Westminster Hall

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 5 March 2024

[Ian Paisley in the Chair]

Educational Attainment of Boys

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the educational attainment of boys.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank the Backbench Business Committee, which agreed to this debate.

The Government have been improving the overall standards of education in this country, which we can see in the fact that 80% of our schools are good or outstanding. We have been rising up the international rankings on maths, reading and science, and yet today boys are still not doing as well at school as they should be. They are underperforming and that cannot go on any longer.

In addition to that, boys are behind girls at every single stage of education. The gender attainment gap is an expression of their underperformance because there is no biological or other intrinsic reason why boys should be behind girls, as they have been for the past 30 years. It is not a competition or a battle of the sexes, of course—we all want our girls to learn, to do well, to reach for the stars. But as a Parliament and as a society, we must want our boys to do the same. The figures are stark, as is the lack of interest or action, which I will come to later.

Let me run through a few facts. At 11, in reading, writing and maths, 56% of boys meet the expected standard, compared with 63% of girls. At 16, 43% of boys and 47.2% of girls received a grade 5 or above in GCSE English and maths. At 18, 34,000 fewer British boys every year go to university than girls of the same age. Boys are also behind girls in terms of exam performance in A-levels, T-levels and vocational education. At 16 to 24, more than 400,000 young men are NEETs—not in education, employment or training—and fewer young men go into the majority of our professions than young women.

We should also mention exclusions: another sign of boys not doing so well. The latest figures that I have show that 4,677 boys were excluded from school in one year. Those figures are hidden in plain sight. The Government, education research bodies, think-tanks, trade unions and social mobility organisations all know them, and yet there is silence—a silence of inaction, a silence of acknowledgment, a silence of care.

Research papers from academic research bodies and think-tanks continually highlight the facts, but say precious little on what should be done. One published only this year focused on how girls were outperforming boys, yet the main recommendation was to ask why so few girls study science, technology, engineering and maths—unbelievable! The plight of the boys was made invisible. Similar recent research reports give a scant nod to the gender attainment gap, but do not seek to explain it, let alone put forward ideas on what to do. Boys’ educational underperformance is a truth and no one dares speak its name: silence across the educational establishment.

Some have spoken, though. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), the Chair of the Select Committee on Education, cannot be in Westminster Hall this morning because he is chairing the Committee at this precise time. He reminded me recently, however, that the Committee has made a number of recommendations about the need to support boys in school. He believes it is a matter of concern that boys are disproportionately represented among many groups. He wants schools to be inclusive and to unleash the potential in every pupil and thinks that understanding the best ways for them to support boys and drive forward their academic attainment is so important. I know that he welcomes this timely debate.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on issues affecting men and boys. Our fourth policy report in this Parliament focused on boys’ educational underperformance. As in all our reports, we asked experts in the UK and across the world to speak to us. Crucially, they included six brilliant headteachers from across the UK—from Dorset, London, Cheltenham, Birmingham, Sussex and Rochdale—who have closed the gender attainment gap in a way that has also supported their female students.

We also heard from a national network of educators led by Dr Alex Blower, the access and participation development manager at Arts University Bournemouth. They are implementing an educational framework based on the “taking boys seriously” principles developed at Ulster University. I highly recommend that as a starting point, alongside how the six headteachers are succeeding at a practical level.

From what the successful school leaders told us, four main pillars need to be adopted. First, schools and trusts need to recognise the gap, collect data, then commit themselves to addressing it continuously throughout the school. From the board down to teaching assistants, it is a whole-school cultural approach. There has to be institutional will from the top to the bottom. The schools found that the problem is not with the boys, but with the way the adults treat them. They found, for instance, that some teachers were sanctioning boys more harshly than girls for the same offence and that they had lower expectations of boys and were inadvertently rewarding them for lower effort. Once the teachers recognised that, the improvements were immediate. They found that many of the disengaged teenage students were those who had arrived at secondary school aged 11 with low literacy skills. The successful schools put in place careful monitoring and interventions to ensure that language and reading skills enable the student to understand the lesson. It is basic stuff, not rocket science. We cannot expect the pupils to learn if they cannot access the curriculum because they do not have the basics. I will happily send the Minister a summary of what the successful schools have done.

Secondly, the schools create a boy-positive environment that is inclusive, fair—including with discipline—relational and aspirational. It is important that the boys and their parents recognise that they are included and that parents are supported if needed. The boys are not seen as a problem; they just need encouragement, understanding, to be believed in and given self-esteem. They need pushing. They need high expectations, their success to be celebrated and to understand the point of what they are being taught.

Thirdly, there need to be tactical interventions, especially on literacy, oracy and study skills, plus role models and mentors. The successful schools did not see role models and mentors as necessarily being outside school or in the media. They simply made sure that older boys were visible in succeeding in all subjects—not just traditional subjects such as football and physics, but drama, music and history. Not all boys need that but some do, especially boys with no father or positive male role model at home or in their community.

More male teachers are needed to show boys that learning is for them, too. It is telling that 80% of teachers told me that not having enough male teachers in school is a problem, especially given that 30% of primary schools have no male teachers at all. Yet the Department for Education and teaching and training institutions fail to promote teaching specifically as a career for young men. We have asked, but we have been ignored.

Lastly, as a society we simply need to take better care of our boys and support them when they need it. The attitude identified as harming boys’ progress is not limited to the school environment. We have all as a society inadvertently developed a culture that boys experience as hostile to them. We have developed the belief that boys’ underachievement is somehow natural and normal, because “boys will be boys”.

The negative narrative and indifference that boys face, especially those with problems, have to change. Some 41% of sixth form boys and girls have been told in school lessons that boys are a problem. Two in five boys have been told by schools, or outside organisations invited into schools, that they are a problem. Let that sink in. Two in five is a shameful statistic, and those schools need to take responsibility. What will the impact be? It’s hardly going to be positive, is it? Too many boys feel ignored, marginalised and unsupported.

We also need to deal with other problems caused by the adult world: family dysfunction; a lack of community aspiration and opportunity; gangs; criminal pathways; and social media’s so-called influencers. What to do? As well as making my earlier points, which are aimed at all involved in education, the APPG asked the Government to do a number of things and I will mention a few. We need to provide political leadership and a narrative that publicly acknowledges that the gender attainment gap exists and that boys’ relative underperformance is a problem that the whole educational community has to solve.

We need to launch or fund a sector-wide task and finish group, and a summit of headteachers to find and promote solutions, inviting successful heads to guide the taskforce and the Government’s thinking. We need a ring-fenced research programme on understanding and addressing the gender attainment gap, and to launch a “This boy can” campaign, similar to the “STEM is for girls” campaign and other initiatives. We should specifically promote careers in teaching and other professions, including health and social care, which would then put pressure on careers services.

We need to tell Ofsted to include the gender attainment gap in its assessment of schools and to give a positive assessment to schools that have policies and initiatives in place to address it. There should be more encouragement of mentoring schemes for boys, whether from current or former pupils, or community leaders. On behalf of boys without fathers or positive male role models at home, I urge the Government and the wider educational community to take action.

As a society, Government and Parliament that believe in inclusion and equality, we cannot let this situation continue. We must not and cannot tolerate our boys not doing as well at school as they should. The time to stop the inaction and stop ignoring the issue has come. We have to come together and tackle the underachievement of boys in our schools. We can and must do that together.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Thank you for bobbing, colleagues. I call Jim Shannon.

09:44

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for bringing forward this debate. He has spoken on this issue many times in Westminster Hall and the Chamber, with a real passion for the subject, encapsulating his concerns for his constituents and for our young boys. I will do likewise for my constituency, because this issue has been on my radar throughout my time as an elected representative, from when I was a councillor, starting in 1985, through my time as a Member of the Legislative Assembly, and now as an MP.

The hon. Gentleman clearly laid out the problem and I join him in speaking out for those young boys who seem to fall through the cracks. It is a long time ago, of course, but I can well remember that as a boy my attention was hard won by the teachers at school. Sometimes my mind tended to wander, and for that reason many a duster sailed past my head and many a cane came down upon my hand—all justified and well deserved. I do not think that it did me any harm; it may have motivated and challenged me to focus a wee bit more in the class and to do the right things.

The issue I am trying to get at is that times were much different. I can remember teachers encouraging me— I also have to say, Mr Paisley, that you and I both will have been encouraged by our parents, both mum and dad. They are the motivation for us in many cases; they are the encouragers who make us try to achieve higher goals and higher things, and we are thankful for them. They ensured we went through the exams and went straight out to work, though I certainly know how easy it would have been to slip through the cracks, like those young people the hon. Member for Don Valley referred to.

Every time A-level or GCSE results come out, I like to remind those who feel disappointed—I say this very humbly—that I did not excel at exams in the way that I should have. That was probably a case of not focusing and not putting in the hard swotting that was necessary. However—again, I say this very gently and humbly— I started work, progressed through that to my own business and ultimately became an elected representative. There are things that can be done and just because exams do not work out when someone is 16, 17 or 18, that does not mean that life is over and it cannot get better.

The issue of educational attainment for boys is one that my colleagues in Strangford, the former Education Ministers Michelle McIlveen and Baron Weir of Ballyholme, worked on very closely. Now, a good friend of ours, Mr Paisley, Paul Givan, is in the post and he really focuses on those issues back home. It is an accepted fact in Northern Ireland that Protestant males from working-class backgrounds are the lowest achievers, with some all-boys schools only having around 30% of pupils attaining A to C grades in five GCSEs, so there are a lot of things to do back home—that is not this Minister’s responsibility, of course, but I mention them because they relate to the story and the debate before us today.

The topic has been the subject of numerous reports and actions taken to improve the outcomes that some have labelled a generational educational problem. Indeed, the underachievement of young Protestant males in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), such as at Dundonald High School, is similar to that in mine.

One of my constituents works in a school. He has only five boys in his class and he caters to them day and daily on an individual basis because that is his focus and his responsibility. Some of the boys are incredibly bright but also incredibly troubled, with backgrounds that make their outlook on life understandable. Other boys struggle with the basics and use anger in an attempt to distract from what they believe is their failure—but in my opinion, the failure is not theirs. It is ours. The society we live in and the education system in place have allowed a situation where those who do not thrive academically feel like failures.

We have to make sure they do not feel like failures—we have to lift them above that. We need surgeons, but we also need the people who make the scalpels and the surgeons’ tools. Those who manufacture the knives are as necessary as those who wield the knife, something that seems to be lost in some approaches to learning. It is important that teaching captures our young people’s attention and takes them forward.

Having said that, I am aware of programmes in Northern Ireland, such as the Usel programme, which takes the children referred by social workers and who have slipped through the gaps and provides them with learning and employment and, more importantly, helps them to find their place in a fulfilling way. I have sat on the board of governors for Glastry College since 1987, approximately 37 or 38 years, and my boys grew up with young boys from Greyabbey.

Some of those boys were never going to achieve educational standards—it was never going to happen. They knew what they were going to do: they were going to work on the farms or building sites, because that was where their vocation was. Opportunities do not always come through education, but the opportunities to have education must be there. That is what we are really asking for. I am asking to make sure that those young boys have that opportunity and can do those things.

Those programmes are vital. I recently spoke to a lady involved in running one of them in a café, who told me that the overwhelming majority of children in the programme were young boys who simply did not feel worth anything or that they could achieve anything. In some cases, their dads were in prison, and some did not even know who their dad was. That is a fact of society; it is a fact of life. That is not a judgment, by the way— I am making an observational point because we have got to reach out, try to do things better and bring people forward.

Those cases are heartbreaking. The need for programmes and small classes is clear, but so is the need to change the structure so that those who excel in the practical know that they are valued and vital. That takes changes from the root, but all that takes money. There is no better person than this Minister to be asked this question, or to encapsulate our thoughts, put them together and tell us how the education system here on the mainland will work. It takes money and determination to help to make a change, and that is the message we need to send from this House today.

Grades are important and educational standards are vital—but, with respect, they do not always equate to success. I say that gently but honestly. Success is finding happiness, fulfilment and joy in life, and people need to know their worth in order to achieve that. Today must be the first step.

09:51

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I begin by wishing everyone a very happy St Piran’s Day. St Piran is the patron saint of tin miners and we have adopted him as our national saint in Cornwall, hence my attire.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on securing this debate on a very important issue—one that he feels passionately about, as do I. He opened the debate by laying out the case very clearly. Although this debate is about academic attainment, and that is clearly important, it should not just be about that. I stand before Members as someone who left school at 16—as I often say, most of my teachers thought I left long before that—and could not wait to get out of education, although I did quite well in my O-levels. I am a great believer that, although academic attainment is important, it is by no means the only important thing in life. The most important lessons I learned in life, I did not learn in the classroom.

We need to keep things in perspective. As a country and as a Government, we sometimes put so much emphasis on academic attainment that that becomes counterproductive for those, particularly boys, who do not achieve it and then feel that they have not quite come up to the mark and may become demotivated as a result. The debate needs to be about more than just academic attainment.

Having said that, I think we have a real challenge in this country when it comes to how we educate, support, equip and enable boys to fulfil their potential in life. Some recent figures showed that there are now 83,000 more boys not in education, employment or training than girls. That should raise a number of questions. Why is there such a big disparity between the number of boys who drop out of education or training and are not in jobs and the number of girls who do the same?

We need only look at the suicide rate among men, particularly young men, to wonder what is going on in our country and our society today. Three quarters of all suicides involve men. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 in this country, and that should really concern us. What is going on with the way we support, help and treat men that means so many of them decide to take their own lives?

I think there are a number of factors. I speak as a father to two boys, who are now grown men in their own right, and as a granddad to three, two of them boys—for the avoidance of doubt, the other one is a girl. I am so grateful, actually, that I am not a young man today because we seem to bombard our young men with so many negative messages about being a man.

The whole thing about toxic masculinity pushes negative messages all the time to young men, who then wonder what they are meant to be, who they are meant to be and how they are meant to behave. We need to take a long look at ourselves. I absolutely understand and agree that we have needed to address the inequality that many women have experienced in our society for a long time, and we have made huge progress on that, but we should not be putting men down as a result. I feel sometimes that that is what we have done, and we need to think carefully about it.

I am also concerned that we seem to put so much expectation on teachers. I am a great believer in the family and that having a stable, loving and positive family environment is the single thing that determines the outcome for boys and girls—for all children. Teachers clearly have an important role in providing education, but so often we expect our teachers to do far more than educate; we expect them to be social workers and mental health professionals and all sorts of other things. The state cannot do everything. I worry sometimes that we are always looking for the state to provide the answers to these challenges, whether in education, through schools and teachers, or other parts of the public sector, when I believe that most of the answers actually lie within the family. The Government have made some positive steps to support families and parents. That is hugely welcome, but we could do more to help parents to fulfil their role, rather than expecting teachers and other parts of the state to do it for them.

One thing I have noticed—the Minister is aware of this, and I am grateful for our meeting to discuss it—is that Cornwall, like other parts of the country, is seeing a huge rise in schoolchildren suffering with mental health conditions or who have neurodiverse conditions, and the education system is struggling to support them properly. Many parents are taking their children out and off-rolling them as a result. My observation is that disproportionately more boys are affected than girls. We need to look at what more we can do to support children struggling with these challenges and their parents.

As the Minister knows, I think fining the parents is not the answer. I have to put on record that I was disappointed that the Government are going to increase unauthorised absence fines for parents; that is not something I agree with at all. I think it is definitely the wrong thing to do. We need to provide help to ensure that children struggling with these conditions get the support they need, rather than threatening their parents with fines for the children not being able to attend school.

Finally, on the point about the underachievement of boys, a report into race and ethnic disparity in this country was commissioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) when she was Prime Minister. It found that one of the most disadvantaged groups in our country was white working class boys in coastal towns. I would ask the Minister: what have we done with that information? In Cornwall, where we clearly have many coastal towns and villages, it is young people, and particularly boys, growing up in those communities who consistently underachieve.

My Cornish colleagues and I worked hard to get Cornish included as a recognised national identity in the recent census. That has been really helpful, because we now have real data on how Cornish people are faring. The census found that only 14% of 18 to 24-year-olds who identified as Cornish went on to further or higher education, whereas nationally it was 34%. The Cornish are 20% behind the national average. Again, I would say to the Minister: what are the Government doing about that?

We are very much aware of the underfunding of schools in rural areas, which the Government have begun to address, but there is still a long way to go. We need to look at the funding of schools and other services in coastal areas. Many young people growing up in our coastal towns and villages find themselves disadvantaged because of the very nature of the challenges that coastal towns face. That is feeding through into the underachievement of those young people, particularly young boys.

I ask the Minister: what more can the Government do to support coastal communities and to ensure that schools in coastal communities get the resources that they need to close that gap or disparity, so that young people growing up in our coastal towns and villages do not suffer the disadvantage that they have done for far too long? I believe that this really should exercise the Government, particularly Ministers in the Department for Education, to look at what is going on and provide the support that we really need in Cornwall and other coastal parts of the country.

09:59

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Paisley. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on securing this incredibly important debate on the educational attainment of boys, and I also congratulate him on his excellent and constructive speech, which I am sure gave the Minister and his team a lot of food for thought.

Like my hon. Friend, I have raised this matter in debate and discussion on numerous occasions and not enough has been done to date by our Government to address these issues, despite the fact that our Government have been very successful in all that they have done in the past decade to improve our education system and to make it positive and successful. I pay tribute to the tireless work on men and boys’ issues by my friend and campaigner, Mark Brooks OBE, who has done so much to raise this issue outside this Chamber by campaigning across the country.

Overall, we know that there is an attainment gap between boys and girls. That is not a recent phenomenon—it has been the case for many years. The trend continues, and at all stages of education, boys lag behind girls. I am a great believer in social mobility, and education is an important path to achieve that. Opportunity through education and offering good education is what we all want. As a former teacher and lecturer, I have been disappointed to see how the issue of educational attainment for boys has not progressed in the way that I would have liked seen—I know that the Minister will agree with that too. Girls outperformed boys at the expected standard for all subjects in 2023, except for maths, where they were neck and neck or maybe the boys were slightly better. In reading, 76% of girls met the expected standard, which was down from 80% in 2022, while 70% of boys met the expected standard, which was unchanged from 2022. That is a huge gap in educational achievement between boys and girls.

I follow my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) in highlighting the underachievement of white working class boys, which has made the headlines quite a number of times in the past decade. There is obviously no quick fix to this long-standing and growing problem, which has developed into something of a taboo subject. Both the previous speakers have highlighted the fact that we have concentrated on women’s issues, which are very important, but we have somewhat neglected some of the issues facing men—which my colleagues have already raised, and I will not repeat.

White working-class boys from disadvantaged backgrounds underperform against boys of all other races and ethnicities in our country. The question is why. That demographic is falling further and further behind and shows no signs of catching up, which is a huge worry. White schoolboys eligible for free school meals have lower higher-education participation rates than any other group when analysed by the sex and ethnicity of those receiving free school meals.

Even for those not eligible for free school meals, white boys still trail. They have a higher-education participation rate of 36.4%, compared with Chinese boys, who have the highest participation rate. Why have Governments of different political persuasions not attacked that problem and come forward with solutions? What should be done? What can be done? We have heard some examples and I will not go down repeat them. We need to look seriously at tackling this problem, but to do so it must be accepted that a lot of working class white boys have disadvantaged backgrounds, which we have to help them to overcome.

We understand the reasons, but what action should we be taking? Schools need to adapt more and the curriculum needs to be adapted too. Academic excellence is not the only thing that matters, and there are a lot more jobs and opportunities out there that are not based on academic achievement. Good role models are also absolutely vital. The family is the primary educator, and one hopes that parents, as well as teachers, will have a huge input, but there are many other candidates for role models, including local sportsmen and women, businesses and former students, particularly those who are really successful.

In schools in my constituency of Bexleyheath and Crayford we quite often get those people to come in to enthuse the young boys and make them realise that, yes, they have got to have a basic education, but beyond that there are huge opportunities in sport, business, retail, music and entertainment—there is a great wide world out there that is not based on academia. There are many careers and jobs about which, unfortunately, teachers are not knowledgeable. It is absolutely true that teachers do a fantastic job; they are dedicated and hard-working, but former students, or successful footballers or whatever, who can come in and talk to boys about their lives and careers are great motivators.

When we look at today’s society in our country there is such huge opportunity. We want these underprivileged lads to have that opportunity to advance themselves, but they need to understand what is there. It is not just the academic curriculum that matters—teachers and parents need to be informed of what is available and of the routes through which people found successful career opportunities.

Great teachers can give inspiration for life—we all remember inspiring and motivational teachers. I had one when I was in sixth form many years ago called Peter Sillis. He was my history teacher. He was a great motivator, telling people that they did not just have do jobs based on academic achievement. He always told me that I had the wrong political views, but it was the 1960s and I am afraid that all the teachers were left-wing. That did not stop us sitting in the front desks opposite him in his lessons arguing back whenever possible. He was a great Harold Wilson supporter—I will not go any further with that one.

