Oral Answers to Questions
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)
Gill Furniss (Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)
Israel must immediately allow rapid and unhindered aid into Gaza. The Foreign Secretary raised the humanitarian situation with Israeli Foreign Minister Sa’ar on Sunday. We recently announced £4 million of further UK humanitarian support for Gazans, and we will continue to urge Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid to allow the UN and other aid organisations to operate safely and independently.
Dr Opher
This morning I heard from my medical colleague, Dr Rebecca Inglis, of Healthcare Workers Watch, that a GP in Gaza was killed by Israeli soldiers—shot in the head, Mr Speaker. He is just one of 1,200 healthcare workers who have been murdered by Israeli forces. Countless others have been unlawfully detained and tortured. Israel is deliberately destroying the Palestinian healthcare system. Will the Minister please raise these issues with his Israeli counterpart?
Mr Falconer
I can confirm that I have raised these issues with my Israeli counterpart. It is appalling that hundreds of healthcare workers have reportedly been killed since the start of the conflict. We continue to urge the Israeli authorities to ensure that incidents are investigated transparently and that those responsible are held to account and lessons learned. Healthcare workers, premises and facilities must be protected, allowing medical staff to do their work.
Gill Furniss
More than 450 Palestinians have been killed in recent weeks as Israeli forces have opened fire on those attempting to collect aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The people of Gaza not only face daily risks from bombs and bullets, but the ever-present danger of man-made drought and famine. Will the Government commit to using all resources at their disposal, including further sanctions and an arms embargo to ensure that aid is delivered to Gaza under the auspices of the UN and other suitably qualified bodies?
Mr Falconer
The killing of civilians at aid distribution centres in Gaza is horrifying. Israel must fulfil its obligations under international law to ensure unhindered humanitarian assistance. I will not speculate about future sanctions or arms embargoes, but we continue to engage with our partners and will not hesitate to take further action if the Government of Israel do not change course.
Laura Kyrke-Smith
Mussa Abu Darabi is just one of hundreds of Palestinians who have been killed trying to access food from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in recent weeks. Fifteen international human rights organisations have now warned that the GHF may face legal consequences for
“aiding and abetting, or otherwise being complicit, in crimes under international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide.”
Will the Minister join me in condemning the murder of desperate and starving people? What assessment does he make of the GHF’s legality?
Mr Falconer
No one should risk death or injury to feed their family. As I said in this House on 4 June, Israel’s aid delivery measures are inhumane. We will not support any mechanism that endangers civilians. We have continually called on Israel, including most recently on Sunday, immediately to allow the UN and aid partners to safely deliver all types of aid at scale.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
On three occasions in answering this question the Minister has said that “Israel must”. What will he do if Israel does not?
Mr Falconer
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, this Government have taken a series of actions in response to developments in Gaza. We will continue to take such actions until the situation changes.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
What is the Government’s assessment of how effectively medical aid can be delivered to those in need in Gaza, including the remaining Israeli hostages?
Mr Falconer
Aid can be delivered effectively into Gaza. There are established mechanisms through the United Nations and its partners, and we want to see those mechanisms in place. The hon. Gentleman raises the vital question of ensuring that the hostages themselves get sufficient access to food. Both my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I have heard directly from Eli Sharabi, a released hostage, who has talked about Hamas’s deprivation of food from the hostages. That must stop, and they must immediately release all hostages.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
My constituents have watched in horror as Israeli forces have reportedly killed more than 400 Palestinians and injured thousands more at aid distribution centres in Gaza. Over the weekend, dozens more Palestinians were killed while trying to access humanitarian aid. Why are the Government still permitting the transfer of F-35 components to Israel through the international pool, knowing that these aircrafts may be used in operations causing mass civilian casualties?
Mr Falconer
We have set out the reasons why the Government have had to take special measures to ensure that the F-35 programme continued to operate, which includes our continued role in the global spares pool in the United States. However, I agree with the sentiments of the hon. Lady’s constituents; the deaths around aid distribution centres are clearly horrifying, and there needs to be a full investigation and action taken. Vitally, aid must get into Gaza at the scale required and from enough distribution centres in order to avoid the horrifying scenes that we have seen.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
We must not forget Gaza. Despite the eyes of the world now being turned to the Iran-Israel war, it is important that we continue to remember the suffering of the Gazans and continue to move on it. As a witness from Médecins Sans Frontières said to my Committee, there is “lethal chaos” in Gaza. There is one read-across from the Iran-Israel war that I think we should learn from: the clear closeness between Israel and America, and the fact that America can influence Israel. I ask the Minister to ensure that we continue to say in our conversations with the Americans not to give up on Gaza, and to use their influence to ensure that the Israelis do the right thing. There must be peace and the hostages must come home.
Mr Falconer
This Government will not give up on Gaza. I can confirm that the Foreign Secretary has raised Gaza in his engagements with the US. I have not forgotten about Gaza, and was speaking to Palestinian counterparts just last night. The situation in Gaza will remain a top priority for this Government.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
Israel dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah is to be welcomed, but the continuing blockage on medical and humanitarian aid going into Gaza is not welcome. As we continue to talk, children continue to die. I hope that the Foreign Secretary will make it very clear that the continuation of children dying every single day is unacceptable, and that he will stand up to the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon and to the Knesset and the current Israeli Government of Netanyahu. These deaths are just going on and on and on. How many more children need to die before something changes?
Mr Falconer
As I have said, the Foreign Secretary has raised these issues with both his American and Israeli counterparts, and I have done the same. We remain steely in our focus on the situation in Gaza, including the tragic scenes around the deprivation of aid and the impact that is having on civilians right across the strip, including children. We are trying to take every measure we can to reduce that suffering. That includes aid where it can be brought in; aid into the region, where that is the most appropriate way to reach the medically vulnerable; and in a few small cases ensuring that Gazan children can access medical assistance here.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
The humanitarian situation in Gaza simply cannot continue. We have spent a lot of time in this House discussing the extent of that situation and the fact that food and essential supplies are not getting through to support innocent victims. What proposals has the Minister put to Israel about the opening of specific crossing points for aid delivery into Gaza? Will he give his assessment of why the Israeli Government may not be listening to this country and our Government on this particular issue?
Mr Falconer
The disagreement that the Israeli Government have is not simply with the British Government; it is with a wide range of their partners. As the right hon. Lady is aware, we signed a statement with 26 partners about the humanitarian situation. We made a leader-level statement with France and Canada. There is wide disagreement with the approach that the Israeli Government are taking in relation to aid distribution. At the weekend, the Foreign Secretary discussed these matters, including entry points, with the Foreign Minister of Israel. We would like to see the Israeli Government shift position. It is clear, for the reasons that she says, that that shift must come urgently.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
On Thursday, I received a message from Mohammed, an NHS doctor with family in Gaza. He wrote:
“My 16-year-old nephew was missing for five days after heading out to retrieve humanitarian aid at a location announced by Israeli forces. We found him dead yesterday; his body mutilated, eaten by stray dogs. He died alone. No one could reach him or others like him in time. He was only a boy who desperately wanted to get food for his starving family.”
On 10 June, the Minister sanctioned two Israeli Ministers who advocated for the blockade of Gaza, noting that that would not remove Hamas or ensure that the hostages were released. But nothing has changed. What further steps are the Government taking today to signal to the Government of Israel that the UK will not stand idly by while children in Gaza are starved, denied medicine or killed as they seek food for their families?
Mr Falconer
The hon. Gentleman shares with the House a heartbreaking story. I know that it is one of thousands of such stories about lives lost in Gaza. The situation is intolerable, and we will continue to take further action. As I have said, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary raised this matter with the Foreign Minister on Sunday. Clearly, there have been significant developments in the middle east since 10 June. This is now the time for Israel to implement a ceasefire and to allow aid in; for Hamas to release hostages; and for us to try to draw a line under the horrifying suffering of Mohammed and many others like him.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
This Government are strengthening ties with our European allies to deliver mutual benefits for our prosperity and security. As the strategic defence review laid out, we need a resilient and competitive European defence industrial base to deliver the capabilities that we need at speed and scale. With that UK-EU security and defence partnership now agreed, securing the UK’s swift participation in Security Action for Europe is a priority for the Government, and, of course, these partnerships complement and reinforce NATO’s role as the cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security.
Edward Morello
In an increasingly unstable world, working with our European allies on defence and weapons production is vital for our security and our economy. If investment is needed, providing it should not stand in the way of the opportunity to support UK defence manufacturers, enable joint research and development and promote Britain’s strategic interests on the global stage. What recent discussions has the Minister had with his European counterparts about ensuring that the UK has access to the Security Action for Europe fund?
Stephen Doughty
I have been having regular conversations, as have the Foreign Secretary and colleagues across the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office. I was in Poland just last week discussing with our Polish allies our important collaboration. The week before that, I was in Rome with the Weimar+ group. These are all active and ongoing conversations and, as the hon. Member said, they are absolutely crucial at a time of such geopolitical uncertainty.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr David Lammy)
We are proud to be founding partners of Gavi. We have invested more than £5 billion since 2000 helping to immunise more than 1 billion children. Gavi has enjoyed good cross-party support in this House and I am looking forward to updating the House accordingly.
Jim Shannon
I welcome what the Foreign Secretary has said, and I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s repeated assurances that vaccination remains an international development priority. Ahead of tomorrow’s high-level pledging summit, does the Foreign Secretary agree that the UK must continue to make a significant contribution to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance to ensure that millions of children are protected from some of the world’s deadliest yet treatable diseases, such as malaria?
Mr Lammy
I am not going to anticipate the announcement that we may make tomorrow, but I am hugely grateful for the hon. Gentleman raising this issue. We are a proud founding member of the Global Fund and were very pleased to co-host its eighth replenishment alongside South Africa. I look forward to making an announcement very shortly.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr David Lammy)
We have renewed engagement with our allies to pursue all lawful avenues to make Russia pay for Putin’s illegal war on Ukraine. I have engaged with G7 Foreign Ministers on this, and I look forward to speaking to partners at the NATO Hague summit later on today.
Lisa Smart
I saw for myself the impact of Russia’s barbarism in Kyiv and Chernihiv last month, and I heard directly from some of the brave Ukrainians who had been subject to war crimes in Yahidne. There is a lot going on in the world at the moment, but what assurances can the Foreign Secretary give the House and those Ukrainians waiting to be able to go home that he is straining every sinew so that Russia pays for its crimes and war crimes?
Mr Lammy
Our support is iron-clad. The hon. Lady will have seen our continuing package of sanctions on Russia and will recognise that this issue will be central to our discussions at NATO later on today and tomorrow. Whether it is at the G7, NATO or Weimar+, the UK continues to lead on this critical issue, not just for Ukraine but for European security.
Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
Will the Foreign Secretary consider further sanctions on the Russian regime for the forced deportation of Ukrainian children? In recent peace talks, the Russian delegation proposed an exchange of prisoners of war for Ukrainian children who had been stolen from their homes, thereby equating combatants with children, who receive special protected status under international law. Is that not horrific? Does the Foreign Secretary share my concern that 53,000 Ukrainian children are expected to attend “summer camps” in Russia this summer, from which they are unlikely to return to their homes?
Mr Lammy
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for continuing to prosecute this issue and for raising it at every opportunity. It is a heinous crime. We have already sanctioned some of the individuals who lie behind it. I will not comment on future sanctions, but we are, of course, keeping this under full consideration. It will be a topic of discussion with both Ukrainian Foreign Ministers and NATO Ministers later today.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
Ukraine has bravely fought back Putin’s illegal invasion, and that is with our undoubted support. Will the Foreign Secretary give an update on what action is under way to release the billions of pounds of frozen Russian assets? On the subject of Russian threats and malign influence, he will be alarmed to know that the political opposition leaders in Georgia have been arrested and imprisoned this week. What steps are the Government taking in response, and will further sanctions be considered to curtail Putin’s absolute abuse of democracy in Europe?
Mr Lammy
The Minister responsible for Europe, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), has condemned what took place in Georgia over the last few days, and I endorse that condemnation. On the issue of Russian assets, we are engaged particularly with European colleagues who are more exposed than we are. It has been right to allow new Governments in Europe to take their place and consider these issues, because they require some technical understanding, but we continue to press this issue, and it will be a topic at the NATO summit later today.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
Over the weekend, while the world’s attention was fixed on the escalating conflict in the middle east, President Putin restated publicly his desire to conquer the whole of Ukraine and his readiness to use nuclear weapons against Kyiv. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s assurance that he is maintaining a focus on Putin’s barbaric war against Ukraine.
The Foreign Secretary previously told the House that Germany and Belgium were the blockers to international agreement on seizing frozen Russian assets. Will he set out how he and the Prime Minister will raise this proposal with his Belgian and German counterparts at the NATO summit? Has he considered replicating the EU’s proposals to extract billions of euros more from those assets by moving them into higher yielding investments?
Mr Lammy
It is important to recognise that the European Union has just come forward with a new sanctions package—its 18th. I congratulate it on that, given that, as the hon. Member will recognise, countries like Hungary have been backmarkers and blockers on this issue. He has heard what I have said on Russian assets: it has been important for new Governments to be able to consider these things afresh and get up to technical speed. The way forward must be to pool those assets so that all of us bear joint liability, as it were. The discussions continue apace.
Maya Ellis (Ribble Valley) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Catherine West)
We are steadfast in our support for women and girls; the appointment of Baroness Harman as special envoy underscores that commitment. We are focusing much of our effort on the most marginalised women and girls, who are disproportionately affected by ongoing conflicts and crises—for example, through food assistance to 800,000 displaced people on the Chad-Sudan border, almost 90% of whom are women and children.
Maya Ellis
Yesterday, we welcomed an ambitious and much-needed industrial strategy, which will rely on bold trade deals with countries around the world. Britain has a strong tradition of promoting human rights in its work around the world. How is the FCDO ensuring that we uphold our commitment to rights for girls and women as we develop trade deals with other countries?
Catherine West
We are using our influence to unlock the full potential of women to participate in the economy—that includes working to include gender provisions in newly negotiated free trade agreements—and we are supporting women-led businesses to realise the benefits of trade. The developing countries trading scheme provides for 0% tariffs, which disproportionately supports smaller, women-led businesses in low-income countries.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
I should like to know what steps the Foreign Office is taking to protect women and girls in this country. There can be no better candidates for deportation than non-UK nationals who have violently raped children here. After the Casey report into the gangs scandal last week, Ministers promised that they would do everything they could to deport the men involved. Will the Foreign Secretary confirm that he has already told Pakistan that British aid and diplomatic visas will be withdrawn if convicted rapists are not taken back?
Catherine West
It is probably a question for the Home Office, but we in the Foreign Office will do anything we can to support victims and bring people to justice.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
Education is a basic right, and ensuring quality education for every girl is essential to building a more equitable world. In 2023, the Conservative Government launched the women and girls strategy to deliver on the three Es: education, empowering women and girls, and ending violence. Does the Minister stand by the commitment to ensure that at least 50% of aid reaches women and girls? Most importantly, will she confirm the 2025-26 official development assistance spending for global education following the spending review?
Catherine West
We are committed to supporting women in all that we do. We are supporting, for example, 200,000 displaced children with education interventions in Sudan and reaching Sudanese refugee populations in six countries through £14 million of funding for Education Cannot Wait, which the right hon. Member may know from her time as a Minister—was that one of the programmes she cut? UK support through the international finance facility for education will unlock up to $1 billion in additional and affordable education. Our equality impact assessment will be published shortly so that she can analyse the exact pounds and pence.
Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)
The UK operates one of the most robust export control regimes in the world. One of our first acts in government was to review and suspend export licences that could be used by the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza. We have successfully implemented that suspension and have continued to refuse relevant licence applications. All export licences are kept under careful and continual review, and we can suspend, refuse or revoke licences as required.
Brian Leishman
The war criminals of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Government are carrying out the most vile human rights abuse and genocide. At the same time, the UK carries out the training of Israeli military personnel and facilitates almost daily spy flights that provide intelligence, and there is continued exporting of military equipment to Israel. With all that, will the Government support an independent public inquiry into UK involvement in Israeli military operations in Gaza?
Mr Falconer
It is important to be focused on the facts at issue. We do not support spy flights; we have a limited presence to try and find hostages in Gaza, for reasons that the whole House would understand and support. There are fewer than 10 IDF personnel receiving any training in the UK, and that training is academic and non-military in nature. We are not arming Israel’s war in Gaza. We categorically do not export any bombs or ammunition for use in military operations in Gaza.
My hon. Friend asks about an independent inquiry. The Government welcome scrutiny and I welcome my time in this Chamber. On the questions at issue on arms sales, including on the F-35 programme, there is a judicial review on which we will hear findings shortly. There is plenty of scrutiny of this Government.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
Will the Government let us know what assessment they have made of Israel’s stockpile of nuclear weapons?
Mr Falconer
The hon. Gentleman will understand why I will not comment on those issues from the Dispatch Box.
Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
Our work on water, sanitation and hygiene helps deliver development objectives on global health, climate and growth. We support eight countries in Africa and Asia to develop climate-resilient water, sanitation and hygiene services and prevent the spread of diseases, including cholera. We are working through the World Bank and the global challenge programme on water to reach 300 million with water services by 2030.
Brian Mathew
Recent polling by WaterAid and YouGov shows that access to water, sanitation and hygiene is the No. 1 priority that the UK public want to see funded through UK aid. That makes sense, given that water underpins global health, keeps girls in school and builds climate-resilient communities. Does the Minister agree that it is one of the smartest and most cost-effective ways to deliver the UK’s development goals? Without access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene, there can be no meaningful progress in any of those areas.
Stephen Doughty
The hon. Gentleman makes important points. I had the pleasure of seeing many important water and sanitation projects in my previous career. We are concentrating on maintaining our impact by focusing on partnerships with Governments and multilaterals, and establishing the conditions that can secure additional domestic funding and private investment in those areas. He rightly makes the link between water and sanitation and health, and that will be considered as we approach future funding allocations.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
The Diego Garcia military base deal secures the future of the strategically critical US-UK military base. It will protect our national security for generations and ensure we maintain vital capabilities. It is our most significant contribution to the transatlantic defence and security partnership. It has been strengthened since our agreement with the previous Mauritian Government and, indeed, from the deal under discussion by the previous Government. The payments will be split between the FCDO and the Ministry of Defence, and published in the usual way. The Opposition understand the jeopardy facing the base and the necessity of the treaty, which is why they started negotiating in the first place.
Sir John Hayes
The Foreign Secretary is an old friend and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer), is a Lincolnshire neighbour whom, in all his innocence, I regard with a degree of paternal care, so I ask this question more in sorrow than in anger. The assumption rooted in the Government’s statements is that unless we do a deal with Mauritius, the International Telecommunication Union could decide that Mauritius is sovereign and deny access to both the US and the UK. That is fundamentally untrue. The ITU has no competence in that regard and it is ignored by the US already, so will the Minister confirm that that argument is entirely bogus? This is not a deal. This is not diplomacy. It is a disgrace.
Stephen Doughty
I thoroughly reject that statement by the right hon. Gentleman. He knows that I have a lot of respect for him, but I am afraid that he is completely mistaken on this. The fact is that the courts were already making decisions that undermined our position, legally binding provisional measures could have come within weeks, affecting the operational ability of the base to function as it was, and we believe that an inevitable binding judgment would have followed. The deal has been done and this House is now scrutinising it. I have appeared before two Committees in recent weeks, and of course there will be further such scrutiny over the weeks ahead.
Stuart Anderson
If the US wanted to launch an attack on Iran from Diego Garcia in the current circumstances, would the UK Government support it?
Stephen Doughty
As the Foreign Secretary has made absolutely clear, there was no UK involvement in the US strikes on Iran. The hon. Gentleman will understand that we do not comment on private conversations with our allies or on hypothetical operations.
David Reed
I had hoped for a more precise answer to my question. Rather than pressing again for exact figures or a departmental breakdown, let me proceed down a related line of inquiry. Is there any mechanism, legal or otherwise, that the Mauritian Government could use to reopen the Chagos negotiations or to request further financial or material assistance in a way that could result in additional cost to the British taxpayer?
Stephen Doughty
I have set out the costs very clearly. They average out at £101 million over the course of the deal. That compares very favourably with, for example, what France pays for its military facility in Djibouti. This treaty has been entered into in good faith by the UK and Mauritius, it will be legally binding, and we are absolutely clear that it is compliant with international law and all our other obligations.
Blair McDougall (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
When the Foreign Affairs Committee was in Washington recently, we raised the Diego Garcia deal with the Administration. They could not have been more enthusiastic for this deal, because they recognise that it secures our strategic interests in the area. Does the Minister agree that it is perhaps time for Conservative Members to stop playing politics with national defence?
Stephen Doughty
I could not agree more. This deal is supported by the United States, by our Five Eyes partners and by India. It secures our national security, the security of our allies and the base well into the next century. As I have said many times, if there was not a problem, why did the previous Government start negotiating?
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
Labour’s surrender of British sovereignty has been welcomed by China, Russia and Iran, and now we learn that the UK will have to notify Mauritius of any military operations coming from Diego Garcia, jeopardising our national security. Far from upholding our international obligations, this treaty is a shameful betrayal of British Chagossians, with no guarantee of access to the Mauritian-controlled £40 million trust fund and British taxpayers forking out £30 billion to subsidise tax cuts in Mauritius. Why will the Government not allow this House a proper debate and a vote before next week’s 21-day deadline under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010? Should we not keep the Chagos islands British and under the protection of the Crown? Would that not be a better policy?
Stephen Doughty
Half of the hon. Gentleman’s question was rhetoric and half of it was completely wrong. He might want to consider correcting the record on a number of points. We do not have to inform Mauritius before undertaking military action from the base; that relates to expedition information after actions, so there is no fettering of our ability to operate from there. The costs he quoted were simply wrong. It is £101 million averaged over the course of the deal, and the net present value of the payments is £3.4 billion. All sorts of wild figures have been posted around, but they do not reflect the reality. This has been considered by the Government Actuary. I would really have hoped, given the wide geopolitical threats that this country and our allies face at the moment, that he would come up with some more serious questions.
Oliver Ryan (Burnley) (Ind)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr David Lammy)
The United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia are historic allies with a modern partnership. I met His Highness Prince Faisal bin Farhan immediately after the first Israeli strike, signifying the significant strength and trust in the relationship. The Prime Minister visited Riyadh for his first strategic partnership council with His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, where he committed to an ambitious programme of co-operation and enhanced mutual prosperity.
Oliver Ryan
I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is an important partner for trade and peace in the middle east and for the combating of terrorism around the world. With reference to recent events in Iran, how is the Foreign Secretary utilising our relationship to involve the Saudi Government in our de-escalation efforts in the region?
Mr Lammy
I have found it hugely beneficial to be able to speak to His Highness Prince Faisal so closely over the last few days, at the outbreak of this crisis and then again in the last 48 hours. We stay in close touch, and Saudi Arabia is a key ally. Of course, we were worried about how the situation would affect regional allies like Saudi Arabia. There is so much that we can do together, not just on security, but on trade. Our trade has grown by 70%, and we remain committed to growing our total trade to £30 billion by 2030.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
The creation of the Abraham accords was one of the achievements of the first Trump Administration, and the President of the US has said that he aims for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to join those accords. What are the UK Government doing to encourage that process, and what preconditions does he believe Riyadh has for joining the accords?
Mr Lammy
The right hon. Gentleman raises a good question. We should remember when thinking about 7 October that one of the objectives of Hamas was to tear apart the prospects of normalisation in the region. Notwithstanding the horrors and pain of the crisis in the region over these last months, the Abraham accords and Israel’s changed relationship with so many Gulf partners in particular, but also other Muslim countries, are important to keep hold of. We continue to discuss these issues, but there are no prospects until we get to a ceasefire.
Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)
The safety of British nationals is our first priority. We are providing support and advice to more than 1,000 British nationals as they seek to leave the region by land and air. We have deployed teams to Israel, Cyprus, Egypt and Jordan. Our embassy in Tehran has been temporarily withdrawn but continues to provide support to British nationals in Iran remotely. We have bolstered teams in neighbouring countries to support British nationals seeking to get to safety. When Israeli airspace opened yesterday, we ran our first RAF evacuation flight, and I can confirm to the House now that we will fly another today.
Lewis Atkinson
British nationals in Israel, including the daughter of my constituents, remain concerned about their safety. The advice has been for British citizens to make their way to Egypt via the border, but there have been some reports that the Israeli Government have suggested those journeys would be unsafe. Can the Minister clarify the advice to British citizens in that situation?
Mr Falconer
Travel advice is the best source of advice for British nationals in Israel. There are options for leaving by land, as my hon. Friend’s constituents are aware. There are now options for leaving by air as well, but, as he and the whole House will understand, the flow of flights out of Israel remains limited. British nationals in Israel will want to make their own judgments about whether they want to wait for a flight or make a land journey, and my officials are available to advise every constituent on the options before them.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
Two of my constituents are currently in Tehran, but they say that fuel shortages, long queues and poor internet access, as well as closed airspace, have made it almost impossible for them to leave Iran. They urgently need clear guidance, they need a way to formally register their presence, and they need consular support, which they are struggling to access. Will the Minister urgently meet me to ensure that my constituents get the assistance they need from the Government to come home safely to Eastbourne?
Mr Falconer
I am, of course, very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. The whole House knows that we have advised against all travel to Iran for some time, and we have been clear that our ability to provide consular assistance in Iran is very limited for those reasons, particularly given the temporary withdrawal of our embassy. We would encourage those in Iran to be in touch with the Foreign Office, and we will provide what advice and support we can.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)
We are committed to recognising a Palestinian state at a time that has the most impact and is most conducive to long-term prospects for peace. UK bilateral recognition is the single most important action we can take towards Palestinian statehood, which is why it is important to get the timing right, so that it creates genuine momentum and is not simply a symbolic gesture.
John Milne
What is happening in Gaza is hard enough to watch, but if we are to prevent the west bank from going the same way in a few years’ time, we must act today. Does the Minister agree that recognising the principle of a Palestinian state, without making any judgment for the moment on its borders, is the strongest and most effective way to reaffirm the UK’s long-standing commitment to a two-state solution, while there is still territory left to form it with?
Mr Falconer
The hon. Gentleman makes important points about the situation in the west bank—points that we have discussed in this Chamber before. We have condemned the violence and the expansion of illegal settlements in the west bank. There are a range of issues on which we profoundly disagree with the Israeli Government in relation to their approach to the west bank, and we will continue to raise those issues with force. I refer him to my previous answer about recognition.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Can my hon. Friend update me on the conference that was due to be held at the weekend but was postponed following the bombing of Iran by Israel, at which the potential for recognition was to be discussed?
Mr Falconer
I think my hon. Friend refers to the two-state solution conference that was due to take place in New York last week. It has been suspended for understandable reasons, given events in the region, by its French and Saudi co-hosts. We expect that it will be rearranged, and I have been in conversation with my Saudi colleagues about when that might be.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr David Lammy)
I am committed to securing Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s release—I was committed to this before coming to power, and I remain committed now. The Government are engaging intensively on this case. I raise Alaa’s imprisonment every time I am in contact with my Egyptian counterpart, and the Prime Minister has raised it in several conversations with President Sisi.
Ms Creasy
I think everybody in this Chamber, including the Foreign Secretary, is desperately worried about the health of Laila Soueif, who has felt that she has no choice but to be on hunger strike since her son Alaa should have been released last September. She is in and out of hospital, desperately ill, “dying in slow motion”, as her daughter says. I welcome the work that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have done on this case and the commitments they have made. As the Foreign Secretary knows, the Egyptians have remained steadfast in their objections. Can he confirm that he is considering all options to secure Alaa’s release, including changing the Foreign Office travel advice for Egypt to highlight the risk of arbitrary detention, so that no other family is put through this kind of anguish?
Mr Lammy
This case and Laila’s condition concern me greatly. It has been a top priority every week that I have been in office. At every single level—Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Minister, National Security Adviser—we are engaged with the Egyptians. I believe that our strategy is working, but clearly, given Laila’s health, we must see progress at pace with the Egyptian Government.
Brendan O’Hara (Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber) (SNP)
I recall the right hon. Gentleman, before he became Foreign Secretary, asking the previous Government what “diplomatic price” Egypt had paid for the arbitrary detention of Alaa, before demanding that “serious diplomatic consequences” should be put on Egypt should it not release him. Alaa’s mother is now 278 days into a hunger strike and is critically ill, so let me ask him this: since he became Foreign Secretary, what diplomatic price has Egypt paid, and what serious diplomatic consequences can he point to that Egypt has been forced to pay since July last year?
Mr Lammy
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that I remain in close touch with Laila and the family, and that this is a No. 1 priority for me and I expect to see Alaa released. I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that he has stood up time after time to raise his concerns about Gaza, and he will understand that if he wants the UK Government to have an effect in Gaza, we must have relations with the Egyptians.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)
We are clear that Israel must immediately allow rapid and unhindered aid into Gaza, including desperately needed medical supplies. The UK continues to support the delivery of medical assistance through trusted partners, including UK-Med, which has completed over 500,000 patient consultations in Gaza since January 2024. We will continue to assess how we can best support those in need.
Jeremy Corbyn
The Foreign Secretary will understand my question, because I wrote to him on 18 June asking if he would meet Dr Mohammed Mustafa, who has assembled a children’s hospital in prefabricated form in Jordan and is ready to go into Gaza. It will be able to help the 400,000 children in northern Gaza who have no access to any medical facilities at all at the moment. This is desperately urgent. Will the Minister meet Dr Mustafa to familiarise himself with the opportunity here of doing something practical and good to help desperate children in northern Gaza?
Mr Falconer
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his continued engagement on these questions. We have discussed across the Dispatch Box many times the restrictions on aid getting into Gaza, including in relation to construction materials. I am very happy to take a further look at this specific proposal and see if there is anything that we can do.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
The al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, which is run by the Anglican church in Jerusalem, has repeatedly been bombed. Earlier this month the hospital compound was hit, killing five people, including a father escorting his son to surgery. The Minister has spoken much about the need for aid to get in, but will he set out what concrete action he is going to take now? Saying that Israel must do something does not mean that it is going to act, so what action he is going to take to ensure that the attacks on hospitals, medics and patients ends?
Mr Falconer
I want nothing more than for the attacks on hospitals, medical personnel and aid workers to end. My hon. Friend is right that I have said many times from this Dispatch Box that I want that to be the case, yet these strikes have continued. We continue to raise these issues with the Israeli Government. We have taken a series of actions, many of which we have discussed already over the course of this morning, and we will continue to take action until things change. Until things change, this Government will not be satisfied.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr David Lammy)
Britain is at the heart of diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the situation in the middle east. We are clear that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon. While at the UK, EU, G7 and NATO summits and in my engagements from the high north to north Africa, the Government have been delivering security and growth for the British people, deepening Britain’s partnerships and alliances, and addressing the ongoing horrendous conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
Daniel Francis
I know that this House, alongside my constituents across Bexleyheath and Crayford, welcomes the sanctions taken against two Israeli officials earlier this month. What discussions are the UK Government holding with our international partners regarding further actions that could be taken in relation to the incitement of violence against Palestinian citizens?
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend will have seen that we worked with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway on taking those sanctions against Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. I cannot speculate on future sanctions, but I reassure him that we are co-ordinating with our allies. He will know that on the issue of humanitarian aid, for example, 26 countries joined us.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
Given the clear threat that Iran poses to the United Kingdom, our allies and the middle east, does the Foreign Secretary support the actions undertaken by the United States to degrade Iran’s nuclear weapons? He will have heard that President Trump has said that Iran’s nuclear capabilities are gone. Does he welcome that?
Mr Lammy
It was important to be alongside Secretary of State Rubio last week in DC. We continue to work closely with President Trump, and the Prime Minister spoke to him just two days ago. The initial assessments of those attacks in Iran are coming in, and we will assess that in due course.
Priti Patel
Given the situation that has emerged in the middle east and the fact that the de-escalation has not taken place in recent hours, can the Foreign Secretary outline what measures he is overseeing, in what is effectively quite an urgent situation, to bring back 4,000 British nationals now stranded in Israel? He, like me, will have received overnight a large volume of correspondence from concerned families. What immediate steps will be taken? I understand that another plane is being put in place, but we are now speaking about 4,000 British nationals who are clearly stuck in Israel.
Mr Lammy
I was very pleased to see that that flight came into Birmingham. We will do all we can to work with the Israeli Government to open airspace and to continue flights. We have a ceasefire. I have seen, of course, that that ceasefire has been violated, and I urge all partners to keep to that ceasefire so that airspace can open up and commercial flights can resume.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
Mr Lammy
I cannot comment on hypotheticals, but I can assure my hon. Friend that we will do all we can to protect our assets and our troops in the region and always to stay within international law.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)
The hon. Lady raises vital questions about the status of children in Gaza. In response to one of her colleagues, I set out some of the measures that we have taken already. Clearly, children in Gaza, like all civilians there, are under the most enormous pressure at the moment, and aid getting in is a vital next step. Where children from Gaza are outside the region, in particular in Egypt and Jordan, we have provided support to them there. In a very limited set of cases where specialist medical attention is possible only from the UK, we have brought children from Gaza to the UK.
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
Mr Lammy
I want to reassure my hon. Friend that we have banned the sale of arms that could be used in Gaza, and we liaise with the French and the Saudi Arabians, despite the suspension of their conference. I think the intention is to resume in September.
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Stephen Doughty)
It is a shame that the hon. Gentleman’s question takes that tone; I thought we had a very constructive conversation yesterday, and I took on board the points made by him and by the Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). I assure the hon. Gentleman that the marine protected area is a key part of our agreement with Mauritius, and this Government are committed to protecting our oceans and natural resources globally.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)
Yasmin Qureshi
What steps is the Minister taking to stop the killing of Palestinians, and to recognise the state of Palestine?
Mr Lammy
It is important to recognise that in our country, at Sizewell and at Urenco, uranium is enriched at between 3% and 5%. The International Atomic Energy Agency has found 60% enrichment in Iran. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and we are doing all we can diplomatically to get a negotiated settlement on that problem. Of course, we continue to press for aid to the Palestinians.
Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)
Mr Falconer
We have discussed these issues many times. Earlier, an hon. Friend asked me why, when Ministers say things at the Dispatch Box, they do not happen. The view of this House on the question of a two-state solution is clearly very important, but it is the job of Foreign Office Ministers to try to make it a reality in practice, through diplomacy.
Gregor Poynton (Livingston) (Lab)
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
Earlier this month, the US President ordered the brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles, and called those protesting against these raids “paid insurrectionists” and “criminal invaders”. A few days later, a gunman assassinated Democratic politician Melissa Hortman. In recent months, figures associated with the US President have spread disinformation and polarising rhetoric via social media, even targeting a Government Minister. I am sure that the Secretary of State agrees that this level of political violence—
Mr Speaker
Order. This is topical questions; I have to get other people in. Questions are meant to be short and punchy. Please, let us now hear a quick answer from the Foreign Secretary.
Mr Lammy
Just as the hon. Gentleman would not expect members of Congress or the Senate to comment on domestic issues in our country, I am not going to stray into domestic issues in the US. It remains the closest of allies.
Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
Mr Falconer
I recognise the appetite in the Chamber to hear more about the ICJ advisory opinion. It was a far-reaching and complex judgment, and we are taking our time with our response.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
What practical steps can the Government take to support women and girls in Afghanistan who, after a period of being encouraged to liberate themselves, are now cast back into domestic servitude?
Mr Falconer
This is an incredibly important question. As I think some in the House know, I negotiated with the Taliban when I was an official. It is a source of incredible personal frustration to me that the situation in Afghanistan for women has got worse and worse as the months have drawn on. The Taliban need to change course, not just on the rights of women, but for the viability of their economy and their country.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Catherine West)
I thank my hon. Friend for his hard work for his constituents. I met Simone’s family on 14 May and, as he is aware, I met the Minister responsible in Vientiane. I will raise my hon. Friend’s point today, as a result of this question.
Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) (PC)
Holyhead Towing in my constituency has vessels in the middle east, specifically in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. The company is keeping its crew updated to the best of its knowledge. What official advice or guidance is available for UK maritime operators working in the region?
Mr Falconer
As I have said before, travel advice is the surest and most regularly updated advice for British nationals in the region. We changed the travel advice yesterday for Qatar, as my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary announced in the House. We hope, as he has said this morning, that there will now be greater stability in the region, that the ceasefire will hold, and that British nationals in the region will not be so concerned. Travel advice is the best place to look.
Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)
The all-party parliamentary group for Africa, which I chair, recently published its report on Africa’s just energy transition to accessible and renewable clean energy. What assessment has the Minister made of the report’s nine recommendations, including the recommendation on reforming carbon markets so that they work in Africa’s interests, and the recommendation on ensuring that international development funding is blended with private sector funding for investment in that transition?
Mr Lammy
May I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend on her recent elevation? I thank her for her work on the APPG, and I assure her that we will review her report as part of our new Africa approach.
Sir James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)
Dame Karen Pierce is one of our most senior and experienced diplomats, and I very much welcome her appointment as an envoy to the western Balkans, but since her appointment, we have heard precious little about the western Balkans from the Foreign Secretary’s Department. Can he reassure this House that we have not lost interest in the western Balkans?
Mr Lammy
Having been to the region twice—I am going back soon, within the next six weeks—I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we have absolutely not lost interest. Dame Karen Pierce is at the centre of that, alongside the Berlin process, which we will host later this year.
Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)
We recently agreed the successful UK-India trade deal, but FCDO co-ordination with India on crisis diplomacy has never been more important, particularly following the recent terrorist attack, the Air India plane crash and human rights concerns, including about the case of Jagtar Singh Johal. Can the Secretary of State explain how security co-operation and consular support are being pursued in the light of the trade deal?
Catherine West
May I first say how deeply shocked and saddened we all were by the devastating plane crash in Ahmedabad? The Foreign Secretary visited India in his first month in office, and since then, we have agreed the groundbreaking technology security initiative and the free trade agreement, as my hon. Friend said. On human rights issues and the case of Jagtar Singh Johal, I will meet my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Douglas McAllister), who represents the family, hopefully this week or next, when our diaries can align.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
What does it say to Britain’s allies, and to our enemies, when neither the Foreign Secretary nor the Prime Minister can bring themselves to say that the strikes again Iran were right and legal?
Mr Lammy
I have spoken to Secretary of State Rubio every single week that I have been in office. The Prime Minister and the President of the United States have the best of relationships. That is a signal of how well our special relationship is working.
Mike Tapp (Dover and Deal) (Lab)
The Iranian regime hangs gay people from cranes. It funds and arms terror groups, and arms Vladimir Putin. A regime such as that must never have nuclear weapons. What will the Foreign Secretary do to prevent it from ever achieving its goals?
Mr Lammy
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding us of the horrendous human rights record of this regime, a regime that is the worst sponsor of state terrorism in the world.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
Can the Foreign Secretary declare from the Dispatch Box that an Iran with no nuclear weapons is now a more likely prospect as a result of the actions of the Israeli and American forces over the past 10 days?
Mr Lammy
I recognise the point that the hon. Gentleman has made, but let me make this clear to him. Once a country has acquired the ability to enrich uranium to 60%, that scientific knowledge is there and does not go away. Ultimately, this will require a diplomatic solution. That is what President Trump is pushing for, and that is what the UK Government want to see as well.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)
The postponed French-Saudi conference on a two-state solution may take place as early as next month. Does the Minister think it will provide the significant opportunity that he seeks for us to recognise Palestine as a state, alongside UK allies?
Mr Falconer
We are talking to the French and the Saudis about their plans. Obviously events in the middle east are moving quickly, but I recognise the force of what my hon. Friend has said.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Cousin marriage is often used as a cover for forced marriage. Have the Government raised the issue of the incredibly high rate of first-cousin marriage with the Pakistani Government, given that so many of those marriages are between UK and Pakistani nationals?
Mr Lammy
As the right hon. Gentleman probably knows, I was in Pakistan recently, and we discussed a range of human rights issues.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary will be aware that Colombia and South Africa, as co-chairs of the Hague Group, have called an emergency ministerial conference in defence of international law and the rights of the Palestinian people, to take place in Bogotá in July. Countries across the world are confirming their attendance. Will the UK Government send a representative, and join nations around the world in standing up for international law?
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend will recognise that we, alongside our partners throughout the global community, continue to raise serious issues relating to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, and of course I will look in detail at the conference to which he has referred.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
Melia, Gvaramia, Badri Japaridze, Khazaradze, Zurab Japaridze and Vashadze: all six opposition leaders arrested over the last two weeks in Georgia. What are the British Government going to do about it, and what is the message from the British Government to the Georgian people, who are suffering as a result of this huge democratic backsliding?
Stephen Doughty
The Georgian people have made clear their Euro-Atlantic aspirations. We absolutely condemn not only those arrests of opposition politicians, but the closing down of civil society space. I have communicated my concerns directly to Georgian Dream in recent weeks, and will be doing so again.
Speaker’s Statement
Mr Speaker
I wish to make a short statement about the text of the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill. After the Bill was published last Wednesday, a small error was spotted in the text, concerning a cross-reference between subsections in clause 5. I am satisfied that the error is sufficiently minor to authorise a corrected print of the Bill, which will be available in the Vote Office and online after this statement. The substantive proceedings on the Bill are not affected in any way by the change, and no matters of order arise.
National Security Strategy
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Pat McFadden)
Today the Prime Minister attends the opening day of the NATO summit. That summit is expected to agree to a new commitment to grow spending on national security to 5% of GDP by 2035—to be made up by a projected split of 3.5% on core defence spending, and 1.5% on broader resilience and security spending. This will mark a new resolve among NATO members to make our countries stronger and, as we have always done, the United Kingdom will play our part.
NATO’s member countries meet at a time when the security situation is more in flux than at any time in a generation—a time when Ukraine is in its fourth year of resisting Russia’s invasion; a time when we in Europe are being asked to do more to secure our own defences; a time when security involves not just the traditional realms of air, sea and land, but technology, cyber and the strength of our democratic society; and, as we have seen in recent days, a time of renewed military action in the middle east, with Israel and the United States acting to try to stop Iran developing a nuclear bomb. News of a ceasefire is welcome, but as we have seen, even in recent hours, the situation remains fragile and the focus must now be on a credible plan to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons.
It is to the great pride of my party that NATO was founded in the aftermath of the second world war with the strong support of the post-war Labour Government. Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary at the time, said that
“we must face the facts as they are.”—[Official Report, 22 January 1948; Vol. 446, c. 386.]
Today, in this very different age, we too must face the facts as they are.
The generation that founded NATO saw it as a powerful expression of collective security and solidarity: alliances abroad, matched by capacity at home. Our national security strategy, published today and made for these very different times, is inspired by those same values and aims. Every Member of this House understands that the first duty of any Government is to keep the country safe. That is and always will be our No. 1 priority, and our national security strategy sets out how we will do that.
The world has changed fundamentally and continues to change before our eyes. This is indeed an age of radical uncertainty, and the challenge to leadership in times of such change is to understand, to respond and to explain. The British people understand this. They recognise that we are living in a world that is more confrontational, more turbulent and more unpredictable than most of us have experienced in our lifetimes.
When the Prime Minister spoke to the House in February, he promised to produce a national security strategy that would match the scale of the task ahead. The strategy we have published today does that, with a plan that is both clear-eyed and hard-edged about the challenges that we face. It sets out a long-term vision for how we will do three crucial things. First, we will protect security at home by defending our territory, controlling our borders and making the UK a harder target for our enemies—one that is stronger and more resilient to future threats.
Secondly, we will promote strength abroad. That means bolstering our collective security, renewing and refreshing our key alliances, and developing new partnerships in strategic locations across the world. It also means taking a clear-eyed view of how we engage with major powers such as China in order to protect our national security and promote our economic interests, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will make a further statement on the China audit shortly.
Thirdly, we will increase our sovereign and asymmetric capabilities by rebuilding our defence industries, training our people, focusing investment on our competitive strengths, and using our exceptional research and innovation base to build up advantages in new frontier technologies.
All this will make us a stronger and more resilient country, but delivering on each commitment will be possible only if all parts of society are pulling in the same direction. Our manufacturing, science and technology industries have to be aligned with national security objectives. Our industrial strategy, published yesterday, will help play to the UK’s strengths and deepen our capabilities. The investments we announced in the spending review also deepen our resilience and strength as a country, with a health service strong enough to cope, safe and secure energy supplies, modern housing and transport for our people, all of which contribute to a strong United Kingdom.
That is why it is so important that all parts of Government and businesses big and small understand that cyber-security is national security, and that our core systems and the revenues of business are being targeted by our adversaries. It is why we as legislators have to ensure that our own laws—from borders to trade—fit with national security. This will take a whole-system approach that reflects today’s reality. National security means strong supply chains, controls on immigration, tackling online harm, energy security, economic security and border security. It transcends foreign and domestic policy, and it all plays a role in how we make Britain a safer, more secure and more sovereign nation.
This document provides the blueprint of how this fits together. The strategy brings together everything we are doing across the full spectrum of national security: the commitment to spend that 5% of our domestic economic output on national security by 2035, meeting our NATO commitments once again; the over £1 billion we are investing in a new network of national biosecurity centres; how we are stepping up in areas such as cyber capability; our anti-corruption strategy to counter illicit finance; the expansion of our legal and law enforcement toolkit; the largest sustained investment in our armed forces since the cold war; our plan for defence investment to unlock real benefits for working people; how we will prioritise NATO explicitly in our defence planning; a vision for not only deepening our alliances with the United States and the European Union, but growing our relationships with other emerging nations; the money we are investing in our brilliant research and development base over the coming years, such as the £750 million for the supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh; and our ambition to gain a competitive advantage in cutting-edge technologies and to embed national security in our artificial intelligence agenda.
We do not underestimate the size of this task. The world is a more dangerous place than at any time since the end of the cold war, yet it is also a place where Britain’s values, capabilities and alliances can make a positive difference. Since we came to power, we have taken step after step to prepare Britain for what lies ahead: record investment in defence, backing our allies, and resisting the false choices put before us that would only have weakened our country. Today’s strategy represents an important contribution to all that work. It recognises that our long-term growth, prosperity and living standards all depend on national security becoming a way of life for people and businesses in the UK. This is a plan for how we protect the British people. It is a plan for today’s times, but rooted in long-held values. It is a plan to defend our national interests, deepen our international alliances and increase our sovereign capabilities, and I commend it to the House.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I am grateful to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for advance sight of the statement and of the strategy.
Protecting our country from internal and external threats to keep the British people and our interests safe is the No. 1 priority for any Government. As a former Home Secretary, I have seen at first hand the incredible efforts of our security and intelligence services to keep us safe. So much of their work will never be disclosed, but I know that the whole House will join me in thanking them for all they do, alongside our police, counter-terrorism operations, the armed forces and all those who work so hard to keep Britain safe.
His Majesty’s Opposition will always work constructively with the Government in the national interest, especially in the current global climate when threats are increasingly complex and multifaceted. Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, non-state terrorist actors and transnational criminals all pose a significant threat to us all. That is why we welcome actions that build on the measures we put in place in government, including our National Security Act 2023, which gives us increased oversight of adversarial action and introduced the foreign influence registration scheme.
The statement and the strategy refer to the three pillars of security at home, strength abroad, and increasing sovereign and asymmetric capabilities, and I will take each in turn. On security at home, protecting critical national infrastructure must be a key component of any national security strategy. How will that work in practice? What resources will be provided? What further steps are being taken to protect people on British soil from transnational repression? With China placing bounties on the heads of people in our own country and both the NSS and the strategic defence review highlighting the threats posed by China, can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that China will be placed on the enhanced tier of FIRS? Will the Government drop their support for the China super-embassy spy hub?
On projecting our strength abroad, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned today’s NATO summit, and the commitment to increase what he calls national security spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, with 3.5% on core defence. But he does not have a plan to get to 3%, let alone the 3.5%. It is all smoke and mirrors, so when will he deliver a plan to get to 3%, and why will he not heed our calls to hit 3% by the end of this Parliament? That would be a vital stepping stone on the way to the higher defence spending he is seeking. Will the Government give clear information on exactly what spending will be included in the 1.5% target? Is there any new money, and does this, for example, include the costs of Sizewell, as we heard recently?
As well as increasing spending, we need to develop a tougher edge for a dangerous world. Given the security threats that we continue to face, will Labour’s £30 billion Chagos surrender treaty be scrapped? It undermines our national security, and contrary to the Prime Minister’s claim, our loss of sovereignty has been publicly backed by representatives of the regimes in China, Russia and Iran. The costs also hoover up money that we could spend on much-needed defence capabilities at this incredibly dangerous time.
On increasing sovereign and asymmetric capabilities, can the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster explain what support will be given to private enterprise and what investment will support efforts in this area? I also note that the words in the Government’s strategy do not quite align with their broader action—for example, the decision to allow the Chinese firm Mingyang to provide wind turbines for large wind farm projects in the UK. Does he acknowledge the need to protect our energy infrastructure from such potential malign activity, and if so, what concrete steps have been taken to increase the very resilience of our own infrastructure?
Finally, on the important role of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy and of parliamentary oversight, we understand that the National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, has not been made available to the Committee for questioning. The Government have claimed that it would not be appropriate for him as a special adviser to answer questions from the Committee. However, in this case, it is more than clear that Mr Powell’s role as the National Security Adviser puts him in a unique position—a unique senior position—and it appears that, as the lead adviser for the Government’s national security strategy, it is only right that the Joint Committee be able to put questions to him. Given the important issue here, and Mr Powell’s senior role and central position, will the Government finally let him give evidence to the Committee to allow it to undertake its important work?
We will always work to support the defence and security of Britain, and engage constructively with Ministers and challenge them to do everything possible to keep us safe, so I welcome the chance for these questions to be answered today.
Pat McFadden
Let me express my gratitude to the shadow Foreign Secretary for her response, the spirit in which she put her questions and her welcome for at least broad parts of the strategy we have published today. Let me turn to the questions she has asked and try to address them.
On the resources to protect people, we made our commitment to increase defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP. Unlike the Conservative party, we said exactly how we would pay for that, even though it meant a very difficult choice on this side of the House. On the FIRS scheme, the right hon. Lady will be aware that Iran and Russia have been placed on the enhanced tier. She asked about our approach to China. This is a serious question and we must have a serious approach to it. The Conservative party, during its time in government, veered between the naivety of the so-called “golden era” to, in effect, no engagement at all. We believe that both were the wrong approach. Instead, our approach will be marked by a desire to protect our national security and to promote our economic interests; total disengagement is not a good option for the UK, so we will be guided by both. The Foreign Secretary, as I said, will make a fuller statement on China shortly.
The right hon. Lady asks what might be included in the 1.5%. It will include such things as cyber-security, border security and telecoms infrastructure. To those who ask what those things have to do with defence, let me be clear: our opponents and our enemies know that they are part of national security, and we should recognise that, too.
Finally, we have resisted the Opposition’s pleas for us to choose between our allies. In resisting that, I believe we have a strategy that makes our country stronger and enhances Britain’s capabilities. That is at the heart of the strategy we put today. Indeed, we made a conscious choice to increase investment in the country’s future capabilities at the spending review. This will give us increased strength in the future. The spending we have committed to is funded, it is set out in the spending review and that is the approach we will take in the future, too.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I call the Chairman of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. I totally agree that defence and security have to begin at home, in the home and in the workplace. This is a very welcome comprehensive national security strategy, given its wide-ranging assessment of all the threats we face, in defence, security, critical national infrastructure and so on. An impressive number of workstreams have fed into it—AUKUS, the SDR, the resilience review and so on—but there was no mention of the National Security Council. Can my right hon. Friend tell me what he is doing to ensure that there is a coherence across the strategy that will herald a cultural change in how this country faces security?
Pat McFadden
I thank the Chair of the Joint Committee for his question. I should have said, in response to the shadow Foreign Secretary, that I hope to reach a resolution with the Committee soon on the matter of appearances before it. I am always happy to appear before the Committee, if invited. The Chairman of the Joint Committee is quite right to say to the House that publishing strategies is one thing, but there must be follow through. The difference between this and some other documents produced is that it is a whole-system approach, looking at sovereign capability, international alliances and making our country a harder target for our enemies. All three of those must be brought together and followed through in a systematic way.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats welcome the publication of the Government’s national security strategy, because we recognise that we are living in a world that is less stable and more insecure now than at any time since the end of the cold war. Putin’s forces continue to wage their war in Ukraine, the middle east is teetering on the precipice of a fully-fledged regional war, and the actions of the United States under an unreliable President Trump are putting an enormous strain on the post-war settlement from which we have benefited so much.
The nature of the threats we face continues to evolve, as has become immensely clear to millions of people across the country with the recent cyber-attacks on Marks and Spencer and the Co-op, and in other countries we have seen attempts by authoritarian states to meddle in free and fair elections. That is why we welcome so much of what is contained in the strategy. It is also why the Liberal Democrats have welcomed the Government’s decision to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, although we have urged Ministers to go further.
Given the new NATO target of 5% of GDP, will the Government now urgently convene cross-party talks to establish a consensus on how to get there? We need to show our adversaries we are serious about that commitment. The strategy also has a welcome focus on resilience, something especially important given not just the scale of the threat we face but its varied nature. Will the Minister look at steps taken by our allies such as Estonia to inform their populations about how to deal with those threats, should they arise? To reflect the threat posed to our democracy by hostile actors, will he make protecting our democracy a national security priority? I also note the importance that the review places on sovereign independent capabilities. Is that an admission from the Government that, under President Trump, the United States is no longer a reliable ally? Will the assessment be carried over into defence procurement, where we look to maintain an inextricably close bond with the United States?
Pat McFadden
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. Let me try to go through some of the issues she raised. She is absolutely right to draw attention to the importance of the recent cyber-attacks on Marks and Spencer, the Co-op and the legal aid system. They show what both state and non-state actors can do, and they show how important it is that we strengthen our cyber-capabilities and our cyber-defences as much as possible. In terms of being serious, the actions we have taken so far since the election show that we are serious. We have a plan in place to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP this Parliament. It took a very difficult decision to do that, but at the spending review we showed exactly how that would be paid for. On her reference to the United States, it remains a strong, reliable, deep and important ally for the United Kingdom. The relationship between us helps to protect the British people every day.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
In the absence of the published China audit, which we have all been looking forward to so much, the national security strategy has been gone through with a fine-toothed comb by many of us. On China, it states:
“Instances of China’s espionage, interference in our democracy and the undermining of our economic security have increased in recent years.”
May we have some guidance on how we will address that, because that is not entirely clear? In particular, what advice is being given to the nations and regions when they are dealing with our third-biggest trading partner, with whom we need to promote but also protect ourselves?
Pat McFadden
I thank the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee for her question. If people look at page 39 of the document, they will see many references to China, and I referred to the statement that the Foreign Secretary is going to make. On our advice to people, as I said, it is guided by the protection of our security interest and the promotion of our economic interest. She refers specifically to the devolved Governments and the nations and regions. We did arrange a recent security briefing for the First Ministers at the time of the recent meeting of the Council of the Nations and Regions, because we agree it is important to bring them into our thinking and help them play their role in protecting our national security interest, too.
Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman’s long experience will tell him that sometimes in government the grander the language the less significant the actual announcement. But if on this occasion—I am perfectly prepared to accept that this is so—the Government are making a serious effort to redraw the boundaries of what is national security policy and what is not, does he agree that we need matching parliamentary scrutiny of that area of policy? As he knows, the Intelligence and Security Committee is the only Committee with the necessary clearances to look at classified material. Does he think that this is a good moment to look again at the memorandum of understanding between the Committee and the Government about what the Committee covers?
Pat McFadden
The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to say that the document is distinguished by a broader view of national security, which is also reflected in the discussion at NATO today, where we are looking beyond our core defence expenditure on our armed forces to the other things we have discussed that contribute to our national security. I thank the Intelligence and Security Committee for its work in all its iterations over the years. I have a good dialogue with the Committee. I look forward to that continuing, and to the Committee playing its very important role.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s focus on building up our armed forces in this more uncertain world, but is it not also vital for our national security that we focus on preventing conflict? Bringing sides together to negotiate and mediate can stop conflict spilling over and allow our armed forces to focus on the serious threats he has identified in the national security strategy. It is for that reason that former military chiefs, heads of the Security Service and Select Committee Chairs last week wrote a letter to the PM calling for investment in peacebuilding and conflict prevention. Will the Minister commit to using all the tools in our kitbag, including peacebuilding and conflict prevention, to keep our citizens safe?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend is quite right to draw attention to the deep expertise that exists in the diplomatic service, which advances our national interests in a whole range of ways every day, including in conflict resolution. I pay tribute to the work of those in our diplomatic posts and diplomatic service across the world.
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
If you will allow me, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will read a small quote from page 10:
“We will continue to abide by the important principle—shared by NATO and its key partners—that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions are inextricably linked”.
But that is not how the US views it. The Trump Administration see them as quite separate, and would prefer the United Kingdom to focus its efforts on the Euro-Atlantic. How does the right hon. Gentleman explain that discrepancy?
Pat McFadden
They are inextricably linked. While the Prime Minister attends the NATO summit today, our carrier group is in the Indo-Pacific region. It is quite right that the strategy we have published today draws attention to our responsibilities, our ambition and our determination to act in both arenas.
