its population, while the EU had vaccinated only 12% to 14%. Just think how much more the rest of our life sciences sector and other industries can achieve when they are fully freed from the EU’s shackles.
We must support the Bill; it will help to remove the remaining EU bureaucracy from our statute book that continues to impede our economy and society. Some noble Lords may complain, as indeed they have today, that too much discretion is being given to Ministers, but we should remember that the retained EU laws only exist because edict after edict was imposed on the UK without this country being able to alter so much as a comma. Noble Lords have far more scrutiny now, and under the Bill, than they ever did when the legislation was created.
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
It is not nonsense; it is true.
Above all, we should celebrate that our country is a sovereign nation and be grateful that we are not subject to the 25,163 new EU laws created since we left. I urge noble Lords to support the Bill, which recognises that our country is now governed from Westminster and not by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, the Bill sets out considerable detail on the legalistic process of dealing with retained EU law, which noble, and noble and learned, Lords are rightly examining, and will continue to examine, in great detail. But the Bill says absolutely nothing about specific items of law.
I will focus on the areas within the remit of Defra and get down to some specifics. As we have heard, the department has by far the biggest burden of legislation to consider from the current dashboard of over 1,700 pieces of legislation, encompassing animal health and welfare and the environment, matters of great concern to the UK public and critical for trade. While the Bill aims to retain, amend or revoke retained EU law, according to that which is “right for the UK”—which is perfectly fair and reasonable—there is as yet little indication of which laws are going to be judged “right for the UK”.
In the light of the absence of specifics in the Bill, my points will be a series of questions; while the Minister may not be able to answer them today, I hope he will respond to them by letter. It is difficult, from the current dashboard, to determine how many pieces of legislation have been reviewed by Defra and may be accepted, for example, as unchanged. On Defra’s legislative burden, can the Minister tell us where it currently stands on assessing the 1,781 REULs? What additional resources has Defra been given to cover this vast workload? I also note that an extension of the sunset beyond 2023 is possible for England, but not for the devolved Administrations. Yet so many of the relevant laws are devolved competencies, so how will His Majesty’s Government assist the devolved nations in dealing with this in the very limited time available?
The UK has played an important role in developing the 44 retained animal welfare laws, and, given our pride in the high standards we have in the UK, can we assume that most, if not all, of these will be accepted into UK law unchanged? Who will decide whether to accept, amend or revoke the many hundreds of laws and regulations before they are presented to Parliament as SIs, at which point of course we will have very limited opportunities for parliamentary scrutiny? Transparency here is essential for the credibility of the process, so can the Minster tell us who will decide, how they will decide, and when they will decide?
A particular concern relates to the REACH regulations, which require animal testing for the safety of chemicals and so have animal welfare implications. Will there be mutual recognition of testing, either in the UK or the EU, so as to avoid the replication of animal testing?
On food safety, has the Food Standards Agency been given the resources to cope with the huge number of legislative adjustments that will be required concerning food safety and quality?
Finally, on trade, the requirement for export health certificates to our biggest single export market for animals and animal products has ballooned from about 20,000 a year to over 200,000 a year. Will legislative changes consequential to the Bill add to this regulatory burden or reduce it? If they will reduce it—how?
I have asked a few questions, but they are only a fraction of the thousands of questions that the Bill raises.
Lord Udny-Lister (Con)
My Lords, although some would still care to deny it, it is a fact that no single electoral option has received more votes in UK history than that to leave the European Union. Indeed, the majority of the 17.4 million voters who turned out on that historic day to cast their votes to leave the EU did so on the simple premise that we in this place would take back control of our laws and untangle the UK from nearly 50 years of top-down EU bureaucracy. Today, through Second Reading of this Bill, the Government have shown that they will live up to the mandate and, in so doing, they have my full support.
Throughout my participation in other Brexit-related debates and listening to some of the contributions made by noble Lords, I have been rather confounded, as regretfully there appears to be an assumption by some that the only origin of standards and protections is the European Union and the European Union alone. I put it to your Lordships’ House that this view is complete baloney. It neglects the fact that for centuries this island nation has been the global benchmark and upholder of high standards, robust regulations and the origins of many legal and financial mechanisms which ensure fairness, competitiveness and probity in our global systems to this day.
Perhaps, in his summary, the Minister might reassure the House of this and of the fact that this country has a proud track record of creating sound regulation where required and, in some cases, more robust standards than even those of the EU. It would also be helpful if the Minister could confirm that the Civil Service in the UK is well up to the job and more than capable of writing regulations, because there has been a suggestion today that it is not capable of delivering that in the time available, which seems rather strange from so many people here.
I support this Bill, as it presents government with an unparalleled opportunity to cut red tape where it is not needed and allow our businesses the freedom to get on with innovation and transformation. With SMEs accounting for around 60% of UK employment, the more freedom we give them, the better and the stronger our economy will be in the long term. I hope that Ministers will seize this opportunity and remove as many of these regulations as possible.
The constitutional significance of this Bill cannot be downplayed, for through the ending of the special status of retained EU law, we are returning sovereignty to this Parliament and restoring the primacy to Acts of Parliament. Most importantly, we are putting the British back in control of the laws of the land and for that reason the Bill has my support.
Rwanda: Memorandum of Understanding
(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
To ask His Majesty’s Government why they used a Memorandum of Understanding rather than a treaty as the vehicle for the agreement with Rwanda on the transfer of asylum seekers. Relevant document: 7th Report from the International Agreements Committee
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted, after four months, to see the International Agreements Committee’s report on Rwanda debated here; albeit, I have to say, because of my success in a ballot rather than because of its importance. Yet this issue is important to the asylum seekers involved but also for the future of our parliamentary role in scrutinising the action of Ministers.
Thanks to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, treaties must be laid before Parliament for 21 days, where they can be debated, evaluated and, in the case of the Commons, their ratification endorsed or delayed. That is a powerful stay over the ability of government to make international treaties without parliamentary consent.
Today, we will hear from members of the International Agreements Committee who wrote this report: the noble Lords, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, Lord Lansley and Lord Razzall, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, together with one of our newer members, the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister. On behalf of this House, they and other members of the committee examine every treaty and report on it. However, with the Rwanda accord, we see an issue with enormous human rights and rule of law implications, potentially affecting the lives of thousands, yet the agreement was signed not as a treaty but as a memorandum of understanding. This allowed the Government to bypass Parliament; indeed, it came into force on signature without any opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny.
Two weeks ago, on 12 January, two Lords committee reports on the usurping of parliamentary power by Ministers were debated in this Chamber. It was stated:
“The abuse of delegated power is in effect an abuse of Parliament and an abuse of democracy.”—[Official Report, 12/1/23; col. 1536.]
The first report, Government by Diktat, was in the committee’s words,
“a stark warning—that the balance of power between Parliament and Government has ... been shifting away from Parliament”.
The second, Democracy Denied?, was an alert
“to a potentially serious threat to a cornerstone of our constitution—effective parliamentary scrutiny of legislation”,
it being a
“matter of urgency that Parliament should … consider how the balance of power can be re-set”.
On Rwanda, the avoidance of the CRaG Act treaty scrutiny by means of an MoU makes one conclude that that is exactly why that vehicle was chosen. I will not go into the rights or wrongs of the intention within the MoU—the offshoring of asylum claims—because its legality is being tested in the high courts, while its morality is for other fora. However, we noted in the report that, since this was agreed by a non-binding MoU, its so-called safeguards are not legally enforceable, meaning that neither the individuals concerned nor the UK can ensure that asylum applicants’ rights are protected once they arrive in Rwanda.
Our committee concluded that the Government should not have signed a deal with Rwanda merely as a political statement without parliamentary scrutiny. It has significant consequences for individuals and their rights; it involves public expenditure; and it is a major new policy, with far-reaching implications. Surely something of this importance is the business of Parliament and not just of Ministers.
It is unacceptable that a Government should use prerogative powers to agree important arrangements with serious human rights implications without scrutiny by Parliament. Rather, such agreements should be signed as legally enforceable treaties or, if for any reason that is not possible, the Government should deposit MoUs for parliamentary scrutiny in the same way as a treaty, allowing 21 days before implementation.
Indeed, major constitutional changes to our handling of refugees is even better done by legislation, which, we read in the Times, the Government are now planning. Regardless of whether any of us agree with that policy, being described elsewhere as draconian and possibly removing rights of appeal, should Parliament agree, then that is the law. However, I had concerns when I read in yesterday’s Sunday Times that if a court does something that the Prime Minister does not like, he will pull us out of the European Convention on Human Rights rather than accept a judge’s ruling. The Government seem to think they can be above the law.
Today’s debate is about why the Government chose to bypass Parliament in the method by which they chose to implement a new policy. We invited the Government to engage constructively about how to handle non-treaty arrangements of such importance. Unfortunately, we were given no sensible answer and no debate in your Lordships’ House to put our case in public. Our ballot system for debate is what brought us here today and I am grateful that that at least existed and, for once, I was lucky in the ballot. I hope, however, that today we will get a more constructive answer from the Minister to this serious question: why did the Government use a MoU rather than a treaty for the Rwanda agreement?
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on securing this debate and, indeed, on her persistence in doing so. I think the committee, of which I was then a member, was absolutely right to conduct an inquiry and to challenge, as we did, the Government’s decision to use a memorandum of understanding as the basis for this arrangement with Rwanda. By deliberately making the arrangement—of course it is not an agreement, according to the Government—not binding in international law, the Government deliberately put it outside the scrutiny of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. So there is a very simple principle at stake in this debate: should significant international agreements be scrutinised by Parliament?
This agreement is in fact both significant and controversial. The cost is high. The risk of non-delivery is also high. There was insufficient evidence of potential effectiveness, such that the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office at the time had to seek a ministerial direction on value-for-money grounds before proceeding. The High Court has determined that domestic legislation gives the Government the necessary powers, but this does not preclude the possibility that removals to Rwanda of some individuals may conflict with the provisions of the refugee convention. This and the lack of any enforcement powers in the arrangement further strengthen the case for scrutiny.
The Government should recognise that their use of the prerogative power subsists by virtue of the Government’s control of Parliament. The sovereignty they enjoy is that of the sovereign in Parliament. When they fail to recognise this, or abuse the privilege, they hasten the day when we will need to legislate to specify when and how the Government can enter into such agreements and in what circumstances Parliament must assent. I think that in this case the Government got the procedure wrong. I hope that today the Government, whether or not they persist in the policy, will accept that they got it wrong and undertake not to repeat that error.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to the register and my support from RAMP. One reason why the MoU is such an important political issue, as agreed by the committee and the Government, and also a moral issue, is the widespread fear about the implications for children wrongly assessed as adults. I welcome the assurance in a Written Answer that
“no one undergoing an age assessment, or legally challenging the outcome of an assessment, will be relocated until that process is fully concluded”,
but I am advised that where the child has been assessed as an adult at the border, even if they subsequently challenge that assessment, they may still be issued with a notice of intent, which can create acute anxiety, especially as they have only seven days to respond. Can the Minister say whether that advice is correct?
Given the many procedural errors identified in the High Court Rwanda judgment and the chief inspector’s comment that the age-assessment process for those arriving by small boats was “perfunctory”, how can we have confidence that unaccompanied children who do not understand the age-assessment process or have no legal support will not be wrongly issued with a notice of intent? Can the Minister explain why, when we have been told that no decision has yet been taken as to whether families with children might be relocated, Care 4 Calais reports that 42, or one-fifth, of its clients issued with a notice of intent since last August have children?
Lord Razzall (LD)
My Lords, I share the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, somewhat cynically, that the Government have chosen this memorandum of understanding rather than a treaty so it should not be subject to parliamentary approval under the relevant legislation. That would mean a full parliamentary debate, permitting the treaty to be rejected. We have been unable to debate the Rwanda situation until today. Surely there should have been a debate on whether Rwanda is a safe country to send asylum seekers to, particularly in light of the recent history of genocide and ethnic cleansing in that country. It is even more important because many people do not realise that if a migrant seeks asylum in Rwanda and their application for asylum is granted, they only stay in Rwanda and lose the right to come here.
Few can doubt that our policy towards asylum seekers is in a mess. It is not just a failure to deal with migrant boats across the channel. I thought the Member of Parliament for East Worthing and Shoreham could not have put the problem better with his question to the Home Secretary at a recent Home Affairs Select Committee meeting. He asked her how a teenage migrant seeking asylum from an African country—and not Syria, Ukraine or Afghanistan—could apply for asylum. Her reply was that if the migrant arrived in the UK, they could put in an application on arrival; that would be the process. When Tim Loughton pressed her on how the migrant could arrive here legally, she had no answer. The disgrace of the current situation is demonstrated when the Home Secretary cannot answer a key question from one of her key supporters.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
They did not say so at the time but the Government now maintain that the CRaG Act 2010 overruled the previous understanding that the Government would also draw to Parliament’s attention agreements not given treaty form but which bind the nation and
“involve international obligations of a serious character.”
I argue that the Rwanda agreement, and perhaps Prime Minister Johnson’s agreements with Sweden and Finland on security, match that description, but the Government say that the 99 year-old Ponsonby rule is dead.
The Government also reject the International Agreements Committee’s proposal to agree criteria for deciding whether an agreement should be a memorandum of understanding or a treaty. They say that that would restrict the royal prerogative. Yes, it would; I understand the argument, although of course it would depend on what the criteria were. What I do not understand is that they also reject the alternative course of agreeing criteria in determining which non-treaty agreements are so significant as to justify parliamentary scrutiny—the scrutiny Ponsonby promised. There would not be very many. I recall from my past life that most MoUs are routine—updating, renewing and not amounting to very much. They are small beer, certainly not worth Parliament’s attention. But there are some that are very important, and I would say that the Rwanda agreement is one of them. So I urge the Minister to ask the FCDO to look again at the idea of agreeing criteria for separating the many sheep from the few Rwanda-type goats. Substance matters as much as form—I would say, more so.