There are many dedicated and outstanding teachers for whom we are grateful. We praise teachers because it is a difficult job in today’s society. It is more difficult than when I was a teacher and when I was at school, because society and, I am afraid, behaviour has changed. However inspirational and good teachers are, they cannot do the work alone. They require the backing of the education establishment, the Government, academics, businesses, industry and the general population, believing in the teachers and in the boys. We need to motivate them. Of course, parents are the primary educators, and we need to help and enthuse them and get them to be positive and look at what can be done. Academies are a great triumph of our Conservative Government because they have opened up a different world, and they run differently from when I was teaching and when I was at school. That has been a positive achievement. Quite often, academies and secondary schools have people in to offer advice and to discuss matters.

We have heard that there is a shortage of male teachers. That is a regret because a lot of our primary schools have few, if any, male teachers. That may be difficult for families if at home the mother is bringing up the children without a male role model. We must never forget that boys from the most economically deprived areas of our country are just as clever, talented and able as anybody in the best areas. What they lack are the opportunities and the chance for support, encouragement and confidence. Being confident that they can and will do things is key in today’s society. My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley mentioned reaching for the stars, and that is a good matter to highlight. Boys can succeed if they get the opportunity to do so.

We need more publicity from the Government, academies and businesses and more investment in boys at an earlier age, particularly white working-class lads. In particular, we must not at any time let boys decry education, become disillusioned and opt out, so we end up with an underclass who are not educated and have not had the opportunity to make something of themselves. Yes, we need qualifications, but it is the basics that they all need—the ability to read and write and to be confident with maths. They will hopefully see what the opportunities are if we bring people into schools who are not educationalists. I know we as politicians go into schools and talk about life at Westminster, but we need more people to go into schools and talk about their careers. If we do not, not just individuals but society will be disadvantaged because there is huge talent out there among young males, including young white males, which needs to be grasped so they can all have a positive future. This debate is important, and I know the Minister is listening with great concentration, but he needs to take back to the Department the fact that this is an issue. The Government have done good things in many other areas, but this one is still in his in-tray.

10:13

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett), and I agree with him that no one forgets a good teacher. Indeed, my own socialist English teacher remains in regular contact with me, continuing to lobby and raise issues with me on almost a weekly basis. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on securing the debate and on the report from his all-party parliamentary group on this important issue.

Education is everything. It is the route to opportunity and the way to ensure that everyone is best equipped to fulfil their ambitions and dreams—it is, indeed, a silver bullet. Research shows that boys perform worse than girls on most major educational indicators through their school years, and some figures in particular should cause us concern. Boys are far more likely to be suspended and twice as likely to face permanent exclusion, and less than 60% of boys meet the expected standard in English, reading, writing and maths.

Specific groups of boys are particularly impacted by low attainment. Of those eligible for free school meals, only 34% of white British boys, 35% of mixed white and black Caribbean boys and 36% of Caribbean boys attained grade 4 in both English and maths GCSEs in 2023. Most noticeably, boys from Gypsy, Roma or Traveller backgrounds have especially low pass rates. I mention the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community in particular as Darlington has a high proportion of that population. I want to mention St Teresa’s Primary School, which is led by the excellent head Paula Strachan, who has done so much work focusing on the GRT community.

We must take these figures seriously. The Government have taken, and is taking, steps to close the gap, having driven up standards over the past decade. In Darlington, 80% of schools are now rated as good or outstanding, in comparison to 2010, when only 65% of our schools met those standards.

However, we must not forget the young working-class boys from the groups I mentioned—the kids who often miss out on so much. In Darlington I have seen at first hand that many working-class kids miss out on the aspiration and inspiration to succeed in education. Many of those boys come from families where they may not have a male role model; if they do, that male role model might not be in employment. Being encouraged to succeed is much more the norm in middle-class households, as well as in some ethnic minority communities. That is something that we can and must change. It is down to us as politicians, as well as our schools, community groups and Government—with parents, perhaps most importantly of all, taking the lead—to inspire kids to take education seriously, and schools need to have the resources to facilitate that.

In my role as the MP for Darlington, I have ensured that I have spent time at every one of the 36 schools in Darlington, hosting assemblies, answering questions and talking about my career in business and politics. That might only be a small thing, but it might be the one thing that inspires one person. My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley, who is leading this debate, has organised an amazing programme of role model lectures in his local schools, and his work in that respect is an example to us all. I am interested in hearing from the Minister what plans there are for more innovative ways to inspire and teach the boys who are falling behind where we want them to be.

Reading is a good place to start. The library at Skerne Park Primary School was opened last year by children’s author Cressida Cowell as part of her Life-changing Libraries scheme, in partnership with BookTrust. The project gave the school a dedicated library space and new books, and it has inspired teachers to put reading at the forefront of the curriculum. On my visits to Skerne Park, I have been delighted to see the enthusiasm with which pupils talk about what they are reading, and how much the variety of books engages children’s creativity and imaginations. Many of those inspired kids may previously have missed out on more conventional forms of education.

I was also delighted when the historic Darlington Library on Crown Street reopened its doors last year, having been saved by community campaigners after the Labour council sought to close it down. It is a vibrant place with a huge variety of books, where children, parents and carers can further indulge in reading in. It is beautifully decorated with murals depicting scenes from Charlie Mackesy’s wonderful “The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse”. It is a vital hub for our community, with a focus on being welcoming to children and therefore encouraging them to read. It also helps to inspire parents to encourage and embrace their children in learning. Facilities such as that can really inspire a love of reading and open doors to other worlds for our children.

In addition to that, we must not ignore the need for further focus on children with special educational needs and disabilities. As of January last year, 22% of boys were identified as having special educational needs. That is a further sign that we must look at innovative ways to make sure these children are educated in the way that best fits them. More than 300 children in Darlington are still waiting up to three years for a child and adolescent mental health services assessment, so much more still needs to be done to ensure that more boys do not miss out.

Before I conclude, I must put on record my concerns about Labour’s plans to tax private education. When I recently visited Dame Allan’s School in Newcastle, I was blown away by number of places it gives to local disadvantaged communities—funded entirely by itself. That could all be thrown away if VAT is added to school fees, which risks robbing that community of that opportunity.

We cannot uneducate a person who has learned to read. If we arm them with the basics, we lay the ground for them to succeed. Education is a silver bullet in terms of achievement, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister what more the Government are doing in this area.

10:20

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. It is great to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), who made some incredibly interesting and pertinent points. I agree with him particularly about putting VAT on private schools. Abbeywood School, a private special school in Hellaby in my constituency, deals with people with severe SEN, and I worry that it will close if VAT is applied. That would have a detrimental effect on Rother Valley and on our children with special needs.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for the work, time and effort he has put into championing and supporting men and boys in this place through the APPG and for consistently raising this issue in debates and questions. I know that he feels strongly about it, and he is making a real difference in raising its profile. Prior to his election, these issues were not raised nearly as much as they are now. He really is giving a voice to men and boys and their place in this world, so I thank him for that.

It is an undeniably shocking statistic that more than three times as many men as women take their own lives every year. In fact, suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50, with one suicide taking place every 90 minutes, which is as long as this debate will last. I believe a lot of this stems from education in schools and from a lack of attainment, and to tackle this epidemic, we need to take a new approach. There have been some incredibly effective adverts and advice—Norwich City FC’s incredibly powerful “You Are Not Alone” advert springs to mind—but they focus on tackling symptoms, not on addressing the causes of male suicide.

To address any problem, and especially this issue, we must start with young people. Schools are the perfect place to build self-esteem and character and to grow the boys of today and the men of tomorrow. However, on the facts, it is clear that many schools are not yet the welcoming, nurturing place where all young men can thrive. As we have discussed, boys are more than twice as likely to be excluded. Even by the end of reception, their attainment is already significantly behind that of girls. These shaky foundations do nothing for the rest of boys’ education, eventually leading to tens of thousands fewer boys attending universities than their female peers.

Crucially, this trend is exaggerated by external factors, especially in less well-off areas. Boys on free school meals continue to be let down by schools that fail to provide an environment geared towards them, and that has a consequential effect on their grades and thus their lives. After all, everything from earnings to employment and from happiness to suicide rates is heavily in favour of university graduates. The picture is even worse for white working-class boys from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are the least likely to gain entry to our elite universities of any socioeconomic group. Universities often pride themselves on their diversity and inclusiveness statistics but, when it comes to white working-class boys from disadvantaged backgrounds, all universities are abjectly failing. There are not enough—frankly, there are barely any—outreach programmes for this demographic group, who are just not going to university. Through no reason other than being born a boy in a working-class area such as mine, they are being pushed away from higher education and face a statistically worse quality of life—and even an earlier death.

What, then, is to be done to support these boys through education, so that they can grow into happy, fulfilled men? If the problem starts with early education, how can we foster a healthier, more boy-friendly education system? Getting more men into teaching is clearly a good start. Male role models can play an important part in a boy developing a healthy sense of self and growing into a well-adjusted man. Only a quarter of teachers with whom boys in school might spend the majority of their time are male, so we must do more to encourage men to re-engage with schools, and bring about a shift towards helping to understand young men, rather than excluding them.

However, when we go to the nursery sector—even before schools—that figure is dramatically worse. Only 3% of nursery teachers are men. That is a shocking statistic. At the very earliest age—I thank the Government and the Minister for opening up childcare places, which my girls are benefiting from—only 3% of teachers are male. That is an absolute disgrace. We need to make sure that men are seen by young boys as role models—as leaders, learners and educators—literally from as soon as they go to university, because at the moment they are not, and unfortunately that sets in train later failures.

However, the problem cannot be solved just with more male teachers. I know that young women can and do make brilliant and inspiring teachers, and are clearly good role models for young men. But there are thousands of small changes that could be made right across the education system that could incrementally improve it for boys—for example, encouraging them to play sports or perhaps learn an instrument, both of which have proven beneficial impacts on education and therefore on life. Perhaps we should be opening up diverse scholarships to working-class boys at schools, making higher education more open and accessible to a group who our universities are failing.

Perhaps, though, the most important thing we can do is continue to open up the conversation about our failure to properly provide a suitable education for boys, and especially white working-class boys, that can allow them to reach their full potential. We need to encourage a sense of togetherness and allyship, where currently there might be division or gender bias, to make sure they are supported in their educational career. We need an open and honest conversation, both within schools and between schools, to explore how to best support boys in their development towards becoming young men. We need to recognise the effects of education, and particularly the rejection from education that some boys feel, on the rest of their lives, and to build schools and universities designed to welcome and champion them.

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) about bringing back former male teachers and alumni to talk to boys. Schools in Rother Valley such as Wales High School do that very well, but all schools should be bringing back as many people as possible—to talk to boys, to show success, to show that there is a future, to encourage them and to show them that they can achieve anything.

That leads me to a couple of other points I want to make about the current structural failings, which I do not think we have touched on yet. A University of Kent study from not that long ago found that boys felt they were not expected to do well at school. I am sure we have all seen this “Boys will be boys” attitude—“Oh, he’s misbehaving. Boys will be boys. They’ll be fine. It’s the girls who are sitting and reading.” Yes, boys will be boys, of course; but they are no less good than girls, especially when it comes to education. If boys are allowed to run amok or run riot, or are treated differently, they will not have the same expectations. We need to make sure they have those expectations. The University of Kent study was incredibly insightful, because the primary school boys who were interviewed felt that they did not need, and were not expected, to achieve the same as girls. But that is wrong: they need to be expected to achieve the same as girls, and we need to make sure it is the same.

Another point—I hate to say this, and I know my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley will criticise me for using this phrase—is gender bias. The University of Trento in Italy found that there was a gender bias in the marking of educational papers. When girls’ names and boys’ names were on the same papers, boys were found to be statistically marked lower—harder—than girls. However, in a blind test of exam papers, they were found to be equals, so there clearly is some sort of gender bias against boys when it comes to marking. If that is happening in school, it will lower the expectations of boys and retard their progress. That is wrong.

I think every Member here has mentioned that boys need to be encouraged, nurtured, treated differently and given better role models, and another aspect we should talk about is single-sex schools. Only 6% of schools in the UK are single sex, and the majority of those are female single-sex schools. I am not saying that single-sex schools are the best, or better or worse than mixed schools, but surely there needs to be an open conversation. If boys are doing worse at school—clearly, they are, and we all agree with that—surely there need to be schools that are geared to raising up boys, including some of the white, working-class, disadvantaged boys, and perhaps that should be in a single-sex educational space.

I declare an interest: I went to a single-sex male school and had a great time. It was wonderful; I felt nurtured and loved, and it was a very good school. I now have two girls, who will do well wherever they go to school. We need to look at this issue, because the drive since the 1970s has been to get rid of single-sex schools, and yet for some boys——and for some girls—single-sex schools might be the right place to be educated.

The last thing I want to touch on before I close is the ultimate responsibility for boys’ education, which is parental responsibility. We cannot get away from the fact that the majority of a boy’s time will be spent with his family, and the family is the bedrock of society, of education and of his future. We need to do more to support families, because it is families, the role models in families and the way boys are treated in families that will have the biggest effect on how boys do at school—not what a teacher says, but where they spend most of their time. We need to ensure that all policy has that family-friendly and family-centric approach first, because that is the most important thing for success for everyone, male or female.

I want to sum up by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley and the all-party group for its report on how improving the lives of half of those in education will improve the lives of everyone else. Turning schools towards, not away from, young men will only serve to improve their lives and those of everyone in the community. We cannot allow the unseen killer of suicide to continue to claim men’s lives, and we must address the root cause of those tragic deaths. Schools are clearly where we need to start.

10:31

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Mr Paisley. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on securing this debate, which seeks to dig deeper into the educational attainment of boys at school, and other hon. Members on sharing their views this morning.

The attainment gap between boys and girls is something that starts at an early age and grows throughout a boy’s time at school. In 2022-23, according to Department for Education statistics, by the end of the reception year, just under two thirds of boys had what is classed as a good level of development, compared with about three quarters of girls. By the end of primary school, the proportion of boys reaching the expected standards of reading and writing remained lower than girls. Going into secondary school, boys lag behind girls across every headline measure collected by the Department for Education and, as hon. Members have mentioned, boys are more likely to be excluded from school during that time.

As hon. Members have also touched on, other significant attainment gaps exist in our school system. For example, following the covid pandemic, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and others grew, while white boys from disadvantaged backgrounds underperform compared with those of other races and ethnicities. Labour has set out how we would tackle the inequalities in our education system with our plan to break down the barriers to opportunity for everyone in this country, because all boys and girls should have the same opportunities to have an excellent education, leading to a good job and a good standard of living.

We know that the gap starts at a young age, where boys start school at a lower attainment level and with less developed language skills. Indeed, the pandemic shone a light on how a child’s early language development goes on to affect their later education. That is why Labour has called for primary schools to be equipped with funding to deliver evidence-based, early language interventions. That is something we would prioritise in government. Better communication skills would boost boys’ and girls’ outcomes and improve engagement with school.

Research has also consistently shown that the attainment gap is largest for those on free school meals, coming from the poorest families. Again, that issue has been raised by hon. Members today. We all know that there are shocking levels of child poverty in this country, leaving children too hungry to learn. That is why we would introduce free, funded breakfast clubs in every primary school to provide children with a softer start to the school day. That would give them an opportunity to play and socialise with their friends, developing their communication and social skills, as well as providing them a breakfast, setting them up well to learn throughout the day.

We know that the quality of teaching is a huge driver of pupils’ attainment. Quite simply, there are not enough teachers in our schools. Many teachers feel overstretched, and turnover is higher than before the pandemic, and there is no real plan to tackle the issues with their working conditions. They feel badly let down by this Government. To ensure that we have the best—and necessary—teachers in our schools who can deliver the best life chances for all our young people, Labour would recruit 6,500 new teachers to fill the gaps. We would pay for that by ending the tax exemptions that private schools currently enjoy.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her words and comments. It is World Book Day this week, and an event for it is taking place in Portcullis House. Looking to the future, should the Government change, is it the shadow Minister’s intention to ensure that books and reading would be a clear, core part of any child’s education?

[Catherine McKinnell]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Indeed, we will have a debate here tomorrow about World Book Day and how important reading and literacy is for children. We recognise it as the absolute core foundation of every child’s start in life, ensuring the best education for every child. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has highlighted that today.

We would also reintroduce a school support staff negotiating body to ensure a proper voice for support staff, because we know that they power our schools, but unfortunately are currently leaving the profession in droves.

[Peter Gibson]

Turning back to Labour’s plans to tax education, I wonder if the Labour party has actually done any modelling on how many children whose parents are struggling really hard to put their children through private education will end up in the state sector, and how many children on assisted free places, bursaries and so on, funded by those private schools, will end up back in the state sector?

[Catherine McKinnell]

As I said earlier, Labour believes that education should be a priority, and should be at the centre of national life for this country. That requires the necessary funding to ensure that there are teachers. We know there are teaching gaps throughout our school system. Young people are not being taught by specialists in their subjects, and we know there is a shortage. Teachers are struggling to manage the workloads as a result. Labour would prioritise supporting the teaching workforce for the 93% of children who are educated within the state sector. That would come by removing the current tax exemptions that private schools enjoy. That has been modelled by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, showing very clearly that we would have a net benefit from the policy, closing—I know hon. Members are here to debate this very point today—the attainment gap between the outcomes for all children at school, and particularly boys.

[Peter Gibson]

The hon. Lady has not given us the figure that I asked for in my earlier intervention. It is simply my view, and I am sure that of all hon. Members on the Government side, that we do not level up opportunity by robbing opportunity from those who are already enjoying it.

[Catherine McKinnell]

It is interesting that hon. Members are here today to discuss an education system that they are highlighting is currently letting children down, which we in Labour agree is letting children down. After 14 years in government, it is quite remarkable that hon. Gentlemen would take that attitude to a costed proposal that seeks to meet the huge demands within our education system and the requirement to ensure that every school has the teaching workforce it needs. That will be Labour’s priority. The choice we make in government will be to ensure that we have an education system that can meet the demands we are hearing about today.

I want to echo the points that have been raised about mental health. As has been highlighted, we know that boys are far less likely to reach out for support and often struggle to speak about mental health challenges. That is holding children and young people back, impacting on their ability to learn as well as their health, and the number of children waiting for support continues to rise, along with absence from schools.

[Alexander Stafford]

I have been following the hon. Lady’s argument, which I believe is to put VAT on private schools and use the money from that to top up and improve the education system. We have also talked about suicide prevention. Obviously, suicide is a very complex issue when it comes to men and includes factors such as mental health. If the Labour party wants to put VAT on private schools to help education, then, following the same logic, the hon. Lady should agree with putting VAT on private healthcare to improve healthcare outcomes. Is it the Labour party’s position to put VAT on private healthcare to improve mental health outcomes?

[Catherine McKinnell]

The Labour party will present our offer for Government when the general election comes, which we are all waiting for at the moment, and we will put our fully costed plans in our manifesto. We are focused on improving and increasing mental health support for young people, which I will get to.

[Sir David Evennett]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I will respond to the previous intervention first. We will pay for that by ending the loopholes that non-doms enjoy in this country. We will fund mental health support, as well as breakfast clubs, which are intended to tackle the issues that hon. Members have highlighted in this debate, which are getting worse, not better. I hope that hon. Members would be minded to note that, because they are making the case to their own Government to find solutions to these problems—problems that a Labour Government would respond to.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Member gives way, I remind colleagues that this is a debate on educational attainment of boys, not a general debate on the Budget, which will come later in the week.

[Sir David Evennett]

I have been listening with great interest. Obviously, the hon. Lady is putting forward Labour party policy generally. I am very concerned about what Labour would do if it ever got into government to help these working-class boys to achieve. The issues she is raising are very generalised.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I would not suggest that the right hon. Gentleman has not been listening to my speech, but I have set out a whole range of measures that Labour would put in place to raise the attainment of every child.

Going back to mental health support, we would ensure that there are dedicated counsellors in every secondary school and that there are mental health hubs in every community. Children and their families are waiting and waiting for the mental health support they need. The absence levels in schools are clearly being affected as a result.

It is clear that there is an attainment gap between boys and girls. It is Labour’s view that we need to do everything we can in government to break down the barriers to opportunity that too many of our children face, and we will do that. I agree with hon. Members: there is no silver bullet to solve this. That is why we have proposed a whole range of measures that match the ambition we have for every child. We would put the education of all our children at the heart of national life. It is the very least that our children and our country deserve.

10:44

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) on securing a debate on this important subject. The last time that he and I were at an event on this topic was a meeting of his APPG, where he had invited Richard Reeves to come and talk about his book, “Of Boys and Men”. We discussed a lot of these issues. The book is very interesting and thought provoking. In my previous life as a charity director I was involved with lots of organisations that did great work to support boys through education and employment pathways, so I have a lot of sympathy with the issues that my hon. Friend raises. I thank him for his continued campaigning on this important issue.

The Government’s track record in education has been in improving standards dramatically. We have been rising up the league tables internationally in stark contrast to Labour-run Wales, which has been falling down them. Girls continue to outperform boys across most headline measures, although the gap has been narrowing. At key stage 2 the gap between boys and girls at the expected standard in reading, writing and maths has fallen since 2022; it is the lowest since 2016. Although that is in part due to a slight decrease in girls’ attainment, increased attainment for boys in reading, writing and maths combined has also supported that. Similarly at key stage 4 there was a gap of 6.6 percentage points between girls and boys achieving a grade 5 in English and maths in 2018-19. That was down to 4.3 percentage points in 2022-23.