Alex Baker (Aldershot) (Lab)
I welcome this national security strategy. Defence begins at home, and my community plays a role in the UK’s security and resilience with the HQ of Standing Joint Command in Aldershot. We need to focus as much on national resilience as on conventional military threats, so will my right hon. Friend share the work he has been doing on the national resilience strategy? How does it fit with the national security strategy that is in front of us today?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend is right that resilience and target hardening must be part of our national security strategy. Resilience is about capability and investment; we are determined to do both, and will have more to say about resilience in the coming weeks.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
Before the most recent election, the Intelligence and Security Committee produced a very comprehensive report on China, making it very clear that it considers China to be one of our greatest threats. I am therefore astonished that, in the whole of today’s strategy, there are three paragraphs that deal with China, and that it raises one or two issues and then proceeds to take a different decision. It talks about there being a problem with human rights—which is genocide—and the cyber-security attacks on the UK, as well as China’s espionage, interference in our democracy, sanctioning of people like myself and undermining of our economic security, and its being guilty of transnational repression. China also ships arms to Myanmar, keeping that brutal regime in charge, at the same time as building the largest navy. To what degree do three paragraphs satisfy the idea that China should surely be in the list of threats?
Pat McFadden
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. Let me make it clear that any sanctions on UK parliamentarians are wrong, and there is no place for them. The paragraphs he refers to set out some of our position on China. As I have said, the Foreign Secretary will, however, make a broader statement on the China audit immediately after this statement. I repeat again what I said in my opening remarks: our approach to China will be guided by protecting our security interests, which we will always do robustly, but also by promoting our economic interests; we do have an economic relationship with the second biggest economy in the world.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for his statement, which is another firm example of this Government’s top priority of keeping residents safe. As the nature of warfare is changing, may I once again gently raise the importance of health security, and lobby for Harlow to be the new home of the UK Health Security Agency?
Pat McFadden
I believe my hon. Friend is due happy birthday wishes, so let me take that opportunity, and thank him, too, for his tireless campaigning for locating the laboratories in Harlow. The facilities are an important capability for the United Kingdom. A decision has been awaited for some years; I am not ready to announce it today, but people will not have too long to wait before it is announced.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
The national security strategy document outlines an expanded meaning of national security to include areas such as food security. If food security is national security—I certainly agree it is—we need to increase domestic production instead of cutting support for farmers and increasing our reliance on imports from the other side of the world. Will the Chancellor outline how the national security strategy will be used to change policy at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs?
Pat McFadden
The Government agree that food security is important. Our farmers, food producers and food retailers have been burdened with far too many increased costs and delays in recent years, but the recent sanitary and phytosanitary agreement we reached with the European Union will lift that burden. That will be good news for food producers in the UK, who will be able to grow and sell their magnificent produce with much greater ease than in recent years.
Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
It is vital that the UK has robust defences against biological incidents, accidents and attacks. What steps are the Government taking to invest in our biosecurity, and how that will help to protect our country from the range of bio-threats that we face?
Pat McFadden
There is a £1 billion investment in biosecurity. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for DEFRA has been able to announce only today new investment in critical resources at Weybridge as part of that.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
I welcome today’s national security strategy, which bears a remarkable resemblance to every single one I have seen over the past 15 years. There have been only very slight adjustments over that period; I wonder whether there is any connection between the authors, or whether it is just that the officials have not changed, so the politics has not changed. However, one thing that really has changed over that period is technology, and the document I have seen this morning has very little connection to the democratisation of technology that we have seen in Ukraine’s warfare in Russia or between Israel and Iran—or, indeed, in warfare we might see waged against us by the switching off of electronic items, including solar panels and cars by the Chinese state.
Pat McFadden
I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, and I thank him for his question. He is absolutely right to draw attention to the importance of technology, which I mentioned in my opening remarks. It is why we have put such stress on having an AI action plan to make this country as strong as possible in this field, and why we have made the investment in the supercomputer at Edinburgh and this time put the money behind it. Such technology is a critical part of our strength as a country and we have significant advantage and expertise in it. One aspect of the document is about ensuring that, where we have an advantage, we invest in it and we make sure that it deepens our capability in those crucial ways.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I have Dreghorn and Redford barracks in my constituency, so I can only welcome the biggest uplift in defence spending since the cold war. However, many people will be concerned about the cost. I wonder whether there is an opportunity here: if our NATO allies are increasing spending along with us, is there an opportunity for our defence sector to benefit from that, generating jobs and helping to grow our economy?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend is right. Decisions to increase defence expenditure are not just about direct spending on the armed forces, but about the supply chain, industrial capability, defence suppliers and, critically, the skills to meet our defence needs. That is why the Prime Minister has referred to a defence dividend. This is not just security policy; it is industrial and skills policy, too.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
Cyber-security is core and central to our security at home, but a significant weakness is the security of the cabling in the North Atlantic and along the west coast of Ireland. For too long, the Irish Government have freeloaded and taken for granted the United Kingdom providing defence and security. Have the Government approached the Irish Government to see whether they will pay or play their part?
Pat McFadden
I recently had the privilege of visiting the cyber centre at Queen’s university in Belfast, which is doing fantastic research in this area. The hon. Member is right to draw attention to the importance of subsea cables. These carry critical data between us and overseas countries every day and it is certainly part of our strategy to do everything that we can to protect our subsea cable infrastructure.
Jessica Toale (Bournemouth West) (Lab)
Unlike the right hon. Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), I welcome the focus on science and technology in the national security strategy. A new innovation quarter is being developed in Talbot village and the local council aspires to be an AI growth zone, so will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster tell me how this strategy will support growth and security in my constituency and across the south-west of England?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the importance of technology. I said in my opening remarks that the investments that we made in the spending review, which did not fall from the sky but came about because of choices made by the Government, contribute to the strength and resilience of the country. That is why the strategy talks of three pillars—homeland security, alliances abroad and deepening our sovereign capabilities—and all three are important.
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
Given the scale of foreign-influence operations, particularly those of China, does the Minister accept that Britain’s societal resilience remains far too limited? Without clear Government messaging, how can institutions or the public properly play their role? Will the Minister commit to expanding the defending democracy taskforce to include public education, support for free media, and curbing People’s Liberation Army-linked speakers at taxpayer funded events?
Pat McFadden
I would say that my faith in British society was strong. It is a strong society with deeply held democratic values. We never take that for granted, but it has been enduring and strong over the years. The hon. Member is right to draw attention to the importance of defending our democracy. We will always defend the right to have free elections and of our elected representatives to go about their business. We will also do our best to promote free speech and debate in our democratic process.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
The Minister will know from my background that I will welcome the defence measures in the national security strategy, but I particularly wish to highlight the passages on energy security. We know that the impacts of the war in Ukraine, combined with our historical over-reliance on a single source of fuel—fossil fuels—meant that many people in my constituency and across the country faced crippling energy bills. Will the Minister outline how this security strategy will improve our energy security and make sure that we never face such a situation again?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the experience that we had several years ago—in the early stages of the Ukraine war—which showed the perils of over-reliance on overseas oil and gas. That is why investment in clean, home-grown energy is also an investment in our national security and why it contributes directly to the broader view of national security that is outlined in the strategy that we have published today.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
As the MP for Edinburgh West, I welcome the Government’s continued commitment to the defence industries in which so many of my constituents work in the city. As the Liberal Democrat Scotland spokesperson, however, I also welcome what the Minister himself describes as a “critical” investment in the supercomputer at Edinburgh university. Will there be discussions with the Scottish Government to ensure that not just the national security implications but the educational and economic growth opportunities are achieved for the whole country, so that the whole country benefits?
Pat McFadden
The hon. Lady said that she was speaking with two hats, and let me tell her that I know how that feels. She is absolutely right to draw attention to the importance of dialogue with the Scottish Government. The Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee referred to the First Minister in her question. Yes, we do have a positive dialogue. Of course there are political differences, but the dialogue is probably in a better place than it has been for some time. As a former graduate of Edinburgh university, I very much welcome the investment in the supercomputer there.
Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)
I welcome this statement, particularly the attempt to renew and refresh our key alliances and develop new partnerships in strategic locations across the world. Clearly, the United States remains our most important defence and security ally, but we also have historic relationships with countries such as India, where we have recently agreed a very successful trade deal. In addition, the Royal Navy’s Carrier Strike Group arrived in Singapore yesterday on a visit. In view of those relationships, will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster outline how the Government are strengthening our defence security relationships with key allies, such as India and Singapore, in the strategically important location of the Indo-Pacific?
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend is right that the UK Carrier Strike Group is in Singapore and he is also right to draw attention to the very important India trade deal that was reached by the Government just a few weeks ago. In recent months, we have reached trade agreements with the US, with the European Union and with India. Many people thought that that could not be done over a course of years, but it was done over a course of weeks. Each one of those agreements will help to strengthen our economy and deepen our alliances with key allies.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I note what the Minister said about social resilience. There is little point in strategising to defend our security and power in the world if we surrender our freedoms and culture without a whimper at home. Therefore, what will the Government do, for example, to stop the misuse of sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, not to mention the decisions of the likes of Bristol university and the Government with their proposed Islamophobia definition, to create a de facto Islamic blasphemy law in Britain?
Pat McFadden
The hon. Gentleman should have more faith in the depth and strength of British society. This is a society that has sustained robust debate over the years, and I think that it can do so in the future. It is a critical part of our national strength and a part of what makes this country great. I pay tribute to British society for being so strong and for allowing such robust debate.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that our energy security is fundamental to our national security, and, therefore, does he share my concerns that Conservative Members now appear to disagree with the investment that we are making in energy security in this country? If they disagree with the investment that we are making in nuclear, small modular reactors and Great British Energy, they should stand up and say so.
Pat McFadden
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When we make the decision to invest in new nuclear power, that is a contribution to our energy security. When we make the investment in other home-grown clean energy, that is a contribution to our national security. It is essential that, in this day and age, we have a broad view of national security, which understands our vulnerabilities and the importance of protecting ourselves against them.
Mr Joshua Reynolds (Maidenhead) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned new technology, such as AI and the expansion of our legal toolkit, but very little about the legal safeguards and domestic checks and balances that are needed. Will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster reassure me about what checks and balances will be included to ensure that the civil liberties of UK citizens are protected at all costs?
Pat McFadden
Of course we will protect civil liberties. There is a live debate about both security and opportunity in AI, and both are part of our strategy. Let me be clear that we are on the threshold of something that has enormous possibilities, and it is an area in which the UK has significant and deep strengths. The strategy we published today states that we should deepen our capabilities in these areas to grow our sovereign capabilities and that that, in turn, will make us stronger as a country. That is what we intend to do.
Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)
Rolls-Royce Submarines in Derby, just outside my constituency, is a major employer of my constituents. Will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster confirm that the Government remain committed to the nuclear triple lock and comment on how today’s announcement will support our nuclear manufacturing industry in the east midlands?
Pat McFadden
I pay tribute to the work of Rolls-Royce and the contribution it makes to our national security. I assure my hon. Friend that our commitment to the nuclear deterrent as a cornerstone of our national security is right there as part of our national security strategy.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
Labour has repeatedly stated that food security is national security—a point with which I and many of my constituents wholeheartedly agree—yet there remains a clear disconnect between that rhetoric and the substance of current policy. Beyond the announced biosecurity measures, does the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster genuinely believe that the national security strategy goes far enough to address the resilience of domestic food supply chains, the risk posed by climate change to agriculture, and systemic vulnerabilities in our food system?
Pat McFadden
As I said a few moments ago, this Government have lifted the cost, delay and bureaucracy burdens on our food producers by reaching an SPS veterinary agreement with the European Union that the Conservatives would never have reached because of their ideological objection to doing so. The agreement is good for our farmers and food producers, and it is something that this Government have done.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
In this strategy, I read a number of encouraging promises. I quote two of them: “controlling our borders” and “controls on immigration”. How will applying those two promises work out at the open border with the Republic of Ireland, which allows unfettered immigrant passage into the United Kingdom? If we are going to control our borders and control immigration, when are we going to start controlling that border?
Pat McFadden
The hon. and learned Gentleman will be aware that there has been a common travel area between Ireland and the United Kingdom for many years, which the previous Government and this Government were determined to keep. That is why there is an open border between the two countries, as he says. I refer him to the immigration White Paper published just a few weeks ago, which set out reforms to the legal immigration system. Immigration makes an immense contribution to UK society, but we know that people want a proper set of rules around it, and that is what the immigration White Paper provides.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
I echo the comments made by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) about the Chinese Communist party. The national security strategy recognises that UK security is tied to that of our allies. Do the Government acknowledge that lasting peace in Europe means terminating Putin’s European ambitions in Ukraine, and if so, how will the Government get that through to the US Administration?
Pat McFadden
Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, we have stood by Ukraine. The strategy sets out the degree of support that this country has given Ukraine over the past four years. We continue to stand by Ukraine, and we continue to support its right to decide its own future. That will remain a core part of our strategy. With regard to China, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will make a statement shortly setting out the China audit in greater detail.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) asked the question I had hoped to ask, and the Minister sort of answered it, so I will ask a quite separate question. If the ambition is to reach spending at 5% of GDP on defence and broader security by 2035, what is the true current figure? We know the figure for defence but not for wider security; will it include MI5, MI6, GCHQ, counter-terrorism or, indeed, all of the police forces across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Pat McFadden
The hon. Member asks what the is situation now. As the statement released overnight stated, under the current definitions of what we spend on core defence expenditure and broader security expenditure, the figure would be 4.1% by 2027, and we hope to grow from there.
China Audit
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr David Lammy)
With permission, I will make a statement on the China audit.
China’s rise has shaped the geopolitical landscape. Over the past decade, its military expenditure doubled. Its armed forces became the world’s largest. It established dominance over critical mineral supply chains. It pursued relentless innovation in electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and even space travel. Over the same period, China has delivered a third of global economic growth, becoming the world’s second largest economy and, together with Hong Kong, the UK’s third largest trading partner.
Not engaging with China is therefore no choice at all. China’s power is an inescapable fact. After what the Intelligence and Security Committee in 2023 described as a “completely inadequate” approach over the past decade to deal with China’s “size, ambition and capability”, we must now look at the facts. Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton attempted a golden era. Boris Johnson let Huawei into our critical national infrastructure before U-turning. Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak decided that China was a threat but failed to devise any policy response, instead burying their heads in the sand.
This Government conducted an audit of our most complex bilateral relationship to deliver a long-term strategy, moving beyond cheap rhetoric to a data-driven, cross-Government approach. I would like to thank the hundreds who contributed to it, including hon. Members, of course, and experts, businesses, diaspora communities, devolved Governments and close allies. The audit is less a single act than an ongoing exercise that will continue to guide the UK’s approach to China. It informed the Government’s strategic defence review, which assessed that China was a “sophisticated and persistent challenge”. It informed the national security strategy, published today, which sets out China’s impacts on each strategic pillar of UK national security. It has steered our trade and industrial strategies, which analysed where greater engagement is possible, given the important role China can play in delivering UK growth.
Hon. Members will understand that much of the audit was conducted at a high classification and that most of the detail is not disclosable without damaging our national interests. I am therefore providing a broad summary of its recommendations today in a manner consistent with that of our Five Eyes partners. On security, the audit described a full spectrum of threats, from espionage and cyber-attacks to the repression of Hongkongers and attacks on the rules-based order. It made clear that our protections must extend more widely than they currently do—from the security of this House to our critical national infrastructure.
Hon. Members will again recognise that disclosing the detail of the responses to those threats would undermine their effectiveness. However, I can confirm that following the audit we are investing £600 million in our intelligence services; updating our state threats legislation following Jonathan Hall’s review; strengthening our response to transnational repression; introducing training for police and launching more online guidance to support victims; launching, as announced in the industrial strategy, a 12-week consultation on updating the definitions covering the 17 sensitive areas under the National Security and Investment Act 2021; and working bilaterally with China to enhance intelligence flows related to illicit finance specifically, organised immigration crime and scam centres, using new National Crime Agency capabilities.
On global security, the audit underlined the extent of Beijing’s support for the Kremlin. The Government have already tripled the number of Chinese entities sanctioned for equipping Russia’s illegal war, and we will continue to confront that.
The audit reiterated that our approach to China must stay rooted in both international law and deterrence. We will continue to confront China’s dangerous and destabilising activity in the South China sea, which I saw for myself when I visited the Philippines. We will continue to work with our regional partners to support freedom of navigation and call out China’s abuses. We will double down on AUKUS. We will not change our long-standing position on Taiwan, while sustaining unofficial but vibrant ties with Taiwan on trade, education and innovation. We will also never shy away from shining a spotlight on human rights—notably the situations in Xinjiang and Tibet—while on Hong Kong we will insist that China honours its commitments under the Sino-British joint declaration, including by repealing the national security law and releasing Jimmy Lai.
The audit made it clear that our approach will always be guided by the UK’s long-term economic growth priorities. It provided ample evidence of the extent to which our economies are intertwined. China is our third biggest trading partner and our universities’ second largest source of international students. China will continue to play a vital role in supporting the UK’s secure growth, but over the past decade we have not had the structures either to take the opportunities or to protect us from the risks that those deep links demand. Businesses have told us time and again that they have lacked senior political engagement and adequate Government guidance.
We have already begun to develop new structures, including regular economic and financial dialogues with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, setting us on course to unlock £1 billion of economic value for the UK economy and positioning the UK’s world-leading financial sector to reflect China’s importance to the global economy; joint economic and trade commissions; and joint commission meetings on science. We will also launch a new online hub, bringing together detailed and specific business advice. The forthcoming trade strategy will set out how we will support British firms to enhance links with China’s vast and growing consumer market as well as assess new tools to keep goods made by forced labour anywhere in the world off Britain’s high streets.
The audit recognised that China’s global role does not fit into simple stereotypes. China is the world’s biggest emitter but also the biggest producer of renewables. It offers $80 billion towards development annually. It is also the UK’s second largest research collaborator: 11% of British research output included Chinese authors.
So the audit was clear: the UK must develop new dialogues with China on issues such as climate, development, global health and science, as well as on trade. In doing so, we are driving our long-term interests and creating secure opportunities for UK plc.
We cannot deal with China’s complexity unless we improve our capability to understand it, for our national security and for secure trade and growth. The audit showed that under the last Government there was a profound lack of confidence in how to deal with China and a profound lack of knowledge regarding China’s culture, history and—most importantly—language. Over the past year, I have found that far too few mandarins speak Mandarin. We are already taking action to address that by introducing a new China fast stream in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, creating an FCDO global China network and training over 1,000 civil servants on China policy in the past year. Enhancing those capabilities still further will be a core focus for the £290 million FCDO transformation fund announced in the national security strategy by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster a short time ago. The new strategy, which proceeds from the audit, will ensure that the Government examine the full spectrum of interests in their decision-making processes and deliver the consistent approach that was so sorely lacking.
Anyone expecting a simple prescription on China is not living in the real world. The audit has painted a complex picture, but it has provided us with a clear way forward. The UK’s approach to China will be founded on progressive realism, taking the world as it is, not as we would wish it to be. Like our closest allies, we will co-operate where we can and challenge where we must. Never compromising on our national security, recognising the complexity of the world as it is, engaging confidently, carefully and pragmatically, and delivering secure growth—those are the hallmarks of grown-up government, acting in the long-term national interest.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement, and I look forward to reading the audit and receiving the detailed briefings that clearly cannot be put in the public domain.
Let us be clear: China thinks that its way is the best and only way, and its leaders are on an international quest for global governance and for its frightening authoritarian model to supersede ours. Ours is one of democracy, openness and standing up for freedom and values.
China has been ramping up its military with alarming conviction, including conventional nuclear and space capabilities, and it is a critical enabler of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine—we saw President Xi standing side by side with Putin in Moscow just weeks ago—so be in no doubt that China and Russia are collaborating across all domains to undermine our very democratic freedoms and the west. Beijing tramples on the Sino-British declaration in Hong Kong, threatens British national overseas passport holders on British soil and has imprisoned Jimmy Lai—a British national—through an awful, politically motivated trial.
Beijing’s unjustified aggression in the South China sea is dangerous, and it unacceptably intimidates and challenges the sovereignty of its neighbours in the Indo-Pacific. It is consistently and constantly threatening the peace-seeking democracy of Taiwan while committing the most appalling human rights abuses in Xinjiang. It also applies hybrid and grey-zone techniques against Britain, including malign cyber-activity directed at our democratic institutions and sanctioning our very own Members of Parliament, all the while exploiting vulnerable countries through its belt and road initiative. China also flagrantly brushes aside economic rules and steals intellectual property. It has developed sophisticated models to acquire strategic assets around the world.
Despite all of that, it has taken the Government a year to produce this audit, which seemingly fails to set out any kind of serious strategic framework. I think it is fair to say that we know why: it is because the Government—in fact, the Foreign Secretary touched on this—have gone cap in hand to China to bail out their terrible handling of the British economy. They are setting up closer economic ties with China while knowing very well that British businesses are struggling not just in competing against China, but to absorb the weight of Labour’s own regulatory costs.
We have not heard it in the statement, but can the Foreign Secretary name a single area where measurable, tangible progress has been made in advancing critical British interests with China, whether on national security, economic practices, climate or human rights? He failed to mention that Members of this House have been sanctioned by China.
We have seen signs of naivety from the Government—consistently, if I may say so. [Interruption.] Within one day of the Prime Minister meeting President Xi, he effectively held that as an opportunity to bring about a strong and consistent relationship in which surprises would be avoided. Within the following few days, 45 pro-democracy campaigners were jailed in Hong Kong, following a very harsh application of the draconian national security law. That is completely unacceptable.
What is the Foreign Secretary’s actual strategy to deter China from systematically extinguishing freedoms in Hong Kong? Will he commit to using the full weight of the Government machine to do more to protect BNOs and Hongkongers who suffer outrageous transnational repression in the UK, rather than just issuing guidance and training?
The Government have constantly and suspiciously backed the application for China’s new super-embassy in London. Why are the Foreign Secretary and the Government not showing the same backbone that their Irish and Australian counterparts showed when they saw fit to block embassy planning applications from Russia, which they deemed too risky for national security?
Do the Government have a practical strategy to deter Chinese efforts to capture Taiwan by military means or by stealth, or to oppose the human rights abuses in Xinjiang? What is the Foreign Secretary’s end goal and what are the means of getting there? What will he do to find new critical minerals supply chains in order to reduce reliance on Chinese trade? With that, what will the Government do now to move Jimmy Lai’s case on to an urgent footing, away from the complex consular case handling that it seems to have in the Foreign Office?
The Government need to urgently sort out some of the grave contradictions mentioned in the Foreign Secretary’s statement, and I will highlight a few. We heard him speak about the China audit underlining
“the extent of Beijing’s support for the Kremlin.”
We do not question or doubt that, but some action is needed. The statement also says that the audit
“reiterated that our approach to China must stay rooted both in international law and deterrence.”
How does that help Jimmy Lai at this particular moment?
We will always support the security and the defence of our country, so the Government must do much more when it comes to keeping Britain safe from China.
Mr Lammy
I know that the right hon. Lady can be pretty brazen, but a lecture from her about China policy should make even her blush. The Conservative party oversaw more than a decade of division, inconsistency and complacency towards China. There was no strategy, there was no plan and there was no sense of a national interest. The Intelligence and Security Committee, which was chaired by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), from her party, said that the actions on China had left Britain “severely handicapped” in managing our future security. The truth is that the right hon. Lady was at the centre of it.
Where was she during the ill-judged Cameron-Osborne golden age? She was the Minister for the Treasury. Where was she during the humiliating Huawei U-turn? She was Home Secretary. The Tories had their heads in the sand. Under them, Britain’s defences were weakened and our armed services hollowed out. It is a Labour Government who are investing £600 million in our intelligence services to deal with those threats; it is a Labour Government who are investing £290 million extra a year in our diplomatic capabilities in this area; it is a Labour Government who are delivering the biggest increase in defence spending since the cold war; and it is a Labour Government who are making Britain secure at home and strong abroad.
I refer the right hon. Lady to page 28 of the strategic defence review—she clearly has not bothered to read it—which makes it clear that we of course understand that China is a “sophisticated and persistent” threat. She talks about the embassy, but she should know, as a former Home Secretary, that it is a quasi-judicial decision that has been properly made by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The right hon. Lady talks about Jimmy Lai. I met Sebastien Lai last week, and we have been raising the issue on every single occasion. A trial is ongoing, so let us see how it will complete. She raises transnational aggression. We are the ones updating our state threats legislation because the Conservatives left the gaps and did nothing when in power. She raises the situation in Russia and the Chinese supplying Russia with dual-use goods. Who has done the sanctions? There have been five rounds of sanctions under me as Foreign Secretary. What did the Conservatives do? I will take no lectures on this subject from them, who know that, as a Government, they were found wanting on the question of threats from the Chinese.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Our relationship with China is most definitely a difficult one. On the one hand, it is our third biggest trading partner, but on the other hand, the national security strategy, on page 35, says that there is an increase in espionage, China is undermining our economic security and interfering in our democracy, and that has increased over recent years. The Foreign Office needs to hold the ring.
The China audit needs to be wide-ranging. It is an important piece of work. We were looking forward to seeing it published and to the Foreign Secretary coming to talk to us—he said that he would—but instead we are looking through a glass darkly, we do not know and we will not be able to see it. We want to be able to do our job properly and scrutinise this important piece of work. May I therefore suggest that the Foreign Secretary makes available a reading room at the FCDO for Foreign Affairs Committee members and staff before his appearance on 8 July so that we can study the audit properly and hold him to account?
Mr Lammy
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the interest that she has taken with the China audit. I did say that I would update the Committee, and I look forward to appearing before it and taking questions on this subject.
In completing the audit, it has been important to remain consistent with our Five Eyes partners. She will recognise why much of the audit has led to a high level of classification. She will note, when she looks across the G7 and other Five Eyes partners, that many of them have handled their approach to China in the way that I have set out. I refer her to the strategic defence review and its contents on China. I refer her to the national security strategy, which has just been published, and its references to China. I also refer her to the UK’s industrial strategy and its references to China, alongside the statement that I have just made.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for advance sight of his statement. For years, UK Governments have failed to take seriously the challenge posed by China. The Conservatives failed to deliver even the semblance of a coherent approach to dealing with Beijing. Today, after months of waiting for this audit, the Government’s failure to publish a stand-alone document is immensely disappointing. Will the Foreign Secretary set out how Members of this House, including those on the Intelligence and Security Committee and those on the Front Benches with responsibility for foreign affairs, defence and security, can be briefed on the more sensitive elements of the audit?
We on the Liberal Democrat Benches recognise China for what it is: a threat to our values and interests. The Foreign Secretary is right that our approach must confront the facts as they are. They include China’s hostility to the UK’s allies and support for our adversaries, its abuse of human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, the theft of intellectual property and its efforts at transnational repression. Instead of trying to establish warm relations with President Xi, the Government should commit to clear red lines on what they will not accept. For example, we have yet to receive a satisfactory explanation for why my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) was denied entry to Hong Kong when on a private visit to see her family. Will the Foreign Secretary confirm what steps he will take if Beijing refuses to give an assurance that MPs will not be blocked from visiting Hong Kong or China?
We now hear reports that the Deputy Prime Minister is preparing to wave through Beijing’s application for a proposed mega-embassy in the heart of London. That is not a technical planning matter to be cloaked in the veil of quasi-judicial powers; it is a matter of national security. Opposition has been expressed by the United States and by pro-democracy Chinese and Hong Kong activists living in the UK, who already face Chinese Communist party-sponsored bounties. Has the Foreign Secretary met those activists, and will he formally request that the mega-embassy application be blocked?
Mr Lammy
As I have said, this was a comprehensive audit of our relations with China, and for reasons that the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members have raised consistently, there are important sections of that audit that must remain classified. He mentioned the Intelligence and Security Committee; as he would expect, mechanisms are in place to allow that Committee to understand some of the details, and to scrutinise them in the usual way. He mentioned the experience of the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). I want to make it clear that when I recently met the Chinese International Minister and member of the Communist party, Mr Liu Jianchao, I raised that case, and our huge concerns about its implications for the free travel of British citizens and democratically elected Members of Parliament, not just in this country but across the world.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the embassy and had questions about security. Those issues are precisely why the Home Secretary and I, advised by our security agencies, wrote a letter on the issue of the embassy, raising the concerns that would need to be addressed if the proposal was to move forward. And yes, of course I have met activists who are campaigning, particularly on the issue of transnational repression, and so has the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), who deals with this issue and the Indo-Pacific.
Blair McDougall (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
As chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on Uyghurs and on Hong Kong, I have lost count of the number of responses I have had from Ministers that have referred to today’s audit. I hope the Foreign Secretary will forgive me if I take today as the start of a conversation, rather than the last word on these matters. He has again used his three Cs mantra: competing and co-operating with China, and challenging it when needed. I wonder if he understands that many Hongkongers, Uyghurs and others who are fighting for freedom from or within the People’s Republic of China worry that the order of that is deliberate, and that the “challenging” part is a lower priority. What reassurance can he give to those groups that commercial interests will not trump the responsibility to protect freedoms and security, particularly of British Hongkongers? Can he confirm that the threats identified in the audit, and the national security challenge, will be fed into the decision making on whether to allow the embassy?
Mr Lammy
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his championing on the APPGs, and for pressing these issues. I said in my statement that we will co-operate where we can but challenge where we must. I have consistently raised the situation of the Uyghur Muslims in meetings with counterparts, and I have encouraged them to implement the recommendations on Xinjiang from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Genocide is a matter for the international courts, but it is something that I and our allies in the G7 take very seriously indeed, and we will press this issue with the Government of China on every single occasion.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
First of all, before we go to the political knockabout, let me say that I have spoken critically on this issue no matter who was in government; let us settle that before we go on. I want to give the Foreign Secretary a quick audit of exactly what should have been said. China threatens Taiwan, has invaded the South China seas and is having massive disputes with the Philippines. There is genocide, slave labour, organ harvesting and transnational repression. There have been attacks on Hong Kong dissidents here, and Hong Kong dissidents are constantly under threat. There have been cyber-attacks on the UK. China supports Myanmar’s repressive military regime and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also supports North Korea and Iran. It has trashed the Sino-British treaty on Hong Kong, arrested Jemmy Lai and placed sanctions on UK MPs, and it thieves all the intellectual property from private companies. What a record! And what would we balance against that? Some potential trade?
This question has already been asked, in a way, but it is worth repeating. On the embassy decision, it was said clearly in the media that China would not apply again after the refusal from Tower Hamlets unless it received assurances from the UK Government. Can the Foreign Secretary tell me that China has not received any assurances? Or has it received private assurances from the Government that it will get what it wants, and will get this embassy?
Mr Lammy
Let me express my respect for the right hon. Gentleman’s expertise on the China threat. I acknowledge that he is subject to sanctions; I have consistently raised that point with China, noting that it recently lifted sanctions against Members of the European Parliament. I pressed it recently to do the same for Members here. Let me assure him that there are no grubby deals on any issues, and certainly not on the embassy; I reject any suggestion to the contrary. He describes the context on China. I refer him to page 28 of the strategic defence review, which summarises the challenge better than he did. It states that China is
“a sophisticated and persistent challenge. China is increasingly leveraging its economic, technological, and military capabilities, seeking to establish dominance in the Indo-Pacific, erode US influence, and put pressure on the rules-based international order.”
We agree.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement. I am the first to recognise, along with him, the need for pragmatism on this issue. He speaks of our closest allies. In Washington a couple of weeks ago, I heard about the Americans’ real concerns about the super-embassy in London. They are banning Chinese electric vehicles because of their autonomous and connected nature, which is an extraordinary move to consider making. I recognise that there is an economic need, but there is obviously political pressure as well. Can members of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, which I chair, have access to the confidential documents, so that we can be clear-eyed about what we face?
Mr Lammy
I am grateful for the work that my hon. Friend does in this area, but I must maintain that there has not been that access under any Government, other than for those on the Intelligence and Security Committee, who have access to high-classification documents, and for Privy Counsellors, who have access to conversations with the Government and officials that they pledge to keep secret. The Government cannot abandon those principles, which have consistently served us well for many years under many Governments.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
On page 39, the “National Security Strategy 2025” states:
“Instances of China’s espionage, interference in our democracy and the undermining of our economic security have increased in recent years.”
Just three pages later, it talks about the importance of
“creating the basis for a reciprocal and balanced economic relationship”
with China. Does the Foreign Secretary recognise the inherent conflict between this Government’s desire for closer economic relations, and the Chinese Government’s desire to undermine our economy?
Mr Lammy
The paradox is important, but let me be clear that £600 million-worth of new investment in our intelligence services is an important development. Investment in our capabilities, including new powers and capabilities for the National Cyber Security Centre, is an important development, but being able to unlock £1 billion-worth of trade with our third biggest trading partner must also be central to our undertaking at this time.
Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)
I welcome this statement, particularly as it has become clearer that the Conservatives badly mismanaged not just their policies towards China but our relationship with it over successive years. China offers economic opportunities, but also poses threats, as we have been hearing. We also heard earlier in the statement on the national security strategy about the importance of partnership and alliances, including with key allies in the Indo-Pacific. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that Boris Johnson’s 2019 embracing of China’s belt and road initiative was a serious diversion from the position of many of our democratic allies, many of whom saw the belt and road initiative as a threat?
Mr Lammy
Prime Minister Johnson’s record on China is shocking. It led to the grave embarrassment of having to do a U-turn on Huawei, which would have been able to get into the most delicate of our telecommunications infrastructure. It is because of that that we undertook, while in opposition, to do a full audit. That audit is constantly ongoing, but I hope that my hon. Friend will see its results reflected in the industrial strategy, the national security strategy and, of course, the SDR, which was published recently.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)
I enjoyed playing buzzword bingo when the right hon. Member presented his statement. I remind him that the rebellion on Huawei was actually led by Conservative Members, not Labour.
May I question the right hon. Gentleman about a meeting, which he referred to with a little more pride than I would have done? It was the meeting with Liu Jianchao, who is personally responsible for Operations Fox Hunt and Sky Net, which, of course, concern transnational repression, the kidnapping of Chinese citizens and their repatriation by force to mainland China. He did not seem quite as ashamed of that as I would have been. Why has he still not made it clear that the first scheme, which the Conservatives left intact and ready to go, will not yet be introduced for the whole of the Chinese state, as it should be? That is what it was designed for. For all the words that we have heard, there is not a single practical outcome. It is all still waffle.
Mr Lammy
I recognise, and it is right to put on the record, that Conservative Members, the right hon. Gentleman among them, have raised significant issues over the past decade or so about the approach to China. That is why, in opposition, we said that we would do a full audit. He will recognise and welcome, I suspect, the extra investment in the intelligence services, and particularly in our national cyber capability. I see him nodding. Those are tangible outcomes. That cannot, on any analysis, be described as waffle.
Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)
Before coming to Parliament, I worked in a buying department for a large international retailer. In my career, I saw a move to sourcing from China, and a rise in the popularity of retailers based in China. How will the audit work with the Department for Business and Trade to level the playing field for UK manufacturers, given the imports from China, particularly in the light of unfair trading practices, to protect our economic security and UK supply chains?
Mr Lammy
It is a good question, and I refer my hon. Friend to the industrial strategy and the further work that we have to do on supply chains. From day one, this Government have taken a big interest in global supply chains in critical minerals. Together with many partners across the world, we are working with the Global Clean Power Alliance to create new supply chains, in order to deal with the issues that she has raised.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for his efforts in raising the issue of my being refused entry to Hong Kong. I look forward to reassurances that no UK MP will be refused entry to any Chinese territories.
The Foreign Secretary’s statement mentioned that China is our universities’ second largest source of international students, and that includes my university, the University of Bath. Global academic exchange and the free flow of ideas is at the heart of our liberal values and should be welcomed, but should the Government not be aware of the fine balance that must be kept? We should not allow young researchers and students access to certain knowledge that could ultimately be used against the UK.
Mr Lammy
The hon. Member is absolutely right that it is a fine balance. We need to invest more in our police capability, and that is an outcome of this audit. We need to continue to work with our universities, so that they understand the threats in this area, as well as the opportunities.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. Members will be aware that we have three debates this afternoon, so I aim to finish this statement by 2.35 pm.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
May I say to the Foreign Secretary how much I welcome this China audit? I would like to highlight one aspect in particular. As someone who studied Chinese at university and lived there for a year, I know how complex and different China can be, and the many misconceptions and ignorance around China have been a source of frustration for me. Whatever anybody thinks of our relationship with China, it is absolutely vital that we have clear communication and that we deal with China from a position of knowledge. Does the Foreign Secretary agree how important it is that the FCDO is upskilled to ensure that we have that knowledge of Chinese culture and language skills, so we are fully prepared for the years ahead?
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend’s question goes to the heart of capabilities. We must have more diplomats with a fine understanding of China and more Mandarin speakers, and we are doing that. Sadly, the last Government cut the number of diplomats with that capability and understanding. We need to invest in the Great Britain-China Centre so that understanding of the culture is across our country, and she is absolutely right on that point.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I also remind Members that it would be helpful to have short questions and answers.
David Reed (Exmouth and Exeter East) (Con)
On the one hand, the Defence Secretary has told the world that the UK will increase offensive cyber operations against China. On the other hand, the Deputy Prime Minister is pushing for a Chinese super-embassy in London, which will be furnished with secret data cabling. Does the Foreign Secretary see any inconsistencies in his Government’s approach to China?
Mr Lammy
What I see is naivety on the behalf of the hon. Gentleman. First, to be clear, the Deputy Prime Minister has not made her quasi-judicial decision. It is wrong, and he should correct the record of the House because the decision has not been made. Secondly, why would we want a situation in which the United States, under both Governments, can take the hardest approach on China, but trade is up, and in which our G7 partners understand the risks and threats of China, but all their trade is up, when under the last Government, we were in a situation where trade was down only for the UK? That cannot be right.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the Secretary of State for his pragmatic approach. Opposition is easy, but Opposition Members know that if they were in his shoes, they would be doing exactly the same thing. Huawei has been mentioned a couple of times in passing. The reality is the guddle over it delayed the roll-out of 5G by three years and cost the economy £7 billion, which is just incredible and shameful, actually. I welcome the emphasis placed on improving cultural links between the UK and China and, of course, our universities are a key part of that. Will the Foreign Secretary commit to ensuring that our universities have a say in how we establish better relationships between China and the UK?
Mr Lammy
I reassure my hon. Friend that our universities were able to contribute to our China audit.
Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)
As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Tibet, I welcome the fact that the Government have responded to human rights situations in Xinjiang and Tibet. I would like to have seen more about religious freedoms, which includes next week’s birthday of the Dalai Lama—probably the most well-known Tibetan in the world. His future reincarnation should be for the people of Tibet, both inside and the diaspora. Given the Tibetan diaspora, the Uyghur diaspora and Hong Kong nationals are under constant surveillance here by the Chinese Communist party, how do the Government plan to take the recently agreed G7 definition of transnational repression and translate it into domestic law?
Mr Lammy
I remind the hon. Gentleman that, in December, we appointed my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) as the special envoy for freedom of religion and belief. He is right to raise the issues that we are aware of in Tibet. On transnational repression, we have a broad range of powers to counter foreign interference and transnational repression, particularly under the National Security Act 2023, which we will update.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement and that answer. He will know that in Bracknell and the wider Berkshire area we have a large Hong Kong community, who have been terrified at the threat of national repression from the Hong Kong Government. What message can he share with my constituents about the protections available for them to enjoy the democracy and freedom of speech that we so value here in the UK?
Mr Lammy
The Minister for the Indo-Pacific has met some of my hon. Friend’s constituents on this issue. Because of the concerns he rightly raises, I hope he will welcome the training for our police right across the nation on these issues.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
Will the Government publish a list of sectors considered overly dependent on Chinese input, starting with critical minerals and clean energy components, to promote transparency? Will the Foreign Secretary outline any clear Government targets for reducing those dependencies?
Mr Lammy
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the powers to counter foreign interference and transnational repression under the National Security Act.
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
The Foreign Secretary mentioned Hong Kong in his statement. Would he consider speaking to colleagues in the Home Office about rethinking the changes to indefinite leave to remain, to ensure BNO passport holders do not end up facing questions about their status?
Mr Lammy
That issue is still subject to consultation and will be announced by the Home Secretary in the usual way.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
The UK Government are still considering Mingyang as a credible supplier for turbines for the Green Volt offshore wind project, and the SNP Scottish Government have given Mingyang priority status for a factory to build turbines based in Scotland under their strategic investment plan. Both say to me that neither Government are taking seriously the threat that China poses to our energy supplies. China is, at best, unreliable and, at worst, hostile and should be nowhere near our critical national infrastructure. Will the Secretary of State finally rule out Mingyang being a permitted supplier for energy infrastructure in the future or at least give us a date for when we will hear a decision?
Mr Lammy
Through the National Security and Investment Act 2021, we have a robust framework to make individual decisions such as the one on Mingyang. As the hon. Lady knows, energy is one of 17 priority sectors under the NSIA in which Government can block any potential acquisitions on security grounds, and that remains under consideration.
Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
It is four years today since the Apple Daily ceased publication, and Jimmy Lai still languishes in Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison. It is worth noting his name and encouraging the Foreign Secretary to raise his case as often as he can. It is welcome to see in the statement that we are
“strengthening our response to transnational repression”.
Can the Minister confirm that that includes restoring access to the Mandatory Provident Fund, which is another way the Hong Kong Government are spreading their chilling impacts on BNO visa holders here in the UK?
Mr Lammy
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that. May I also name-check the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) on this issue? The issue is under consideration, and we have been discussing with communities these very important pension issues.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
In his statement, the Foreign Secretary says that
“our approach will always be guided by the UK’s long-term economic growth priorities”.
As an example of that, he refers to our universities’ second largest source of international students being China, yet the Intelligence and Security Committee stated in the press notice for its report on China, of which he approves:
“China is similarly aggressive in its interference activities… China oversteps the boundary. It has been particularly effective at using its money and influence to penetrate or buy Academia in order to ensure its international narrative is advanced and criticism suppressed.”
In answer to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), he said that we look to the universities to take precautions. Given the financial incentive to universities, I would rather look to someone else to take the precautions.
Mr Lammy
The right hon. Gentleman is right: we do have to be vigilant. As I said, sitting behind this audit is a lot of work at high classification. He will know that the Intelligence and Security Committee understands the nature of that work, particularly the work that sits behind the strategic defence review and the national security strategy. That is ongoing, and I am happy to ensure that he is aware of the work we are doing with universities.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Foreign Secretary has referred to protections in terms of energy companies, but when it comes to Mingyang and Orient Cable in the highlands and the North sea, the concern is not their ability to produce but their ability to switch off and on the network and our energy security and, as a result, national security. Can he tell us what mitigating measures will be put in place if those contracts are won?
Mr Lammy
I recognise the sensitivity and the import of what the hon. Lady says. That is central to the considerations and discussions that are under way within Government as we look at these issues and balance them against our national security.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
For weeks, some questions on China have been deflected on the basis that we should wait for the audit, so it is rather disappointing that the insight we get today is very opaque. In the Foreign Secretary’s statement, he reveals that China is the UK’s second largest research collaborator. Has he done an audit of the nature of that research? Are there economic and intelligence risks from that research, and are the Government minded to take any steps either to monitor or to control the extent of that research?
Mr Lammy
The hon. and learned Gentleman says that he would have liked to hear more and the statement was opaque, but the other side of that coin is that it might be reassuring that the Government are not making all of our intelligence capability and understanding available to China and the outside world. He will recognise that the biggest academic partner in that research is the United States, and given the way the economy of China has grown, certainly over my two decades in Parliament, it is not surprising that it has emerged as our second largest. I want to reassure him that, of course, the agencies are able to offer full advice to universities and examine sensitivities, and we are very aware of the threats he has conveyed to the House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
For an example of a quick question, I call Sir Desmond Swayne.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
It was proper and lawful to send HMS Spey through the Taiwan strait in pursuit of vital international freedom of navigation in the South China sea, was it not, and can we see more like it?
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I want to remind the Foreign Secretary that the Government that invited Huawei into our telecommunications network was actually the last Labour Government between 2003 and 2006. [Interruption.] Well, he has tried to be partisan about it. The ebb and flow of these issues and the mistakes go back quite a long time, and he should acknowledge that.
What assessment has the Foreign Secretary made of China’s dominance of the world market for cellular internet modules, which are subsidised and sold internationally below the cost of manufacture? What assessment in particular has he made of the insertion of kill switches in Chinese-made wind turbines and PV cells, and will he rule out any Chinese involvement in our energy infrastructure?
Mr Lammy
I will take no lectures from the hon. Gentleman, whose advice to former Prime Minister May led to the possibility of nuclear information being revealed. He should be embarrassed, and I am surprised he came to this statement this afternoon.
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
Given that China represents one of the defining geopolitical challenges of our age, I am somewhat sceptical about reports this morning that this much-touted, long-awaited year-long audit has significantly downgraded that challenge. Under this Government, there has been a significant increase in ministerial engagement and visits with China, a policy that is at best incoherent and at worst incompetent. Given that actions speak louder than words, can the Foreign Secretary confirm that the Prime Minister will no longer be making his proposed trip to China?
Mr Lammy
The audit is a lot of work, and we have not even been in government for a year. We pledged to undertake an audit, we have undertaken that audit and what I have set out is comprehensive. There can be no no-go areas for the UK Prime Minister.
Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)
The audit received responses from the devolved Governments. Last month, the Northern Ireland Finance Minister met the Chinese consul general in Belfast. The meeting was described as a formal diplomatic engagement with views exchanged on deepening co-operation. Significantly, there were no press interviews, publicly released minutes or full attendee list; no specific sectors or agreements were referenced. Northern Ireland’s foreign policy is not devolved, so does the Foreign Secretary know what was discussed or agreed? Does he think he should know and will he ask? As a response to the audit, did the Northern Ireland Executive include what was discussed in that meeting or previous meetings between the Chinese Government and the First and Deputy First Ministers?
Mr Lammy
The hon. Gentleman has put his views on the record, and I will consult my officials about what he has revealed.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call Jim Shannon to ask the final question.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement. It is essential that we have a fuller understanding of the reach of China, as well as of our goals. British citizens have contacted me about the human rights violations, not only against those in China but those who live on our shores. Will the Foreign Secretary ensure that China understands that its reach stops before our shores, and that our people are entitled to think and have freedom of speech whenever they desire, without any fear of reprisal?
Mr Lammy
The hon. Gentleman is right. We will always fight and press for our democratic norms. We cannot accept repression, oppression and criminal acts committed in our own country. We will stand up to them, and I have made representations to my Chinese interlocutors to make that completely clear.
Points of Order
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your advice about the exchange that I have just had with the Foreign Secretary. After he had been incredibly partisan about the history of Huawei’s involvement in our telecommunications infrastructure, I pointed out that that involvement began under the previous Labour Government when he was a Minister, but he tried to accuse Members on the Conservative Front Bench of something similar. I asked a serious question about the Chinese dominance of the world market for cellular internet modules, which is a very serious issue. We have all grown used to the fact that we do not get answers in this House, so perhaps you will advise us, Madam Deputy Speaker, on whether Ministers will do so. The Foreign Secretary then decided to abuse and insult me personally about advice that he claims that I gave, in a previous role, to a former Prime Minister. He has no idea what advice I gave in that job. If he cares so much about my personal history, he will read all the things I have ever written about the role of Chinese companies in our energy infrastructure. I would like him to take the opportunity to withdraw the accusation.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. What he refers to was a matter of debate and nothing disorderly occurred. This is not a matter for the Chair, but I would urge that good temper and moderation be followed at all times in this Chamber.
The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr David Lammy)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a matter of record that former Prime Minister May was considering matters that pertain to our nuclear capability. The hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) was an adviser at that stage, and she had to withdraw her recommendations on the China General Nuclear Power Group. That is a matter of record, and anyone in this Chamber can google it.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. While the Foreign Secretary is sitting here, I thought it relevant to record that we have just heard that the American Government have put in a second disapproval, for security reasons, to the granting of a Chinese embassy in the proposed location.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order, but as he knows, that is not a matter for the Chair. He has put his comment on the record.
Planning (Flooding)
Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the consideration of flooding risk in the planning process; to make internal drainage boards statutory consultees for certain planning decisions; and for connected purposes.
During this Parliament, we have heard a lot about the problems in the planning system. In particular, the Government have spoken about the blockers—those who, for reasons that the Government seem not to understand, oppose developments they see as bad for their communities. This Bill intends to go some way to fix the Government’s problem. In reality, the reason that many people in our communities become blockers is that they have no faith that the planning system will deliver houses that make their lives better. They are hard-working people, but rather than listen to their concerns, the Government have sought to bash them at every turn.
One of the biggest problems in the planning system is the total failure of many local authorities—as a councillor, I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—to properly understand and consider flood risk in new developments. Policy that the Government think ought to be sufficient to prevent development on floodplains in all but exceptional circumstances, for example, is being circumvented by developers. Due to lack of suitable expertise in planning, we see such developments often going ahead without suitable drainage infrastructure to protect our communities from flooding.
What does this all mean? It means that many communities in Mid Bedfordshire and across the country who have done the right thing, and taken the houses that the Government want them to take, now find themselves with a higher flood risk, while developers have got away high and dry with their profits. When they stand ankle-deep in water in their once dry living rooms and desperately attempt to stop the next bad development making their situation worse, the Prime Minister calls them blockers. We are letting them down.
This is not a hypothetical situation—it is happening in our communities in Mid Bedfordshire right now. Take the village of Maulden, historically developed as a linear settlement running along the greensand ridge, where developers saw an opportunity to develop up the slope of the ridge. That upslope development has caused a huge increase in flooding in Maulden, to the point that homes that have stood for centuries with minimal flooding have now been reclassified by the Environment Agency as being within flood plain.
Are the developers stopping there? Of course not. Another 40 hectares of land has been put forward for development around Maulden as part of the call for sites for the next central Bedfordshire local plan. Who gains from planning like this? It certainly is not the hard-working people who already live in Maulden, who saved up to buy the house that they had been dreaming about and wish to be able to peacefully enjoy it, without having to worry about getting sandbags out every time grey clouds form overhead. It is not the people who worked hard to get their new-build home in Maulden, only to discover the planning system let them down and allowed developers to get away without building the right protections for their homes from flooding. It is not the Government, who are left puzzled as to why all these people are opposing their plans to build thousands more homes in our communities. The only people who gain are the big box developers who have thrown up the houses with minimal restrictions and mitigations, and taken their profits whilst our communities pay the price. Maulden is just one example, but there are many places in Mid Bedfordshire and across the country where our planning system has failed the people who need it most—the people we serve.
That is what this Bill will try to fix, starting by ensuring that where we have an internal drainage board—experts on flooding and flood management—we take advantage of their expertise and make them a statutory consultee on development that is likely to have an impact on flood risk in the broad area they cover. Many internal drainage boards are already contributing to that work by making representations on planning applications, but putting them on a statutory footing would ensure that their advice is given the consideration it deserves and would cost us nothing.
This Bill will make a simple amendment to schedule 4 to the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 to insert internal drainage boards as a statutory consultee in the planning system. It will also ensure that we take the politics out of protecting people from flooding by ensuring that the Secretary of State may remove internal drainage boards as a statutory consultee only if they replace them with an alternative body, which should provide advice on flooding risk.
The Environment Agency already acts as a statutory consultee on planning matters that impact on flood plains, but it lacks the resources to effectively and efficiently identify flooding risk more broadly. That is why internal drainage boards, where they exist, should be brought into the planning process to complement its role and ensure that proper consideration is being given to the flooding implications of developments for current and future residents.
This Bill will also ensure that planning authorities give appropriate weight to flood risk in the planning system and prevent developers avoiding their obligations to build liveable homes rather than just their own profits. It will introduce a simple presumption against development where the lead local flood authority, the Environment Agency and/or the internal drainage board, considers that the development would increase flood risk for existing properties when taking into account sustainable drainage infrastructure and flood mitigation measures.
The Bill would require the Secretary of State to publish statutory guidance, prepared by a panel of experts, for planning authorities and lead local authorities on the minimum expected standards for drainage and maintenance in new developments. It would build on recent Government announcements on build-out rates and give planning authorities the ability to reject future planning applications from developers on the basis of past failures to deliver or maintain sustainable drainage infrastructure.
We must do better for the hard-working people in our communities who want to return from work to a warm, dry home. That is the least they deserve, and I present this Bill for them.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Blake Stephenson, David Simmonds, Nick Timothy, Mr Gagan Mohindra, Dr Ben Spencer, Sarah Bool, Alison Griffiths, Jack Rankin, Rebecca Paul, Lewis Cocking and Paul Holmes present the Bill.
Blake Stephenson accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 July, and to be printed (Bill 270).
Department for Education
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I call the Chair of the Education Committee.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I rise to address the House on the Department for Education’s main estimate for 2025-26. I thank the Liaison Committee and the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate this afternoon; it is an important opportunity to scrutinise the Government’s spending plans, which must deliver for every child, young person and family. Education is the bedrock of opportunity, social mobility and economic growth.
The Government inherited a situation in which almost every aspect of the Department for Education’s areas of responsibility faced severe challenges, from the financial pressures on early years providers to the erosion of school budgets and teacher pay, the crisis in the special educational needs and disabilities system, underfunding of further education and skills and a total reset needed in children’s social care.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is giving a really important speech on a subject that is very dear to my heart, as everyone in the House knows. Will she add to her list the huge issues that we inherited with school buildings? As a former teacher—I have mentioned that a few times—I know that the learning environment is really important. We inherited a real issue with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, for example, but there have also been other issues, such as those faced by Sir Frederick Gibberd college in my constituency.
Helen Hayes
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the state of the school estate.
The final area of challenge is that many universities face a risk of insolvency. At the heart of all the Department’s responsibilities are individual children and young people who need and are entitled to the best possible start in life, secure foundations, a great education and every opportunity to grow into active citizens with successful careers and a good quality of life. The challenges in our education and social care systems can be seen in the outcomes for children and young people, with rising numbers of children not meeting the early learning goals when they start school, growing disadvantage gaps at all stages of education, very poor outcomes for care-experienced young people, rising levels of school absence and far too many children with special educational needs and disabilities not receiving the support that they need to thrive in education.
I will speak to the estimates across five key spending areas—SEND, children’s social care, early years, skills, and higher education—drawing on the Education Committee’s ongoing inquiries to ensure that these funds meet the urgent needs of our communities. On special educational needs and disabilities, the main estimate reflects the Government’s recognition of the challenges, with an immediate increase in high needs revenue funding of more than £1 billion. Capital spending for high needs provision sees a 138% uplift, from £310 million to £740 million, to create new school places.
During the inquiry, my Committee has heard powerful testimony from families and educators about the crisis in the SEND system, with witnesses calling for significant and far-reaching reform to ensure that funds translate into effective delivery for children. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warns that rising SEND costs could absorb much of the mainstream school budget uplift, and that capital investment, while significant, may not meet growing demand. The forthcoming schools White Paper promised this autumn must set out bold reforms, with resources made available to ensure that they can be implemented successfully. Our inquiry report will set out recommendations to the Government for reform of the SEND system, and I hope that the Government will make time to take full account of our work. I urge the Minister to confirm a timescale for those reforms, informed by our Committee’s evidence.
Our children’s social care inquiry has exposed acute funding pressures, with local authorities forced to prioritise crisis interventions over preventive support due to a £1.2 billion cut in early intervention spending since 2012. The spending review introduces a £555 million transformation fund over three years, including £75 million in 2025-26 and £270 million for a new children’s social care prevention grant. That is a vital step towards effective reform.
The additional £560 million for children’s homes and foster care placements is also welcome. However, the independent review of children’s social care estimated a need for an additional £2.6 billion of funding over four years. My Committee’s work underscores the urgency of investing in early intervention to reduce the number of children being taken into care and to improve outcomes.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am really grateful for the work of the Education Committee, which is excellently chaired by my hon. Friend. Does she agree that cutting the value of grants to families from the adoption and special guardianship support fund will put more pressure on children’s social care and leave children without the vital support they need?
Helen Hayes
I thank my hon. Friend for her important work in this area. I agree that the cuts made to the adoption and special guardianship support fund have caused great alarm across the adoption, special guardianship and kinship care community. It is important that in reviewing that funding, the Government look at how effective support for adoptive families can be provided across both health and education, and look to give families confidence that the support they rely on and that is needed can be delivered. We know that in the past, adoptive families have not always been able to access the support they need, so I agree with my hon. Friend that this is an urgent and important consideration.
I call on the Government today to provide a clearer analysis of the funding that is needed for children’s social care, as well as plans to bridge the gap between the funding that has been announced to date and the £2.6 billion prescribed by the independent review, so that preventive services that keep families together can be prioritised.
Turning to early years education, the expansion to 30 hours of funded childcare for under-fives from September 2025 is transformative. The main estimate allocates £8.48 billion to the early years block—nearly double the 2023-24 spend—with an additional £1.8 billion in 2025-26. However, the IFS highlights that higher than expected take-up could increase costs by £1 billion annually, and the sector faces a shortfall of 70,000 places and 35,000 staff. The £370 million for 3,000 new nurseries in primary schools is a very positive step, but the Committee has heard concerns about delivery timelines and workforce shortages. Given the rising costs to providers, including minimum wage and national insurance increases, I urge the Minister to clarify how the Department will ensure sufficient capacity and support providers to deliver this ambitious expansion on time. It is also important that the Government give careful consideration to improving quality and consistency in the early years, and to how best to ensure that high-quality early years education maximises the unique opportunity in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life to stop the impacts of disadvantage being embedded for a lifetime.