The Lord Bishop of Durham
I declare my interest in RAMP as laid out in the register. The Lords Spiritual as a whole chose to speak out against the transfer of asylum seekers to Rwanda. We did not do this lightly, knowing the privileged role we hold in the life of our nation, but the memorandum of understanding brings into question fundamental issues about individual rights, our commitment to international law and our moral standing as a nation. It is because of these deep and important questions that I believe the use of an MoU was highly inappropriate.
The Government, in response to the International Agreements Committee in 2020, said that MoUs are used primarily for “technical or administrative matters”, but in this instance, we are talking about the transport of vulnerable people thousands of miles away, before and without considering their claim to asylum. This is not technical or administrative; these are men, women and children, to whom we owe a duty of care under international law. With such far-reaching implications, parliamentary scrutiny and debate should have been facilitated, whether or not the Ponsonby rule, or subsequently the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, applies to non-treaty agreements. Let me also add that a monitoring board which has yet to meet and which sets its own work plan is not a sufficient level of oversight for an agreement of this nature.
I finish by briefly mentioning our responsibility to children. When announcing the Rwandan partnership, the then Home Secretary said that it would operate as a scheme mainly for single male migrants. However, we now know that Ministers are considering whether families seeking asylum at our borders will be subject to this deportation, the possibility of which I must say I find intolerable. Surely it would be unacceptable for any such extension not to be ratified by Parliament. If the Government do decide to include children in the scheme, which I implore them to simply disregard, they must commit to bringing it before this House. Children deserve the highest level of legal safeguards, in both the letter and spirit of the law.
Lord Udny-Lister (Con)
My Lords, despite being one of those who strongly support the Government, certainly on these Benches, I rise with regret to say that I am in agreement with what has been said by many others. After years of political neglect, our asylum system is clearly broken. I fear that the agreement with Rwanda, which has so far failed to act as a meaningful deterrent, is but a distraction from what needs to be done to break the stranglehold of the criminal gangs who are profiting from the exploitation of people.
Other noble Lords have touched on the technicalities of why it would have been wiser to use a treaty rather than a memorandum of understanding, so I will not labour that point, except to say that I share the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that an MoU eradicates the opportunity for effective parliamentary scrutiny. I hope that my noble friend the Minister can provide remedies for this concern in his winding up.
It is through the swift deportation of illegal immigrants to their safe country of origin, not through an MoU with Rwanda, that the perilous channel crossings will be brought to an end. I therefore welcome the Government’s commitment to introduce legislation that will see illegal immigrants deported within days if their claims for asylum are rejected. The Government can be assured of my support if that legislation comes here. Recently, the Government’s successful deportation of 43 people back to Albania was a step in the right direction—although a very small one when you consider that some 13,000 Albanians arrived in the UK last year. I wish the Government would direct more attention here. Does my noble friend agree that securing more bilateral agreements, such as the UK-Albania joint communiqué, must be the way forward if we are to secure our borders and have a fair asylum system?
I conclude by commenting on the asylum backlog. Some 140,000 people are waiting for a decision on their asylum claim. That is where efforts need to be directed, to get it under some kind of control.
Lord Parekh (Lab)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town for several reasons, of which three are particularly important. I hope the Minister will offer a satisfactory response to them.
First, MoUs are not legally binding documents; they involve no legal obligations on either side and they are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Therefore, to replace them is to emasculate our democracy. There are already threats to democratic practices in our country, and I do not think we need to add to them.
Secondly, given not just this Government’s record on migration but that of the previous one, there is always reason to worry about what they might do with the licence given to them to replace legal documents with memoranda of understanding. The important thing is that memoranda of understanding can easily become a kind of camouflage or cover-up under which you can write almost anything that you want.
Finally, asylum seekers will have no understanding of the prevailing conditions in Rwanda and therefore cannot know what effective representation they should make—hence there is always a danger that the MoU will badly damage their basic rights.
In the light of all this, it is not at all surprising that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said that this proposal is incompatible with the 1951 refugee convention. It is not just him; a lot of other people have also reached that conclusion. I therefore fully support my noble friend Lady Hayter and hope that the Minister can reassure us that this will not become common practice.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is to be congratulated on bringing this aspect of the Rwanda agreement to the House for debate. It is one of the many contentious aspects of that agreement, and it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that the main driver of the choice of an MoU rather than a treaty is that it escapes full parliamentary scrutiny, let alone approval by Parliament.
Avoiding full parliamentary scrutiny has also made it more difficult to elicit from the Government a clear answer to the question of whether the agreement is consistent with our treaty obligations to asylum seekers under the 1951 refugee convention, to which we are a party. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, whose job is to ensure that parties to the convention respect its provisions, says that it is not.
The Minister wrote to me on 3 February setting out the reasoning behind his curt and cursory reply to my question on 24 January. That is welcome, but it is not convincing. The hard fact is that there is no provision in Article 31 of the convention or elsewhere in it authorising a party to refuse even to consider an asylum application before deporting the applicant. It is bizarre that in that letter the Government still referred wistfully to the Dublin convention, when it was their act of “getting Brexit done” that resulted in its loss.
All this may sound rather arcane, but it matters. The Government’s clearly proclaimed policy is to uphold the rules-based international order, but we are now, by unilateral assertion, deciding to act in breach of one of those rules. What is to stop others doing likewise? What would then remain of the rules-based international order? There are reports that the Government may be contemplating doubling down by introducing legislation to deport to Rwanda even potentially genuine asylum seekers—for example, Afghans fleeing the Taliban or Iranian women fleeing persecution—without any chance of consideration. Frankly, that is an appalling road to go down and I hope that the Minister will say that the Government will not go down it.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, I fully support the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who has set out the case so well. In 1924, Arthur Ponsonby, then an Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office in a Labour Government presided over by one of my predecessors as Member for Aberavon, pledged that the Government would inform Parliament of all agreements, commitments and understandings that may in any way bind the nation.
The argument now is whether that commitment should include agreements that are not treaties, such as, in this case, a memorandum of understanding. I believe the general understanding of the reasons for the Ponsonby rule was that the knowledge of such issues should be made fully available to Parliament and that the public mind should be prepared for any action necessary. I am not particularly concerned with the minutiae of the argument about the extent of the rule; I am concerned about the substantial lacuna in parliamentary scrutiny in respect of significant MoUs.
Our committee reported that it was unacceptable that the Government should be able to use the prerogative to agree important arrangements with other states that have serious human rights implications without the scrutiny of Parliament. It is timely for the use of prerogative powers, with their origins in the mists of time, to be examined. The late Lord Mayhew and I, as former law officers, persuaded a parliamentary Select Committee that the use of the prerogative to authorise going to war was outdated. We should look at this again. Hardly any issue is more important to an individual seeking asylum than transfer to a foreign country without his agreement and, in this case, the scrutiny of Parliament.
I invite the Government to consider the development of policies in Spain and the USA which show that legislative scrutiny of non-binding agreements is not incompatible with the effective conduct of foreign affairs.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, there is much to desire in the MoU with Rwanda with regard to consistency, clarity and process. There will continue to be legal challenges. The wording of the MoU, together with various ministerial Statements in this and the other place, has revealed not only laughable errors in the Home Office decision-making process but has created confusion as to who is eligible for removal to Rwanda, what the criteria are and who makes the decisions.
Let me quote from some of these ministerial speeches and letters to parliamentarians:
“For every stage in the process, … our approach is to ensure that the needs and vulnerabilities of asylum seekers are identified and taken into consideration where appropriate. … Everyone considered for relocation will be screened and interviewed and have access to legal advice.”—[Official Report, 20/12/22; cols. 1070-71.]
“nobody will be removed if it is unsafe or inappropriate for them.”— [Official Report, Commons, 19/4/22; cols. 46.]
So the Home Office will apparently consider each individual’s particular circumstances before deporting to Rwanda. The Minister then says, unequivocally, that asylum claims will be determined in Rwanda. I ask the Minister: which is right? If it is the former, can the Minister enlighten the House on the time and resources required to assess each individual case in light of the legal advice that they are guaranteed? And how precisely would this lengthy process be an effective deterrent to the people traffickers?
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, in October 2022 your Lordships’ Committee on International Agreements was quite right to express concern about this memorandum. It lacks access to justice for asylum seekers, it lacks parliamentary scrutiny, and it is not legally binding.
When I learned about this, like many other people, I was filled with disbelief. Have our Government done their due diligence on the human rights of Rwanda and looked at its history? Banishing people to another country is bad enough, but to Rwanda—which has an appalling human rights record—is another thing. I hear the High Court’s rulings on this, but close consideration must be given to the individual circumstances of each person. If the Government want to target the people smugglers and criminal gangs who profit from this enterprise, then they should spend all that money on that effort.
By associating ourselves with Rwanda on the human rights issues, we will lose credibility on the international stage; dictators and authoritarian regimes around the world will point this out to us when we criticise them for their human rights record. They will say that it is rich coming from us when we are in bed with Rwanda. I hope the Government will have second thoughts about this. Our country’s credibility and reputation are at stake here. We must tear this memorandum up.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, it was a credit to the Conservative Party under David Cameron that they took up the cause of Rwanda—a country which had suffered the worst genocide the world had known since the last war. The return to political and economic stability under Paul Kagame, even at some cost, has been remarkable. However, I have to say, like others, that Rwanda has not been a showcase of democratic government and human rights either. The FCDO website is not very encouraging about it, and the Helen Bamber Foundation, a much-respected NGO, said:
“This is a shamefully cruel way to treat people who have come to the UK to seek protection, fleeing persecution or conflict.”
The key question today is whether the MoU is compatible with international law—if we accept that there is an MoU. The Government say it is consistent with the refugee convention and the ECHR. But UNHCR gave its own opinion back in April 2022 that it was
“firmly opposed to arrangements that seek to transfer refugees and asylum seekers to third countries in the absence of sufficient safeguards and standards.”
Having been on the IAC for three years, I realise that the procedures around parliamentary scrutiny can be labyrinthine. This debate challenges, once again, the Government’s decision to make policy on a subject of huge public interest by way of an MoU. In their response to the committee, the Government said the non-legally binding instruments were a sufficient framework for parliamentary scrutiny but that it only
“may be appropriate to draw parliament’s attention to NBIs that raise questions of public importance.”
These words are hardly encouraging. It gives rise to a suspicion—also touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Parekh—that, in the case of Rwanda, the Government are unwilling to share or review policies that may be controversial and prefer to hide them behind an MoU. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that this is true.
Meanwhile, I congratulate the noble Baroness on achieving this debate. I wish her well with the committee in future.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Baroness.
The FCDO written policy on guidance on treaties is perfectly clear. It states,
“The key difference between MoUs and treaties is whether or not there is an intention to create legally binding obligations… There is no hybrid. … an MoU is not legally binding.”
The Minister on 20 December referred to this as an “agreement”. I hope he does not do that in his winding-up speech today because the FCDO policy is also very clear. It says:
“DO NOT USE … agreement/ undertaking”.
I hope the Minister can do me the courtesy today of replying to the questions I asked him on 20 December, when he did not give me the courtesy of answering them then. What is the legal basis in domestic law for the commitments in this arrangement that is being provided? What is the legal basis in domestic law of the data sharing?
Given that this is a private arrangement with a company in Rwanda with a centre that I visited last June, which is on an annual rolling contract that will have to be renewed in March—next month—what is the breakdown of the £20 million of taxpayers’ money that has already been spent on no persons being sent? What is the breakdown of the £120 million provided to the Rwandan Government on top of that? The very least the Minister can provide the House with—since the Government are not asking us to ratify this arrangement, not agreement—is to publish the contract for the receiving centre.
What are the processing times expected for those who will be sent to this centre? In December, the Minister said that the policy is that it could be for children and families. I say to the Minister very clearly that I saw no facilities for children and families in that centre. This is £140 million of taxpayers’ money, the purpose of which the Minister himself said is to remove an incentive. This is gross maladministration. The centre even has its own euphemism for it. The Minister can, at the very least, provide me with the answers today that he refused to give me in December.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, as we have heard from my noble and learned friend Lord Morris, it was in 1924 that the original Ponsonby rule was put in place; indeed, he was my great grandfather. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, believes that elements of that are still in place, even though the Government believe the CRaG Act supersedes the Ponsonby rule. Nevertheless, the principles underlying the Ponsonby rule are still the principles that this House should aspire to in properly scrutinising international agreements, particularly when they are so controversial as the agreement we are currently discussing.
I thank my noble friend Lady Hayter for this Question and for her persistence. I trust that she will return to this matter in future debates and in the committee’s future work because the issue itself is not going to go away. I think all noble Lords who have spoken obviously believe that the Government have taken this route of action to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. I would like to have an in-principle defence of the approach the Government have taken because it seems to me that bypassing Parliament undermines Parliament itself and undermines the agreement which has been reached with the Rwandan Government.
My second point is about the agreement. There are a number of basic questions on the agreement’s merit—its cost, its viability, its lawfulness. We have heard that there is a backlog of 140,000 asylum seekers; we have heard the figure of £140 million or more being spent which so far has achieved nothing. It seems to me that the Minister has some serious questions to answer about the merits of the scheme itself, let alone the way the Government are seeking to put this in place. I hope that he can talk about both the principle and the practicalities of the memorandum of understanding that the Government have put in place. I also hope the Minister can reply to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Udny-Lister, about the possibility of a multitude of bilateral agreements for deportation and whether the Government see that as a way forward.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Murray of Blidworth) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for securing this debate. I must apologise that I will not be able to address all noble Lords’ contributions during this response. I am delighted to provide the clarity the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, rightly asked me to provide as to the reasons why a memorandum of understanding was chosen in this regard.