However, we know there is more to do. Raising attainment for all pupils, including boys, is at the heart of the Government’s agenda. My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley is right that boys’ attainment is not currently as high as that of girls. He will know that the attainment of some ethnic groups is not as high as some others, and that the attainment of free school meal children is not generally as high as non-free school meal children. I know that the issue of white working- class boys is something he has spoken about many times, as have my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett). I was on the Education Select Committee when it did its report on the attainment of white working-class boys, which the Government at the time welcomed.

Our approach is to provide schools and teachers with the resources and expertise to target support at those that need it most. Often it will be targeted at disadvantaged young people. The pupil premium helps to provide extra support to improve the outcomes of disadvantaged pupils. The funding will rise to more than £2.9 billion in the coming financial year—an £18 million increase from the year before. We are targeting a greater proportion of the schools’ national funding formula towards deprived pupils—more than ever before. That will be more than £4.4 billion, or 10.2% of the formula allocated to deprivation this year.

More broadly, we have invested significantly in education to ensure that all young people can reach their potential. The core schools budget next year will be the highest ever in real terms per pupil, helping schools in their vital work to close attainment gaps and level up educational opportunities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley talked about the importance of literacy, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson). This is a key area of focus for us because evidence shows that high quality early childhood education, including language development and literacy, has a positive impact on outcomes in both the short and long term.

[Alexander Stafford]

On literacy, does the Minister agree that there should be a statutory requirement for every primary school to have a library? At the moment one in seven primary schools do not have a library.

[David Johnston]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; I was not aware of that statistic. I absolutely agree with him about the importance of libraries and of children reading. When I visit primary schools in my own constituency, I tell all the children that the most important thing they can do is read a book. I share his enthusiasm for that.

We have invested more than £17 million in the Nuffield early language intervention programme, improving the language skills of reception age children who need it most following the pandemic. Our English hubs programme is improving the teaching of reading, with a focus on phonics, early language development and reading for pleasure. That has provided appropriate and targeted support to more than 5,000 schools across England since it was launched. Targeted support is also being provided through the national tutoring programme, with almost 5 million courses started since it began in November 2020. In 2022-23, more than half of the pupils tutored under the programme were boys, and we expect tutoring to continue to be a staple offer from schools, providing targeted support for those children who need it most.

My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington raised the important issue of SEND, and I completely agree with him. I had a very good visit to Beaumont Hill Academy in his constituency, and was impressed by the dedication of the staff team there. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay talked of the educational challenges in coastal areas such as his. He will know that Cornwall is one of our education investment areas, precisely for that reason, to be given a package of additional funding and support.

[Peter Gibson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; he is being incredibly generous with his time. May I place on the record my thanks to him for visiting the fantastic Beaumont Hill Academy last week? My sincere apologies for not being able to join him on that visit. Was he able to visit the site of our planned 48-place new special school?

[David Johnston]

Unfortunately, I was not, although the plans were indicated to me. Attendance is obviously fundamental. Ensuring children reach their potential requires them to be in school, which is a big priority for us. We are more than doubling the number of attendance hubs to support 2,000 schools, investing £15 million to expand one-to-one mentoring to help 10,000 children. Many hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley, talked about the importance of mentoring. We will require all schools to share data to support early intervention. Our plan is working, with 380,000 fewer children persistently absent or not attending last year, and numbers continuing to fall.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) was right to raise how few men work in early years education. I wrote a piece a few weeks ago, trying to encourage more men into that area. On the teaching workforce more broadly, my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley is right to say that men make up a smaller proportion of the teaching workforce than women. It is important to attract more male teachers to the profession.

We have seen some change. In state-funded nursery and primary schools, we have seen an increase of more than 6,500 male teachers since 2010, but we want to go further, through our campaigns to attract and retain excellent teachers, including more men. We want teaching to be an attractive and competitive profession. From September 2023, starting salaries rose to at least £30,000 in all areas of the country, alongside a 6.5% pay award for experienced teachers and leaders in the past financial year, ensuring all teachers launch their careers on a competitive starting salary.

On exclusions, creating a culture with high expectations of behaviour is very important. Our behaviour in schools guidance provides clarity and support to schools, to help them create calm, safe and supportive environments. We are clear that permanent exclusions should be used only when absolutely necessary, as a last resort, and should not mean exclusion from education. I was concerned by what my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay described, and we are looking at what action may need to be taken there.

Briefly touching on professions, I used to work on widening access to professions before I became an MP. My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley is absolutely right that professions, such as medicine, the law and others, have seen a huge shift from being overwhelmingly male to overwhelmingly female in their entrants. That is less so at senior levels, but certainly in entrance to those professions, that is the case. I used to work on this issue, partly from the aspect of class and socio- economic background. Actually, a lot of those professions had been successful in recruiting more women and ethnic minorities, but disproportionately from private schools and professional families. Whether male or female, black, white or Asian, it was considerably harder to get into those professions if from a working-class background. Indeed, an individual is 24 times more likely to become a doctor if a parent is a doctor, and only 6% are from a working-class background. I agree with my hon. Friend about the issue and would only say that there are a number of issues about access to those professions and more work is needed to make sure that who gets into them is representative of the country at large.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and others set out the importance of people, and especially boys, understanding the full range of jobs and careers open to them and of having mentors and other support to encourage them along those pathways. That is a big part of the Careers & Enterprise Company’s network of enterprise advisers, who are volunteers from businesses who help schools in that regard.

We accept that there is always more that can be done to improve outcomes for children of all backgrounds, including boys, and we will continue our work to ensure that in every area, children can access excellent schools and high-quality technical and higher education and go on to good jobs. I am enormously grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley for continually raising the issue of educational attainment for boys. The Government agree that boys should feel included and supported at school to help them reach their full potential and we will continue to work to deliver our commitment of building a world-class education system for all children and young people.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I call Mr Fletcher, who has a couple of minutes to wind up.

10:56

[Nick Fletcher]

I thank everyone who has taken part in this extremely important debate. I also want to put on record my thanks to Mark Brooks OBE, who is a colleague and friend. He has done a huge amount of work on the matter over the past few decades.

I am genuinely pleased by many of the points made. One thing that has come through is the importance of family. We put an awful lot on teachers, but I genuinely believe, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) said, that we tend to put too much on teachers a lot of the time. The family is the silver bullet for everything—I genuinely believe that. Unfortunately, we have 2.6 million separated families out there with 4 million children, so there will be an awful lot of boys who do not have a male role model in their lives. We really need to take that on board. It is a huge problem that is coming down the line and we need to do everything we can to get mentors and role models in front of those young boys. If we do not, they could quite easily end up on a path that we do not want them to take—and that will not just cost us with a society we do not want to belong to, but it will cost us a fortune to look after those boys once they have taken that wrong path.

I had hoped we would have got a little more from the Minister today. There are some easy wins there for us that will not cost us any money. For instance, if we just write to schools and say to them, “Please look at the gender attainment gap and whether it exists in your school. If it does not, fantastic. Well done. Come back to us and tell us what you are doing to make sure it does not. If it does, just acknowledge it.” We need to acknowledge that there is a gap there. It is said that the first sign of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. We cannot be in a position like that with our boys. If we let boys down at 11 years old, we will have a huge problem in future.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) and I mentioned one word: expectation. We should expect boys to do well. They can do well and with the right support they will do well. Once again, I thank everyone for coming. I am sorry for the Minister that, unfortunately, there are no Back-Bench Labour MPs here today. That is really disappointing. It just proves what they would do with working-class boys and boys as a whole if they did get into Government: not a lot. Unfortunately, we are where we are, but I thank everyone on this side.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the educational attainment of boys.

Farming in Wales and the UK

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I will call Jonathan Edwards to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up—as he knows; he is an experienced Member—as is the convention for 30-minute debates. I suspect, however, that he will get a number of interventions.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered farming in Wales and the UK.

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and to have the opportunity to raise the concerns expressed in rural Wales in particular, but seeing that there is an honourable turnout from Members from all constituent parts of the UK, I suspect we will hear about the concerns of other farmers across the UK.

Feelings are running at fever pitch in Wales, and last week a mass protest converged on the capital city of Cardiff. For those in the rural heartlands of Wales, Cardiff is not the easiest place to get to. My hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) will attest that it is easier to get to London than to Cardiff from Caernarfon.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

It is easier to get to Dublin.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Yes, it is even easier to get to Dublin. The turnout was extraordinary and showed the strength of feeling that has erupted over recent weeks. I was listening to the Wales podcast on the BBC on the train down over the weekend, and it said it was the largest demonstration that the Senedd has ever seen. That is testament to the strength of feeling in rural Wales.

Although I do not come from farming stock directly, my father and his brother were raised on Ffos y Ffin farm in Capel Dewi following the death of their father from tuberculosis. He got involved in the local young farmers movement, and his best friend was David Woods, who farmed Waunyryddod in Cwmfelin Mynach in the west of Carmarthenshire, near Whitland. Some of my fondest memories as a child include visiting the Woods family at their farm on weekends, watching my father and Mr Woods milk the herd, and helping out as I got a bit older. I witnessed at first hand the unwavering dedication of our farmers and grew a huge appreciation for their work and for the pride they feel in being food producers for the general population.

The pressures farmers work under are considerable. They are open to hugely fluctuating costs and prices while their payments largely flatline, and they work on extremely small margins. One of my first meetings after being elected was with a dairy farmer, who explained the huge financial difference that a 1p increase or decrease in the price of milk would cause his business. The inflationary pressures squeezing our economy are hitting farmers particularly hard, with skyrocketing input costs severely impacting their income. Last year, I received a justifiably angry message from a constituent complaining that fertiliser costs had doubled in less than 12 months. He was talking about having to drastically cut back on production. The inflationary pressures have driven up costs across the industry, yet farmers have not had the option of passing those costs on to consumers due to their position in the supply chain.

Mental health has become a major issue in the agricultural community. Suicide rates are far higher than those of the general population. Economic pressures undoubtably play a role, as do the insular nature of the job, the relentless hours and the demanding schedules. A recent survey revealed that over a third of farmers experience clinical depression and nearly half struggle with anxiety. I have been there myself on many occasions, and it is absolutely no joke. Being in that state of mind while working in an extremely dangerous workplace obviously makes matters even more serious. I know of a farmer who has had his struggles over the years. Recently he walked into a slurry pit before snapping out and phoning the emergency services, which thankfully got there in time. Mental health in farming should be a priority for policymakers, and I pay tribute to charities such as the DPJ Foundation, based in Carmarthen, for their work in providing advocacy and raising the profile of those issues.

From an economic perspective, agriculture is comparatively more important to the Welsh economy than that of the UK as a whole. Take out farming and other sectors will be severely hit. To further make the point, National Farmers Union Cymru recently hosted a meeting with over 100 stakeholders who are worried about the new sustainable farming scheme of the Welsh Government. A wide range of organisations and companies were represented, including agricultural contractors, vets, academic institutions, farming charities, legal firms and trade associations, as well as major meat, milk and food service companies based in and operating in Wales.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on bringing this debate forward. He is absolutely right to highlight the issues for Wales, and indeed for the whole of the United Kingdom. Does he agree that there are many issues facing farmers UK-wide, and that the farming community needs support to ensure that we are providing opportunities to not only those from farming backgrounds but those outside, so that they can realise that there is potential for a fulfilling career in the countryside? Perhaps we need to push for this vocation as passionately as we do for the NHS or even engineering.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am extremely grateful for that very valuable contribution. Later in my speech I will talk about how the agricultural community needs to perceive us as wanting to work with them, as opposed to being unsympathetic towards them, which, unfortunately, is especially the case in Wales at the moment.

Returning to my point about the NFU gathering, following the meeting, NFU Cymru president Aled Jones said:

“The food and farming supply chain is an £8 billion industry in Wales that employs some 233,000 people, Wales’ biggest employer. As a sector we are completely interlinked with each part of the supply chain relying on the other for their viability.

A productive, progressive and profitable Welsh farming sector is essential to the wider supply chain, farmers spend around £1.4bn annually on products such as feed, fertiliser, veterinary and medicines, farm machinery and contract work. The produce from our farms is processed and sold in retail and food service markets in Wales, across the UK and globally.”

To return to the issue of intervention, we get the impression that policymakers at a Welsh level in particular view our farmers as some sort of economic burden. Their mindset needs to be turned around, and a key part of that is accepting the anchor status of farming for the whole rural economy.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate, and I very much agree with all the points that he has made. He will be aware that in much of East Anglia, just as in Wales, one in eight jobs in rural communities are linked to agriculture, food and drink, and the wider supply chain. I wonder whether more can be done to support the agricultural sector through public sector procurement, such as the UK Government and the devolved Governments introducing minimum requirements for food in our hospitals and our schools to be purchased from local farmers.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am extremely grateful for that intervention. I think that such a policy would give the added bonus of providing high-quality food in hospitals and schools, which we should be aspiring to achieve as policymakers.

[Sir Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what is going on in Wales—the real disappointment faced by Welsh farmers under the Labour Government provided by the Welsh Assembly—is the gypsy’s warning for farming across the whole of the UK? If we were unlucky enough to get a Labour Government, what is happening in Wales would happen in the rest of the UK, and there is not even a Labour MP present to defend the Welsh Government. It’s a shocker!

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his passion and his support of the farming industry. I do not want to write his election leaflet for him, but I will certainly be concentrating on Welsh Government policy further on in my speech.

Earlier this month, 3,000 farmers converged on Carmarthen market under the protest banner “Digon yw Digon”, which translates to “Enough is Enough”. I pay tribute to my constituents Gary Howells and Aled Rees for mobilising so many farmers in my home county. Indeed, protests have been erupting across Wales and England. As an aspiring historian in a past life, I have to mention that those massive protest meetings have parallels with the Rebecca rioters’ mass gathering at Mynydd Sylen, near Pontyberem, in the summer of 1843—I had to get that in. What we are witnessing today, however, is colossal discontent in the agricultural community. Thankfully, organisers and the unions have done a great job in ensuring that matters have remained peaceful and within the law.

Much of that anger has been growing since the EU referendum, as farmers have witnessed the destructive approach taken by policymakers to the development of post-Brexit agricultural policy. There is no doubt that leaving the European Union has been a disaster for Welsh farming. They were promised sunlit uplands by the leave campaign but have been let down, and in the post-Brexit trade deals that have been signed, the interests of our farmers have been sold down the river by the UK Government. I acknowledge that there seems to have been a slight change of approach with the current deals, such as the one with Canada. However, that is too little, too late in relation to some of the previous deals.

The Welsh Government calculate that, for the period 2021-25, rural support funding will be £243 million less than had we been under EU farming support policy, and that figure does not account for inflation. The difficulty faced by the Welsh Government in managing an overall budget declining in real terms perhaps explains some of the unfavourable policy approaches that we have seen towards agriculture over the last few years. If the UK Government have left themselves open to accusations that they have neglected agriculture, the Welsh Government are open to accusations of hostility.

[Hywel Williams]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate; he is making a fine speech. He points to the double whammy facing Welsh farming. It is not only Brexit and the subsequent disaster—of course, the Canada deal is far from settled; a cruel pantomime is going on at the moment, as we shall see later in the main Chamber—but there is also the incompetence and lack of understanding and listening from the Welsh Labour Government, as witnessed at the very large protests last week. Clearly, we need a change.

[Jonathan Edwards]

My hon. Friend’s point about the Welsh Government is well made. I do not know of any farmer who votes for the Labour party, and I suppose one can understand why the Labour party takes the approach it does. But it is disastrous for agriculture to have a Government who are open to the accusation of being hostile to farmers.

One of the most emotionally difficult meetings I have had as an MP was on the case of the farm that was struck down with bovine TB. It is difficult to explain the mental health impact on those affected. Earlier this month, “Ffermio”, an agricultural programme on S4C, unmasked those horrors graphically on the Castell Howell farm of Mr and Mrs Davies in Capel Isaac in my constituency. The family had to witness their cattle herd shot in front of them, one by one. It was absolutely harrowing for the viewer and utterly despairing for the family. It has become a tipping point for the emotional outpouring we are witnessing in rural Wales at the moment. It was an incredible piece of filmmaking by the “Ffermio” programme team, led by my constituents Ellen Llewellyn and Meinir Howells.

The failure of the Welsh Government to get to grips with bovine TB, and the continued faith in the policy of destroying cattle herds, has become a perfect metaphor for the unsympathetic environment farmers face from their own Government. I am glad that the Welsh Government committed to reviewing their policy on farm slaughter last week, but there should be a wholesale review of policy, including dealing with TB in wildlife.

To compound matters, the Welsh Government partnership parties have acted with blatant disregard on changes proposed to school terms and the potential impact on the Royal Welsh show, one of the marquee events in the Welsh national calendar. Proposed school term changes could see the show fall outside the traditional summer holidays, with the organisers warning that they will face a £1 million-plus shortfall, making the event unviable. Last week, the Minister hosted an event by the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society in the very room where the idea to form it came to fruition, Committee Room 12, to celebrate the 120 years since that initial meeting. England has lost its royal show, and we in Wales now have the most successful, and possibly the largest, agricultural event in Europe. Yet the event operates on small margins, and a £1 million operational loss could be fatal. The Welsh Government need to sit back and think this policy through, and make sure that the Royal Welsh show and the National Eisteddfod are protected.

The all-Wales blanket approach to nitrate pollution by the Welsh Government has irked farmers further due to its disproportionality and the estimated cost of £400 million to the industry. Everybody acknowledges the need to reduce agricultural pollution. However, why the Welsh Government feel the need for a sledgehammer approach is beyond me. Coleg Sir Gar’s Gelli Aur Agricultural College in my constituency has been pioneering slurry treatment technology that separates waste into two reusable products by separating the water. Water can then re-enter the environment safely or be reused on the farm, with the remnants being a dried product that can be used as fertiliser with little pollution risk.

Instead of coming down on farmers like a ton of bricks, why are the Welsh Government not providing grants for farming businesses to upgrade their waste systems? That could be done on a collaborative basis among farmers. One system could service a number of farming businesses and would potentially provide an income source from a waste product. It ticks all the boxes.

There is huge innovation in Wales. Aled Davies and his company, Pruex, also based in my constituency, is pioneering using natural bacteria to disinfect chicken and cattle sheds from ammonia pollution instead of chemicals. The results I have seen look very impressive. I was delighted to receive an email last week from Mr Davies saying that he had secured a research contract from the Welsh Government—I will give them a bit of credit for that. That shows what can be achieved if the Welsh Government work with the sector. Wales can pioneer change.

Unfortunately, that brings me to the new sustainable farming scheme for agricultural payments proposed by the Welsh Government. Their own assessments indicate that the scale of job losses in the agricultural sector would be around double the expected steel job losses in Port Talbot. Unamended, the new policy would also lead to a loss of £199 million to farm incomes and an 11% reduction in livestock numbers—that is the Welsh Government’s own figures. The knock-on effect on the wider rural economy would be catastrophic.

Page 6 of the partnership agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru endorses the SFS as a commitment in which both parties will develop the new agricultural support regime.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

On support for farmers, yesterday I was speaking to a former president of the Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society, a Mr Finlay Munro, a farmer in my constituency. He made the point, which I found quite thought provoking, that when we talk about carbon sequestration, we are not really giving grassland its full value, and that, if that could be worked into the equation, it might be a support mechanism for our farmers. Does the hon. Gentleman—who is making an excellent speech—agree that the Government should look at that?

[Jonathan Edwards]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; indeed, that is the criticism of the SFS coming from farmers. The Welsh Government made a statement last week saying they were going to review it, which is a positive step forward in response to the protests. However, reviewing is one thing; what we want is policy implementation. The hon. Gentleman’s point is well made, and it is often made to me by my farmers in Carmarthenshire.

Returning to what I was saying, it is worth reading out the section on the SFS in the partnership agreement, so that it is on the record. It says that both parties will work together to:

“Introduce a transition period as we reform the system of farm payments so stability payments will continue to be a feature of the Sustainable Farming Scheme during and beyond this Senedd term. We will agree the longer-term arrangements for Welsh agriculture, recognising the particular needs of family farms and acknowledging ecologically sustainable local food production.”

It pains me to say this, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) will not be too happy with what I am about to say, but it seems to me that Plaid Cymru has been completely outmanoeuvred by the Labour party in the partnership agreement. They have effectively been lead down an endless 20 mph road to nowhere by Labour.

There is a clear case that the farming community has a vital role in helping the Welsh Government to reach their environmental targets, especially in terms of carbon sequestration—to return to the point made by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). The alternative is letting the speculators buy up Welsh agricultural holdings—as has been happening—and planting trees on productive Welsh farming land. As always, the Welsh Government would be better advised to take farmers with them on a journey, as opposed to dictating and imposing. Just to reiterate the point I made in response to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, there has been a Welsh Government statement saying that there will be a review, but what we really want to see is action.