On skills and further education, the 12.7% increase in the apprenticeships budget to just over £3 billion, alongside £1.2 billion annually by 2028-29 and £625 million for construction skills, signals the Government’s commitment to equipping young people for a changing economy. In our inquiry, however, my Committee heard concerns about the defunding of level 7 apprenticeships, with witnesses including the British Chambers of Commerce warning that it could limit higher-level opportunities and deter participation. The absence of detail on the lifelong learning entitlement in the spending review is also of concern. The forthcoming post-16 skills and education White Paper must provide a unified and comprehensive vision for skills funding for young people and adults. I urge the Government to reconsider their decision on level 7 and to set out how additional funding will be allocated to maximise impact.
Finally, higher education faces significant challenges, with a 13% real-terms cut to direct teaching funding via the strategic priorities grant, which is now more than 80% lower than 2010-11 levels. My Committee has heard evidence of universities closing courses, reducing repairs and maintenance, and facing financial instability. The Office for Students’ 2025 report warns of declining performance, with recovery reliant on optimistic recruitment forecasts. While the modern industrial strategy promises better targeted funding, our universities—which are anchor institutions supporting thousands of jobs in every town and city that has a university—need urgent support. I therefore repeat the sector’s call for a transformation fund to stabilise universities and enable them to deliver the reforms that are necessary to ensure that they meet future skills needs and continue to contribute to economic growth through research and development and the role they play in building international collaboration.
The Education Committee will continue to scrutinise the work of the Department for Education carefully and hold the Government to account, ensuring that these funds deliver for every child and every learner. I urge Ministers to act swiftly on the promised White Papers, engage with our inquiries, and translate investment into meaningful change. Education is our most powerful lever to bring about a fairer, stronger country; let us ensure that it delivers.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
This debate is a very important opportunity to discuss the upcoming cuts in the Department for Education. We know from the estimates document that overall resource departmental expenditure limits are coming down. We are told that that is largely a technical change as a result of changes to the student loan book, but I have to say that these are rather large numbers to come from such technical changes.
From the comprehensive spending review document, we know that like other Departments, the Department for Education has agreed to 5% in savings and efficiencies. What that document does not explain, however, is 5% of what. Presumably, it is not 5% of the entirety of the DFE’s budget, because the DFE is different from many other Departments in that so much of its spend goes directly to schools, colleges and early years settings providing for children. According to the estimates, the DFE’s admin spend is actually increasing. Part of that, of course—in line with so many other private and public sector organisations across the country—is the extra costs imposed by the increase in national insurance contributions, so what are those efficiencies? I hope the Minister will be able to tell us today.
So many things have already been cut, including the discretionary spend that helps children to achieve their best, with everything from Latin to computer science and the cadets programme. I do not think there are many more things that can be taken out, but perhaps the Minister can tell us. In particular, I would like her to reassure us that the primary physical education and sport premium is safe. Will she please do that in winding up?
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
In the past few days, a headteacher in my constituency has told me that their school’s funding is going down significantly in real terms this year. They say that they are now looking at a crisis, with potential staff cuts coming. On top of that, I have heard local providers of early years education saying that they are being even more punitively hit, because private sector providers receive no support with national insurance. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, for a Labour Government who came in promising to do so much for education, our children are actually seeing very little?
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend makes powerful points, including about the additional unfunded cost pressures for nursery providers—of course, that argument also extends to regular state-funded schools. The one thing I might quibble with is his statement that this Labour Government came in promising to do so much for education. Actually, the Labour manifesto was rather light on commitments on education. The biggest ones were, first of all, the commitment to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country. On closer examination, that commitment turns out to be not just similar to, but identical to, the policy of the previous Government, which was to roll out mental health support teams to cover all schools in the country.
The second high-profile commitment was about breakfast clubs. The maths on breakfast clubs are something of a mystery to me, because I have heard Ministers repeatedly say that having a breakfast club is going to save parents £450 a year, but they are reimbursing schools £150 a year. Where is the rest of that money supposed to come from? It is also true that some schools—including some in my constituency—already have a breakfast club that is charged at a reasonable rate, so they will lose revenue from their existing breakfast club. Before anyone says, “You have to think about whether it should be charged for or not,” it is worth remembering that the breakfast club provision that already exists is typically reimbursable for families on universal credit at a rate of up to 85%, to the extent that it is childcare that is enabling parents to go to work.
Then, of course, there is the famous—or infamous—commitment to 6,500 additional teachers. Colleagues might remember that that commitment was going to be paid for by the receipts on VAT from private schools. The Government now say that VAT from private schools is going to pay for housing, not for teachers. It is not clear that that policy is going to raise much revenue to spend on anything, given that the most recent figures show a fall in the number of children at independent schools. Those are the Government’s own figures. [Interruption.] I beg your pardon?
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
A rise in the number of independent schools.
Damian Hinds
The most recent figures—the Government’s own figures—show a fall of 11,000 in the number of children at independent schools.
Of course, the number of teachers in the state sector is not going up in this country; it is coming down. The Government have tried to have this every possible way. There is a line in their manifesto that is very clear—it comes up more than once. It says that Labour is going to recruit
“6,500 new expert teachers in key subjects”.
When asked repeatedly what key subjects they had in mind, they refused to say. Eventually they said that these teachers will be recruited—I think am I quoting this correctly, but if not absolutely accurately then pretty close—from schools and colleges across the country. Then some numbers came out showing that the number of teachers in primary schools had gone down. Funnily enough, the target was then redefined so that it did not include primary school teachers; it would include only secondary school teachers.
That brings us back to this question: if it is only secondary schools, where teachers have specialist subjects, what are the key subjects that will count towards this number? If the Government just meant any subject, the word “key” would not be there. What do they mean by expert teachers? If they mean simply teachers with qualified teacher status—[Interruption.] I think the Minister might be readying herself to intervene.
Damian Hinds
No? If the Government simply mean teachers with qualified teacher status, then I gently remind the Minister of something we covered in Bill Committee, which some colleagues might recall. The number of teachers today who do not have qualified teacher status is 3.1%, which does not sound all that high. What do colleagues suppose it was in May 2010, the previous time that there was a change of Government? The answer is 3.2%. So the number of teachers without qualified teacher status has hardly changed, and to the extent that it has, it has slightly gone down.
We know that other RDEL—revenue spending, effectively—is going up, but it has to cover an awful lot. There is £1 billion-plus in national insurance contribution costs. We know from reports from teachers and headteachers in the sector press that shortfalls in the range of 10% to 35% are being reported. School suppliers are also facing higher national insurance contributions, which will also have a knock-on effect on the cost of other services into those schools. Schools are also picking up the cost of breakfast clubs, and there is an extension in free school meals eligibility and so on. Overall, if we look at the detail in the estimates and the spending review, all these increases are front-loaded—that is to say, for 2024-25 the increase is 6.8%, but that then comes down to 5.2% the following year, and then 3.4%, then 2.1%, and then 1.6%.
The main point I put to the Minister—constructively and co-operatively—is that things are changing significantly in schools because of demographic change. We have reached a point where I do not believe it is legitimate to use the measure of real-terms per pupil funding as the yardstick for whether effective school resourcing is increasing or decreasing. That is because the number of pupils will fall. We know already from TES, which used to be called The Times Educational Supplement, that surplus secondary places have increased by some 50% in just two years. Labour MPs may well argue—and I kind of hope they do—that when there is a smaller number of children there will obviously be less funding, and there is some logic to that argument, but in a sense it does not matter what arguments they make in this Chamber, because back in their constituencies, if they talk to headteachers, they will hear something different.
When pupil numbers are rising, if real-terms per pupil funding is held constant, that is a net increase in resourcing to the school. When numbers are falling, and even if real-terms per pupil funding is increased by a few per cent, that feels very much like a cut. Let us think about it in the following practical terms. If a primary school class of 27 goes up to 29, that is an increase in revenue to the school of something like £10,000, £11,000 or £12,000, but the vast majority of costs do not change. It works the same way in reverse. If a class moves from 29 pupils to 27, the school loses £10,000 to £12,000, but there are still the same costs, and the teacher is still being paid the same and so on.
In an urban setting, some whole schools may close—some already have. That is a painful process to go through, and no MP wants to represent an area where schools close, but at least that way the numbers can be made to work over a wider area, and some of those schools can convert to nursery schools, I hope, or to special schools. A big secondary school might reduce, say, from an eight-form entry to a six-form entry and manage the numbers that way. For a rural primary school, neither of those things is an option. There are major indivisibilities. Right now, 92% of DFE funding for schools is driven by pupil numbers, and I just do not think that will work over the years ahead. What will Ministers do to reform funding so that it is fair and effective at a time of falling overall pupil numbers?
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
I am going to start with an immediate four-minute time limit.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this estimates day debate. I will first declare my usual interest, as my wife is employed as a special educational needs co-ordinator in our local authority in the London borough of Bexley.
I will start with three points about the impact on my constituency. First, I welcome the condition improvement funding, which will see investment in Fairford academy in Barnehurst, Peareswood primary school in Slade Green and Townley grammar school in Bexleyheath.
Two specific Department for Education-led issues impact on my Conservative-controlled local authority in the London borough of Bexley. I was pleased to see in its recent representation that my council welcomes the “fix the market” pillar in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. It had the highest overspend of any local authority in London for children’s social care in the previous financial year. My local authority welcomes that move in the Bill, because it wants the market for children’s service placements to be not-for-profit, as seen in Scotland and Wales. Will the Minister comment on departmental funding for social care settings and how the measures being brought forward in the Bill can help local authorities?
My main point is that I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) said about SEN funding. My local authority signed a safety valve agreement with the previous Government because of the rate of our dedicated schools grant. In its recent submission to the Chancellor, the council said that although it is grateful for the current funding, the statutory override for the deficit ends on 31 March 2026, while the DSG is not planned to come out of deficit until 2028-29 at present. That safety valve agreement, which my local authority signed, continues to be overspent, which continues to put significant pressure on the council. It believes that the statutory override needs to be extended by up to three years.
Despite having agreed that with the previous Government, the council’s position is that the statutory override is, at best, only a temporary solution to a more fundamental and long-term challenge for SEN funding. I know the Minister will be bringing forward proposals in this area after the summer break, but some comments later today and some assurances about SEN funding going forward would be deeply welcomed by my local authority and by me.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
I welcome the investment for our teachers, school buildings, free school meals and SEND support, but I remain concerned about SEND provision in Somerset. I know from personal experience and from listening to constituents just how much of a difference giving SEND children the support they need can make. Teachers go above and beyond to give children in their classes the education they deserve, but we have a SEND system in crisis. It feels like we have gone backwards from when I was at school, which is, I am sorry to say, thanks to the cuts made under the previous Conservative Government over many years. As in so many other areas of life, parents in Yeovil are often left with a losing draw in a postcode lottery, waiting months to get the support their children deserve.
There are two really effective ways that the Department can invest its budget to improve the outcome for SEND children at school. The backlog for education, health and care plans is too high in Somerset, and it is of course right that Somerset council receives more money to urgently support EHCP provision, but not every SEND child needs an EHCP for support. Instead, we urgently need universal screening for neurodiverse conditions at primary schools. That would be a fantastic way of empowering teachers to identify the individual needs of children in their classes and to adapt their teaching.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
I speak to lots of special educational needs co-ordinators in many schools in and around my constituency, and they always tell me that the earlier the diagnosis, the better, and the more a child can be put on a path towards effective learning. Does my hon. Friend regret, as I do, the loss of Sure Start centres, which were one of the very best ways of identifying those learning conditions as early as possible?
Adam Dance
I totally agree. It is sorry to see that so many of those centres have gone, and we need to invest more.
The earlier that children’s needs are identified and supported, the more likely they are to succeed. Researchers, for instance at University College London, have already developed a screener that goes far beyond the current phonics screening, and it is really cost-effective. I hope that the Government’s schools White Paper, which is due in the autumn, will set out a plan for rolling out such screeners across schools.
Once children’s needs have been identified at school, we need to ensure that our teachers are fully equipped to help. That is why we urgently need better internal teacher training and continuous professional development for teachers and other education professionals, including teaching assistants and senior staff. We must also ensure that SENCOs are represented on senior leadership teams, and are given dedicated time to do their work properly. I hope that the Minister or the Secretary of State will update us on the progress made on teacher training, and tell us when we can expect those teachers to be rolled out.
There can be no better investment in the future of our country than investment in education and young people. Ensuring that everyone has a good-quality education and career always provides a return, as I know from my personal background of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia. I left school having had support, but I was severely bullied, to a point where I was sprayed with deodorant and set alight when I got off the school bus, so I know how vital such support is. Without the support that I was given at school, I would not be here today: I would either be in prison or I would have taken my own life. This is so important—so please, let us get on with universal screening and teacher training for neurodiverse conditions.
Tim Roca (Macclesfield) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) for sharing that traumatic experience with us, and to the bravery that it must have taken. I also pay tribute to teachers in my constituency. I met secondary heads just before Christmas, and will meet all our primary school heads together in the coming month.
I am proud that there is so much to welcome in this estimate. I particularly welcome the capital investment in schools across the country, which I think presents a dual opportunity—not just an opportunity to rebuild the crumbling schools that were left to us by our Tory predecessors, but an opportunity to invest to make them greener, so that increased energy efficiency can save money and reduce school bills. I welcome the extra £1 billion to reform and enhance special educational needs and disabilities provision, and I look forward to more announcements about SEND—I share some of the concerns mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis). I welcome the investment in further education and apprenticeships, and the breakfast club funding. I congratulate the Ministers, because this means that children will stop going to school hungry and will be given the best chance to learn regardless of their background. The clubs are being brilliantly piloted by Pott Shrigley church school in my constituency and Disley primary school, where I went myself.
I particularly welcome the funding that has been allocated in the spending review to expand eligibility for free school meals, which means that an extra 1,200 children in Macclesfield will receive free lunches. Each one will mean a life changed and a trajectory altered, breaking down barriers to opportunity and success. However, what the estimate does not contain is a significant real-terms increase for Cheshire East schools. Head teachers in my constituency still tell me that things are tough because of an historical funding formula that leaves Cheshire East as one of the lowest-funded authorities in the country. It receives the 13th lowest share of DSG per mainstream pupil—five grand less than the highest share, and £2,200 less than the highest non-London authority. The high needs block is worse: we rank 12th out of 151 local authorities, receiving two and a half grand less per pupil than the 151st.
This is entirely explained by the school funding formula, and it is an important formula. Schools in metropolitan areas are more expensive to run. Of course schools should receive additional investment based on deprivation, language needs or rurality, but when the basic grant funding does not keep pace with basic costs, things become very tough. Macclesfield is not quite rural enough and not quite deprived enough, without the “English as an additional language” numbers required, which makes life very difficult for head teachers who are trying to balance the books—particularly after 14 years of making cut after cut.
The funding formula works only if there is a significant increase in the basic entitlement, so that all schools, whether in Cheshire East or elsewhere, have a budget that is sufficient to make ends meet. I say that because I have difficult conversations with teachers in my constituency, some of whom are spending as much as 88% of their budgets on fixed staff costs because they are having to retain—and want to retain—hard-working, talented teachers who, in the long run, are more expensive. I recently saw an example of that at Rainow, an excellent primary school in my constituency, which has full classes but is finding it difficult to make the numbers work.
I am grateful for my recent meeting with the Minister to discuss these issues with her, and I welcome the work that the Department is doing in tackling them. Change does not come overnight, and changing a funding formula as historic as this cannot be done overnight, but I hope that everyone who supports fairness and agrees that deprived areas should receive more funds will also agree that every school deserves to receive the basic funding that will enable all our children to be taught, and will ensure that they are not at schools that are finding things tough. I will make no apologies for continuing to fight, on behalf of all my constituents, for fairer funding for all schools.
Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
The Government have set themselves an ambitious and welcome growth mission, with targets including an 80% employment rate and support for 65,000 additional learners a year by 2028-29. However, some of the decisions made of late somewhat undermine those objectives. Along with Liberal Democrat colleagues, I recently wrote to the Government expressing grave concern about the cuts in the adult skills fund, and the impact that they will have on the Government’s economic growth plans. In her response, the Minister for Skills assured us that adult education was very much a priority.
The Government’s recent announcements about skills funding in the spending review are most welcome, but there is a troubling contradiction in committing to supporting 65,000 additional learners a year while simultaneously cutting the adult skills fund. The Government have invested £625 million to train 60,000 skilled construction workers, recognising that targeted skills investment drives economic growth; that logic should surely apply across all sectors facing skills shortages.
We have no clarity on any improvements in post-18 adult education funding. Mark Robertson, the principal of Cambridge Regional College, which serves my constituency, has said that the cuts in the adult skills fund will mean a £1 million drop in funding for his college, which is unable to meet demand for programmes including healthcare courses, employability training and adult English and maths skills courses because of the lack of available funding. He has warned that the position will be considerably worsened for 2025-26, because the college’s adult skills funding will fall by about 20%. He has said:
“It seems a little counterproductive that, given the drive to reduce immigration to the UK of social care workers by 2028 and the need to train and retrain people employed in areas such as digital skills and retrofit techniques, these priorities are not aligned with a fully joined up policy regarding adult skills funding to enable the need for trained and skilled workers to be met.”
The disconnect between growth ambitions and the funding reality also extends to our universities, which face huge financial pressures and, in some cases, a growing risk of insolvency. Data released recently suggests that up to 72% of higher education providers could be in deficit by 2025-26 without mitigating action. The causes of this situation are well documented, so I will not go into them, but a combination of factors makes it inevitable that more institutions will be forced to make difficult decisions on staffing across all jobs in the sector, and the economic consequences will extend beyond the campus.
As we know, universities are often the largest employers in their area, and the knock-on economic benefits of students living in the area are substantial. On the doorstep of my constituency is Cambridge University, but we also have Anglia Ruskin University, which delivered over 5,000 degree apprenticeships between 2018 and 2023, as many Members will recognise. I urge the Government to look closely at further education and higher education funding, and to lay out their plans in more detail.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)
Order. I want to try to get everybody in, so we will have an immediate three-minute time limit.
Mrs Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
I start by paying tribute to all those who work with our children and young people, be it in our nurseries, schools, colleges or universities. As the Member for Wolverhampton North East, a member of the Education Committee and a former deputy headteacher, I want to speak frankly about the urgent need for education spending to be tailored to local need, because that need is undeniable in constituencies like mine.
Maintaining the system as it stands is not an option. We must build an ambitious education system that actively identifies challenges and intervenes early on, and it is not enough to focus only on academic outcomes. Our education system must also equip young people with the skills, confidence and resilience that they need to be prepared for the grit of life and the world of work.
Around 40% of children in Wolverhampton and Willenhall grow up in poverty, and there has been a stark increase in the last decade. These realities hit education hard. In 2024, just 46% of disadvantaged pupils in England met the expected standards at key stage 2, compared with 67% of their peers. At GCSE, the gap is stark: fewer than one in four students on free school meals in Wolverhampton achieve a strong pass in both English and maths.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
Does the hon. Member agree that it is important that we have a broad exploratory curriculum at GCSE level, and that the recent decision to close off certain subjects for year 9 students at Tiverton high school in my constituency reflects a trend towards a narrowing of academic opportunity, which is rather regrettable?
Mrs Brackenridge
Although I cannot speak to the hon. Member’s local issues, I welcome the curriculum and assessment review, which will certainly look to change the one-size-fits-all model.
I welcome several commitments in this year’s main estimates, particularly the announcement that households receiving universal credit will be eligible for free school meals from September 2026. Over 500,000 children will benefit, and 100,000 will be lifted out of poverty. For a constituency like mine, that could be life-changing, provided that the roll-out is well funded and properly delivered.
I also welcome the £2.3 billion uplift in core schools funding for 2025-26, but this money must flow to where it is needed most. It cannot simply reinforce the status quo, and it must be targeted if it is to level the playing field for disadvantaged children. Of that money, £1 billion is earmarked for high needs and special educational needs and disabilities provision, with local authorities set to receive 7% to 10% more per head.
Funding increases are helpful, but they must be matched with delivery reforms and accountability. I want to highlight the £370 million investment in school-based nurseries and early education. In constituencies like mine, too many children are starting school already too far behind.
Finally, I want to stress the importance of skills and further education. With a high proportion of local parents working in insecure or low-paid roles, we must ensure that the £1.2 billion annual further education and skills investment helps people to retrain, upskill and access better opportunities.
These estimates contain important and necessary commitments, but the measure of their success will be how effectively they address inequality, and whether funding truly follows need. I urge the Government to ensure that every element of this year’s education spending reaches the children, the families and the communities who are most in need.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
The future of our country is being shaped every day in our classrooms, yet we are failing too many children, too many families and too many schools in places like West Dorset because the Government funding formula relies too heavily on deprivation as a metric, and fails to recognise the very real challenges that rural schools face with transport, staffing, access to specialist services, and the additional pressures of isolation.
I recently spoke to the headteacher of Thomas Hardye school in Dorchester, who had previously worked at a school in London. He told me that schools in London receive about £10,000 per pupil. In West Dorset, he has to manage with close to £5,000 per pupil, yet the challenges of delivering education in rural areas are not fewer. In many cases, they are far greater.
Dorset studio school in my constituency serves students from all over Dorset, and 52% of its pupils have special educational needs and disabilities—more than three times the national average. Some 11% have education, health and care plans. These children struggle in mainstream settings, and they need specialist support, skilled teachers and facilities that meet their needs, yet Dorset studio school operates in an outdated building without the most basic facilities. There is neither a hall nor a canteen, and there are no proper changing areas or specialist classrooms. Many pupils with EHCPs cannot access the one-to-one support that they require because of cramped, inadequate spaces, and children with physical disabilities cannot easily move around buildings. In February 2023, funding for the rebuild was finally secured, but delays—including a general election, revised costings and administrative hold-ups—mean that the money has still not been released. Contractors remain on hold, while the staff, parents and pupils remain in limbo. I urge the Government to release the funding, because every day that goes by is another day when these children are not getting the education they deserve.
Many families in West Dorset rely on the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which has been a lifeline for some of the most vulnerable children. These are children who have faced trauma, loss and instability, and who need specialist therapeutic support to heal and thrive, but even this fund has faced cuts and uncertainty. In recent months, adoptive parents, special guardians and kinship carers have feared that the fund would be scrapped, and it was only after sustained pressure that its continuation was confirmed. However, the fair access limit for therapy has been cut from £5,000 to £3,000, and funding for specialist assessments has been withdrawn entirely. Families who rely on consistent long-term care are now faced with an impossible choice, as multi-year funding is not available. We must prevent further cuts, and commit to supporting vulnerable children and their families properly.
Education spending is not just a budget. It is an investment in the next generation, in our country’s future, and in every child’s right to reach their full potential.
Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)
As a former teacher, school governor and university lecturer, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary groups on schools, learning and assessment, on classics and on social mobility, may I say how proud I am to stand here as a Labour MP elected on a manifesto commitment to break down barriers to opportunity for all young people?
Bracknell Forest is an incredible place in which to grow up. We have only good and outstanding schools and a fantastic local FE college—Bracknell and Wokingham college—and leafy Berkshire is of course a very lovely corner of the world. However, it would be wrong to suggest that young people in my constituency do not face real challenges. The Sutton Trust has identified that Bracknell has below average social mobility. We have a below average number of 18-year-olds going on to higher education, and the figure is half the rate of Wokingham next door. We are one of the councils in the safety valve programme, and we are facing sustained issues in offering the vital SEND education that is so badly needed.
That is why I am so proud that this Government are working to address these educational inequalities, including giving hard-working teachers in my constituency above inflation pay rises for a second year in a row; addressing school support staff funding through re-establishing the school support staff negotiating body; extending free school meals, with over 3,000 students set to be eligible in Bracknell Forest; and the funding to support Uplands school to open a new school-based nursery. What a difference from the Tory party, which would prefer to fund a tax cut for private schools, and the Reform leader, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who believes SEND students are being massively over-diagnosed.
The SEND crisis demands real action to address it, which is why I particularly welcome the £1 billion extra for SEND in last year’s Budget, including £2.2 million more for Bracknell Forest council to expand provision. I have seen the effect of expanding provision, and I was very proud to open the new special resource provision at Sandhurst school just the other week. However, we need a full range of provision, with mainstream support as well as new special schools, and the Minister will know that I have been lobbying her hard to deliver the proposed special school for autism in Buckler’s Park in my patch. Shamefully, the previous Government promised that school, but without a penny to pay for it. I would like to take this opportunity to once again lobby my hon. Friend to deliver that much-needed service.
James MacCleary (Lewes) (LD)
I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on early education and childcare.
Early years providers are facing an escalating financial crisis. The Government’s latest tax increases will add an average of £40,000 a year to staffing costs for early years providers. Hopscotch nurseries—a group operating across Sussex, including in Seaford in my constituency—estimates that increases to employment costs will add £140,000 to its wage bill, and this comes at a time when 84% of nurseries nationwide report that they cannot find suitable staff. Staffing accounts for nearly three quarters of their running costs, and these financial pressures mean nurseries face closure or fee hikes that families cannot afford.
On recent visits to nurseries in my local community, I have heard from practitioners working with young children every day that, although the Government’s aim to expand funded childcare is laudable, there are simply not enough qualified staff available to deliver it. Not enough applicants, a lack of qualifications, low salaries and a high turnover have led to many nurseries operating at well below capacity. One nursery in Newhaven in my constituency recently told me that it takes only half the number of children it could take. This is not because of a lack of demand—far from it—but because of a lack of qualified staff to care for children safely.
An Early Years Alliance poll of 1,000 nurseries in March found that two in five nurseries are set to reduce the number of Government-funded places for three and four-year-olds to cover rising costs, including the increases to the minimum wage and employer’s national insurance. This is the direct opposite of the Government’s stated desire to expand provision of funded hours in early years.
As a parent of young children myself, I share the frustration at rising childcare fees, with childcare in the UK among the most expensive in the world. Private and voluntary nursery providers, which deliver the majority of early years education, are particularly vulnerable. Without urgent intervention, we risk a mass closure of facilities that are integral not just to child development, but to our local economies and communities. A survey this month by the Early Education and Childcare Coalition showed that nearly 20% of nurseries are operating at a loss.
I urge Ministers to reconsider exempting early years providers from their national insurance increases to prevent nurseries from being pushed into closure. We cannot afford to lose more essential childcare places. This is also a question of opportunity and fairness. Investment in early childhood education has been repeatedly proven to significantly narrow achievement gaps, benefiting disadvantaged children. I support the Government’s aim to expand funded childcare and the provision of free school meals, but without adequate funding for providers, there is a real danger the Government could end up putting nurseries out of business and increase the strain on school budgets breaking even. I implore Ministers to find ways to support our nurseries, including an exemption from the Government’s national insurance hike, to deliver education and support to our children in a way that is financially sustainable for both parents and providers.
Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)
I very much welcome the Government’s investment in education, as demonstrated through the estimates that have come out today. In particular, I want to touch briefly on the increased investment in SEND and high-needs provision to the tune of £1 billion—something I am sure Members are aware is very close to my heart. However, I would like to sound a note of caution and echo some of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and I thank her for her work on the Select Committee on this matter.
Investment alone will not solve the SEND crisis. It is the biggest issue facing schools. It is one of the biggest issues facing councils. Dare I say it, it is one of the biggest issues facing local healthcare authorities—not to get ahead of the next estimates debate. Money alone will not solve it. We need institutional root and branch reform of how the SEND system works. I have said it before and I will say it again: if we fix the SEND system, we fix the education system for every single child. What we need is investment in early years provision.
Every time I visit a primary school, I am confronted by headteachers who say that the level of high-needs SEND provision in key stage 1 has skyrocketed in recent years. We can discuss the reasons behind that. The covid pandemic proved the value of early years intervention in that, by and large, it did not take place for four to five years and we have seen the impact that that has had on young people coming through. So, we need early and quick intervention and investment in early years services. I take umbrage with Members, unfortunately on both sides of the House, who have spoken about over-diagnosis of conditions such as ADHD and autism. We need quick and accurate diagnosis and a treatment pathway to conditions that are on the rise primarily because of historical under-diagnosis. Finding out who the children are who struggle with those conditions and putting in early interventions as quickly as possible, such as speech and language therapy, will save us money in the long run. If we are able to identify children who are in need of additional support in early years, that will save an awful lot of money overall. It will save money in education, health and local authorities.
I very much support the Government’s direction of travel in trying to get as many children in mainstream as possible. I firmly believe that early exposure to children who are different from yourself can only be better for society, by and large. However, I would like to press the Minister for a timescale on when the SEND White Paper will come out. I would welcome her assurances that parents, carers and young people themselves will be meaningfully involved in it. I would also welcome her thoughts on how we ensure all schools share an equal load when it comes to SEND provision.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
I want to talk about the real-life impacts of the decisions in the education estimates, and specifically, due to the short amount of time, on school funding.
There is a village in my constituency called Buckland Monachorum for whom school funding is a particularly pertinent issue. It is in the middle of campaigning, because the local trust responsible for the school is having to restructure from September. That is entirely because of the cuts schools are facing and the knock-on impacts from the Budget that we have heard about. The restructuring is causing huge consternation among parents. There are complaints, a campaign—as I said—and a huge amount of stress, as they face a different future to the one they were expecting.
The Learning Academy Partnership trust, which is responsible for the school, has shared figures with me that highlight the reality of the funding changes that it is facing. It also has one of the schools that falls foul of the f40 inconsistencies we have heard about. It is worth saying briefly that secondary schools in Devon can see as much as £1 million less in funding than equivalent schools in a city such as Manchester. An hon. Gentleman said earlier that city schools need more money. I hear that, but rural deprivation is a key reality, too, and we need to do more to address it.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
I am extremely grateful to be cheekily coming in at this point, but the East Riding of Yorkshire is the lowest-funded authority in the country for SEN. I hope we might hear from the Minister about how the distribution, as well as the quantum, can be made fairer. Unfair distribution exacerbates the strain in the system.
Rebecca Smith
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I agree that, and there are issues right across the country.
The trust in my constituency is facing financial pressures: teacher pay awards, unfunded beyond 1.7%, mean a 4% increase, costing £359,330; support staff pay awards, unfunded beyond 0.9%, mean a 3.2% increase, costing £295,000; and teacher pension increases, support staff pensions and the national insurance increases have a total cost of £349,000, with £76,000 unfunded due to pupil-based funding. That is a problem right across Devon. We are concerned because it means ultimately that those local village schools will have to take a direct hit, which is something that neither the parents nor the teachers, nor the trusts that are responsible, want to see.
A big part of this issue is about the reduction in the general annual grant—a real-terms reduction of £200,000 in 2025-26, plus 0.5% redirected by Devon local authority to special educational needs. This will have a massive impact on the most vulnerable children right across the community; ultimately, it will not enable them to get the education they require.
Briefly, I want to ask the Minister about the future of schools in places like Dartmoor in Devon, and especially the schools that fall foul of the f40 formula issues. What can the Minister do to reassure the parents, teachers, other staff and children, most importantly, whom I represent, who will ultimately pay the price for these cuts, intentional or not? What reassurances can she offer in response to their pleas and my pleas for children and young people in South West Devon to have the funding they need for the future they deserve? What reassurances can she provide to me that that will take place?
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
In Portsmouth North, we know that education does not just open doors, but transforms lives. I welcome this Government’s commitment to rebuilding the foundations of the education system.
Before entering this House, I was a teacher, and I have seen at first hand the power that education has to transform individual lives and whole communities, and how Government policy can impact it negatively or positively. In Portsmouth, sadly, that power has often been held back by under-investment, postcode inequality and a lack of opportunity for those outside the traditional academic path.
I am proud that more than 6,500 children in Portsmouth will benefit from Labour’s expansion of free school meals and that teacher pay is rising—by 5.5% last year and 4% this year—recognising the dedication of staff across our schools. Combined with rising attendance and the return of 3 million more school days, that shows that Labour’s plan is working.
It makes me cross when those on the Opposition Benches talk about trade union baron pay rises, when it is actually our teachers, doctors and armed forces who got those long-awaited pay rises, which were denied by the previous Government. It is time those on the Opposition Benches were honest about that. [Interruption.]
Amanda Martin
Children with educational needs in Portsmouth still face long waits and a shortage of school places; families are waiting, and schools are stretched. Can the Minister set out how the Department is working with local authorities to expand high-quality provision in areas such as Portsmouth, and whether the spending review includes targeted capital or revenue support for this area?
If education is to drive growth, skills reform must be front and centre, and I am glad that is part of Labour’s priority. Colleges are central to this. Students and staff at Portsmouth college are eager to do more, but need the right investment. Ambition is vital, because the role of education is not just social, but economic. The spending review must be understood as part of the wider industrial strategy that Labour is delivering. Skills reform, youth hubs and the creation of Skills England are vital tools to align training with the future of our jobs, and the Department must ensure that schools, colleges and businesses are integrated into this strategy.
We also need to get serious about apprenticeships—not just for school leavers, but for older learners and those changing careers. We need to talk about access, because apprenticeships must work for everybody. I have heard from constituents in their 20s and 30s and beyond who want to reskill, but cannot afford the drop in income. Although it may seem radical, I wonder whether the Minister would consider a means-tested apprenticeship loan system similar to student finance with an automated repayment tied into income above the living wage. That kind of support could transform access for working parents, carers and those who want to change their career.
As a Government Member and a member of the Education Committee, I am proud of the Government’s work. The spending review lays solid foundations, but there is a long way to go. Portsmouth North is a place of talent, determination and potential. Labour’s plan is already delivering change, but if we truly want an economy built on skills and a society built on fairness, we must keep pushing forward.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
As we know, not all local education authorities are created equal. For those like South Gloucestershire, where schools are among the lowest funded in the country, the average rise quoted will not make up for years of underfunding. As I recently raised in this House, it is reported that two thirds of South Gloucestershire schools will be in the red next year, which is having a massive impact on children and young people in my constituency.
I shall set out some of the pressures that are making that situation worse and ask the Minister how the spending review will help to tackle them. The first is the underfunding of staff costs. The Government are not fully funding the 4% pay-rise for teachers and are expecting schools to find a quarter of the amount from efficiencies within their budgets. Coupled with the underfunded national insurance reimbursement, this is placing a massive pressure on budgets. Can the Minister explain what these efficiencies would look like. I can tell her what things already look like in our schools before these cuts. In my local schools, clubs, trips and activities have been axed. Qualified teaching assistants have been replaced by cheaper apprentices. Class sizes have been breached and staff shared across year groups, or even across several schools. Each school will be asked to cough up tens of thousands of pounds that they simply do not have, and this will disproportionately hit small rural schools where the staff budget makes up a high proportion of the total.
SEND pose challenges nationwide, but areas such as South Gloucestershire where school funding is lowest and where schools have struggled with a huge high-needs deficit, are hit particularly hard. The spending review says in relation to SEND that the Government will
“set out further details on supporting local authorities as we transition to a reformed system as part of the upcoming local government funding reform consultation.”
There is, however, no reference to the legacy safety valve agreements. The two-year extension of the statutory override is a temporary relief and does not solve the underlying problem. Schools and local authorities need to be able to plan ahead, so what assurances can the Minister give authorities such as South Gloucestershire whose safety valve agreements are coming to an end, and when will those authorities have certainty about the future funding arrangements?
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
Councils are being asked to deliver SEND services without sufficient funding, to which my hon. Friend has alluded, and that creates a postcode lottery for families, with children waiting months to receive support. Does she agree that we urgently need SEND funding reform, including removing the £6,000 school contribution to end the postcode lottery, so that we can deliver the support that children need?
Claire Young
I agree with what my hon. Friend says. Schools are disincentivised from taking action on special educational needs if they know that they have to fund the first £6,000.
Finally, I highlight the pressure of free school meals and breakfast clubs. Although the extension of that provision is of course welcome, the funding does not recognise that schools are already having to subsidise school meals due to rising costs, and those subsidies will now increase. Schools in my area tell me that they declined to join the breakfast club pilot due to the lack of funding. One school I spoke to was expecting 67p per child for non-pupil premium children and 88p for pupil premium children. That non-pupil premium price represents less than 15% of the break-even cost for their current breakfast club. Yet again, these schools would have to subsidise at the expense of other activities.
Behind the headline numbers are schools in crisis, especially in constituencies such as mine where they have been routinely underfunded for years. I hope the Minister can provide reassurance for my constituents that the headline figures will translate into fair funding for South Gloucestershire.
Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Nothing is more important than ensuring that every child in every part of our country has the opportunity to thrive. That is why breaking down the barriers to opportunity is such a key part of this Government’s plan for change We are determined to undo the failure of the previous Government and to see that every school has the necessary resources to offer the education that all our children deserve.
I welcome the estimates. In Hyndburn, the commitment to additional funded early years education will be transformational for family budgets, saving families up to £7,500 a year, and helping mothers such as me to balance careers with family life. Crucially, this will also enable us to achieve the key target of 75% of children achieving a good level of development when they start school, which will equate to over 500,000 more children being school ready across the country.
Furthermore, the £6.7 billion capital investment into our school buildings will support the rebuilding of several schools in Hyndburn, including Hyndburn academy in Rishton and Haslingden high school. It will also help us to tackle the removal of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete in Knuzden St Oswald’s primary school and to make other repairs and improvements to a number of other schools across the constituency.
Thanks to this Government’s commitment to increasing access to free school meals, up to 6,590 children in Hyndburn will benefit. This Government understand that children who are well fed are better able to concentrate in the classroom and better able to learn. I know how much it will mean to families across my constituency to be able to save up to £500 a year because of this change. This is a Labour policy, based on Labour values, and it demonstrates the shared commitment of the Chancellor, the Minister and the Secretary of State to ensure that we deliver on our promises to the next generation.
Having worked hard to tackle educational disadvantage for many years, I also know the importance of the regional improvement in standards and excellence teams and the £150,000 being made available to them so that families and communities will no longer be let down year after year without the interventions needed to tackle failing schools where the standards just are not good enough. On the skills agenda, Accrington and Rossendale college has already received £1.5 million of capital. The £1.2 billion commitment for the skills agenda is crucial, and I will be ensuring that young people in Hyndburn benefit directly from it.
There is so much more to talk about, whether it is mental health support, reforming the apprenticeship levy and apprenticeships, reviewing the curriculum and the current approach to assessment or making progress on hiring an additional 6,500 teachers. There is still lots to do—
Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on behalf of my constituents, including the hundreds of families who feel they are being let down by a system that simply is not working. Over the past year, I have heard heartbreaking stories from constituents whose children have been left waiting years for EHCP assessments and the specialist support they desperately need. Hampshire’s SEN service received over 3,800 EHCP requests in the last academic year alone.
My constituent Chrissy’s daughter has struggled severely with reading, writing and confidence. When Chrissy asked for a dyslexia assessment, her daughter’s primary school was unable to provide one, and the family cannot afford private testing. Her daughter has missed days of school due to the sheer fear of going in, becoming physically sick as a result. Natasha, another constituent, told me that she is at her wits’ end trying to secure the right support for her son. He has an EHCP but is still without an autism diagnosis and a specialist placement after over two years of delays and miscommunication. What reassurance can the Minister give my constituents that their children will get the support they need to reach their full potential?
I have also been contacted by constituents who have expressed concern about the cuts to the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which has been a lifeline for some of the most vulnerable children in our society. Will the Government consider reversing the cuts to help give all children and young people the best possible future?
I welcome the Government’s decision to expand eligibility for free school meals to all children in households receiving universal credit. It is a long-overdue step in the right direction. To make the policy work in practice, the Government must introduce auto-enrolment and ensure that the expansion in eligibility is fully funded and properly implemented.
I have heard from the headteacher at Chandler’s Ford infant school in my constituency that the funding provided to schools has not kept pace with the actual cost of meals. The cost of delivering meals now exceeds Government funding by £1.11 per meal, which has forced the school to find another £31,468 out of its budget for the financial year. Eastleigh college receives £2.66 per student, but meals are costing the college closer to £5. Have the Government considered the impact on other areas of school budgets, as schools and colleges try to keep up with the increased cost of free school meals, and what provisions are being made to cover the shortfalls?
After years of neglect under the Conservatives, our education system is failing to deliver the outcomes that children deserve, and teachers and parents are having to pick up the pieces. We urgently need a system that works with families, not against them.
Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)
Parents with SEND children across Tewkesbury represent one of the demographics who most consistently contact me. I regularly hold surgeries with desperate parents who feel that they have nowhere left to turn. I have spoken with parents whose children have missed years of education and whose ability to work has been diluted by the need to care for and teach their children outside the school environment. Many others have spent years awaiting diagnoses and years more acquiring an EHCP, viewing an EHCP as a kind of silver bullet, only to get their children enrolled in a school that simply does not have the additional resources to support them.
Cameron Thomas
I am afraid I will not.
This is a growing, nationwide crisis being experienced by schools and families, and it has secondary effects on the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury. Responsibility for SEND provision currently falls to local authorities, but councils across the country are struggling to balance their resources between looking after their people and maintaining their infrastructure. I do not accept that those councils are all at fault—that simply cannot be. In fact, I empathise with those councils that observed this month’s spending review with their heads in their hands.
Last month, I held a Westminster Hall debate where I pointed out that Gloucestershire is among the lowest-funded councils for education in England. I am delighted that the Minister for School Standards announced a review of the national funding formula for 2026-27, and I very much hope that Gloucestershire will be firmly in the Government’s mind when it takes place. I ask the Government to acknowledge that they must address the growing demand for SEND provision and not leave it to local authorities or kick it down the road until 2030.
I ask that the Government investigate and address the root causes of this growing problem and implement systems and processes in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Until they do, local authorities will continue to buckle under demand, our teachers will continue to break and our constituents across the country will continue to suffer.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. I am sorry to have had to be a little brutal, but we managed to get everybody in. We are, however, 10 minutes over time, so if Front Benchers exercised a little discretion, that would be helpful. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I congratulate the Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), on securing this important debate on the Department’s estimate. Given the constraints you just mentioned, Mr Deputy Speaker, and how the Department’s remit is huge, I want to touch on a couple of areas: day-to-day school budgets and funding to support some of our most vulnerable children. I also hope that the Minister might answer some questions on the recent free school meal announcement.
It is fair to say that since the Labour Government swept to victory a year ago there has been a huge amount of rhetoric about the opportunity mission and putting children at the heart of policymaking, but the reality on the ground feels a little different. Despite what the Government would have us believe, school budgets across the country are at best frozen and at worst falling into deficit. Years of Conservative mismanagement and underfunding from 2015 onwards—[Interruption.] Conservative Members chunter, but the figures are there. We all know that from 2015 onwards, their mismanagement—[Interruption.]
Munira Wilson
The Conservatives’ decisions cast a long shadow over our schools and colleges. Although the Government trumpeted £4.7 billion for schools in the spending review, they failed to mention that school budgets will see an increase in real terms of only 0.4% over the spending review period. When I speak to school leaders, as I do regularly, they still express the same level of despair as I heard during the last Parliament, when the Conservatives barely mentioned children or schools.
School leaders are tearing their hair out trying to balance the books while shouldering the double blow of an underfunded rise in employers’ national insurance and underfunded teacher pay rises. One school in my constituency has shared its budget figures with me in detail to show what is really happening. It has about a quarter of a million pounds of salary pressures as a result of the NI and pay rises, yet only an additional £30,000 to fund that hole. The result is that the most vulnerable children will suffer, with learning support assistance and inclusion staff most likely to go to protect teaching staff, who are obviously essential. Although prudence in previous years means that reserves can be drawn on and future capital projects cancelled to keep the lights on this year, the school is looking down the barrel of redundancies in 2026-27. Having seen figures from other schools’ budgets, I know that its situation is not unique.
Following the spending review, the IFS said that schools would need to make efficiencies to the tune of £300 million to £400 million to afford the underfunded teacher pay rises and NI increases. When schools are facing ever-increasing pressures—special educational needs demand, student attendance challenges, behavioural issues and much more—it is ridiculous for the Government to ask them to find efficiencies.
I know that school staff are already straining every sinew to find every penny possible, down to banning things like colour photocopying. It was frankly insulting, therefore, when the written ministerial statement came out just before the May recess, which lectured them on taking responsibility
“to ensure that their funding is spent as efficiently as possible”,—[Official Report, 22 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 48WS.]
as if they do not already do that. Those so-called efficiencies are actually cuts, whether to staff, extracurricular activities, school trips or mental health support. To quote one headteacher from my constituency:
“every year you think you’re going to go into bankruptcy”.
I am not sure that was what the Government meant by their opportunity mission. After the Minister accused me last month of imagining these problems, I hope she will confirm to the House how she expects schools to cough up the extra money for the teacher pay deal and national insurance. If not, will she go into bat with the Treasury for more?
I want to touch briefly on an issue that a number of my hon. Friends have spoken about: the cuts in grants to the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which are measures that will hurt our most vulnerable children. We know that the fund provides therapy for children who, in many cases, have been through deep trauma and who, without significant therapeutic intervention, will struggle to have a fulfilling childhood and life ahead of them. After the fund expired, Ministers were dragged to this place to confirm that it would continue, but they then snuck out announcements over the Easter recess of 40% cuts to the grants.
I know that the Minister will come back and say that, at £50 million, the size of the pot remains the same, but that is simply not the point. If £3,000—that is what the grants have been cut to—cannot fund the therapy a child needs, it might as well be zero. Just speak to the professionals and the unsung heroes who have stepped up as adopters and kinship carers, who are dealing with the consequences of the trauma every day. They feel deeply let down by this Government.
We are not dealing with massive figures here. Indeed, when we look at the billions in the departmental estimates, we are talking about small packages that will make a huge amount of difference, and not just to individual children but to the taxpayer in future, with money saved further down the track. It is not only immoral; it is short-sighted. Halving the Department’s spend on consultancy and advertising would allow Ministers to reinstate grants to previous levels by boosting the fund from £50 million to £75 million. As we debate these estimates, I once again call on the Minister to reverse those cuts. Also, now that the spending review is complete, I call on her to announce the ASGSF settlement for 2026-27 very soon, and by October at the latest, so that families and service providers can plan.
I want to touch briefly on the welcome recent announcement to expand free school meals—a policy for which the Liberal Democrats have been calling and campaigning for many years, and for which we have campaigned alongside many others to ensure it was adopted. Even though it is a welcome announcement, there are a number of questions that need to be addressed. How many children are estimated to be losing out on free school meals as a result of the end of transitional protections? There has been some suggestion from some quarters that children currently in receipt of free school meals will now lose access to pupil premium funding, as well as home-to-school transport. Will the Minister clarify on the record to this House what the position is? We are also still in the dark as to where exactly the money for the free school meal expansion is coming from.
In conclusion, while spinners in the Department for Education have made a good fist of ensuring that the headlines proclaimed that the Department was a victor in the spending review battle, there are still a number of crucial issues hidden beneath the top line. Our schools and our most vulnerable young people have been left struggling. The devil is in the detail. I therefore hope that the Minister can persuade us otherwise and convince us that she really believes in extending opportunity to every child and young person in this country.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
Before the election, Labour said that increasing VAT would pay for more teachers. Even in December, the Chancellor said that
“every single penny of that money will go into our state schools”.
More recently, however, the Prime Minister has claimed that this will instead pay for investment in social housing. He said
“my government made the tough but fair decision to apply VAT to private schools… because of that choice, we have announced the largest investment in affordable housing in a generation.”
These statements from the Chancellor and the Prime Minister cannot both be true. They cannot spend every penny on state schools and also spend money on housing, so my first question to Ministers is this: who is not telling the truth? Is it the Prime Minister or the Chancellor? Logically, both statements cannot be true.
Either way, we are not getting the extra teachers. In fact, statistics just came out showing that there are not more teachers, but fewer. There are 400 fewer overall, including 2,900 fewer in primary. Teacher numbers went up 27,000 under the last Government. Now they are down 400 under this Government. It was at that point, when those statistics came out showing that things were going in the wrong direction, that Ministers suddenly and for the first time started saying that the loss of staff in primary schools would no longer count. Primary school teachers no longer count for this Government. They had never said this before until the statistics showed that teacher numbers were falling.
This pathetic attempt to move the goalposts is so corrosive of trust in politics. It is a bit like when the Chancellor said that she was making her unfunded pledge to reverse the disastrous cut to the winter fuel payment because things were going so well with the economy. Everyone knows that is not true. It was so brazen. Let me quote what the Office for Budget Responsibility has said:
“Since the October forecast, developments in outturn data and indicators of business, consumer and market sentiment have, on balance, been negative for the economic outlook”,
and
“borrowing is projected to be £13.1 billion higher in 2029”.
But this Government seem to think that they can say black is white and people will believe them.
In that same brazen spirit, the Secretary of State responded to the statistics showing that there were fewer teachers in our schools by saying in a chirpy tweet:
“We’re getting more teachers into our classrooms.”
Ministers now say that primary schools do not count because pupil numbers are falling, but pupil numbers in primary are now predicted to be higher than when they made that promise. On the same basis, we could equally exclude all the many areas where numbers of pupils are falling in secondary and, indeed, places where numbers in primary are still going up, as in Leicestershire. It is brilliant: if we just ignore all the teachers that are getting the sack, of course teacher numbers are going up.
Peter Swallow
In the spirit of saying things that are not true and making brazen statements, I wonder whether the hon. Member can get on to the bit of his speech where he pretends that the Conservative Government invested more in our schools.
Neil O’Brien
I am glad that the hon. Member has prompted me—he must have a copy of my speech. In the last Parliament, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, real-terms spending per pupil went up by 11%. I thank him for allowing me to make that point.
So why are so many teachers getting the sack? It is partly because that is not the only broken promise. Labour also promised that it would fully compensate schools for the cost of the national insurance increase. The Minister sighs as I say this, and schools around the country will sigh too, because Labour broke that promise. According to the Confederation of Schools Trusts and the Association of School and College Leaders, schools have been left up to 35% short in some cases. With all the broken promises that we have already mentioned, let me check in on another promise. Perhaps the Minister will tell us the answer. The Prime Minister promised two weeks of work experience for all pupils and the Labour manifesto promised £85 million to pay for it. In May the Government told schools to get on and deliver extra work experience. When exactly will schools receive that £85 million?
Schools are not the only bit of the Department for Education where the Government have broken promises. The Secretary of State’s website still says, in a chirpy way:
“Graduates, you will pay less under a Labour government.”
But Labour has increased fees, not reduced them. The spending review was strangely silent on the subject of tuition fees. I assume that silence can only imply that tuition fees are set to rise in every year of this Parliament. Let me say what that will mean. It will mean that, in 2027, fees will go above £10,000 a year for the first time. It will mean that the total amount borrowed per student taking out the full amount will increase from £59,000 now to £66,000 outside London, and from £69,000 to £77,000 in London. So much for paying less! Ironically, the gain to universities from that broken promise and from that fee hike has been entirely wiped out by yet another broken promise: the decision to increase national insurance, another thing that Labour promised not to do.
That broken promise has also hit nurseries. The Early Years Alliance has said that it is “disappointed” and “frustrated” by the spending review, and the Early Education and Childcare Coalition says that the spending review
“reiterates many promises already made”
and that
“many nurseries and other providers are…running at losses and at brink of closure”.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes that the funding in the spending review for early years
“may not be enough to meet additional unexpected demand”.
So what does this all look like when we come down from the billions to look at it from the frontline? Sir Jon Coles is the leader of the largest school trust in the country and also a distinguished former senior official in DFE. What does he make of these estimates and this SR? He says that
“education will—for the first time in a spending review—get less growth than the average across all spending departments… The last time we had such a poor three-year cash settlement was the period 2014-2018, when average cash increases were about 1.8 per cent. But then, inflation averaged 1.5 per cent… it slightly sticks in the throat that HMT are trying to present it as good news… The claim that this is a ‘£2 billion increase in real terms’ is a version of spin I can’t remember seeing before. It relies on treating the financial year before last (pre-election) as the first year of the current spending review period.”
In fact, he says that when all that is stripped away,
“to all intents and purposes, this is a flat real-terms settlement for three years. If, as Schools Week are reporting, the £760 million ‘SEND transformation fund’ is coming out of the core schools budget, then that represents a significant real terms funding cut in school funding.”
Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether that is correct and it is coming out of core schools spending.
That brings me on to the great suppressed premises in these estimates, which is that DFE assumes that it will save substantial amounts on special needs compared with the trend implied by previous years. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) talked about the cuts to special needs spending. In fact, since 2016, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, spending has increased by £4 billion in real terms—a 60% increase. If that has felt like a cut to the hon. Member, he will not like what is being brewed up by the Treasury now.
The SEND plan will be out this autumn—coincidentally around the time of what looks like an increasingly difficult Budget. So far, DFE Ministers have floated two ideas for the SEND review. The first is to restrict EHCPs only to special schools. That would be a huge change. There are 271,000 children with EHCPs in non-special state schools and a further 37,800 in non-special independent schools, so 60% of the total are not in special schools. Anna Bird, chair of the Disabled Children’s Partnership—a coalition of 120 charities—has said:
“The idea of scrapping Education, Health and Care Plans will terrify families.”
Secondly, on top of that, we learned from a Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care that the Government also plan to push a lot more children from special schools into the mainstream.
There are two big questions about this plan. To say the least, there is a clear tension between these two money-saving ideas. If the Government take away EHCPs in mainstream schools, parents will be a lot less confident when the council presses them to put their child into a mainstream school rather than a special one. Given that the Government have U-turned on the winter fuel payment and now say that the coming welfare vote will, in fact, be a confidence vote in the Prime Minister, it will be interesting to see what eventually issues forth from the DFE. We know from these estimates and the SR that, as Sir Jon Cole says, unless the Government deliver these large, planned savings in special needs, the settlement for schools will become increasingly difficult.
This Government have broken a staggering number of promises incredibly quickly. Ministers seem to believe that they can just say that black is white and that they never meant any of the things they so clearly promised. This debate is about the money side of things, of course, but in terms of reform, things are also going backwards with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will lower standards and smash up 30 years of cross-party reform to appease the trade unions. Tony Blair once talked about “education, education, education.” What we are now getting is broken promises, broken promises, broken promises.
The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)
Every child deserves the opportunity to achieve and thrive in education. That is why this Government have—as Labour Governments always do—prioritised education, with the Department’s budget for day-to-day cash spending increasing by almost £6 billion compared with the last financial year. Within that, we have increased the overall core schools budget by £3.7 billion in 2025-26 compared with last year. This real-terms increase in funding per pupil helps underpin our ambition of achieving high and rising standards for all children in all our schools. This investment of £3.7 billion in 2025-26 includes both the £2.3 billion announced at the October Budget, and the £1.4 billion in additional funding being provided to support schools with staff pay awards and with the increases to employer national insurance contributions from April 2025.
The majority of school funding is allocated through the schools national funding formula. In 2025-26, £5.1 billion of the schools NFF has been allocated through deprivation factors, and £8.6 billion will be allocated for additional needs overall—that is, over £1 in every £6 of total core funding through the formula being directed towards the schools facing the most challenging cohorts. The spending review builds on this investment in schools. Across the spending review period, core schools funding—including SEND investment, which I know is a big issue for many Members who have spoken —will increase from £65.3 billion in 2025-26 to £69.5 billion by 2028-29.
I turn to the SEND system, which many Members have spoken passionately about. It is, and has been for too long, on its knees. This Government are determined to face up to the facts: too many families and children are simply not receiving the quality of SEND services and provision that they should expect; they are having to fight for those services; and they are having to wait too long before those services are made available. It is this Government’s ambition for all children and young people with SEND to receive the right support at the right time, so that they can succeed in their education and in moving into adult life. To help us achieve that, we have invested £1 billion more in funding for high needs in 2025-26 than in 2024-25.
We are also providing £740 million of high-needs capital funding in 2025-26, so that local authorities can adapt schools to be more accessible and can build new places, including in specialist facilities within mainstream schools. More than 1.7 million children and young people in England have special educational needs, and the vast majority of those are educated in mainstream settings. We are committed to improving inclusivity, to bringing a new focus on expertise in mainstream settings, and to an inclusive curriculum, so that the vast majority of children can be well supported in mainstream settings, with specialist settings catering to those with the most complex needs.
Jen Craft
I would like the Minister to clarify that the additional support and ambition that she is talking about is to improve the SEN side. For Members who are not aware, the statutory bit is the SEND side, and there will obviously be improvements in that; but if we improve the SEN side, which is the bit that children do not need an EHCP for, parents will not need to go through that adversarial legal battle, and there will be fewer reasons for people to have to go through what can at times be a truly horrific system.
Catherine McKinnell
My hon. Friend makes a really important point, and I was about to respond to a question that she raised in her very good contribution to this debate. We will set out the details of our approach to SEND reform in a schools White Paper, which we intend to publish in the autumn.
We recognise that we need to support mainstream schools in providing much greater inclusion for children with SEND. We need to commence a phased transition process, which will include working with local authorities to manage their SEND system, including deficits. There will also be an extension to the dedicated schools grant statutory override until the end of 2027-28—an issue that many Members have raised on behalf of their local authorities. We will provide more details by the end of the year, including a plan for supporting local authorities with both historical and accruing deficits.
I turn to teacher training. I was very sorry to hear about the experience of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance). He is incredibly brave, and it is important that he has shared that. To respond to his question, high-quality teaching is central to ensuring that all pupils are given the best possible opportunities to achieve. To support all teachers, the Department is implementing a range of teacher training reforms that will ensure that teachers have the skills to help all pupils to succeed.
We are determined to make sure that every family is a stable, loving home, and that no child grows up in poverty, lacks food or warmth or is denied success due to their background. We are determined to turn things around, tackle child poverty and spread growth and opportunity to every family in every corner of the country. The Labour Government have announced that we are extending free school meals to all children from households in receipt of universal credit from September 2026. That will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty and put £500 back in families’ pockets. We are supporting parents through that decisive action, which will improve lives—and that is before the child poverty strategy comes out later this year. Providing over half a million children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a free, nutritious lunch time meal, every school day, will also lead to higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes, which means that children will get the best possible education and chance to succeed in work and life.