The proposal to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda has been, and continues to be, the subject of considerable public debate. The number of people crossing the channel in small boats has increased exponentially, placing our asylum system under severe pressure as well as the extent to which services can be provided to those coming to our shores. Not only is every crossing attempt a potential tragedy, as we have seen far too often, but the people arriving via these small boats have travelled through and then left safe countries with fully functioning asylum systems.
Tackling the global migration crisis requires global solutions, and the United Kingdom’s ground-breaking partnership with Rwanda is an essential part of that approach. This policy will help to disrupt the business model of people smugglers, those gangs putting lives at risk using dangerous, unnecessary and illegal routes into the UK. The long-term strategic bilateral partnership that we intend to deliver through the migration and economic development partnership between the UK and Rwanda is built on the shared understanding that the current conventions for dealing with refugees and migration no longer work. I agree with my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister that bilateral agreements are also important, but we need new approaches at scale to ensure that immigration is orderly and controlled. Noble Lords will appreciate that there is an urgency and considerable public interest in deterring unnecessary, illegal and dangerous journeys to the UK.
I will now turn to the Question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on the decision to use a memorandum of understanding for the migration and economic development partnership. As indicated in the Government’s response to the International Agreements Committee’s report, the Government’s decision to use a memorandum of understanding—a non-legally binding instrument—has the benefit of allowing the detail of the partnership to be flexible. The technical details may be adjusted quickly if needed with the approval of both partners.
The UK and Rwanda have a well-established relationship. There is a significant history of our two Governments working together, as the noble Earl observed. Most importantly, the Rwandan Government have reason to know that the United Kingdom places the utmost importance on Rwanda’s compliance in good faith with the terms of the memorandum. The obligations placed on Rwanda under this partnership are laid out clearly in the memorandum, and they ensure that both countries have the same understanding of these obligations.
Indeed, in its judgment, the Divisional Court of the High Court at paragraph 65 found:
“The terms of the MOU and Notes Verbales are specific and detailed. The obligations that Rwanda has undertaken are clear. All, in one sense or another, concern Rwanda’s compliance with obligations it already accepts as a signatory to the Refugee Convention.”
I can therefore confirm to the House that we are confident that Rwanda will honour its commitments. This position was also considered by the High Court at paragraphs 70 to 71 of its judgment, where it stated that
“the conclusion that Rwanda will act in accordance with the terms of the MOU and the Note Verbales rests on HM Government’s experience of bilateral relations extending over almost 25 years and the specific experience of negotiating the MOU over a number of months in 2022”.
Furthermore, the court found that
“the Home Secretary did not act unlawfully when reaching the conclusion that the assurances provided Rwanda in the MOU and Notes Verbales could be relied on”.
I should also note that adopting a treaty, rather than using memoranda as suggested by the noble Baroness, would not necessarily have afforded individuals the right to raise disputes in the way some noble Lords have suggested.
While the Government cannot comment on ongoing legal proceedings, no court has ruled that this partnership is unlawful. In fact, the High Court, in the 19 December ruling, said that the arrangements entered into for the relocation of asylum seekers to Rwanda is consistent with the refugee convention, the European Convention on Human Rights and the statutory and other legal obligations on this Government.
I am therefore disappointed by the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Sahota, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and others on the safety of Rwanda, which appear to be ill-informed and contrary to the High Court’s judgment. In paragraph 71, the court found that the Home Secretary’s assessment that
“Rwanda is a safe third country, was neither irrational, nor a breach of article 3 of the ECHR”.
The domestic legal framework that gives effect to removals under this partnership is backed by legislation which has already faced parliamentary scrutiny.
I welcome the court’s judgment that this policy is lawful, as we have maintained throughout. We will, of course, pay extremely close attention to the individual circumstances of those considered for relocation. Decisions will be taken on a case-by-case basis, and nobody will be relocated if it is unsafe or inappropriate for them.
The arrangement requires Rwanda to process claims in accordance with international standards, as I previously mentioned, and it ensures protection from inhumane and degrading treatment and from refoulement. We have assessed Rwanda to be a fundamentally safe and secure country, with respect for the rule of law and a strong track record of helping those in need. In paragraph 51 of its judgment, the High Court itself said that
“Rwanda has a significant history of providing asylum to refugees”.
This session concerned an important political arrangement underpinning our partnership. The Government carefully considered the report from the House’s committee which the noble Baroness chairs. As noted in our response to the report, we published the memorandum of understanding in full transparency in April last year, very shortly after it was concluded. The MoU was negotiated with utmost care and attention by both Governments.
It is not at all fair to suggest that His Majesty’s Government have avoided scrutiny. Ministers have engaged fully with Parliament regarding this arrangement, including via Oral Statements, Parliamentary Questions and written correspondence. Ministers and senior officials have made numerous appearances before committees, and we are here today discussing the issue. Of course, all of this is on top of the High Court’s very detailed consideration of this document.
The Government take the view that the constitutional convention known as the Ponsonby rule, as it existed and was practised, was in its entirety put on a statutory footing by the CRaG Act. We do not accept that there has ever been any convention whereby non-legally binding arrangements are routinely submitted to parliamentary scrutiny, and this is borne out by the consistent practice of successive Governments. Parliament did not consider disclosure of non-legally binding arrangements to be part of the Ponsonby rule when it looked to put the convention on to a statutory footing in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act.
With that said, while we responded to the urgency and exceptional public interest in deterring these dangerous crossings to the United Kingdom, it is not at all right to say that this was rushed or that scrutiny was evaded. We have been clear that the memorandum of understanding between the UK and Rwanda is a non-legally binding instrument. Such instruments are common mechanisms for recording political commitments and arrangements between states and—as I have already said—allow for flexibility.
A decision on whether to use a treaty or non-legally binding instrument will depend on various factors. Ultimately, the decision will be based on whether there is a need for legal enforceability or whether a non-legally binding commitment would be appropriate. While we have never claimed that the terms of the memorandum are to be legally binding under international law, the arrangements we have put in place provide sufficient assurances to us—and indeed have satisfied the High Court—that the arrangement will be operated in line with international obligations and in a manner which ensures the welfare and safety of those people relocated under it. I am sure that the noble Baroness will be aware of the means by which the delivery of the scheme will be overseen and assessed against the assurances in the memorandum.
I particularly highlight the fact that a monitoring committee has been appointed, as was referred to during the debate, whose members are independent from both the Rwandan and United Kingdom Governments, and who will be able to look at every part of the relocation process and will independently assess all conditions. The monitoring committee will produce a summary report for publication yearly for all to see.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
The Minister has only a few moments left. This is the second time that a Front-Bencher has asked specific questions which the Minister has refused even to acknowledge. I regret that I am going to have to escalate this up through the usual channels. It is just not acceptable that the Minister at the Dispatch Box does not even acknowledge valid questions from a Front Bench.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I think the noble Lord’s question related to the legal basis for the agreement in domestic law; I have addressed that in detail in the course of my speech to the House.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Well, I am sure that we can discuss this on another occasion.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down—I think we have six minutes—he said that the Government used an MoU rather than a treaty because it could be amended. Does he accept that the detail of treaties can also be amended? More importantly, on an MoU, surely that could still—by the choice of the Government—have been laid for 21 days to give parliamentary scrutiny. Parliament will not be able to scrutinise the committee referred to by the right reverend Prelate, but the MoU could have been laid for 21 days. Does the Minister accept those two things, that the treaty itself could be adapted and that an MoU could have been laid before Parliament?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for those two questions. On the first point, no, to amend a treaty would be a more cumbersome process than the flexibility afforded by a memorandum of understanding. On the second point, it is clear that Parliament had considerable opportunities for scrutiny, as I have set out, and there was no want of scrutiny from the method adopted.
Lord Lansley (Con)
Can I press my noble friend on one point? Does he agree that the Government could have chosen to lay a memorandum of understanding under CRaG even if not required to do so, and that, as a result, it could have been debated in the House of Commons, which would have had a choice on whether to support the agreement or otherwise?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I appreciate the hypothetical question that my noble friend asks. As I say, the issue was one for the Statements that were provided to the House of Commons, and it seems that there was no want of scrutiny. Therefore, I am afraid that I do not accept that contention.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord said that he was not able to answer all the questions asked. Will he please write to noble Lords with the answers?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Yes, certainly; we will have a look through them.
Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill
Monday 6th February 2023
(1 year, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 View all Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 18 January 2023 - (18 Jan 2023)
The Earl of Lindsay (Con)
My Lords, the overarching objective of this Bill is a timely and important opportunity to review, rationalise and update a wide-ranging tranche of legislation, and that I warmly welcome and strongly support. However, I have grave reservations about how the Bill proposes that it is done. My concerns are therefore about process, not purpose, and fall into two broad areas. The first is the role allotted to Parliament; the second is the uncertainties for, and potential impact on, consumers and businesses.
I will cover the first area with brevity. Having been a member of the SLSC when it signed off its report on this Bill and having become a member of DPRRC before it signed off its report, I fully endorse the concerns and recommendations set out in both those reports. They deal largely with concerns about parliamentary sovereignty, the need for greater parliamentary oversight, and the extent to which it is intended that secondary legislation will be used. I will not repeat those important concerns in detail, as they have been well articulated by others and not least by my noble friends Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord McLoughlin, respectively the former and current chairs of those two committees.
I turn to a range of more practical concerns. In doing so, I declare my interest as president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, the CTSI, which is the professional body for trading standards. In expressing its concerns, I am raising concerns that have equally been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, who was my predecessor as president of the CTSI.
CTSI and the coalition of partner organisations see considerable merit in the opportunity to reappraise and update the legislation and regulations that underpin trading standards and consumer safety. However, they are deeply concerned about the practicability of doing this comprehensively, with due process and to good effect, across such a vast swathe of legislation, given the proposed sunset deadline at the end of the year and the minimalist approach to consultation and parliamentary scrutiny.
CTSI, alongside organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, the Child Accident Prevention Trust and Electrical Safety First, are therefore calling for the proposed sunset deadline of 31 December 2023 to be revisited. Their understandable fear is that, with thousands of pieces of vitally important but often complex legislation needing to be reviewed, rewritten or sunsetted, mistakes, omissions and contradictions are inevitable. This in turn could result in key protections for consumers and businesses being undermined or lost.
More specifically, CTSI and its partners are concerned that the Bill creates a lack of clarity around trading standards’ duties to enforce laws vital to ensuring the safety of products such as toys, electrical appliances and cosmetics; could weaken fair trading rules that protect consumers and law-abiding businesses; could undermine rules that ensure the welfare of animals and the UK’s ability to export animal products to EU member states; could result in diminished information requirements for food provenance, allergens and use-by dates; could make convictions for consumer rights offences unsafe if the laws that underpin them are not clear and coherent; and poses a threat to life due to differences in technical metrology definitions in the healthcare sector on the road and at sea. These are very real uncertainties and concerns, as are those that relate to the role of Parliament and parliamentary procedure.
I said at the start that the Bill is a rare and, I believe, welcome opportunity to review and update a lot of important legislation. We therefore need to ensure that the processes that the Bill is proposing are made fit for purpose and command greater confidence inside and outside Parliament.
Lord Woodley (Lab)
My Lords, the arguments against this undemocratic Bill are well understood by both Houses and, indeed, beyond. Unfortunately, there is not enough time today for me to do justice to these arguments, so I will attempt to highlight only my gravest concerns with the Bill—as many others have, in fairness.
Most of the most important employment rights, such as the protection of pregnant workers, maternity and parental leave, guaranteed rest breaks, equal treatment for part-time works, and especially TUPE protections, are derived from EU law, as the Minister knows. All these rights are now under serious threat, despite the Tory manifesto promising to
“legislate to ensure high standards of workers’ rights”.
I have asked the Minister twice, as the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, said earlier, to confirm that no existing employment rights would be weakened or scrapped, but he point-blank refused to answer. When I asked him specifically whether he would allow TUPE protections to fall off the statute books, the Minister would only say that he
“will look at that and see whether it is appropriate for the UK economy”.—[Official Report, 1/2/23; col. 658.]
I find this answer totally unacceptable. How on earth can there be any debate about whether these vital protections are appropriate for our economy? What kind of economy do this Government want? One where workers see their pay and conditions slashed after takeovers; a race to the bottom? That is what we are left with without these protections. It is a far cry from the high standards we were promised.
Last week, my noble friend Lord Watts made the excellent point that Ministers were well fond of rolling over trade deals, and he asked why we could not roll over the protections that workers have now, to stop them worrying about their futures. Unfortunately—but, once again, not surprisingly—the Minister did not answer. Perhaps he might like to address this point today.
As parliamentarians, it is our duty to stand up for our constitutional role of holding the Government to account. It was highlighted by various committees of this House, including the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, that this Bill would lead to a “significant shift of power”—not to Parliament, but to Ministers. This Bill, therefore, runs counter to the principles of parliamentary democracy and is a blank cheque placed in the hands of Ministers, according to these committees. Is that what the Government really meant by “taking back control”? It certainly looks like it to me. Is it really what people voted for in 2019? I do not think so: they did not vote for that.
In its report, the delegated powers committee said:
“The Bill is sufficiently lacking in substance not even to be described as ‘skeletal’.”
It is outrageous; it is an abuse of the democratic process.
This Bill, and the Minister’s refusal to rule out a bonfire of employment rights, is completely the opposite of what the Government promised voters. It is therefore nothing less than the duty of this House to defeat it or, at the very least, to delay it until the next election, when the voters can decide for themselves whether workers’ rights are worth defending after all. I think I know what the voters will say.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, last week I hosted a meeting with Zsuzsanna Szelényi, the brave Hungarian former MP, a member of Fidesz and the author of Tainted Democracy: Viktor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary. I reflected that this Bill, especially in the light of the reports from the DPRRC and the SLSC, is a government land grab of powers over Parliament, fully worthy of Viktor Orbán himself and his cronies. This is no less than an attempt to achieve a tawdry version of Singapore-on-Thames in the UK without proper democratic scrutiny, to the vast detriment of consumers, workers and creatives. It is no surprise that the Regulatory Policy Committee has stated that the Bill’s impact assessment is not fit for purpose.