My understanding is that in Scotland the SNP aim to enable farmers to continue to access a level of basic payments, which seems to be a better approach. In Wales, we would do well to rethink the SFS, look at what Scotland is doing and meet the demands of the farming unions for a new universal baseline payment. As my constituent Ian Rickman, the president of the Farmers’ Union of Wales, has said:

“The reality is that if the scheme remains in its current form, and if the modelling report is correct, farmers uptake will be minimal and everyone will lose out—Welsh farmers, the environment, the public and ultimately the Welsh Government. There is a real worry that even under a scenario where scheme payments come nowhere near to compensating for the loss of the Basic Payment Scheme, there will be some farm businesses that will have no choice other than to participate in the SFS. This will, no doubt, place further pressure on farmers’ workload and mental health.”

He continued:

“The Sustainable Farming Scheme must be accessible by all, and provide long-term stability for farming businesses and the wider rural economy that relies upon agriculture. The SFS needs to provide a meaningful income stream which properly rewards farmers and underpins the importance of a high quality food supply chain, produced here in Wales.”

The deadline for the final stages of the Welsh Government’s consultation on the SFS is later this week, and I will be sending them a copy of this speech. As Ministers and negotiators on behalf of Plaid Cymru and the Government consider the responses, I urge them to tread very carefully before announcing their final plans. Conceding reviews is one thing; what matters is the policy environment that will be implemented, and unless concerns are addressed, the protests that we have witnessed to date will be magnified.

[Hywel Williams]

May I just say that the hon. Gentleman does a slight disservice to my party by lumping Plaid Cymru in with the Welsh Labour Government. We do have an agreement, as he knows full well, having been involved in discussions on this issue in past times, but that is far from being jointly responsible together as a coalition—as some parties have recently titled it.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention because what he said is what a lot of the public discourse around the protests has been. However, I read out the actual partnership agreement—

[Hywel Williams]

Which has since developed.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Yes, there is a negotiation going on, and the hon. Gentleman is aware that his colleague in Arfon is the lead negotiator. I think she has been blindsided by the Labour Government.

He will like this bit now, though—

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to bring his remarks to a close.

[Jonathan Edwards]

R. S. Thomas, one of our greatest national poets, would often portray in his work how farmers and the land of Wales are one and the same. I have to be honest: I find the culture war tactics used against farmers difficult to comprehend. As R. S. observed, nobody understands nature and the intrinsic link between the preservation of nature, industrial toil and food production better than our farmers. Everyone understands that practices will have to evolve, but the role of policymakers must be to lead industry on a journey that it can buy into, as well as one that safeguards farming, as opposed to one that industry considers to be undermining it.

11:20

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Fay Jones)]

It is lovely to see you in the Chair, Mr Paisley; I know that, given your constituency, this is a matter of interest to you as well. I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) on securing today’s debate. I thank the hon. Members who have contributed so far; I am pleased to see colleagues from right across the United Kingdom, because all too often farming in Wales does not get the attention it needs. I am delighted to see so many people contribute.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

Where is Labour?

[Fay Jones]

My hon. Friend, from a sedentary position, makes a good point about the startling lack of Labour Members in the debate. I will come back to that in a moment.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr drew attention to many of the key pressures facing farmers at the moment, and I particularly commend him for talking about mental health. I join him in praising the DPJ Foundation, which I know. My constituency adjoins his, and I have been to a farmer, in Hundred House in my constituency, who pointed out the beam at the top of the barn that he contemplated using when things got so desperately bad. I am grateful that with the support of the DPJ Foundation he is worlds away from that place now, and I credit it for all the work it has done to support farmers, because it is a very difficult time.

We know that farmers are used to working in incredibly difficult conditions, whether that is from the weather, a difficult lambing or poor global prices—whatever it might be. Farmers are often at the bottom of the chain, and it is right that we thank them for what they do, not only in producing our food but in stewarding our environment. We simply would not have the incredible rolling hills of mid-Wales without them. I am incredibly proud of them, and this is another opportunity for me to restate just how much we owe to farmers the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

There was much in speech by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr that I agreed with, and sadly I do not have time to talk through everything. I gently challenge his points on trade, which he brought up on the Floor of the House yesterday.

[Jamie Stone]

I was tempted to intervene because of the mention of farmers across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. It is of interest that there are no Scottish National party Members here. Again, when I talked to Mr Finlay Munro, we spoke about the lack of forward planning. We do not know where we are on what will be environmental, what will be wild and what will not. Is it hedgerows or is it feeding the nation? That is something that I think we need to be very wary of.

[Fay Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. It is not a political point to say that Members are not here, because all Members from all parties ought to be engaging and listening to farmers at the moment. It is absolutely right to point out that what farmers need is certainty. In my maiden speech, I talked about how farmers can withstand drought, flood and Government interference if they are able to plan and are given the certainty. Sadly, that is very much lacking for farmers in Wales, and I believe in Scotland we need to see a little bit more detail. I urge all Members to come to the table.

To return to the points made by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr about trade, he referred to the Australia trade deal. I would push back gently against some of the language that he used there. There are safeguards within the Australia trade deal that protect farmers right across the United Kingdom from any kind of dumping. I wish that would get a little bit more attention.

[Hywel Williams]

I do not know whether the Minister has met the Australian and New Zealand ambassadors, but I have along, with the Plaid Cymru group. I can inform her that both ambassadors were delighted at the wonderful deal they achieved with the United Kingdom, and slightly puzzled as to what we were getting out of it.

[Fay Jones]

I will carry on with the point about protections in the trade deals. I understand that Plaid Cymru is quick to talk down trade deals—in fact, I am not sure that it has ever supported a single one. However, there are a number of safeguards in both free trade agreements that protect agriculture, so there are huge reasons to be positive, not least about the fact that the Australia trade deal brings us access to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. That is a hugely promising market for Welsh agricultural products.

As I have not yet even started my speech, I will try to return to some of the points I was going to highlight. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr is right to point out some of the issues with the sustainable farming scheme. He used the phrase “digon yw digon”, and we in Wales understand what farmers mean when they say that: they have had enough of feeling as though they are not being listened to.

I was really disappointed to hear a Labour Member in Prime Minister’s questions last week refer to some of the protesting farmers as extremists who are sharing conspiracy theories online. If Labour Members were willing to listen to them, they would understand that they are raising legitimate grievances about the future viability of their businesses, for example over bovine TB, which the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr raised incredibly well. That is an example of where the Welsh Government have set their face against farming. In England, we introduced a badger cull in 2013—I pay credit to the Liberal Democrats for their determination to see that through as part of the coalition Government. We have seen statistics that show that the rate of bovine TB is reducing, but in Wales we have no such support. In England, we are being led by the science; in Wales, I am afraid that it is being ignored.

I am afraid to say that the sustainable farming scheme is frankly unworkable. We had a long debate on the Floor of the House last night, when we talked about some of the challenging elements of that scheme. I am afraid to say that farmers will be required to carry out six online training courses each and every year. They will be required to submit data on the amount of medicines they use in their flock or herd, the rate of lamb loss, soil, worm numbers, and seed receipts. It is simply unworkable. That is before we even get on to the two headline items of the sustainable farming scheme: the condition that farmers must remove 10% of land for planting trees and a further 10% for habitat construction. Given the global uncertainty we face, it is madness that the Welsh Government want to reduce the amount of land available for food production. We should be boosting our food security, not reducing it.

I will try to wrap up my remarks in the last couple of minutes. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr is right to point out that the sustainable farming scheme will, according to the Welsh Government’s own analysis, cost 5,500 jobs on farm, not to say anything about the impact on the wider supply chain. I have a huge amount of time and respect for the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), but he criticised me in his intervention on the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr for the fact that the Welsh Conservative party has pointed out Plaid Cymru’s support for Welsh Labour over the last few years. If it looks, sounds and smells like a coalition, I do not really know why the hon. Member for Arfon wants to call it a co-operation agreement.

However, the fact is that this is in Plaid Cymru’s hands. To make the sustainable farming scheme go away, all it needs to do is vote against the Welsh Government’s budget and force them to go back to the table, listen to farmers and make improvements to the scheme. Were it to withdraw from the co-operation agreement—or coalition, as I call it—it could get this off the table, which is what all farmers want. They want to deliver for the environment and food production, and they want their Government to listen to them,. Plaid Cymru has the power to make that happen. I urge the hon. Member for Arfon to hear the message coming from Westminster Hall and the main Chamber that his party has the power to do that, and I very much hope that it does.

In the final minute, I thank the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr once again for bringing this debate to the House. The importance of food production and environmental delivery must go hand in hand. It is absolutely incumbent on all of us here to speak up for the important industries that power our nation, whether it is steel, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, or farming, which is a historic, dynamic and proud industry that powers rural Wales. In the few seconds I have left, I commend him for his comments about the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show, which is the largest show in Europe.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

Only just.

[Fay Jones]

I am sorry to contradict my hon. Friend. Farming is the beating heart of rural Wales. I am incredibly proud to represent so many farmers, and I thank the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr for his work in doing the same.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

11:30

Sitting suspended.

Neonicotinoids and other Pesticides

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Henderson in the Chair]

14:30

[Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the environmental impact of neonicotinoids and other pesticides.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson. I thank all Members who have joined this debate. I also thank everyone who has signed the many petitions linked to the debate, including a significant number of my constituents in Chester. It is clear that the concern about this issue is overwhelming. Before I start, I should say that I will do my best to refrain from any bee puns.

On 18 January this year, the Government approved emergency authorisation for use of the highly damaging neonicotinoid on sugar beet for the fourth year in a row, going against the advice of their own advisers and the concerns of campaigners and environmentalists across the country. That decision is yet again ill-judged and wrong. It directly contradicts our national and international obligations, such as the commitment to halt species loss by 2030 and the obligation under the global biodiversity framework to reduce the overall risk from pesticides by at least half.

Those decisions are being made against expert advice, waved through without a parliamentary vote and made on the basis that they are temporary and in the case of an emergency. Have we really had an emergency for four years in a row or is this just the Government’s way of nodding through harmful practice on a yearly basis?

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. I am sorry for intervening early, but I have to go to a meeting and wanted to make my point.

I am a beekeeper myself. I was recently speaking to the Somerset Beekeepers’ Association, which called the Government’s ongoing war on insects “unfathomable”. Does the hon. Member agree that we must have rigorous testing of chemicals before they are approved for agricultural use, and that the Government should introduce a clear qualitative target for significantly reducing the overall use of pesticides in agriculture?

[Samantha Dixon]

I agree with the hon. Lady and I thank her for the intervention.

Last night, I noted a BBC article entitled “Bee-harming neonicotinoid use ‘makes a mockery’ of ban”. There is no doubt that there is an issue with virus yellows, but we are facing a biodiversity emergency and lifting the ban is not the way forward. We have got to find another way. I support the calls made in the article by Richard Benwell, the chief executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, for the Government to urgently deliver their long-awaited strategy on sustainable pesticide use.

Bees and other pollinators have for many years been facing an increasingly difficult task in the face of changing agricultural practice. That is a challenge in itself for our farming community, but it can also lead to a decrease in available forage and produce monoculture deserts for much of the year, making insect existence increasingly challenging. It is well known that neonicotinoid pesticides can be very harmful to a wide range of insects and invertebrates, including our beloved bees. They affect the nervous systems of bees and other insects, resulting in paralysis and eventually death. In fact, author and academic Professor Dave Goulson has warned that just one teaspoon of this type of chemical is enough to kill 1.25 billion honeybees. That is equivalent to four lorry loads.

Environmentalists, campaigners and local beekeepers have been in touch with me ahead of this debate to share their views and concerns on this topic, including the Wildlife Trust, our own Chester zoo, and Angharad, a local beekeeper who kindly alerted me to a report by the expert committee on pesticides that states:

“There is new evidence regarding the risk from neonicotinoids globally which adds to the weight of evidence of adverse impact on honeybee behaviour and demonstrated negative impacts on bee colonies”.

Bees play a crucial role in our food supply chain by pollinating crops, and their decline could have cascading effects on biodiversity and agricultural productivity. We should be protecting them, not putting them in harm’s way. Insect populations have suffered drastic declines in the UK. Recent evidence suggests that we have lost 50% or more of our insects since 1970 and that 41% of the Earth’s remaining five million insect species are threatened with extinction. Of course, other human factors and habitat loss are also to blame, but so is the widespread use of neonics. Given that a third of our food crops are pollinated by insects, we have a lot to lose.

The Government’s emergency authorisation allows the seed coating of sugar beet crops with neonics—a method of application that results in only 5% of the pesticide reaching the crop. The rest accumulates in the soil where it can be absorbed by the roots of wildflowers and hedgerow plants visited by bees, or it can leech into watercourses and affect the wildlife that lives there. If we thought sewage in our waterways was not enough, we are also adding harmful chemicals into the mix. Harmful neonics have been found in more than 10% of English rivers despite a widespread ban in 2018. In more than half the rivers where neonics were detected, they were at levels that pose a significant risk to wildlife. I back our farmers and am concerned that sugar beet farmers are experiencing a difficult time. However, lifting the ban is not the way forward. In fact, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ own economic analysis found that there was little impact of the beet yellows virus on sugar beet yield in untreated crops.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

Pollinators, which are obviously the subject of the debate, are particularly important, but what about human health? Norfolk County Council is the first council in the country to ban glyphosate. That is an important move forward, and perhaps the hon. Lady will give her thoughts on that. More importantly, should we not be trying to find naturally produced, sustainable products that are not harmful to pollinators or human health and to repeat what has happened with Norfolk County Council and glyphosate? We should be rolling that out and putting all our scientific efforts into trying to find those products for the future.

[Samantha Dixon]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. In fact, that underlines the importance of the strategy coming forward on the use of all pesticides. I thank him for his intervention.

We must find a science-led way forward that not only protects our bees and safeguards our future biodiversity and human health, but helps the farming sector by supporting initiatives that promote alternative, bee-friendly pesticides and sustainable farming methods. Despite the emergency authorisation being granted in 2022 and 2023, the proportion of farmers who decided against using neonics was 29% and 40% respectively. That shows that an increasing number of growers are trying to farm in a way that does not harm nature or rivers, yet there appears to be no support for those growers from the industry or Government.

The Government have instead focused on short-term solutions that will undermine the long-term sustainability of the farming sector and disadvantage those growers trying to do the best for nature. Emergency pesticide authorisation risks not only the floodgates opening for other harmful pesticide use, but slowing down crucial research on the alternatives. Without those alternatives, climate change will only lead to increased demand for neonics. The use of pesticides in the agricultural industry has become commonplace for many years, and there are good cases to support the use of targeted pesticides to help secure successful food production. However, some of those treatments are not being used in a targeted way and are affecting beneficial pollinators, as well as pest species.

[Sarah Dyke]

Scientists increasingly believe that there is no safe level of pesticides for humans to be exposed to. There is growing evidence that pesticides become more harmful when they are combined together—something known as the cocktail effect. I spoke to an arable farmer last summer, who told me he would never allow his children to eat bread made with his wheat. When I challenged him, he simply said, “Well, I know what’s gone into it, don’t I?” Does the hon. Member agree that the Government need to regulate, incentivise and support farmers to lead the transition away from pesticide use?

[Samantha Dixon]

I agree. The hon. Lady makes a very compelling case, which I hope the Minister is listening to.

The widespread use of the pesticides is not seeking to target known pest species but, as the hon. Lady has mentioned, being used as a blanket catch-all that preloads the crops with deadly chemicals that can transfer into the pollen and nectar, and into the food chain. We must look for positive alternatives, and not settle for short-term harmful solutions.

Will the Minister comment on the assessment the Government have made on the impact of their emergency authorisation of neonics for the last four years? Will he explain why the Government have ignored expert advice, which puts our vital pollinators under threat? Will he commit to any future decisions on this issue being put to a parliamentary vote? Finally, will he tell us all when the long-awaited strategy will be published?

I thank all Members who have joined today’s debate. I know we are all busy bees with packed diaries, and I hope the rest of the debate will create a real buzz about this issue—sorry, I really couldn’t help myself. On a serious note, nature has a critical role to play in both integrated pest management solutions and tackling climate change. It cannot do that if it is under attack from harmful pesticides such as neonicotinoids.

14:42

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Henderson. I congratulate the hon. Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) on setting the scene so very well on a subject that should really interest us all. If it does not, then there are questions to asked—that is the reason we are all here. It is a pleasure to see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who has a deep love of farming. It is an especial pleasure to see the Minister, who is always here whenever debates such as this are to be answered. I know that he, like me and others in this room today, understands the importance of the subject.

I declare an interest—not because I am a beekeeper, but because my neighbours down the road, Chris and Valentine Hodges, are. A couple of years ago, I let them put some of their beehives on to my land, because I wanted to see the natural environment that I live in enhanced. It quite clearly has been. They have what is called a black bee species, which is almost extinct; they are responsible for ensuring that it comes back. This is not just on my farm, but in the constituency across the whole of the Ards peninsula, up into North Down and as far over as Strangford lough. By the way, the honey is absolutely gorgeous. Every morning before I leave my house, I have two spoonfuls on my brown toast. Fibre is very important when getting to a certain age, so the honey gives me that wee bit of flavour and taste, and I thank the Lord for it. It is really special.

I am ever mindful of the responsibility that we hold to be good stewards of our environment, which I know is an obligation that our farmers honour in every sense. All the farmers I know want to do that; I know the Minister does that, and other people here do the very same. Many farmers see themselves not as landowners but as caretakers of the land for future generations, as the hon. Member for City of Chester said clearly in her introductory speech. The responsibility for producing food that is safe is of great importance. For that reason, many old-school farmers—I am probably one of them—have encouraged their children to attend agriculture college to get a basis of generational knowledge, while working hand in hand with modern techniques, and to be taught how to get the most out of the land and diversify where necessary. Our agriculture colleges are vital to the future food security of this nation, and that should also be noted today.

The complexity of grant applications and red tape has been somewhat reduced, but it is still a matter of concern to the farming community. The need for the Ulster Farmers’ Union—the sister organisation of the National Farmers Union in England—is very clear. The two work together and provide some of the best insurance rates possible; maybe I am a wee bit biased, because all my insurance is with the Ulster Farmers’ Union. That is why I looked to see what the NFU’s view was on this issue, knowing that it has hands-on knowledge and science at its fingertips.

I can understand that there are situations in which the use of these pesticides is important. Most recently, the Government approved an application from NFU Sugar and British Sugar for the emergency use of the seed treatment on sugar beet seed in 2024. That was a vital application, and we need to look at it and recognise why that decision was made and its implications. The authorisation was granted on the condition that the product will be used only if the threshold for virus lessons is reached. Michael Sly, the chair of the NFU Sugar board, said:

“The British sugar beet crop, which safeguards more than 9,500 jobs, continues to be threatened by Virus Yellows disease.”

That terrible disease can do all sorts of damage to the countryside and to bees in particular. He continued:

“In recent years the disease has caused crop losses of up to 80%.”

We cannot ignore that; those are the facts, figures and statistics. He went on to say:

“I am relieved that this has been recognised by Defra”—

particularly the Minister who is here in Westminster Hall today—

“in granting the derogation which will be invaluable if we see a return of severe pest pressure.

An independent, scientific threshold is used to forecast the severity of pest pressure on the British sugar beet crop and any seed treatment will only be used if this threshold is met.”

So there are conditions; this is not a wild abandonment of the process, which is very much controlled. DEFRA and British Sugar have it well under control. Mr Sly added:

“the industry will again deliver a comprehensive stewardship programme to ensure safe and responsible use of the treatment if the threshold is met.

Led by the British Beet Research Organisation, the homegrown sugar industry is working hard to find viable, long-term solutions to this disease.”

This process is about the long-term vision and how we find a cure or something that ensures that this disease does no more damage.

[Duncan Baker]

I am the first person to say that we need to look at insecticides and make them safer. However, I represent a constituency that produces a large amount of sugar beet, and this derogation is for a limited period and for a non-flowering plant in its first year, so pollinators will not be at risk from it. The fact that we are spraying the seeds of this plant actually mitigates a huge amount of risk. I think the public do not fully appreciate that absolutely key point.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that very salient and helpful intervention, which put the facts on the record. He explains why and how these things have been done, the controls that are necessary and why these things are necessary, and I am sure nobody here will have any concerns about the way they have been done, how long they will last or their importance. As I said, Mr Sly concluded by saying that the homegrown sugar industry is working hard to find a viable long-term solution to the disease, but it is imperative that we recognise the necessity for that.

To conclude, that application shows the level of thought that must go into having an application approved by British Sugar. The use of these harsh chemicals is not the first solution; it is a final solution. For that reason, I believe that they should remain available, but they should always—always—be closely monitored. We owe a duty to our environment, but also to our food security. The balance between them is so delicate, but it can be struck; I believe in my heart that if there is a will, there is a way. I look to the Minister, as I always do, to ensure that we in this House are doing the best we can to put the garden back in the shape that it should be in.

14:49

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) for introducing the debate in the way she did. There are strong supporters of bees and pollinators in all parties, and she set out clearly that there is genuine concern among the people we represent about the continued use of emergency authorisations of bee-killing pesticides for the sugar beet crop.