We will provide more detail in due course, but decisions such as expanding free school meals do not happen by accident, nor are they simply the outcome of hard work by campaigners outside this place. They are decisions about who we put first in our national life, and who has the first call on our country’s resources. Our Government put children first. Expanding free school meal eligibility is a choice made by this Government, who are determined to secure a brighter tomorrow for our children and ensure excellence everywhere, for all our young people. This Government know that delivering the most equal society—something that we Government Members are determined to make real—is a choice, not something achieved by chance.
On the points hon. Members raised about children’s social care, we are putting children first. This Government are committed to delivering children’s social care reform, to break the cycle of late intervention, and to help more children and families thrive and stay safely together. For 2025-26, the Department has allocated £380 million to deliver children’s social care reform, including £44 million of new investment to support children in kinship and foster care, as announced at the autumn Budget.
Because this Government are determined to ensure that all children have the best start in life, by 2028 we aim for 75% of children to reach a good level of development by the end of reception, which means that approximately 45,000 more children each year will start school ready to learn, thrive and succeed. That is ambitious. No progress has been made on this measure in many years. We are creating 6,000 nursery places in schools across the country through the first wave of 300 school-based nurseries; that is backed by £37 million.
Munira Wilson
The Minister talked about the Government making choices to prioritise children, and about keeping families together. How will the cuts to grants for therapies for some of the most vulnerable, traumatised children in our society help families stay together? Those children manifest the most challenging behaviours, which result in adoption placement breakdown, and that means worse outcomes for those families. How is that putting children first?
Catherine McKinnell
The changes that we have made to the fair access limits will ensure that more children have access to the fund, because year-on-year demands have increased. When we brought forward the legislation, which was the biggest overhaul in children’s social care in a generation, the opposition parties voted against it. We are determined to improve the life chances of children, to broaden access, and to ensure support for those that need it, despite our tough fiscal inheritance.
To return to childcare, at the spending review, we announced almost £370 million of further funding to create tens of thousands of places in new and expanded school-based nurseries. Despite the tough decisions we made to get our public finances back on track, we are continuing to invest in early years, and are supporting the delivery of entitlements. We will create a reception-year experience that sets children up for success, and are working with sector leaders to drive high-quality reception practice. We are increasing access to evidence-based programmes teaching early literacy and numeracy skills. We are delivering the largest ever uplift of 45% in the early years pupil premium to better support disadvantaged children at the earliest point in their school lives.
Unfortunately, having taken a couple of interventions, I have gone over my time. To summarise, we have inherited a challenging set of circumstances, but we are determined to change the life chances of children in this country. My final words are of appreciation for everyone working in our education system to support our children and young people. Our shared goal has to be providing the highest-quality outcomes for every child. The Government are investing in education, and we remain committed to renewing the entire system to make our ambitions a reality. We are putting our promises into action, and we are determined to change the lives of children across the country.
Helen Hayes
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. The education and children’s social care system across the country has been well represented, and we have heard contributions about the challenges in SEND, further education, schools, rural areas and early years. Right hon. and hon. Members have welcomed the expansion of free school meals and the introduction of free breakfast clubs.
I thank the Minister for her response, and join her in paying tribute to all the professionals who work so hard every single day to improve the lives of children and young people across the country. I urge her to work very closely with parents as she brings forward SEND reforms, because at the heart of successful reform of the SEND system is the rebuilding of parents’ trust and confidence. The Education Committee will be robust in its continued scrutiny of the Government.
I say gently to the Conservatives that the problems that they are attacking the Government for not solving within a year are the legacy of their 14 years in power. We are talking about trust and confidence in the SEND system; we would build trust and confidence in this place if there was slightly more honest reflection, humility and thoughtfulness on that point.
I again thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this important debate, and I look forward to further scrutinising the work of the Government.
Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54(2)).
Department of Health and Social Care
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
The debate will be opened by a member of the Health and Social Care Committee, Paulette Hamilton.
Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)
I am delighted to open this debate on the Department of Health and Social Care’s main estimate. My remarks will focus on the recent spending review, which includes some welcome funding increases and sets out some ambitious reform objectives. However, it also raises questions about deliverability, particularly of objectives to do with capital investment, efficiency savings and the role of social care.
Let me begin with capital investment. The Government have rightly emphasised the need to shift from analogue to digital systems across the NHS. The increase of nearly 50% in technology and transformation funding will mean that it reaches up to £10 billion by 2028-29, which is a welcome and substantial commitment. However, the NHS has a poor track record on digital transformation. The National Audit Office has highlighted the risks around fragmented delivery, unclear governance and unrealistic timelines, and those lessons remain highly relevant. Its 2020 report on digital transformation in the NHS found that despite £4.7 billion in national funding, many trusts were still reliant on systems that were outdated and not integrated.
The capital budget is being asked to do a great deal more than achieve digital transformation. The Government have committed to the new hospital programme, and to addressing critical infrastructure risks, such as those posed by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. Over five years, £30 billion is allocated for maintenance and repair, and £5 billion is allocated for critical risk. However, by the end of the decade, there will be no real-terms uplift in the capital allocations, compared with this year. In fact, in 2027-28, the funding settlement actually falls to £13.5 billion from £14 billion the previous year, meaning that inflation in construction costs and materials will significantly erode its purchasing power. The British Medical Association has warned that current funding cannot cover both the new hospital programme and essential maintenance, and now that programme must also compete for funding with the vital digital transformation. Can the Minister explain how the Department will choose its priorities from those competing essential demands on the capital budget?
Turning to resource spending, the Department’s day-to-day budget will grow by an average of 2.7% per year in real terms. That funding will be used to deliver several welcome commitments, including investment in elective recovery and urgent and emergency care; a £4 billion increase in adult social care funding; 700,000 additional urgent dental appointments annually; 8,500 more mental health staff; and £80 million a year for tobacco cessation programmes. Those are all positive steps.
Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, as well as for her excellent chairing of the Health Select Committee at the moment and for opening today’s debate. Does she agree that this Government’s record investment in our health service will be vital to turning around the health service after 14 years of under-investment and a lack of reform? As my hon. Friend has touched on, that investment also needs to be targeted to enable the three shifts that the 10-year plan talks about. In particular, we need to reverse the trend of more spending going towards secondary care while less goes to primary care. We need a big uplift in dentistry, which my hon. Friend has mentioned, but also in primary care—in GPs—and in pharmacy.
Paulette Hamilton
Hear, hear. My hon. Friend makes some valuable points, and I agree with every one of them.
Underpinning the settlement I have described, however, is the Government’s pledge to generate £17 billion in efficiency savings over three years, with a staggering £9.1 billion expected in the final year of this Parliament. Critically, those savings have already been factored into the settlement—in effect, they have been spent before they have been delivered. In the light of that, we need absolute confidence that there is a clear and robust plan to generate those savings. The Government are assuming an annual productivity improvement in the NHS of 2%, more than triple the long-term average of 0.6%. They appear to be relying on digital transformation to unlock the bulk of those savings, which is risky, given the history of digital change programmes in the NHS.
Another source of savings is the plan to cut reliance on temporary staff by reducing sickness absence and overhauling staff policies, including limits on agency spending and eliminating the use of agencies for entry-level roles. Again, this is a welcome ambition, but delivering it will be a significant challenge, one that will require meaningful, sustained improvements to staff wellbeing and working conditions. We cannot build a sustainable workforce on good will alone. Therefore, will the Minister say when we can expect an updated and fully costed workforce plan to deliver on these ambitions?
Delivering the reforming elective care for patients plan is also central to achieving those efficiencies. It proposes reforms such as optimising surgical pathways through hubs, streamlining referrals, expanding remote monitoring and reducing unnecessary procedures. The plan assumes a rapid transformation of services, with significant improvements in productivity and patient flow expected within just a few years. That is ambitious, especially given the context of ongoing workforce shortages, ageing infrastructure and rising demand. Reform is essential, but it must be realistic, properly resourced and paced to succeed. We cannot afford to set targets that look good on paper but falter in practice, damaging morale and patient care. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the projected £17 billion in savings will materialise and be delivered on time? What happens to those additional resources for frontline delivery if those savings are delayed or fall short?
I will also touch on adult social care, which is in desperate need of reform. The Casey commission has an important job to do, but the terms of reference for the first phase of Casey’s work state clearly:
“The commission’s recommendations must remain affordable, operating within the fiscal constraints of Spending Review settlements for the remainder of this Parliament.”
Now that those settlements have been reached, can the Minister provide clarity to the House about precisely what fiscal constraints Baroness Casey’s recommendations will have to conform to? The £4 billion for adult social care announced in the spending review includes an increase to the NHS minimum contributions to the better care fund.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I thank my fellow member of the Select Committee and stand-in Chair for giving way, and I congratulate her on how she is introducing the issues today. Does she agree that the length of time set for the Casey review to report does not give us a sense of confidence that the Government have injected sufficient urgency to address the serious problems of ensuring that we have a robust social care system that can stand up to the pressures that lie ahead?
Paulette Hamilton
I thank the hon. Member for that deep and thoughtful point. He is absolutely right. Timescales are an issue, and that is why, as a Select Committee, we are asking the Government a number of questions so that we can scrutinise what is happening and get the information.
My Committee considered the better care fund in our inquiry into adult social care. It was introduced with the aim of driving better integration between health and social care, and shifts resources upstream from NHS acute services. However, the evidence we heard was stark. These resources have been overwhelmingly focused on hospital discharge. While timely discharge is important, that does not match the fund’s original objectives. How will the Government ensure that this increase in funding leads to a greater focus on prevention? The Chancellor referred to the Government’s plan for an adult social care fair pay agreement. Reaching such an agreement is not just desirable but essential. Staff working in care homes are far more likely to live in poverty and deprivation than the average British worker.
Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)
The hon. Member is making her points very well, and I congratulate her on her success in bringing this debate to the Chamber. I agree with what she has said about fair pay for social care workers—I support that as well—but does she agree that a fair pay agreement will put undue pressure on providers unless there is some money or financial incentive attached to it so that they are able to meet their fair pay requirement?
Paulette Hamilton
The hon. Gentleman has made a valuable point. The problem is that we in the Committee are waiting for the workforce plan, and we are not sure what is being planned. What the hon. Gentleman has suggested is desirable, but at this moment we do not know what the workforce plan will throw up. It is possible that what he has suggested is already in the plan; let us just wait and see.
The current position is both morally unacceptable and economically short-sighted, fuelling the workforce crisis. What concrete progress has been made in establishing the fair pay agreement? Can the Minister give the House an update? Will she also tell us whether the funding that is required to pay for this essential agreement will come out of the £4 billion that has been announced for social care?
While both the main estimate and the spending review present a vision of reform, it is clearly a vision built on some highly optimistic assumptions. We need to see robust, detailed plans to deliver the digital transformation and the unprecedented scale of efficiency savings that the Minister is counting on. Without such plans, and without realistic assessments of the challenges, the risk is not just that these reforms will fall short, but that they will do so at the expense of frontline services, patient care, and the morale of our dedicated health and social care workforce.
I urge the Minister to address the specific questions that I have raised today.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. It will not have escaped Members’ notice that we are playing “beat the clock” this afternoon. There is another debate to follow, with a very large number of speakers, and we are going to have to try and split the time between two debates. That means two things. First, after the next speaker I will impose a limit of three minutes on every speaker. The Liberal Democrat Front Bencher has agreed to cut her speech to six minutes and the other two Front Benchers have agreed to cut theirs to eight minutes, with no interventions. Secondly, it is up to Members, but if they intervene, we will not get through this, or else some Members will not be called—and it may be that Members who have spoken in earlier debates will not be called at all.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) on securing the debate.
We have learned this week that rather than the Government ensuring that funding reaches the frontline, spending on staff at the Department of Health and Social Care and seven other arm’s length bodies has increased by more than 10% since Labour came to power, while GPs, social care providers and hospices are forced to do more with less.
The situation is further compounded by rising financial pressures. Despite repeated promises that additional funding would improve patient care, the chief financial officer of NHS England has confirmed to the Select Committee that all the extra money allocated to the NHS will be swallowed up by national insurance increases, inflation and pay settlements, which means that none of it will go towards real improvements in frontline care.
The rise in national insurance contributions was supposed to bolster the NHS and social care. In reality, it has landed like an extra tax on providers themselves. GP surgeries, care homes, hospices and community services are all grappling with the additional payroll costs, just as they struggle with surging demand and chronic workforce shortages. The Institute of General Practice Management estimates that the average GP practice now pays an extra £20,000 a year in national insurance alone. Across the nearly 6,500 practices, that adds up to around £125 million a year—money that could otherwise pay for more than 2 million GP appointments, at a time when patients are struggling to be seen.
Adult social care providers face an equally stark reality. The Nuffield Trust projects that employers will shoulder nearly £940 million in extra national insurance costs in this financial year, on top of the £1.85 billion required to cover the rise in the national living wage. Local councils already face a £665 million shortfall in delivering their legal social care duties. The Government have promised a 3% real-terms rise in NHS revenue spending each year to 2028-29, reaching £232 billion by the end of that financial year, yet despite the headline increases, capital investment is being held flat in real terms. NHS leaders have made it clear that it will not be enough to rebuild or modernise our hospitals, or to fund the facilities required to support more care in the community.
The Health and Social Care Committee’s recent inquiry, “Adult Social Care: the Cost of Inaction”, has drawn attention to the enormous human and economic toll of the Government’s failure to reform the care sector. From the burden of unpaid carers to the economic impact of people leaving the workforce due to unmet care needs, the system is under severe and unsustainable strain, but rather than tackling this issue, the Government have once again kicked social care into the long grass and are waiting for a report from Baroness Casey that will probably not emerge until the very end of the Session. The cross-party talks that this Government promised have been scrapped again.
Although the spending review includes £4 billion in additional adult social care funding and an increase in the NHS minimum contribution to the better care fund, there remains little clarity on how the Government will fund their commitment to deliver a fair pay agreement for care workers. It is also far from clear that the better care fund is currently structured to meet the real needs of the care sector, rather than simply alleviating pressures in primary care. These estimates are not abstract figures; they translate directly into longer waits for elderly patients, overstretched family carers and staff driven to exhaustion.
Can the Minister confirm exactly how much funding the Government will allocate next year to tackle the social care workforce emergency, reduce waiting lists for assessments and services, and ensure that councils can meet their statutory obligations? What concrete recruitment and retention measures will be put in place to attract and retain carers, nurses and support workers in this vital sector, and how much new capital investment will be committed to help providers to modernise facilities and expand capacity to meet the needs of our growing and ageing population? When will the cross-party talks that the Government promised on social care happen? They must happen; otherwise, all the good effort—from Members on both sides of the House—on this issue will be lost. Finally, with social care vacancies entrenched and NHS productivity still trailing pre-pandemic levels, will the Minister set out what credible workforce and capital investment plans will be included in the forthcoming NHS 10-year plan to address these challenges once and for all?
I pay tribute to all the health and social care workers—employed or voluntary—across this country. This Government, with their massive majority, have a real opportunity to make real changes. They must start doing so now, and quickly.
Lewis Atkinson (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
I welcome the estimates and the CSR settlement from the Government —a record settlement for the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS. Given the time constraints, I will focus on three key points: financial management, underlying demand and the prioritisation of spend in the estimates.
We rightly focus on the headline settlements in estimates such as these, but what we do not talk about enough is the importance of good public administration in the Department. In the 19 years that I spent in the NHS before coming to this place, I saw how the previous Government had a sticking-plaster approach not just to politics, but to public administration. Budgets were confirmed at the last minute and planning guidance was outlined at the very last moment of the financial year, meaning that there was no opportunity for NHS leaders and health leaders to plan appropriately for resource spending. I particularly welcome the emphasis the Secretary of State for Health and the new chief executive of NHS England have put on restoring accountability through the foundation trust model and multi-year settlements that mean that, although I am sure NHS colleagues would like more, they at least know and can plan investment and spend-to-save decisions over that period.
Secondly, Members have queried why the NHS seemingly continues to require increases. I draw the House’s attention to the Nuffield Trust’s work showing that this is about not health inflation but underlying health demand. The Nuffield Trust estimates that, as a result of population changes—mainly the ageing of the population—there is a 1.1% increase in demand every year. In addition, advances in technology add a further 1.8% increase in healthcare demand, so there is already a 2.9% increase in underlying demand before inflation, which highlights that the Government’s emphasis on reform accompanying investment is critical.
Finally, to deliver that reform, the investment going in must be very carefully targeted. The evidence base is clear that investment in primary care—and we are fortunate in this country to have a world-leading gatekeeper system of healthcare through general practice—represents the best return on investment in health. Work done by Michael Wood and the NHS Confederation confirms that. Alongside investment in mental health services and wider public health, this creates the best chance for the health system to live within these estimates and to meet our constituents’ expectations.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
There are very legitimate concerns about rumoured plans to merge integrated care boards across the country. When ICBs merge, the promise of unified oversight gives way to a bureaucratic structure that prioritises large-scale efficiency over the nuanced understanding of local communities. Each locality and its environs has its unique challenges, such as variable demographics, socioeconomic disparities and distinctive health issues that demand targeted solutions. A merged ICB risks offering one-size-fits-all strategies that overlook the finer details of local care. The resultant dilution in responsiveness not only alienates patients, but stifles innovative local approaches that have proved successful in addressing community-specific challenges. While attempts at driving efficiency are certainly laudable, we risk sacrificing the local approach for local needs.
In my constituency of Tiverton and Minehead, community hospitals in Williton, Minehead, Tiverton and Dene Barton in Cotford St Luke are anchor institutions providing essential care for my constituents. Communities in rural areas simply cannot afford to lose them. These facilities are often the only nearby source of medical attention, and that is critical when timely treatment can mean the difference between life and death.
Moreover, community hospitals offer the family and friends of patients the opportunity to visit and check on them without having to travel great distances to do so. As we know, this familiar contact is so often a crucial part of a patient’s journey to recovery. It is certainly true in Tiverton and Minehead that community hospitals help to reduce the health disparities found in rural settings compared with urban centres. Without them, residents in more remote areas would simply not have access to the same level of healthcare as those in more built-up areas. That is why, where possible, we must resist administrative reforms that ignore local distinctiveness, and at the same time invest robustly in the community pharmacy network and community hospitals.
Ben Coleman (Chelsea and Fulham) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) for her excellent speech and for securing the debate.
I am quite excited about Saturday week, not just because it will be my birthday on 5 July—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Thank you so much—but because the national health service will be 77. Yes, it has survived that long. [Interruption.] I have survived slightly less long, I would like the House to think. Despite the years of cuts and chaos which have left the NHS broken, it is not beaten and we are rebuilding it. There is a huge amount to do, but we are making progress. After record funding in our first Budget, I am delighted that the spending review has put the health of our nation first. And, as touched on by colleagues, I am equally delighted that the Government are determined to reform how the NHS works to get a bigger bang for our buck and better outcomes for patients, because we need that.
We know we have masses to do. My hon. Friend set out many of the splendid things we have done so far, including getting waiting lists down to their lowest for two years, which is quite an achievement after only 11 months of this Government. On a more personal level, I am delighted that my constituency is benefiting directly from having a Labour Government. Charing Cross hospital has been given millions of pounds extra to upgrade vital infrastructure, including new MRI scanners, modernised operating theatres, better energy security and a big refurbishment of the ground and first floors, all under this Government. I also hugely welcome the new investment in GPs in my patch: the Cassidy medical centre, Ashville surgery, Palace surgery in Fulham and the Chelsea practice have all been earmarked for new funding under the Government to improve facilities and help provide better care.
Finally, I am excited by the possibilities of the new neighbourhood health service, which we are looking forward to in the 10-year health plan. Locally, I look forward to playing my full part in bringing together all the local health and social care practitioners, so that my residents get the better healthcare they have been waiting so long for and deserve. While I do that, I will also be working to ensure that we confront health inequalities and end the situation that we have now where people get less good access to health, less good treatment and less good outcomes simply because of their colour, what they earn or their disabilities. We must end that.
The spending review continues the work we have begun of repairing a health system that has been left bruised and battered, down but not out. Combined with the 10-year plan, we will be putting the nation’s health on a better path for the future and creating the change that people so vigorously voted for.
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
In the limited time available, I want to press the Government on a very live and urgent issue, which is the establishment of a dental school at the University of East Anglia. Currently, there is no dental school in the entire east of England. The Government accept that Norfolk is the Sahara of dental deserts. My constituents were excited by the prospect, as early as next September, of Norfolk training its own dentists. Just last week, the General Dental Council gave its approval for the new dental school and work is already under way at the UEA to create the facilities for this training.
Things ground to a halt, however, when the Government were unwilling to allocate the funding to ensure that places would be available in time for the UCAS deadline for 2026 entry, saying that we all needed to wait for the spending review. A frustrating delay, lost time to prepare and perhaps a lost year, but we reluctantly accepted the need to wait to receive this good news. And then the spending review came. And went. And we heard nothing: total radio silence from the Government on the future of this much-needed dental school. I tabled a written question to the Government directly after the review and they have refused to answer it. The silence is causing worries to increase.
There is a clear link between the lack of training opportunities in the east and the massive oral health inequalities we are facing. If we do not train in Norfolk, we cannot retain in Norfolk. People love our area. When they study here, many stay. It would be just the same with dentists. And we need it to be, because in Norfolk and Waveney we have so few dentists that each new one would be required to serve 3,000 people, based on current ratios. It is not tough maths to realise that, with the number of hours in a day and days in a year, people will go a long time without seeing a dentist, if they can get on an NHS list at all.
These are not just numbers and stats, these are real people: the people in my community. I would welcome anyone who is moving the money around spreadsheets in the Treasury or the Department of Health and Social Care to come to explain the dither and delay to their faces—some of which can no longer manage to muster a smile.
The situation has become untenable, but we have the opportunity for real improvement. We have cross-party support across Norfolk’s MPs from all parties, and I know that the Minister responsible, the Minister for Care, gets it—he has heard the stories, and I truly believe he cares. I hope that he can now deliver on the concern and warm words that we have welcomed and deliver us the dental school we need now.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
Fourteen years of Conservative Government left our national health service on its knees, with waiting lists at record highs, patient satisfaction at record lows and millions living in pain and fear, suffering without the treatment they need.
Turning that around is a mammoth challenge, but thanks to this Government, the green shoots of recovery are there. In my local NHS trust, waiting lists have fallen now for four months in a row. We promised an extra 2 million appointments in our first year, and we have delivered 3.6 million. We have hired an extra 1,700 GPs over the past year and provided much-needed extra investment, including for the Village surgery in Timperley, in my constituency.
However, there is still so much further to go, and the spending review and the settlement it gives the Department is a recognition of that. In delivering a £29 billion increase in annual NHS day-to-day spending over the next four years, the Chancellor has acknowledged the mountain there still is to climb to ensure that our health service is there for us when we need it. Accepting the scale of the challenge and putting forward the money needed to meet it separates this Government from the Opposition parties, which either want to abandon our national health service entirely or forget their record and wish away its problems.
The difficult decisions that this Government have taken have given us the space for record investment, and I am pleased that the Government also acknowledge that that must come with much-needed reform. We have seen it with the scrapping of NHS England and the efficiency savings that will generate, and we have seen it with the £10 billion investment in NHS technology over the next four years.
As part of that effort, may I suggest that, following my conversations with the Secretary of State on this topic, the future of Altrincham Hospital in my constituency is considered very carefully? We lost our minor injuries unit because of the Conservatives’ failure on NHS staffing, and the temporary skin cancer diagnostic hub that occupies its space must be turned into a permanent diagnostic centre.
To conclude, we finally have a spending review settlement that recognises the scale of the challenges facing our national health service, and we finally have a Government who are serious about fixing the problems it faces. Residents across Altrincham and Sale West are already feeling the benefit of that, with more to come. We have saved the national health service before and, thanks to this Government, we are going to do it all over again.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand). Of course, in this debate we have to reflect on the fact that the Government inherited the NHS in the very worst state in its 77-year history, which the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) reminded us of. The Government must pick up the NHS and try to restore it to the state that we would all like to see.
I approve of the three shifts the Government are proposing—no one could argue against prevention rather than ill health. Obviously we want to see advances in prevention, technology and delivery of services into the community, with better integration and improvements in the workforce plan. With that, however, I would like to see the Government advance the case for safe staffing. When I was last in this place, I was part of a campaign on that, which sought to achieve, for example, a ratio of never more than seven on acute wards—seven acutely ill patients to every registered nurse on acute wards. We should be aiming to try to support staff on the frontline, rather than leaving them under the pressures they currently face where they are seriously understaffed.
There are incredible pressures within the service itself. I know that, at the weekend, the A&E department of the Royal Cornwall hospital had more than 100 patients waiting to be treated, with ambulances often waiting outside. Our ambulance service is currently proposing to cut co-responders from some of our rural areas—where fire service staff support the ambulance service—which is a matter of great concern. The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust is also facing a £50 million cost improvement programme this year, and many other trusts on the frontline are also facing similar pressures.
The Government must look at the capacity of the nursing home sector, as there are often many unused beds. We talk about the difficulty of discharging patients from a hospital, but there is also the risk of the independent sector cherry-picking the profitable bits of the NHS. We need, above all, to back up our NHS. As the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton), the temporary Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, pointed out, social care is vital. If one in four social care workers are leaving the sector every year, we know that we have a serious crisis. The Casey review cannot come soon enough.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
First, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a trustee of the charity Helpforce, a member of the Public Accounts Committee and an officer of the patient safety all-party parliamentary group.
It was a Labour Government who founded the NHS on the principle that it would be there for us when we needed it. Patients in my constituency lost that confidence under the Tory Government. When they rang for a GP in the morning, they were told that it would be three weeks before they could be seen. If they rang 999, they were not confident that the ambulance would arrive. When they were referred for tests, they would be waiting months rather than weeks. These estimates show that this Labour Government believe in the NHS, believe in its future and can turn it around, so that again it is there when we need it.
The spending review gives an uplift in day-to-day spending as well as a huge rise in capital budgets. It is those capital budgets that will enable the rebuilding of Airedale Hospital, which has been plagued by RAAC, and is vital to my constituents. I have seen at first hand the difference that good-quality primary care facilities can make with the completion of the extension at Grange Park surgery. I know that, with this settlement, the Government will want to see further investment in primary care, and I hope the Minister will confirm that.
It is imperative that this extra spending helps deliver the shifts from treatment to prevention, hospital to community and analogue to digital. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I helped to challenge officials at the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England as to why, despite commitments over many years to community and prevention services, the money had never followed under the Tories. I hope that, with Labour’s NHS 10-year plan, we will make it clear that the money will be there for community services and for prevention. I am very pleased that the Chancellor has put a stop to the raiding of capital budgets to fund everyday expenditure.
These estimates rely on very ambitious productivity savings. At the heart of that is the health of our workforce, because too many are sick and absent from work. Volunteers can make a huge difference to retention because they improve staff wellbeing. Volunteering can also be a route for people to try out a career in healthcare. I urge the Minister to back the initiatives that support the use of volunteers.
Anna Dixon
I will not give way, because we are under a time limit.
In conclusion, I am confident that this funding settlement will help to put the NHS back on track and make it fit for the future.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
I rise to set the record straight in Scotland when it comes to the much-vaunted but false largesse of this spin-doctoring Labour Government.
After the autumn statement, the Government spent much time and energy telling the Scottish people how generous they were—the largest settlement in the history of devolution, they said. However, what they did not tell the people of Scotland was that when their inflationary policies were taken into account, driven by their eye-watering borrowing—when we consider pay and prices rises and the punitive employer national insurance increases —the settlement that looked big in cash terms was not so big in real terms. If Scottish Labour Members would spend as much time dealing with the things they were elected to deal with as they spend attacking the Holyrood Government, they might locate the spine that some Labour Back Benchers seem to have found recently in regard to the welfare Bill.
Turning to the estimates, under the Barnett formula, Scotland’s taxpayers depend on the generosity of the Westminster Treasury, even though it is our money—and do not give me the usual nonsense about higher per capita spend. If the Treasury did its sums correctly to include all our produce, if our needs were properly calculated and our geographic size and rurality compared to our population and demography accounted for, the numbers would be very different.
The results of the spending review and these estimates are not good. The UK Government’s spin on the spending review was so misleading that the independent and well-respected Fraser of Allander Institute said, “We have seen Labour MPs and MSPs describing the spending review event as increasing the block grant by £9.1 billion over the spending review period, but this is a figure that is neither transparent nor helpful”—not my words but those of the institute. Its conclusion, based on the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s forecast, is that rather than representing a £9.1 billion uplift, Labour’s spending review actually brought in a £700 million cut to Scotland’s funding against May’s central estimate.
Our health service depends not only on our excellent NHS workers but on our infrastructure. That is why it is so disappointing that in the spending review the UK Government imposed a real-terms cut on Scotland’s capital spending in the latter half of the spending review period. In effect, Scotland has been short-changed by more than a billion pounds.
Despite Labour’s continuing austerity in Scotland, the Scottish Government is investing heavily in our health service. Over the past year there has been a significant fall in long waits and an increased amount of GP appointments and surgical procedures—for example, there has been a 50% increase in hip and knee replacements. The SNP will continue to fight for our NHS and against successive Westminster Governments who do not have Scotland’s interests at heart.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
We know that a key part of primary care is community pharmacy. Indeed, that was recognised in the Darzi report, which stated:
“One of the great strengths of the health service in England has been the accessibility of community pharmacy.”
The previous Government committed to community pharmacy through the introduction of Pharmacy First. The Darzi report also highlighted that 1,200 pharmacies have shut their doors since 2017, and increased medicine costs and rising national insurance costs will not be helping.
Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend recognise that it is not just community pharmacies that are being hammered in this sector but hospices too, such as St Luke’s hospice in Basildon, which is facing a £450,000 rise in its national insurance costs? Does she also agree that Ministers are putting these costs on to pharmacies and charities that cannot make them back, which is absolutely killing community infrastructure in the health service sector?
Rebecca Smith
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. Indeed, St Luke’s hospice in my constituency will be facing exactly the same issues.
At risk of closure is Tubb pharmacy in Newton Ferrers in my constituency, which I have raised in this place before. Pharmacist Esi has been helped massively by an incredibly active community. The pharmacy supported a petition I delivered here in Parliament, and it provides essential services to the two rural villages of Newton Ferrers and Noss Mayo, but it is seeking Government action in order to secure its future.
While the estimates may highlight a commitment to delivering care closer to home, according to Community Pharmacy England there is still no clear path to the sustainable funding and operational model that is required by community pharmacy. It is needed by community pharmacies such as Tubb in Newton Ferrers, and it is needed by community pharmacists such as Esi. It is needed by the whole country to be able to deliver community pharmacy, Pharmacy First and, ultimately, to relieve pressure on primary care. I urge the Minister to provide this substantial funding for community pharmacy. I know that the Minister agrees that this work is incredibly important, and I urge her to ensure that we bring it to the fore as quickly as possible so that there can be a future for community pharmacy across the country.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Due to time constraints, I must now call the Front Benchers, starting with Helen Morgan.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
I congratulate the acting Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton), on securing this important debate and on her excellent opening speech on the risks inherent in the spending review settlement.
The Conservatives left our NHS in a disgraceful state that is impacting every one of our constituents. On their watch, people with life-threatening emergencies were left waiting hours for ambulances, hospitals were left to crumble, and accessing a GP became a huge challenge. The collapse of NHS dentistry has left some people pulling out their own teeth at home. It is essential that the new Labour Government are bold and ambitious in turning the NHS and care sectors around. The Liberal Democrats support the principles of the Secretary of State’s three shifts and have stated on many occasions the alternative means we would use to raise the necessary funds, but today’s debate is about how the money should be spent.
I was pleased that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s statement last week incorporated a measure that the Liberal Democrats have long called for, not least in our last Opposition day debate in April: a ringfenced fund for maintenance, to deal with the huge repair backlog that has built up across the NHS estate. However, I must reiterate the need to go faster with the new hospital programme. We know that the Conservatives’ plans were unfunded, but this capital spend must be brought forward so that crumbling hospitals in places like Torbay, Watford, St Helier and Stepping Hill can be rebuilt as soon as possible, because spending billions on maintaining buildings that face demolition in the next 20 years is not a wise use of taxpayers’ money.
The Liberal Democrats believe that the crisis in the NHS—particularly in accident and emergency—cannot be solved unless we transform social care. We have long argued that investment in the NHS will be pouring good money after bad if hospitals cannot discharge patients because there are no care workers to help them recover. The fair pay agreement for care workers is a start, but it will not touch the sides of the yawning abyss of current and forecast vacancies in the care sector. At a bare minimum, we need a higher minimum wage for care staff to stop the sector haemorrhaging workers. It is more urgent than ever that the cross-party talks for which the Government had such enthusiasm at the start of the year are reinstated. The terms of the Casey review, which leaves fundamental restructuring of the care sector to 2036, are not ambitious enough. The review needs to be completed this year, so that meaningful change is not put off while our population ages.
I turn to mental health. The Darzi review outlined in stark terms the fact that mental and physical health are not given parity in the health service; mental ill health takes up 20% of the caseload and only 10% of the funds. Proper investment in mental health is essential to the shift from treatment to prevention. It was disappointing to see the Government abandon mental health waiting list targets and reduce the overall proportion of money spent on mental health, while proclaiming that they were meeting the mental health investment standard because, at integrated care board level, there had been a fractional increase. I urge the Minister to ensure that mental health is given priority, and to ensure that prevention, through early intervention, can bring about improved outcomes.
Yesterday, the Secretary of State announced a new national investigation of maternity services. I was disappointed that no oral statement was made. Many MPs represent constituents whose families have been left distraught by maternity service failings at Shrewsbury and Telford, East Kent, Morecambe Bay, Nottingham, and potentially other trust areas. Those voices deserve to be heard in Parliament, but that opportunity was denied.
I welcome the inquiry, but remain dismayed at the slow progress since Donna Ockenden’s shocking report into the Shrewsbury and Telford hospital trust in spring 2022. She recommended 15 immediate and essential actions for national implementation; three years later, that has not happened, and the Government have removed the ringfence from funding intended to ensure safe staffing levels. Her findings were consistent with those after other maternity scandals, and the Government accepted her recommendations. It is vital that the inquiry moves the situation forward and is not used as a distraction tactic to delay real action.
Before concluding, I will raise the subject of the fundamental reorganisation of the NHS, which is being undertaken without any meaningful parliamentary scrutiny. NHS England announced the decision to slash ICB running costs by 50% by the end of this year, with detailed plans to be submitted by the end of last month. No impact assessment for that drastic change was undertaken by the Department and, as far as I can see, there is no funding from the Treasury for potential redundancy costs and no confirmed redundancy scheme. ICBs will be expected to transfer some statutory duties to other trusts without that change being on any formal statutory footing. The guidance from the soon-to-be-abolished NHS England has been hastily prepared.
If ICB money can be spent more efficiently, the Secretary of State has our support, but surely such radical change requires scrutiny, particularly when it was not in the Labour manifesto and there has been no White Paper, no consultation, no legislation, and not even a short ministerial statement on the subject. We would all appreciate the opportunity to better understand how the process will improve outcomes for our constituents.
The new Labour Government face an enormous challenge in turning around an NHS left at breaking point by the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats’ job as an effective Opposition party is to urge the new Government to go further, faster, in tackling the issue of access to GPs and dentists, in ending the appalling scandal of corridor care and dangerous ambulance waiting times, and in bringing urgency to the issues of spiralling mental health waiting lists and the crisis in social care.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I congratulate the acting chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton), on securing this important debate. It is almost one year since the Labour Government took office. They came to power promising that they had a plan to improve our NHS. However, what they actually had was a plan to get a plan by launching a consultation asking professionals and the public for ideas. The consultation was launched in October last year, and I understand that more than 220,000 people have contributed, but despite it being promised for spring, there is still no sign of it. Will the Minister commit to publishing a plan before the summer recess?
While the Secretary of State considers what the plan should say, over in No. 11 we have seen the Chancellor follow the usual Labour playbook: higher spending, higher borrowing and higher taxes. There will be more funding for the NHS, yet as the chief executive of NHS England noted, the NHS budget is now equivalent to the entire GDP of Portugal, reaching £226 billion in 2028-29. That is around 50% of public spending. It is said that 18th-century Prussia was an army with a state attached to it; 21st-century Britain is at risk of becoming a health service with a country attached to it. This is not the Government’s money; it is taxpayers’ hard-earned cash, yet the Government have provided no clarity—no meaningful detail and no credible plan—on how such vast sums will be used.
In the autumn Budget, an additional £10.6 billion in extra funding was promised for 2025-26. However, Julian Kelly, NHS England’s former chief financial officer, told the Health and Social Care Committee that most of it will be consumed by pay settlements, the national insurance hikes and non-pay inflation. Today, 64% of NHS spending goes towards personnel wages and pensions, which is a far higher proportion than in other comparable systems, but the NHS still faces staff shortages and expensive agency costs. Will the Minister confirm how much of the overall funding will go to salary increases? How much will be diverted into covering the national insurance increases for hospitals, social care, pharmacies, GPS, NHS contractors and social care providers?
As we speak in this Chamber, resident doctors and nurses are balloting for industrial action. Strikes would only add to the disruption and delay in care for sick and vulnerable people. Do the Government have a plan to minimise the impact of strikes, should they occur?
Let us look at one proposal that the Government have announced: the scrapping of NHS England. This Government by press release announced NHSE abolition without adequate planning. Ministers have dodged basic questions about costs, staffing changes and structural reform. There is, once again, no plan. The details that we know about do not inspire confidence. NHS England has asked the ICBs to reduce their costs by up to 50% by October 2025. ICBs will have to cluster, with the number expected to fall from 42 to 27 in two years. Many have warned that services will be cut, and redundancy payments linked to those restructurings could reach £1 billion in 2025-26. Has the Minister costed that in the Department of Health and Social Care revenue settlement?
The Government promised to restore the 18-week hospital waiting time within this Parliament. However, their departmental modelling shows that only 80% of patients may meet that standard for routine operations. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will deliver that promise?
Moving on to capital spending, the Minister says that she wants to continue the new hospitals programme, albeit more slowly than we would have done, and invest in technology, but capital budgets remain flat in real terms. The chief executive of the NHS Confederation says that this leaves
“a major shortfall in capital funding”.
The Nuffield Trust said that
“it will be difficult for the NHS to invest in the technology and facility upgrades it needs to meet the government’s…targets.”
Will the Minister explain how they will prioritise, and what will be delivered?
The Government have said that they want to shift funding from hospitals to primary and community care. Will the Minister confirm or deny reports that the NHS 10-year plan will delay the planned increase in spending on primary community care until 2035, instead of 2029, as was originally promised? A key part of community care is social care, but as Daniel Elkeles, the chief executive of NHS Providers, noted,
“social care…hasn’t been given the focus it needs”,
and that is
“a significant blocker on progress for the NHS.”
Cross-party talks on reform have quietly been abandoned in favour of an independent commission led by Baroness Casey, but that process is not due to complete until 2028. Yet again, we see headline-grabbing announcements from the Government, with no delivery plan and no real reform, leaving patients, staff and families waiting for the care they desperately need. The Government aim to deliver £13.8 billion in efficiency savings by ’28-29, with more than £9 billion of that total expected to come from DHSC alone. Will the Minister clarify where, within the Department, those savings will be found, and what impact assessments have supported those decisions?
The Government say that prevention is better than cure, and I agree. A good example is the “Act FAST: face, arms, speech, time” campaign, which we will all be familiar with, but just last week, in an answer to a written parliamentary question, the Minister admitted that
“the Government have made reductions in the Department and NHS England’s communications and campaigns.”
Can the Minister tell us which public health campaigns are to be affected?
Finally, the dental contract requires reform. The Government started negotiations a year ago, yet the Public Accounts Committee has noted:
“NHSE and DHSC do not yet know what reform might look like or to what timescales it can be delivered”.
Will the Minister tell us when the Government expect to conclude negotiations and get on with dental reform? In summary, the Government need to stop governing by headline. They need to publish a robust evidence-based plan, and start delivering.
The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
I thank the interim Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton), for securing this debate, and all colleagues for taking part. I have been asked to condense my comments, so I hope that I can address her questions, but if I do not cover them, we will of course make sure that she has a written response.
We are honest about the challenges facing the health service, and we are serious about solving them. That is why we published the independent review led by Lord Darzi, which provided a full and frank assessment of the state in which the nation’s health service was left by the Conservatives after 14 years of government, aided in the first five years by Liberal Democrat colleagues. That investigation highlighted the critical challenges facing the NHS, and we have heard about more of them today. They include a significant increase in people living with multiple long-term conditions, and growing demands for mental health services, particularly among children and young people. That is why we are taking the steps that we are taking.
The investment we are already making in 2025-26, the outcome of the recent spending review and the forthcoming 10-year health plan will address these root causes by delivering our plan for change commitments, investing in preventive health care and modernising NHS infrastructure, so that we radically reform the NHS. We will deliver three shifts to ensure that the health service can tackle the problems of today—caused by the Conservatives—and of tomorrow. They are: shifting care from hospitals to community; shifting from analogue to digital; and shifting from sickness to prevention.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington said that there were highly optimistic assumptions in the planning process, and that robust, detailed plans and efficiency savings were needed if we are to deliver on those assumptions. I agree. I am optimistic about our ability to deliver, but I am also realistic and very focused on delivery. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman), I am already seeing improvements, as are most Members in their constituencies. May I wish him a happy birthday for July, while we are here? My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) rightly said that the Labour Government did this before, and we will do it again.
The estimates set the Department of Health and Social Care a resource spending budget of £208.1 billion and a capital DEL—departmental expenditure limit—budget of £13.6 billion, an increase from the 2024-25 supplementary estimates budget of £9.6 billion and £2 billion respectively. On capital, we have, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) said, reversed the shocking decision by previous Governments to keep raiding capital budgets in order to keep the revenue going. That is why NHS buildings across our constituencies are in the state that they are in, and why we do not have the infrastructure that we need. I was pleased to visit Airedale hospital recently to see the work being done to repair it. On digital and tech, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington will notice that we have a £10 billion dedicated spend for the issues that she quite rightly raised.
The Department covers a wider family of organisations, and I can assure the House that we are focused on all parts of the departmental family to make sure that taxpayers’ money is spent as efficiently and effectively as possible. Everybody here has raised particular issues to do with the NHS, so I will briefly remind Members of the outcome of the spending review that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor recently announced. The spending review includes £29 billion more day-to-day funding in real terms than in 2023-24 and the largest-ever capital health budget; there will be a £2.3 billion real-terms increase in capital spending over the spending review period. That is our commitment to the British public. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson), with his great experience of the health service, said that we need to make sure that we have good public administration. The multi-year settlements can help the system to plan much better.
This record investment puts the NHS on a sustainable footing to deliver for the British people. We will cut waiting lists so that, by the end of the Parliament, 92% of patients will start consultant-led treatment for non-urgent health conditions within 18 weeks, delivering on the Prime Minister’s plan for change commitment to prioritise people’s health. We will support the shift from analogue to digital with the investment of £10 billion in NHS technology and transformation between 2026-27 and 2028-29—an increase of almost 50% from 2025-26. We will repair the NHS estate, continuing to deliver the 25 hospitals, with £30 billion over the next five years for day-to-day maintenance and critical safety risks, including the eradication of RAAC. None of that happened under the Conservatives.
We will enable 2% productivity growth per year, unlocking £17 billion of savings to be reinvested in frontline services. As well as delivery, the British people rightly expect us to ensure value from this huge investment in the health service. The Secretary of State has marked 2025-26 as a financial reset year with the publication of this year’s planning guidance. He has been clear that all systems must live within their means, exhausting all opportunities to improve productivity, tackle waste and take decisions on how to prioritise resources to best meet the health needs of their local population.
All systems are now planning to achieve a balanced financial position in 2025-26, recognising that £2.2 billion of deficit support has already been provided. We will therefore close the £4.4 billion initial gap in full. Financial plans support the delivery of key operational performance targets for elective, cancer, and urgent and emergency care at a national level set out in the guidance. We are working closely with NHS England on key aspects of delivering that. I assure the Chair of the Select Committee that I meet colleagues from across the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England weekly to go through those plans in a robust manner.
There is a lot to get through, so I am sorry that we have lost a lot of time to respond to colleagues. We are particularly looking at productivity and efficiency targets. We are ensuring that the financial performance and improvement programme for 2025-26 learns the lessons of the past. We will focus on cost variation and on upskilling finance teams and wider leadership to ensure that there is good governance in our reporting practice. We will issue the NHS performance assessment framework and have a targeted approach to recovery because the current model does not work. We are looking at ICB reform, as has been discussed. We want to ensure there is a reduction in the variation of cost across the system so that we can get more care and support to the frontline. We are focusing much more on medium-term planning to have a long-term financially sustainable system for systems and providers.
Thanks to this Government’s record investment, we are taking steps towards fixing the foundations of our NHS to make it fit for the future. We will set out more details on our plans shortly in the forthcoming 10-year plan, which will lead the NHS to meet the challenges set out in the plan for change and build an NHS fit for the future.
Paulette Hamilton
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken. The Health and Social Care Committee will continue to scrutinise the health and social care sectors. The Committee remains united in the view that we need a programme in place to reform social care. The spending review and the funding tells us the scale of the challenge. On 5 July, the NHS will be 77 years old. I want to pay tribute to and thank all the healthcare staff and workers in the NHS and say a big happy birthday to the NHS.
Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).
Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The debate will be opened by the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for finding time for this important and urgent debate. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is responsible for some of the biggest areas that impact all of us every single day, and I welcome the ambitious drive of the Deputy Prime Minister and her Ministers to deliver in those areas.
For too long, we have simply failed to build the homes that people need: the affordable homes for young people stuck at home or in the unaffordable private rented sector; the family homes for people whose kids have outgrown sleeping in the same room; and the social rent homes to get people off the social housing waiting lists and give the 164,000 homeless children a safe and permanent roof over their head.
I welcome that the Department is addressing head-on the financial distress that many local authorities are in. Last year, a record 30 local authorities received so-called exceptional financial support, which allows them to sell long-term assets or take out loans just to pay for their day-to-day costs. Due to the pressures they are under, some councils now have no choice but to hollow out their services in order to deliver vital services for residents. How can that be sustainable in 2025? How can it be fair that local people ultimately pay the price when their councils cannot fix up their town centres and have to cut vital services like bin collections just to make ends meet?
If the Department is going to get to grips with these dual crises and deliver on its ambitions, its plans to address them must be fully funded. When we look at the estimate and the recent spending review, there is good news for affordable housing and social housing, although I do have some questions for the Minister, which I will come to. On local authority finances, however, the Select Committee remains concerned that no new money is on the way. The spending review promises
“an average overall real terms increase in local authority core spending power”,
but only if local authorities increase council tax by the maximum allowable under legislation, passing the buck on to councils and raising the taxes we all pay in our local area.
If the Department is serious about ensuring everyone has access to an affordable home, we must end the decades of failure to build the homes we desperately need. That is why I welcome the Government’s ambition and commitment to deliver 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament, but evidence to our Select Committee from the sector has been clear: if the Government want to increase house building towards delivering more than 300,000 homes a year and reaching their target, social housing must be a substantial part of that mix. Ministers have said that the 1.5 million target is “stretching”, and the message we have heard from the sector is clear. In November, the Minister for Housing and Planning told us that, rather than a target of 300,000 homes per year over five years,
“The trajectory is an upward one”.
He said:
“The precise curve of that trajectory is dependent on factors like… the spending review settlement”.
We therefore warmly welcome the announcement in the spending review that the next affordable homes programme for 2026 onwards will be worth £39 billion. The estimate provides almost £400 million of uplift for the current affordable homes programme, which runs from 2021 to 2026. It is important that we continue to fund that if we are to reach the aim of 1.5 million new homes, but we need to start the building now, not towards the end of the decade. That is why I would be grateful to get some clarity from the Minister and the Department. Ministers have said they will publish a long-term housing strategy later this year, to set out how they will meet the 1.5 million target.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
This morning I met one of my constituents who is a care leaver, and she spoke of the huge challenges she faced in getting housing, partly because of the lack of affordable housing. Does my hon. Friend agree that supporting care leavers needs to be part of the housing strategy?
Florence Eshalomi
I thank my hon. Friend for that really important intervention. It is clear that so many people desperately want to get their foot on the housing ladder and are worried about the precarious nature of private renting, which is why we welcome the Government’s ambition to end no-fault evictions, but there is much more we can do, and it starts with building the homes.
It is important that the Government set out their plan for reaching their target, instead of leaving it too late, so I have three questions for the Minister. First, when will the House have clarity on how much funding will be coming forward in each year of the 10-year affordable homes programme? The Government have said that spending will reach £4 billion a year in 2029-30. What does that mean until then? While the £400 million uplift accounted for the affordable homes programme is welcome, it is not clear that that is a sufficient rise for the Government to achieve their goal of 1.5 million new homes.
Secondly, when will we see the long-term housing strategy? The Government have said that the strategy will be published “later this year”. Now that we have the long-term certainty of 10 years’ worth of funding, housing associations are calling out for clarity—they want to get building the homes that we need.
Thirdly, what discussions is the Department having with Homes England about the design of the new affordable homes programme? What is the Minister’s view on how much of that funding should go to shared ownership or right to buy? My Committee has consistently called on the Department to set out how that target will be achieved by tenure, including the important target of social rented homes.
My Committee has been undertaking an inquiry into local government funding and we have heard that local government continues to be under severe financial strain. Local authorities across the country are being asked to deliver ever more, but simply have not been given adequate funding to do so. I welcome the Department’s day-to-day spending in respect of local government and the uplift of 22%—£2.5 billion overall—according to the proposed estimate.
However, the financial strain councils are facing is almost entirely driven by high-cost, demand-led services, over which councils have little control. Those services, which include the provision of social care and homelessness support, are vital and often relied on by some of the most vulnerable people in our respective areas. The cost of social care has soared over recent years. In 2023-24, local authorities in England spent £20.5 billion on adult social care—19% of the total service net expenditure. If children’s social care is included in that figure, it is over 30% of the total budget.
A significant proportion of the 22% uplift in the estimate comes from new money—over £850 million—for adult social care grants. I welcome that much-needed injection of funding. There is also an uplift of £684 million for children’s social care, but that figure appears to be somewhat inflated by a budget transfer from the Department for Education. While that uplift for the Ministry is welcome, it still may not be enough.
I want to touch briefly on homelessness and temporary accommodation again. Our first inquiry as a Select Committee in this Parliament deliberately chose to look at the sharp end of the housing crisis, and we published reports on children in temporary accommodation and rough sleeping. We found that at the heart of the crisis are over 165,000 homeless children and their families, who are often voiceless, out of sight and stuck in completely unsuitable temporary accommodation. That is also damaging council finances. I have repeated the figure before and I will repeat it again: councils spent £2.29 billion on temporary accommodation in 2023-24, which amounts to London boroughs spending a combined total of £4 million per day on temporary accommodation. That is not sustainable.
The estimate includes over £260 million in funding for the rough sleeping prevention grant, and an uplift of £194 million in the homelessness prevention grant. Again, while these uplifts are a positive step in the right direction, my Committee heard that the restrictions placed on the homelessness prevention grant are quite troubling for some London councils. The new ringfencing introduced for 2025-26 requires almost 50% of that grant to be spent on that specifically. The homelessness situation in the capital is not deceasing and boroughs are spending almost 80% of that funding on temporary accommodation. The Committee urges the Government to engage with councils to solve the issue, to ensure that we do not see a reduction in provision and to address homelessness levels.
The current system also has small, short-term pots of funding. We urge the Department to reform those funding streams to ensure that there is long-term sustainable funding, instead of multiple, short-term funding pots.
My Committee is concerned that there is slow progress on the inter-ministerial group that is developing the strategy. We know that the Department plans to publish that “later this year”. This area may not be in the Minister’s direct remit, but will he be more specific about when we will get that strategy? Given that we cannot end homelessness without building the social homes we need, could the homelessness strategy be published at the same time as the long-term housing strategy?
There is so much to welcome in the estimate for 2025-26. The Government are moving in the right steps and the right directions, but we need to hear the detail of the affordable homes programme funding, especially if we are to deliver a boost to housing before the end of this Parliament. We need to ensure that our local authorities are on a stable footing to provide for the most vulnerable in our society, whether it is those who need adult social care, people sleeping rough or families at risk of homelessness. I welcome the funding commitments outlined in this estimate, but I urge the Government to go further and be more ambitious in their funding and financial support for these priority areas. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to my questions.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. We have far too many speakers, because this debate must conclude at 7 pm. We will have a hard speaking limit of three minutes. Interventions are up to the lead speaker, but if they are not made or taken, I could get everybody in. That is something to keep you going for a bit. [Interruption.] Yes, the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) remaining quiet will help enormously.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I rise to the three-minute challenge. We hear that this is the biggest investment in social and affordable housing in a generation. I am sure we all remember the day when we got the keys to our first home and how that felt. We are told there will be £39 billion over 10 years, but the real test is whether it reaches the councils and communities that need it the most. As ever, we need detail and clarity, and once again it is lacking from this Government and these estimates—I fear that is because of their pursuit of their ideologically driven utopia.
Will the Government commit to publishing the regional allocation of local authority housing and affordable homes programme funds, which is critical to understanding the impact on our own communities? We must ensure that funding flows to not just city regions, but towns such as Walsall and the Walsall borough, where my constituency sits. Local authorities must have fair access to the affordable homes programme and to infrastructure support.
I have previously expressed my concerns in a debate on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill about the lack of democratic accountability that this Government will create in their approach to planning. A further point, which has been expressed by the National Association of Local Councils, is that the Minister’s Department is not proceeding with commissioning new neighbourhood planning support services from 2025. I feel that that is just another kick in the teeth for local parish and town councils.
I know that the Minister is a good man and brings loads of experience to this place from his time in local government, but I do not believe that his Government are interested in local communities, preferring to drive a coach and horses over our precious green spaces. I look at how Birmingham’s housing targets are being slashed, yet ours across the Walsall borough are being hiked up. Maybe it is because Birmingham is incompetent and cannot empty its bins, but I will leave that for another day.
These are arbitrary, Whitehall-driven and centralised targets. I have long campaigned for development to happen on brownfield first, but that needs real funding for remediation, infrastructure and up-front costs. Under Andy Street’s leadership and a Conservative Government, we showed in the west midlands that we can remediate brownfield sites—look at the Caparo and Harvestime sites—and deliver for local people, but we need funding, which is lacking in this estimate. A failure to remediate is a failure to regenerate our towns, cities, communities and local economies. I have done it in less than three minutes, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)
I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for launching last week’s consultation on the fair funding review 2.0. It was a beautiful moment for those of us who represent rural constituencies such as mine in Shrewsbury, because the consultation will ask councils to put forward evidence that explains the additional costs of delivering services across a rural area—the all-important rural sparsity. What does it mean? It means that in Shropshire, we have to travel distances of up to 40 miles. Imagine every person driving for social care and every school transport driving to a special needs school. That can cost up to eight times more than under an urban council.
We must think about our demographics. On average, we are nine years older than the rest of the country. The pressure that that puts on social care means that more than 80% of our budget is already spent just on social care. I worked in local government for 25 years. My job was in local government funding at the regional and local levels, and I can say that everybody who worked with me—from every party and in every rural council—has been lobbying for 20 years for this kind of fairer funding for rurality. My plea goes out to those who are listening that they will engage with their local councils and ask them to send the evidence to this consultation, because this Labour Government are listening to rural areas and delivering for them.
Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
I welcome the opportunity to contribute on the important matter of how we spend money on local government, given the huge range of services it provides to each of our constituencies. The residents of Bicester and Woodstock share the pressures that many areas face when it comes to housing and homelessness. Like so many Members of this House, my surgeries are dominated by those who are unable to access the social housing that they wish—those who are living in inappropriate accommodation, often trying to look after their children in environments in which no child can advance their education. As such, I very much welcome the Government’s words about their ambition in this area.
However, I regret the fact that during the debate on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, the Government resisted the request from our party that they make a firm commitment to make 150,000 social homes available each year. I very much hope that the Minister will look for a way to implement that goal in practice, even though he resisted the legislative request. I also welcome the fact that the Government have committed to the abolition of the Vagrancy Act 1824. That campaign, which my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) has run for many years, is coming to fruition. It is so important that we do not criminalise those who are unable to access housing.
I will now turn to the broader issue of financial predictability that our local authorities face. The Minister will know the importance of financial management—indeed, I am sure he is caught up in it almost every day of his working life—but for local authorities to plan, the Government must give them time. As such, could the Minister give us two undertakings: first, that the local government finance settlement will be multi-year, in line with the spending review, and will be set for three years; and secondly, that the draft local government financial settlement on which councils start to plan will be announced much earlier than 18 December as it was last year? That announcement was one of the latest in any year.
In common with many Members, the other theme of my surgeries is the plight of many families who are coping with a child with special educational needs and disabilities who cannot access the services they need. Whether it is a lack of places in special schools or an inability to get the assessments they need to estimate their educational potential, too many young people are being let down. As such, given the huge deficits that have been accumulated in high needs blocks—in Oxfordshire, for example, the figure is £137 million—does the Minister recognise that councils simply cannot wait for an education or schools White Paper in the autumn to begin to understand how they will manage those figures in the future? Can he give some guidance to councils about the Government’s intentions for the next financial year, so that they can start to plan for what could otherwise be deeply destabilising cuts?