It is not only important regulations that are being potentially swept away, but principles of interpretation and case law, built up over nearly 50 years of membership of the EU. This Government are knocking down the pillars of certainty of application of our laws. My noble friend Lord Fox rightly quoted the Bar Council in this respect. Clause 5 would rip out the fundamental right to the protection of personal data from the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. This is a direct threat to the UK’s data adequacy, with all the consequences that that entails. Is that really the Government’s intention?
As regards consumers, Which? has demonstrated the threat to basic food hygiene requirements for all types of food businesses: controls over meat safety, maximum pesticide levels, food additive regulations, controls over allergens in foods and requirements for baby foods. Product safety rights at risk include those affecting child safety and regulations surrounding transport safety. Civil aviation services could be sunsetted, along with airlines’ liability requirements in the event of airline accidents. Consumer rights on cancellation and information, protection against aggressive selling practices and redress for consumer law breaches across many sectors could all be impacted. Are any of these rights dispensable—mere parking tickets?
Many noble Lords—in particular the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, in her excellent maiden speech—the TUC and many others have pointed out the employment rights that could be lost, and health and safety requirements too. Without so much as a by-your-leave, the Government could damage the employment conditions of every single employee in this country.
For creative workers in particular, the outlook as a result of this Bill is bleak. The impact of any change on the protection of part-time and fixed-term workers is particularly important for freelance workers in the creative industries. Fixed-term workers currently have the right to be treated no less favourably than a comparable permanent employee unless the employer can justify the different treatment. Are these rights dispensable? Are they mere parking tickets?
Then there is potentially the massive change to intellectual property rights, including CJEU case law on which rights holders rely. If these fall away, it creates huge uncertainty and incentive for litigation. The IP regulations and case law on the dashboard which could be sunsetted encompass a whole range, from databases, computer programs and performing rights to protections for medicines. At particular risk are artists’ resale rights, which give visual artists and their heirs a right to a royalty on secondary sales of the artist’s original works when sold on the art market. Visual artists are some of the lowest-earning creators, earning between £5,000 and £10,000 a year. Are these rights dispensable? Have the Government formed any view at all yet?
This Bill has created a fog of uncertainty over all these areas—a blank sheet of paper, per my noble friend Lord Beith; a giant question mark, per the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine—and the impact could be disastrous. I hope this House ensures it does not see the light of day in its current form.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, we recently celebrated the third anniversary of Brexit and it is indeed the gift that keeps on taking: taking control and scrutiny away from Parliament, effectively passing it to unelected officials in the Civil Service, and taking certainty, confidence and competitiveness away from businesses. The whole thrust of the debate today is what assurance is there that key protections that we have achieved will remain on the statute book and that there will be no gold-plating. I play tribute to my noble friend Lord Heseltine, who single-handedly eradicated gold-plating from the transposition of a very innocuous directive, such as the toy directive, into the home-spun rules of our home civil servants.
The dashboard is very difficult to navigate. It is a moving feast, but we know that there are some 1,780 Defra proposals. I pay tribute to the Defra officials who spent the best part of two years transposing farming, environment and other regulations into UK law at some considerable speed and therefore had to return with corrections. I do not blame them for that, but that shows us what the expectations will be with an even more limited timetable before us in the Bill.
As others have mentioned in the debate, the dashboard does not cover all retained EU laws agreed by the devolved Administrations, so it is no wonder that the Welsh and Scottish Administrations have withheld their consent from the Bill. Now, with a sweep of the pen, all that we have achieved over years of transposing and passing into UK law these protections is going to be rolled away purely as a result of a political decision to achieve this arbitrary timetable before the next election.
I would like to judge the Bill before us this evening by the extent to which at the end of this process we will still be able to export and import, which we were told would not be jeopardised as we would have frictionless trade through the trade and co-operation agreement. I have been contacted by businesses I worked with 30 years ago and longer as a Member of the European Parliament in the food and drink sector, chemicals and, in particular, the cars and vehicle sector. We have identified a change in policy direction moving away from a functioning statute book to a period of tremendous uncertainty. No one in the debate this evening disagrees that the statute book should be kept under constant review. I think that all who have spoken expressing caution about the Bill are concerned about the manner in which the statute book is to be maintained. Parliament will not be in the driving seat; it will nominally be Ministers, but I would say unelected officials. What evidence is there that there has even been a proper consultation of all the interested parties affected, many of whom have been represented in their concerns being voiced today? I urge my noble friend and the Government to be prudent, drop any arbitrary deadline and seek to give a measured response where we can pay tribute to those who have expressed their concerns.
To the extent that we can still export and import, I have been contacted by those in the car sector who are concerned that we have only recently agreed type approval regulations. For chemicals, we have only recently agreed the UK REACH regime, and for the food and farming sector, animal health safety and welfare have featured largely this evening.
In conclusion, while my noble friend and I are on different sides of the argument regarding Brexit, throughout our careers we have held business dear to our hearts. Will he say which part of the Bill promotes business and will help to facilitate exports and imports?
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
Doctrinaire, ideological, subversive of Parliament, a headlong rush, an arbitrary timetable, a blank cheque for government by diktat—this Bill is coming in for a bit of criticism from Conservatives. I am not surprised, because the presumption that change is needed and the proposed method of change do not strike me as terribly Conservative. Lord Salisbury in 1892 defined Conservatism as delaying changes until they become harmless. I have always believed that he also said: “Change? Why should we change? Things are bad enough as they are.” I can get away with that as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, the real expert on this, is not here; he says it is apocryphal. Here are Lord Salisbury’s successors running a rushed, in-house review of some 4,000 laws with a presumption that change is required because of the laws’ origins, not their effects.
I was there in Brussels during a period of peak legislation with the single market programme. I was there when the European Union was dancing to the tune of a British Conservative initiative, inspired by Margaret Thatcher, prescribed by Arthur Cockfield, pressed by John Major, driven through by Commissioner Leon Brittan. Were they all wrong? Is their legacy now suspect simply because they succeeded in getting the EU to buy their prescriptions for appropriate regulation?
Of course, some of the 4,000 laws could well be overtaken; I do not know. There could be sense in a sift done bottom-up, sector by sector, consulting those affected, balancing the consumer interest with the interests of producers and traders—but not this way; not top-down, in-house, with no consultation, minimal scrutiny, an end-year guillotine and new rules by decree cutting out Parliament.
Business hates this Bill. Business likes certainty. Business wants regulatory predictability. The perception of change for change’s sake is anathema to business. The chemical industry and Defra confirm that the cost of replacing the EU REACH regulations will be about £2 billion. That is just one industry. This Bill and the uncertainty that it creates will affect them all. No wonder the CBI opposes it so strongly.
Lord Salisbury also said in 1879:
“Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible”.
As regards this Bill, that seems to be exactly right. It is malign, misconceived, damaging, undemocratic, un-Conservative—and we should throw it out.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, people watching these proceedings will be astonished that this House seems minded to obstruct this Bill and to fail to fully engage with the difficult and messy process of self-government as an independent, sovereign parliamentary democracy, arising from the largest plebiscite in British history in 2016.
The Bill should be seen in the wider context of what went before and what is proposed, a wider historical context—what I might call the Benn challenge. In his valedictory speech to the House of Commons in March 2001, Tony Benn asked of those tasked with exercising power:
“What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/01; col. 510.]
Is that not the fundamental question at hand in considering the Bill today? The fact that the EU failed to answer that question is why Brexit happened.
The Bill’s opponents are mostly well-meaning and sincere, and I accept that, but many observers will see an effort to thwart Brexit and render it a failure. Some noble Lords pray in aid the need for scrutiny and oversight, but they were silent when 265,490 EU laws, judgments, directives, regulations and decisions—the mythical EU acquis—mostly taken behind closed doors and rubber-stamped by the European Council of Ministers, were forced on our sovereign Parliament between 1973 and 2020 by virtue of one Act of Parliament: the European Communities Act 1972, Section 2. No one voted for that, unlike Brexit and the Conservative Party manifesto in 2019, and the elected House just last month, which gave this Bill a healthy Third Reading majority.
The withdrawal Act 2020 specifically and formally recognises in Section 38 the right of the UK to exercise—in its own way, within its autonomy and independence through a sovereign Parliament—its own legal regime. It was also well understood in 2018 that the withdrawal Act was iterative and transitional legislation, so a sunset clause is both logical and inevitable, although perhaps arbitrary, and any attempt to extend it beyond either 2023 or 2026 will be viewed as lacking democratic legitimacy.
There is no evidence—this is the Chicken Licken argument—that the Bill will inevitably lead to a weakening of our own domestic legal rights and protections. In any case, no Government can bind the hands of their successors. Any policy development that is against the interests of working people in this country will be judged harshly, and the efficacy of those policies will be judged at a general election. That is the basis of democracy. It is not our place to second-guess the views of the electorate at a forthcoming general election.
We now have opportunities to develop new policies and make our own laws on animal welfare, on vaccine rollout, on freeports and on diverging from EU solvency rules. The Bill honours the commitment made to the British people in 2016 and 2019. I regret that I have not been able to rebut the findings of the committee report published last Thursday, but in due course we will do that in Committee and on Report. Essentially, EU legal and political supremacy has no place in a mature, independent, self-governing democracy.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough and to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, and my noble friend Lady Bray on their impressive maiden speeches.
I am sure I am not the only one in this Chamber who longs for the day when we are united in holding the Executive to account for decisions and policies made here at home. But I cannot see how we can get to that point unless and until retained EU legislation no longer takes priority over domestic UK legislation. Surely that is a prerequisite for parliamentary sovereignty to be restored—and with it the fate of the people in Parliament and the Government’s ability to deliver—and indeed for the opportunities and benefits of Brexit to be realised. It is, as my noble friend Lord Frost said, the logic of delivering Brexit.
Now I recognise that some noble Lords are absolutely determined that this should not happen, and that the consideration of this Bill should be used as a chance to delay, in the hope that Brexit will never be enacted. I completely respect their right to hold such a position and to articulate it—if only they would. But I fear that instead we are in for another bout of Brexit-bashing amid the familiar and disdainful refrain that “they”—the people who voted leave—did not know what they were doing. As someone who knew exactly what he was doing when he voted leave, I fear that continued skirmishing simply delays the healing we so desperately need.
Like my noble friend Lady Bray, I have faith in our parliamentary democracy and in the people—as my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough just reminded us—to ensure that, once accountability is brought home, as this Bill provides for in the medium to longer term, “they”, the voters, will decide at a general election whom to hire and fire on the basis of policies decided and delivered in the UK for the UK. They will have the final word. But for that to happen, this Bill—however uncomfortable we may find it—must pass first. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his tireless tenacity in ensuring that it does. He deserves our support.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, noble Lords have already heard from my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, a former Brexiteer who has seen the chaos we have already, before this Bill is enacted, and has said that she has had enough and wants to rejoin the EU, as the whole Green Party does. I was initially going to have a list—a chart—of all the practical problems but so many people have done such a great job on that already: the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, on labour rights, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, on all the Defra issues and Defra’s incapacity to deal with them, and the noble Lord, Lord Trees, on the issues being raised for the devolved Administrations, whom the Government so often seem to ignore.
That the Government lack the capacity to deliver the fantasy they are setting out in any kind of orderly way is clearly not stopping them, or perhaps not being orderly is the intention of at least some parts of the Government. In the financial sector there is a lot of money to be made from chaos, as Naomi Klein showed us so clearly two decades ago in her explanation of the shock doctrine of disaster capitalism.
It is very clear that this Bill, should your Lordships’ House not oppose it, will be a complete working out of the hashtag #ToryChaos. I urge all sides of your Lordships’ House to oppose the Bill—to vote it down. We have heard from a barrage of Cross Benchers and more than a few Conservatives how dreadful it is. The responsibility is in our hands. How bad does a swathe of Henry VIII clauses have to be before your Lordships’ House takes responsibility? I direct that remark particularly to the Benches to my right.
As I am speaker number 46, much has already been covered and I aim not to go over old ground. Instead, I am going to take a different approach and interrogate the Government’s own stated intentions with the Bill and see how lacking a base in realism they are. In the Government’s own words on the retained EU law dashboard, the justification is:
“This will allow us to create a new pro-growth, high standards regulatory framework that gives businesses the confidence to innovate, invest and create jobs.”
I want to unpack that. They say they want to remove outdated regulation that may be hampering growth. What does “outdated” mean? Is a protection for nature, for workers’ rights, for consumer rights outdated? Who is going to judge? What kind of growth? Surely your Lordships’ House will agree that we do not want growth in water pollution, air pollution or exploitation of workers. All-out growth, of course, is the ideology of the cancer cell.
On creating a high standards framework, I go back to our earlier discussion of the environmental improvement plan and the issue of plastics, highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. We do not have a bottle deposit scheme in England, but many EU countries have one, so it is not EU rules that have stopped that. The French are racing towards getting rid of single-use containers in fast food stores—that is within EU rules.
On confidence to invest, I will quote an Institute for Government report from last year on business investment:
“The UK has persistently lagged other comparable countries.”
It is well behind Germany, France and Italy; it is not EU rules that are holding them back.
The Minister used the phrase “create … jobs” again. That is curious, when the lack of people for jobs is currently one of the UK’s great problems. We have 47,000 nurse vacancies, an 11% vacancy rate in the care sector and an overall vacancy rate of 1.3 million. Do we not need to find a way to use the human resources that we have now? EU rules are not stopping us doing that.
Finally, in introducing the Bill, the Minister spoke of “countless opportunities”. I assume he meant that rhetorically, but of course it is literally true: the Government are still trying to count the number of regulations and rules that the Bill covers—
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
I suggest that the noble Baroness brings her comments to a close.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
How can you make a law when you do not know what it covers?