Having called similar debates in previous years, I am hugely passionate about this issue. I bloody love bees, and I am desperately concerned that the public’s concern about bees is not being reflected in Government policy. It is not being reflected in the way the Government follow expert advice or in the way they are treating this House on an issue they know matters to nearly every single Member of Parliament.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

On the point about greater awareness, does the hon. Member agree that such debates are essential in not only the beekeeping fraternity but the wider community, who sometimes do not understand the importance of beekeeping and what it contributes to wider society? They are helpful in broadening knowledge among the 95% of the public who take beekeeping as a small, almost irrelevant pastime and do not see the importance.

[Luke Pollard]

Beekeeping is a pastime that is enjoyed in rural and urban areas, and it is something that matters. It is not just about local produce; it helps to support an ecosystem that we all depend on—from our vibrant, beautiful gardens through to the food we eat. What matters to bees should matter to us all, because it affects every single one of us.

Bees, along with other pollinators, play a crucial role in our ecosystems. The decline in bee populations affects not only our country’s biodiversity but our food security. It is paramount that we as politicians take the issue more seriously. One third of the UK’s bee population has disappeared in the last decade, and the UK has already lost 13 out of our 35 native bee species. That should make us think about what we are doing to safeguard those remaining species and ecosystems, and how we are not only protecting habitats from being lost, but increasing available habitats for insects, for pollinators and for nature.

I have listened intently over many years—from when I sat on the Front Bench, where my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) is sitting today, to where I sit now—to Ministers talking about the importance of nature-based recovery and of encouraging more of our farmers to take nature-based solutions to heart. I welcome that change in language, and we have seen an important policy shift in recent years, but if we are to make it real and deliver that nature-based solution, emergency authorisations for bee-killing pesticides simply cannot sit alongside it; they are incongruous with it. Continuing the use of bee-killing pesticides amounts to environmental vandalism.

I back British farmers. One of my two little sisters is a farmer, and the other works in agricultural products. This issue matters. I represent an urban constituency in the south-west of England, but I know just how important farming is to the south-west and to our rural communities, because without farmers, there is no food. It is really important that we understand that, so I back farmers’ concerns.

I understand that there is a real issue around the viability of crops affected by the diseases that the emergency authorisations are seeking to address, but I want to look at those authorisations. When we left the European Union, the Government said they would follow the evidence and not make decisions without it—DEFRA said that on a number of occasions, even though a prominent former Environment Secretary might not have been very kind about experts. However, the Government are not following the evidence here. Will the Minister explain why they are not following the expert group’s advice? When do they expect to be back on track with that? Do they have alternative science that gives a different perspective from that of the expert group? And what guidelines have they given the experts about commenting on the authorisations?

It is important to recognise that this is the fourth year in a row where neonicotinoids have been allowed for emergency use, but if we look at the words in the emergency use authorisation, I doubt there has been an emergency for four years in a row. I echo my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester: four years in a row is not emergency use; it is a pattern that has allowed a type of behaviour to continue. If it was an emergency, there would have been one year of emergency use, and activity to correct that would have taken place.

In the first of the debates I called a number of years ago, one of the Minister’s predecessors told me that these were temporary emergency authorisations that would last only three years at most. We are now in the fourth year of temporary emergency authorisations, and I am not certain from anything I have seen from the Government that there will not be a fifth, sixth and seventh emergency authorisation if they are re-elected. I do not get the sense that there is a destination that the Minister is driving us towards, and what I would like to see is a clear destination.

[The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member because he is making an important point. It may be helpful to the House to understand that a further check and balance on the authorisation for emergency use is whether the threshold is met for the product to be deployed. Only where that threshold is met is the product deployed in the open market. In 2021, that threshold was not met, so the product was not deployed in the open market—that was not felt necessary. The science says that where there is an issue and a challenge, we will use the product, and where there is not, as in 2021, that product will not be allowed.

[Luke Pollard]

I agree with the Minister about the thresholds, but they do not detract from the fact that the Government have effectively established a baseline that they will authorise emergency use of neonicotinoids every year, notwithstanding that emergency use is subject to a threshold being met.

I do not see how we can be in the fourth year of an emergency without some urgent and emergency action being taken to address it. It would be kinder and more honest in this debate to say that the Government now have a standing policy to authorise the use of bee-killing pesticides for sugar beet crops, but a threshold has to be met. For me, that would seem a more honest appraisal because, after four years, it is a reality that this is authorised every year, and I do not think it should be.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I am sympathetic to a lot of the points the hon. Gentleman is making, but does he not think that authorisation every year is a fairly reasonable position to get to in the absence of an alternative to neonics? One important thing that has not been discussed in this debate is that there is currently no viable alternative to neonics when the threshold has been met. Until we are in that position, authorisation may well be the reasonable course of action.

[Luke Pollard]

One advantage, or disadvantage, of having spoken in and called debates on the use of neonics is that I have listened to a number of Ministers cycle through the arguments for why authorisation is justified each and every year. In one earlier debate, the argument was put that we need to use the emergency authorisation because the new crop species are not yet online. In another, a Minister said that we need to use the emergency authorisation because the insurance scheme that would support sugar beet growers where there is disease in the crops is not yet online.

Those debates were many years ago, and we need to see honesty and transparency in this debate. I think the hon. Gentleman is saying that it would be reasonable to argue for using these pesticides if those things happen. What I am saying to the Minister is that we now have a standing policy that bee-killing pesticides are used on an annual basis, subject to a threshold. Let us be honest that it is a standing policy, and then we can debate whether the Government’s policy is right and what the alternatives are. At the moment, the annual reauthorisation is against the expert advice of the Government’s own scientific body, which does not support the position that we should be allowing these pesticides to be used on an annual basis.

[Dr Poulter]

I will give the hon. Gentleman a medical analogy—I am a practising doctor, as he may be aware. I may prefer certain medications over others and recognise that a medication I prescribe may have unpleasant side effects. Although I may wish that there was an alternative to that medication in development, at this moment it may be the only option available to me in my prescription repertoire to make the patient better. That is a similar situation to the one we are facing with the use of neonics. The issue here is what is being done to accelerate the finding of effective alternatives to neonics. That is the question we need to ask here, because we do not want to put farmers in a situation where the only viable treatment is completely banned.

[Luke Pollard]

I am grateful for that intervention. I am not a doctor, so I will not try to butcher a health analogy that might be shot down. I think the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) is saying that we need to hear from the Minister about authorising neonicotinoids against expert advice, which the Government say they are following but are not, with a different excuse every year. I would like to see the destination we are going to. We have a standing policy now from DEFRA that that is authorised every year. It does not necessarily mean from what the Minister said in his intervention that they will be used every year, but they will be authorised every year. That is the standing policy.

The reality is that for the majority of years in this Parliament the Government have authorised neonicotinoids to be used in emergency cases. I do not believe we can have four years’ worth of emergencies. If a patient came to the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich four years in a row, I suspect he would challenge the use of the word “emergency” in that context. That is why I want this made clear. What is the Government’s destination? What is their plan? What are their alternatives for the use of neonicotinoids?

I do not want to limit what I say to farmers’ use of neonicotinoids. As this debate is about the broader use of neonicotinoids and we have established that neonics kill bees, that bees are essential for our ecosystem and that there is cross-party concern about the Government’s use of bee-killing pesticides, we have established that neonics are the problem. How they are deployed into our ecosystems is also a problem. We have looked at the neonic deployment in agriculture and sugar beets, but I want to talk about neonics in two other areas.

One is neonics’ use in imported food. For the countries where we have now signed trade deals that use neonics as standard in their agricultural production, how are we safeguarding our ecosystem and food supply against importing neonics in food, on coatings of food and in other agricultural products? We know that neonics, when exposed to the natural environment, get everywhere. We have seen studies recently, as cited in The Guardian only a month ago, that refer to neonics now appearing, according to a Swiss study, in children—in every child that was tested in the study. So we know that neonics are present.

We also know that neonics are present in our wildlife and in our rivers, as has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester, and in our wider ecosystems. So we need to look at how we are getting neonics into those things and where neonics are imported in food.

Also, I have a concern that neonics are being used in flea treatment far too frequently. Dog and cat owners, in an attempt to look after their pets and make the right decision, are using neonicotinoids. Fipronil and imidacloprid are two different types of neonics used in flea treatment. We are advised to use it on the back of our pet’s neck and we are not supposed to touch the pet until it is dry. In practice, we know that the effects of those neonics and their ability to spread last for the duration of that flea treatment. We are seeing more neonics going into our rivers and watercourses as a result of flea treatments.

At the moment there is not enough focus on that area. If we have established that neonics are a concern for bees, we also need to understand the direction of travel. I do not come with a prescription for the Minister to cut and paste into policy; I am saying there is an issue here. It is important that we have an honest debate with members of the public who, I believe, are trying to do the right thing by their pets. Many of them would be utterly horrified and aghast if they found out that in trying to do the right thing to support their pets and prevent diseases they are harming our wider ecosystem.

There is a debate worth having, as the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich suggested, on a destination and how we address the problem. The authorisation for emergency use of bee-killing pesticides on sugar beet crops affects a certain part of the country primarily. It does not affect every watercourse or river catchment area, yet we are finding neonics in a wider variety of areas when bee-killing pesticides are used, so it is incumbent on us all to make a strong case against bee-killing pesticides in agriculture and also look at bee-killing pesticides used elsewhere.

Professor Dave Goulson, whom my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester mentioned in her remarks and whom I met at a bee roundtable that I hosted a year or so ago to talk about bee-killing pesticides, warns that flea treatment harms fish and invertebrates that live in our waterways. Those are chemicals that were banned for agricultural use in the UK several years ago, and which remain banned for that use, but are allowed to be used in pet treatment—that is a question mark we have to look at. I have already spoken about the human health impacts; they are concerning and also need to be properly understood.

It is incumbent on all of us who campaign on bees, and who love bees, to make sure that our answers to this issue are clear on where we need to see action. The emergency authorisations for bee-killing pesticides in agriculture should end; they should not be allowed. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge will restate the position he has held in every one of the debates on this issue that I have spoken in over the course of this Parliament—that we should stop.

However, it is clear that there are also other challenges that we need to look at and investigate. Could the Minister explain where else we can look, and what science his Department is commissioning about the wider use of neonicotinoids and their pollution of our wider ecosystem? I do not think that any one of us present has the answer, but if we can agree on the problem, that will at least get us moving towards starting to address it.

I thank the campaigners—not only the wildlife trusts—who have been working on this and who are championing insects. Apart from bees, insects get a pretty bad rap—there are not many charities holding out for the daddy-long-legs, but without insects there is a really significant impact on our ecosystem. Insects should be championed much more. They are not just scary creepy-crawlies; they are absolutely essential for a vibrant ecosystem and the nature-based recovery that we all want to see.

In particular I want to thank Anabel Kindersley of Neal’s Yard Remedies for her tireless campaigning on this matter. No debate could happen without her continued pressure on MPs and her encouragement of us to keep pushing further and further. Bees and nature matter; if we are not having that constantly said, there is a risk that the wider use of neonics becomes something that is just accepted, and that their authorisation becomes an annual occurrence that passes without a parliamentary vote.

In previous debates I have spoken about the importance of a parliamentary vote. If something damages our environment, as we know that these pesticides do, and that is against Government advice, and against the principles of evidence-based policymaking and “following the science” that the Minister’s Department has set out, there should be an extra step before it is authorised.

The reason we do not have a debate and a vote on authorising bee-killing pesticides in agriculture is very simple—the Government would lose that vote each and every time. The Opposition MPs would vote against it and their own MPs would vote against it, and that is why we do not have a vote on it. That in itself should tell us a story about whether the use of those pesticides is acceptable behaviour.

In this latest authorisation, those chemicals are being used against the Government’s expert advice, and that is ill-judged and wrong. There has been no parliamentary vote on it, nor do I think the Minister wants one—it will not happen. I do not think we can have an emergency four years in a row without bigger action. That is why, whether we like it or not, bees are an election issue, and matter to the voters who we all represent. They are in decline across the country, despite the incredible efforts of local councils planting wild flower meadows and bee corridors, and of local people encouraging the use of hives. Pollenize is an amazing community interest company in Plymouth that puts amazingly-painted beehives all over our city and collects the honey, supporting nature-based recoveries. However, despite their work we know that that recovery is not working in the way we want it to.

This is not just about the emergency authorisation of bee-killing pesticides; it is about something else as well. This involves habitat loss and the wider use of neonics in our economy, and we must look at all of those. I look forward to hearing from the Minister, but I also look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, so that we can be absolutely clear that those bee-killing pesticides would not be authorised if there were a change in Government. I would encourage my hon. Friend’s position on this matter to go in that direction.

If that were the case, there would be a greater focus on the issue that the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich mentioned—finding better ways of supporting our farmers who are affected by this issue. Not all farmers are affected, but some are, and they deserve support. If this were a genuine emergency it would be all hands on deck to try and solve this matter, but four years later it is still not all hands on deck. Four years later we are still here, having emergency authorisations passed without a parliamentary vote, and bees are still dying. That is why this needs to change; we need a change of approach, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister and the shadow Minister what that approach should be.

15:09

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Henderson. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) for securing the debate. Her introduction was full and thorough, and I will echo many of her points. I am also grateful for the other speakers. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has left us. I have long wondered what he was on to keep him going, and now we know the answer: two spoonfuls of honey on a piece of toast in the morning. We will all have to try that.

I was particularly taken with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). His passion for bees is legendary and he raised a series of important points, many of which I will touch on. I thought that the exchange between him and the Minister on the threshold issue was illuminating. I fear that, because of the weather this year, we are likely to cross that threshold again, so in reality we are talking about a derogation that will be applied this year. He made a point about flea treatment for pets, and I think that issue will rise and rise in salience. It is clearly a significant problem.

The key point is that we are here again—for the fourth time. It is almost an annual debate—the annual neonicotinoids debate. It really is a case of déjà vu. We are also still waiting for the national action plan on pesticides. I have had this brief for four and a half years now, and Josie Cohen and others from the Pesticide Action Network have been pressing me on this point all the way through. I have lost count of the number of changes in terminology so, if the Minister cannot give us a date, perhaps he could tell us whether it is soon, imminent or in due course, or maybe, just possibly, after the election—who knows?

There is a serious point here: why on earth has it taken so long to deal with these issues, which have already been raised? Why can’t we find a way forward? How many times is it that the Government have ridden roughshod over expert opinion by allowing yet another emergency authorisation for the use of Cruiser SB? We have already heard the answer; it is four times. As my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport said, that hardly constitutes an emergency because, once again, the Government have ignored the advice of Government scientific advisers on the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides. Back in September, it said that it was unable to support an authorisation for Cruiser SB because

“the potential adverse effects to honeybees and other pollinators…outweighs any likely benefits.”

It is right. We simply cannot afford to allow further devastation to the number of bees in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport has already quoted the statistics: one third of the UK bee population has disappeared in the last decade. Since 1900, 13 of 35 native bee species have been lost. There has been a dramatic decline in the number of all pollinators, which has fallen by over 50% between 1985 and 2005.

This is a fundamental threat to the survival of a much-loved part of our natural world—a threat that we should challenge not only for its own sake, but because the economic consequences are severe. Quite frankly, we would struggle to survive without bees. They are crucial to our physical health and the health of the wider environment. In the UK alone, approximately 75% of our crop species require pollination and around 70 crops depend on, or benefit from, bee pollination. Though there are of course other methods of pollination, wild bees can pollinate on a much bigger and more efficient scale than the alternatives.

The economic benefits are estimated to be worth approximately £690 million to the UK economy in terms of the value of the crops they pollinate. From a global perspective, bees pollinate 70 out of the top 100 foods we eat and an astonishing one third of every mouthful of food we consume. They are also essential for the crops used for animal feed. Without them, it would be harder to produce much of our meat, egg and dairy products. I am told that in China they have had to resort to pollinating fruit trees by hand because pollinators have been nearly wiped out by pesticide use. That should serve as a warning to us. Estimates suggest that it would cost UK farmers an incredible £1.8 billion a year to manually pollinate their crops. Without bees, it would not be long before our ecosystem was in severe trouble.

Not only are bees in more danger every year, but they are more important every year. According to the UN, the volume of agricultural production dependent on pollinators has increased globally by 300% in the past 50 years. The UN also found that greater pollinator density results in better crop yields, so it is also good for farmers.

These pesticides are not only toxic for bees; at certain levels, they are toxic to aquatic life and build up in river systems. Research by the Rivers Trust and Wildlife and Countryside Link found neonicotinoids in more than one in 10 English river sites tested by the Environment Agency. The levels of neonicotinoids in many of our rivers was above the environmental quality standard deemed safe for aquatic wildlife. The rivers most affected by the pesticides were found in the east of England, south-east England and west midlands, including the Ivel, Waveney, Nene, Ouse and Tame. The evidence is pretty clear. It is no surprise that other countries are heeding the advice of their experts on banning these pesticides.

A European High Court ruling last year found that no derogation concerning seeds treated with neonicotinoids was justified, including in exceptional circumstances invoked to protect sugar beet. The French Government announced on 24 January 2023 that they had decided not to pursue a further exemption for neonicotinoid use on sugar beet, in the light of the court ruling, effectively putting an end to the emergency use in Europe of three banned substances—imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam. We are going in the opposite direction from scientific and legal consensus in comparable countries.

I recognise the problems that growers face in combating diseases transmitted by aphids. I am an east of England Member of Parliament and I absolutely understand the importance of the sugar beet industry to our region. Virus yellows, in particular, causes significant yield losses. The National Farmers Union, as has been said, reports that for some that can be up to 50%, and I thank the NFU for its background briefing. The most complex and serious example is that spread by the peach potato aphid, and it is hard to control. In 2020, the sector lost 40% of the national sugar beet crop, bringing down the five-year average yield by 25%.

I was grateful to the NFU and British Sugar a few months ago; I met their representatives and some from the British Beet Research Organisation in Rougham near Bury St Edmunds. We stood in a field and looked very closely at the impact of the disease on a variety of sugar beet plants. That was an informative and chastening experience, because one could see the damage being done to those plants. I fully appreciate the challenge that farmers face. I also think that most farmers know that the use of this chemical will not be a long-term solution. In 2023, 40% of sugar beet farmers in England chose not to use them, despite the authorisation allowing their use. That is up from 29% in 2022.

To go back to earlier discussions, many have been able to successfully deploy integrated pest management systems. There was an interesting piece in Farmers Weekly a few weeks ago detailing the recommendations being made by BBRO, including a move to more tolerant varieties. That is part of the issue—it is an economic one. The problem is that, in moving to some of those more tolerant varieties, there is a yield penalty, a financial calculation. What that tells us is that there are choices, and that it can be done. The question is whether we choose to do so.

My view is that the future will be different, and I think that is why so many people are exasperated and genuinely shocked by the Government’s continuing stance. The reaction to the Government’s latest decision to authorise the use of Cruiser SB has been damning. The Wildlife Trusts called it a

“deathblow for wildlife, a backwards step in evidence-based decision making and a betrayal of farmers who are producing food sustainably.”

The chief executive officer of Wildlife and Countryside Link said the decision

“flies in the face of ecological sense”.

It is not just environmental and wildlife groups who are outraged. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport has already referenced the campaigning work of Anabel Kindersley, chief executive of Neal’s Yard Remedies, who helped to establish the “Save the Bees” campaign with a number of businesses that have repeatedly called for an end to the use of bee-killing pesticides. That is partly because they see the threat to bees as a threat to their businesses. In the modern world, that is the challenge: not just to produce food, but to do so in an environmentally sustainable, nature-positive way. I acknowledge that that is hard, and we may need new tools to help us, but change has to come, and it should start now with an end to the use of these toxic chemicals in our fields.

15:19

[The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a farmer, although we do not and have never produced sugar beet at home. I thank hon. Members for their contributions to this interesting debate. We agree on more than we disagree on, including the necessity to find a way forward, to which I wholly subscribe.

Decisions to allow or not to allow the use of pesticides are based on careful scientific assessment of the risks. The aim is to achieve a high level of protection for people, animals and the environment while improving agricultural production. The decision to grant the emergency authorisation of Cruiser SB was not taken lightly and was based on robust assessment of the environmental and economic risks and benefits.

The emergency authorisation was issued with a strict threshold for use. The seed treatment was authorised to be used if—and only if—a virus incidence rate of 65% or more over the summer months was forecast by the independent model developed by Rothamsted Research. That forecast was made on Friday 1 March.

The use of Cruiser SB on sugar beet in England will be allowed this year as yellows virus incidence thresholds, as predicted by the Rothamsted model, has been met. Emerging sugar beet seedlings and young plants are vulnerable to feeding by aphids, which transmit several viruses collectively known as virus yellows. These viruses lead to reduced beet size, lower sugar content and higher impurities.

We withdrew authorisation for the use of pesticide products containing three neonicotinoids on outdoor crops at the end of 2018. Since then, sugar beet growers have been adjusting to the new conditions. In 2020, there was severe damage, with 24% of the national crop being lost, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), recognised. Many individual growers were severely affected and less sugar beet was planted in 2021, because some growers were reluctant to take the economic risk. In recent years, the virus threat has been relatively low.

This year, the threshold has been set at a predicted virus incidence of 65% or above. That is a slight increase from last year’s threshold. The change reflects our improving understanding of the fit between the model used to predict virus incidence and the real-world outcomes. The aim of the threshold is to ensure that Cruiser is used only if damage is predicted to sugar beet production.