Finally, one highlight of local government is how it touches many aspects of our constituents’ lives and provides many diverse services. I call on the Minister to look at the public health grant and its role in providing for preventive healthcare, working closely with the other branches of the health system. We have figures out to 2026, I believe, but predictability about the future of that budget is a matter of huge importance.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to contribute to today’s estimates debate. I am really pleased that early progress has been made under this Labour Government, particularly the renewed commitment to invest in our communities, with a focus on addressing the housing crisis and fairer funding for local authorities. I commend Ministers on the shift in direction; however, while this Government are certainly doing more than their predecessors, I would like them to go much further.
I welcome the Chancellor’s confirmation that £39 billion will be invested in a new 10-year affordable homes programme, which provides the opportunity for long-term planning rather than short-term fixes. However, Shelter and the National Housing Federation estimate that we will need to build at least 90,000 new social rent homes every year to meet demand, and while the Government have set a target of 1.5 million homes over the course of this Parliament, they have yet to clarify how many of those homes will be social rent properties. As such, it is vital that the long-term housing strategy—which is expected later this year—provides more detail.
Shelter’s “Brick by Brick” report highlights that people earning up to £30,000 are failing affordability checks for so-called affordable rented properties. We urgently need to redefine affordability and recognise the potential of social housing. I welcome Liverpool city council’s recent housing strategy, which includes a target of 8,000 new homes by 2027, with 20% designated as affordable housing. However, in my constituency, the housing crisis is both acute and immediate. We face a severe shortage of genuinely affordable homes. Too many families are trapped in poor-quality housing, waiting lists are growing, and rent levels are simply unaffordable for those on average incomes. I place on record the ongoing campaign by residents in the Welsh streets against unjustifiable rent hikes imposed by Placefirst. Residents recorded their first major victory with a rent cap of 6%. That was a significant reduction from the 30% that was proposed. I thank the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now and the local councillor, Rahima Farah, for their great campaigning.
Housing delivery does not happen in a vacuum. Local government is the engine room of our communities, and it has been running on empty for far too long. I welcome proposals to redistribute £2 billion in funding from wealthier councils. That is a vital step towards a fairer settlement for local authorities, but its success will depend on swift implementation, transparency and an assurance that no local authority will be worse off. After years of damage, we are beginning to see the rebuilding of local services and investment in our housing stock, but let us not mistake a good start for a job done. The foundations have been laid, and it is encouraging to see progress and further plans are in place. Now, let us build with urgency, with ambition and with the determination that our communities deserve.
Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)
I commend the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for bringing forward this estimates day debate. It is a pleasure to serve under her stewardship on that Committee.
This country continues to feel the impact of Labour’s disastrous and anti-growth policies. The day-to-day spending of this Department is increasing by more than £2.4 billion—an increase of 22%—which is welcome, but it is clear that Labour’s plans to save on our planning system and the cost of local government are once again a false promise. The £2.3 billion extra being given in local government resources grants will not help our communities and local people, as £500 million of it is just to fund Labour’s detrimental increase in employer national insurance. That tax is hurting every business up and down this country, and it is placing unsustainable pressure on key sectors, such as the care industry and those who provide early years care.
Labour continues to U-turn on its commitments and policies. The impact of its changes to personal independence payments and its cruel cuts to winter fuel payments can be seen in the £800 million increase in costs for adult social care. That is yet another example of Labour’s headline mistakes costing money. An additional £399 million has already been allocated for the affordable homes programme, and continual rises for that are unsustainable. Labour will not deliver its target of 1.5 million new homes, with Savills recently predicting that as few as 840,000 homes could be built. That is significantly less than the 2.5 million homes and 750,000 affordable homes built under the last Conservative Government.
Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem with the Government’s housing policy is that they are failing to identify the right places to build the right homes? Until they do that, they will not deliver these eyewatering numbers, especially if they are relying on greenfield rural sites.
Mr Mohindra
I agree with my hon. Friend. We are fortunate that the Minister has a background in local government, so he understands those pressures. I look forward to further clarification on grey belt and building on brownfield first, which every constituency MP wishes to see, but it is not yet transposed on to local plans and the growth ambitions of this Government.
I was about to come on to green belt and the changes to the national planning policy framework. Those changes will not solve the problems that we all have identified as the bottleneck in increasing development on non-green-belt land. Labour’s policies unfortunately simply cause damage.
In the spring statement, the Chancellor claimed that the planning reforms would be the main driver of the reduction in borrowing that she has promised. However, there is no obvious reduction yet in the money given to local authorities, with the amount estimated for the day-to-day spending of local government up 22% from the main estimate last year. Although the Treasury might celebrate that as being 3% less than budgeted at the spending review, this dramatic increase, along with the increases of 30% in communities day-to-day spending and 27% to the communities capital fund, is simply unsustainable.
Labour continues to show how it prioritises areas where it has support to the detriment of rural areas, such as in my constituency, and areas in need of support around the United Kingdom. The cuts of £101 million in the levelling-up fund and £183 million in the UK shared prosperity fund are disappointing, and the non-delivery of the services grant and the rural services delivery grant will place pressure on services that are already struggling in rural and semi-rural areas such as my constituency, including bus services.
Instead, Labour is rewarding poor financial management by Labour-run councils and mayoralties across the UK, with £823 million being used for a recovery grant and a funding floor and the Labour-controlled Greater Manchester and West Midlands authorities receiving the first integrated settlements, which could cause an increase of over £400 million in spending.
Labour says that it is cutting local government costs by creating unitary authorities, but that is just placing greater control in their hands at the expense of local democracy. This estimate shows how little control Labour has over local government spending—and I will have to finish on that point. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how he will deal with these matters.
Chris Curtis (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for calling this important debate. Let me start with what I think should be seen as positive news and welcomed across the Chamber: the once-in-a-generation increase in funding for social housing. We in the Select Committee have heard about some of the dire consequences of the housing crisis that was left to this Government, especially its effect on the thousands of children growing up in temporary accommodation. The extra funding will mean that, finally, the dial will start to move.
I hope that I am not breaking any confidences in saying that the Committee Chair and I were at a dinner with many representatives of the industry on the evening that the spending review was announced. It is, I think, very rare in politics to sit in a room with people who are pretty unconditionally happy with a policy that has been announced—and, in this instance, happy about not just the extra money but the 10-year funding settlement, which I do not think has been mentioned yet, and also the access to remediation funds, which will make a real difference to the number of homes that are built.
This is important for the entire housing sector. The model that we have for building homes in Britain nowadays means that housing funded by section 106 contributions is struggling to be purchased, because the amount provided for social housing has not been good enough. There is real confidence that this funding will start to fix that problem and move us closer to the 1.5 million target, but, while the money is good, I think it important to urge the Government to go as far and as fast as possible with planning reform, and not to row back on the commitments we have made to ensure that the money is spent effectively and efficiently and we can unlock the homes that the country needs. It is also important for us to start to have a conversation about the Building Safety Regulator, which is clearly not working at present and is holding up projects. We will hear back from the new towns taskforce shortly; I hope that the Government will put the necessary funds behind that programme.
It is great news that we have the extra money in the multi-year funding settlement, but most councils will acknowledge that they are still concerned about stretched resources, and, again, it is important for us to go as far and as fast as possible in reforming special educational needs and social care services to ensure that they are fit for the future.
Let me end by saying—because the Minister for Local Government and English Devolution is present—that it is notable that the spending review provides for an increase in the funding pots that are available specifically to combined authorities. We in Milton Keynes feel that the Department has acted rather like Lucy pulling the ball away from Charlie Brown, so please will the Department redouble its efforts to create combined authorities, not just in Milton Keynes but across the country, so that areas that currently do not have them are not left behind?
Mr Lee Dillon (Newbury) (LD)
I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee on securing the debate, and on the robustness of her speech holding the Government to account.
The Department covers many areas and councils themselves cover more than 700 services, but I shall concentrate on housing, hopefully in the spirit of constructive opposition. Like many others who are in the Chamber today, I support the Government’s headline ambition to build 1.5 million homes—it is a goal that I share, as do many in the housing sector—but I remain concerned that the Government are still unwilling, or unable, to answer my question about how many of those homes will be genuinely affordable. Far too many people across the country are priced out of home ownership, with house prices rising at an unsustainable rate.
Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
My observation is that there is simply no such thing as affordable housing in my constituency. If someone is earning £12 an hour and £20,000 a year, a house that costs £30,000 is not affordable. Does my hon. Friend agree that the only sort of housing that people can afford in my constituency is social housing?
Mr Dillon
My hon. Friend will know the needs of her constituency better than I do, but as someone who worked in social housing for 14 years, I will always advocate for the delivery of more social housing units.
In my constituency of Newbury, the average house price in April was £398,000—up by 6.2% on the previous year. Owning a home is fast becoming a distant dream not just in west Berkshire, but across the country. Although I welcome the target for new homes, I urge the Government to make affordability central to their plans.
The homes we build must reflect the needs of real people, not just developers or investors. I was pleased to see the allocation of £39 billion over a 10-year period in the recent spending review—one of the most ambitious long-term investments in affordable housing for decades. I hope that it kick-starts the generational step change that we need to deliver affordable homes, but it must include council homes and social rented homes.
We Liberal Democrats have been clear that we need 150,000 social homes built every year—homes that people can genuinely afford and that are linked to local infrastructure and services. Sadly, with the reduction of neighbourhood planning, that will now be less likely to happen. I challenge the Government to match their ambition by setting their own target for social housing delivery. Without that, our housing mix will be dictated by the private market, and that is simply not a viable solution to the housing crisis we face.
I also welcome the £13.2 billion commitment to the warm homes plan. The decision by the Conservatives to scrap our home installation policies have had a real cost, and an estimated 1.6 million homes have been built with lower energy efficiency and higher bills as a result—a Conservative legacy. With 6.1 million households now in fuel poverty, we must act urgently to fix Britain’s cold and leaky housing stock.
As the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) said, the spending review included a 10-year social rent settlement at CPI plus 1%, which I again welcome. Housing associations have long been calling for that, and I am grateful that the Government have listened. That is a positive move, but we must ensure that rents remain affordable and that social landlords are held to account. We cannot allow social rents to drift higher and tenants to be priced out once again, and let us not forget the 1.5 million people who are still waiting for social housing.
As the Member of Parliament for Newbury and a member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, I will continue to hold this Government to account—not just on how many homes they build, but on how many people they help.
Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)
I start by paying tribute to officers and councillors in the London borough of Bexley for all they do. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for securing today’s debate. For the record, my wife is employed by our local authority as a special educational needs co-ordinator in a local authority school.
I will briefly touch on three things. First, I welcome the record investment in housing, but I remain deeply disappointed that my Conservative-controlled council sold off its housing stock 26 years ago, has no housing revenue account and, through its own development company, has built 126 homes on three sites and has not supplied a single affordable home on any of those sites. The council has used viability assessments to argue that it cannot build affordable homes. In the housing plans that come forward, I hope we can find ways for my local authority to begin to deliver the affordable homes that we desperately need. Hopefully, that will be through the election of a Labour council next year, but we will wait and see—it has been a long time since we have had one in my patch. My local authority is complaining about the ever-dwindling stock of private rented properties that it can purchase, but it needs to turn its attention to the moneys coming forward so that it can finally deliver affordable homes.
Secondly, on local government funding, my council cut 15% of its staff in 2021. It had to sell a building in order to issue redundancy notices and, at the same time, had to come to the previous Government for a capitalisation order. We hear fantasy economics from the Opposition, but let us be clear: the cuts that were made to local authorities happened under a Conservative council and a Conservative Government in my patch. I hope that the fair funding review will lead to some investment, and I know that my council is lobbying hard. There have been demographic changes in my patch, and I hope that we begin to see some investment in local services.
Lastly, as I mentioned in the education debate—and, again, we have heard it before—we need guarantees about the safety valve that will be ending next March. My council did sign a safety valve agreement, but it continues to overspend, despite the commitments my Conservative council made to the previous Conservative Government, and that is a ticking time bomb for my council. On those points of how we can invest in housing, begin to have a fair funding review and look at the safety valve hanging over my council, I would welcome the Minister’s comments.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
I commend the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for securing this important debate. I congratulate her on her fair and robust approach to leading the Committee, and every now and again she allows me to ask some difficult questions of Government Ministers, for which I am very grateful. All of us on the Committee have taken very seriously our duty of scrutinising the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government over the past year, recognising its widespread responsibilities and the deep impact its decisions have on our constituents right across the country. I wish to mention a couple of those responsibilities.
One of the biggest drivers of the financial difficulties facing councils has been the catastrophic rise in the amount of money spent on children with special educational needs. This is very close to my heart, as I have seen it from both sides. I grew up with a brother and sister who both benefited from SEND provision, and I have also been a local councillor in Hertfordshire. In just 10 years, the number of children in the county with education, health and care plans has grown by a staggering 223%, which is even higher than the 140% national rise. The funding has not kept up. Incredibly, Hertfordshire receives the third lowest funding per head out of every authority in the country. If it was funded at the national average, an extra £47 million would be available for children with the most complex needs across Hertfordshire.
I hope the Minister agrees that it should not matter where in this country someone is born, because the system should have the resources to meet their educational needs. Removing this historical funding formula would be the first step in creating such a system. The Minister will of course point out that the total reorganisation of local government in this country is the answer to these problems, and that the efficiencies promised by huge unitary councils will solve the funding crisis. However, residents of my constituency of Broxbourne already feel that they are getting a bad deal from the county council, so exactly how will forcing them into a much larger council, which will have a much longer list of responsibilities for an even bigger area, help this situation?
As with everything the Government touch, one of the inevitable consequences of this reorganisation will be higher taxes for my constituents. It will be constituents living under Conservative-controlled Broxbourne council who will feel this the most, as they will go from paying the lowest non-parish council tax in the country to, inevitably, a higher charge under a merged authority.
There is no way that efficiencies will cover the extra spending of these bloated authorities. Reorganisation itself is not cost-free, and I am yet to see councils that have gone through a reorganisation come out saying they are awash with cash. I hope the Minister is genuinely listening to the concerns raised in this debate, and will come back with the Department of Education in the near future with genuine solutions to the SEND funding crisis, and ensure that all our constituents have a fair say when local government reorganisation is forced upon them in our areas.
Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)
As the newest member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, I want to start with my own thank you to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), who has been such a welcoming Chair and who drives forward our business with passion and conviction.
I will focus my brief remarks on the settlement for social housing, which has the potential to be transformative in our mission to build social and affordable homes at scale. To understand why the challenge is so stark and why the funding is so badly needed, it is right to reflect on recent history. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition and the subsequent Conservative Governments made an ideological decision not to build homes for social rent, and their lamentable record stands in contrast to what went before. In the last two years of the previous Labour Administration, 2009-10 and 2010-11, the Government built 73,053 homes for social rent, but in the last two years of the Conservative Government, 2022-23 and 2023-24—and those were the best two years—only 19,365 homes were completed, which is a reduction of nearly 75%.
We had 14 wasted years, in which the crisis deepened for the 1.5 million people on social housing waiting lists, for the 164,000 children living in temporary accommodation, and for the countless more living in overcrowded and inadequate homes in the private rented sector. It is a source of pride in Welwyn Hatfield that we have retained significantly more council housing than the national average—just over one in four people in my constituency lives in a social home, and in Peartree ward in Welwyn Garden City that rises to 44%—but that still is not sufficient to meet demand. We have more than 3,000 people on our waiting list and growing numbers living in temporary accommodation—a story familiar to Members representing communities all across the country.
In the spending review, the commitment to investing £39 billion over 10 years in the affordable homes programme was a statement of intent. This is the best financial settlement for social housing in a generation, but its ultimate success will be measured by the homes delivered and the lives changed. As a member of the Select Committee, I want to continue to hear from people on the frontline about what else is needed to act as a catalyst for activity. Do developers have access to the skilled workforce they need to scale up development? Is the priority to bring forward stalled sites, and how quicky can that be done? Do people in the sector share my experience that demand for homes for social rent is greater than for any other tenure type?
Planning and building homes takes time. There is inevitably a lag between a major funding announcement like this and seeing the impact in the communities we represent, but we have to move as fast as we can. Time is short and the stakes are high. I commend the Government for making this investment. Now, we are all invested in making sure that it delivers results.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
When the Chancellor gave her spending review statement, I was very disappointed that she did not use the words “local authority” or “council” once. Worse still, she granted the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government a tiny increase that we all know does not meet the challenge. It is an unfair deal to those who need housing and those who rely on council services. I know that as the MP for Woking. Sadly, I am the MP for the most indebted bankrupt council in the country. I fear that more councils will follow suit; 25 have said that they may soon issue a section 114 notice, which effectively means bankruptcy. Local government needs investment, so that we can shape our local places and our constituencies to ensure that vulnerable people are protected. I do not want more councils to follow Woking borough council’s route.
The Local Government Association says that there will be an £8 billion funding gap by the end of this Parliament as a result of that financial settlement. That is unacceptable. The Government’s answer to that is to put up council tax by 5% every year for this Parliament. That is unreasonable. We know that council tax is not fair. It is an out-of-date system for funding our local authorities. The fact that it is based on early 1990s property values is not acceptable. Buckingham Palace has a smaller council tax bill than the average three-bedroom semi-detached in Blackpool.
I will ask the Minister three questions. Will he commit to reforming the council tax system to ensure that local government is properly funded, and to ensure that funding is not based on that unfair system? Local government is struggling because of social care. Will he agree to lobby the Government to bring forward their social care review, so that it does not report in three years’ time? It urgently needs to report much sooner, so that we can tackle the social care crisis, which is causing a problem for our NHS, and particularly for local government. Finally, on special educational needs, we MPs hear from so many families that the system is not working. We hear from councils that it is putting them on the brink of insolvency. Does the Minister agree that the Government White Paper and the reforms in the autumn should come with a proper funding solution that supports our vulnerable children and ensures that councils will be financially solvent?
Joe Powell (Kensington and Bayswater) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), the Chair of the Select Committee, for securing the debate.
It is such a relief that we now have a Government who acknowledge the scale of the housing challenge, and are prepared to put serious investment and policy change behind it. In my constituency, there are 3,000 families on the social housing waiting list, and more than 2,000 people in temporary accommodation. It is those people I think of when we look at these numbers. There are no quick fixes, and we should be honest about that. However, the package in this spending review—the biggest investment in social and genuinely affordable homes for 50 years—is hugely welcome; there is the £39 billion for the affordable homes programme, which has been mentioned, the 10-year rent deal, and the new low-interest loans.
There is also something that I have been advocating for: equal access to the building safety fund for housing associations, so that money can go towards improving homes, not just remediating buildings. I strongly believe that the legacy of Grenfell cannot be that it is harder for people to get a safe and healthy home. I have been clear to the housing associations in my constituency that we expect radical improvements in their services—on repairs, on damp and mould, and on communications. My message to them was that this Government will get them the support that they need to get on a sounder financial footing, but that must be accompanied by a commitment to addressing those failings. We have kept our side of the bargain, so can the Minister outline his expectation that housing associations will invest in their homes following the spending review? Can he also give an update on opening up access to the building safety fund? On building safety, I hope that the Government will take seriously the need to support the Building Safety Regulator in doing its job effectively, and the need to avoid a false choice between building safety and achieving the 1.5 million homes target.
The local government funding formula will have a major impact on our ability to secure safe and healthy homes. The consultation has just opened. I absolutely support the objective of tackling regional inequality in Britain, so I urge the Minister to ensure that any decisions made use accurate, up-to-date data that fairly reflects the reality.
Joe Powell
I am sorry; I do not have much time left.
That means including housing costs when analysing deprivation, ensuring that the daytime population is included, and ensuring that the huge pressure on temporary accommodation is factored in. We all want to reduce the need for temporary accommodation, but in the short term, we must not balance the temporary accommodation budget on the back of the everyday services on which our constituents rely; that would be another false choice. The package is a huge step forward, and I congratulate all Ministers on securing it; now is the time to deliver.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) on the way in which she introduced the debate, and I strongly support everything she said. Indeed, I support the sentiment and ambition of the Government’s announcement of £39 billion in investment. However, the Government must listen to local areas and, if they are intent on delivering their housing targets, must allow those areas to vary the way in which the targets are met.
I will cite the example of my area of Cornwall. It is one of the fastest-growing places in the United Kingdom, almost trebling its housing stock over the past 60 years, but the housing problems of local people have got significantly worse over that period. That does not mean that the answer is building fewer homes; it simply means that the target-setting process is not in itself the solution to the housing problems that such places face. These targets are often based on the delusion that the private market will collude with the Government in driving down the price of its finished product, which is clearly not the case. The Government need to allow that in some places, areas can set targets to meet need. That would mean that planning applicants had to demonstrate how they would meet need, rather than simply building homes that people cannot afford. That is a method that the Government need to consider.
Far too much of what goes into the planning system is about land value speculators taking far too much out of the development process. Setting high housing targets creates high hope value on all the land adjoining all our communities. It is like applying the rural exceptions policy, but around all our areas. We need to address the issues more effectively. The Government need to recognise that many shovel-ready projects are currently unviable, so when money is being considered for future housing projects, they need to look carefully at how they can get things moving very quickly.
In Cornwall, over the past decade, £500 million of taxpayers’ money has gone into the pockets of second and holiday homeowners, because tax incentives and loopholes support that. I urge the Government to look again at wider questions of housing injustice, and at the way that houses are being misdelivered in areas like mine, and to try to work with local communities and the council to ensure that we meet need, rather than developers’ greed.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
For millions, the affordable housing crisis is the clearest sign that Britain is broken. That is why I welcome the Government’s announcement of £39 billion for the affordable homes programme in the spending review. That is a significant investment, but getting the 160,000 homeless children out of temporary accommodation is a national emergency, and it demands urgent action. I ask Ministers to comment, in their response to this debate, on reports that much of this funding is back-loaded until after the next general election, with only relatively modest increases over the next three years.
We cannot ignore the human cost of delay. This is not a static problem, or a building waiting to be repaired. Childhood does not pause. We need to prove to the public that we are tackling the housing crisis now. When we fail to provide the basics of shelter and stability, we undermine the talents and contributions of the next generation. That failure not only harms those children, but diminishes our collective future. I urge Ministers to consider Shelter’s proposal that two thirds of the announced funding be spent in the first five years. Matching this would show true commitment to change, and offer real hope for the future.
We must also ensure that this funding is used to deliver the genuinely affordable homes needed to bring down spiralling waiting lists. My constituents are understandably hugely cynical; they are promised affordable housing, but so often what gets delivered is anything but. All the evidence shows that it is council housing that is desperately needed by families at the sharp end of the housing crisis. The affordable homes programme should deliver an end to decades of under-investment in housing for working-class communities—and I know that is what Ministers intended. The way to get there is with a clear public commitment that 80% of this investment will be for social rent.
To conclude, I welcome the fact that the headline figures are ambitious and encouraging, but the details must be refined to deliver the homes that workers need. Yes, that means more up-front investment, but there are solutions. Housing developers fuelled this crisis by building at rates that maximised profit while families waited, and by prioritising luxury builds while key workers struggled to find affordable homes. Just as the Government rightly used a windfall tax on oil and gas giants to lower energy bills, we should consider a windfall tax on the supernormal profits of the biggest housing developers. The major developers put profit before the public good, raking in billions while failing to deliver the homes that we need. They should help pay to fix the mess that they helped create.
Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak. I thank, too, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for bringing forward this debate, and for her excellent chairmanship of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which is evident from the contributions from across the House.
I am here to speak not only about how construction and building homes will help to create hundreds of thousands of good jobs, but about how we need to create millions more if we want everyone here to live a decent life. I am an economist, and I came to this place to ensure that everybody could earn a decent living and have enough money to pay the bills, but we are so far from that today. The average salary for a non-graduate is around £30,000. For two earners to raise two kids, they need to earn £35,000 each, but around 40% of full-time jobs pay less than that. That is 10 million workers who cannot afford a decent life, and those who cannot earn enough are turning away from Labour Members, as they have turned away from Conservative Members.
If we want everyone to have a decent job, the Government must help to create them. We are making a good start with house building. I welcome the £500 million that is going into affordable house building this year, and the £40 billion for the 10 years to come, because construction jobs are good non-graduate jobs. Building those 1.5 million homes means creating good jobs. A skilled construction worker earns £35,000. Around 300,000 of those jobs will be created when we build 1.5 million homes, and another 300,000 more jobs will be created in decarbonising buildings.
That is welcome, but we need to create a lot more good jobs if we want everyone to live a decent life. We need millions more—a lot more than the 600,000 jobs that will be created in the construction of homes and insulation. This is a job far bigger than housing and local government alone. Good jobs in healthcare, childcare and social care are all needed.
That is the path we should follow—the Government should create good jobs. We should not simply wish that enough good jobs will be created—that is the path we should not follow. In our technological era, growth alone does not automatically create enough good jobs where we need them, either for the people or places that require them. We came to this place to create a better life for all, but that is not possible for almost half of all workers because there are not enough good jobs. We can create hundreds of thousands of good jobs through construction, but we need to create millions more if we want everyone in this country to live a good life.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am a councillor on Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council.
Local government funding is in crisis, from social care to special needs, homelessness to high streets. Our councils—whose work impacts us all and who are the backbone of local service delivery—are being pushed to the brink. While the estimate sounds positive, it is way more complicated, just like the work that councils do. The lack of funding is not a new problem. The hollowing-out of local government has been happening for a decade. In my home councils of BCP and Dorset, central funding through the revenue support grant was slashed by between 95% and 98% over that time. The Government’s announcement that central funding for councils with low tax bases will be weighted sort of misses the point. Many councils in the south receive no revenue support grant and are already raising their council tax by the maximum 5% each year. The Government need to talk to the councils they are targeting and review this proposal before they create a new problem.
Local areas are dealing with ageing populations and soaring house prices, and councils risk having no choice but to take money directly from services for the poorest, sickest and most vulnerable. The three-year settlements are welcome to help planning, and the headline £13.5 billion increase in Department funding by 2028-29 sounds positive, but measured against 2025-26 it is actually a real-terms cut of 0.6%. While MHCLG’s day-to-day spending will rise by £2.5 billion, much of this comes through transfers. For example, much of the £857 million for adult social care is reallocated from children’s social care, and the £515 million to cover increased national insurance contributions does not cover the demand.
Adult social care is now the largest spending area for upper-tier authorities. Meanwhile, tensions between the NHS and councils over who funds the sick and elderly are growing, leaving families stuck in the middle. Carers bear the brunt, often being forced to choose between caring and working, which has knock-on effects on the wider economy and carers’ wellbeing. The situation is made worse because independent providers are not covered for the NICs increase. The Nuffield Trust estimates that the increase in national insurance will cost independent social care employers £940 million this year. Many are handing back contracts, unable to make the numbers add up, which is piling pressures on to councils. I urge the Minister to look closely at the impact of this change. The Liberal Democrats want a social care workforce plan, a royal college of care workers to improve recognition, and a higher carer’s minimum wage. We call on the Government to complete the Casey review within one year instead of three. The elderly, disabled and our NHS deserve better than further delay.
The crisis extends beyond adult care, affecting our youngest children too. SEND provision is, as we know, inconsistent and underfunded. Parents are exhausted, teachers are overwhelmed, and children are being left behind. We are relieved, rather than happy, that the statutory override will continue for another two years, because many councils would face insolvency within months without it, but this merely defers the inevitable. As debts outgrow reserves, councils cannot invest in their communities or drive local growth.
The upcoming White Paper must guarantee every child with an EHCP the support that works for them, make mainstream education more inclusive so that children can stay close to home with their peers, and urgently reform the funding formula. The funding formula does not work. In some areas, the annual base funding per pupil is £2,500 less than in others. Schools have to fund the first £6,000 for any special educational support, but some schools do not get £6,000 a year for a pupil’s whole education. The Liberal Democrats really are begging for that to be resolved. In specialist provision, I have seen independent settings charge more than £100,000 to educate children with moderate needs when a state-maintained special school is doing the same for £20,000; but, without alternatives, councils are forced to pay.
The loss of the £100 million rural services delivery grant was a huge blow to rural councils, so I welcome the consultation on reviewing that, but those councils face not just higher delivery costs but recruitment challenges. It was wrong for the Government to suggest that rural communities do not face the same deprivation—tell that to some of my constituents who have no mains gas and no sewerage, no job opportunities and are miles from anything.
The Liberal Democrats welcome the £267 million for rough sleeping and £194 million for homelessness prevention, and we are pleased that that has been ringfenced, but without a target for social house building, councils remain burdened with the costs of temporary accommodation. It is not just about money: the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee’s recent report revealed that temporary housing is detrimental to our children’s health, with it being a factor in the deaths of 74 children, including 58 infants, in the last five years. It also damages the developmental, mental health and life chances of every child in that situation. We therefore welcome the £39 billion investment in affordable housing, but we are disappointed to see how backloaded it is, meaning that many families will wait up to 10 years finally to get a roof over their heads.
Finally, I want to address devolution. The Liberal Democrats support genuine devolution, so we are disappointed that the Government have cancelled funding for neighbourhood plans and are discouraging the formation of new town and parish councils where there is local government reorganisation. Instead, we are seeing top-down area committees with no statutory powers. The spending review mentions funding for mayoral areas, but that benefits only those areas that are ready to go. What about the areas outside wave one such as Kent and Medway, or Wessex? Where is their support in the meantime? Our local councils deliver every day, but they cannot do it alone, so I urge the Government please to provide fair funding and real devolution for those areas.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
It has been a wide-ranging debate. I add my congratulations to the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for securing it and introducing it so well. I pay tribute to my Conservative colleagues—my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) and my hon. Friends the Members for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra) and for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking)—for sharing both their views, brought from their long experience in local government, and their great passion for their constituencies.
I will start with the striking speech by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley), who set out many of the challenges around local government finance in her constituency. I came away from that speech thinking, “Just wait until she finds out which party in government slashed the £8.8 million of rural delivery grant from her local authority, which has led it to say it is having to consult on reducing bin collections further—to just once every three weeks—and to literally turning the lights off in Shrewsbury to save the money necessary to balance the books following this local government finance settlement.”
When we come to the Chamber to debate the resource departmental expenditure limit and the capital departmental expenditure limit, it is really important, as hon. Members have done, that we set out the story behind that: what it means in our constituencies for our local authorities. When we started the debate, we knew that it was against a backdrop of a Budget last year that left councils net £1.5 billion worse off because of the rise in national insurance contributions. That alone took £1.5 billion out of local authorities’ capacity. Since then, we have seen a developing backdrop of rising inflation, which is now pushing 3.5%, and deteriorating economic conditions —in particular, rising Government borrowing—which may be one of the reasons why the Government are seeking to push back borrowing the capital that funds the housing programme in the hope that costs will come down in due course. But all these things are imposing rising costs on our local authorities.
I have enormous sympathy for the Minister, who I know has huge experience in local government. However, as Members from across the House have demonstrated in their contributions, the impact of the Department for Education’s decisions on SEND, the impact of the Home Office’s decisions on asylum funding—for Hillingdon, which serves about two-thirds of my constituency, that is, on its own, an additional £5 million per annum cost pressure—and the impact of Department of Health and Social Care decisions on public health, which have a significant impact on the costs local authorities face, are all accumulating.
That leaves the Minister and the Government with a series of difficult questions that they need to address. Having set out the existence of that substantial black hole in council budgets, and the black hole that a number of Members on all sides have referred to in housing delivery, the fact that the visible symptoms of council services, such as rough sleeping, are racing up—according to St Mungo’s charity, rough sleeping has risen by 27% in London alone—means we know that our local authorities face a significant challenge.
The questions that I hope the Minister will begin to address in his summing up are around the underlying financial assumptions behind the figures that are set out in the report. We know that there is always a tendency in Whitehall to see local government finance as an opportunity to centralise credit by announcing the positive things that we want to see money spent on and localising the blame by forcing councils to fund that through rising fees and charges or increases to council tax. When it comes to ensuring that the 1.5 million homes in our country that already have planning permission are delivered, there needs to be a relentless focus on getting that money out of the door and into the hands of local authorities and others to ensure that those homes can be delivered. The Opposition will scrutinise relentlessly, in search of the evidence that that is happening.
Our councils face this challenge against the backdrop of a potentially costly and disruptive reorganisation. We know that many councils have come forward with their own proposals for local government reorganisation. [Interruption.] The Minister says “All councils” from a sedentary position. All councils were asked, invited or, perhaps, required to put forward their proposals for reorganisation. However, we know that asking, for example, all the planning officers in the country to reapply for their jobs is unlikely to aid that focus on housing delivery.
Will the Minister clarify the following points in his response? First, will he set out the Department’s underlying assumptions on council tax rises, fees and charges, and discounts? It seems clear from the analysis being done by local authority finance officers that the underlying assumption is that all those things will rise in every council to the maximum possible extent, simply in order to stand still. What are the Government’s underlying assumptions about business rate rises, discounts and redistribution? I note, for example, that North West Leicestershire district council, because of the business rates reset, expects to lose 67% of its spending power in one go as a result of the Budget. What are the underlying assumptions about the housing revenue account, parking revenue account and other ringfenced council budgets, so our constituents know what is coming, not just in their council tax bill but in what they may pay for parking, permits, waste services and other essential day-to-day services?
Let us consider the individual cases coming in. I made reference to the impact on Shropshire of the loss of £8.8 million in rural services delivery grant, and South Holland, West Lindsey and Staffordshire Moorlands will see a 40% cut in their funding needs assessment as a result of the Budget. There are also authorities, such as Boston, that are seeing more than 40% of their budget driven to cover the costs of drainage boards. East Cambridgeshire district council sees a cut of £125,000 a year, and Fylde district council sees a rise of nil despite a headline announcement by the Government of 6.8%, once those calculations are taken into account. I know the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) was here earlier on, and Harlow reports that as a consequence, the core funding—the revenue support grant—is cut by 25% this year alone. All that has a huge impact on local Government funding and what our constituents will see.
I know that there are many in this Chamber with experience in local government. Our councils remain the most efficient part of our public sector, but it is clear from the many constituency-level issues and the insights we have gained in this debate that they deserve better from this Government in a much more transparent and open funding settlement, so that we know the underlying assumptions of Government and our constituents can understand what will happen to their council tax bills and their household budgets.
The Minister for Local Government and English Devolution (Jim McMahon)
I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), the Chair of the Select Committee, for opening the debate with her usual diligence and, rightfully, her challenge. I also pay tribute to all the other members of the Committee who were in the Chamber today for the work that they do throughout the year. It is often unseen, and maybe even unsung, but it is appreciated and it makes a huge difference to the functioning of a good Government.
The wide range of contributions today demonstrates the significant interest in the vital work that the Department does in driving positive change to the lives of many working people. On behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister and my fellow Ministers, I also thank departmental officials for their tireless work and dedication over the last year. They are working solidly to ensure that we get these reforms through, that we sort out the funding foundation and that we deliver the ambitious plan that we set out for this Government.
Turning to this debate, the Chancellor took decisive steps to stabilise the country’s financing, to back growth and to rebuild every region across the country, repairing the damage felt by working people, communities and businesses after a decade and a half of stagnation. The Government must now use every tool at their disposal to ensure that we turn that tide. The new investment rule is a bold but important tool, a move that has freed up an extra £113 billion of investment over the next five years, including for schools, hospitals, roads, green energy and, of course, housing. This will deliver good jobs, as highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher), because housing is at the very heart of this Government’s commitment.
I am delighted that we have increased the budget for the affordable homes programme by £400 million this year. Indeed, 2025-26 has the biggest annual budget for affordable housing in over a decade. This shows what can be achieved, but our efforts will not stop there. The spending review announced a new 10-year affordable homes programme with £39 billion of new investment, alongside a 10-year rent settlement and £2.5 billion in low-interest loans for social housing providers. This will address many of the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff). This is a generational intervention, but do not just take my word for it. The National Housing Federation was clear that this is
“a transformational package for social housing and will deliver the right conditions for a decade of renewal and growth.”
We have heard from many friends across the Chamber, including my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis). He echoed the Deputy Prime Minister, who has long argued that social and affordable housing is a bedrock of opportunity. The homes that we build now will house families for many generations to come, giving them a safe, decent and affordable place to call home, keeping communities together and investing in the most fundamental right that the people of Britain rightly expect. That is why this is so central to the Government’s work and one of our defining missions.
Alongside building new homes that are safe and decent, this Government are taking real steps to ensure that all existing homes are safe, too. In response to the final report of the Grenfell Tower inquiry, we made firm commitments to accelerate the pace of building remediation and we are backing our words with action. We have increased funding for building remediation by £553 million in 2025-26, and we are taking our annual funding to over £1 billion for the first time. We are also making over £1 billion available for new remediation funding. Over the coming years, social housing landlords will see the benefit and this will bring to an end the unfair two-tier system that has treated social housing tenants as second-class citizens for far too long, as highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell).
Supporting the most vulnerable in our society is at the heart of our Department’s work, so we are pleased that we are making record investments into our homelessness system this year, including a £233 million uplift that will take homelessness funding to over £1 billion in 2025-26. Alongside this, we have increased funding for the local authority housing fund by £100 million this year, allowing councils to invest in the long term by increasing their stock of temporary accommodation. This will allow us to begin to bring to an end the use of unsuitable and expensive bed and breakfasts to house families.
It is a matter of national shame that over 165,000 children live in temporary accommodation. Many of those kids are away from school and their friends and are often in accommodation that none of us would choose for our own families, as my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) rightly said. I say to the House that if it is not good enough for our own children, it is not good enough for any child, and we will address this scandal head on.
I assure the House that the Government are under no illusions of the scale of the financial challenge that our councils face. I know the difference that councils can make, having had the honour of serving as a councillor over many years. That is why we are absolutely committed to working in partnership with the sector to rebuild local government from the ground up so that it is fit, legal and decent, getting ahead of the crisis management and delivering better outcomes for the people we were all sent here to represent.
The recent spending review provides an extra £5 billion of new grant funding in the next three years, including £3.4 billion of new grant funding to be delivered through the local government finance settlement. We are going even further by fundamentally reforming the local government finance system. The current system is an outdated model that means some places face neighbourhood decline. It hits at the heart of what it means to live a decent life in a good place. To add to that, the escalating cost crisis in adult social care, children’s services and temporary accommodation makes matters even worse. It is not fair for outcomes or for councils either. Although the previous Government said they understood this, they failed to take the action needed to address it—we will not make the same mistake.
The fair funding review 2.0 consultation, launched last week, sets out the heart of the matter. We will take into account the real cost pressures being felt in key areas, as highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis). We will also take into account remoteness, as rightly identified by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley), as well as deprivation, the ability to raise council tax locally, daytime visitor numbers, temporary accommodation cost pressures, and much more. Coming to the point rightly made by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade), the cost of labour in areas will also be taken into account. When Members see the fair funding review, I hope they will see that we have taken into account those cost pressures being felt in every local authority, and that we have done this with integrity, because it means a lot to ensure that we finally get a system right that for too long has, frankly, been broken.
All these measures are being supported by the first multi-year settlement in a decade. The importance of that was set out by many Members, but in particular by the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller), who spoke about the stability needed and ensuring that councils have that firm foundation. A fair funding formula needs to do just that, and this is a promise delivered.
This Government have made choices, and we are open about those choices because they have allowed us to make the record investments that I set out earlier. One of those choices was to reform the inefficient, ineffective and outdated local growth funding landscape. As such, we are continuing the UK shared prosperity fund at a reduced level of £900 million for one financial year for transition, before we move to a model of targeted long-term local growth funding, as confirmed at the spending review. Deprived communities and mayoral regions will see the benefit. The north and the midlands will also benefit—their potential has been untapped for too long. Overall investment in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be protected, and communities will have genuine control of where funding goes for their areas for the first time in a long time.
We are making significant investments in the things that matter to local people—in social and affordable housing, in building safety, in homelessness and in local government. For far too long, we have seen the erosion of the things that make places safe, clean and decent and that give pride of place, because the previous Government did not take on the challenge in the way that was needed. We are not willing to do that. We are not willing to stand by idly while the system falls over, outcomes get worse and, in the end, costs escalate to the point of crisis. We are fixing the foundations, getting on with the job and finally giving our councils and communities the justice that they deserve.
Florence Eshalomi
I thank the Minister and the 15 Members from across the country who have taken part in the debate, which shows the value we place on our local authorities. For far too long, our local councils have not always got the recognition they deserve, but they are the first line of defence for all our constituents, and it is right that they are properly funded to carry out this vital work.
The Minister outlined some of the key areas where the Government are making big changes, and it is important that we continue to press him on those key areas and ask these difficult questions—not because we want to, but because we see this day in, day out in our inboxes, and it is vital that we address it. We do not want any more councils declaring bankruptcy, we do not want any more section 114 notices being issued, and we do not want any more young people tragically losing their life because of the temporary accommodation they are living in.
It is important that we help the Government in their ambition to build the homes we need. The £39 billion outlined is a step in the right direction. Our cross-party Select Committee will continue to ask the Government these questions, because we believe that every single person across the country deserves a safe, secure home that they can call their own.
Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).
Speed Cameras: Installation Criteria
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
Too many of my constituents feel they are being left to fend for themselves on unsafe roads. They are scared for their children, they are tired of reporting the same danger again and again, and they are angry that nothing changes until someone is seriously hurt, or worse. My message to the Government today is simple: people should not have to die or be seriously injured before something is done about dangerous speeding. Provisional estimates for 2024 suggest that 1,633 people were killed on Britain’s roads last year, while 56% of fatal road collisions in 2023 involved one or more speed-related factors.
I have three clear asks of the Minister today. First, the Government must move to taking a proactive approach to fixed speed camera placement, rather than waiting for a tragedy before allowing action. Secondly, I am asking that national guidance—specifically, Department for Transport circular 01/2007, “Use of speed and red-light cameras for traffic enforcement: Guidance on deployment, visibility and signing—be updated to reflect this proactive approach. Thirdly, I want the Government to make it easier for local communities, who know their roads better than anyone, to get the speed cameras they need without having to fight for years to be heard, if the data can back up the request.
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate her on securing her first Adjournment debate. Many people in my constituency have written to me about this issue, particularly those in villages around the towns, such as Ferrensby. Does she agree that in rural areas like mine, there needs to be a proactive stance to ensure that where there are not footpaths and pavements, people are not at risk from speeding vehicles?
Lisa Smart
I absolutely agree. My constituency is suburban, but a number of our areas are semi-rural and have roads without pavements. When pedestrians are walking along a road because there is no pavement, the danger level is increased. I agree that communities need to be able to take proactive action to make our roads safer.
We should start with the facts. Speed cameras work. They reduce speeding, reduce accidents and reduce deaths—they save lives. The RAC Foundation and the Department for Transport have both shown that speed cameras reduce speeding and cut the number of crashes. Areas with cameras see up to a 42% drop in fatal or serious collisions. These are our children making it home from school or our grandparents crossing the road safely. This debate is not about whether cameras work, because we know they do.
The threat of dangerous driving remains clear, and I want to take a moment to thank the Brake campaign for its work on these issues. It continues to be a powerful voice for road safety, fighting for changes that prevent heartbreak and loss in communities up and down the country.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for securing this debate. She is right to mention the organisation Brake and the good work it does; it does the same good work in my constituency, and we all benefit. In Northern Ireland, speed cameras are primarily installed in locations with a demonstrated history of injury, collisions and speeding problems, so they are mostly on motorways rather than in country areas where there are more accidents, with the result that they are not as effective as they could be. Does she agree that the oversaturation in some areas and underusage in others has led to the general public losing confidence in the use of speed cameras as a tool for road safety, and instead, many see it as a revenue-raising exercise?
Lisa Smart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. The safety of road users, be they vehicle users, cyclists, pedestrians or mobility scooter users, needs to be at the heart of decision making on speed cameras. I agree that safety rather than revenue needs to be at the centre of any decisions.
In my constituency of Hazel Grove, the danger is real and it is happening right now.
Lisa Smart
Gill has lived on Moor End Road in Mellor for 25 years. In that time, she has seen people’s pets killed, cars smashed to bits and a stone wall destroyed by reckless drivers, but what keeps her awake at night is fear for local children and elderly relatives. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) mentioned happens in his constituency, parts of Moor End Road do not have pavements, so people are forced to walk right alongside very fast-moving vehicles. For Gill, it feels like it is only a matter of time before there is an accident. We should not be waiting for that time to come.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
Too often, the question of whether local authorities, combined authorities or police forces are responsible for funding speed cameras comes up. That has led to horrible delays in places like Thorns Road and Manor Way in my constituency, where, despite fatalities and decades of concern, we are still no closer to getting average speed cameras on those hot spots. Does the hon. Member agree that we need faster mechanisms to agree who pays for speed cameras, so that we can move quickly so that the people of Halesowen and Quarry Bank can feel safe?
Lisa Smart
I agree with the hon. Member that the bureaucracy of who funds cameras should not be what holds up making our roads safer. We should have an agreed way of funding them and communities should be empowered, so that if they can raise the funds themselves, whether through a parish council precept or otherwise, they should not be blocked from doing so. Given the costs incurred through loss of life and injury, the expense of such interventions should be looked at as a whole; the installation of a speed camera can prevent such costs further down the line, so is a matter of making an investment in order to save.
Another of my constituents, Christopher, also from Mellor, knows that all too well. He was involved in a terrifying crash with a stolen car being driven at dangerous speeds, and he told me that he thought his life was over. Nobody should have to feel that fear just for being on the road.
In Offerton, my constituent Chris is one of many who have contacted me about speeding on Offerton Road and Torkington Road. He is worried about HGVs thundering down residential streets, ignoring the 15mph limits on the Torky bends. He said kids are scared to walk home, near misses are all too frequent and many incidents go unreported. In Little Moor, Marion lives on a dangerous bend, where cars have been written off, they have destroyed the lamp post next to her house and a motorbike has torn up her driveway.
I cannot talk about speeding without mentioning the wonderful children of Mellor primary school. After I visited the school, the entire year 6 class wrote to me about speeding on Longhurst Lane—I had encouraged them to write to their MP about things that they cared about, and they did. Children aged 10 and 11 asked me for updates on what was being done about Longhurst Lane, and many of them told me that speed cameras would be an obvious part of the solution. If schoolchildren can see the solution, I think we should listen. These are just a few of the voices in my inbox—there are many, many more. Our communities are sounding the alarm, but they feel ignored and are desperate for someone to take action.
Here is the root of the problem: under current Government guidance, local authorities should not install a fixed-speed camera until after there have been three or more fatal or serious injury collisions, as per circular 01/2007. So three serious injuries or deaths have to happen before speed cameras are encouraged—that is a disastrously reactive policy. It is a policy that says, “We’ll only fix the danger once enough people have died or have at least come close to it.” That is surely both morally wrong and practically absurd. Residents on Strines Road, for example, have repeatedly raised concerns about unsafe driving. They have logged the dangers and shown the evidence, but because the road has not yet claimed enough lives in a sufficiently limited time period, the current guidance is of little help.
I should note that circular 01/2007 allows for the installation of fixed-speed cameras even before the usual thresholds are met, recognising that such cameras can play a valuable role where there is clear community concern. However, as the answers to several of my written parliamentary questions have made clear, that provision is treated very much as a secondary consideration. The Greater Manchester combined authority, which covers my own patch, frequently points to the national guidance when pressed on the installation of new cameras in parts of my constituency where local communities have made their concerns more than clear. The guidance fails to actively encourage or even enable local and combined authorities to prioritise that proactive approach as a central pillar of their road safety strategy, where it rightly belongs.
Both in theory and in practice, the Government’s approach does not value prevention; it responds only to tragedy. We need a better approach based on risk, not on death tolls. Let us listen when residents report repeated speeding. Let us take community complaints seriously. Let us use data such as average speed monitoring and near-miss records, not just crash statistics. My community welcomed the Government’s announcement that speeding would be addressed in the new road safety strategy. That is a good first step, but we need to see that strategy take a proactive stance.
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend very much for bringing forward this debate. I point out in particular that one of my residents—a man called Chris, who is now a friend—lost his wife Lorraine. She was simply cycling back from her work at school and was hit by a driver. In order to ensure that nothing so dreadful happened again, Chris paid for speeding signs on his piece of road. It really should not be for individuals to feel so desperate that they end up funding that themselves. Certainly in my area, it is very difficult for communities to prove that they need to have some sort of speeding restrictions. Those signs are really effective, particularly since they move around in parishes, which I have and which I know my hon. Friend does not have.
Lisa Smart
I am so sorry to hear that that happened to Lorraine and Chris. Of course Chris does not want that to happen to somebody else, and it is entirely understandable that he has taken action himself to remind drivers of the speed limit. My constituents on Strines Road have done something very similar—every single green bin has a speeding reminder on it. They have taken action into their own hands.
Tessa Munt
We do not have bins in rural areas. There is nothing bar the speed cameras.
Lisa Smart
The secondary point to the one that my hon. Friend raises is about local authorities being properly funded so that they can take the preventive action that works for them to make their communities safe. I am grateful for the points that she raises.
The guidance must be revised to give clear guidance to local and combined authorities, because until that changes, councils and local police forces will continue to feel that they cannot act. That is not good enough, and our constituents deserve more. My call to this Government is simple: update the national guidance to allow for the proactive, preventive placement of speed cameras based on risk, not on tragedy. Let us build a future where safety comes first, not after the fact. Let us give councils the tools they need to stop accidents before they happen.
We also need change at the local level, so I welcome the GMCA’s ongoing review of its speed camera guidance, which I pushed for for years as a councillor before being elected to this place. Frankly, that review is long overdue and has taken far too long. National reform will empower changes at the local level, and it is that change that I will keep fighting for and that I ask the Government for today.
Let me end where I began. Our constituents should not have to wait for tragedy before they get protection. They should not have to experience the death of an elderly neighbour, a child on their way home from school or another member of their local community to see the change that they need. Speed cameras work: they lead to lower speeds, fewer accidents and fewer deaths on our roads. I once again urge the Government to take a proactive approach to speed camera installation, to update national guidance to that effect—particularly circular 01/2007—and to make it easier for local communities to get the safety measures that they need.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Lilian Greenwood)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) on securing this debate—her first Adjournment debate—and thank her for raising the vital issue of speed cameras and the criteria for their installation. It is really good to have the opportunity to discuss an issue that she has raised with me a number of times in questions and correspondence over the past year.
I begin by making it clear that improving road safety is one of my Department’s highest priorities, and measures to address speeding will be considered for inclusion in the forthcoming road safety strategy. As the hon. Member has said, there were 1,624 fatalities in reported road collisions in Great Britain in 2023. Of those, 888 occurred in collisions in which, in the opinion of the attending police officer, speed was a factor for at least one vehicle. That represents 58% of all fatalities in collisions for which the police recorded at least one collision factor. The police often refer to the “fatal four”, and I am afraid that excessive speed remains the major contributor to road traffic collisions.
Alex Ballinger
One issue that we have across Dudley is street racing. We often have groups of young men coming from Birmingham, racing up and down the A456 and through the back streets of Halesowen, terrifying some of my residents. Unfortunately, despite the excellent work of Operation Hercules and the police, we have not really been able to crack down on that. Does the Minister agree that street racing hotspots are areas where we should consider putting average speed cameras?
Lilian Greenwood
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. I am sure that everyone in the House feels concern about the kind of antisocial driving occurring in his constituency. It is absolutely right that local partners—the local authority and the police—should look at how best to tackle that kind of behaviour, which is undoubtedly a blight on his local community and is obviously very concerning to hear about.
All available research shows a link between excessive speed and the risk of collisions, so I am really grateful to the hon. Member for Hazel Grove for raising this issue, and indeed to other hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. Fatalities and injuries from road collisions are simply unacceptable, and this Government will work hard to prevent those tragedies for all road users.
The hon. Member talked about action to reduce speed, including lower speed limits, and action to enforce speed limits, such as speed cameras. My Department’s guidance on the use of speed cameras and red light cameras for traffic enforcement is not mandatory—it is guidance—and authorities are invited to set their own deployment criteria if they wish. The guidance encourages authorities to develop their own deployment criteria, so that they can demonstrate a local systematic approach to site selection.
I recognise that at a time when local authorities face a great many calls on their resources, it is important that they focus those resources where they will have the most impact. Unfortunately, I imagine that will sometimes mean local authorities deciding that they need to focus on those places where there have been KSIs—where people have been killed or seriously injured. However, I encourage local authorities to consider both how they can deal with places where there have been KSIs and how they can take a more proactive approach.
Tom Gordon
In North Yorkshire, we do not have any average or fixed speed cameras. We have a number of temporary mobile speed vans, but they do not act as a sufficient deterrent because they move around—that is obviously the purpose and nature of them. Instead, we have seen lots of community speed watch groups set up. Does the Minister agree with me on the importance of those community groups, who work so hard to highlight the dangers of speeding in rural communities like mine?
Lilian Greenwood
I agree with the hon. Member about the importance of community speed watch groups. I will come on to that topic a little later.
The guidance on the use of speed cameras and red light cameras should be used alongside setting local speed limits. These are tools to support our primary objective, which is reducing the number of collisions and casualties and, indeed, reducing their severity. I agree with the hon. Member for Hazel Grove that speed cameras work. In the right place, speed cameras can help manage safety risks by encouraging drivers to conform to the speed limit. However, they are not the only or always the best way to improve road safety. Speed limits should be evidence-led, and general compliance needs to be achievable without an excessive reliance on enforcement. Frankly, we cannot have a speed camera everywhere, and we cannot have a police officer everywhere.
As the hon. Member knows, the enforcement of road traffic law and the deployment of available police resources, including on mobile cameras, is the responsibility of individual chief constables and police and crime commissioners, taking into account specific local problems and the demands that they face. Local government is the main delivery body for road safety. Under section 39 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, local authorities have a statutory duty to take steps to reduce and prevent collisions, and they have the power to set speed limits on their roads. It is right that they focus on the areas of highest risk, which may be where tragic collisions have occurred, but there is nothing to stop them from implementing road safety measures elsewhere. Indeed, I would agree that a more proactive, preventive approach is entirely sensible. It is clearly incredibly valuable to identify places where there is a higher risk and evidence of near misses.
Lisa Smart
I am grateful for the Minister’s remarks. She says that it seems entirely sensible to move to a proactive approach; does she have plans to update the guidance in a way that moves towards that approach, so as to be clear with local authorities?
Lilian Greenwood
Certainly I welcome the opportunity for us to debate this issue today. I will reflect on the contributions that Members have made, and on the suggestions that the hon. Member has put forward. Local authorities already have the power to take that approach, and I want to be clear about that. It is a myth to say that they cannot act until there have been a number of fatalities; they already can. Local authorities also have a range of traffic management measures available to help improve safety in their areas. In addition to the ability to set local speed limits, they can also introduce traffic calming measures, speed-activated warning signs and average speed cameras.
Tessa Munt
Will the Minister consider the fact that if someone wants to install a 20 mph limit in our towns and cities—such as Wells or Cheddar, which are plagued by speed trouble—the police advice is that drivers have to already be close to 20 mph for them to accept the need for a 20 mph limit? That strikes me as utterly bonkers. It stifles any further discussion and the implementation of 20 mph limits, even near schools.
Lilian Greenwood
I thank the hon. Member for raising that point, and I will say a little more on that in a moment. It is for local authorities to determine what measures are appropriate in individual cases, because they have the local knowledge of their roads. Any authority that has the support of the local community for installing such schemes has my Department’s full backing. I welcome the support expressed by Members today, and agree that sharing good practice can be helpful.
The Department gave councils updated guidance on setting 20 mph speed limits, reminding them to reserve them for sensible and appropriate areas only, such as outside schools, and that safety and local support should be at the heart of the decision. That in itself impacts compliance, as drivers are more likely to observe the speed limit when they understand why it is there. I emphasise that we support 20 mph limits in the right places. As well as influencing safety, they can influence quality of life, the environment and the local economy, but 20 mph zones and limits are best considered on a road-by-road basis. That ensures local consent, unlike blanket measures.
We are therefore not in favour of 20 mph limits being set indiscriminately on all roads, without due regard for the safety case and for local support; but when there is clear evidence, and when people support them, I think it entirely right for local authorities to pursue them, if they wish to. They will want to make decisions about local implementation in consultation with local communities and, of course, with the local police; as I have said, they know their roads best, and I cannot and should not dictate to them from Westminster.
While local authorities are free to make their own decisions about the speed limits on roads under their care, provided that they take account of the relevant legislation and guidance, they are rightly accountable to local people for those decisions. I understand how frustrating it is for communities who feel that their concerns are not being listened to and acted on. However, the Members who have spoken today have made a powerful case for lower speed limits, and we know that even the most experienced and careful drivers can make mistakes, and that collisions at higher speeds are much more likely to have tragic outcomes.
John Slinger (Rugby) (Lab)
I fully appreciate how important it is for local communities to have the most influence over road safety measures in their area, but can my hon. Friend expand on the forthcoming road safety strategy? Can she tell us whether there will be an even clearer drive from central Government towards, perhaps, a “vision zero” approach, and towards giving local communities even more impetus to reduce speeding? It is, in my view, and probably that of many other Members, selfish and reckless of people to exceed a speed limit that they are required by law to abide by.
Lilian Greenwood
I know that my hon. Friend has been a great champion for improvements in road safety. The Department will consider what more we can do to support local authorities and hon. Members in this regard, and we stand ready to work with everyone who is trying to improve road safety locally. As my hon. Friend knows, and as the House knows, we are developing our road safety strategy, and I look forward to saying more about that in the months ahead. As the Secretary of State has said, we are hoping and aiming to publish it by the end of the year.