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, in opening, my noble friend the Minister stated that the Bill will “benefit people and businesses”, but workers’ and employers’ organisations are united in their opposition to it: neither businesses nor consumers want the Bill. It would leave our country and its framework of rules, laws and protections in a state of prolonged uncertainty.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and a report from the Delegated Powers Committee offer their concerns in stark terms, with the Regulatory Policy Committee giving the impact assessment a red rating—namely, “not fit for purpose”. The Government admit that they do not even know which laws will be lost. I find this truly shocking. I have been in Parliament since 2015 and have watched in horror the stripping away of previous norms in the last couple of years. The idea that we should just throw all of our laws into a big hat, pull out a few, change a few and throw the rest away—without even knowing which ones are which—cannot be the way to run any country, let alone a serious parliamentary democracy. I ask my noble friend a simple question: how is this Bill in the national interest? Are we a parliamentary democracy? Does Parliament have the power to make, change and decide on laws, or has it been surrendered, or are we being asked to surrender it, to a group of Ministers, who may change very frequently? We do not know which Ministers will be in place at any one time.
I believe we have a duty to oppose this. Removing Clause 7’s mandatory directions to courts, removing Clauses 15 and 16’s excessive powers—never tightening regulations—and extending the irresponsible deadline of the end of 2023 would all be improvements, but they are not enough. Where is the comprehensive dashboard of all the laws and regulations that will be removed? Members of Parliament have no idea who will lose out and who will gain. Which laws will be deleted, which will be changed and how far can Parliament assess any of it?
This is not about Brexit; Brexit has happened. My noble friend Lord Frost said that it is part of the logic of Brexit, but I fear that Brexit is being used here as a smokescreen for a deregulatory power grab, the results of which are impossible to gauge—it is recklessly irresponsible. My noble friend insisted that this is not a power grab, but how else do we describe the Government asking Parliament to give up its power of scrutiny over the laws of the land and all its regulations by handing powers to Ministers to tear up regulations just because they may have an EU-related origin?
The overarching soundbite seems to be “regulations must be bad, so we have to get rid of them”, but “regulations” is basically another word for protections. Indeed, regulations can be drivers of growth in themselves; for example, environmental regulations can drive investment in skills, innovation and job creation. They protect every facet of our lives. In the words of the song,
“you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone”.
It is not too late for my noble friends and other noble Lords to pull us back from this brink.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister will remember that, about four years ago, we were discussing the EU withdrawal Bill. It was flawed in many ways—it took a long time, and we were raising all sorts of points —but we all recognised at that point that we needed something such as that, because we needed some degree of continuity, stability and time to consider whether we wanted the EU regulations or whether we wished to change them. We agreed, in principle, that we needed a Bill. The opposite is true of this: 80% of speakers in your Lordships’ House today have been fundamentally opposed to the Bill. A larger proportion of representations from civic society, industry and business—almost everybody; not just the usual wussy bugbears of the Government, such as human rights lawyers, trade unionists and environmentalists—is opposed to the basic precept of the Bill. So I will scrap the rest of my speech, except to pose the key question: what is your Lordships’ House going to do about it, with this unanimity of view?
If they were put to the vote tonight, I would vote for the amendments to the Motion. While I would have preferred to try to block the Bill at Second Reading, the House of Lords does not do that. So what shall we do if we follow our normal course? We need to make some fundamental amendments to the Bill, and I will suggest five. We should establish, before we go any further, a proper parliamentary process for considering the remains of the EU regulations, which probably needs to be a body of both Houses. We should delete the arbitrary sunset deadline of December this year, which is less than 11 months away. We should delete the provisions in Clause 15(5), which mean that we can alter the regulations only in a deregulatory way, with a very narrow definition of deregulation. We should put in the Bill the declarations made by Ministers that workers’ rights and environmental protections will not diminish. We should also move back the ultimate sunset clause of the end of 2026, as we need more time. Frankly, the reindeer in Lapland can wait a bit; there is, after all, still a statute on our book that says that you are allowed to kill a Scotsman in Carlisle if he is carrying a bow and arrow, but not on a Sunday—we have never deleted that one. While we need to delete some laws in due course, let us take proper consideration under parliamentary procedure and not under ministerial fiat.
There is such unanimity of view that the House of Lords needs to get out of its pram and assert itself. If necessary, we should do so more than once. If the Government do their usual job of rejecting all Lords amendments, let us send it back again; then the Government will have to decide whether to use the Parliament Act, by which time we will be in a general election and, hopefully, the world will change.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
I would like to add that I am very keen to get out of the pram with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty—I think it is a very good idea. I want to make a few remarks about food. The regulations that we have about food, most of which have happened in Europe, are about protection. In fact, we do not get enough of it. So I am completely dismayed that everything in this Bill says that there can be no further strengthening of regulations.
At the moment, the food companies are allowed to kill us slowly. They cannot kill us quickly. In other words, if you walk into a high-street fast-food restaurant, you are not going to drop dead. But, if you lived on food from that high-street fast-food restaurant, you would probably drop dead, or at least have diabetes, or be in ill health by the time you were 50 or 60 and living a bad life because of bad food. So we need more regulation.
I agree with so much of what has been said tonight, but in my few minutes, I want to give your Lordships an idea of how much relates to food, farming and public health that we are possibly going to throw out of the window. This is about antibiotic use on farms; it is about harmonised testing; it is about the banning of the use of hormone growth promoters; it is about the import of meat from animals which have been treated with hormone growth promoters. People are now beginning to understand what this does to the human body—it ain’t pretty.
All food safety laws, including the maximum containment for BSE monitoring; setting maximum residue levels for pesticides; lists of countries allowed to import meat; health marks on meat; labelling of beef; country of origin labelling on food—remember the horse meat scandal—preventing river pollution from agricultural activity; training staff to perform these checks at borders; increasing border controls and emergency measures for the entry of certain goods; as well as the huge one about the transportation of animals, which has been something we have worked on with the EU and we have done well here. Any suggestion that we would lower our animal welfare standards in the pursuit of capitalism and a quick buck is, quite frankly, disgusting. Rules on the production and labelling of organic produce are also possibly going to be sunsetted. And, by the way, who came up with the idea that sunset was a verb?
I will quote the Food Standards Agency, because it has an extremely brilliant new chair, Susan Jebb. She said:
“In the FSA, we are clear that we cannot simply sunset”—
she used it—
“the laws on food safety and authenticity without a decline in UK food standards and a significant risk to public health”.
The task ahead of us to go through these rules is very challenging and it inevitably means that we will have to deprioritise other important work. Is this what we want? We do not have a great food system at the moment; I have banged on about it long enough. We now stand looking at an even worse one and making good people, such as Susan Jebb, go through basic laws. Please, let us find a way, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, to get out of the pram and stand up to this outrageous business.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register and congratulate my noble friend Lady Bray and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, on joining us. I have known them both for some years and know they will make a distinguished contribution.
The points I have to make are about transport and somewhat technical, so the Minister may need to write to me rather than answer. They have so far identified 424 transport instruments that will be affected by the Bill, but no one is actually sure that that is the correct final number.
My first point is about safety legislation and regulation, which have developed to support the incredibly high levels of safety enjoyed by passengers and crew aboard UK-registered commercial aircraft. I remind noble Lords that the last fatal crash in the United Kingdom involving a passenger plane on the UK register was in 1990. There is a threat to the cohesiveness of this complex web of aviation regulations if some parts are inadvertently or thoughtlessly removed, possibly just because they are overlooked or forgotten. Safety regulation should always be amended in an evolutionary way, not by this slash and burn approach.
My second point concerns legislation which is relied on by the aviation industry in a secondary sense. Passengers with reduced mobility, environmental problems, security and consumer protections are all covered by mature and complex, often overlapping, regulation, and they are at risk should the Bill become law, with the supporting jurisprudence falling. There are also fatigue-related parts of the specific mobile worker working time directive which could be lost inadvertently.
Thirdly, there is a matter of confidence in the legislative process. People live in the confidence of a mature and effective safety system, which means that the hazard they face is near zero. Much of this legislation is secured by international agreement, some of it under EU law and some of it under other parts of the law. But, with this sunset clause approach, there is a danger that some of it will be discarded without thought, and the work to generate new legislation is, frankly, a distraction. We ought to leave this legislation where it is.
Finally, I draw attention to the fact that, in November 2022, the DfT briefed the DfT industry engagement forum on aviation safety on the Bill. At this cross-industry safety body, even the DfT made clear that its preference was for the maintenance of the sitting arrangements. It emphasised that it was finding it impossible to impress on people higher up in government that this was the officials’ policy: so officials in charge of safety are apparently being ignored. At an appropriate time, I will be looking for support to amend the Bill to look after the safeguarding provisions of safety legislation. I hope the Minister will make that unnecessary by bringing forward an amendment to exempt them.
Lord Cormack (Con)
If the Minister does not and my noble friend does, I will be glad to give him my support.
My Lords, I begin by congratulating our two new Members, my noble friend Lady Bray and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady. I want just to say to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, that everyone in this country has reason to be grateful to her because, at a time when her party did not have its most responsible leadership, she was a model of temperance, pragmatism and good leadership, and we are all in her debt for that.
I am afraid I share the misgivings of those who do not like the Bill. That will not come as a great surprise to many people. Government by diktat and by deadline is never a good idea. It is particularly not a good idea when it marginalises Parliament in the process. What we face is a marginalisation of Parliament and an accretion of power to the Executive. Yes, individual Ministers may exercise that with discretion and good sense, but they should not have that power, which will be vested in them if the Bill goes through on this ridiculous deadline when there is no need for a deadline. We would have escaped the Irish protocol had there been a good acceptance that a deadline was not the best way to govern. We would have avoided many other disasters in recent years if we had adopted a similar process.
I say to my friends and colleagues who take a different view of the Bill, please, tomorrow, read the speeches of my noble friends Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord McLoughlin; one a self-proclaimed Brexiteer, who sees the constitutional difficulties in the Bill, and the other a former Government Chief Whip and a very good friend of mine who has done a wonderful job in his career in Parliament—I was proud that he came from my constituency. These are not ciphers; these are people who have strong, coherent views based on real facts.
Although my noble friend Lord Hamilton—I listened to him; he might just give me the benefit—tried to dismiss this Bill, it should not be dismissed. It is a constitutional monstrosity. That point was also made by my noble friends Lady Altmann and Lord Young of Cookham and many others around your Lordships’ House. We have a duty to parliamentary democracy. We do not have the final word, and nor should we; we are not the elected House. However, we have a constitutional duty.
Although people talked of great majorities in the other place, they were more or less on party lines—majorities of around 50 or a little more. They were not sweeping majorities, such as we have had with certain Bills before us, but majorities on party lines with people obeying the party Whip. As far as I am concerned—I have always adopted this stance throughout my 53 years in Parliament—a Whip is a guide. It is a request, not an instruction or order. I ask all my noble friends to remember that.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, setting out on a journey when you do not know where you are going seems somewhat unwise. Politicians sometimes have to pursue careers without certainty as to the outcome, but as legislators we really should have some idea of where we are going.
Here we are considering a rare situation: a complex Bill that sets out to abolish many regulations and accepted and important rules, without the foggiest idea of what may or may not replace them. The Government do not intend to replace some at all, but others are vital to businesses big and small and critical to other processes. They are to be abandoned without proper scrutiny or thought-through replacements. How many pieces of EU-derived legislation are we talking about? The Government do not know.
However, my concerns with this Bill are not about the principle but about the process. The scale of the task in the proposed timescale is enormous, and I am yet to hear a convincing argument as to why the end of 2023 has been chosen as a date for disposal in all cases. This creates significant resource issues and there is insufficient capacity in our Civil Service to deal with this effectively. Surely, it is also a distraction at a time when the Government’s focus should be on matters of much greater importance.
A danger presented by the sunset clause is that, as the default position, swathes of retained EU law could expire without our knowing it, leading to many unintended consequences such as gaps in the law and important protections inadvertently dropping out of regulation. Provisions in the Bill will also allow the Government to amend or revoke retained EU law by means of secondary legislation, much spoken of today, effectively sidelining Parliament and removing any form of scrutiny. We have spoken up about this “executive grab” on many occasions before, but this would be a stage too far. Maybe the other place has lost its appetite for proper scrutiny, but this House has not and must not. As my noble friend Lord Young said earlier, it is also noteworthy that its own independent Regulatory Policy Committee has called an impact assessment conducted by the Department for Business “not fit for purpose”.
The breadth of legislation affected is well reflected by the groups that have expressed deep concerns: the National Farmers’ Union, the Bar Council, the Institute of Directors—I could go on. We know that British business needs certainty, continuity and transparent regulatory processes. This Bill kills that concept. There is also the impact on the UK to consider. Given that the Bill will confer powers on both the UK Government and, where applicable, the devolved Administrations, there is concern that different approaches may be taken, producing uncertainty and divergence between our constituent nations.
The vast majority of retained EU law, which the UK—and I as an MEP—played a key role in shaping as part of a democratic process, is vital in many spheres. It would be better to look at the small proportion of retained EU law that the Government believe is not working and rewrite it under primary legislation once the impact of such changes is fully considered by Parliament.
Of course, those who are promoting this legislation claim that removing the influence of the ECJ and replacing it with the British courts in relation to derived laws is justification itself. Lawyers here will hardly—for once—be grateful for the confusion and uncertainty created by these new powers. Some areas of the law do need improving, but this must be done in a considered manner. The Government must extend the 2023 deadline, or at least allow Parliament the opportunity to consider what laws need replacement and what alternatives are to be put in place to maintain stability.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with the furious frustration expressed today at being asked to grant an Executive a licence to legislate on thousands of legal instruments, all without accountability to Parliament or the public. I empathise because that anger at a democratic deficit was exactly what prompted me to vote to leave the EU. These very EU retained laws started life as secondary legislation impositions on the UK Parliament: they were directions from and obligations to the EU Executive. They were products of a supranational institution whose very design is to ring-fence swathes of lawmaking from national electorates and to delegate sovereign powers to unaccountable European Commissioners, the European bank, et cetera.