Members will be aware of the strict conditions of use that have also been set as a requirement of the emergency authorisation. As the threshold has been met and neonicotinoid-treated seeds will be planted, those conditions are in place to mitigate risks to the environment, including risks to pollinators. Neonicotinoids take time to break down in the environment, and during that period, may be taken up by flowering plants. The conditions for use of Cruiser SB therefore allow only a limited range of crops, none of which flowers before harvest, to be planted in the same field within 32 months of a treated sugar beet crop.

Growers must also comply with a stewardship scheme. As part of that scheme, treated fields are monitored to determine the levels of neonicotinoids in the environment. Full details of the conditions of use have been published online.

To be clear, we remain committed to the existing restrictions on neonicotinoids. Emergency authorisations are approved only where strict legal requirements are met. There must be special circumstances. Use must be limited and controlled, and the authorisation must appear necessary because of a danger that cannot be contained by any other reasonable means.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I wonder whether we could turn the question round. What would need to happen for the Minister not to grant a derogation? I cannot really see circumstances in which this situation is likely to change.

[Mark Spencer]

There are circumstances where it is likely to change. There are advancements in other products that are coming forward in the marketplace. The gene editing Act offers opportunities for research institutes to find alternative genetic possibilities to help improve resistance within the sugar beet plants to some of these pests and diseases. In those circumstances, as those new technologies come forward, of course they will be assessed on their merits. We are very keen to support the development of alternatives to try to help sugar beet producers and the environment at the same time.

[Daniel Zeichner]

rose—

[Luke Pollard]

rose—

[Mark Spencer]

I give way to the shadow Minister.

[Daniel Zeichner]

As I said in my speech, it is not that tolerant varieties or alternatives are not already available; it is that there is an economic cost. I do not really see how that is different from the situation the Minister has described. They will not necessarily provide the same level of yield, even with the gene editing. There will still be a cost.

[Mark Spencer]

Let me give way to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, and then I will take both points at the same time.

[Luke Pollard]

I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) said. The Minister set out the reasons for Cruiser SB’s authorisation. Could he be equally clear about the plan to address it? What measures are being taken, how are those measures being assessed and how can we as interested parliamentarians scrutinise progress against those measures, so that that we are not here next year having the same debate with the same possible alternatives, but not yet having them in action? Can he set that out in a reply to Members in this debate, or as a written ministerial statement, so that we can see what plan his Department is pursuing?

[Mark Spencer]

The plan that we are pursuing is working with the sector and the scientific community to try and bring those advances forward as soon as possible. It is not possible for me to stand here today and predict what those advances may be in the next 12 months or five years. Clearly, we have to work with the sector. British Sugar is putting an awful lot of work into trying to improve sugar beet growing in terms of its practice and the products available.

To return to the point I was making, the aim of the threshold is to ensure that Cruise will be used only if there is predicted to be a danger to the sugar beet crop. Those criteria have been met at the moment. There must, of course, be special circumstances. Use must be limited and controlled, and the authorisation must appear necessary because the danger cannot be contained by any other reasonable means. That emergency authorisation allows a single use of neonicotinoid on a single crop under very strict conditions to mitigate the risk to those pollinators.

My decision was informed by the advice of DEFRA’s chief scientific adviser, the Health and Safety Executive and the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides. I also considered economic issues informed by analysis from DEFRA economists. The scientific advice concluded that with the proposed conditions of use there were no concerns for human health. In respect of environmental risk, potential risks to bees were considered in particular detail.

HSE concluded that a number of potential risks to bees, including acute risks to bees from all routes of exposure, were not of concern for this use of thiamethoxam under the proposed conditions of use. Further advice from the chief scientific adviser was that remaining risks, including those from following crops, were likely to be acceptably low given the conditions of the use proposed.

In taking the decision, we have wanted to be as transparent as possible and to give access to the information considered during the decision-making process. We have published documents outlining the key elements involved in making the decision, which can be accessed on gov.uk. That includes the HSE emergency registration report, where Members can access the full HSE risk assessment.

Looking to the future, we do not wish to see the temporary use of neonicotinoids continue longer than is strictly required. The development of alternative sustainable approaches to protect sugar beet crops from viruses is paramount. That includes, as I was saying, the development of resistant plant varieties, measures to improve crop hygiene and husbandry, and alternative pesticides. British Sugar, plant breeders and the British Beet Research Organisation are undertaking a programme of work to develop such alternatives. The Government are closely monitoring progress and in January provided £660,000 towards a precision breeding project to develop resistance to virus yellows in sugar beet, helping to expedite the transition away from neonics.

In addition, the Government recently held a roundtable with members of the British sugar industry and environmental organisations to discuss the industry’s progress on implementing alternatives. I have urged British Sugar and others in the sector to drive forward the plans so that their outputs can be implemented in the field at pace. This afternoon’s discussion gives us an opportunity to recognise the need to develop alternative, sustainable approaches to tackling these plant diseases.

The Government are fully committed to the agricultural transition to repurpose the land-based subsidies we inherited from the EU, which did little for the environment or farmers. That is why we are delivering on a new and ambitious system that rewards farmers and land managers for their role as environmental stewards, which starts with the sustainable farming incentive. Last year saw the roll-out of the sustainable farming incentive, which includes the introduction of paid integrated pest management actions. Specific actions to support more sustainable pesticide use include: paying farmers to carry out assessments and produce integrated pest management plans; establishing and maintaining flower-rich grass margins, blocks or in-field strips; and payments for not using insecticides or for planting companion crops. Those actions are already supporting farmers to minimise the use of pesticides and incentivising the uptake of alternative pest control methods. Encouraging lower-risk and alternative approaches to pest management will be a prominent feature of the national action plan on the sustainable use of pesticides, which will be published shortly.

As I have outlined, the decision to allow the limited and controlled use of new neonicotinoid-based pesticides on a single crop was not taken lightly and is based on the most robust scientific assessment. We will continue to work hard to support our farmers, and to protect and restore our vital pollinator populations.

[Luke Pollard]

I do not quite buy the Minister’s argument. Will he reflect momentarily on the other uses of neonicotinoids in our wider economy, including in flea treatments? I recognise that he may not have the answers in the folder in front of him, but this might be an area that he could ask his officials to investigate. We are at the start of exploring the issue, and I would be grateful if he could set out the path that he thinks would be useful to take in order to explore the matter further.

[Mark Spencer]

I am more than happy to continue to explore that issue. It is interesting that the hon. Member should raise it at this moment in time because we are doing some work in that regard, and there is a statutory instrument coming on veterinary medicines and their deployment. He will be aware that some flea treatments require a veterinary prescription and some can be done under the jurisdiction of an expert—I hesitate to use that word; for example, it might be in a pet shop, where there is some expertise. Others treatments can simply be bought of the internet, so there are different levels of treatment. The Department needs to be careful that such products are of benefit to pets, but also of their impact on the environment. We will consider that robustly as we move forward. I thank him for highlighting that matter and thank hon. Members for their contributions.

15:33

[Samantha Dixon]

I thank the Minister, the shadow Minister—my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner)—and other hon. Members for joining the debate. I am not sure that I am particularly reassured. I have heard that, as of Friday, growers may be spraying this particular chemical on their crops.

[Mark Spencer]

On a point of clarification, the product is not sprayed. There is no aerial spraying of neonicotinoids at any point, and I would not want to inadvertently mislead the House.

[Samantha Dixon]

Crops are being treated with this particular chemical, which I find disconcerting. As I set out in my speech, concerns are shared by constituents up and down the country that instead of the chemical being used in an emergency situation, its use is becoming routine.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for broadening the debate into the use of the chemical in pet treatments, and I thank the Minister for his comments about how the Government are considering addressing the issue. An SI may not be the most appropriate way to do that, given the need for the wider concerns about neonicotinoids to be aired, as he said, as transparently as possible; an SI is not the route that most of my constituents would want to see followed. I go back to the point I made earlier about the use of parliamentary time to consider and debate these issues.

Hopefully, this time next year we will not be debating this issue. Hopefully, that will not be necessary, as alternative means of controlling the specific disease referenced today will have been found, but I hope that everyone here understands how worried people are about the future health of bee communities.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the environmental impact of neonicotinoids and other pesticides.

15:36

Sitting suspended.

Wine Duty

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Westminster Hall

16:00

[Gordon Henderson (in the Chair)]

I shall call Will Quince to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered wine duty.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson. I am pleased to have secured this important debate the day before my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers the Budget statement to the House. I am grateful to the Minister for responding. I know he will take very seriously the points I will make further to our correspondence on this issue. I would also like to thank the unusually great number of right hon. and hon. Members present for supporting this 30-minute Westminster Hall debate. I hope the Minister has noticed the strength of feeling on this important subject.

I applied for this debate as a result of meeting the chief executive officer of Majestic Wine, which is the UK’s largest specialist wine retailer, with more than 200 stores across the UK, including a large store in my constituency. They raised a number of concerns relating to wine duty that I felt were important for the House to hear and reflect on. The UK is a major global hub for wine and spirits. It is the world’s second largest importer of wine by volume and value, and the largest exporter of spirits. It supports over 390,000 jobs, £69 billion in economy activity and £8.6 billion in excise duty revenue.

Like all businesses, those across the wine supply chain have had to confront some tough trading conditions over recent years, but a number of the challenges they face are unique to the wine and spirit trade, and these were brought to my attention by Majestic. The challenges faced by Majestic and other similar businesses stem primarily from the new alcohol excise system, which was introduced last year. In particular I am referring to the impact of the historic duty increases and the changes to the way wine duty is calculated. The introduction of the new duty regime last August followed a review of the inherited EU duty rules. When the review was announced, it was welcomed across the drinks industry, which backed wholeheartedly the aims of the review, which were to make the new duty system fairer, simpler, less distortive and easier to administer.

Sadly, particularly for wine and spirit businesses, the new regime is not fairer. In fact, in many ways it has reinforced the existing market distortions. For wine businesses, the new system is anything but simpler to administer—in fact, it is exactly the opposite. The new system that was introduced on 1 August 2023 levies excise duty on all alcoholic products according to strength, but at different rates. This reinforces pre-existing market distortions by continuing to tax wine and spirits more harshly than other categories of alcoholic drink.

When introducing the new system, the Government recognised the impact it would have on wine businesses and rightly put in place a temporary easement mechanism that pegged the amount payable for wines in the range of 11.5% to 14.5% at the amount payable on a wine of 12.5% alcohol by volume. That amount is currently £2.67 per bottle. Wines falling within this easement mechanism account for 85% of the wine sold in the UK market. That is 1.1 million out of 1.3 million bottles sold. This easement is set to end on 1 February 2025.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I represent the Wine Society, which is headquartered in Stevenage and is a large organisation struggling under this pressure. It will cost it £300,000 to £400,000 to upgrade its systems. It is being asked to price wine before the level of alcohol is known, as wine is an agricultural product, and it is having to re-evaluate the range of wines it is able to output, which is having a knock-on effect on the supply chain. Does my hon. Friend agree that this seems to be a difficult case of unintended consequences, and if the easement he refers to were to be made permanent rather than temporary, it could solve the problem?

[Will Quince]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He is right to champion the cause of the Wine Society, which is based in his constituency. There is both a significant cost implication and an administrative burden for such organisations, so the impact of these changes should not be understated.

The easement that is set to end on 1 February 2025 will affect wine businesses ranging from major retailers such as the big supermarkets to specialist retailers such as Majestic. However, as my right hon. Friend has just alluded to, there are also thousands of independent wine merchants who have all said that having to implement fully the strength-based system would impose significant costs, running to many millions of pounds, both in the short term and once the necessary systems are established.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for his great speech. We are constituency neighbours and he knows that it is not just wine merchants that will be affected but thousands of wine businesses across the UK. We have a strong and flourishing wine sector, but this regime has failed to meet one of the original key objectives that the Treasury sought to establish, which was to make the system easier to administer. Instead, unit labelling and ABV is putting a burden on producers and merchants, which means that they face pricing and cost implications. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is increasing red tape at a time when the Government should be doing much more to reduce it and ease the costs and the burdens of regulation for businesses?

[Will Quince]

My right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour is absolutely right to raise that issue, and she has long championed cutting the red tape and bureaucracy that British businesses face. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) said, this unintended consequence means that business faces not just extra cost but the significant administrative burden that comes with cost and time. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) is right to point out that the new system is not simpler or fairer and that it has a huge cost implication.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

First, I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. James Nicholson Wine in Crossgar, which is in my constituency, is one of those excellent wine businesses that draws lots of people, not just because of the quality and wide variety of its wines but because it has also become a bit of a tourist attraction. It does lots of things. When it comes to the retention of jobs, does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the Government’s proposed changes will undoubtedly—though I hope not—have an impact on job creation and job retention?

[Will Quince]

The hon. Gentleman is right to intervene on that point, because job creation and retention, including in his constituency, is important, as is our flourishing tourism sector. The growth in wine production across our country is something that we should celebrate; we should be proud of that and support it.

This debate is timely because we have some time on our hands. Obviously, the sooner we give notice to industry that the easement can continue, the lower the cost and administrative burden borne by industry. We have until 1 February 2025 to address this issue. I will have an ask for the Minister in a few moments, which I hope the hon. Gentleman will agree with.

I will just touch on one other element first, which is why wine is different. The easement recognises that wine is different from other categories of alcoholic drink. Wine cannot be made to a predetermined strength; the alcoholic strength of wine is determined by climate. I know that I do not need to teach anyone in this Chamber to suck eggs, but wine from warmer climates tends to be higher in alcohol than wine from cooler climates. Wine is not like beer or cider. And wine is subject to strict production rules, so in that respect it is also unlike beer and cider. As a consequence, there is very little that wine makers can do to lower the alcohol content.

It is estimated that there are over 100,000 different wines on the UK market. By comparison, there are less than 1,000 different ciders. Different vintages of wine can vary in strength, as is the case with some wines from the same year. Of course, that is one of the great pleasures of wine; wines from around the world are unique, while different vintages from the same vineyard can differ in strength and taste.

Taxing alcohol by strength, with lower rates for lower-strength products, might seem simpler on paper, but it takes absolutely no account of how different alcoholic products are consumed, including in what quantities and whether the product is diluted. This new system is much more complicated to administer for wine businesses and it penalises wine from warmer climates.

The differences between wine, spirits, beer and cider will remain if the easement ends. In practice, if the easement is abolished as planned, there will be 30 different payable amounts for wine in the 11.5% to 14.5% ABV range.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an important argument. I met with Liquid Indulgence, a small wine supplier in my constituency that supplies commercial businesses around York, as well as selling direct to customers. The point my hon. Friend is making is exactly what that small business said to me about the impact this change would have on that business and whether it could continue. It will surely have a massive impact on small wine suppliers across the country, and will potentially have a negative impact on what those businesses can bring in in tax, compared with what the Government are trying to achieve.

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point on behalf of the small wine supplier he represents in York. Of course, this change will have a massive impact. When Majestic originally brought this matter to my attention, it did so not just on its own behalf, but on behalf of the thousands of wine organisations and companies across the country, ranging from one-person bands through to small and medium-sized enterprises, all of which will bear the administrative burden of this cost.

I want to reiterate one point. If this easement ends—I hope it is “if”, as I very much hope the Minister listens and it will not end—there will be 30 different payable amounts for wine across the 11.5% to 14.5% ABV range. Prices will range from £2.45 to £3.10 per bottle. The practical arrangements that would need to be made as a result of this change are countless, including the reality that two wines from the same independent vineyard in France, say, would have to be labelled differently.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

Other right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned wine merchants, but what we have so far not discussed are the wine growers in the UK. I had better declare an interest, being the chair of all-party parliamentary group for wine of Great Britain. Wine production is one of the fastest growing agriculture sectors, employing about 2,300 people, with a predicted 50% growth in jobs by 2025. Last year, 2023, was an absolutely vintage year, with an estimated 25 million bottles. This easement affects not just wine merchants, but a very important and fast-growing agriculture sector.

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is not just about wine merchants, of course; it is also about the growers. It is a boom industry in this country, and not just for tourism, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, but because English wine, and wine from across our four nations, is being consumed far more frequently than ever before. It is something that we should encourage as a country. I know the Chancellor is keen, in particular, to encourage sparkling wine.

I want to reiterate a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). I am sorry to labour this point, but it is important. The abolition of the easement would introduce massive ongoing red tape costs that concern supermarkets and large retailers, which, of course, we are concerned about. However, what I am more concerned about, as my right hon. and hon. Friends have eloquently pointed out, is the disproportionate costs for smaller wine businesses in constituencies across this country.

As I have said, wine has far more stock keeping units, or SKUs, than other alcohol categories. It is estimated that there are in excess of 100,000 wine SKUs on the UK market. A specialist SME wine retailer, for example, will carry more than 2,000 SKUs at any one time, while larger wine retailers may carry up to 10,000 SKUs. If the easement ends, the duty will have to be calculated individually for each SKU; this will have to be done on an annual basis, as alcoholic strength can vary between vintages.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good case. I speak on behalf of Direct Wines, which is based in my constituency. It has pointed out that now is not the time to remove the easement because the hospitality industry is still struggling to recover from the pandemic. Just over the weekend, we read that a number of pubs are closing regularly. Now is surely not the time to bring about more cost pressures to the industry.

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point about time. Arguably—I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham on this—there is no time to impose additional red tape and bureaucracy on SMEs across this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) is right, however, and as I said at the outset, businesses are coming out of what has been a difficult economic situation. We need to support them as much as we can. As a constituency MP, it sets off alarm bells when I hear that a large organisation such as Majestic—in fact, the largest in the UK—informs me that it will struggle with the additional bureaucracy and cost. We can therefore only imagine how difficult it will be for the tens of thousands of smaller UK wine businesses in constituencies across our country.

As I said at the outset, the UK is the world’s second largest importer of wine by volume and by value. In 2022, we imported the equivalent of more than 1.7 billion bottles of still and sparkling wine. I know that the Minister—a good man and a great Minister, whom I respect hugely—recognises the economically significant contribution that the wine industry makes to the United Kingdom. I invite him to commit today to visiting the Majestic Wine headquarters in Watford before the Easter recess, because I think that will allow him to understand—as I have by meeting people from Majestic—the full implications for wine businesses of ending the easement.

For all the reasons that I, and right hon. and hon. Members have set out, I genuinely believe that there is still time to do the right thing. The more notice that we give business, the better. I hope that the easement will continue—but I hope that that decision can be made soon—that we will do the right thing and that we will make the easement permanent. It is a simple fix, which would benefit business and consumers, and make very little difference, if any, to Treasury receipts.

16:16

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Gareth Davies)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, as always, Mr Henderson.

I congratulate my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), on securing the debate and on the attendance that he has achieved. I recognise the strength of feeling on this across the House and in particular in this Chamber today. I completely share his support for our broader alcohol sector. Not only is it a significant contributor to our gross national product, but I would suggest that it pays a little towards our gross national happiness. It is part of our heritage. From Shakespeare’s plays to our modern British sparkling wines, we have long recognised how life’s triumphs and trials—weddings, wet weather and the working day—can be soothed or celebrated with a glass of our favourite tipple. I recognise that.

In the past few weeks alone, therefore, I have for example met the head of the all-party parliamentary group on wine and spirits, my right hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), and the highly active Wine and Spirit Trade Association to discuss how this remarkable industry’s potential can be truly uncorked. My officials have engaged with businesses and representatives of the UK industry up and down this country as part of budgetary processes that one might expect, from the more well-aged players such as Majestic Wine to the younger vintages such as Ambriel Sparkling.

On behalf of the Government, I am proud to represent our alcohol duty reform package and to present it to the House. We have introduced the biggest reform of alcohol duties for more than 140 years. We introduced a new, simplified alcohol duty system based on the common-sense principle of taxing alcohol by strength to modernise the existing duties, to support businesses and to meet our public health objectives. This is the first time that public health objectives have been inserted into the alcohol duty system.

That reflects four key principles, which it might be helpful for me to set out: the duty system should be fair to the producers that make and grow the drinks we enjoy; it should recognise the importance of jobs, and of pubs and their role in our national life; it should tackle the problem of harmful high-strength products being sold too cheaply; and it should support innovation and modern drinking trends, in particular today’s trend of moving towards lower-alcohol products. Our reforms do just that.

As part of the changes, which came into effect in August last year, we have supported our wine sector. Let me set out how we have done so. First, we removed the sparkling wine premium. My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) rightly spoke about our domestic growers, a really important part of our wine industry. I recently met the chief executive officer of WineGB. I can tell her that we have removed the English sparkling wine premium. Since 1 August 2023, sparkling wines attract less duty than they did under the previous duty system. That is one of the points that I want to make today.

In such a reform some duty has gone up for some sectors in the alcohol industry and some has gone down. For our domestic growers of English sparkling wine it has gone down significantly, even with the retail price index increase that we saw last year. That is the right thing to do for our domestic growers. It will ensure consistency in our system and build success for British wines, which my hon. Friend and I want to see.