The police-run Community Speedwatch schemes enable local volunteers to work with the police and other agencies to address identified road policing issues in their localities. I know how important they can be to local communities, and I thank all those who are volunteering in this way. Drivers who are detected speeding are sent letters, and the police may take further action if a driver is detected multiple times. Decisions on when to adopt Community Speedwatch schemes are operational matters for police and crime commissioners and chief constables, in conjunction with local policing plans, but as I have said, the schemes can play a very important role.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, the Government treat road safety with the utmost seriousness, and we are committed to reducing the number of people killed and injured on our roads. The Department is developing our road safety strategy, and I look forward to the opportunity to set out more details in due course. I welcome today’s debate and all the contributions from Members on road safety, both today and on other occasions. I am pleased that there is so much determination in the House to tackle the unacceptable loss of life and unacceptable injuries that result from road traffic collisions, and I look forward to working with Members further on the issue.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Protection and Disclosure of Personal Information (Amendment) Regulations 2025
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
General CommitteesRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Protection and Disclosure of Personal Information (Amendment) Regulations 2025.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today, Mrs Hobhouse. The regulations are part of a secondary legislation programme implementing the reforms of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. Combating economic crime remains a priority for the Government. At the same time, it is crucial that we ensure that the UK lives up to its reputation as a country in which legitimate businesses can thrive. The reforms in the 2023 Act strike that balance. As the implementation of the 2023 Act continues at pace, I am pleased to present the Committee with these new regulations as part of the next wave of reforms.
As a quid pro quo for running a limited liability company, those controlling them have to register their details publicly at Companies House. That provides transparency for members of the public, so they can find out who those people are. At the same time, it means that the owners and controllers of the company can be held to account for the company’s affairs. However, the Government are conscious that by having personal information on the public companies register, individuals can be subject to increased risk of harm, including the risk of fraud and identity theft, and other matters such as stalking. The regulations aim to ensure that the register does not become a tool for abuse, and to strike the right balance between transparency and privacy.
Currently, it is possible for an individual to protect their residential address from the public register in certain limited cases. When I say protect, I mean that the register cannot display the addresses publicly. That does not mean that the address has gone away entirely; Companies House retains the address and can share it with those who have functions of a public nature, such as law enforcement, if required to do so.
The new regulations deliver another instalment of the reforms to enhance the protection of personal information on the register. They build on regulations that came into force on 27 January this year. The previous regulations expanded the circumstances in which an individual can apply to protect their residential address from the public register.
The regulations will expand that existing protection regime further still. They will allow individuals to apply to protect their business occupation, signature and date of birth. They will also make it possible to protect a residential address in even more cases than is already allowed. The only exceptions will be where it is not possible because the company names make it so, and in certain charge-related filings. That is because of the importance of those filings for due diligence purposes. The Government will keep those exceptions under review.
We believe that the reforms align with the Government’s mission to kick-start economic growth. They will encourage enterprise and entrepreneurship, giving prospective directors greater confidence that their personal information can be protected if they decide to start a company or accept an appointment as a director.
The regulations will also remove the requirement for certain community interests, company documents and statements of solvency to be signed. That means that those documents can be authenticated via printed name, bringing them in line with other company-related filings. By reducing the number of signatures on the public register, the measure will reduce misuse of the register for fraudulent purposes, including identity theft.
In addition, the regulations will remove the requirement for directors of overseas companies to provide a business occupation. As the 2023 Act will remove the requirement for UK company directors to provide their business occupation, the regulations ensure consistency with the requirements for overseas company directors.
Further, the regulations expand an existing protection mechanism for people with significant control. They can currently make an application to request that the registrar refrains from disclosing their usual residential address to a credit reference agency. The regulations allow a person with significant control over a company to make applications in more cases—for example, where they are at risk as a result of being a partner of a limited partnership. The regulations make other minor amendments to secondary legislation relating to people with significant control, which are applied to limited liability partnerships and eligible Scottish partnerships.
The regulations apply the changes that they make to company law to the law governing LLPs and unregistered companies, such as companies formed by royal charter. This will ensure that the framework for other entities aligns with that of standard companies.
I reiterate that the regulations strike the right balance between privacy and transparency. They mark a further step towards the successful implementation of the 2023 Act, and I therefore hope that the Committee will support them.
Dame Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mrs Hobhouse.
We are scrutinising the draft Protection and Disclosure of Personal Information (Amendment) Regulations. That may sound dry, but I imagine that every colleague here has come across a case in which someone’s identity has been stolen because of the information about them that is available on the Companies House register. I am pleased that these regulations show this Government building on the good work of the previous Government. I therefore certainly will not object to their passage this afternoon, but I have a few questions for the Minister, in the interests of parliamentary scrutiny.
First, I could not see any mention in the explanatory memorandum of how long it will take for individuals to have their application actioned. Will the Minister shed some light on how quickly Companies House thinks that it will be able to process applications and, from approval, how long it will take to have the information removed from the register? Secondly, what are the Government doing to ensure that the application process at Companies House for removing details is straightforward? Thirdly, what is the administrative cost of these regulations to Companies House, and will those costs be recouped through any planned changes to the fees for registering a company?
Fourthly, how many individuals are expected to make use of these regulations? I note that an impact assessment has not been published, and given the limited financial implications, I can understand why. However, given that the intention of this statutory instrument is to remove information from the register that puts individuals at risk of theft and fraud, will the Minister please inform us how many people are thought to be the victims of crime as a result of the information that is currently publicly available in Companies House? How many cases are estimated to be prevented as a result of the statutory instrument that we are considering today?
Finally, given that the statutory instrument is intended to reduce the risk of theft and fraud by removing personal details from a public register, how does Companies House plan to publicly let people know about this change and its effective date? Has Companies House explored a more proactive approach, and has it thought about using artificial intelligence to remove this information automatically? I look forward to the Minister’s answers to those questions.
Justin Madders
I am grateful for the shadow Minister’s support. As she rightly pointed out, we can all understand why this sort of issue is important—I am sure we all have constituents who have been affected by it—and she asked a series of perfectly reasonable questions.
We do not have in mind a specific period for processing applications. It will very much depend on the level of demand and whether the information is provided in the correct manner in the first place. I understand that, because a similar process has already been set up under previous regulations for certain circumstances in which people can remove their information, the systems are in place and there are staff ready to go. The people at Companies House have assured us that they are confident they will be able to manage the demand.
There will be a fee, and I understand that it is currently £30. Of course, Companies House can recover fees only on a cost-recovery basis, so there will be no element of profit making—it will simply cover overheads. I understand that there is a wider review of Companies House fees, which will clearly be informed by the progress of the roll-out.
The application itself is straightforward. It can be done via email or on paper, and must contain the information that the applicant wishes to protect and the list of documents. There will be no need for individuals to justify why they need the information to be removed from the Companies House register. If the correct information is provided, the process will be fairly straightforward. I understand that Companies House will issue guidance shortly on how the process will work.
On the wider point about how the changes will be communicated to individuals who are on the register, I will come back to the shadow Minister if there is any further information. I will also do the same if we are able to provide estimates of how many people the changes will protect. With fraud, criminals often take information from a number of sources, so it is about limiting the scope for fraudulent activity, but if we can put a number on it, we will certainly do that. A number of actions have already been taken to prevent incorrect information from being put on the register under the new powers in the 2023 Act.
That probably covers the bulk of the shadow Minister’s questions. I will write to her with more information if I can give any more detail. A lot of this relates to the processes and the internal workings of Companies House. We have confidence that the people there will be able to deal with the change, as they have undertaken similar projects recently. I thank Members for their support for the regulations and commend them to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Nuclear Installations (Compensation for Nuclear Damage) (Amendment) Regulations 2025
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
General CommitteesRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Nuclear Installations (Compensation for Nuclear Damage) (Amendment) Regulations 2025.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. The draft regulations, which were laid before the House on 19 May, make technical changes to the way in which the convention on supplementary compensation for nuclear damage, known as the CSC, will operate in the UK on accession to the treaty. The changes streamline the operation of the different conventions, as well as the domestic implementing legislation.
Nuclear power is central to the Government’s mission to become a clean energy superpower, and a key part of our industrial strategy to revive Britain’s industrial heartlands. It provides clean, home-grown energy, creates thousands of well-paid, skilled jobs, and complements other technologies by providing stable and reliable electricity to the grid.
To drive forward new nuclear and deliver on our mission, the Government made a series of bold commitments in the recent spending review. A £14.2 billion investment was announced to build Sizewell C, ending years of delay and uncertainty and creating 10,000 jobs, and we pledged £2.5 billion for small modular reactors, or SMRs, over the spending review period. Rolls-Royce SMR has been selected as the preferred bidder to partner with Great British Energy—Nuclear to develop the reactors. Together with Hinkley Point C, those announcements represent the biggest nuclear roll-out for a generation, delivering more nuclear to the grid than in the past 50 years.
Participation in nuclear third-party liability—or NTPL—treaties are important for supporting nuclear development, while also safeguarding the interests of potential victims in the highly unlikely event of a nuclear incident. NTPL treaties ensure that: minimum levels of compensation are available to victims of a nuclear incident; claims are channelled exclusively to the operator of a nuclear installation; and claims are channelled to the jurisdiction in which the nuclear incident occurred. The UK is party to the Paris convention on third-party liability in the field of nuclear energy and to the Brussels convention supplementary to the Paris convention on third-party liability in the field of nuclear energy, known as the Brussels supplementary convention. They are implemented domestically in the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.
The Paris convention sets a minimum operator liability amount of €700 million, with an additional €500 million of compensation available above that to compensate victims in a Brussels supplementary convention country. Finally, there is a shared international fund of €300 million made up of contributions from Brussels convention members, again used to compensate damage in Brussels states.
To remove some potential barriers for investors and the nuclear supply chain, and to support exports, we are now pursuing accession to another treaty, the convention on supplementary compensation for nuclear damage. The CSC is another international nuclear third-party liability treaty, under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The UK is the first Paris convention member to seek to accede to the CSC.
Accession to the CSC will expand the number of countries that the UK has NTPL treaty relations with by 11. The expansion will remove some potential barriers to inward investment, and support UK exports in the future. Accession will enhance the UK’s attractiveness as a destination for nuclear investment and support the successful delivery of future projects. That is because the mutual respect of the principles of NTPL treaties will apply to more countries.
In the highly unlikely event of a nuclear incident, accession to the CSC will also increase the amount of compensation available for potential victims. The CSC establishes a shared international fund made up from contributions of the contracting parties to compensate victims of a nuclear incident. A country’s contributions are calculated based on installed nuclear capacity and UN contribution rates, expressed in special drawing rights. At present, with the UK as a member, the shared international fund would be approximately £120 million, with the UK’s contribution set at £7 million. To date, there have been no calls on this fund.
As the first Paris convention country to seek accession to the CSC, there is no established path for countries seeking participation in both conventions, and the UK is therefore a pioneer in this respect. To enable CSC accession, provisions were included in the Energy Act 2023 to amend the Nuclear Installations Act 1965, which provides for the UK’s participation in various NTPL regimes. Our initial approach had been to reflect the minimum national compensation amount required for claims at 300 million special drawing rights, equivalent to €370 million, by setting this as the liability limit for operators. This was to come out of operators’ existing financial security provision.
This instrument makes a technical change to the way the CSC will operate in the UK upon accession to the treaty. The technical amendment will align the compensation available under the CSC with that of the Paris convention, which is to say it creates a single first tier of compensation available under both conventions with a limit of €700 million. This remains within the existing financial security provided by operators, meaning no increase in the liability burden for operators. For sites with lower liability levels, namely low-level and intermediate sites, their financial security requirements will also remain unchanged.
This approach will simplify the operation of the different conventions and the classification of claims in domestic legislation. It will benefit the administration of funds by ensuring that the CSC shared international fund comes into operation only once operator financial security limits under the Paris convention are exhausted. It will continue to ensure the additional funds available under the Brussels supplementary convention and the CSC go only to those entitled to make a claim under these conventions.
In conclusion, the instrument makes a technical change to the way the CSC will operate in the UK. We continue to work towards CSC accession, which will support the delivery of new nuclear projects and exports while continuing to safeguard the interests of victims in the highly unlikely event of a nuclear incident. The Government have been clear on our support for nuclear, and these measures contribute to creating the best possible investment climate. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. It is an unusual experience to be in full agreement with most of what the Minister has said. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Do not get used to it.
I took the Energy Act through the last Parliament, and it is under section 22 of the Act in which the amendments necessary to implement the convention on supplementary compensation for nuclear damage are contained. Section 306 of the Act outlines the powers of the Secretary of State to make regulations concerning the CSC. The regulation before us today seeks to amend the classification of claims for compensation in respect of the convention on supplementary compensation, as set out under section 22 of the Energy Act/Nuclear Installations Act 1965.
Under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965, if compensation claims, excluding CSC-only claims, reach an aggregate of €700 million from the responsible person, the appropriate authority may be required to satisfy further claims, including CSC claims up to the equivalent of the aggregate €700 million and the value of the CSC international pooled funds. For CSC-only claims, the responsible person’s liability limit is 300 million special drawing rights, after which the appropriate authority’s liability is limited to the aggregate of 300 million special drawing rights and the value of the CSC international pooled funds.
Regulation 2(3)(b) will omit section 16(1ZAA) of the Nuclear Installations Act. Subsection (1ZAA) sets a financial limit on the compensation payable by a responsible person for CSC-only claims. Thereby, this regulation seeks to remove the lower liability cap for claims that relate only to the CSC, which is in place for claims arising under the convention on third-party liability in the field of nuclear energy: the Paris convention. As a result, the liability for claims under either convention is brought to €700 million. Any claim brought under the CSC, or under the CSC and the Paris convention, would have a cap on liability of €700 million plus the value of the CSC international pooled funds.
As a nation seeking to build a golden age of new nuclear—not quite as golden as it might have been had the Government stuck to our plans, but a golden age none the less—and to implement a revival of civil nuclear in the UK as part of our secure, affordable, clean energy ambitions, it is incumbent on us to put in place the necessary mechanisms to ensure consistent liabilities in the event of damages. That is what the draft regulations seek to do. I am in violent agreement with the Minister on this point, and we do not oppose any of these changes today.
Question put and agreed to.
The future of Acoustic Couch, Bracknell
Potential closure of Oswestry Crown Post Office
Mental Health Bill [ Lords ] (Ninth sitting)
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 4 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I have a few preliminary reminders. Please switch electronic devices to silent. No food or drink, except the water provided, is permitted during the sittings of this Committee. Hansard would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes or pass them on to the Hansard colleague in the room. Members are reminded to bob and catch my eye if they wish to speak in any debate.
New Clause 1
Reporting: racial disparities relating to community treatment orders
“(1) Within a period of 12 months following the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must undertake a review of racial disparities which relate to the use and administering of community treatment orders.
(2) The review under subsection (1) must include, but is not limited to—
(a) an assessment of whether certain racial or ethnic groups are disproportionately represented among individuals subject to community treatment orders compared to their representation in the general population;
(b) a review of the outcomes and effectiveness of community treatment orders across different racial groups, including health outcomes, and patient experiences.
(3) The Secretary of State must lay a report of the findings of the review before Parliament within 18 months of the day on which this Act is passed.”—(Zöe Franklin.)
This new clause seeks to gauge the Government’s view on prevalent racial disparities as they relate to the use of community treatment orders under the Act.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 3—Addressing and reporting on racial disparities and other inequalities in the use of the Mental Health Act 1983—
“After section 120D of the Mental Health Act 1983, insert—
‘120E Mental health units and services to have a responsible person
(1) A relevant health organisation that operates a mental health unit or community mental health service for qualifying patients must appoint a responsible person for that unit or service for the purposes of addressing racial disparities and other disparities based on protected characteristics related to functions discharged under the Mental Health Act 1983.
(2) The responsible person must—
(a) be employed by the relevant health organisation, and
(b) be of an appropriate level of seniority.
(3) Where a relevant health organisation operates more than one mental health unit or service, that organisation must appoint a single responsible person in relation to all of the mental health units or services operated by that organisation.
(4) A patient is a qualifying patient if they are—
(a) liable to be detained under this Act, otherwise than by virtue of section 4 or 5(2) or (4) or section 135 or 136;
(b) subject to guardianship under this Act;
(c) a community patient.
120F Policy on racial disparities and other disparities based on protected characteristics
(1) The responsible person must publish a policy on how the unit plans to reduce racial disparities and other disparities based on protected characteristics in that unit or service.
(2) The policy published under subsection (1) must cover the following topics—
(a) the application of the guiding principles to all aspects of operation of this Act;
(b) staff knowledge and competence in connection with promoting equality and anti-discriminatory practice in relation to this Act;
(c) workforce demographics, recruitment, retention and progression;
(d) implementation of the patient and carer race equality framework (England only) and any other requirements of relevant national policies;
(e) care planning and decision-making in the use of this Act including section 56A (making treatment decisions);
(f) the availability of alternatives to detention and involuntary treatment;
(g) take-up of independent mental health advocacy;
(h) the cultural appropriateness of independent mental health advocacy;
(i) access to and use of advance choice documents;
(j) what steps will be taken to reduce racial disparities and other disparities based on protected characteristics in that unit or service.
(3) Where a responsible person is appointed in relation to all of the mental health units operated by a relevant health organisation, the responsible person must publish a single policy under subsection (1) in relation to those units or services.
(4) Before publishing a policy under subsection (1), the responsible person must—
(a) consult any persons that the responsible person considers appropriate;
(b) have regard to the following matters—
(i) the views, wishes and feelings of people from ethnic minority communities who have been detained;
(ii) the views, wishes and feelings of people with other protected characteristics who have been detained.
(5) The responsible person must keep under review any policy published under this section.
(6) The responsible person may from time to time revise any policy published under this section and, if this is done, must publish the policy as revised.
(7) If the responsible person considers that any revisions would amount to a substantial change in the policy, the responsible person must consult any persons that the responsible person considers appropriate before publishing the revised policy.
120G Training in racial disparities and other disparities based on protected characteristics
(1) The responsible person for each mental health unit or service must provide training for staff that relates to addressing racial disparities and other disparities based on protected characteristics in that unit or service.
(2) The training provided under subsection (1) must include training on the topics covered in section 120F(2).
(3) Subject to subsection (4), training must be provided—
(a) in the case of a person who is a member of staff when this section comes into force, as soon as reasonably practicable after this section comes into force, or
(b) in the case of a person who becomes a member of staff after this section comes into force, as soon as reasonably practicable after they become a member of staff.
(4) Subsection (3) does not apply if the responsible person considers that any training provided to the person before this section came into force or before the person became a member of staff—
(a) was given sufficiently recently, and
(b) is of an equivalent standard to the training provided under this section.
(5) Refresher training must be provided at regular intervals whilst a person is a member of staff.
(6) In subsection (5) “refresher training” means training that updates or supplements the training provided under subsection (1).
120H Annual report by the Secretary of State
(1) As soon as reasonably practicable after the end of each calendar year, the Secretary of State must conduct a review in consultation with relevant bodies with commissioning functions on the use of treatment and detention measures contained in the Mental Health Act 1983 broken down by race and other demographic information.
(2) Having conducted a review under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must publish a report on the progress made in reducing inequalities in treatment outcomes and the use of detention measures in the use of this Act on people who have protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.’”
This new clause requires mental health units and services to appoint a responsible person tasked with addressing racial disparities related to functions discharged under the Mental Health Act 1983.
Zöe Franklin
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. New clause 1 seeks to ensure that racial disparities in the use of community treatment orders are properly understood, monitored and addressed. We have known for many years that black individuals are disproportionately subjected to coercive powers under the Mental Health Act 1983, including detention, restraint and community treatment orders, yet progress has been painfully slow.
The new clause would require the Secretary of State to undertake a review within 12 months of the Bill passing and to publish the findings within 18 months. It would look specifically at whether certain racial or ethnic groups are over-represented among those who are subject to community treatment orders, and whether there are disparities in outcomes—including treatment effectiveness and patient experience—across racial groups. The aim is not just to collect data, but for meaningful scrutiny of how coercive community powers are applied and whether they are serving all groups equally.
The 2018 independent review of the Mental Health Act found that black individuals were more than eight times more likely to be placed under a CTO than white individuals. That is not a minor discrepancy, but a structural injustice. The review also raised concerns that CTOs were not necessarily used because they are clinically effective, but because they are seen as a way to manage risk, particularly where racialised assumptions come into play. We must ask, are CTOs truly supporting recovery, or are they disproportionately used to control and surveil? Are they fostering trust or fear in mental health services?
The new clause would give Parliament the information we need to answer those questions. It would set a timeline for transparency and create a foundation for future policy reform that is rooted in fairness and equality. In the absence of this new clause, we risk continuing a system where racial injustice is baked into mental health practice, without sufficient oversight or accountability. If this Government are serious about tackling racial inequality in mental health, they will have no objection to this basic measure of review and reporting.
We have discussed specific disparities in previous clauses, but new clause 3 aims to ensure that systematic and sustained action is embedded in the way that mental health services are run. The disproportionate detention and coercive treatment of black and minority ethnic people under the Mental Health Act has been evidenced for decades, yet progress on addressing these inequalities has been too slow and too inconsistent across the country.
New clause 3 takes a structural approach. It would require each mental health provider to appoint a dedicated senior lead to take responsibility for reducing inequalities within their services—not in name only, but through published plans covering staff diversity, culturally appropriate advocacy care planning and the use of advance choice documents. It would also ensure that frontline staff receive ongoing training that equips them to recognise and respond to disparities and uphold anti-discriminatory practice, with regular refreshes to ensure that this learning stays live. Importantly, it would place a duty on the Secretary of State to publish an annual report breaking down how the Bill is used across racial and other demographic groups, and what progress is being made to close those gaps.
This is not about creating more paperwork; it is about requiring leadership, transparency and accountability at every level, from clinical teams through to Government. If this Bill is to earn the title of a reform, it must act decisively on the most pertinent inequalities in the system. I urge the Committee to support the new clauses.
David Burton-Sampson (Southend West and Leigh) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. Sadly, there are clear racial inequalities within the mental health system, as in other areas of health, and this must change. People from ethnic minority communities are more likely to experience a mental health problem, are less likely to receive support, and have poorer outcomes from services. It is very concerning that black and ethnic minority people are over-represented in detentions in our mental health system, and there are well-documented worries over disparities in the quality of care that they receive.
Decades of evidence and lived experience testimony point to systemic injustice. Black British people suffer a 6% higher rate of common mental health problems than white British people, and black adults are twice as likely to show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder—at 8%, compared with 4% of the white British population. Black men are over 10 times more likely to be placed under community treatment orders, and black women are more likely than any other group of women to experience common mental health problems. Studies have shown that experiences of racism link to depression, psychosis and post-traumatic stress. When people are assaulted—not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically—by the structures around them, it leaves a lasting impact.
I have witnessed at first hand the racial disparities at a visit to my local in-patient mental health care at Rochford community hospital, where I could see a visibly disproportionate number of black men on the ward, compared with the percentage of black men I know live in my community. People from ethnic minority communities are more likely to come into contact with mental health services through crisis pathways, the police, accident and emergency, and detention. They are more likely to be restrained, isolated and subjected to coercive treatment. We must listen to what these communities are telling us.
Research by Mind identified nine key barriers to accessing care, from stigma and discrimination to Eurocentric models of treatment, language and cultural barriers. People feel othered by a system that was not built with them in mind. We need to rebuild trust and recognise that mental health cannot be separated from the broader social and political context. Austerity, Brexit, the Windrush scandal and covid-19 have all disproportionately affected the black, Asian and minority ethnic community. That has led to a decrease in trust towards the establishment, and that bleeds into general distrust of organisations and officials working in healthcare settings and mental health.
People from BAME communities have shared many examples of direct and indirect discrimination they have experienced within mental health services. Those negative lived experiences further erode trust in the system and often deter people from seeking help. Racial disparities in mental health are a pressing issue that requires immediate and sustained action.
New clauses 1 and 3, tabled by the hon. Member for Winchester and outlined by the hon. Member for Guildford, have good intentions, but we need to reflect on whether they fit in the Bill. I would suggest not. The drivers of disparity here are much deeper than the scope of the Bill, and it would be wrong to attempt to wrap up the solution to this issue within it. That does not mean that action should not be taken.
I am hopeful that this Government are doing wider work to drive down racial inequalities, including with the challenge we can see here with mental health. Perhaps the Minister will outline more about the Government’s work, and therefore why the new clauses are not needed. I support the intent of the hon. Member for Winchester, but I cannot support the new clauses as an addition to the Bill. I would be happy to meet the Minister and others to discuss further ongoing overall inequalities for the BAME community.
The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this morning, Mr Vickers.
New clause 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Winchester, would require the Secretary of State to undertake a review of racial disparities in the use of community treatment orders. It is our view that the evidence base is already strong, and further reviews are not necessary. There are significant racial disparities in the use of community treatment orders. In 2023-24, black or black British people were issued with CTOs at seven times the rate of white or white British people. The use of community treatment orders as a proportion of overall detention numbers is higher for all minority ethnic groups compared with the white British population.
We are committed to reducing these disparities through our reforms and through the patient and carer race equality framework, which was a recommendation of the independent review. This includes a greater focus on prevention and early intervention, in part by promoting the use of advance choice documents, rather than an approach that simply makes it harder to impose CTOs. We are developing and monitoring an evaluation strategy, and we will continue to monitor and report on ethnic disparities via the published Mental Health Act statistics and our annual implementation report to Parliament.
New clause 3 would create the new “responsible person” role. They would have a duty to report on racial disparities and other inequalities in the use of the Mental Health Act. However, as drafted, the remit is significantly broader than that, to the extent that it would not be practical to combine all the stated functions into one role. We agree that there is a need to strengthen organisational leadership, improve data collection and change cultures across the mental health system. We also agree that it is important to have more targeted responsibilities to monitor and address racial disparities at board level in trusts, and that is already an explicit requirement of the PCREF.
The PCREF is a contractual requirement of mental health providers under the NHS standard contract. It builds on the statutory duties that apply already under the Equality Act 2010. These existing requirements cover the key responsibilities needed to monitor and address racial disparities. The PCREF can be updated more regularly than primary legislation, allowing us to take an iterative approach throughout implementation to ensure that we are capturing reporting and acting on the right data from frontline services. Ultimately, we feel that the PCREF will be more effective at reducing racial inequalities than the very broad remit outlined in this new clause, and that the addition of a responsible person in legislation is duplicative and unnecessary.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West and Leigh asked about implementation. The PCREF is the key instrument that we will use, but we are seeking to improve and strengthen decision making in three important ways: first, by requiring that an individual must be at risk of serious harm to be made subject to a CTO; secondly, by requiring the community clinician to be involved in all community treatment order decisions; and thirdly, by increasing the frequency of automatic reviews of patient cases by the tribunal, so that CTOs can be removed as soon as it is safe and appropriate to do so. I hope that that gives my hon. Friend some reassurance around the work that we are doing, but of course I would be happy to discuss these matters with him.
For those reasons, I ask the hon. Member for Guildford to withdraw new clause 1, on behalf of the hon. Member for Winchester.
Zöe Franklin
I thank the Minister for outlining the PCREF and the focus that it will have in addressing these issues. I was particularly interested in the explanation of the iterative approach that it will allow. I also thank the hon. Member for Southend West and Leigh for his insights into the issue. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 2
Mental Health Crisis Breathing Space
“(1) Any person detained under sections 3, 37, 41 or 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983 must be offered support from the mental health crisis breathing space debt respite scheme.”—(Dr Chambers.)
This new clause ensures that MHCBS, a debt respite scheme, is offered and available to patients detained under sections 3, 37, 41 and 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause relates to the mental health crisis breathing space debt respite scheme, and would allow it to be
“offered and available to patients detained under sections 3, 37, 41 and 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983.”
The mental health crisis breathing space mechanism is another vital tool that can protect people in a mental health crisis from the impacts of problem debt, by pausing enforcement action, contacting creditors and freezing interest and charges on any debts.
However, the number of people benefitting from an MHCBS are significantly below its potential, largely because both patients and healthcare professionals do not know about it. Ensuring that everyone detained under the longer provisions of the Act would automatically be offered access to the scheme would ensure that many more people could benefit from it. We have discussed in previous sittings the impact of debt on mental health, and the work of Winchester Citizens Advice. I am really pleased to say that this week, I presented them with a huge award for best social enterprise at the Hampshire business awards, so my congratulations go to them.
Stephen Kinnock
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Winchester for bringing this issue before the Committee. The Government’s breathing space programme plays an important role in protecting people experiencing problem debt. We recognise that that can be particularly critical for people whose mental illness is worsened or even triggered by financial problems.
Let me reassure the hon. Gentleman that people under the sections identified by his new clause are already eligible for breathing space. In fact, eligibility covers all individuals detained in hospital for assessment or treatment under the Mental Health Act, as well as those receiving crisis treatment in a community setting from a specialist mental health service. Furthermore, NHS England guidance already sets out that financial support, including referral to breathing space, should be offered to patients receiving acute in-patient mental health care, whether detained or voluntary patients. We will make explicit the need for staff to offer proactively that support in the Mental Health Act code of practice. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Member for Winchester to withdraw his new clause.
Dr Chambers
I thank the Minister for his comments. I am concerned about the lack of knowledge among patients and healthcare professionals. We cannot see any downside to making this an automatic right, so we will press new clause 2 to a vote.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Zöe Franklin
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause would require local authorities and commissioning bodies to promote and report annually on mental health wellbeing in regard to any guidance published by the Secretary of State.
Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way so early in her speech. I mentioned my concern about this provision on Second Reading: a rough road is not the same as a broken bridge. We are dealing here with the most severe mental health issues. The new clause talks about wellbeing, which affects everyone. Trying to report that and fit it into this criteria risks diluting the very aim of the Bill in trying to deal with the most severe mental health issues. I would be grateful for clarification on the difference between mental wellbeing, which affects everyone, and mental health issues, which not everyone has.
Zöe Franklin
When it comes to enabling the Mental Health Act to function, having an understanding on the ground of the picture across our communities regarding mental health wellbeing is very important. That is why we tabled the new clause, which would allow us to get community care right. That would then feed into the crisis care that we are discussing in this Committee.
Stephen Kinnock
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Winchester for tabling the new clause. Like him, we are committed to preventing mental ill health and promoting good mental health. Achieving our vision for mental health requires a spectrum of interventions across the whole of society and across the life course, from prevention and early intervention through to treatment and specialised care for those with a severe mental illness in community and in-patient settings. We are committed to the shifts from treatment to prevention, hospital to community and analogue to digital, and our forthcoming NHS 10-year health plan will affirm those commitments.
With our commitment to neighbourhood health, we are encouraging stronger partnership working between local government, mental health services and the voluntary and community sector. As part of our shift to community, we have already launched six pilot neighbourhood mental health centres to deliver a 24/7 service, with open access to anyone who requires mental health support. Through the shift to prevention, we are putting more emphasis on early intervention and recovery to support people to live well and thrive, ensuring that we improve the conditions for creating good mental health.
Alongside that, I remind the Committee of the existing prevention concordat for better mental health: a voluntary agreement signed by local authorities and integrated care boards. Signing the concordat involves a commitment to take evidence-based, preventive and promotional action to support the mental health and wellbeing of their populations. The new clause would be duplicative of that existing programme, and could introduce an unnecessary resource burden on local authorities and commissioning bodies.
We are committed to moving to a meaningful partnership between central and local government, and to letting local leaders lead within their communities. For those reasons, I hope that the hon. Member for Guildford feels able to withdraw the motion.
Zöe Franklin
I thank the Minister for his comments. In particular, I was interested to hear about the mental health centre pilot schemes. I look forward to their further roll-out. They will be crucial in addressing the issues that we sought to address in the new clause. I was also very pleased to hear about the focus on a meaningful partnership between local government, national Government and mental health providers. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 7
Funding and reporting
“(1) For each financial year until all sections of this Act have come into force, of the total health service expenditure by the bodies (taken together) in subsection (2), the proportion which relates to mental health spending—
(a) under the Mental Health Act 1983, and
(b) under this Act or which, in future, would be made under provision inserted into the Mental Health Act 1983 by this Act, (taken together) must not decrease.
(2) The bodies are the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and integrated care boards.”—(Dr Chambers.)
This new clause would require that mental health spending as a proportion of health service expenditure must not decrease in the implementation period of the Act.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Chambers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
We are aware from the Darzi report that mental health cases account for about 20% of the NHS burden, and currently receive about 10% of the funding. Our mental health services urgently need investment. Children at risk of self-harm, anorexia and suicide often wait months to be seen. I keep thinking about a few people I spoke to in Winchester who have teenage daughters with anorexia. They have been told that their daughters have to reach a lower BMI before they hit the threshold for treatment. That is horrific for the individuals, and we know that their anorexia will be more difficult to treat, will require more intensive, longer treatment, and will cost the NHS more in resources and finances.
Many people cannot access the care in the community that they need. In a context in which suicide and mental ill health is on the rise, it is therefore disappointing to us that the Government have removed key NHS targets on mental health, such as physical health checks for those with mental disorders. Supporting those with mental health conditions is a fundamental pillar of the Government’s welfare reforms and economic agenda, but we know there were about 1 million people waiting in 2024 for mental health services. That is why we need to ensure that the spend on mental health care does not decrease and that, if anything, it increases.
Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)
As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I carefully scrutinise the annual accounts of the Department of Health and Social Care. We have been urging that exactly how the breakdown of expenditure relates to issues is made more transparent within those accounts, such as how much is spent on mental health. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are other ways in which we can scrutinise and hold the Department to account for its spend on mental health?
Stephen Kinnock
I thank the hon. Member for Winchester for his new clause. This was raised in the other place and there are several issues with it that have not yet been fully addressed.
First, the new clause would apply only to spend under the Mental Health Act. The mental health system, and its accounting, is not structured based on the legal framework that patients are subject to. A single ward may contain a mix of patients under the Mental Health Act and informal patients who would not usually be considered to be under the Act. Community services will support some patients on community treatment orders, who are therefore subject to the Mental Health Act, but also many who are not and have never been subject to the Act. It would not be feasible or desirable to try to restructure accounting and reporting based on which patients are subject to the Act and which are not.
Secondly, the Government believe in prevention. We want to see better mental health outcomes, with more people cared for in the community so that the need for use of the Act is reduced. Over time, we want to see a shift in spend into preventive community services, which should in turn lead to a fall in the need for the use of the Mental Health Act. Few would disagree with that general aim, but the new clause would prevent that. By requiring share of spend under the Act to increase or remain the same, we are necessarily limiting the share of spend that could instead go towards preventing people from needing to use the Act in the first place.
We will need to invest to deliver these reforms, as the impact assessment makes clear; however, the new clause is flawed and not the right mechanism to achieve the necessary investment. Parliament already has the power to scrutinise departmental spend via the estimates process. We are required to report on the share of spend on mental health under the National Health Service Act 2006. This is sufficient to hold the Government to account. I therefore hope that the hon. Member for Winchester feels able to withdraw the motion.
Dr Chambers
I thank the Minister for his comments. If there is a duty to report the spend on mental health as a share of the whole budget, then I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 8
Mental Health Commissioner
“After section 142B of the Mental Health Act 1983, insert—
‘Mental Health Commissioner
142C Independent Mental Health Commissioner: establishment
(1) There is to be an office known as the Office of the Mental Health Commissioner.
(2) The Office in subsection (1) must be established by the Secretary of State three months after the day on which the Mental Health Act 2025 is passed.
(3) The Office of the Mental Health Commissioner will be led by an individual appointed by the Secretary of State titled the “Independent Mental Health Commissioner”.
(4) The role in subsection (3) is referred to as the “Mental Health Commissioner”.
(5) The Mental Health Commissioner may appoint staff to the Office of the Mental Health Commissioner they consider necessary for assisting in the exercise of their functions in section 142D.
142D Functions of the Commissioner
(1) The Mental Health Commissioner is responsible for overseeing the implementation and operability of functions discharged by relevant bodies and persons under the provisions of this Act, the Mental Health Act 1983, and the Mental Capacity Act 2025 particularly regarding the provision of treatment, care, and detention of people with a mental disorder.
(2) The Mental Health Commissioner must publish an annual report on the use of functions discharged under this Act, which must assess—
(a) the quality of mental health care treatment provided by relevant services;
(b) the accessibility of mental health care treatment services;
(c) the relationship between mental health and the criminal justice system;
(d) inequalities of mental health care provision regarding protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010;
(e) the use and effectiveness of detention measures under this Act, including but not limited to Community Treatment Orders, for the purposes of therapeutic benefit outlined in section 1(2B);
(f) challenges surrounding stigma of mental health conditions;
(g) the accessibility of advice and support to mental health service users, their families and carers on their legal rights;
(h) other issues deemed appropriate by the Mental Health Commissioner.
(3) In fulfilling their duties under subsection (1), the Mental Health Commissioner may review, and monitor the operation of, arrangements falling within subsection (1), (2) and (3) for the purpose of ascertaining whether, and to what extent, the arrangements are effective in promoting the principles in section 118(2B) of this Act.
(4) Subject to any directions from the Secretary of State, the Commissioner may take action necessary or expedient in connection for the purposes of their functions.
(5) This may include—
(a) collaborating with health services, public authorities, charitable organisations, and other relevant entities, including NHS bodies, the Care Quality Commission, and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman;
(b) ensuring enforcement authorities and public bodies under the Mental Health Act 1983 have the necessary capacity and resources to adequately discharge duties under the Mental Health Act 1983 and this Act.
142E Appointment, Tenure, and Remuneration of the Mental Health Commissioner
(1) The Secretary of State may by regulation make provision for the appointment, tenure, removal, and general terms of appointment of the Mental Health Commissioner.
(2) The Secretary of State may also by regulation determine the Commissioner’s remuneration, allowances, and pension entitlements.
142F Examination of cases
(1) The Secretary of State may, by regulations, make provision for the examination by the Mental Health Commissioner of the cases of those who are detained under this Act receiving treatment by authorised mental health care providers.
(2) The Secretary of State may, by regulations, provide for the Office of the Mental Health Commissioner to access and examine relevant data on mental health treatment provision held by NHS England and any other authorities the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
142G Regulations
A statutory instrument containing regulations under sections 142E and 142F may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.’”—(Dr Chambers.)
This new clause establishes the office of the Mental Health Commissioner and makes provisions for relevant duties and responsibilities.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Chambers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 8 would establish the office of a mental health commissioner and makes provision for relevant duties and responsibilities. The commissioner would have a strategic, cross-government focus, working to promote mental health and tackle inequalities, and would be a powerful advocate for the rights and wellbeing of those living with mental health problems, who would finally have a voice at the top table. The commissioner would also play a vital role in the public sphere, tackling stigma and discrimination, and championing policies that support good mental health across society. The commissioner would have an independence to comment on the implementation of the reform of the Mental Health Act and any subsequent changes or issues that arise. International evidence highlights the impact that such a role can have in improving communities.
I keep coming back to a conversation I had in my office in Winchester with a psychiatrist whose wife also worked in the medical profession. He said that they were struggling to navigate the mental health system to get the healthcare that their child desperately needed. He made a really good point: if they, with their knowledge, expertise and experience, could not navigate the mental health system, what hope does anyone else have? That is why it is important to have someone with an overview who can advocate for patients, and the patient journey in general, to ensure that the process is streamlined and that people have the information they need to access the care they are entitled to.
Stephen Kinnock
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Winchester for bringing this issue, which was also debated extensively in the other place, before the Committee. Our view has not changed: the functions of the proposed commissioner clearly duplicate existing responsibilities of other organisations, most notably the Care Quality Commission. The Children’s Commissioner has expressed concerns that introducing a new mental health commissioner risks interfering with her own role in relation to children and young people’s mental health.
We recognise that the patient quality and oversight landscape is not working effectively, but I strongly doubt that inserting another body whose role overlaps with those already in place would help to address that issue. The landscape is already cluttered and fragmented. That is why last year we asked Dr Penny Dash to assess whether the current range and combination of organisations deliver effective leadership, listening and regulation for the health and care systems in relation to patient and user safety, or whether a new delivery model is needed. We will shortly see the results of her much-anticipated review.
We appreciate that our argument that the proposed mental health commissioner’s role would be duplicative of the CQC has previously been met with concerns about the effectiveness of that organisation. I reiterate that two major independent reviews into the wider role of the Care Quality Commission have reported under this Government, the recommendations from which the CQC has accepted in full. While we are confident in the progress that the CQC is making, we recognise that those reviews did not closely inspect the CQC’s statutory role and responsibilities in relation to monitoring the use of the Mental Health Act.
Therefore, in response to an amendment tabled in the other House, we committed to report on the CQC’s monitoring functions under the Act in the first of the Government’s annual reports on the implementation of the Bill. That will include reflections from the new chief inspector of mental health, Dr Arun Chopra, on the CQC’s statutory functions and its role as a key partner in delivering the reforms. I am looking forward to meeting Dr Arun Chopra very shortly in his new role.
Lastly, creating a mental health commissioner with a supporting office would require significant resources that we simply cannot justify. The original Mental Health Act commission was brought within the CQC to reduce Government spending and realise the benefits of aligning the CQC’s functions under the Mental Health Act with its functions under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, and to give it new powers to monitor via potential enforcement. Bearing in mind the radical reforms that we are making to the national health system to rid it of duplication, inefficiency and waste, we believe that now is not the time to reverse course on these matters.
Anna Dixon
I commend the work that the Minister and Penny Dash are doing to look at patient safety and the changes going on at the CQC. Could he reassure us that, within scope, he is also looking at the role of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman? There seems to be some confusion about whether complaints under the Act fall to the CQC or the PHSO.
Stephen Kinnock
The Dash review is looking at the landscape regarding all the different institutions and organisations, including the PHSO and the CQC, to map out how they interact with each other. Our view is that there is a lot of confusion and a lack of clarity, but we await the outcome of the review. I can confirm, however, that Penny Dash is looking at those matters. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Member for Winchester to withdraw the motion.
Dr Chambers
I thank the Minister for his reassurances. The issue is that the ability of the CQC to oversee implementation is limited, and it does not have a policy advisory function, which is something that a commissioner could do. Although we understand the Minister’s concerns about the office of a commissioner, the issue is important enough that we put it in our manifesto. We stood on a manifesto commitment to improve mental health access and streamline services via a commissioner. For that reason, we will press new clause 8 to a vote.
Zöe Franklin
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause would introduce a dedicated veterans’ mental health oversight officer, recognising that those who serve or have served in the UK or Commonwealth armed forces face distinct mental health challenges that are not always adequately met by the current system. Far too many veterans experience post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety or substance misuse that, sadly, is linked to their service. Yet they are often treated within a system that does not fully take account of those experiences, and they are sometimes detained under the Mental Health Act without the benefit of trauma-informed, veteran-specific pathways of care.
New clause 9 seeks to change that. It would create an independent officer, tasked with monitoring the use of the Mental Health Act in relation to veterans, advocating for tailored assessment and care linked to veterans’ service history, promoting alternatives to detention where appropriate, particularly through veteran-specific services, and reporting annually to Parliament on outcomes including rates of detention, recidivism and systemic barriers. It is not just about oversight; it is about respect and responsibility.
Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)
I am very sympathetic to the hon. Member’s concerns, but how does she see the new clause fitting in with the already established armed forces covenant, which protects and promotes healthcare for veterans across the country?
Zöe Franklin
I see them as absolutely sympathetic to each other and working in concert. We want to ensure that veterans have specific, tailored mental health care, as is outlined in the Bill. That is why the new clause would ensure that veterans’ unique needs are not just recognised but actively addressed. It is a practical and overdue step to improve care, safeguard rights and deliver the joined-up service that veterans deserve. After all, they give so much to our nation through their service.
I hope that the Minister will support the new clause, but if he does not, I hope that he will outline for the Committee how the Government will ensure that the aims of the new clause will be addressed through the Bill and its accompanying documents as they stand.
Stephen Kinnock
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Guildford for bringing the issue before the Committee. While most veterans lead healthy and successful lives following their service in the armed forces, we know that some may need mental health support. This Government are proud of the courage and dedication of our armed forces, and we are committed to ensuring that those who serve and served in the armed forces receive the best possible care.
All service personnel have access to mental health support throughout their career. The Defence Medical Services provide a responsive, flexible, accessible and comprehensive treatment service and, for leavers from the armed forces, NHS mental health services are available that are specially designed to support the unique needs of veterans. That includes veterans in mental health in-patient settings under the Mental Health Act and those within the criminal justice system. In England, these services are Op Courage and Op Nova, and in Wales there is Veterans NHS Wales. These bespoke services link with wider NHS mental health services to advocate for and support veterans to receive care tailored to their needs.
We are committed to giving veterans and armed forces personnel fair access to mental health care services and special consideration where appropriate. That is reflected in the core principles of the armed forces covenant, to which public bodies such as the NHS are legally bound to give regard. It is our firm view that a wealth of measures are already in place that respond to the unique needs and experiences of those who serve and have served in our armed forces. For that reason, I ask the hon. Member for Guildford to withdraw new clause 9.
Zöe Franklin
I thank the Minister for his comments—particularly about Op Courage, Op Nova and the armed forces covenant—and for his commitment to the veterans who have served this country and their courage, even when they face challenges with their mental health. The Liberal Democrats are willing to withdraw the amendment, but we will observe the passage of the Bill closely to ensure that it serves our veterans well across the UK. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 11
Costed plan to ensure community provision for individuals with learning disabilities and autism who are at risk of detention
“(1) Within 18 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a fully costed plan for how Integrated Care Boards and local authorities will ensure provision of adequate community services for individuals with learning disabilities and autistic people who are at risk of detention under Part 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983.
(2) As part of the development of that plan, a formal consultation process must take place to determine how the decision to enact the relevant parts of this Act will be made.
(3) The consultation must include input from relevant stakeholders, including—
(a) individuals with learning disabilities and autistic people;
(b) carers for people with learning disabilities and autistic people;
(c) healthcare professionals; and
(d) advocacy groups.”—(Dr Evans.)
This new clause requires a costed plan to ensure that ICBs and local authorities are able to provide adequate community services for individuals with learning disabilities and autistic people at risk of detention under Part 2 of the 1983 Act, informed by a consultation with a range of stakeholders.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Dr Evans
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I rise to speak in support of the new clause, which was tabled by the Conservative party. It would place a duty on the Secretary of State to review the effectiveness of the regulatory authority’s role under the Mental Health Act 1983 within one year of the Act’s passage.
Allow me to provide the current legal and regulatory context. Under the framework in the Mental Health Act 1983, the Care Quality Commission, which is the regulatory authority in England, is tasked with monitoring and regulating providers of mental health services. We have debated some of this, and there are issues still to be addressed.
The CQC inspects hospitals, community mental health teams, and other relevant services to ensure compliance with statutory safeguards and standards. It publishes reports on providers and issues recommendations where it identifies failings. Additionally, there is an existing reporting framework under the Act whereby the Secretary of State is expected to oversee and ensure the Act’s proper implementation, with periodic ministerial reports to Parliament and CQC inspection outcomes made publicly available. However, there is currently no statutory requirement to review the CQC’s own role and effectiveness in carrying out these specific mental health functions. The gap means that although providers are scrutinised, the regulator itself escapes similar structured accountability and review.
This question was debated in the other place and I welcome the comments from the Minister in the Lords, Baroness Merron, who, in a letter, rightly highlights existing transparency measures. She states that,
“findings from CQC’s monitoring activity are reported annually in their Monitoring the Mental Health Act report, which is laid before Parliament and published publicly.”
That is true. She also notes the annual quality account reports produced by NHS healthcare providers under the Health Act 2009, which cover patient safety, treatment effectiveness, and patient feedback. True. Those are indeed important components of the current oversight framework, and we support the continuation and strengthening of those transparency mechanisms.
Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about transparency, but it is not just about that. Does he agree that it is also about having an evidence base that allows reform and improvement of the regulator?
Dr Evans
I do, and to expand the point, this is about understanding the performance of CQC as well. We know from the Dash report and from Mike Richards that there are, and have been, concerns about CQC performance. That is at the heart of this new clause—to try to make sure we actually look at the performance and regulation of the regulator. Those reports focus on the performance of mental health services and providers, but they do not amount to a dedicated statutory review of the regulator itself—specifically, the CQC’s role, effectiveness, and capacity under the Mental Health Act.
Annual reports primarily reflect the CQC’s monitoring outcomes rather than a comprehensive, independent evaluation of whether its regulatory functions are being discharged optimally, or whether it is adequately equipped to meet the new challenges posed by the legislation. In other words, reporting on what the regulator monitors is not the same as reviewing how well the regulator performs its duties.
The new clause would address that distinct gap by mandating a focused review with a parliamentary report and a Government response, thereby strengthening accountability at the regulatory level. The new clause aims to establish an additional layer of scrutiny, not duplicative reporting. It would require the Government, within 12 months of the Bill becoming law, to conduct a formal review of the CQC’s effectiveness, specifically in regulating mental health services under the 1983 Act. It mandates an assessment of whether the CQC is adequately fulfilling its duties, including monitoring, inspection, and enforcement responsibilities, as well as whether it will be capable of carrying out its duties under the new legislation. Given the well-documented problems in mental health, it seems entirely appropriate to address the key point: is the regulator regulating effectively?
Dr Shastri-Hurst
My hon. Friend makes a strong point about having a review to ensure that the regulator is operating effectively. Does he share some of my concerns that a one-off review may not demonstrate ongoing oversight and scrutiny of the performance of the regulator?
Dr Evans
We do not want to introduce too much bureaucracy, but ensuring an accountable statutory mechanism to ensure adequate oversight is incredibly important. Much of the debate about the Bill has been about whether we put things in primary legislation or in policy, or whether we allow policy and legislation to be done at a secondary level—or even leave them for the organisation to deal with. My concern with the CQC is that we have not seen the organisation step up in the way that it should do. That does not mean that it is not making progress, but we need to see further progress.
Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I rise to speak in strong support of new clause 13, tabled by the shadow Minister. The new clause would place a duty on the Secretary of State to review the functions and effectiveness of the regulatory authority, which is currently the Care Quality Commission, within one year of the passage of the Bill. The new clause is a timely, necessary and constructive addition to the Bill.
As colleagues will know, the Care Quality Commission plays a dual role in relation to the Mental Health Act. First, as the regulator of services, it ensures that providers meet fundamental standards of care and safety. Secondly, through its specific responsibilities in visiting and speaking to those detained under the Act, it ensures that people’s rights are protected and that the law is used appropriately and humanely. That is no small task. It is a balance that requires the CQC to be not only reactive but proactive, and not only independent but responsive to the lived experiences of patients—especially to the voices of the most vulnerable. That is why the new clause matters. As we bring forward significant reforms to the Mental Health Act through the Bill, and rightly modernise and improve safeguards and place greater emphasis on autonomy, dignity and therapeutic benefit, we must also ensure that our system of oversight and regulation is fit for purpose.
I welcome the direction that the Bill sets. Its four core principles are rightly placed at the heart of the legislation: choice and autonomy, least restriction, therapeutic benefit, and seeing the person as an individual. Those principles must shape the way that care is delivered on the ground. That means they must also shape the way that care is monitored, inspected and held to account. A review of the regulator’s role is not about criticism for its own sake; it is about ensuring that the regulatory framework supports and reinforces the ambitions of the Bill and that it can respond to emerging challenges, shine a light where services are falling short and, crucially, act to protect patient rights.
Gregory Stafford
My hon. Friend is being slightly charitable to the CQC. Given Penny Dash’s review, we all know that the CQC has significant problems, otherwise we would not be reviewing it. Does my hon. Friend agree that the new clause is absolutely vital because of the failures of the CQC up to this point, and our lack of faith in it being able to meet the challenges that this legislation will bring to the mental health sector? Does she also share our concern about the CQC’s ability to regulate and scrutinise properly?
Aphra Brandreth
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have seen examples where regulators have not intervened quickly or robustly enough, and where systemic issues went unnoticed or unaddressed for far too long. We need to strengthen the remit and ensure that the CQC is properly equipped and held to the high standards that we expect of it.
I am an economist by background, so evaluation is something I think about a great deal. Reform, however well intentioned, must be followed by evidence, scrutiny and a willingness to learn and improve. The new clause ensures that we do not just set change in motion, but that we stop to ask whether it is working, whether the right things are being done, and if not, how we can improve.
The review required by the new clause would look not only backwards at whether the regulator has effectively carried out its existing duties under the Act, but, crucially, forwards, assessing whether it is ready to meet the responsibilities placed on it by the new reforms. I particularly welcome the requirement for the review to be published and laid before Parliament. Transparency is essential. It would allow Parliament to scrutinise but also gives patients, families, professionals and the public confidence that those questions are being asked seriously and answered publicly.
Ultimately, the new clause is about improving outcomes. When regulation works well it safeguards dignity, prevents harm, identifies and spreads good practice, develops trust and helps us build a system where the principles of this Bill—choice, autonomy, less restriction and greater therapeutic benefit—are not just written in statute, but visible in practice. That is especially important in mental health care, where so often the people subject to the Act are among the most vulnerable. Those in in-patient settings, particularly those who are detained, are often not in a position to advocate for themselves. They rely on a system that is vigilant, takes its safeguarding responsibilities seriously and puts patients’ rights first.
I hope that all members of this Committee will support the new clause. It is collaborative in its intent, constructive in its purpose and essential to delivering the meaningful reform that we all want to see. It reinforces the importance of accountability, transparency and listening to those most affected by this legislation. We owe it to those individuals and their families to make sure that we not only change the law, but also the culture and oversight that surrounds it. This review would help us do exactly that.
Stephen Kinnock
I am grateful to the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth, for bringing this issue forward.
Two major independent reviews into the Care Quality Commission have reported under this Government: one by Dr Penny Dash, on the CQC’s operational effectiveness as a regulator of all health and social care providers including those in mental health, the other by Professor Sir Mike Richards on its single assessment framework. The CQC has accepted those recommendations in full, and although we are confident in the progress that the CQC is making, we recognise that the reviews did not closely inspect its statutory role in relation to monitoring the use of the Mental Health Act.
Those powers and duties are entirely distinct from those that the CQC uses to regulate the health and social care sector under the Health and Social Care Act 2008. In recognition of that gap, as the Opposition spokesman pointed out, we committed in the other place to report on that specific aspect of the CQC’s role in the first of the Government’s annual reports on the implementation of the Bill, which will be laid before Parliament one year after Royal Assent.
Dr Evans
The Minister mentioned the Government’s annual reports, but at other times he has said that they will issue written ministerial statements. Will he clarify which it will be? There is a big difference between a couple of paragraphs in a written ministerial statement laid before the House, and a full report. When debating the other clauses, new clauses and amendments, the Government’s answer has been that they will report back to Parliament in a year’s time. I am grateful for that, but clarity would be helpful, because a full and comprehensive report would give more weight to the Opposition in terms of understanding and transparency.
Stephen Kinnock
I can confirm that the information will be in a section of the written ministerial statement that will be tabled within 12 months of Royal Assent. We think that requirement makes the Bill more robust and effective, because it is an integral part of the entire ecosystem that we are looking at in terms of implementing this legislation and making sure we have the institutional capacity and capability. We think it helps to have the information as an integral part of the written ministerial statement, but the hon. Gentleman is right to point out that we should be clear in the definitions and language we use.
The written ministerial statement will be an overall implementation report. It will contain a number of sections, one of which will be on the role of the CQC and the inspection function. It will include reflections from the new chief inspector of mental health, Dr Arun Chopra, on the CQC’s statutory functions under the Mental Health Act, as well as its role as a key partner in the delivery of the reforms. The written ministerial statement—the report—will be laid before both Houses of Parliament within 12 months of Royal Assent. I hope the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth therefore feels able to withdraw his new clause.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Dr Chambers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause would require a review of the quality of accommodation for people detained or admitted to hospital under the Mental Health Act, and require the Secretary of State to publish a strategy to implement the recommendations of that review.
Lord Darzi found that many people are being treated in Victorian-era asylums. Many mental health hospitals are crumbling and the wards are not fit for purpose. Both the Care Quality Commission and the independent review of the Mental Health Act confirmed that many mental health wards are unsafe for staff and patients, and provide poor-quality care in unsuitable buildings. One CQC inspection report found that the seclusion rooms had low ceilings that contained electrical wires overhead, creating a safety hazard, and that staff could not see people clearly through the window panels because they were cloudy.
Is the Minister confident that the mental health estate is adequate to fulfil the Bill’s objectives? In particular, is the Minister satisfied that the mental health estate is sufficiently safe, in structural terms, and designed appropriately for those using it? For example, is it free of ligature points, and does it have sufficient in-patient capacity for children and young people?
Stephen Kinnock
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Winchester for bringing this issue before us. We are committed to closely monitoring the quality of in-patient care and driving continuous improvement in services. Indeed, we are already in the process of doing that, and a further review is not necessary to drive the changes forward.
The CQC’s role is to monitor the quality of in-patient services. Its annual “Monitoring the Mental Health Act” report specifically discusses the in-patient environment, and considers the quality of accommodation under the 1983 Act. The independent review in particular made a recommendation to replace dormitory provision with private rooms. To date, the NHS has invested £575 million in doing that, and we are committed to completing our programme of investment.
Anna Dixon
I draw attention to Lynfield Mount hospital in my constituency, which provides mental health in-patient care. It has a fantastic plan for upgrading its facilities, but at the moment it has secured only a proportion of the capital funding. Will the Minister meet me and local NHS leaders to see whether we can close the gap in the capital funding for that facility?