Do not get me wrong: there are problems with this Bill. The Government may have missed an opportunity to use the retained law issue as a spur for democratic renewal. They could have launched nationwide town-hall meetings and debates to guide decisions on what laws to keep or delete. But, to note, whatever the anti-democratic dangers of this skeleton Bill, there is a popular mandate behind the Bill’s intent: to fulfil a promise of taking back control of our legal system by abolishing EU supremacy. We do indeed need to give domestic courts more discretion to depart from retained EU case law—they can take it into account but should not be required to follow it. Also, the real constitutional outrage before us is not the Bill so much as the fact that some domestic primary legislation remains subordinate to EU law. I am not sure that complaints that the sunset clause means changes are rushed will cut it with the public. For many millions who voted to leave in the largest democratic vote in UK history, the impression is of sloth, prevarication and obstruction. They deserve a sense of urgency to finish what voters started in 2016.
Many of the core objections we have heard today seem to be driven by a failure of imagination. Many noble Lords have cited professional bodies, NGOs, employers organisations, trade union leaders and lawyers—all who appear unable to imagine social and economic progress happening without retained EU laws. Nowhere is this more gallingly illustrated than in accusations that the Bill will create a bonfire of workers’ rights. Surely this legalistic presumption is insulting to decades of self-organisation by working-class people who fought tooth and nail to win those gains. Maybe tell the RMT rank and file members—many of whom I campaigned alongside for Brexit—that their rights are safer in EU retained law than on their picket lines. Do I trust the Tory Government with workers’ rights? Of course not. But I do not trust EU law either. The first time I heard of the model strike-breaking legislation in the form of minimum service requirements was when it was being eulogised in the European Parliament. And, yes, I will be opposing it when it comes to this House.
The TUC briefing warns that this Bill jeopardises the agency workers directive, but we might note that this very directive is a device used to avoid paying agency staff at the same rate as employed staff. It has been used by the ECJ to break collective bargaining agreements via the 2007 rulings in the Viking Line and Laval cases. Other briefings warn us this Bill will drive a wrecking ball through women’s employment rights and equality legislation. Actually, a far greater threat to equality law in 2023 is not this Bill but the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Act. How disappointing that all those condemning this so-called dodgy legislation today have not been clamouring to oppose this material assault on women’s sex-based rights that threatens the UK-wide Equality Act.
The 4,000 retained EU laws were put on the UK statute books without Members of this unelected House crying democracy. Earlier, we were assured that it was all okay because, as one noble Lord explained, there were special behind-closed-door committees that scrutinised them. There was no mind that, no matter how many British voters might object to any one of those laws, there was nothing—zilch—they could do. The lack of outrage at that democratic deficit—
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
The noble Baroness has exceeded her time limit. Perhaps she could bring her comments to an end.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, and my noble friend Lady Bray and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—so you have four noble Baronesses tonight on different sides.
I welcome this Bill to remove and reform EU law. It honours the country’s decisions in the 2016 referendum and the 2019 general election leave the EU, its legal orbit and its corpus of law. The voters’ mandate was clear—to restore sovereignty so that the laws under which we are governed reflect their wishes and the Parliament they send to Westminster honours their mandate. The Bill honours that mandate in two principal ways. First, it accords supremacy to UK law, ending that of the EU where there is incompatibility. Secondly, retained EU secondary legislation will, unless otherwise decided, lapse at the end of 2023—the sunset clause about which we have heard so much today.
Others have spoken about the economic potential of this measure. I shall touch on the concerns, which I do not share, practical and constitutional. The practical concerns relate to timing and uncertainty—what is thought to be too short a timeframe and possible uncertainty in so rapid a switch to a new system, which could, it is thought, be bad for business. But not only should the deadline be achieved quickly and smoothly if individual departments get down to the task—a task with which they will already be familiar through the laws for which they are responsible—but the more rapidly this corpus of secondary legislation is removed or adapted for UK law, and the sooner the two systems of law end, the greater the certainty for all. The constitutional concerns relate to what is seen as the Executive overlooking Parliament—or what others have called, in more colloquial language, a power grab.
We are speaking here about secondary legislation, which was introduced under the EU, much of it without proper parliamentary scrutiny. It did not reflect the wishes of the people of this country but was the result of a Byzantine system of laws under an unelected European commission and handed down from on high to Parliament. Moreover, there are good reasons for acting as proposed. Unlike the UK system of law, EU legislation is based on the continental system of law. It is a different form of law. It enshrines the precautionary principle covering every possible situation, but often does so too late for innovators and entrepreneurs. Four thousand is the number of regulations we have heard mentioned today, but more laws do not necessarily mean better law.
Moreover, Ministers are and will be accountable, but to Parliament, and more accountable and more important to the people of this country, who, at a general election, send Parliament to Westminster. It is from the people that the authority of Parliament derives, not from itself. Governments listen to the voice of the people and have acted decisively and rapidly throughout the centuries: workmen’s compensation in the 1890s; national insurance and pensions in the 1910s; widows’, orphans’ and old age pensions in the 1920s; holidays with pay in the 1930s; family allowances, national insurance, maternity allowance and legal aid in the 1940s. I therefore welcome this measure. I have no doubt that the Government will move ahead rapidly and I shall do nothing to delay the passing of the Bill.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)
My Lords, I think it is time I brought a bit of consensus—a bit of unanimity—to this House: I am a rotten politician.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)
You see? I got the House’s agreement straightaway. The reason is that I have been listening to these speeches, including the two excellent maiden speeches from my noble friend Lady Bray and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady—I congratulate them on speaking on a non-controversial Bill, as per the tradition—and I can see merit in many of the arguments. I do not want this to be about dogma, though. I can see that there is a polarisation between those for Brexit and those opposed to it—but not among everyone.
But the Bill is not about this. As many have said, and as my noble friends Lord McLoughlin and Lord Hodgson have pointed out in their committees, that is not the way forward with this Bill at this particular moment. My noble friend Lord Young made an extremely good point when he said that those people who thought that powers were coming home found that they had been delivered to the wrong address; they were not delivered to Parliament. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Hamilton, who made a very good point: why were some of these laws that we are talking about and are worried about not enshrined in law previously? They have had time to work on this.
I will speak briefly; it has all been said, and there is no point in overdoing it. I declare my interests in conservation as in the register. I want to concentrate on one aspect that I have concerns about, which I hope the Government will be able to reassure me on at some stage: the habitats directive. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, also mentioned this. This was not brought in by the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels—well, it was, except it was actually UK-originated. We in this country pushed that forward, probably reluctantly, on a lot of the European Union. We cannot afford for that to go. You might say—as I am sure my noble friend will, in his customary agreeable manner—that there is no intention to do so at all, but I heard, not so long ago, that in the push for growth some of these regulations were potentially at risk. I do not want that.
All I would say is that I have been told over the years that with great age comes wisdom—well, not in my case. I think Voltaire said that with great age comes responsibility. I hope so, but I have to say to noble Lords that, in my case, with great age comes great cynicism, and I am afraid that I will need a lot more reassurance before I can allow the Bill to go forward in its current state.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, having spent too much of my working life in the innards of EU law, I am as conscious as anyone of its inadequacies, particularly for a country that is no longer able to shape the content and development of that law, as I think we once did rather successfully through our participation in its Commission—where I had the honour to work for Lord Cockfield—its Council of Ministers, its Parliament and its courts. So, it is right that we should engage forward gear, address the issue of supremacy and review the EU laws retained in our system, weighing in each case the advantages of continued alignment against the opportunities for striking out on our own.
Need this take what the Minister described as “decades of parliamentary time”? Not if we follow the model that literally stared us in the face for the first three hours of this debate: the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which students of the annunciator will know was being debated in Grand Committee. Hundreds of items of retained EU law, identified after a painstaking review, are listed in that Bill for revocation—a list which is, of course, amendable by Parliament. Powers are provided for new rules to be made, after consultation and engagement with parliamentary committees. That is a process which could and should be adapted to other fields in which the view is taken that it is time to move on. Yet this Bill takes another course: it asks us to sign away both the authority of Parliament and what remains of this country’s reputation for considered and responsible lawmaking.
What is to be done? Like the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I offer a few ideas to start us off. First, on revocation, if the sunset clause cannot be moved, the Commons should at least have a veto over decisions to revoke, as provided by the cross-party Creasy-Davis amendment in the other place. This would place a guard-rail on the edge of the cliff.
Secondly, replacement: the astonishing Clause 15 should be removed, as recommended by our Delegated Powers Committee. If it must remain, as our Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has said, we must contemplate what it described in carefully chosen words as
“a procedure by which the Houses can modify an instrument.”
Clause 16, its powers not time-limited like the others, also needs attention.
Thirdly, there should be a guarantee that powers in the Bill will not be used in a way that contravenes the Northern Ireland protocol or the level playing field provisions in the trade and co-operation agreement.
We should also address a point not much touched on today: the legal certainty issues in Clauses 4 to 7 noted by the Bar Council—commendably on its part, since we barristers thrive on uncertainty and, unamended, the Bill will provide rich pickings indeed.
Last May, in the debate on the gracious Speech, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, asked,
“what is the point of us being here if, when we identify a serious constitutional problem, we never do anything about it except talk?”—[Official Report, 12/5/22; col. 130.]
He was right. The Bill is an attack on the constitutional role of Parliament, a view expressed eloquently across this House from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom. The analogy of powers under the European Communities Act 1972 is a false one, as the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, explained with authority, and even if it were otherwise, two wrongs would not make a right. The powers of this House are modest, and properly so, but if the views so firmly expressed today are not heeded by government, we will be justified in using every one of them.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I think I detect a certain limp and enervated air in the Chamber, largely as a result of the length of this debate—I am the 57th and last of the scheduled Back-Bench speakers. However, I fancy that it is also perhaps a little because of, in the wider sense, the length of the debate. We have been arguing these points for six and a half years now, and one sometimes feels that it is as though we were in the trenches in Flanders, with every clause—every legislative proposal—fought over as fiercely as a clod of dirt in no man’s land.
The battle lines were drawn this afternoon in the early speeches, and very little advance was made. My noble friend the Minister—and my noble friend Lord Frost, who I suppose is the ultimate author of these proposals—set out the case for the Bill, which is that you cannot have a special category of law in perpetuity on the statute books and that this was always intended to be a contingent and transitional arrangement; and then the case on the other side was made eloquently from all sides, from people in every party and on the Cross Benches, namely that we should be careful about transferring powers from the legislature to the Executive, and that this constitutes a Henry VIII clause.
I have a lot of sympathy with that view. In a perfect world, we would not need to do this. However, the world we inhabit is not perfect: it is gross, sublunary and very much imperfect. I wish that we had gone ahead and deregulated at some point over at least the last three years since Brexit came into effect, if not the last six years since the referendum. We have been very slow to seize the regulatory and competitive opportunities afforded to us by independence. However, as I say, we live in an imperfect world. The real reason for the haste was given—with the frankness that a Back-Bencher is allowed and Front-Benchers are not—by my noble friend Lord Lilley: if this corpus of law is left untouched, people will make all sorts of claims about the likely impact of its abolition, and we will be left with this image of some kind of Dickensian workshop at the end of the day. The only way of anticipating and disproving that is to go ahead and show that it was not the case.
I had not heard much mention of Henry VIII before I came here but I have been hearing it a lot recently. It is worth remembering that every law here that is being scrapped is itself a piece of secondary legislation that came before your Lordships’ House out of a system which really does involve a massively powerful Executive and a very weak legislature. I was in the European Parliament for 21 years. As many of my former colleagues on all sides here will recall, the European Commission, extraordinarily, is both a legislative and an executive body, despite being unelected. It has a monopoly on the right to initiate legislation. Yet very few of the people who are complaining now about these Henry VIII clauses complained then, and nor did they complain about the mother of all Henry VIII clauses, Sections 2 and 3 of the European Communities Act 1972—whoever the mother of Henry VIII was. Oh, it was Elizabeth of York, the luckless lady who lost so many of her kin in the Wars of the Roses.
I suppose that it is a very good thing that we do now care so much about the supremacy of our Parliament. It would have been nice if more voices had been raised when we had this torrent of law imposed from abroad, but better late than never. It would have been nice, as recently as the lockdown legislation, if there had been a little more concern about the powers being granted to the Executive, but joy shall be in heaven more over one sinner that repenteth. If one of the great advantages of Brexit was that it would restore Parliament to its centrality in our national story, then it is already working.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
My Lords, I have been given permission to speak in the gap, which I will do very briefly. I will start with how I come into this issue. When I first arrived in the House of Lords in 1972, there was the European Communities Act. I served on the European Community Committee, which later changed its name to the European Union Committee. Your Lordships will remember the brief intervention at the beginning of this debate by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, when the Minister was speaking. He might find it more awkward, now that he is on the Woolsack, to intervene when the Minister speaks again. However, his intervention drew attention to the work of the European committees, in this place and the other place.
What did we do? We were given drafts from the European Union of directives and regulations. We were then given the opportunity to comment. We called evidence, we wrote a report, we sent it back to the Commission in Brussels and surprisingly, you may think, a lot of our recommendations were accepted. Therefore, when the Minister said that the European committees had no power to veto the drafting—I have forgotten his exact words—that got missed out, because we did have a good opportunity to do so in looking at the drafts.
Where are we now? I have heard every speech except one. I begin by giving the score. Only 10 speakers have spoken permanently pro Bill. One or two others have hesitantly spoken pro Bill, out of a total of 58 speakers. That gives a message, does it not? My noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone said that we should not pass this Bill. I suggested to my Front Bench that we should oppose the Bill—that we should not allow it to go any further. I am afraid that I was told that this was not the policy. I then moved towards the Liberal Democrat Benches. I got more favourable noises but certainly not “We should not pass this Bill”.