Secondly, as has been extensively discussed today—I will come on to this in more detail and address some of the points that have been made—we introduced a wine easement for 18 months until February 2025. As a result, all wine between 11.5% and 14.5% alcohol by volume will be subject to duty as if it were 12.5% ABV. That means we have effectively given the wine industry time to adapt to the new system and allow wine producers to adapt their systems. I recognise completely that a shake-up of a system that has existed for more than 140 years will raise some eyebrows and cause change for a number of businesses, but we should be confident that the bureaucratic burden under the new system is manageable.

Every other product is already subject to duty based on our strength-based system. We have included, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester rightly pointed out, the weather impact of wine, and included cider, which is also subject to seasonal variability challenges. We are mindful of unintended consequences, as several right hon. and hon. Members have outlined, but to make the wine easement permanent, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) has called for, would go against the principle of the alcohol reform to move to a strength-based system that brings in the public health element. As I have already said, although the impact on wine is clearly being felt, we have provided an easement over a period of time that was decided in consultation with the wine industry in four rounds of consultation before the reform comes into being.

I can commit to my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester that we will monitor the reforms and their impact. We have outlined that three years after they come into effect, which is enough time for us to be able to assess them, we will conduct an impact assessment, which will allow His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to gather the relevant information to understand any long-term impacts in the alcohol market. That commitment complements the broader fiscal approach, because at the last autumn statement we announced tax cuts that supported the alcohol and hospitality industry.

We froze alcohol duty for six months until 1 August 2024. We also announced a package of business rate changes and tax cuts worth £4.3 billion over the next five years. My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) was right to highlight the difficult time that our hospitality industry has gone through in recent times. That is why we extended the retail, hospitality and leisure relief scheme—a 75% relief—up to a cash amount of £110,000 per business between 2024 and 2025. In addition to the work being led by my colleagues at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on their package of wine reforms, which will increase flexibility and innovation, the Government have announced a freeze to the small business multiplier for the fourth consecutive year, for 2024-25, protecting over 1 million ratepayers from a multiplier increase. That builds on the unprecedented support that we should never forget we offered the industry during the pandemic—some £16 billion of business rate support. We have also held the tax rate steady over the last three years, which has protected businesses from inflationary pressures at a cost of £14.5 billion to the Exchequer.

This Government have never given the sector reason to doubt our commitment to it, because it has received many cuts or freezes to duty over the last decade. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester that the wine industry has benefited from cuts or freezes to wine duty at five of the last 11 fiscal events. Compared with 2015, wine duty is some 12% lower in real terms. That is something we can all raise a glass to.

Finally, I will address the comments by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who, rightly, has consistently raised the issue of red tape for businesses in the House. She specifically mentioned labelling. Overall, these reforms to our alcohol system simplify our tax duty. That is a Brexit freedom. Under the last slight change to our alcohol duty system in 1996, we had to take duty from the European Union, which was incredibly complicated, completely inconsistent, and did not include any provision for public health. Our easement gives businesses time to adapt to the new system and put in place measures to be able to administer it. Wine can still be labelled to 0.5% ABV. DEFRA has introduced guidance and an option to label to 0.1%, but I want to be really clear that that is optional.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester for raising this important sector and this important issue. It is right that the Government’s fiscal approach continues to be scrutinised in this way. I am confident that this policy is the right one, not just for the wine industry, but for the whole of the United Kingdom.

Question put and agreed to.

South West Water

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Simon Jupp (East Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of South West Water.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Henderson. I am delighted to have secured this important debate, one year on from another debate that I secured on the performance of South West Water. It is another opportunity to hold South West Water to the highest possible standards in the House.

Last year, I described the performance of our water company and its historic lack of investment as “shameful”, and many of my constituents shared my point of view. This year, I want to focus my speech on the facts facing my constituency of East Devon. The public want to see evidence of improvement and delivery of the promised investment, and they want South West Water to clean up its act and our water. South West Water must deliver better services for our constituents, improve our bathing waters, and protect our natural environment. Not doing so puts the vibrancy of our coastal communities under threat.

As the MP for East Devon, I am determined to push South West Water to deliver the standards expected by local residents, visitors and businesses. I want the unacceptable pollution we have seen in Exmouth, Sidmouth and Budleigh Salterton to be met with the full force of the law. Thanks to this Conservative Government, we finally have the tools to hold South West Water to account. It is the biggest crackdown on sewage spills in history: the Government have introduced unlimited fines, accelerated investment plans, legal targets to reduce discharges from every single storm overflow and eliminate all ecological harm, as well as compulsory storm overflow monitors, and they have forced live spill data to be made public. I voted for all that. The Government have passed a suite of new laws to crack down on spills, including the Environment Act 2021, the Environmental Targets (Water) (England) Regulations 2022, the Environmental Civil Sanctions (England) (Amendment) Order 2023, and the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2023.

Those new laws, brought in by this Conservative Government—and no previous Government—are forcing the hand of water companies, but new laws on their own will not clean up our water: more investment, better data, and tougher enforcement are clearly needed. On investment, we know that South West Water has historically failed to invest; we pay the highest sewerage bills in the country, and we have not had our fair return for decades. On data, we now know the scale of the problem, because this Government lifted the lid on the water companies’ infrastructure and made them pay to monitor the results of their own failures.

On enforcement, the Environment Agency must be appropriately funded to carry out its enforcement work. In order to crack down on water pollution, this Government have boosted funding for the Environment Agency, with a budget of £2.2 million per year specifically for water company enforcement activity. That means more officers focused on regulation, more compliance checks, and more data specialists. Environment Agency workforce numbers are higher than a decade ago—there are now 13,200 staff, and it is growing at its base in Exeter. In the past two years, staff numbers have grown by 2,300 across the Environment Agency.

So are things moving in the right direction? Well, the Environment Agency has said:

“There is still much work to be done.”

Its latest annual rating for South West Water is now two stars. That rating is for 2022; in 2021, it was a one-star water company. The Environment Agency has said that the two-star rating is evidence of “modest improvements”, but it has also said that pollution is still at “unacceptable” levels. I agree: only last year, South West Water was fined £2.1 million after admitting that it caused pollution across Devon and Cornwall dating back to 2016. The year before last, it was hit by £13 million in fines in the form of bill deductions for customers. Since those fines were handed out, the Government have legislated to introduce unlimited financial penalties on water companies and expand the range of offences for which penalties can be applied.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. It is interesting to note that a £2.1 million fine was levied against South West Water, but does he think that fine is going to make any difference to a company that has a debt in its water business of £2.8 billion?

[Simon Jupp]

I think every little helps. When we look at the scale of fines and potential future fines from ongoing investigations, which I will come to, I think we will see more money levied in that way from South West Water. Money raised by fines will then be channelled back into improving water quality, supporting local groups and community-led schemes, which help to protect our waterways.

The bosses of water firms that commit criminal acts of water pollution will be banned from receiving bonuses. I am pleased that the chief executive of South West Water led by example in not accepting a bonus last year. Meanwhile, the industry regulator, Ofwat, is currently investigating South West Water’s wastewater treatment works and leakage reporting. I and many colleagues look forward to seeing the outcome of those investigations. The need for independent regulators—Ofwat and the Environment Agency—to act decisively in these investigations is crucial.

Unfortunately, I have to report that the start of 2024 was particularly poor for South West Water in my constituency. Exmouth has faced several major incidents resulting from failures in South West Water’s infrastructure and the lack of investment in the town. South West Water has been using tankers to take sewage from burst sewer pipes to pumping stations, causing additional spills due to the disposal of additional tankered sewage. Those incidents are currently under investigation by the Environment Agency. The situation was—and is— completely unacceptable.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Incidents such as the one he has just described have been happening in Kingsbridge in my constituency, where there have been significant floods and raw sewage has been coming out of the network. The problem is that the investigations are not quick enough, nor are the actions to resolve them, and the damage done to residents and businesses is not well enough understood by South West Water, which needs to engage at a far quicker rate. Does he agree?

[Simon Jupp]

I do agree with my hon. Friend. The extra resources being pumped into the Environment Agency in our region will no doubt be helpful. Coming back to Exmouth, unfortunately some of the ground team, both contractors and people who work for South West Water, who were trying to fix this mess faced harassment and abuse during the weeks of disruption. Historical underinvestment and poor management by South West Water executives are not the fault of workers on the ground, who are out day in, day out in all weathers. I thank everyone who worked so hard to fix those failures, come rain or shine.

As investigations continue into this extremely sorry state of affairs, I continue to work with the Environment Agency, Ofwat and the water Minister. Every option must be on the table in response, including hefty fines. The recent debacle in Exmouth has once again demonstrated the dire need for fast-tracked investment into Exmouth’s water infrastructure, fully funded by South West Water. I have asked Ofwat to include Exmouth’s recent pollution incidents as part of its ongoing investigation into sewage treatment works, and I am pleased that that is happening.

I visited the Exmouth burst pipe alongside the Environment Agency, and I challenged South West Water on the timescale for a permanent solution. I repeated my calls for it to speed up its plans for £38 million of investment in Exmouth. That work includes upgrades to reduce spill frequency at Phear Park and Maer Road pumping stations, and upgrading the sewage treatment works outlet through Sandy Bay holiday park.

That is apparently due to be completed by March 2025, but let me be exceptionally clear: I remain to be convinced that plans to manage spills by moving them across town from one part of the network to the other, or by building pipes further out to sea, will deliver the result that the people of Exmouth dearly deserve. Nor will I or anyone else be grateful for a partial fix. I would add that we still do not know the precise location of an important sewer overflow in Exmouth. After so many months, South West Water still has not determined where the Maer Road combined sewer overflow spills off Exmouth beach. That is unacceptable.

[Anthony Mangnall]

I apologise for intervening twice, but my hon. Friend has just made an essential point about the impact that water companies are having on our aquaculture businesses. Some of them are based out of Brixham, but some out in Lyme Bay, off his constituency, and they are severely jeopardised by the network that South West Water operates and by its lack of ability to treat the sewage. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to ensure that South West Water takes into account the businesses that will be affected by those networks?

[Simon Jupp]

I agree 100% with my hon. Friend, who makes a powerful point about the impact of this unacceptable performance on businesses. We need to know the location of the end of the pipe off Exmouth beach, not only because of a potential breach of the Environment Agency’s permit conditions, but for the safety of bathing water users. I remain on the case with South West Water. The saga has gone on for far too long. Both the Environment Agency and I agree that investment to reduce sewage spills in Exmouth is well overdue and I will not relent in my calls for more investment from South West Water in Exmouth and across all parts of East Devon.

Near to Exmouth is the gorgeous town of Budleigh Salterton, at the mouth of the River Otter, with a new national nature reserve that I was privileged to visit a couple of weeks ago. A couple of hours ago I learned that the sewer pipe in Budleigh Salterton burst last night. South West Water were using tankers to transport flows from Budleigh to Maer Lane sewage treatment works. I understand from South West Water, with whom I remain in touch about this recent incident and its impact on the local environment and disruption to local residents, that the repair is now complete. I have already received several emails on the matter. I have asked South West Water for more details on its longer-term plans for Budleigh Salterton and what its investment will mean in terms of spills.

Following my debate in Parliament last year, South West Water announced a new multimillion package to upgrade Sidmouth and Tipton St John’s sewer system and to reduce the number of spills. I have been calling on South West Water to speed up that already announced investment, and I reiterate that call today—I know the company will hear me. We have seen far too many reports of spills off Sidmouth beach in the last few weeks. If it is possible to go further and faster, while balancing the cost to customers, South West Water must not hesitate to do so.

If South West Water believes its sewage systems cannot cope with new housing developments, it must say so. The Government are looking to consult on whether to make water companies statutory consultees on major planning applications. I wholeheartedly support such a move, and I urge the Minister to press ahead with that as quickly as possible.

I firmly believe that applications for new planning developments should only go ahead if it is clear that local water infrastructure can cope. I also urge the Minister to get water companies to install monitors on all emergency overflows. There cannot be any excuses for pollution. I understand that the Government want to do that, and I would be grateful to hear the timescale for when that could happen.

For my part of Devon, South West Water must make its water infrastructure fit for the future. When the new town of Cranbrook, which I am proud to represent, was being built, South West Water opted to upgrade an existing sewage treatment works in Exeter rather than build a new plant. If further development east of Exeter is to go ahead, I strongly urge South West Water to draw up plans for a new plant, with urgency.

Councillors on East Devon District Council very much jumped the gun to sign off a further new town of 8,000 homes in our district—just weeks before the new national planning policy framework was announced, which provides the tools to challenge such housing targets, especially in these circumstances. That was spectacularly short-sighted and risks further challenges for the district’s water infrastructure.

I will not use much more time; I am conscious that other colleagues would like to speak. Outside Parliament, I have been working with East Devon parish, town, district and county councillors—this must be a cross-party endeavour—and with environmental groups. I have raised their concerns with South West Water’s bosses, the Environment Agency and Ofwat. We all want to hold South West Water to account for its plans to invest in East Devon and to fix local problems urgently, as and when they crop up—and they do crop up all too frequently.

I have previously secured compensation for residents of Clyst St Mary after foul flooding in the village and I recently helped local charity Sidmouth Hospice at Home to reach a resolution over a hefty bill from South West Water. I have also facilitated meetings between Sidmouth town and Lympstone parish councils and senior figures in South West Water to look at data and delve into the issues in granular detail.

South West Water has held community meetings in Exmouth and Sidmouth recently and I publicly urge the company to continue to talk regularly with the communities that pay for its services. I also urge South West Water to publish its post-2025 investment plans online as soon as they are finalised. After all, it is we the public who are the billpayers. We have the right to know what is going on.

We all want to protect our stunning coastline, rivers and streams and hold South West Water to account for its failings. We finally have the tools to do so, through targets, fines, monitoring, data and investment plans. I am pleased to have secured this debate on the performance of South West Water and I very much look forward to hearing the contributions of other colleagues and the Minister this afternoon.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Gordon Henderson (in the Chair)]

I was about to remind hon. Members to bob if they want to speak, but it looks as though I do not have to. I gently urge Members to restrict their comments to about five minutes. I call Luke Pollard.

16:44

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Henderson. It is good to follow my fellow Janner, the hon. Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp), who brought forward this debate. The performance of South West Water is not good enough: that is felt by the constituents both he and I represent. We need renewed cross-party pressure on the company to invest in the services required to cut sewage spills and to return reliable water usage all year round, as well as to address the concerns about drought in our area.

Raw sewage is the perfect metaphor for the last 14 years. For years, South West Water dished out huge dividends to its shareholders while dumping sewage into our rivers and seas. Our region deserves so much better than that. The most recent data from the Environment Agency has not been published for 2023, but the 2022 figures show there were more than 37,000 sewage spills in the south-west. In Plymouth alone, there were more than 2,000—an average of five spills every day, or 12,750 hours of sewage dumping.

According to South West Water’s live, interactive storm overflow map, as of half-past 3 today there are 26 bathing water locations across Devon and Cornwall that may be affected by the operation of overflows, including two in Plymouth. Having more data is a necessary part of being able to respond to the challenges of a lack of investment in infrastructure over a long time. However, that data must lead to enforcement and to a change in investment behaviour by South West Water in order to start shutting down those storm overflows for routine discharge.

All of us in this House recognise that, in the event of extreme weather, our water system cannot hold that much water—but we are not talking about extreme weather on a day-to-day basis; discharge is a routine daily occurrence from a water company that knows it should not be doing it, but is still doing it. I would like the water company to be more honest with customers and parliamentarians about what needs to be done to get to a point where all those storm overflows do not routinely discharge on a daily basis.

[Richard Foord]

The hon. Member talked about how data on sewage spills is gathered. Does he agree that, rather than water companies having complete control over gathering data on sewage spills, that function ought to sit with the regulator, the Environment Agency?

[Luke Pollard]

I am not a huge fan of the Environment Agency—I like the people who work there, but there are just not enough of them. Certainly, since 2010, Environment Agency funding has been cut by over 50%, which creates real challenges in the efficiency of prosecutions. Prosecutions that take years do not represent justice delivered quickly, or fines going to the affected communities quickly; they represent justice delayed, and something that can be built into the company’s daily business operations.

I will pick up on a final point before I finish: the investment that South West Water is making at Devil’s Point in Plymouth. As a regular wild swimmer there—I swim all year round, in shorts or wetsuits, depending on the time of year—I am grateful that the Minister and his predecessor authorised the campaign I was running for a new bathing water status at Devil’s Point and Firestone Bay. That is very welcome. The data collection there shows excellent water quality nearly all year round, but the two private raw sewage outlets that pump untreated human effluent into that important part of Plymouth Sound are not acceptable. I am grateful to South West Water for starting the work on closing those and adopting those raw sewers, but that work is taking too long and I would like to see a greater urgency in delivering it. We know raw sewage is going into our sea, and the action taken there should be quicker.

I encourage the Minister to keep pressure on South West Water, because as a water company it is not investing enough in the infrastructure we need. I have long-term concerns about the amount of water in our system to prevent future droughts and water restrictions in the summer. I would be grateful if the Minister could keep that pressure on South West Water, so that the region gets the water and sewage services that we deserve.

16:49

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I will focus my remarks on water supply rather than pollution. To give some context, the Environment Agency predicts that England risks running short of water by 2045—not very far away—due to climate change and population growth. The Government are struggling to get our daily usage down to 122 litres per person by 2050—currently that figure is 145 litres. We have built no new reservoirs since 1991, and we know that the Environment Agency is going to reduce river abstractions.

In 2022 we had one of the hottest summers on record, and yes, we did almost run out of water. What happened in the south-west? Reservoirs were at a record low—Roadford lake was 30% below its usual water level—and, much to everyone’s consternation, hosepipe bans were implemented for over a year, from August 2022 to September 2023. The Environment Agency was not impressed; as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request, a leaked email from the Environment Agency said that South West Water

“were not honest, open and transparent with regulators about their drought projections”

and that there was

“a lack of understanding of their own supply system”.

Basically, it was not prepared.

What did South West Water do? To its credit, it did start putting measures in place. It introduced the option of water audits and made a number of water-saving products available—although not everyone can use them and they run out very quickly. Its “stop the drop” and “save every drop” campaigns were well regarded—indeed other water companies have followed suit—but they did not deliver the savings expected. The target was a 5% reduction in consumption, but the campaigns achieved only a 3% reduction. The company also introduced a non-household innovation fund.

So far, so good, but as we head forward, climate change is not going to improve much; it is going to make things worse. Looking forward to the water plan for 2024, there is an assumption that there will be a sixteenfold increase in heatwaves by 2030 and we will have 15 megalitres less water available per day by 2050. Yet the population of Devon will have increased by 350,000 by 2050, with many working from home, increasing demand, and we know that abstraction licences will continue to decrease, so we will need extra 30 million litres of water per day net for that plan period.

I have a real concern that the supply and demand calculations made by South West Water are unrealistic. There is a huge overreliance on smart meters to deliver the goods, and indeed on every one of us using less water. South West Water was rated as red on the supply demand balance index for 2022-23 because two of the four water zones were in deficit. By 2050 we will need 200 million litres of water per day. It is not realistic. We already know that the figures from South West Water are questionable, and work is going on with Ofwat looking at the leakage and consumption data.

Smart meters have proved a bit of a challenge in the electricity industry, and I see no hope that they can be better for water, not least because they are going to be under paving stones. The apps—it is not clear what sort of device South West Water will use—do not work very well. If the electric market is anything to go by, if one’s property is too far away from where the core meter is, the app simply does not work. I put in a smart meter, but I still have to give my readings every six months.

To top it all, if we do not have proper guidance for individuals and they do not know how much water they are using in a bath, or shower or washing machine, and if we do not have manufacturers putting grading systems for water usage on their machines, we are never going to change behaviour to meet the need that is clearly there. Water companies are bearing the brunt of trying to convey this message, and the Government need to do some more heavy lifting here. It feels like the measures are being done to consumers, not with and for consumers.

I am pleased that there is going to be a consumer-focused condition introduced into water company licences, but when? The Government said 2024; will the Minister confirm whether that will be the case? That measure will mean that we, as customers, should be well informed and feel that we can rely on South West Water to fix problems. This weekend, my residents in Ashcombe were very concerned because a pumping station that supplies their water, and that has been off-on with different problems since 2017, failed again. This is 2024, seven years since 2017—the consumer duty cannot come soon enough.

The water supply is just as important as pollution, and we need to focus on it. We cannot rely on reduced demand assumptions. We need more infrastructure—we cannot just sit on our laurels—and it needs to be innovative. We need to look at desalination as, to its credit, South West Water is beginning to do, but that is only the start of a very big mountain that still needs to be climbed.

16:55

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Henderson. A policy paper says:

“the costs of cleaning up coastal waters, a national resource, have not fallen fairly across the country. Thirty per cent of the cost has fallen on Devon and Cornwall, which have just 3 per cent of the nation’s population. The chair of the South West Water Consumers Committee believes their average bill will go up by a further £150 a year”.

That was written in 1996. It is a Liberal Democrat policy paper from almost 30 years ago, and it is a story that continues to chime today and echoes through the decades. It is good that we are talking about the performance of a single water company, and South West Water is plainly one of the worst performing water companies in the country, but we should not focus myopically on the performance of one single water company and miss the big picture: the regulatory environment in which all water companies work. That is what I shall address my remarks to.