Stephen Kinnock
I congratulate Lynfield Mount on the important work it is doing—and I congratulate my hon. Friend on that extremely strategic intervention. Yes, I would of course be more than happy to meet her, and we will make sure to get that in the diary.
The Government have allocated £750 million for estates safety in 2025-26, to address high-priority estate issues across the NHS systems, including in the mental health estate. The CQC will continue to monitor the impact of the reforms through its existing monitoring and reporting duties. A further statutory review is therefore not required, so I ask the hon. Member for Winchester to withdraw his new clause.
Dr Chambers
I thank the Minister for his reassurances, especially on the ongoing reviews. I will withdraw the new clause, but I make the obvious point that this is about not only the health and safety of the staff and patients, but the public perception of mental health, and the stigma surrounding it if we are treating people in Victorian-era asylums. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 15
Review of impact of this Act on detention
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within a period of 12 months following the day on which this Act is passed, commission an independent review into the impact of relevant provisions on reducing the number of people detained under Part 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983.
(2) In subsection (1), ‘relevant provisions’ include—
(a) sections 4, 5 and 6,
(b) section 8,
(c) section 21, and
(d) sections 46 and 47.
(3) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the publication of the review in subsection (1), publish a strategy to implement the recommendations of that review.”—(Zöe Franklin.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to commission a review into the impact of relevant provisions in the Act in reducing the number of people detained, in particular the provisions relating to people with autism or a learning disability, on grounds for detention and for community treatment orders, medical treatment, care and treatment plans, and on after-care, and to implement any recommendations within 12 months of the publication of the review.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 18—Report on the impact of this Act on patients with eating disorders—
“(1) Within a period of 12 months following the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a report on the impact of relevant provisions in this Act on patients with eating disorders.
(2) In subsection (1), ‘relevant provisions’ include—
(a) section 5 (Grounds for detention),
(b) section 11 (Making treatment decisions),
(c) section 17 (Urgent treatment to alleviate serious suffering),
(d) section 21 (Care and treatment plans), and
(e) section 47 (After-care services).”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to report on the impact of this Bill on patients with eating disorders within 12 months of the passage of this Bill.
New clause 23—Impact assessment: children and young people in temporary foster care—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within 18 months of the passing of this Act, publish and lay before Parliament an impact assessment on the impact of this Act on children and young people who are in temporary foster care.
(2) The impact assessment under this section must consider—
(a) whether the ordinary residence provisions result in delays or inequities in accessing treatment or after-care under this Act;
(b) the effect of transitions between placements on continuity of treatment under this Act; and
(c) any unintended consequences for children and young people in temporary foster care arising from the application of subsections (3) to (5) of section 125G of the Mental Health Act 1983.”
This new clause would require the Government to publish an impact assessment on the impact of this Act on children and young people in temporary foster care.
Zöe Franklin
New clause 15 calls for an independent review of whether the legislation achieves one of its core aims: reducing unnecessary detention under the Mental Health Act. People with learning disabilities and autistic people are still far too often detained in hospital settings, sometimes for months or years, despite clear evidence that community-based support would be more effective and humane. The Bill’s provisions—including those on grounds for detention, care and treatment planning and aftercare—are supposed to address that, but if we do not review their impact, there is a risk that they remain warm words without real change.
The new clause would ensure that the Government must review how well the new law is working, in particular for those most vulnerable to inappropriate detention, and then act on that evidence within a year. If we are serious about reform, which I believe the Government are given the content of the Bill, then the new clause would ensure serious scrutiny and accountability.
I turn to new clause 18. Eating disorders are complex, often misunderstood and frequently mismanaged in the mental health system. Too many patients face delayed interventions, inappropriate detention or a lack of tailored care, particularly when their condition does not fit into a narrow clinical threshold. The Bill introduces reforms to detention criteria, treatment decisions and care planning, but we must ensure that the changes actually work for people with eating disorders.
The new clause would require the Secretary of State to publish a report within 12 months that assesses the Bill’s impact on patients with eating disorders, including whether it is has improved access to appropriate treatment, safeguarded against unnecessary detention and strengthened aftercare. This is a matter not just of policy but of real people’s lives. We owe it to this vulnerable group to ensure that the reforms deliver real change, and that they are not left behind in a system that is still too often shaped by other conditions.
Finally, on new clause 23, children and young people in temporary foster care are some of the most vulnerable in our system. They often face multiple disruptions in care, placement and support, all of which can significantly impact their mental health. The new clause asks for a focused impact assessment on how the changes in the legislation will affect them. In particular, the new clause looks at whether the ordinary residence rules delay or block access to mental health treatment, whether placement changes disrupt continuity of care, and whether the provisions in section 125G of the Mental Health Act unintentionally harm this group.
Foster children should not fall through the cracks of bureaucracy. If we are serious about improving mental health services for all, we must understand and address the unique risks that face those who are moved frequently, often with little warning or support. An impact assessment is a necessary first step to ensure that their needs are not overlooked.
I commend all the new clauses to the Committee and look forward to hearing from the Minister.
Stephen Kinnock
On new clause 15, we want more people cared for in the community and fewer people reaching a point of crisis and detention, but we do not think it is right to use the legislation to drive down the numbers in an arbitrary way that could interfere with clinical decision making and create a risk that people do not receive the help that they need. An evaluation of the relevant clauses should therefore focus not purely on the reduction in detentions, but on the overall improvement of experience and outcomes. Such improvement is predicated on the independent review principles of choice and control, therapeutic benefit, and the person as an individual, as well as the principle of least restriction.
The timescales suggested in new clause 15 are not feasible. Following Royal Assent, our priority will be to update the code and for staff to be trained on the new legislation and code, before commencing the first phase of the reforms. The first phase of significant reforms cannot take effect until the work on the code and the training of staff are completed. Few, if any, of the sections mentioned in new clause 15 could therefore be commenced within 12 months, and it would be premature to commission a review of their effect on detention rates within that time period.
We plan to commission an independent evaluation of the reforms, subject to funding and fundable research applications. This will be a long-term, staged exercise, given the long period over which different reforms are expected to be sequentially commenced following the initial primary legislation. We will monitor the impact of the reforms on the number of detentions and disparities in detention rates, all of which are already published under the monthly Mental Health Act statistics. We have also committed to providing Parliament with an annual update on the implementation of the reforms. As we already plan to commission an independent evaluation of the Bill, and as the timescale set out in new clause 15 would not be feasible, I ask the hon. Member for Guildford to withdraw the new clause.
On new clauses 18 and 23, we have already published an impact assessment alongside the Bill, which was scrutinised by the Regulatory Policy Committee and rated fit for purpose. We have also committed to laying an annual report on the Bill’s implementation, through the written ministerial statement. We are committed to monitoring and evaluating the reforms to understand their impact on different groups affected by the legislation.
On new clause 18, we recognise the devastating impact that an eating disorder can have on someone’s life. The earlier treatment is provided, the greater the chance of recovery. The implementation and evaluation of the reforms will be a long-term, staged exercise. It would not be possible to assess the impact of the reforms on people with eating disorders within 12 months, as not all reforms will have been implemented. We will continue to work closely with NHS England to improve access to appropriate and timely care and treatment for people with an eating disorder.
On new clause 23, we recognise that there are inequalities in mental health prevalence and outcomes for children and young people in care. We are committed to ensuring that all children are able to access the care and treatment they need. We plan to develop bespoke guidance in the revised code on the care and treatment of children and young people, to account for the specific needs of that cohort. I hope that hon. Members will not press their new clauses.
Zöe Franklin
I thank the Minister for his comments; it was really helpful to hear about how he sees the timings in our new clause fitting with the ongoing work to implement the Mental Health Act and the commissioning of the independent review. I am concerned about his comment that the work will be dependent on funding. I hope that the funding for the important independent review will be ensured. However, on the basis of the Minister’s comments, I am happy not to press any of the new clauses. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 16
Transfer of patients: out of area placements
“(1) The Mental Health Act 1983 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 19 (transfer of patients), insert—
‘19A Transfer of patients: out of area placements
(1) The Secretary of State must reduce to zero, within five years of the passage of the Mental Health Act 2025, the number of patients transferred to a hospital outside of the area in which the patient is ordinarily resident.
(2) The Secretary of State must publish, within six months of the passage of the Mental Health Act 2025, a report to outline how the duty under this section will be met, including how provision for treatment under this Act will be increased.’”—(Dr Chambers.)
This new clause would require the transfer of patients to hospitals outside of their area to be reduced to zero within 5 years, and for the Secretary of State to produce a report on how this will be achieved.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Chambers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause would require the number of patients transferred to hospitals outside their area to be reduced to zero within five years, and the Secretary of State would have to produce a report on how this would be achieved. We should not underestimate the harm and distress caused to patients and their families when they are allocated an out-of-area mental health placement. At the end of March 2024, there were 900 active out-of-area placements in England, of which 89% were deemed inappropriate.
Patients must be treated in a centre close to their home and family, and that can be achieved by increasing capacity and co-ordination between services. The new clause calls on the Secretary of State to publish guidance within six months of the Bill’s passage, setting out what processes and funding will be available for that purpose. Vulnerable people deserve to be treated near to their families and home, and the new clause would ensure that happens.
Dr Shastri-Hurst
The new clause is underpinned by noble intentions, but does the hon. Gentleman believe that patients would be better served if such a process were in guidelines rather than in the Bill? That would ensure that it is deliverable.
Dr Chambers
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s comments. That is a sensible and insightful point, and I will take on board the Minister’s response too.
Stephen Kinnock
We believe that everyone should receive treatment for mental illness as close to home as possible, but there are circumstances in which placement on a ward outside the area where a person usually resides is clinically necessary. Some specialised services—for example, treatment for an eating disorder—may require a person to be transferred to a placement away from home, and we wish to retain that option.
However, we know that too many patients are placed outside their local area, which is why we have set aside £75 million in capital funding for local systems to invest in reducing such placements for all patients. We are also trialling new models of care, including six pilots of 24/7 neighbourhood mental health centres, with the aim of treating more people in their local communities. Similar international models have achieved significant reductions in hospitalisation.
NHS England is developing a new model for specialised children’s and young people’s mental health services that aims to ensure that children and young people are treated in the least restrictive environment close to their family and home. I hope that that satisfies the hon. Gentleman and that he will withdraw the new clause.
Dr Chambers
I thank the Minister for his comments. He recognises the issue and is taking steps to address it, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 19
Report and Guidance: Improving Outcomes for LGBT Patients
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, prepare and lay before Parliament a report on the mental health outcomes of patients who are treated under the Mental Health Act 1983 and who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT).
(2) The report under subsection (1) must include an assessment of—
(a) any differences between non-LGBT patients and LGBT patients in—
(i) the extent of the use of detention measures under the Mental Health Act 1983; and
(ii) treatment outcomes following detention, and
(b) the availability and accessibility of ‘culturally competent’ mental health treatment under the 1983 Act for LGBT patients.
(3) Following publication of the report under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must publish guidance for responsible bodies and individuals working with patients under the Mental Health Act 1983, including but not limited to those working in—
(a) mental health hospitals;
(b) places of safety;
(c) crisis accommodation; and
(d) relevant community mental health services.
(4) The guidance under subsection (3) must include—
(a) provisions about updated training standards for staff regarding the specific mental health needs and experiences of LGBT individuals, including training on non-discriminatory practice and inclusive communication approaches;
(b) steps to improve safety for LGBT patients in relevant mental health settings, with particular regard to addressing discrimination and harassment; and
(c) a definition of ‘cultural competent mental health treatment’ for the purposes of subsection (2).
(5) Responsible bodies and individuals working with patients under the Mental Health Act 1983 must have regard to guidance published under subsection (3).
(6) In preparing the report under subsection (1) and the guidance under subsection (3), the Secretary of State must consult—
(a) patients with a mental disorder who identify as LGBT;
(b) the families or carers of patients with a mental disorder who identify as LGBT;
(c) relevant professional bodies;
(d) integrated care boards;
(e) local authorities;
(f) providers of mental health treatment; and
(g) such other persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(7) The Secretary of State must update the guidance under subsection (3) at regular intervals, and no less frequently than every three years.”—(Zöe Franklin.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to report on mental health outcomes and disparities for LGBT patients in treatment under the Mental Health Act 1983 and publish guidance covering training and safety for this specific group.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Zöe Franklin
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 19 would require the Secretary of State to report on mental health outcomes for LGBT patients detained or treated under the Mental Health Act 1983, and to publish clear guidance to improve staff training, patient safety and inclusive care for that group. We all deserve appropriate support when experiencing poor mental health, and that support must be fair and respectful, no matter whether the patient identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Members of the LGBT community should have confidence that they will be treated with dignity and should not face unequal or inappropriate treatment because of who they are. Unfortunately, we know that that is not always the reality.
Stonewall’s “LGBT in Britain—Health” report revealed deeply concerning findings: almost one in four LGBT individuals had heard discriminatory or negative remarks about them from healthcare staff, one in eight had experienced unequal treatment, one in 10 had been outed without their consent in healthcare settings, and one in seven had avoided treatment altogether for fear of discrimination. That is unacceptable anywhere in our health system, but it is especially alarming in mental health settings, where patients are already in distress and often detained, and may not be in a position to advocate for themselves.
Stephen Kinnock
I am grateful to the hon. Member for bringing this issue before the Committee. This Government are committed to tackling health inequalities. The NHS continues to pursue its advancing mental health equalities strategy, which sets out plans to address inequalities in access, experience and outcomes in mental health care, including for LGBTQ+ people. However, we do not think that a review within 12 months of the passage of this Bill is the right approach. First, there are known data quality issues with the recording of sexual orientation in the mental health services dataset, which, combined with small numbers, limits our ability to monitor outcomes accurately and reliably.
Secondly, we do not need a review before acting to improve patient experience under the Act. We will update the code of practice following the passage of this Bill, including the statutory guidance to the Mental Health Act, and will work with patient groups to consider what further guidance is needed to reduce disparities in use of the Act. That consideration will cover issues based on sexuality, gender, race and other protected characteristics. We are also committed to monitoring and evaluating the reforms, which will include an assessment of whether new safeguards and support mechanisms are being equitably accessed through different groups. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Member to withdraw the new clause.
Zöe Franklin
I thank the Minister for his comments, for the recognition that individuals in the LGBT community clearly have concerns about the way that mental health care is provided, and for the commitment to addressing those. I hope that at some point he will be able to advise on the timeline for looking to resolve the issue of the unreliability of data; it is crucial that we have accurate data in order to ensure good outcomes and improvements in mental health care. However, in the light of the Minister’s comments and commitment on the issue, we will not press the new clause, although I look forward to observing closely, as this Bill continues through the House, how it will address the current inequalities for the LGBT+ community. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 22
National strategy on mental health units
“(1) The Mental Health Act 1983 is amended as follows.
(2) In Part VIII (Miscellaneous Functions of Local Authorities and the Secretary of State), after section 118, insert—
‘118A National strategy on mental health units
(1) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the passing of the Mental Health Act 2025, publish a national strategy to set out how the Government will ensure that all relevant mental health units meet or exceed ‘good’ safety standards as assessed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
(2) A strategy issued under this section must address the following matters—
(a) recruitment, retention and training of mental health staff,
(b) patient-to-staff ratios, and
(c) safe staffing levels during crises and night shifts.
(3) Following publication of the strategy, a report on implementation progress must be laid before Parliament annually.
(4) For the purposes of this section, a ‘relevant mental health unit’ is a facility used for treatment under this Act.”—(Dr Chambers.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to publish a strategy, followed by an annual progress report, on how the Government will ensure that all mental health units used for treatment under the Mental Health Act 1983 are rated “good” or above by the CQC.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Dr Chambers
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 22 is quite similar to new clause 14, on the state of in-patient facilities. It would require the Secretary of State to publish a national strategy to ensure that all mental health units meet or exceed a good rating for safety, as assessed by the Care Quality Commission. It would also mandate annual progress reports to Parliament. We all know that far too many mental health settings fall below acceptable standards. The CQC has repeatedly flagged serious failings in in-patient mental health services, including unsafe staffing levels, poor physical conditions and risks of harm to patients. These are not isolated issues but persistent and systemic problems.
The new clause calls for a proper, co-ordinated response. It would require the Government to set out how they will address staffing shortages, improve recruitment and retention, and ensure safe staffing levels, particularly at night and during crisis periods, when the risk is often highest. It is not enough to rely on reactive inspections or piecemeal initiatives; we need a national strategy backed by data, accountability and regular reporting to the House. Too many vulnerable people are currently treated in mental health units that are overstretched, understaffed and, in some cases, unsafe. The new clause would begin to change that by setting clear expectations on monitoring progress and holding the Government to account. I commend the new clause to the Committee.
Stephen Kinnock
We all agree that patient safety is paramount. Anyone who receives treatment in an in-patient mental health facility deserves safe and high-quality care. There have been too many incidents of poor-quality and unsafe care resulting in trauma and sometimes tragedy.
Although we agree with the principle of the new clause, the overriding objective duplicates NHS England’s in-patient quality transformation programme, a national initiative aimed at improving the quality and safety of care in in-patient mental health, learning disability and autism services. The programme has been developed with service users, families and staff, and sets out a long-term vision for improving in-patient services.
The new clause focuses specifically on staffing arrangements. Although we of course agree that the workforce is an important consideration in ensuring safe in-patient care, it is not the only factor. By comparison, NHS England’s in-patient quality transformation programme takes a more comprehensive view of the factors that contribute to safe and effective in-patient care. For example, it includes support for the cultural changes required to create and sustain an in-patient environment in which patients and staff can flourish. The programme’s progress will be measured using a range of data and evidence, for example on patient and staff experience.
We know that more needs to be done to support the providers of mental health care to improve the quality of their services in a sustainable way, which is why we are putting in place a robust package of reforms to help to improve performance. There will be no more rewards for failing; instead, ICBs and providers that do well will be rewarded with greater freedoms, while the most challenged will receive focused intervention. For those reasons, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the new clause.
Dr Chambers
I thank the Minister for his comments and reassurances. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 24
Application in respect of patient already on hospital grounds
“(1) The Mental Health Act 1983 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 5(1) (Application in respect of a patient already in hospital), after ‘or,’ insert ‘that the patient has attended a hospital or been brought to a hospital to seek help or admission as a patient or,’”.—(Dr Shastri-Hurst.)
This new clause would allow people who have attended or been brought to a hospital to seek help or admission as a patient to pursue an application for admission under the Mental Health Act.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Natasha Irons (Croydon East) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause seeks to ensure that if a patient dies while in detention under the Mental Health Act, an independent inquiry into their death will be required. Unlike deaths in prison or police-related deaths, deaths while a person is detained under the Mental Health Act are not automatically investigated independently. Currently, if a person dies while detained under the Act, the trust responsible for their care should carry out an internal investigation into their death to find out what happened and whether lessons can be learned. Those investigations, known as serious incident investigations or root cause analysis, do not have any independent oversight and can vary a lot from trust to trust.
Inquest, the only charity in England and Wales providing expertise on state-related deaths and their investigation, has found that the current system for investigating such deaths is not fit for purpose. In its statement to the Lampard inquiry, it outlined an anonymised case from 2010 in which there was a stark contrast between the findings of the NHS trust that investigated the death of a patient detained under its care and the inquest that took place two years later. The trust found very few failings in care, whereas the jury at the later inquest were critical of the patient’s treatment, which directly led to their death. The question we must ask ourselves is why we would allow deaths while in detention under the Mental Health Act to be investigated by those in charge of custody, when deaths in any other setting would not be. We do not allow the police to judge their own actions if a death occurs in custody, so why should it be any different for those detained under the Mental Health Act?
Josh Dean (Hertford and Stortford) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. In the really dire circumstances of a death in detention, we are dealing with the most difficult and, for family members and loved ones, the most devastating circumstances. Given that, does she agree that it is important to make sure that the circumstances are reviewed thoroughly and independently?
Natasha Irons
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is about transparency and providing answers for the families of patients when the very worst happens.
Independence has allowed investigations into deaths in places of custody to improve significantly. As outlined by the independent advisory panel on deaths in custody, patients detained under the Mental Health Act now have the highest mortality rate across all places of custody. Indeed, the rate is three times higher than in prisons, when taking into account estimates of time in custody and the number of people in each setting. Behind each of these tragedies are families who have unanswered questions and who have had to fight to find out what happened to their loved ones, and vulnerable people who should have received better care.
In my constituency, there is the story of Catherine Horton, who died in 2017 while in the care of the South London and Maudsley NHS trust. The inquest into her death found that the risk assessment was not properly updated, with no formal risk assessment conducted, and no care plan on her arrival or while at the facility. There is also the story of Tia Wilson, who died in 2021 in the care of the same trust. The inquest into her death found that there were multiple failures in managing her risk, which contributed to her death. Then there is the story of the brother of one of my constituents, who absconded from his care, went missing, and was later found dead in a wooded area a stone’s throw from her home.
For each of those cases, we know that internal reviews will have taken place and assurances of improvements will have been made, and yet issues with risk assessments remain and families are left pushing for answers. This is not unique to south London; the internal review process is failing to deliver the necessary improvements across the country. Without embedding independence into the process, we risk undoing a lot of the good work that the Bill seeks to achieve. Adding independence into the investigation of these incidents where the very worst things happen gives trusts a genuine space to learn the lessons. It would improve patient safety and provide families with the transparency they need.
Although we must all acknowledge the incredible work that trusts do across our country to provide care for people at their most vulnerable, we must also provide a proper framework for challenge and improvement. The new clause is an opportunity to treat the deaths of people detained under the Mental Health Act with the same seriousness and care as deaths in other custody settings, to embed transparency, and to make the meaningful improvements that all patients deserve.
Stephen Kinnock
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing this issue to the Committee. I thank her for her powerful speech, which drew on specific experiences of people who have been through very terrible and tragic processes. I have discussed some work on the broader issue of quality of care, but this is a vital issue, and I reiterate how grateful I am to her for enabling us to discuss it on the public record. We recognise that there have been too many incidents of poor-quality and unsafe care, which sometimes result in tragedy. I hope my hon. Friend is reassured by the measures we are taking to support providers of mental health care to improve the quality of their services. We have carefully considered her new clause, and I am afraid that we do not think this needs to be addressed through the Bill.
Natasha Irons
I thank the Minister for his comments. The cluttered and chaotic way in which we investigate these things is part of the problem, so I am glad to hear that there is a wider review of how we streamline the process better for patients, because we are seeing mistakes repeated over and over again. I am content to withdraw the new clause, but I would be grateful if the Minister would meet me to discuss the wider plans in this area and how I can support that work and take it forward.
Stephen Kinnock
I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend. It is also worth mentioning the independent advisory panel on deaths in custody report, which she mentioned. We are considering that carefully, so we should include it in our discussions.
Natasha Irons
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 26
Use of restraint and restrictive intervention
“(1) The Mental Health Act 1983 is amended as follows.
(2) In Part II (Compulsory Admission to Hospital and Guardianship), after section 7, insert—
‘7A Use of force in connection with admission for assessment or treatment
(1) A relevant organisation that operates a hospital must appoint a responsible person for the purposes of this section.
(2) The responsible person must—
(a) be employed by the relevant health organisation, and
(b) be of an appropriate level of seniority.
(3) The responsible person must keep a record of any use of force by staff who work in that hospital against a person (“P”) who—
(a) has been admitted for assessment or treatment under sections 2 to 5 of this Act; or
(b) is on the hospital premises and is at risk of detention under this Act.
(4) The Secretary of State must by regulations provide for the risk factors to be considered under subsection (3)(b).
(5) A record kept under this section must include—
(a) the reason for the use of force
(b) the place, date and duration of the use of force
(c) whether the type or types of force used on the patient formed part of the patient's care plan;
(d) the name of the patient on whom force was used;
(e) a description of how force was used;
(f) the patient's consistent identifier;
(g) the name and job title of any member of staff who used force on the patient;
(h) the reason any person who was not a member of staff in the hospital was involved in the use of force on the patient;
(i) the patient's mental disorder (if known);
(j) the relevant characteristics of the patient (if known);
(k) whether the patient has a learning disability or autistic spectrum disorders;
(l) a description of the outcome of the use of force;
(m) whether the patient died or suffered any serious injury as a result of the use of force;
(n) any efforts made to avoid the need to use force on the patient; and
(o) whether a notification regarding the use of force was sent to the person or persons (if any) to be notified under the patient's care plan.
(6) The responsible person must keep the record for three years from the date on which it was made.
(7) The Secretary of State must ensure that, at the end of each year, statistics are published regarding the use of force by staff who work in hospitals under the conditions set out in this section.’”—(Jen Craft.)
This new clause would require hospitals to record information on all incidents in which force is used against patients with mental disorders, in line with the reporting currently required in mental health units, including force against those at risk of detention for assessment or treatment. It would also require the Government to publish annual figures on the same topic.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I will speak briefly to the new clause, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam (Olivia Blake). Its aim is to close a loophole in the current framework by which use of restraint is recorded. Currently, the use of restraint is governed by the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018, which mandates that where force or restraint is used in a mental health unit, that must be recorded and reported. There are, however, a number of patients who are treated outside mental health units and therefore do not fall within the scope of the Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam has spoken about the issue, to which her attention was particularly drawn in the context of the treatment of patients with eating disorders. This happens quite often, either where there is a shortage of beds in a mental health unit or where the patient in question has co-occurring physical health conditions that require treatment outside such a unit.
Restraint is used regularly and often on patients with eating disorders, by which I mean restraining them to force them to eat, but there is currently no mechanism by which its use must be recorded. If a patient, particularly a young person, who is in hospital but is not in a mental health unit is subject to this restraint, which may be deemed necessary to preserve life and in their best interests, there is currently no mechanism by which that is recorded.
Josh Dean
We touched earlier on the safeguards around electroconvulsive therapy. Does my hon. Friend agree that when someone with an eating disorder is restrained, particularly in circumstances that involve the administration of nasogastric tube feeding, such safeguards are really important because of the invasive nature of the treatment and the potential restraint used in delivering it?
Jen Craft
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The crucial purpose of the new clause is to ensure that the use of restraint is recorded at all times, as well as highlighting that quite often the restraint may be carried out not by a member of the medical staff, but by hospital security, for example. I think we can only imagine the real horror and force involved in that.
Anna Dixon
I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to this gap in the current law. Would she acknowledge that there is now evidence that the use of restraint and restrictive interventions can have serious long-term effects on a patient’s health and wellbeing? Indeed, there can also be an impact on those staff members who are required to carry it out, often with poor training.
Jen Craft
I completely agree. The long-term implications and impacts of restraint on health and wellbeing have been widely documented and acknowledged. It is vital, if a patient is subjected to these measures, that their use is recorded and the patient, in turn, can understand why.
The Committee has spent significant time talking about the importance of patient inclusion in their treatment plans. Earlier clauses, which I will not revisit at length, deal with the importance of enabling patients to select how and where they are treated, as well as advance choice documents. They are vital to the patient experience, because they involve and include them in how they are treated. We acknowledge that such involvement has a massive impact on the patient’s ability to heal, get better, recover from their mental illness and, in some cases, get well enough to go home. It is vital, if people are subject to restraint and the use of force, that it is recorded in an appropriate manner.
This new clause seeks to mandate the recording of its use by staff, as well as information such as the member of staff who applied the force, whether they are medical, and, vitally, demographic data. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend East and Leigh—I hope I have that right—
Jen Craft
My apologies; they are both lovely places. My hon. Friend spoke earlier about the impact that mental health treatment can have on people in regard to race and ethnicity, and the importance of including demographic data. We know that black people are disproportionately subject to use of force and restraint, which is why recording this data in a mental health unit is acknowledged as important. However, if a patient is subject to restraint outside a mental health unit, there is currently no mechanism to record that.
The new clause would also require the Secretary of State to publish annual statistics on how restraint has been used outside a mental health unit. I believe that the Minister’s predecessor agreed to look at closing this loophole. To date, however, action has not necessarily been forthcoming. People continue to be subject to the use of force or restraint, and we have no means of knowing how often it has occurred, to whom it has occurred or whether it has taken place inappropriately. I encourage the Minister and other members of the Committee to consider how we can ensure that the use of restraint and force is appropriately recorded in all medical settings, not just in mental health units.
Stephen Kinnock
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam for tabling this important new clause, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock for moving it on her behalf.
The new clause seeks to recreate some of the duties from the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018, but apply them to patients detained under sections 2, 3, 4 or 5 of the Mental Health Act or those at risk of detention under that Act. This would cover patients receiving mental health treatment who are not in specialist mental health beds, such as young people with eating disorders who are detained in general paediatric wards.
There are practical reasons why we do not support the new clause as it is drafted. For the vast majority of mental health patients, this duty would duplicate duties that already exist under the 2018 Act. Although the new clause would go further in requiring the recording of use of force outside mental health units, it does not require any further use of that data to develop policies or train staff, which is a key element of the 2018 Act. As drafted, the new clause would introduce new duties to record and report data, without there being any clear further use of that data.
I accept, however, that we need to do more to reduce the use of restraint for all patients detained or at risk of detention under the Mental Health Act. NHS England has an ongoing programme of work, overseen by the reducing restrictive practice oversight group, to address this issue for people experiencing acute distress and mental health difficulties. My officials have also written to the CQC to commission it to develop a viable and proportionate mechanism for reporting use of restraint to the CQC, drawing on the views of NHS Providers and NHS England. Any potential changes can be made in regulations and would not require primary legislation, so we can continue this work in parallel with the passage of the Bill, delivering on our commitment to reduce the use of force for mental health patients. For those reasons, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock will withdraw the new clause.
Jen Craft
I thank the Minister for his comments. I am reassured, as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam will be, to hear that he accepts the need to do more about the use of restraint, regardless of the setting in which it occurs. I am also pleased to hear about the measures by which he is seeking to do so in parallel with the passage of the Bill. I am content with what the Minister said, and I imagine my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Hallam will be, too. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 55
Power of Secretary of State to make consequential provision
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the following:
Clauses 56 to 58 stand part.
Government amendment 39.
Clause 59 stand part.
I should say to Members that we have 10 minutes left. If they want to conclude the Committee’s business this morning, they should bear that in mind.
Stephen Kinnock
Clauses 55 to 59 are the general provisions of the Bill. They include the powers to make provision that is consequential on the Bill by regulations. The clauses also set out the territorial extent of the measures, and the commencement and short title of the Bill.
Clause 55 will allow the Secretary of State to make regulations that make provisions that are consequential on the Bill. The power may be used to
“amend, repeal or revoke provision made by or under primary legislation passed—
(a) before this Act, or
(b) later in the same session of Parliament as this Act.”
Clause 56 will provide an equivalent power for Welsh Ministers to make consequential provision in areas of their devolved legislative competence. Regulations that make consequential provision will be subject to the affirmative scrutiny procedure where they amend or repeal primary legislation, and to the negative procedure where they amend or revoke secondary legislation.
Clause 57 sets out the extent of the Bill. The majority of the Bill will extend to England and Wales, but the general provisions in clauses 55 to 59 will apply UK-wide. We have tabled two amendments, Government amendments 37 and 38, that will modify section 6(3)(b) of the Human Rights Act 1998, extending its protection to cover private care providers when providing certain services arranged or paid for by public authorities. That change, if accepted, will extend UK-wide; we tabled the amendments to clause 57 to reflect that position.
Dr Evans
I will be brief. On this clause, I will be grateful if the Government can ensure good co-operation between the devolved powers, and if the Minister can set out how he will engage with the Welsh Government before exercising the power.
On clause 57, what consideration has been given to cross-border issues to ensure that there are no unintended consequences between the likes of England and Wales or Scotland and England? Clause 58 covers commencement; will there be a clear published timetable for that over the next 10 years? Will Government allow Parliament sight of the transitional provisions? We have talked about the annual written ministerial statement, which we have clarified, but will there be further tracking reports that we can look at?
Clause 59 states that the Bill will not impose new public spending or taxation, and yet the impact assessment lists £1.9 billion for the NHS in England, £396 million for local authorities, £2.5 billion for supporting housing and social care, and £287 million for legal costs and tribunals. Clearly, costs are associated with the Bill’s implementation over the next 10 years, so a money resolution is rightly required. When I raised those issues on our first and second days in Committee, the Minister rightly could not answer, because we had not had the Government’s settlement. We have now had that settlement, so I will be grateful to understand how the funding is to be applied to mental health on the community side and with regards to the Bill. Finally, given that we are dealing with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, what are the Barnett consequentials of the Bill in ensuring the support implied in the clauses?
I am grateful to the Committee, the Clerks, the Chairs, everyone here and everyone who has helped me prepare. Committee stage has been a joy, but also a long trial to get through. I am glad to be present as the Bill proceeds, because it is the right thing for the country.
Stephen Kinnock
I thank the shadow Minister for his question about devolved powers. We have worked closely with the Welsh Government on the Bill. The Senedd has yet to vote, but the Welsh Government in their legislative consent memorandum recommended that it grants consent to the Bill. We also seek a legislative consent motion from the Northern Ireland Executive for extending—in Government amendments 37 and 38—the remit of the Human Rights Act 1998 to cover private care providers when providing certain services arranged for or paid by local by public authorities. I will look into the cross-border issues and, if something is there, I will certainly write to update the shadow Minister.
On the published timetable, the written ministerial statement will absolutely be a report on progress over the 12 months and will have a forward plan in it. I cannot say at this moment whether it will be a forward plan all the way through the proposed 10-year commencement period, because some of that will go beyond the spending review period, for example, but I assure the hon. Member that a timetable will at least cover the period of the initial spending review. I do not know whether there will be tracking reports—I will check that point with officials—but my sense is that the written ministerial statement will be the main hook to hang this on.
The shadow Minister asked about the money resolution. We have the overall financial envelope for the DHSC. There is now—how should I describe this?—intense dialogue going on between departments within the DHSC and across portfolios, so I think it will take a couple of weeks before we get the carve-up of the envelope across the different portfolios.
I note the shadow Minister’s point about the Barnett consequentials. I will look into it and come back to him.
It remains for me to thank you, Mr Vickers; everyone in Committee, for their very hard work; and all the staff and officials, to whom we are hugely grateful. I commend the Bill to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 55 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 56 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 57
Extent
Amendments made: 37, in clause 57, page 68, line 3, at end insert “subject to subsection (2).”
This is consequential on amendment 38.
Amendment 38, in clause 57, page 68, line 4, leave out “This section, section 55” and insert—
“Section (Human Rights Act 1998: extension to certain private care providers), section 55, this section”.—(Stephen Kinnock.)
This ensures that NC10 extends to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Clause 57, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 58 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 59
Short title
Amendment made: 39, in clause 59, page 68, line 25, leave out subsection (2).—(Stephen Kinnock.)
This removes the privilege amendment inserted in the Lords.
Clause 59, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Bill, as amended, to be reported.
Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Before we begin, I have a few preliminary announcements. Will Members please be kind enough to send their speaking notes by email, if possible, to hansardnotes@parliament.uk? Please switch all electronic devices off or to silent. Please also remember that tea and coffee are not allowed in the room during sittings.
We will consider first the programme motion as on the amendment paper and then the motion on the reporting of written evidence for publication. In view of the time available, I hope that we can take those formally, but they are open to debate if anyone wishes to debate them. The Minister will move the programme motion standing in his name, which was discussed yesterday by the Programming Sub-Committee for the Bill.
Ordered,
That—
1. the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 24 June) meet—
(a) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 26 June;
(b) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 1 July;
(c) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 3 July;
(d) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 8 July;
2. the proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 12; Schedule; Clauses 13 to 40; new Clauses; new Schedules; Clauses 41 to 44; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
3. the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Tuesday 8 July.—(Simon Lightwood.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee
shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Simon Lightwood.)
The Chair
It is cooler today, but if hon. Members are robust enough and wish to remove their jackets, they may do so.
We now come to line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The selection and grouping list is available in the room. It shows how the clauses and selected amendments—there are amendments that have not been selected—have been grouped together for debate. Amendments grouped together are ordinarily on the same or a similar issue. I appreciate that I may be teaching granny to suck eggs, but some Members may not have served on a Bill Committee before.
Decisions on amendments do not take place in the order that they are debated; they take place in the order that they appear on the amendment paper. The selection and grouping list shows the order of debates. Decisions on each amendment, and on whether each clause should stand part of the Bill, are taken when we come to consider the relevant clause.
Let me explain that: you will find that things are debated and then not voted on, and you might think, “Oh gosh, we have missed something.” We have not. We will vote on them when we reach the stage in the Bill at which they appear, even though they have been grouped earlier, because they are on a similar subject to something else. I hope that is clear. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me or the Clerk—I may not know the answer, but the Clerk certainly will.
A Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called to speak first. Other Members are then free to catch my eye to speak on all or any of the amendments within that group. Members can speak more than once in a debate, but please indicate that—I do not have second sight. I do not like feeling that someone has been left out because I did not call them, so make sure that you catch my eye, or that of whoever is in the Chair, if you want to speak.
At the end of the debate on a group of amendments, I will call the Member who moved the lead amendment to speak again only if they wish to do so. Before the Member sits down, they need to indicate whether they wish to withdraw the amendment or press it to a vote. If any Member wishes to press any other amendment to a vote, please let me know in advance. Before we start, do any Members need to make declarations of interest?
Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)
I am a serving councillor on Norfolk county council.
Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)
I am a serving Isle of Wight councillor.
The Chair
We will now begin our consideration of the Bill.
Clause 1
Purpose: improvement of bus passenger services
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 22—Duty to promote bus services—
“(1) It is the general duty of any relevant authorities overseeing bus operations to promote bus services in their jurisdiction.
(2) In fulfilling this duty, authorities may consider—
(a) the potential benefits of making bus services economically competitive with other transport options;
(b) measures to enhance the environmental sustainability of bus services, including but not limited to reducing emissions and supporting greener transport alternatives;
(c) the broader social, economic, and environmental benefits of increasing bus patronage;
(d) the need to reduce road congestion and improve urban mobility;
(e) opportunities to contribute to lower air pollution and reduced greenhouse gas emissions;
(f) the provision of affordable and accessible transport that promotes social inclusion;
(g) the need to improve access to employment, education, health, and other essential services.
(3) A relevant authority must publish a report every two years which outlines steps taken to fulfil this duty, including—
(a) progress in making bus services economically competitive and environmentally sustainable;
(b) the effectiveness of policies and measures aimed at increasing bus patronage;
(c) challenges faced in promoting bus services and proposing or implementing solutions; and
(d) plans for future improvements in bus services.
(4) Relevant authorities may consult with any relevant stakeholders, including transport operators, local businesses, and members of the public, which they deem to be expedient for the purpose of fulfilling the duty outlined in this section.”
This new clause would place a duty on authorities to promote bus services in their areas.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Simon Lightwood)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Roger. I think I speak for the majority of Committee members in saying that, as this is my first Bill Committee, I will be guided by your experience and that of the Clerks.
This clause places a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the purpose of the Bill, namely the improved performance, quality and accessibility of bus passenger services in Great Britain. The clause was inserted into the Bill via a non-Government amendment in the other place. I will take this opportunity to outline the Government’s objectives for buses, which extend well beyond the Bill and explain why the clause is not necessary.
The Government know that for far too long, buses have not been delivering for passengers. Long-term service decline has undermined confidence and contributed to falling patronage. Efforts to buck that trend have not gone far enough. The Government’s vision is for better bus services across the country. We seek to grow passenger numbers and drive opportunity to underserved regions. That means enabling local areas to shape services that connect people to the places where they need to go; that can be counted on as a reliable, affordable, inclusive and better integrated part of the transport network; and that offer bus passengers, in particular women and girls, safety throughout their journeys. Passengers should also be able to access accurate, accessible and timely information about when and where buses will run.
The Bill is an important part of delivering that vision. Local leaders will be given powers to decide how best to design bus services in their areas, whether that is through bus franchising or strengthened enhanced partnerships. The Government are taking steps to ensure that essential services, including those in rural areas, are protected, that safety is improved, and that services are more accessible.
Legislative change alone, however, is not enough. In addition, the Government have published updated franchising guidance. Reforms to how bus services are funded are also being implemented, with the bus service improvement plan and the bus service operators grant funding being combined into a single bus grant. Furthermore, at the spending review, the Government committed £900 million each year to maintain and improve vital bus services; extended the £3 fare cap until March 2027; and announced franchising pilots in York and North Yorkshire, and Cheshire West and Chester.
The clause, therefore, does not account for the full scope of the Government’s ambition. It cannot do so, because our ambitious reform package extends beyond the structural changes that the Bill makes. The clause would also amend the Bill to limit its outcomes to specific aims, which would not take into account the other outcomes that the Government seek to achieve, such as improved safety. I hope that my comments demonstrate to Members the Government’s objectives for buses. For those reasons, the Government will oppose the clause remaining part of the Bill.
I thank the hon. Members for Wimbledon and for North Norfolk for tabling new clause 22. I have explained that the Bill is about empowering local leaders across the country to shape better bus services for their communities. Beyond the Bill, the Department for Transport allocated more than £700 million of bus grant funding to local transport authorities in 2025-26. That included additional funding for local transport authorities to boost their capability, so that they can make the most of the opportunities that the Bill gives them. I have already spoken about the announcements at the recent spending review, including the extension of the £3 bus fare cap to March ’27. Work is already under way to ensure that the Government provide active support to local transport authorities, such as those interested in franchising.
The Bill is about giving local areas choice, and with that comes trust. That is consistent with what the Government seek to achieve through devolution. My view is that authorities and operators want to promote bus services in their local areas, which will help their communities to thrive and create growth. New clause 22, however, would place additional requirements and reporting burdens on local authorities and local transport authorities. That would lead to additional pressures on authorities already under resource constraints. That is not the Government’s intention. We want authorities to be focused on delivering better buses and, as I said, we want to give them the tools to get on and do precisely that. The new clause has the potential to compel authorities to divert funding from essential services to other activities. For those reasons, the Government cannot support it and I ask that the new clause not be moved.
The Chair
I will give another word of explanation at this point. Ordinarily, I would call the shadow Minister first and then other Members, but because Mr Kohler tabled the new clause, I shall call him first and then the shadow Minister. The first four debates on the selection and grouping list are on clause stand part, which means, literally, that the clause being considered shall stand—remain—part of the Bill. If the clause is amended, the Question will be whether the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
When we come to a group with a lead amendment, as we will in our fifth debate, I have the authority to decide whether to subsequently permit a clause stand part debate. We will debate the amendments in the group, and then I will put the Question that the clause stand part of the Bill—but that can be debated. Different Chairmen take different views. My view is that you can have your cake, but you cannot eat it twice. You can have a big debate, which sometimes facilitates a general discussion—that is fine by me—but it almost invariably means that you then do not get a second bite of the cherry with a stand part debate at the end.
If you have any questions, ask. It is a slightly complex and arcane process, but we will get there in the end.
Steff Aquarone
What you have just described is in the event that the amendment is agreed to. Is that right?
The Chair
No, not necessarily. A lead amendment will be moved when we come to a group of amendments, as will happen in our fifth debate. Only the lead amendment will be moved, and it may or may not be agreed to. I will then decide, on the basis of the debate on the grouped amendments, whether everything in the clause has been sufficiently debated and we need hear no more about it, thank you very much. If there are things missing, I will say, “Actually, this still warrants a clause stand part debate.” Other Chairmen may take a different view. I have found, generally, that Members like to take a slightly broader view in debates, which is fine, but you cannot do it twice. What we cannot have is repetitive debates.
Because new clause 22 is grouped with clause 1, I call Paul Kohler to speak to his new clause.
Mr Kohler
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. The Lib Dems support the Bill and applaud the Government’s ambitions. This is an excellent move forward, and we support the purpose set out in clause 1. The stated aim to
“improve the performance, accessibility and quality of bus passenger services”
in the UK is vital. However, buses have for too long been a poor relation in public transport, which is why we are pushing the Government to give local authorities a general duty to promote the use of bus services.
The bus is the most popular form of public transport, but it has long been neglected and, to some extent, looked down on. New clause 22 would ensure that local authorities have a duty to encourage the use of buses and promote their benefits and services, but it is only a general duty. Subsection (2) would not be mandatory; it simply suggests the things that a local authority might consider.
Although the Government’s ambitions are wonderful and to be commended, we want local authorities to start saying to people, “Yes, buses are important, and we have a role in providing them.” That is why we are pushing the Government on that.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)
It is very reassuring to have you in the Chair, Sir Roger. I already feel calmer, and I am sure the Minister does as well.
Jerome Mayhew
I will tell you at the end of the day.
The Opposition welcome the Bill in principle, which is why we did not divide the House on Second Reading. We welcome it because franchising was an innovation that the previous Government introduced in 2017. At that stage, it was limited to mayoral combined authorities, although any local authority could apply to the Secretary of State for agreement that franchising could be brought in.
We are concerned, however, that the Bill does not deliver the goals of value for money and improvement of passenger services as it is currently drafted. It is therefore important that we use this opportunity to carefully consider the many amendments from the Government, official Opposition, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens; each of them has their various merits, and there are many good ideas to improve what every party agrees is currently an imperfect Bill.
That brings me to clause 1—the purpose clause—which was proposed by the Earl of Effingham in the other place, and received substantial support. It ensures that the overarching aim of the Bill is to improve bus services, and that that remains at the heart of all decisions undertaken in its provisions. By explicitly requiring the Secretary of State to have regard to that purpose, the clause embeds into the legislation a commitment to improve bus services. That is not merely a formality; it is about setting a clear duty on the Secretary of State to put the improvement of bus services at the core of any decisions he or she makes under the legislation.
The clause gives the Bill a necessary focus; it is the framework on which all the baubles of other clauses and requirements are hung. That is important when there is a change to structures, as the Bill anticipates, because it is easy for process to take over from the clear objectives of the Bill. In a purely commercial construct, where there is an operator driven by the profit motive—they need to drive fare box and have customers to get a return on their investment—it is obvious that the natural incentives focus on the customer. When we move to a franchise and the primacy of commercial incentives are removed, the risk is that the customer gets overlooked.
In what is commonly described as full-fat franchising—rather like the Manchester example of the Bee Network, which I believe we will refer to quite frequently in Committee—the local authority takes full assumption of commercial risk within its remit and the operator is contracted merely to provide a service. That brings the temptation to mould services in favour of the supplier—particularly if the supplier is a municipal bus company, such as an in-house provider—as opposed to the passenger.
With external providers, there are a couple of checks on that: first, the direct relationship between fare box and profitability, which I have already mentioned; and secondly, the local authority’s overseeing position to challenge operators and hold them to account, particularly when partnerships are the enhanced partnerships that we have in many local authorities around the country. That combination enforces the interests of the passenger, even when they are not directly consistent with commercial performance. Under wider franchising, there is a risk—albeit a manageable one—that that check will disappear, because local authorities may become both the judge and the jury.
That makes the purpose clause even more important to ensure that the Secretary of State focuses on passengers in every decision. It makes it clear that the accountability for achieving that result lies firmly with the Secretary of State, and it is useful, as in any complex consideration, to have organisational clarity. Nothing in the Bill, other than here in clause 1, puts passengers front and centre—that is a notable omission from the Bill as currently drafted; all the rest deals with procedure. Placing an explicit duty on the Secretary of State provides a valuable guiding principle throughout the Bill’s implementation period, and ensures that every step taken under the Bill will be aligned with the objective of improving bus services for all those who rely on them.
The Minister in his opening remarks said that the clause was not necessary, because it does not encompass
“the full scope of the Government’s ambition.”
Yet the clause says that the Bill will
“improve the performance, accessibility and quality”.
Surely “quality” encompasses safety, which was the Minister’s example as to why the clause was inadequate to describe the full scope of the Government’s ambitions. I push back on that, because quality does encompass safety in the ordinary sense of that word.
Paragraph 1 of the Government’s explanatory notes for the Bill says:
“The Bus Services (No. 2) Bill brings forward primary legislative measures intended to support the government’s commitment to deliver better buses.”
Clause 1 honours that Government commitment to deliver better buses and should remain part of the Bill.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. This is not my first Public Bill Committee, but I will certainly benefit from your guidance on the particulars of the proceedings.
In general, I am a big fan of the Bill. I am a bus person at heart. Wherever I go in the country, I make a point of taking the buses—I take notes and sometimes write to local councillors. That is how passionately I feel about this. The good measures in the Bill need to be backed up by clause 1, which was added to the Bill in the other place. The Bill has come from the other place in very good shape, and the clause is part of that.
I worry about what the move from the Government to strike out the clause portends for the rest of the Committee proceedings. Is it the sign of real commitment that the bus services deserve? Is it a sign that we will see high-quality, reliable, frequent, high-performance, accessible bus services for the whole country? The Government should explain more why they want to remove this very good clause.
I support new clause 22, tabled by my Lib Dem colleagues the hon. Members for Wimbledon and for North Norfolk. It would extend a stronger duty, including an accountability, to local transport authorities. Empowering local authorities is great, but those who need buses—those who struggle with car dependency and cannot reach essential services—need the good measures in the Bill to be backed up by both those duties and real funding as soon as possible.
Joe Robertson
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Roger.
I rise to endorse the comments made by the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham, and to draw further attention to an issue with new clause 22: placing duties on local authorities without money coming in. Central Government are very good, and have been for decades, at requiring things of local government, which naturally leads to increased costs on councils to deliver the relevant duties and comply with the law, but councils do not automatically—in fact, very rarely—get money to go towards complying.
The duties set out in the new clause seem obvious. Subsection (1) says:
“It is the general duty of any relevant authorities overseeing bus operations to promote bus services in their jurisdiction.”
Subsection (2) has paragraphs (a) to (g). I will not read them all out, but paragraph (a) says that authorities may consider
“the potential benefits of making bus services economically competitive with other transport options”.
There is also a requirement to report every two years. That looks laudable. One would hope it would lead to better bus services, but it would place a cost burden on local government without money coming to every local authority. That is my concern: placing duties without accompanying finance in all cases. That is why I have difficulty with new clause 22, although I appreciate the intention and sentiment behind it.
Simon Lightwood
As I said in my opening remarks, clause 1 does not account for the full scope of the Government’s ambition. The shadow Minister talked about incentives; I think the incentives for local authorities are really clear, if not the clearest. They know what is best for their local areas. They are driven by the desire to tackle the social and economic challenges within their areas, and I do not agree that the clause would add anything to that.
The shadow Minister’s reading of “quality” to include safety is subjective. I do not think it is as clear as he made out. The franchising guidance states that an LTA must
“explain how far it will deliver improvements”
if it franchises. The guidance also has a chapter to ensure that an LTA articulates how it is putting people at the heart of franchising assessments. Although it is not in the legislation, the guidance is clear about driving improvements.
New clause 22 would create an additional reporting burden on local authorities and local transport authorities, which are already operating under resource constraints, while potentially undermining their devolved powers to determine transport priorities in line with their local transport plans. I am not able to support it.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 14—Franchising statement—
“(1) The Transport Act 2000 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 123A, after subsection (1) insert—
‘(1A) The power in subsection (1) cannot be exercised until the franchising authority, or two or more franchising authorities acting jointly, has published a statement, subject to the requirement in subsection (1B), stating—
(a) their objectives in making the franchising scheme, and
(b) their reasons and evidence for believing that the making of such a scheme is the best option for achieving those objectives.
(1B) It is a requirement that a statement in subsection (1A) must be published before the franchising authority complies with the requirements in sections 123B to 123G.’”
This new clause seeks to ensure that before initiating the formal franchising process undersections 123B to 123G of the Transport Act 2000, franchising authorities must first publish a statement outlining their objectives, reasons, and supporting evidence for believing that franchising is the best option to achieve their aims.
New clause 18—Cost of franchising schemes—
“(1) Where a local authority owned bus company is providing franchised bus services, the authority or authorities must publish annually—
(a) The anticipated cost of the franchise for that year
(b) The actual cost of the franchise for that year.
(2) Where an authority (or authorities) have transferred the franchise from a privately owned bus company to a local authority owned bus company, the authority (or authorities) must publish—
(a) the costs incurred by the franchising authority in transferring the service, including the transfer of undertakings (protection of employment costs); and
(b) a breakdown of how those costs are being incurred.
(3) The reports required by subsections (1) and (2) must be published in a format that is easily accessible on the website of the relevant authority or authorities.
(4) Each local authority which runs a bus company delivering franchised bus services must ensure that time is made available for the reports required by subsections (1) and (2) to be debated at a public meeting of the full council.”
This new clause would require transparency about the costs of franchising local authority owned bus services.
New clause 30—Guidance on the development of franchising schemes—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the passing of this Act, issue guidance for local transport authorities on the development of a franchising scheme.
(2) Any guidance produced under this section must include specific information or guidance for local transport authorities in—
(a) rural areas;
(b) coastal communities; and
(c) suburban areas.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to produce guidance for local transport authorities on the development of franchising schemes.
New clause 38—Franchising authorities: joint forum—
“(1) When operating a franchise scheme, the franchising authority must establish a joint forum with operators and trades unions.
(2) The purpose of the joint forum is to address bus service staffing and employment issues in the area covered by that franchising authority.”
Simon Lightwood
Clause 2 removes the requirement for local transport authorities that are not mayoral combined authorities or mayoral combined county authorities to gain the Secretary of State’s consent to start the franchising process. The measure puts all local transport authorities on a level playing field. It also removes from the process an administrative step that does not provide an effective check on local transport authorities’ plans, given that it occurs before a franchising assessment is produced. I am confident that the measure will make franchising more attractive to local transport authorities by speeding up the overall process.
New clause 14, tabled by the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham, would require authorities to publish a statement that outlines their objectives, reasons and supporting evidence for deciding whether franchising is the best option to achieve their aims, before they initiate the formal process. The Department for Transport has established franchising guidance; to require local authorities to provide an up-front statement during an exploratory stage would be premature. The franchising scheme assessment also provides a robust way to present the evidence and rationale behind a decision to franchise.
Although local authorities might choose to develop a feasibility assessment to investigate the right bus model for their area, this should remain optional to allow them the flexibility to adopt the approach that best suits their needs. The new clause would also make the franchising process slower and undermine the Government’s ambition to streamline franchising, making it faster and more cost-effective.
New clause 18 would require local authorities to publish the costs associated with franchised bus services operated by local authority-owned bus companies. Authorities are already subject to statutory requirements to publish detailed information on their spending and financial performance. Under the 2015 local government transparency code, they must regularly publish data on all expenditure over £500, and are required to produce and make publicly available their annual statements of accounts, which are subject to external audit and public scrutiny. The framework ensures a high level of financial transparency and public accountability, making such an additional burden on authorities unnecessary.
New clause 30 would require the Secretary of State to produce guidance for local transport authorities on the development of franchising schemes that includes specific information on rural and suburban areas and coastal communities. The Department for Transport has published franchising guidance, including on the consideration of neighbouring authorities and on the requirement to consult affected areas. The Department continuously refines the franchising guidance, and plans to undertake comprehensive updates after the Bill receives Royal Assent. The introduction of piecemeal additions without considering the guidance in its entirety would risk reducing its effectiveness.
In addition to the guidance, the Department supports LTAs through the franchising and bus reform pilot. The ambition is to explore alternative models that may suit a local area and help to provide evidence for the decision. Lessons learned, tools, templates and best practice will be shared throughout the pilot programme.
New clause 38, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald), would require franchising authorities to establish a forum of stakeholders to address staffing and employment issues in the franchising area. It seeks to increase accountability in areas that choose to adopt franchising. I am sympathetic to the new clause’s aims, but it is not the role of central Government to prescribe how local transport authorities run their services. Franchising guidance that covers driver welfare already exists, giving the franchising authority scope to decide what forums it wants to put in place to support the delivery of its bus services. The new clause is therefore unnecessary and I hope it will be withdrawn.
Jerome Mayhew
Clause 2 amends the Transport Act 2000 in relation to the availability of franchising schemes. It is essentially a facilitating clause to allow for one of the really important changes in the Bill, which is to remove the requirement for the Secretary of State to consent to any local authority other than mayoral combined authorities when deciding whether to embark on a franchising scheme.
Mr Kohler
The concern raised by many stakeholders about this Bill is not about its contents. We all agree with its contents, but the money and expertise are lacking. Local councils do not have either. As I said on Second Reading, although this Bill
“hands councils a set of keys to a new bus network, it does not ensure that there is fuel in the tank.”—[Official Report, 2 June 2025; Vol. 768, c. 97.]
We have great sympathy with Conservative new clauses 14 and 18. It is important that we ask local authorities to list the objectives and evidence. It is also be important to go through the costs. Those constraints and disciplines are crucial and will avoid ideological decisions. We have seen that already with rail nationalisation, where a Transport for London model, which the industry and many Labour Members supported at one point, would have been a better approach than concession contracts. New clauses 14 and 18 are a useful brake on letting ideology, rather than pragmatism, take control. They are not impediments; they are things that surely should be done and are good practice. We will support new clauses 14 and 18.
On new clause 30, we want to make it easier for local transport authorities that do not have the expertise. Having a number of off-the-shelf approaches to franchising is surely a good thing. There are specific issues in rural areas and villages, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk will speak to, but in urban areas we have real issues with bus routes that do not keep to local authority boundaries, but cross them. There are problems of co-ordination when bus routes cross boundaries, and an absence of buses because of those problems. Having a number of off-the-shelf ways to help authorities would surely be a good thing. I will leave it to my hon. Friend to take on that matter.