Lord Hacking (Lab)
I am sorry. I was tempted then to move over to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and his flock, the Cross Benches. He did not say that to me, but I am a former Cross-Bencher and I think that his answer was, “I have no control over the Cross Benches”. I even thought that, under the generalship of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, there might be a cohort from the Government Benches to move that this Bill do not pass. I am afraid that I failed in all those endeavours, but that is clearly my wish.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, might understand that there are lots of things that the Liberal Democrat Benches might want to achieve, but, unfortunately, we cannot do things on our own and we need rather considerable support from other Benches.
We have heard some very eloquent and forceful criticisms of the Bill. I commend all those speeches, not only but especially from my own Benches. I am sorry that I lack time to react to most of the speeches I appreciated, though that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has to be a witty exception. I will nick the terms used by the noble Lords, Lord McLoughlin, Lord Hannay and Lord Cormack, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, respectively: “all powers, no policy”, “scrappage scheme”, “constitutional monstrosity” and “the gift that keeps on taking”.
I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway—we come from the same borough—on her maiden speech. She adequately and expertly refuted the assertion, made by the Minister a couple of times in this Chamber in the past fortnight, that UK employment law owes nothing to EU law. She is a very valuable addition to this House. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Bray of Coln. I hope that she did not learn the wrong things from Ken Livingstone.
The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, reminded us how un-Conservative, and certainly un-Thatcherite, the Bill is, with its revolutionary approach to eradicating at a stroke EU laws crucial to business, as well as to unions and many other aspects of life. He rightly warned that any potential investor would be deterred by “a giant question mark”.
Only a few voices—was it 10? I did not count quite that many—were raised in fervent support of the Government. Otherwise, we heard from across the House, as we are hearing from commentators and interested parties outside, that the Bill is extremely unwise, ill considered and reckless. I do not know of anyone outside a rarefied circle of cheerleaders—that is, anyone sensible and reasonable, even for a Conservative—who thinks the Bill is a good idea. Can the Minister cite anyone?
Stephen Kon, competition lawyer at law firm Macfarlanes, said that it is hard to think of a piece of legislation that has been so broadly and deeply criticised. The Hansard Society says that the Bill’s approach to REUL is “fundamentally and irresponsibly flawed”. Journalist Peter Foster—from that woke, left-wing rag, the Financial Times—has said that this Bill
“is a reminder that the outwardly sensible Sunak government still comes with some pretty crazy baggage”.
The distinguished legal commentator, Joshua Rozenberg, has called the Bill “dangerous”. The experienced George Peretz KC says:
“Fiddling around with the law when you don’t know what the consequences of the fiddle are is not obviously a good idea”
and suggests that
“if you don’t know what the effect is of what you are doing, don’t do it”.
Sir Jonathan Jones KC, former head of the Government Legal Service, says
“it’s a very bad way to legislate”.
The Bar Council, as others have quoted, says that the Bill
“will damage the UK’s reputation for regulatory stability, predictability, and competence on which growth-promoting investment in critical sectors of our economy depends”.
As has been much quoted, the independent Regulatory Policy Committee of experts red-rated the impact assessment for the Bill as “not fit for purpose”. The chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link said that scrapping environmental laws would be “legislative vandalism”.
Noble Lords get the picture. But after director-general of the CBI, Tony Danker, said the Bill risked uncertainty and chaos, the Minister last week breezily brushed aside the fears of the boss of UK’s top business organisation as wrong. We are well beyond the era when the Tory party even claims to be the party of business. It has just gone rogue. This Bill is not some arcane or obscure exercise. It will affect substantive law and thus businesses and all kinds of organisations in the many fields already cited in this debate.
I will say a word to those complaining that this Parliament had no ability to block or amend legislation once it was agreed in Brussels. It was a supranational organisation, as has been said. Please remember that democratically elected MEPs and the UK Government made the decisions on the legislation, not in fact the European Commission, apart from some regulations about sheep meat prices or something. Of course, many of us in this Chamber are former MEPs.
The UK was rarely outvoted in the Council, and if there was a gap in UK parliamentary scrutiny, that was a failing of Westminster, since other national Parliaments, such as the Danish one, insisted on full accountability from their Governments on what they were agreeing to in Brussels. Indeed, they had a veto on what their Government did. I am sorry: do not blame Brussels, blame Westminster.
These are just some of the objections to the Bill. The huge legal uncertainty created will be very damaging. Businesses, workers, consumers and citizens are in the dark. Even lawyers, who might be expected to relish all the work coming their way, are quaking in their boots. The Government have no idea of how many instruments the Bill will affect; there is indeed no guarantee that all retained law subject to its provisions will be identified.
There will be very considerable legal confusion. For instance, no one knows what removing the supremacy, direct effect or general principles of EU law will mean. The meaning not only of regulations but of primary legislation, such as of the Equality Act 2010—already the subject of huge controversy—will not be the same next year as this. As our Delegated Powers Committee says, the Government
“need to explain what is behind the headlong rush and the impending and arbitrary end-of-year deadline”.
Can the Minister give the committee, me and others who have quoted this a coherent reply?
Where regulations are restated, previous judgments relating to these instruments would no longer be binding; workers and employers would be back at square one, and issues will have to go through the judicial system again, with all the length and expense of that process. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, confirmed this in his opening speech, though he seemed to think it was a good idea. If lower courts are able to reject ECJ decisions, this may precipitate more—even opportunistic —litigation by some less reputable companies.
What happens if there are errors, either because the hard-pressed Civil Service, with its high turnover of staff, has perhaps lost its institutional memory and misses something, or if a regulation is accidentally switched off at the end of 2023? Is the Civil Service adequately resourced for this exercise? BEIS has said it needs 400 extra staff: what a waste when Whitehall faces so many other pressing issues.
The Government’s proposed wholesale deregulation—a slash and burn exercise—gives stakeholders no chance to say what should be kept. This is sweeping away the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 settlement which took a long-term approach, allowing departure from EU law over time and after consultation. The Government made a political commitment during the passage of that Act that, aside from technical tidying-up, primary legislation would be needed to make significant policy changes. This Bill breaks that pledge. It is simply anti-democratic and authoritarian in conferring massive powers instead on the Government. The Delegated Powers Committee called it
“a blank cheque placed in the hands of Ministers”,
as others have quoted.
The unexpected consequences of kicking out the EU undergirding of UK law could be very perverse and damaging, with what is left lacking legal coherence. In the field of construction, the Building Safety Act 2022 is premised on definitions in a set of 2015 regulations—the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations —implementing an EU directive and creating a framework for health and safety in construction. Unless these regulations are kept switched on, the 2022 Act of Parliament will have its underpinning yanked away. What then exists?
In employment rights, despite what the Minister has recently claimed, there are many topics for which EU law is the bedrock, even if added to—or gold-plated—in UK law, since, after all, EU law always only provided for minimum, not maximum, standards. Parental leave had no basis in UK law before the EU legislated, and it could be entirely removed or drastically altered by the Bill.
Many of the regulations affected are in areas of devolved competence. My noble friend Lady Randerson and others eloquently explained the harmful effect of this Bill on the devolved Administrations. Others have talked about the consequences for Northern Ireland and for the level playing field provisions in the trade and co-operation agreement—which, if we break it, could lead to trade retaliation. Will the Minister tell us about that?
To conclude, if, as the Government claim, there are real regulatory gains from altering retained EU law which could be agreed with or not, there are much better ways of doing that that have already been identified by this very Government, as others have said. The Financial Services and Markets Bill, which was quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, makes provision for an extensive new regime which has already been subject to considerable consultation. The Procurement Bill brings in new rules on that topic, and then there is the review led by Professor Sir Patrick Vallance to examine EU regulation in high-growth sectors. However, primary legislation and expert reviews require real, careful work, not a simplistic, arbitrary and ideological presumption that EU law must be slashed. They need Bills to be brought forward asking Parliament to legislate with democratic input from MPs, but also input from affected stakeholders of all kinds.
In short, this is a very bad Bill that does not deserve a place on the statute book—certainly not in the form in which it is now before us. The Minister referred in his opening speech to good governance. I think we would like to see some.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady O’Grady on her maiden speech. She showed what a real champion for equality and fairness she is. I must admit that little did I know when I interviewed her for her first job in the trade union movement in the 1980s, working with my noble friend Lady Prosser, that she would go on to break the glass ceiling and become the first woman general secretary of the TUC. I am immensely proud of her. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bray of Coln, and certainly I found her speech inspiring. I like the idea that she values debate and respects all sides of that debate, and I look forward to her future contributions in the Chamber.
The theme of this debate is clearly about ensuring certainty that avoids chaos. I must admit that reading the Sunday Telegraph this week, we have all had recent experience of how uncertainty can create chaos, and that is something that we certainly want to avoid. Of course, EU law which applied to the UK was turned into domestic law to provide the maximum certainty after Brexit—as we have heard in this debate, laws related to farming, food standards, the environment, employment, financial services, privacy and much more. Reference has been made to CBI director-general Tony Danker, who said that this Bill is creating huge uncertainty for UK firms and risks throwing industry into some chaos. The Law Society said it could see a devastating impact on legal certainty in the UK and a negative impact on its status as an internationally competitive business environment.
Where did we start? Where was the policy? In the Explanatory Note to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, as the DPRRC report reminds us, the Government’s policy on repealing and replacing retained EU law was that it would be for democratically elected representatives in the UK to decide on changes after full scrutiny and proper debate. No one disputes the need to consider the status of those laws whose placed on our statute book depended on our EU membership.
Noble Lords in this debate have made it very clear: this should not be an ideological debate. This is not about Brexiteers and remainers; it is about how we make our laws. That should be something that unites us all. This rushed and chaotic process, putting power over huge swathes of law in the hands of Ministers without parliamentary oversight, is simply not right.
As we have heard, this Bill seeks to: sunset most retained EU law by the end of 2023; change the way in which any retained EU law that Ministers decide to keep is interpreted; and provide Ministers with wide-ranging powers to restate, revoke or replace retained EU law. If Ministers want retained EU law to fall away—the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made the point so effectively—all they need to do is nothing: take no action. The decision to take no action is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
The 28th report of the SLSC draws attention to the risk of “inadvertent omission” because departments have failed to identify key laws, and to the absence of parliamentary scrutiny of retained EU law that Ministers have decided should be sunsetted. Far from creating new, high standards of regulatory framework, the replacement legislation cannot increase standards; as we have heard in the debate, it can only keep them the same or make them lower. Reducing standards or allowing key pieces of legislation to simply lapse risks the UK’s trading relationship with the EU at a time when we can ill afford it.
As we have heard, the uncertainty is: what are we talking about? The Explanatory Notes first cited 3,200 bits of REUL legislation. The dashboard refers to 3,745 bits. It grows each week as we examine it. We do not know what we are leading ourselves towards.
The Minister constantly states that he is proud of the UK’s record on employment standards, which, he says, were never dependent on us mirroring the same rules as the EU. Well, what is at risk? Why do workers and their representatives remain concerned? The TUC lists examples of rights that could be lost, and we have heard noble Lords refer to them today: holiday pay; agency workers’ rights; data protection rights; protection of pregnant workers, and rights to maternity and parental leave; protection of part-time and fixed-term workers; rights relating to working time, including rights to daily and weekly rest; maximum weekly working time; paid annual leave and measures to protect night workers; protection of workers’ rights on the insolvency of their employer; rights to a written statement of terms and conditions; collective consultation with workers’ representatives when redundancies are proposed; and protections of terms and conditions for workers whose employment is transferred to another employer.
I remind noble Lords that, last week, my noble friend Lord Woodley raised this matter, and he raised it again today: the protection known as TUPE. He asked the Minister a straightforward question: will he guarantee that TUPE protections will not be scrapped? The response he got was what all government Ministers across Whitehall appear to be saying, which is, “We will look at that and see whether it is appropriate for the UK economy and, if necessary, we will modernise, update or replace it”.
That is why workers are concerned. Statements such as that raise uncertainty and concern. I hope the Minister will answer that direct question tonight: will he keep that protection for workers who are threatened because, through no fault of their own, somebody has bought their company or it has been transferred? We need to have those guarantees. On part-time workers, the prevention of less favourable treatment regulations was raised by noble friend Lord Prentis last week—and he got absolutely no response on that either.
Perversely, the Minister argues that the sunset date provides certainty—a target by which departments can look at their body of retained EU law and decide whether it needs replacing, retaining or updating. A sunset clause is arbitrary. It leads to all kinds of errors and mistakes. The Minister argues that Parliament is not being refused the opportunity to discuss these issues, and that regulations that are updated or changed will come back to Parliament for approval. He forgets to mention that retained EU laws will simply fall away by being sunsetted.
We have heard in this debate from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. I echo the remarks that he made on 12 January in the debate on the Select Committee report Democracy Denied? By the way, those reports are excellent reading. I also recommend that people look at that debate on 12 January. The noble Lord said:
“Nobody … could reasonably argue that secondary legislation is as effectively scrutinised as primary. … Secondary legislation is unamendable: it can be passed or rejected but it cannot be amended.”
In that same debate, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, a former Government Whip and Minister, said that
“when laws are passed without proper parliamentary scrutiny, they cease to be just technical, as they threaten the rights and freedoms of the individual.”
He also reminded us that:
“The excuse that excessive delegated powers are needed because Parliament cannot move quickly enough has been proved false on many occasions, not least by Parliament’s reaction to Covid legislation.”—[Official Report, 12/12/23; cols. 1532-37.]
We have heard Covid mentioned a lot in today’s debate, but it was Parliament that made those decisions and reviewed those instruments. We should not forget that.
The DPRRC’s clause-by-clause examination of the Bill is devastating. I have never read a report like it. The committee recommends that, of the six most important delegated powers contained in the Bill, five should be removed from it altogether. It argues that the shortcomings of this hyper-skeletal Bill justify its approach. I am sure that in the coming weeks we will see noble Lords from across the House speaking up for democracy by seeking legal certainty regarding all the rights and protections that this legislation will impact, and for the restoration of direct parliamentary oversight and accountability.