It is true that South West Water pays out some staggering dividend payments. Since 1990, South West Water has paid out in dividends an amount equivalent to £2,931 per property. That is more than any of the other 13 English water companies. A constituent of mine from Seaton recently pointed out to me that South West Water, or its parent company Pennon Group, owes £3.1 billion, which is similar to the amount paid in dividends since 1990, which is £3.2 billion. By those measures, South West Water is a poorly performing water company, but we have to look at the environment in which it is working. The water companies are working to the incentives that their shareholders set for them, rather than for the public benefit and good.

There were 146 recorded dry spills over a 12-month period last year. To recap, those are illegal spills made by water companies when there is no heavy rainfall. Just yesterday evening, I was talking to Jo Bateman from the East Devon constituency, who attended the End Sewage Pollution coalition meeting that I brought together. She explained to me that she is suing South West Water for those illegal dry spills. I am not at all persuaded that water companies will simply do the right thing without Government intervention. We know the Environment Agency has been denuded of resources in recent years. The agency had £235 million cut from its budget when the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) was the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

[Simon Jupp]

Obviously, the hon. Member was in the room for my speech, and I explained that more investment is going into the Environment Agency to tackle the issues he raises. Would he shed some light on Lib Dem policy? Does his party still want to abolish the EA or keep it? It is not clear—it is a muddle and a farce.

[Richard Foord]

Liberal Democrat policy is to abolish Ofwat but very much to bolster the Environment Agency. We need to ensure that we have a regulator with teeth. As I have said to the hon. Member before, if the Environment Agency has teeth, they are in a glass of water by the side of the bed. He says he thinks that South West Water will hear his concerns, but I point out that the chief executive only forwent her bonus when it was plain that the level of outrage and campaigning in the west country was such that anything else would have been unacceptable. I should say that it is under pressure from parties like the Liberal Democrats that the Conservatives seem to have been talking in recent weeks about water companies and their executives not taking their bonuses when their performance is so poor.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

In clarifying Liberal Democrat policy and the actions they have taken, perhaps the hon. Gentleman could explain what his party’s leader, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), did to tackle this issue when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change between 2012 and 2015.

[Richard Foord]

I would be very happy to. Of course, at that time the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change had different responsibilities.

Our policy now is very much about reforming water companies’ boards. They need to be transformed into public benefit companies. We need boards to have grassroots campaigners such as those I gathered together last night. We had Surfers Against Sewage and the Women’s Institute, which is pushing its “Water You Waiting For?” campaign. Fantastic campaigners such as these need a voice at the board level of these companies, otherwise we will face the catastrophe of our tourist hotspots being struck with the affliction that is water pollution. According to Blue Flag, four of the 10 beaches most affected by pollution last year were in Devon, including Sidmouth, which endured over 600 hours of sewage spills.

We heard earlier in the debate about the Environment Agency. In my view, we need to see the end of operator self-monitoring, which is where water companies get to gather their data themselves before passing it to the regulator. It means that they can potentially vary the data they are collecting. Water companies are essentially marking their own homework. This is having a devastating effect on some tourist areas such as the ones in Honiton.

I feel that there is a mismatch between the rhetoric we have heard this afternoon from some hon. Members and their voting records. I point them to 25 January 2023, when we voted on the draft Environmental Targets (Water) (England) Regulations 2022 and when I was very proud to insist that the Government should have more stringent targets for water pollution. I can see, Mr Henderson, that you are suggesting I have reached the end of my time, but I am grateful to have had the chance to make my remarks.

17:02

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) for securing today’s important debate.

I must declare an interest: I surf. I surfed on Sunday on a beach that South West Water’s website advised it was safe to surf on and had been for 24 hours. However, a well-known campaign group assured me that it had a sewage alert on it. This happens week after week. A campaign group has chosen to misrepresent the data it has, issuing sewage alerts when the combined storm overflows run and scaring people from entering our beautiful waters. Yes, we would all like the combined storm overflows to not run so often, but they are over 95% rainwater, and on most of North Devon’s stunning surf beaches they rush out into the Atlantic ocean. It does not take 48 hours for the tide to sort that out. The recommended gold standard for removing overflow waters is one tidal rotation, which is 12.5 hours.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank South West Water for the work it has done to date, which saw Croyde, one of the jewels of the surf crown, move from having “good” to “excellent” bathing water quality last year. I also thank the company for working with the event organisers—the ones who accepted—over the Christmas period to try to get our big Christmas swims out safely. Huge confusion is being caused on our beaches, with a Victorian bathing water season still in place, meaning that the most accurate data from the Environment Agency is not available from September through to May. We are a hardy bunch in North Devon. We are out all year round.

With that in mind, I want to focus on the serious problem that occurred in North Devon just three weeks ago, when there was a raw sewage spill from a sewage treatment works due to an electrical fault caused by a contractor on site. This resulted in six hours of raw sewage running into a large river that runs straight out to sea. Yes, there are questions for South West Water about the incident, but accidents do happen. South West Water reported it in line with all procedures.

The Environment Agency recommended closing four beaches and posted details of the sewage incident on its website. Unfortunately, it informed only one of the two councils that needed to be notified. No one told people on the beaches. The well-known campaign group, which we would think would rush to issue a sewage alert, did nothing of the sort. Its “sewage alert” has no definition; it literally means that the storm overflow had gone at some point in the previous 48 hours. The group chooses not to use the information that is available to it from the Environment Agency, which details when there is a real sewage pollution issue. In that respect, I have an issue with the South West Water website as well, which only includes data on its own storm overflows. However, it is at least clear that that is what the company is doing.

Most people do not use the Environment Agency website, which is not a fancy app that says when there is a problem. On that day, although we now know that sewage was being released, the campaign group that apparently prides itself on supporting surfers did not use the data available to it and surfing lessons went ahead.

Many people who regularly use the beaches in North Devon gave up on the campaign app some time ago. One surf school said, “We’d never go surfing if we listened to them.” I ask the Minister this question: what more can be done urgently to provide accurate information to those wishing to bathe or surf at this time of year? I urge the campaign group to think a bit harder about the information it is spreading—

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but she has mentioned many times this “campaign group”. I assume she means Surfers Against Sewage, but can she be clear for the record whom she is being critical of?

[Selaine Saxby]

I am happy to clarify, but by the same token the group does not actually like it when I mention it by name.

As I was saying, I urge the group to think a bit harder about the information it is spreading and at least try to issue a sewage alert when there actually is sewage. I say that because when the group set itself up 40 years ago, it ran a brilliant campaign and quite rightly so, as there was a lot of work to do. However, the group now privately states: “With regard to the beaches in your constituency, we totally agree that huge improvements have been made to water quality there and in many places around the country.” However, the group does not like me repeating that in public, as it undermines its very existence.

Yes, South West Water has more to do. I want to know how that incident at Ashford and two more incidents at Croyde over Christmas happened. Most of all, however, I want people to have easy access to accurate information about when it is safe to enter the water on some of the finest beaches in the world.

17:06

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is an absolute pleasure, Mr Henderson, to serve under your chairmanship, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) and fellow Janner on securing this debate.

It is worth recalling what our water quality was back in the mid-1980s. For decades, the south-west had some of the cheapest water bills in the country for one simple reason: we just used to dump our sewage straight into the sea, with no real investment to end that practice until that time. Those who try to pretend that public ownership innately means great standards of environmental practice need to think again.

There has been major investment since that time, but it is another initiative that began under the coalition Government that has brought the issue of water quality back into the headlines. In 2013, only 7% of storm overflow outlets received any monitoring; as of the end of last year, 100% of those outlets receive monitoring. Put simply, the issue—the use of storm overflow outlets—has always existed, but it was just ignored and not monitored.

Bathing water quality is vital for Torbay, especially given the popularity of water sports and sea swimming among both residents and tourists. I have done some considerable work on the issue of bathing water quality since being elected to the House. Achievements so far include the completion of a major project at Torre Abbey sands by South West Water to ensure that our bay met the tougher legal bathing water standards introduced since my election in 2015. Those standards remain in place today.

To provide some background information, the majority of beaches in Torbay have outstanding bathing water quality, with 11 of the 15 registered beaches in the English Riviera classified as excellent for water quality in 2023. However, with Goodrington’s bathing water quality rated as sufficient, there is a need for further work to get all our beaches to a rating of good, then excellent.

To push forward action in the bay, over the last year I have met the chief executive of South West Water at Meadfoot beach, which does not have a storm overflow outlet, despite some claims that it does, and I met the company’s chief operating officer at Goodrington beach to discuss water quality across the bay and the next steps to invest in it.

During my most recent meeting, South West Water recognised the popularity of bathing at Goodrington and the need to improve the rating of Goodrington’s water quality. I pushed it for a target for the water quality being rated excellent by 2030, and to be fair to the company it agreed to that target. We will therefore see a £6-million programme of investment by 2030 in infrastructure near Goodrington and Paignton sands to help to achieve that goal. That work alone will not improve the standard of the bathing water at that beach to excellent, given the issues with items washed into the sea from surrounding parks and facilities, but it will provide further improvement. One thing we sometimes miss in this debate is the fact that water quality can be as easily affected by what is washed in from a park, particularly animal waste, as by whatever discharge may be coming from an outlet. The plan for Goodrington and Paignton is part of a £27-million plan for investment in the bay between now and 2030, with the clear goal of all our beaches reaching the excellent standard.

The Tor Bay Harbour Authority needs to stop using the same term for both rainfall drainage predictions and actual sewage releases—an issue which the previous Lib Dem-independent coalition-run council and the current Conservative leadership have raised regularly with the Environment Agency. The aim is to create clarity for residents, ensure that investment is targeted at sewage and end any misleading presentations of data by third parties.

I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I ask that he cover some specific points. First, what work will be done to hold South West Water to the commitments it has made to invest in further improvements in water quality? Secondly, alongside the wider plans for our region, how will local communities be able to hold South West Water and other partners, such as local councils, to pledges such as the ones recently made relating to Goodrington and Paignton sands? Finally, what steps will he take with the Environment Agency to create greater clarity about what is rainwater draining from land and what is an actual sewage spill? The aim is to bring clarity for the public and focus for resource investment.

Progress has been made, but there is more to do. We need to keep a focus on the issue and ensure that our water company is held to account, so that the progress residents expect to see is delivered.

17:11

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) on securing this debate. I have spent many summer holidays in his constituency over the years, so it was great to hear those names.

This issue is vital, so I welcome the opportunity to discuss the performance of South West Water in more detail. There are lessons for us to learn about the whole sector by examining this case, but many of the issues that have been raised are specific to the south-west. Although there are strong opinions on this issue, there were some very valuable contributions to what has been an excellent debate.

The first point made by the hon. Member for East Devon that is worth repeating is the fact that across the country, many people working for water companies have become the victims of harassment. They are not in any way responsible, and I echo his point about that. He welcomed, as others did, the recent increase in funding for the Environment Agency. However, the context is that the Environment Agency had a 50% cut from 2010 to 2022. If it is the case, as I believe it is, that more money for the Environment Agency will improve the quality of its monitoring, it must be accepted that the huge cuts it experienced in the first 12 years of this Government have been a contributory factor.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) spoke about the need for more honesty from South West Water, which other Members repeated. He spoke powerfully about how important the issue is for his constituents. He also invited us to imagine him swimming in various amounts of Lycra, which many people will have enjoyed when thinking about his outdoor swimming. It is important that we reflect on the fact that swimming is key to both the enjoyment of people in the south-west and the economy down there.

The hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) reflected on the lack of investment in infrastructure over many years. She also said, in what was a very good speech, that she believed that South West Water had not been honest. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) spoke about the specific challenges in the local area, particularly the fact that it is a popular tourist destination, with the population expanding hugely in the summer months. That has specific consequences, and is not necessarily reflected in who pays the bills. He also questioned where the responsibility for companies stood between shareholders and the general environmental good. Businesses have a statutory responsibility to respond to their shareholders, which is why it is down to Government to have responsibility for ensuring that they perform to environmental standards as well. That informs much of the approach that the Labour party takes.

The hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) identified a failure of investment between 2012 and 2015. She placed responsibility at the feet of the Lib Dems, who were in government with the Tories at that time, but we would say that it has happened throughout the past 14 years. She also took the unusual step of suggesting that the major issue that people were angry about was the performance of the local campaign group, which I have to say is a new development that I was not expecting.

The recent report by the Rivers Trust, “State of Our Rivers”, which was published only last week, shows that the dial overall has not shifted on the health of our waterways. Not a single English river is in good overall health, and that has not changed since the previous report in 2021. A multitude of factors inform water health, but 54% of rich river stretches failed because of activities attributed to the water industry. That simply is not good enough.

Yesterday, along with the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton, I spoke at the launch of the election manifesto for the Surfers Against Sewage campaign. It was a shame that the Government were not able to send the Minister, although he was intending to go. It is an important coalition, because the issue is of huge importance to our constituents, particularly to the economy of the south-west. As the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton reflected, we heard from Jo Bateman about the powerful campaign that she is fighting for the ability to swim in clean waterways, recognised as an amenity that should be available to us all.

In preparing for this debate, I was pleased to hear about the work of Jayne Kirkham and Perran Moon, Labour’s parliamentary candidates for Truro and Falmouth and for Camborne and Redruth, respectively. They have supported protests and started petitions that add to the community fight to preserve Cornwall’s waterways. Jayne stressed that the discharges into Cornwall’s rivers was impacting on tourism and costing millions alongside the environmental damage.

Many people are concerned that Ofwat’s new growth duty will further reduce its ability to be a force for environmental good. When the Minister responds, I hope that he can set out how he sees that duty working alongside Ofwat’s responsibilities to improve environmental outcomes. Does the Minister agree that the perception that our waterways are not fit to swim in is damaging to growth as it depletes tourist revenue? If so, will he confirm whether he has instructed Ofwat that its new growth duty must mean that no sewage discharge is liable to reduce tourist growth?

[Gordon Henderson (in the Chair)]

Order. May I stop you? I am afraid you have run out of time.

[Mr Perkins]

Okay. Thank you, Mr Henderson.

17:18

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) for bringing the matter of the performance of South West Water before the House, which has proven to be an incredibly important debate. I am disappointed in the continued poor performance shown by South West Water and its impact on our local environment.

Recently, I undertook a tour of the south-west and heard at first hand how pollution can impact coastal communities and local economies. I want it to be clear that this Government have made improving water company performance a top priority. While performance may have improved in the 2022-23 reporting year, South West Water remains one of the worst performing companies, with a long way to go still—in particular on pollution incidents and storm overflow discharges, both of which were significantly above the industry average in 2022. That is completely unacceptable. South West Water should be under no illusion: it must take urgent steps to reduce its pollution incidents significantly, as well as addressing other performance concerns, such as increasing resilience of the water supply.

Among the concerns expressed by Members, my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon raised the issue of sewage discharge into Exmouth bathing water. I have recently had discussions with him about that, and he has written to me several times. Although the condition of the bathing water is currently classified as excellent by the Environment Agency, I wish to reassure the House that the recent incidents raised by my hon. Friend are currently being investigated by the Environment Agency. It has required South West Water to provide data and information to support its investigations. It would be inappropriate for me to comment from the Dispatch Box while this investigation is ongoing, but please rest assured that the regulator will not hesitate to hold the water company to account if a breach has occurred.

The Environment Agency is also scrutinising South West Water’s overall pollution reduction plan to ensure that the company has the right plans in place to prevent future issues. I will also be personally seeking assurance from the chief executive of South West Water, Susan Davy, that the company is doing all it can to mitigate the environmental impacts and protect bathing waters both in Exmouth and across the south-west for the sake of both the environment and public health.

I am also aware of the concerns of Members and the public following high-profile sewage spills, such as those at Harlyn bay in Cornwall. I am pleased to see that South West Water has outlined an £800,000 investment in this area by 2025 to reduce surface water ingress into the combined sewer network to help reduce storm overflow spill frequencies. However, its actions are again coming too late, following years of neglecting its civic duties. This Government will not be shy of holding the company to account.

[Richard Foord]

Would the Minister agree that the problem is not just with one single water company but with the regulatory environment in which water companies operate? That is why at last night’s #EndSewagePollution coalition meeting, which I brought together, we had present the Rivers Trust, British Canoeing, the Angling Trust, River Action UK, Swim England, Surfers Against Sewage and the Women’s Institute. Does the Minister regret being unable to attend?

[Robbie Moore]

I find it a huge misfortune that it is Lib Dem policy to get rid of one of the key regulators, Ofwat, as has been confirmed in this debate. We have just given Ofwat powers to take a much more robust approach to dividends and water company bosses’ bonuses, so I fear for the future of holding water companies to account if Lib Dem policy is get rid of it. This Government know that the industry needs to go further and faster to address these issues.

In 2022, data indicated that 6.47% of South West Water storm overflows spilled 100 times or more, which was twice the sector average. That is quite simply unsatisfactory. That is why we have introduced our storm overflows discharge reduction plan—the most ambitious plan to address storm overflows discharges in water company history, which will deliver £60 billion of capital investment by 2050 and target our most important sites, including bathing waters first.

The Government have also driven water companies to ensure that we now have 100% monitoring of storm overflows; that is up from 7% in 2010 under the previous Labour Administration. It was the last Labour Administration who brought out self-monitoring; we want to overturn that as we have better data from the roll-out of 100% monitoring.

However, I recognise the progress happening in the south-west. Indeed, I recently visited a pilot scheme at Combe Martin village with my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), where smart water butts and sustainable drainage had been introduced to better manage rainwater. That was having a positive impact. I commend my hon. Friend on the good work that she has been doing in her constituency, working together with her constituents and with campaign groups to ensure that a partnership-led approach can actively work on the ground when it comes to tackling sewage pollution.

[Mr Perkins]

The Minister mentioned something that some of his colleagues have referred to. Self-monitoring was either a big problem, in which case I do not know why the Government have not got rid of it in the last 14 years, or it was not. He needs to be credible about this. If he is trying to say that self-monitoring is a problem, they should have done something years ago.

[Robbie Moore]

That is why this Government have rolled out 100% monitoring of our storm overflows; once we have the data, we are able to hold failing water companies to account. That is exactly what this Government intend to do through our “Plan for Water”, which is all about more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement.

I also wish to address some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) regarding South West Water’s resilience to drought, as I know many in the region experienced extended hosepipe bans. I am pleased to say that South West Water has informed us that, as of 22 February 2024, the Roadford reservoir is now at 100% capacity and Colliford is at 87%, showing significant improvement. The Environment Agency continues to work with the company on a range of new sources to improve resilience. I recently visited Hawks Tor, a former clay pit, that has been brought into the water supply to try to deal with some of those water resilience issues.

Many Members mentioned the issue of investment. Of course, addressing these concerns requires investment, and this responds to some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster). Following a DEFRA commission, Ofwat—which, it seems, the Lib Dems want to abolish—agreed to accelerate £128 million of funding to accelerate smart metering, build nutrient removal systems to improve river water quality and accelerate 15 storm overflow improvements in the Falmouth and Sidmouth catchments.

South West Water’s latest business plans include a significant £2.8 billion package of investment, which Ofwat is now scrutinising to ensure that it will truly deliver for customers and begin to turn its poor record around. Its commitments will also include achieving the lowest level of pollution incidence in the sector and significantly increasing water quality and water resilience by investment in new treatment works, reservoirs and tackling leakage. South West Water must now deliver on those ambitious plans, and this Government will hold it to account every step of the way. I look forward to my next meeting with the chief executive to be able to get an update on those plans.

I also wish to assure the House that the Government and our regulators, Ofwat and the Environment Agency, do not take underperformance lightly. As a result of failing to meet its performance commitments, Ofwat has directed South West Water to return £9.2 million to customers during the financial year of 2024-25, in addition to the £13.3 million returned in the financial year 2022-23. I again reiterate that, if the Lib Dems want to get rid of Ofwat, I am not quite sure who would be directing South West Water to do that.

South West Water was also instructed by Ofwat to produce a service commitment plan to demonstrate how it will meet the commitments made at the start of the current five-year price review period, and that was updated in November 2023. As I have said, I will shortly be meeting the chief executive of South West Water again to discuss progress on its plans and to hold the water company to account on its specific failures on pollution incidents.

When water companies fall short, we will not hesitate to hold them to account. Since 2015, the Environment Agency has secured fines of over £150 million, including a £2.1 million fine for South West Water in April 2023. Furthermore, under the action taken by this Government, we will be strengthening regulation to ensure that regulators have the tools to hold water companies to account. I want to thank all Members for their contributions today, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon for bringing this important debate before the House.

[Gordon Henderson (in the Chair)]

The hon. Gentleman has one minute to wind up.

[Simon Jupp]

Thank you, Mr Henderson. This has been a really good debate, following on from the debate that I led last year as well. It is clear that people, on a cross-party basis, care about this. We have been paying South West Water bills for decades—I know my family has—and we all want to get value for money. We do not think that we have got that historically. If I may, I will make a point to the Liberal Democrats again. In January, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord), when talking about the EA and Ofwat, said:

“the Government probably ought to be stepping in and removing those regulators”.—[Official Report, 31 January 2024; Vol. 744, c. 916.]

As ever, Lib Dem policy is as clear as mud.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the performance of South West Water.

17:29

Sitting adjourned.