The overwhelming view expressed in this debate is that a reasonable balance can be struck between an efficient process for managing the transposition of legislation and ensuring democratic accountability where changes to rights are intended. None of the changes argued for today would prevent the Government from reviewing, reconsidering and, where necessary, replacing retained law, but Members from across this House want to ensure that the process used to do so is transparent, accountable and, above all, driven by the will of Parliament. We are here not to frustrate this legislation but to fix it together so that we can take back control to our democratic institutions.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, this has been a characteristically excellent debate which I think reflects the importance of the Bill. Before I get on to the substance of the issues raised, I will congratulate our two maidens, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, and my noble friend Lady Bray, on their fine maiden speeches. I hope that the House is a similarly engaged audience to the one that my noble friend Lady Bray had when she was presenting for the British Forces Broadcasting Service in Gibraltar. I noted with interest that she studied medieval history at St Andrews. I am also told that she was fired as a PPS in the other place in 2012 for voting against the coalition Government’s plans to reform this House. With those two bits of excellent experience, she will clearly make an excellent Member of this House.
Then we come on to excellent contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady. I profoundly disagreed with all of it, of course, but she put it extremely well. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, who referred to her choice of “A Change Is Gonna Come” on “Desert Island Discs”. I was slightly more concerned by two of her other music choices on that programme—“Pieces of a Man” and “Burn It Down”. I hope neither of them is an omen for me or the House on some of our future debates. I congratulate both maiden speakers; I thought they did extremely well.
As we have had 60 speakers today, I am afraid noble Lords will understand that I cannot answer every Peer directly. I am sure that many of the points will come up again in Committee. I seem to have heard an awful lot of them in the Brexit withdrawal debates from essentially the same people, but I am sure we will raise the points again.
Before I turn to the wider contributions, let me first address the regret amendments tabled today by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman. I am sure it will come as no surprise to either noble Lord that I disagree with the amendments on all points. I do not accept the characterisation that these powers are unprecedented or weaken the scrutiny of Parliament. Indeed, as has been said many times, many of these laws were brought into force with no scrutiny of any kind by this Parliament and were merely directly imposed by Brussels. I noted with interest my noble friend Lord Lilley’s remarks on how this process really worked in practice from the point of view of a UK Cabinet Minister.
Furthermore, the sifting committee for the more substantial powers will ensure that Parliament can debate and vote where it deems appropriate. The scrutiny role of Parliament is not reduced but rather enhanced through this Bill. Of course, we respect the role of the devolved Administrations, which is why the majority of the powers contained in the Bill are conferred on devolved Ministers. It will be up to the devolved Ministers and Administrations to decide which direction they take their stock of retained EU law.
On the final two points of the regret amendments, we should of course aim to complete these reforms as quickly as practically possible. They are necessary to seize the benefits of Brexit and I do not accept that this will cause significant uncertainty nor that, if it did, uncertainty alone is a reason not to make these legislative changes. With regard to environmental law, workers’ rights and the other areas that noble Lords have referred to, I refer all noble Lords to the commitments that have been made by me in this House so far—and I will no doubt do so many times in the Committee debates to come—and by Government Ministers in the other place.
I move now to the substantive points raised in the debate. I thank my noble friend Lord Frost for setting into motion the two reviews into retained EU law that have culminated in the Bill—he has a lot to be proud of—and for explaining the importance of removing REUL from the statute book.
I also pay tribute to the remarks of my noble friends Lord Hannan, Lord Lilley and Lord Jackson for making the obvious point that Parliament will have much more say over this legislation than it did during our time in the EU, when direct EU legislation did not receive full parliamentary scrutiny before it became law in the UK. Had we not left the EU, much of this legislation would be amendable by the EU as if it were secondary legislation, without any direct input from this Parliament at all. By treating this legislation in the same way as domestic secondary legislation for amendment purposes, it can be amended much more easily by delegated powers. It is therefore appropriate that the changes to this body of legislation can be done via secondary legislation. Requiring REUL reform to be subject to primary legislation would take decades in many cases and would see a marked reduction in the UK’s dynamism. My noble friend Lord Dobbs amplified this point, emphasising that the Bill has come through the elected Chamber of this Parliament with only government amendments. It is only right and proper that we view the Bill in light of that majority.
I also commend the excellent speech of my noble friend Lord Jackson, who was right to note the majority that the Bill received at Third Reading in the other place and the lack of concern that this House often showed to powers that were exercised under the European Communities Act—another point also made by my noble friend Lord Hannan.
My noble friend Lord Howard of Rising made it clear that there are many opportunities for us to seize as part of Brexit. He is right to laud the success of our vaccine programme and to note, in the same vein as my noble friend Lord Lilley, that Parliament will have much more of a say in regulation that works on behalf of the UK.
I was disappointed by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, about parliamentary counsel and their work and approach. He is correct that parliamentary counsel are civil servants working for, and delivering the priorities of, the Government of the day. However, although I acknowledge the strength of the noble Lord’s views, it is not in keeping with the customary courtesy of Members to criticise those who cannot defend themselves in this Chamber.
The noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom raised questions about why we are changing the EU withdrawal Act only five years after its passage. It was a bridging measure and was never intended to be on the statute book indefinitely; we discussed it at length at the time. Now that our future relationship with the EU is known and we have established a sense of legal certainty, it is right for us to review retained EU law. The Bill ensures that only retained EU law that we judge is right for the UK is assimilated into our statute book.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, the noble Lord, Lord Beith, and many others are concerned that the sunset could be a regulatory cliff edge. In our judgment, a sunset is the quickest and most effective way to accelerate the review of the majority of retained EU law. A major cross-government programme is already under way to identify retained EU law that can be reformed, repealed or replaced. When the Bill receives Royal Assent, a cross-government legislative programme will commence to sensibly manage change ahead of that sunset date. Without the sunset as a default for retained EU law, we risk unsuitable or obsolete EU laws still being on our statute book in 10, 15 or even 20 years’ time, which should not be acceptable to anyone in this House. We do not need regulations on the issuing of a certificate for the export of cheeses that the UK has never exported. Nor do we need regulations that grant additional aid for the consumption of butter, or hundreds of other obsolete EU regulations. A sunset ensures that we can quickly and easily remove outdated legislation of this nature.
Many noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, made claims that the Government will need to pass nearly 4,000 SIs before the end of this year. That is absolutely not the case. Our work to date has indicated that the number of SIs would be in the hundreds, not the thousands. Of course, this is still a significant task, but it is certainly not the impossible one that has been portrayed today. My noble friend Lord Udny-Lister is right that our first-rate Civil Service and legal service are more than capable of delivering the work required.
A number of noble Lords raised environmental concerns, as they often do, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Bennett, who all claimed that this will somehow remove environmental protections. I can absolutely provide the reassurance that my rightly cynical noble friend Lord Randall was looking for. The Government will ensure that we continue to improve environmental outcomes for this country. The UK has a long record of environmental protection, most of which was never dependent on the EU. The Bill will not change that, nor will it change the world-leading Environment Act that this Conservative Government are proud to have passed.
The noble Lord, Lord Trees, questioned whether this means that we are resiling from our commitment to food standards, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, questioned what this means for the FSA. The Government remain committed to promoting robust food standards, both nationally and internationally, to protect consumer interests, to facilitate international trade and to ensure that consumers can have confidence in the food they buy.
The trade unionists, the noble Lords, Lord Monks, Lord Hendy and Lord Woodley, have claimed that the Bill will lead to a downgrading of UK workers’ rights. We have had similar debates a number of times across this Chamber, and I have no doubt that we will continue to have them on issues such as TUPE. As I have said many times before, their claim could not be further from the case. We are proud of the UK’s excellent record on labour standards. We have one of the best workers’ rights records in the world, one of the lowest rates of unemployment and one of the highest minimum wages. As I have repeated many times, our high standards were never dependent on our membership of the European Union; indeed, in many areas, the UK provides for stronger protections for workers than are required by minimum EU standards.
The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Randerson and Lady Andrews, raised the important issue of the impacts of the Bill on devolution. The provisions in the Bill do not affect the devolution settlements, and they are not intended to restrict the competence of either the devolved legislatures or the devolved Governments. Rather, the majority of the powers will be conferred concurrently on the devolved Governments, enabling devolved Ministers to make active decisions on retained EU law in their respective areas of devolved competence. The UK Government are committed to respect the devolution settlements to safeguard the union and to ensure that the provisions in the Bill work for all parts of the UK, and we will continue our discussions with the devolved Administrations with that in mind. When using the powers in the Bill, we will use the appropriate mechanisms, such as the common frameworks, to engage with the devolved Governments to allow for proper joined-up decision-making across this United Kingdom.
Speaking of devolution, the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Hoey, raised concerns about the specific impacts of the Bill on Northern Ireland. The territorial scope of the Bill will be UK-wide. It is constitutionally appropriate that the core measures in the Bill apply across all parts of the United Kingdom. As my honourable colleagues in the other place have committed, the UK Government will ensure that the necessary legislation is in place to uphold the UK’s international obligations, including the Northern Ireland protocol and the trade and co-operation agreement, after the sunset date.
To answer the specific question from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, on case law, the REUL Bill does not require the creation of brand-new case law across the piece. The Bill’s measures facilitate UK courts to treat retained case law in a similar way to judgments of other foreign jurisdictions by encouraging departure from retained case law in a careful and managed way to allow for the proper development of UK law.
Many noble Lords and noble Baronesses, including the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, have expressed concern about Clause 15(5) through the somewhat misplaced fear that it means that standards can only be lowered. Let me be clear: that is not a correct interpretation. By removing unnecessary or unsuitable regulations, or by consolidating multiple regulations into one, it will be perfectly possible to add new regulations with higher standards under the powers to revoke, provided that the overall regulatory burden is not increased. My noble friends Lady Bray and Lady Lea recognised that point in their speeches, noting that we can keep our high standards with the Bill. I can confirm that the Government share their ambition to ensure that the body of legislation is better suited to the UK. The review of legislation will enable us to improve regulation for business and the economy, which I also hope addresses the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, although I suspect that it will not.
On business and trade, my noble friend Lady McIntosh raised the issue of imports and exports. I can confirm that we have already modified EU legislation covering the use of export restrictions to manage short supply, to make it effective in the UK following our exit from the European Union.
My noble friends Lord McLoughlin and Lord Hodgson spoke eloquently about their respective committee reports. The Government welcome the publication of the reports and I look forward to engaging with the recommendations that have been made. I hope my noble friends will understand that, given the reports’ recent publications, I cannot yet comment on what position the Government will take on the recommendations, but I will carefully study them and a formal response will be made in the usual manner.
Turning to the many comments on impact assessments and post-implementation reviews made by many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Hodgson, we recognise their importance and departments will be expected to take a proportionate approach to analysing the impact of SIs. For smaller-impact measures, this could include the completion of the impact section in an Explanatory Memorandum, a de minimis assessment or a fuller impact assessment, dependent on the regulation in question. Where expected business impacts exceed the current threshold of £5 million of annual business impacts, in the usual way departments will need to submit a full impact assessment for independent scrutiny if their change is a regulatory provision, as defined in the current better regulation framework, to which we are fully committed.
I am, of course, grateful for the recent recommendations of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee on impact assessments and will ensure that my officials make clear to departments the expectations for providing enough information to Parliament when studying new regulations. Departments will be expected to conduct proportionate monitoring and evaluation of their measures up to and including full post-implementation review. My officials will be providing more guidance on this to departments shortly.
I would like to reassure my noble friend Lord Balfe that the Government are committed to maintaining comprehensive safety standards, as he would expect, including in civil aviation and all manner of transport. Similarly, I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford—although again I suspect she will not accept the reassurance—that, while I do not agree with her assessment of the level of scrutiny that laws received within the EU institutions, I can confirm that the Government will not, of course, weaken building safety standards.
This Bill will ensure that we can end retained EU law as a legal category, simplifying and bringing certainty to our statute book. It will also ensure that we can bring forward genuine reform, now ensuring that the UK’s regulatory system is suited to our needs. The Government are determined to see the opportunities of Brexit and I know that the Bill delivers that result.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, it has been an absorbing and long debate and I will not extend it more than a few seconds. I did not expect the Minister to embrace my regret amendment and I am pretty sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, did not expect him to embrace hers either; however, noble Lords around the House picked up on all the issues set out in both amendments and amplified them in a very strong way. The scale of the disquiet over the Bill has really been emphasised in this debate, and if the Minister was in any doubt as to the level of disquiet the Bill is generating, then that has been dispelled. But the extent of this concern is itself an opportunity for all of us to work across the Chamber to produce the amendments and the changes that the Bill needs to make it fit for purpose. We on these Benches undertake to work with everybody, across parties and across Benches, to try to make sure that in Committee and particularly on Report, those changes are brought forward to your Lordships’ House. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington
At end insert “but regrets that this Bill threatens workers’ rights, environmental standards and consumer protections; that it has been introduced without a complete understanding of its scope or impact or what will replace the laws it revokes; that it creates damaging confusion and disruption in the economy during a cost of living crisis; is opposed by both business and workers representatives, including the Confederation of British Industry and the Trades Union Congress; that its legislative ‘sunset’ is arbitrary and will create a regulatory cliff-edge; that it ignores the concerns and lacks the consent of the devolved administrations; and that it undermines democratic scrutiny and accountability, providing ministers with unnecessary and unjustifiable powers.”.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
My Lords, I do not wish to move my amendment.
Lord Callanan
That the bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House, and that it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House that they consider the bill in the following order: Clauses 1 to 6, Schedule 1, Clauses 7 to 10, Schedule 2, Clauses 11 to 20, Schedules 3 and 4, Clauses 21 to 23, Title.