Joe Robertson
All the comments I was going to make have already been made by the shadow Minister. He was so complete and comprehensive that he leaves no space for any additional comment. However, I will briefly give my slant on some of the points. When I rose at the beginning of this sitting, it was to talk about the costs that would be put on to local authorities by the general duties in new clause 22. That has been dealt with. This clause will put much more significant costs on to local authorities that choose to go down the franchising route—after all, franchising is a choice available to a transport authority. Those are costs incurred by transferring a risk from commercial operators to local authorities and the taxpayer if the business does not go in the way of the business plan.
The shadow Minister has already spoken about the huge cost subsidy, effectively, to the services operated in London and Manchester, where there are huge economy of scale advantages. My view is that the franchising model, if it works at all, works for high population densities—cities, large local authorities and those that can swallow bad years—and offers nothing at all for smaller authorities other than the option to take a step into the unknown for no obvious benefit. I think of my local authority on the Isle of Wight—it is fanciful to think that that unitary authority could in any way take a step towards franchising. Even if we end up with a combined mayoral authority with Hampshire county council, which has a big budget deficit, it seems highly unattractive to Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight to go down the franchising route and take on all those risks.
I have no direct experience of the Manchester model, but if Manchester really is the shining beacon, it is one that has cost a huge amount of money. However, that is a huge amount of money that the taxpayer in Manchester may be able to swallow. For a transport authority with a significant chunk of rurality—Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is an exception only in that it has an island attached to it, not in terms of how rural it is—I cannot see the figures adding up because no money goes with franchising.
The Government may talk about money being available for bus services and the £3 fare cap. Those are welcome things, but they are not sums of money that naturally flow with an option to go down the franchising route. Although that does not go against having franchising as an option, I feel that it is going to be attractive only to a fairly small proportion of England—areas with high-density populations and those with metropolitan authorities. In this country, franchising is for the few; it is not a mass model that all local authorities will find attractive. It could lead to a more uneven quality of bus services across the country, and to a two-tier system.
Alex Mayer (Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I want to challenge the suggestion that franchising is an obligation. It is not; it is a power that is given to authorities to use if they wish. However, in those communities that were so poorly served for the past 14 years under the previous Government, should we not inspire an ambition for better bus services?
Joe Robertson
I was not suggesting that it is an obligation. Plainly, franchising is an option. My point is that it is an option that is unattractive to smaller local authorities, which cannot benefit from the economies of scale of franchising bus services. It is much more attractive for city areas. Of course I want rural bus services to be improved; my constituency is a rural area and we want better bus services. I see absolutely nothing in the franchising option that will deliver that, because I cannot see a local authority—in my own or other rural areas—looking at it and thinking, “This is helpful.” That is because it does not, as a right, bring money with it.
Sarah Hall (Warrington South) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I am a Warrington MP, and, as has been mentioned, the town has one of the country’s eight remaining municipal bus companies—the award-winning Warrington’s Own Buses. It is a trailblazer, and it is an example of what a municipal bus company can be and what can be achieved. For example, Warrington still has capped fares, and the bus company can still offer a flat fee of £2 for adults and £1 for under-22s. We have a pioneering all-electric fleet and a brand-new depot. Any profit goes back into the service, and we have free travel for care leavers. With a municipal bus company that understands our communities, we have been able to maintain the essential services that private providers would simply give up on and walk away from.
Jerome Mayhew
I agree with much of the hon. Lady’s description of Warrington’s Own Buses. A few weeks ago, I spoke to the company’s managing director and I was impressed, as I said on Second Reading. However, does the hon. Lady agree that that is because Warrington’s Own Buses has 30, 40 or 50 years’ institutional experience in running those kinds of services—experience that other local authorities simply do not have? Does she also agree that exactly the same delivery of services can be achieved through an enhanced partnership, in which the operator works in collaboration with the local authority, and it is up to them to decide what is important for the community?
Sarah Hall
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I put it on record that Ben Wakerley, who heads up Warrington’s Own Buses, is fantastic. He has been a real asset for us. Experience is an important factor, but it is also about understanding the community that a company serves, and that does not take 30 or 40 years. It just means taking the time to know and understand the community. Ben has not been there for 30 or 40 years, but he has been leading the way with a lot of the delivery.
Collaboration can be good, but my experience of Warrington’s Own Buses, and of how it has focused on services and delivered in the way that it has, shows how powerful that format can be. I encourage other areas to adopt the same thing, because it has put power back into the hands of the community, not private providers.
Steff Aquarone
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I will speak to the clause and to new clause 30 in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon. We have this Bill Committee, Department for Transport estimates day and the forthcoming Transport Committee report on connecting rural communities—we wait for years for the opportunity to talk about buses, and three come along at once.
I strongly welcome the widening of bus franchising opportunities. Rural transport, in particular, needs a proper rethink, and the greater powers that transport authorities can get hold of as a result of the Bill will, I believe, allow local leaders to do just that. People are already welcome the idea of bus franchising. When we visit London, we do not quibble about whether our red bus is run by Transport UK, Arriva, Stagecoach or another franchise holder; we care that it comes at the time we want and takes us where we want to go.
What is lacking in the Bill, however, is leadership relating to how the powers can be used to make a much needed difference to people in rural areas. We have models of urban bus franchising to follow—London has taken the lead and now Manchester is following—but it has never been attempted in a truly rural area. It would be quite reckless of the Government to leave authorities completely rudderless, because some would be guaranteed to go off the rails, and we all know that residents would pay the price in their passenger experience and council tax bills. I gently say to the Minister that this is not about whether guidance is in the pipeline; it is about how far it goes and how robust it is.
Our new clause 30 is the first of our many new clauses and amendments that seek to provide guardrails, guidance and models for those adopting franchising for the first time, in a situation where there may be little evidence to go on. Given the concerns of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East about how franchising might work in rural areas, there could be some good news for him in our new clause, but we need to adjust our thinking about what good bus services look like in such areas. While we do not want a top-down imposition of things on rural, coastal and suburban areas, I and other hon. Members believe it would be good for those areas to be given a greater degree of support from the Government than there currently is in the Bill. I also think that specifically outlining such areas in the Bill will help to ensure greater consideration of the unique characteristics of those parts of the country.
Even if the Department pledges to produce guidance, it could fail to address the challenges faced in rural communities in particular. Coming from a rural area, I know how much Government policy feels like it was written by someone who has rarely stepped foot outside the SW1 postcode. Our coastal communities remain without a top-table representative in Government, and I struggle to see how residents of rural communities can trust that such guidance will be forthcoming unless it is in the Bill, or that it will represent the challenges and needs of their areas.
I hope that the Minister will give due consideration to what we are trying to achieve with new clause 30. I do not expect him to accept it, although he is welcome to do so, but I hope that he outlines the steps that his Department will take to provide comprehensive and structured support to those authorities embarking into uncharted territory with their franchise schemes, beyond what we have heard already.
Simon Lightwood
I will try not to repeat the comments that I have made already, but I will say to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham, that yes, the Conservative Government did put franchising in place. They also ensured that it was near impossible to achieve, as there were so many barriers. Instead of playing party politics about Manchester, what the Conservatives should be saying to Andy Burnham is, “Thank you for your vision. Despite all the barriers that we placed before you, you still managed to achieve franchising and improve bus services throughout Greater Manchester.” The shadow Minister also talked about the primacy of passengers—but excuse me if I judge the previous Government on their actions, not just their words, because from 2010 to 2024, 300 million fewer miles were travelled on buses.
Jerome Mayhew
There is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about which system passengers prefer. The way to really judge that is through ridership—how many people take the buses. It is absolutely right that in Greater Manchester, under the Bee Network, there has been a post-pandemic increase in ridership of about 34%, from memory. However, does the Minister not accept that in Norfolk, where there is an enhanced partnership, ridership has increased by more than 40%, and in Essex, another enhanced partnership area, ridership has increased by more than 50%? The point is that it is not the scheme design that is fundamentally important, but the way in which it is approached. Does the Minister accept that we can have outcomes that are just as good—better outcomes, in fact—through enhanced partnerships as we can through franchising?
Simon Lightwood
What the shadow Minister failed to hear in my previous remarks is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to buses. This could be done through franchising; it could be done through municipal bus companies or local authority-operated bus companies; or it could be done through strengthened enhanced partnerships.
Let me touch on franchising, because the shadow Minister talks about Manchester as the full-fat model. A huge number of alternative franchising arrangements are available, including the Jersey model, which I will go into in a moment. Within franchising assessments, there will be a detailed investigation that is then checked robustly for assurance purposes. Obviously, the process as it stands does not provide an effective check on local transport authority plans, because it happens before a franchising assessment is produced.
On the Secretary of State’s consent, as I have said, it is not effective because it is at the beginning of the franchising process. The assessment must look at the finances of the proposed scheme and then be independently assured. Different areas will also have different circumstances when pursuing franchising; the Secretary of State is not in a position to scrutinise them all.
On funding and LTA support, £1 billion of funding was announced for 2025-26, £700 million of which was for local authorities to improve bus services. That is not for franchising per se; as I said, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The Government are opening up options to local transport authorities. No LTA is being forced to franchise. No LTA has been forced to franchise through the Greater Manchester model, in fact. The Government are looking at how best to support LTAs, including through franchising pilots, which will include elements of rural communities as well. Funding is provided through the bus allocations for LTAs to decide how to spend. The franchising pilots will look at alternative models, one of which could be a joint venture model like the one in Jersey.
Jerome Mayhew
The Minister is right, of course, that all sorts of different franchising schemes and mechanisms are available, and I am looking forward to his description of the Jersey model. However, does he not recognise and accept that, of the authorities that have expressed a direction of travel so far, both Liverpool and West Midlands have also decided to go down what I have described as the full-fat model? It is not just Manchester being an outlier. It is likely that the Bill will ensure—in fact, it is happening already—that full fat is seen as the direction of travel. Does the Minister not think that that is correct?
Simon Lightwood
I concede that, at the moment, it tends to be city regions that are looking at franchising, which is why we are doing the pilots to ensure that we have the template approach. We will learn the lessons from the various different franchising models that could be used. As we announced at the spending review, York and North Yorkshire is one of the areas that would be ideally suited to demonstrate the effectiveness of franchising in a rural setting. There was a comment about coastal communities, so let me just put this on the record: this South Shields-born, not SW1-postcoded MP knows full well the importance of buses to coastal and rural communities. In fact, I am the son of a bus driver as well. [Interruption.] I have ticked all the boxes—he was not a toolmaker, though.
Let me touch on Manchester. The figures quoted on franchising costs in Manchester refer to the level of investment being made to improve Greater Manchester’s bus network, supporting economic growth, greater productivity, access to homes and so on. In 2024-25, the cost of operating the franchised bus network was about £151 million, but it would be misleading to compare that with the £226 million in an attempt to argue that costs have inflated year on year. Greater Manchester was only partway through the three-phase transition to franchising during ’24-25, so the cost was accordingly lower. Transport for Greater Manchester was operating only half of the full network for the majority—nine months—of ’24-25. There is very little additional cost resulting from the adoption of franchising in Greater Manchester, and evidence to date shows that this model is more efficient and effective at delivering value for money.
Bus depots in Greater Manchester were required to ensure a level playing field when procuring franchised operators; otherwise, there would be an inherent advantage, of course, to incumbent operators. Depot acquisition also recognises the importance of investing to bring infrastructure up to modern standards to deliver a quality service and electrification of the fleet.
Turning to local authority bus companies—LABCos or municipal bus companies—there is a level playing field for arm’s length LABCos, which the existing ones in England are, and for private operators. There is existing legislation and regulations around local authority bus companies.
There will be different ways that LTAs can franchise. Rural areas, for example, could look to integrate demand-responsive transport into the network. It is right to recognise the successes that there have been in Jersey. When I visited in April, I saw at first hand the benefits of franchising and what it has delivered for passengers. A small team have successfully introduced franchising in rural areas. Although that offers useful lessons for rural and suburban communities in England, Jersey offers just one model, and there will be particular local transport challenges and opportunities in other places. Far from stipulating the one-size-fits-all Greater Manchester model, we are exploring and working with local transport authorities throughout the country to demonstrate different forms of franchising to make that a success.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Specification of areas
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 70, in clause 4, page 2, line 10, leave out “or places” and insert
“, places or Rural Bus Hubs”.
This amendment is linked to NC35 and would allow rural bus hubs to be included in the specification for a franchise scheme.
Clause 4 stand part.
Amendment 71, in clause 38, page 41, line 23, after “England” insert—
“(e) the impact, or potential impact, the establishment of Rural Bus Hubs on services to villages.”
This amendment would require a review of bus service provision for villages to include an assessment of the impact of rural bus hubs, if already established, or the impact which establishing them may have on villages.
New clause 35—Rural Bus Hubs—
“(1) Local transport authorities may consider the construction of Rural Bus Hubs in rural areas which are, in the authority’s assessment, not sufficiently well-served by buses.
(2) Any Rural Bus Hub must—
(a) be a facility where bus users can park vehicles for the purposes of transferring to a bus service for the remainder of their journey;
(b) be constructed outside of town or and village centres, and be easily accessible by road, cycle or walking routes and other modes of transport;
(c) be on newly-developed sites or on sites which have been repurposed;
(d) contain car parking, electric vehicle charging, cycle parking and other amenities as the franchising authority sees fit, at a level of adequacy determined by the franchising authority.”
This new clause would allow local transport authorities to create rural bus hubs in areas to create a hub-and-spoke model of bus service delivery.
Simon Lightwood
The clause enhances the flexibility of franchising in terms of the areas that can be brought into such a scheme. The Government understand that there is a lack of clarity about whether a franchising scheme may specify more than one non-contiguous area. The clause therefore clarifies that that is permissible, meaning that franchising authorities may be flexible in the areas that they can bring into a franchising scheme. For example, it will allow rural authorities to focus on franchising in individual towns and villages if they so wish.
I thank the hon. Members for North Norfolk and for Wimbledon for tabling amendment 70 that would allow rural bus hubs to be included in the specification of a franchising scheme. The franchised services that a franchising scheme will provide must be specified or formally set out and published. This ensures that the scheme will deliver in a transparent way. The amendment would make it explicit that franchised services could be specified by reference to the rural bus hubs that they might serve. The amendment is unnecessary because the Bill already allows franchising authorities to specify places that franchised services will serve. Places can include rural bus hubs.
Alongside clause 3, clause 4 also enhances flexibility for franchising authorities by clarifying how franchised services may be specified in the scheme. This ensures that franchising authorities can more easily make minor changes to franchised services. For example, the clause will give a franchising authority scope to specify services by listing specific places to be served, or by specifying places by the purpose they serve. Purposes could include connecting students to school or employees to work.
The clause allows franchising authorities to combine approaches to specifying services. This will allow adaptability and ensure that franchising authorities can develop franchising schemes that meet the needs of different communities, such as those in urban and rural areas. The clause also has transitional provisions for authorities that have started the process of franchising prior to the Bill becoming law.
Steff Aquarone
I wish to speak to new clause 35 and amendments 70 and 71 tabled in my name. The Minister has done a very good job of outlining what those proposals seek to achieve, for which I am grateful. I am seeking to remedy the lack of vision for fixing the public transport problems that we face in rural areas.
As I have said, we cannot just throw new powers at rural areas and hope for the best. We have to create workable models for adoption to support areas to use the new powers in the best way possible. There has been great excitement about how to use them to transform the bus networks in our major cities, but in all the conversations here on this issue, rural communities seem to have been forgotten about.
In rural areas, the local bus service is not just a convenience or a “nice to have”, but a real and genuine lifeline. For many, it is the main way they can get to see friends and family, go to medical appointments, and get to the shops and to leisure activities. Bus services keeps many rural villages going. It is no surprise that when the withdrawal of routes in areas like this are proposed, there is fury locally and major campaigns against it.
I asked some of my rural colleagues about their experiences and, unsurprisingly, I was inundated. My hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) has been campaigning to save the X5 between Aylesbury and Hemel Hempstead, which was replaced with an unreliable service that is making it hard for residents to get to key medical appointments. My hon. Friends the Members for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) and for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) are trying to bring back the 84/85 route from Yate to Wotton, a vital route to shopping centres, schools and colleges and for those visiting HMP Leyhill. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) has been working with campaigners to save school bus services in Ancells Farm, with children facing the prospect of long walks down unsafe roads to get to and from school in Fleet.
There are all these communities and campaigns, but we still have not come up with better ways to serve rural areas and protect their access to services. It is telling that when my Transport Committee colleagues and I, several of whom are represented on both sides of this Committee, wanted to go and see some best practice of rural bus networks for our “Buses connecting communities” inquiry—report forthcoming shortly; I am sure everyone will be reading it as soon as it is published—we had to travel to the Republic in Ireland to find them. We simply do not have good examples of successful rural networks here in the UK.
All of that serves to say that it is time for a bold new approach. A good few years ago, when we were researching the Liberal Democrat manifesto for Norfolk’s 2021 county council elections, we undertook research with a number of key local stakeholders to hear what they thought of the local bus network and what we could do to improve it. I personally interviewed bus companies, council officers and other stakeholders. Most importantly, we surveyed local people, including those who do not currently use buses—an often overlooked audience segment. We concluded that we need to combine two of the most successful features of current public transport models to create a new model for rural public transport. Those two things are park and ride services and demand-responsive transport. Pairing them could create a real network that works for our rural towns and villages without the near-impossible task of running an hourly timetable to every village. That conclusion resulted in the rural bus hub scheme outlined in new clause 35.
Rural bus hubs would allow people to get between key towns and villages that they need to visit directly. People in many rural areas suffer from having to take buses in the opposite direction from where they want to go, going to the nearby town or city just to go straight back out again. That adds hours to people’s journeys, the journey is totally derailed if one link in the complicated chain goes wrong, and it is ultimately an inconvenient way to get about. As a result, it does not improve passenger numbers.
Similar to our park and ride networks, rural bus hubs would have facilities to enable those living nearby to travel to the hub independently, either by car or active travel routes. The hubs would have the amenities to charge electric vehicles, and to lock and store bikes safely, so that people could easily return to them to complete the final few miles of their return journeys. The hubs would also be well served by demand-responsive transport for those who are not independently mobile. That would ensure that the network could reach into all areas, including rural villages and harder-to-access communities that may never have had a regular service, if any service, from an existing bus route.
Such passengers, once at the hub, could catch direct, frequent buses to any part of a proper network, getting them to the hub nearest to where they want to go, and linking up with train connections or even hospitals and employment areas. It is a model that could easily be adopted by transport authorities. It would reach the most people possible without seeking to run a regular bus through every village, and it would connect those in rural areas to a proper public transport network that broadens the range of their destinations, rather than just taking them to the nearest city or large town.
My amendment 70 would permit rural bus hubs to fit into the current model of franchising, allowing for specified services to include those running to and from, or between, the hubs. My amendment 71 would add to the review of service provision to villages an assessment of how service in the villages could be impacted by the establishment of rural bus hubs, or how the establishment of the hubs has affected services for villages at the time of the review. That would ensure that, as we assess how villages are faring following the passing of the Bill, we do not simply grow a list of complaints but assess what could be done differently to make improvements and the impacts that those improvements would have.
I grew up in a rural village with a sketchy bus connection. I now live in another, and my children are growing up with the same sketchy connection that I had. That cycle cannot continue. We have to do better for areas like mine, and conventional thinking is not going to cut it. It is time for a radical rethink of how we deliver public transport in rural areas. We have to challenge the old ideas and be willing to seize on something new.
I am sure that the Government will oppose these ideas, but I would gently say that they have not put forward anything equivalent. It is all very well to say, “You could do anything,” but there is nothing of substance to say, “Of all the things you could do, these are the things you might specifically like to consider.” We could feasibly help households to reduce the number of vehicles they rely on, saving them thousands every year. We could encourage active travel by expanding the number of journeys, and the hubs could be a component of that. By expanding demand-responsive transport, we could even remove car reliance altogether, while connecting the carless to a far better range of travel times and destinations than they currently have.
The same old approach is not working. The situation will not magically fix itself with the new franchising powers alone. We have to try something different, and do something to create networked, accessible public transport that works for people, and gets them where they want to go, when they want to go there. I do not think that is asking the world, and I hope that the Government will pledge to look into this idea further to deliver real change for people in North Norfolk, and rural communities across the country.
Jerome Mayhew
Clause 3 is not controversial, so I will not make a long speech. Proposed new subsection (2A) of the Transport Act 2000 simply makes it clear that, where more than one area is specified in a franchising scheme, the specified areas “need not be contiguous.” I say no more about that.
Amendment 70, in the name of the hon. Member for North Norfolk, adds a reference to bus hubs. As he is my constituency neighbour, our constituents share many of the same experiences, and I absolutely support the sentiments that he eloquently expressed: rural areas are often overlooked, bus policy is designed with the major cities and large towns in mind, and policymakers—perhaps because they have limited experience of life in the kind of rural communities that he and I serve—do not consider the very different challenges that we face. I therefore support the sentiment of the amendment, but the challenge is the cost. We keep coming back to the money—or lack of it—in this legislation, because it is disproportionately expensive.
The hon. Member is absolutely right that park and ride is an interesting hub-and-spoke model for rural areas, but there is also the on-demand model, which I have previously described as the Uberfication of rural transport. The tech is obviously already there. Someone books in and says that they want to go from here to there; the algorithm sorts out the route and how many people can be picked up; and then they are delivered from door to door. Because it is door to door, it has the opportunity to provide an improved customer experience.
The challenge is getting the take-up, because it requires a large number of people to buy into such a scheme, and the set-up costs are expensive. There has been a trial in Wymondham, in Norfolk, where the county council put forward a type of on-demand rural service, but the take-up was disappointingly low. Why was that? My working hypothesis is that, if it is a pilot, hardly anyone knows about it, but if there is wide-scale adoption—“This is the future of rural transport”—and it is backed up with public information so that everybody in the community cannot help but know about it, the take-up will be much greater and that then transforms the economics of it.
As a fellow Norfolk MP, I fully support the concept behind the hon. Member’s amendment, but I am afraid that I question whether it is needed, given the specifics of the drafting. As “places” are not defined under the clause as drafted, I am not sure about the requirement to define a specific place—this is my lawyer’s background coming through; it is a nasty rash I am developing—and I wonder whether there is a legal need for that clarification.
I will move on to clause 4. According to the explanatory notes, it inserts proposed new paragraph 123H(2B)(a) into the 2000 Act to clarify that services can be specified by routes or the places intended to be served. I think that is sensible. For example, a franchising authority could specify the services by listing the principal points to be served, so, “The local services to be provided under local service contracts are ones that serve the following principal points,” followed by a list of what they are, such as the hospital, the railway station and the doctor’s surgery.
Another example under this proposed new subsection would be for services to be specified route by route. I will come back to that in a moment, because that is quite an important clarification when we look at the kind of operators that will be in a position to provide these services. Specifically, there is a question about the access of small and medium-sized enterprises to contracts under franchising, which sounds a bit niche but is nevertheless important.
Proposed new paragraph 123H(2B)(b) of the 2000 Act clarifies that services can be specified by describing intended services in general terms. It is broad and gives franchising authorities a wide range of options for specifying services under this proposed new subsection. That, again, is eminently sensible; I will not go into the detail.
Proposed new paragraph 123H(2B)(c) of the 2000 Act clarifies that franchising authorities can combine the approaches under proposed new paragraphs (a) and (b). For example, a franchise authority that covers both urban and rural areas could specify services by reference to the specific routes for the urban areas, in line with proposed new paragraph (a), and then could take a broader approach for the rural areas. Finally, paragraph (d) clarifies the catch-all that franchising authorities can specify services “in such other way”.
Steff Aquarone
I appreciate the warm support from the hon. Gentleman, who is, as he stated, my constituency neighbour. I defer to his lawyering experience on his salient points about the propriety of my amendments given the Bill’s drafting, but I will ask for his reflections on two points.
First, cost is a big unanswered question in the Bill. If the Minister had access to the Treasury, I know that he would be raiding it to fund improved rural bus services. Does the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham agree, however, that at least looking at a hub model makes more sense financially, and for service provision, than trying to establish hourly services in every village?
Secondly, I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support for amendment 71. Although I intend to withdraw amendment 70, I will push amendment 71 to a vote with his support.
Jerome Mayhew
I do not disagree with anything the hon. Member said. I do not have in my head the financial details associated with rural hubs, but it makes more commercial sense as a matter of principle, although it would probably not be profitable, to have a hub-and-spoke approach rather than an hourly service for every village. I do not know whether the hon. Member has counted the villages in North Norfolk, but there are well over 100 in Broadland and Fakenham, so that would be a challenge for any provider.
The Opposition support the concept of new clause 35 if the finances—the missing link—add up, but we question the need for it, because there is nothing in the Bill to prevent local authorities from doing what it sets out.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
I am conscious that we are finishing in three minutes, so I will limit my comments to give the Minister some time. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham, I query the premise that public is better than private. The hon. Member for Warrington South mentioned the ability to provide a better service than existing franchise services, but I want to put on record that we can still get £2 fares in South West Devon. There is not necessarily a concrete need for a franchise; it is not necessarily a magic wand. I will fit my other comments in somewhere else, because I am conscious of time.
Simon Lightwood
I thought the Liberal Democrats were the party of devolution, but they have a strange habit of wanting to tell local areas what to do and how to do it. Rural bus hubs are not yet widespread and the available data on their impact is limited. I have already outlined that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to improving buses. Local transport authorities in rural areas better understand the needs of their local communities, so it is right that they are given the opportunity to determine what is right for their areas.
I have already spoken about the different models for bus franchising, such as the Jersey model. The pilots will explore the models that may suit rural areas over metropolitan areas. In a rural setting, bus franchising could provide the opportunity to integrate demand-responsive transport into the network, ensuring that it links rural areas to key locations and access to onward travel options.
The Government are also supporting local transport authorities to improve the viability and sustainability of demand-responsive transport. That may be the most viable option in rural areas. The Government are gathering insights from the rural mobility fund pilots and are developing best practice guidance—a comprehensive resource for setting up and managing DRT schemes.
Beyond that, the Department’s support programme includes a focus on rural-specific challenges, such as the dedicated Bus Centre of Excellence’s conference on quality bus services in July and our plans for franchising pilots. The Department understands that there are barriers to SMEs accessing franchise networks. That is why we are listening to the sector about ways to ensure that disproportionate paperwork requirements do not hinder SMEs bidding for franchising contracts.
Victims and Courts Bill (Fifth sitting)
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 11 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 3 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
We continue line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill. Please switch all electronic devices to silent. No food or drink is permitted apart from the water in front of you. Hansard colleagues would be grateful if Members could email their speaking notes to them or pass the relevant notes to the Hansard colleagues in the room. Members are reminded to bob if they wish to speak.
Clause 11
Reviews of sentencing: time limits
Mike Wood (Kingswinford and South Staffordshire) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 9, in clause 11, page 12, line 22, at end insert—
“(aa) in that sub-paragraph omit ‘28’ and insert ‘56’”.
This amendment increases the window for applying to the Unduly Lenient Sentences Scheme from 28 days to 56 days.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 10, in clause 11, page 12, line 23, after “(2)” insert
“unless an application is made by a victim, or their deceased victim’s next of kin, in which case notice of an application shall be given within one year”.
This amendment increases the window for applying to the Unduly Lenient Sentences Scheme to one year for a victim of a crime or a deceased victim’s next of kin.
Amendment 11, in clause 11, page 12, line 29, leave out “28” and insert “56”.
This amendment is contingent on Amendment 8.
Amendment 12, in clause 11, page 12, line 39, at end insert—
“(5) In accordance with the provision under sub-paragraph (1) the Crown Prosecution Service must write to the victim, or a deceased victim’s next of kin, within 10 working days of the sentence being delivered to make them aware of their ability to apply for a review of sentencing.”
This amendment is contingent on Amendment 9. It would require the CPS to write to a victim, or a deceased victim’s next of kin, within 10 working days of a sentence being delivered to make them aware of their ability to apply for a review.
Mike Wood
Before any observers start panicking that the shadow Justice Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle, has really let himself go over the weekend, I should say that he sends his apologies to the Committee, although it is not clear whether that is for his absence due to illness or for lumbering Members with me this morning.
I rise to speak in support of Opposition amendments 9 to 12. In the last sitting, we spent considerable time considering the role and involvement of victims and their families in the sentencing process. We spoke about measures aimed at making it as meaningful as possible by both involving them and trying to ensure that offenders are present. Disappointingly, we were unable to secure changes that we believe would strengthen the voice of victims and their families.
Across the criminal justice system, we have seen considerable effort made to improve the experience of victims and their families, including through the introduction of screens, the pre-recording of evidence, the work of organisations such as Victim Support, and the many ways in which the Victims’ Commissioner has expanded the rights of victims and their families and the services available to them. However, there is cross-party agreement on the need to go further. We welcome many of the measures that the Government are introducing, including through clause 11, but victims and their families are not just interested in what the processes of the criminal justice system are like. Although the views of victims and their families are not the only ones we should seek, we really want them to have a fair and reasonable experience of the justice system, and to consider its outcomes to be fair and reasonable.
The unduly lenient sentence scheme provides victims, their families and others with a route to redress when they feel that the outcome does not represent justice. However, it is clear from the evidence we heard last week, and from victims’ family members whom the shadow Minister and I have spoken to, that the current scheme is woefully inadequate. Witnesses who spoke for victims during our evidence sessions, as well as the Victims’ Commissioner and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, all agreed that the current time window is simply not fair.
As Paula and Glenn from Justice for Victims said, echoing what Katie Brett from the group had originally said, 28 days is the same amount of time people get to return something to a shop. There is an inherent unfairness, because there is an exceptional circumstances clause under which a criminal gets no time limit—none at all. The Bill will amend the unduly lenient sentence scheme, but only for the Government’s Law Officers—not in relation to victims and families. We can see no good reason why we should not act now, with legislation before us, to improve the scheme for victims and families too.
Our amendment 10 would allow victims, or a deceased victim’s next of kin, to request a review up to one year after sentencing. Giving them time to act would show that we understand that this can be a deeply traumatic time for many people. Many of us will have had victims come to our advice surgeries soon after sentencing, but outside the 28-day period in which we are able to offer any help. When we have spoken to victims, it has been clear that, first, they were not aware of that, and secondly, because of their state of mind after the trial and sentencing, they were not focusing on such things immediately. Therefore, it is reasonable to extend that period.
Katie Brett started a petition to change the law, which has gathered more than 14,000 signatures. Katie is doing that in memory of her sister Sasha, who was brutally murdered; she was stabbed more than 100 times, raped, and her body was set on fire. Katie has every reason to believe that her sister’s killer should have received a whole-life order, but will never get the chance to legally test that. Ayse Hussein, also from Justice for Victims, had a similar experience, and the group is campaigning for a change in the law.
I am sure the Minister will say that the Law Commission is looking into unduly lenient sentencing and that we must let it do its work, but anyone reading that review will see that it is primarily about criminal appeals from the viewpoint of offenders. The consultation document makes it clear that the Law Commission does not think there is anything wrong with the way in which the ULS operates at the moment, and it is not clear how it can possibly reach that view. Why does the Minister need the Law Commission to tell her and us that this needs to change? The Government are giving the appearance of being dependent on reviews to make up their mind on quite simple principles, but particularly anything significant in the judicial sphere. Here is an opportunity to be bold, and to apply good instincts, which I know the Minister has and am confident would be similar to ours on this issue. We hope that the Government will accept the amendment.
Amendment 12 addresses the equally important issue of awareness. Of course, a short time window creates a greater risk of someone never being made aware, but either way, we need a more robust mechanism of notification, so that victims know of the possibilities. The amendment would introduce a new duty on the Crown Prosecution Service to inform victims, or a deceased victim’s next of kin, within 10 working days of sentencing that they can apply to the ULS. This is about enforceable rights. A legal right means little if the person entitled to it does not know that it exists. Victims deserve to be told what their options are clearly and promptly. The amendment would ensure that no one missed their opportunity for justice simply because no one had bothered to tell them. Surely we do not need the Law Commission to tell us that this is the right thing to do.
Finally, amendment 9 would make a straightforward but crucial change—to increase the time limit for referring a sentence under the unduly lenient sentence scheme from 28 days to 56 days. This is about achieving simple fairness by extending more broadly the Government’s measure to award more time to their own Law Officers.
Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)
We welcome the provisions in clause 11, which relate to extending the time period in which the unduly lenient sentence scheme may be applied for. However, as the official Opposition, we still have concerns that the window of opportunity for victims to raise an appeal remains the same. The scheme can only be referred to for some of the most serious crimes—crimes that are likely to leave victims and their families with a degree of trauma or grief. How can we possibly expect that, within just a month of a sentence being issued, gathering together a clear, strong case for a sentence’s being unduly lenient would be on the minds of victims?
We also know that many victims do not know about the scheme, or the opportunity to appeal. Baroness Newlove said that victims “really do not know” about it. She said:
“Once they leave the courtroom, it can take a long time, but the clock is ticking.”—[Official Report, Victims and Courts Public Bill Committee, 17 June 2025; c. 8, Q15.]
During the oral evidence session, many notable sources raised issues with the current timeframe. Dame Nicole Jacobs, Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, described the current system as “disorienting” and said that
“we need to do so much more to put in place solid advice and support for victims. Those 28 days seem to fly in the face of that.”––[Official Report, Victims and Courts Public Bill Committee, 17 June 2025; c. 9, Q15.]
Extending the window of opportunity will also surely allow a greater base of evidence from previous cases to be compiled, to bolster a referral under the scheme. It is only right that we allow victims, and the organisations supporting them, the time and space to make their case as strong as possible, ensuring that everything is laid on the table for the Attorney General to consider. Let us place victims and families at the heart of the unduly lenient sentence scheme, where they should be.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Davies-Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I place on the record our well wishes to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, and welcome the Opposition Whip, the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire, in his place today.
On amendments 9 and 11, let me start by thanking the Justice for Victims campaign and, in particular, Katie Brett, whom I met again recently and whom I commend for her tireless campaigning for reform of the unduly lenient sentence scheme in honour of her sister Sasha.
As the Opposition Whip mentioned, the Law Commission is undertaking a review of criminal appeals, and it has launched a public consultation inviting views on a range of reforms to the ULS scheme, including extending the time limit. The consultation is open to all and has been extended to 27 June. I urge him and anyone else with an interest to submit their views, if they have not already done so. The Government will review the recommendations by the Law Commission and act if necessary. Parliament intended the ULS scheme to be an exceptional power, and any expansion of the scheme must be carefully considered. Therefore, we will holistically consider the review’s final recommendations following publication of the report.
On amendments 10 and 12, we recognise the exceptionally difficult circumstances for victims and their families in making a referral within 28 days. We heard about the impact that that is having on them directly in our evidence sessions last week. That is why anyone can ask the Attorney General or the Solicitor General to consider referring a sentence to the Court of Appeal. That is open to not just victims or relatives of a victim, but members of the public, the Crown Prosecution Service and parliamentarians—I myself referred cases to the Attorney General and Solicitor General when I was a Back-Bench Opposition MP—thereby taking the burden off victims and their loved ones.
The Court of Appeal is less likely to increase a sentence after more time has passed, because of the double jeopardy risks of sentencing an offender twice. Particularly if enough time has passed that the offender has already completed their sentence, the Court may actually reduce an extra sentence in order to reflect that. That means that an extended time limit would have a more limited impact and, worse, it would create false hope for victims, leading them to delay requests to review and then retraumatising them, with uncertainty hanging over them for up to a year after the trial, when they are trying to move on with their lives. For that reason, it is important that sentences are certain and not subject to change for too long a period.
Let me be clear: it is imperative that we provide better and clearer communication with victims by criminal justice agencies, including in relation to how and when information is given to victims and their families about the unduly lenient sentence scheme after sentencing. We heard loud and clear from victims last week about how the lack of communication and of awareness about the scheme was one of the issues. Under the victims code, the police-run witness care units are required to tell victims about the unduly lenient sentence scheme when they provide a victim or family with information about the sentence. We have already commenced the obligation in the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 on those who provide victims code services to comply with the code unless there is a good reason not to do so. That ensures that agencies, including the police, are held to account for providing victims and their families with the service that they should expect. Once the new victims code is in force, we will also implement the code awareness duty, placing a legal responsibility on criminal justice agencies, including the police and the CPS, to promote the victims code to the public and victims of crime and ensure that every victim and their family are aware of their rights.
Alex Davies-Jones
I do not wish to prolong proceedings unnecessarily. We welcome the Opposition’s support for the clause.
The Chair
Wonderfully brief—thank you.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 11 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 12
Terms of imprisonment for certain offences on summary conviction
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
Clause 12 is a technical measure. It would bring the maximum penalty for six triable either way offences, when dealt with summarily in a magistrates court, in line with other triable either way offences. For those six offences, the maximum penalty that a magistrates court can issue is currently specified as six months. The clause specifies that the magistrates court maximum penalty for those offences is
“the general limit in a magistrates’ court”,
which since November has been 12 months for a single either way offence. That will mean that if magistrates courts’ sentencing powers are changed again in the future, the six offences will also be subject to that change. Correcting that inconsistency will ultimately help to avoid confusion and error in sentencing relating to those six offences.
Mike Wood
The clause is a sensible measure updating the sentencing provision for certain offences on summary conviction. It will replace the fixed six-month maximum term with the general limit in a magistrates court. The change affects a number of serious offences, including breaches of sexual harm prevention orders, criminal behaviour orders and restraining orders. Those are not technical breaches; they often represent a continuation of harmful, coercive or threatening conduct, and it is right that magistrates should have the greatest possible flexibility to impose sentences that reflect the seriousness and risk involved. The clause brings consistency to how the offences are treated and allows magistrates to use the full extent of the sentencing powers available to them. Although we will be watching closely to ensure that the expanded powers are used proportionately and in ways that genuinely improve public protection and victim confidence in the system, we agree that the clause is a sensible provision, and we will support it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 12 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 4
Court transcripts of sentencing remarks
“(1) All sentencing remarks made in the Crown Court must be published within two sitting days of being delivered.
(2) All publications must be freely available to all members of the public.”—(Mike Wood.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss
New clause 12—Access to free court transcripts for victims—
“(1) Victims of criminal offences shall be entitled to receive, without charge, court transcripts of—
(a) sentencing remarks,
(b) judicial summings-up,
(c) bail decisions and conditions relevant to their case.
(2) The Secretary of State must ensure that such transcripts are provided within 14 days of a request.
(3) The duty under subsection (1) shall apply irrespective of whether the victim gave evidence in the case.”
Mike Wood
The new clause seeks to address a critical gap in transparency and accessibility in our criminal justice system: the publication of sentencing remarks from the Crown court. Sentencing remarks are the moment when justice is spoken out loud; when the judge explains not only what sentence is being passed, but why. For victims, families, journalists and the public at large, the remarks are essential for understanding the rationale behind a sentence. They provide clarity, accountability, and allow the public to see that justice is being not only done, but explained. Under the current system, however, the remarks are often buried, available only on request, behind paywalls or subject to lengthy delays, and generally at significant financial cost. That feeds a sense of injustice and confusion, particularly when sentencing decisions are controversial or appear lenient. It also limits public confidence in our courts. People should not have to be legal professionals or pay fees just to access the reasoning behind a judge’s decision.
The new clause would change that. It would require that all sentencing remarks made in the Crown court be published within two sitting days and that those publications be freely accessible to the public. That is not only a matter of open justice; it is a basic democratic civil right. Open justice is not served if court processes and explanations are inaccessible to the very people they affect most directly. Victims deserve to know how their case was resolved. The public deserve to see how justice is applied in their name, and journalists deserve timely access so that the courts can be reported on accurately and fairly.
This is a modest ask with significant democratic weight: two days to publish and no barriers to access. We should expect nothing less from a modern justice system that values openness, trust, and public understanding. It ties into our earlier amendments, because these remarks would help someone understand whether they should consider a referral to the unduly lenient sentence scheme. I hope the Government will support the new clause to deliver the basic right for victims, their families and the general public.
Alex Brewer (North East Hampshire) (LD)
I rise to speak in favour of new clause 12. We agree in principle that victims should have access to the court transcripts—indeed, it has been a long-standing campaign by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). That is very important for victims, especially if they have been subject to coercive control, gaslighting or sexual abuse; victims at the end of the court process may be left questioning, “Was this my fault?” or, “Did this really happen to me?” We have heard from victims that having the transcripts gives them the peace of mind and validation that they need.
We disagree with the Opposition, however, on two fundamental points. The first is the requirement that the court transcripts be provided within two days. We think that is completely impractical, and that two weeks is much more reasonable. Secondly, we do not believe they should be made public. Many people commit crimes who have been coerced into them, or there may be retaliatory crimes; we think making court transcripts public presents an unnecessary public shaming of a criminal, whereas providing them to the victim provides closure and clarity.
Alex Davies-Jones
I thank the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire for new clause 4, which would require transcripts of Crown court sentencing remarks to be published and made freely available to the public within two sitting days of being delivered. Introducing that provision would place a significant financial burden on the criminal justice system in a challenging fiscal context, diverting valuable resources away from the wider system, potentially including other victims services. The release of any Crown court transcript requires judicial oversight to ensure that the reporting restrictions have been adhered to and that other public interest factors have been considered. For transcripts of all sentencing remarks to be published and made freely available within two sitting days would have significant operational and resource implications.
Alex Davies-Jones
With respect, it is very different. These are court documents that can be used in a court of appeal. What we say here is clarified. We email our speaking notes to Hansard. Our comments are checked. The resources are far vaster than for a Crown court in England and Wales, sadly. Therefore, it is not a fair comparison.
Those court transcripts need to be as accurate as possible and legally sound, because people’s lives hang on the line—for want of a better phrase—in terms of whether they are free to go or sentenced, and therefore it is important that they are accurate documents. This new clause would overburden a court system that is already in difficulties, thanks to what we inherited from the previous Government.
However, as I will come to in my remarks, we are looking to make progress in this area. We have extended the pilot for transcripts, and we have made that permanent for RASSO—rape and serious sexual offences—victims, because we recognise how important it is for victims to have them. We are looking at a way of doing it, but the timeframe given by this new clause is just not possible or workable under the restrictions that we currently have within our court system.
Similarly, new clause 12 would introduce a statutory entitlement to all victims of crime to request certain specified court transcripts: transcripts of sentencing remarks, judicial summings-up, bail decisions and conditions relevant to the case. As with new clause 4, providing those free of charge within 14 days of making that request would have significant cost implications and place a significant burden on the courts and the judiciary.
However, as I have said, I want to reassure members of the Committee that the Government are working to improve access on court transcripts and ensure that free provision is focused on victims who need it the most. Bereaved families of victims of murder, manslaughter and fatal road offences can request a judge’s sentencing remarks for free, and between May 2024 and 2025 the Ministry of Justice ran a one-year pilot that enabled victims of rape and sexual offences whose cases were heard at the Crown court to request a free transcript of the judge’s sentencing remarks in their case.
Victims of these offences were chosen because of the particular trauma that attending court can cause for them, resulting in a particular benefit in receiving a copy of the remarks—delivered in a sentencing hearing that they might find it difficult to attend for very understandable reasons—given the impact that those remarks can have on their recovery and in helping them to move on with their lives. Following that pilot, we are pleased to announce that victims of those offences will be able to request free transcripts on an ongoing basis. We are also exploring opportunities for the use of artificial intelligence in reducing the future cost of transcripts, and there is no doubt that the Government are taking action on this important issue.
I hope I have reassured hon. Members. I am happy to work with them, as we have with Members across the House, to ensure that we get this right, but it is important that we get this accurate, and get it right, because there is a lot at stake in providing these court transcripts. Therefore, it is important that we do it holistically, rather than just immediately, because of the impact that that could have.
Mike Wood
I thank the Minister for her remarks, but it does seem that, particularly with the use of AI, as she has said, releasing an initial transcript need not be overly onerous. Obviously, after having got that initial release, the measure would allow for a definitive recording to be produced at a later time if an appeal was to be based on that. I do think that making these transcripts available is in the public interest, so we would like to press new clause 4 to a vote.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time
Mike Wood
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
New clause 7 calls for a review of court delays and their impact on victims to be conducted within six months of the Bill becoming law. Clearly, the impact of covid on our Crown courts in particular is still being felt within the system. Prior to covid, the Crown court backlog was actually lower than it had been under parts of the previous Labour Administration.
Due to significant investment in recovery efforts to try to address the backlog since the pandemic, including a provision for Nightingale courts and uncapped sitting days, the previous Lord Chancellor was clear that our last provisionally agreed sitting days were to be seen as a floor, not a cap. We support the calls from the Lady Chief Justice for more sitting days, and regret that the Government have only gone part of the way towards meeting the capacity that the Lady Chief Justice said was available within the court system.
Moving forward, it is important that we keep up the scrutiny to ensure that the court system is operating effectively and in the interests of victims. Delays in the court system are not just administrative; they retraumatise victims, reduce conviction rates and push people out of the justice process altogether. This review is urgent and overdue. If we are truly to put victims first, we must understand and act on the toll that these delays take. The Opposition believe that this review will help to focus efforts on reducing those delays to a minimum.
Alex Davies-Jones
New clause 7 would require the Secretary of State to assess within six months of Royal Assent the impact of court delays on victims. As the hon. Member will be aware, thanks to his previous Government, this Government inherited a record and rising court backlog. Between 2010 and 2019, the Conservative Government permanently closed more than 260 court buildings as part of a wider estate consolidation. Additionally, historical underfunding has resulted in challenges across the estate, with an estimated £1.3 billion maintenance backlog.
As of December 2024, the Crown court outstanding caseload was over 74,000 cases. Sitting levels have never been higher, but even that is not enough to keep up with the increasing backlog of cases. I recognise the human impact that this can have on victims as they navigate those delays. The recent report by the Victims’ Commissioner truly brought to life the impact of the outstanding Crown court caseload on victims, victims services and the wider criminal justice system. It is clear that more must be done, and that fundamental reform is necessary to address the court backlog.
That is why the Lord Chancellor asked Sir Brian Leveson to propose a once-in-a-generation reform. The review is aimed at achieving a more efficient criminal court system and improved timeliness and swifter justice for victims, witnesses and defendants, without jeopardising the requirement for a fair trial for all involved. The review will also consider the most appropriate and proportionate ways of dealing with cases before the courts, as well as how processes through charge to conviction or acquittal could be improved to maximise efficiency. We expect the review of the report on options for long-term reform in the coming weeks and findings on court efficiency in autumn 2025.
Mike Wood
We support the work that Sir Brian is doing, but do not feel that the new clause would contradict or otherwise impede that work. We also do not think that we ought to wait for the conclusions of Sir Brian’s work before acting. For now, we will leave the new clause as a probing amendment, but we may return to it at a future stage. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 8
Victim personal statements
“(1) The Secretary of State shall, within six months of the passing of this Act, issue revised guidance on the content of victim personal statements.
(2) The revised guidance issued under subsection (1) must stipulate that when making a victim personal statement, a victim shall be able to say anything they wish about the defendant, provided it is not contrary to any statutory limitations on free speech, makes allegations of untried criminal conduct or is disorderly language.
(3) The court must disregard any prejudicial comments made during a victim personal statement.”—(Mike Wood.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to review how to make victim personal statements less restrictive and clarify what can be included.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mike Wood
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause addresses the rules on victim personal statements, about which we heard much in the evidence sessions. There is clearly a desperate need for reform to allow victims to properly and accurately communicate the impact that crimes have had on them. Our new clause introduces a right to be heard for those victims and for families making victim personal statements. We heard appalling stories of traumatised family members, such as Becky and Glenn Youens and Jeremy and Susan Everard, who were told that, no, they could not say what they wanted—they could not say anything derogatory about the guilty offender.
Victim personal statements are not appropriate platforms for gratuitous abuse, but the focus needs to be on allowing the voice of victims, rather than worrying too much about the hurt feelings of the convicted offender. The new clause would ensure that victims can speak freely with the most minimal restrictions possible. We can fairly ask the judge to consider what can and cannot be taken into account for sentencing rather than removing or censoring everything in advance. It is time that we uphold the voices of victims and provide them with the platform and the dignity that they deserve.
Alex Davies-Jones
I thank the hon. Member for new clause 8, which would require the Secretary of State to issue revised guidance on victim personal statements to change the legal position on what they can include. First, let me say that I recognise that victim personal statements are a powerful tool for victims and their families to have their voices heard, and give them the opportunity to tell the court about the impact that a crime has had on them.
The victim personal statement is also important for the court’s sentencing decision. It provides evidence to assist the court in determining the seriousness of the offending as part of a sentencing process. It is right that victims have the opportunity to be part of that. However, it is also right that that be done fairly, which means that the usual rules of evidence must apply.
The hon. Member should be assured that I have heard from victims and their families on their concerns about their experience of the personal statement process. I have already committed to those families that I will look into the matter further. However, his drive to bolster the victim’s voice risks weakening the role that it can play in a sentencing process.
On a practical point, I do not believe the new clause will achieve the desired effect. The criminal practice directions provide the legal basis for a victim personal statement in the context of sentencing. Criminal practice directions are issued by judges, not Ministers. The legal position is then reflected in publicly available guidance. The Secretary of State for Justice is not responsible for any of that guidance, nor have they previously issued any such guidance.
Changing this guidance or issuing new guidance will not change the legal position as set out in the criminal practice directions. That is why I urge the hon. Member to withdraw the new clause, and to work with me to better understand victims’ experience of victim personal statements and how these issues might actually be addressed in a courtroom, while ensuring that the criminal justice system operates safely and fairly for all.
Mike Wood
I thank the Minister for her response. This is an extremely important matter that needs to be dealt with in this legislation. I think she said that she wishes to proceed with something that broadly achieves our aims, but which addresses her concerns about the drafting. If she will undertake to work with the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle, before Report to find a form of drafting that satisfies the new clause’s objectives without what she clearly sees as defects in its proposed wording, we would obviously be happy to work with her and not press the new clause for now. Hopefully, we will have something that we can agree to on Report. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 10
Sentencing guidelines on court fines
“Within 18 months of this Act receiving Royal Assent, the Sentencing Council must revise relevant sentencing guidelines so that the court must award compensation to a victim to the value of items stolen when imposing compensation for the offence of theft, burglary, fraud, or any other crime that has resulted in a financial loss to the victim.”—(Mike Wood.)
This new clause would require the Sentencing Council to revise sentencing guidelines so that a court must impose compensation commensurate to the value of stolen items when issuing fines.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mike Wood
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause seeks to correct a long-standing imbalance in the way in which financial justice is delivered to victims of theft, fraud, burglary and similar offences. It does so by requiring the Sentencing Council to revise its guidelines within 18 months of Royal Assent so that courts must impose compensation that reflects the actual financial loss suffered by the victim. Right now, victims of crime are far too often left bearing the financial burden of the offence, while the offender, even when convicted, is handed a compensation order that does not even begin to redress the damage that has been done, either directly or indirectly.
The result is an insult added to injury. Offenders walk away with a light financial consequence, while victims are left out of pocket and out of luck due to the crimes committed by others. The new clause would shift that balance, not punitively but justly. It would make it a duty, not a possibility, for sentencing to account for what was actually taken or lost. This is not an unfamiliar concept. Courts already have the power to impose compensation orders, but the inconsistency and infrequency with which they do so undermines public confidence in the system. Let us be clear: all the ordinary processes remain in place for pursuing outstanding payments, but why should we not recognise what is actually owed? If someone has a change of circumstance, it may well be that they could quite readily pay what they owe.
Most importantly, this is about victims. It is about restoring faith in the idea that when someone suffers a loss through crime, the justice system stands behind them—not just symbolically but materially by seeking, as far as possible, to provide restitution. The new clause proposes the straightforward but meaningful step of revising the sentencing guidelines so that, where there is a proven loss, it must be reflected in compensation. That is not just fair; it is the very least that victims should be able to expect. I urge the Committee to support the new clause.
Alex Davies-Jones
New clause 10, tabled by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, would require the Sentencing Council to revise its sentencing guidelines so that courts must award compensation to victims to the value of the items stolen when imposing compensation for the offences of theft, burglary, fraud or any other crime that has resulted in a loss to the victim. I have considered the proposed new clause, but I do not consider it helpful in view of the current legislative position, which I will briefly explain.
Courts can impose a compensation order to require an offender to make financial reparations to the victim for any personal injury, loss or damage resulting from the offence. This includes any financial loss sustained as a result of items stolen in cases of theft, burglary, fraud or any other crime resulting in financial loss. Compensation may be ordered for such amount as the court considers appropriate, having regard to any evidence and representations made by the offender or prosecutor. There is no limit on the value of the single compensation order handed down to an adult offender.
The court must also consider the financial circumstances of the offender, in so far as they are known, to ensure they have sufficient means to pay. To do otherwise would create a pointless system of chasing down money that people are unable to pay, causing a cycle of unnecessary harm and emotional distress to victims.
The Sentencing Council has already issued explanatory information on compensation, which outlines these matters to aid sentencers when considering or issuing compensation orders. The proposed new clause, tabled by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, would limit the flexibility of sentences by mandating through sentencing guidelines that compensation must be awarded to the value of the items stolen. The Government are satisfied that the current process allows courts to strike an appropriate balance between seeking reparation for the harm caused to victims and knowing that it is actually enforceable so that victims are not left waiting for unrealistic debts to be paid to them. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire to withdraw the proposed new clause.
Mike Wood
I thank the Minister for her comments, but there is an imbalance in the system. Whereas convicted offenders may appeal against a sentence, victims do not have a similar ability to appeal against a failure to award full compensation. The new clause ought to be the presumptive starting point for compensation. Full compensation should usually be awarded, so we will press this matter to a vote.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mike Wood
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This new clause seeks to close a loophole in the recovery of unpaid court fines. At present, the Limitation Act 1980 imposes a six-year time limit on recovering debts, including fines handed down by the Crown court. Criminal fines are not ordinary civil debts. They are the product of judicial sanction, often imposed in response to serious offences, and reflect the principle that individuals must be held accountable for their actions through the justice system. The new clause would ensure that Crown court fines do not simply expire with time. It would give the Secretary of State the power to pursue unpaid fines without restriction, sending a clear message that justice delayed must not become justice denied. For victims and communities, the payment of court-ordered fines is about not only financial restitution, but accountability and the credibility of our criminal justice system. The Victims’ Commissioner, Baroness Newlove, has long identified this as an opportunity to secure funding, and we all know the tight constraints on expenditure.
Alex Davies-Jones
The new clause implies that there is a time limit on the Government’s ability to enforce unpaid fines imposed by the Crown court, and seeks to remove it. I reassure all hon. Members that this is not the case. There is no such limitation on the ability of the criminal courts or His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service to enforce unpaid fines.
We take the recovery and enforcement of fines very seriously, and we are fully committed to ensuring that financial penalties are paid. HMCTS has robust methods in place for doing so, including taking money from a defendant’s benefits and salary, and seizing and selling goods. Courts also have powers to send offenders to prison for non-payment of fines and other monetary orders. The new clause also seeks to empower the Secretary of State to initiate proceedings to recover unpaid fines. However, civil enforcement mechanisms such as charging orders and bankruptcy are already available, and other well-established enforcement options, including deduction from earnings and benefits, are already in place.
Some offenders will do everything in their power to evade payment. They will move home or provide a false address, and there are processes in place to track them down using tracing tools and any legal routes for securing information gathered by other Government Departments and agencies. Bailiffs can be instructed to collect unpaid sums, and we have just launched a consultation on bailiff regulation, including a 5% uplift in fees to support early-stage recovery. We are also investing in the replacement of outdated IT systems to further improve the efficiency of enforcement arrangements.
I support the intention behind the new clause. It is, of course, essential that fines imposed by the Crown court are collected and enforced. There is no time limit on our ability to enforce fines that remain unpaid, and for good reason. Prolific offenders can rack up substantial fines, which they may pay back through deduction orders or other enforcement orders over many months or years. Offenders may be serving time in prison for other offences, which means that any fines that remain payable during that period will not be enforced until they are released.
We carefully monitor performance on the enforcement of fines. In 2023-24, HMCTS collected over £671 million in financial penalties, of which £10 million was for offences committed before 2017. We rigorously pursue money owed, no matter how old the debt. On average, by the time a financial penalty is five years old, 80% of the total imposition will have been collected. The actions we are taking will further improve performance in this area. For those reasons, we urge the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire to withdraw the new clause.
Mike Wood
Given the Minister’s comments, we are content not to press the new clause to a Division at this time. Again, we may return to it at a future stage. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 15
Duty to collect and publish data upon sentencing
“(1) At the time of passing a sentence by a judge or magistrate the relevant court must provide to HM Courts and Tribunals Service (‘HMCTS’) the following information regarding the sentence passed—
(a) offence type,
(b) sentence length,
(c) such information about the sentenced individual as the Secretary of State sees fit, which must include—
(i) nationality,
(ii) method of entry to the United Kingdom,
(iii) visa route,
(iv) visa status,
(v) asylum status, and
(vi) country of birth.
(2) HMCTS must collect and collate the information on the basis set out in subsection (1) on sentences passed in the courts.
(3) Once every three months, the Secretary of State must publish statistics based on the information collected by HMCTS under subsection (2).”—(Mike Wood.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mike Wood
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause was tabled in the name of the shadow Secretary of State for Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). It would introduce a new statutory duty for courts to provide structured data on sentencing outcomes, including key information about individuals’ immigration status.
Transparency on crime is critical not only for building public trust in our justice system but for ensuring that we have the right tools in place to understand and respond to the realities of criminal offending. The new clause would create a clear, accountable framework for collecting and publishing sentencing data that sits at the intersection of the criminal justice and immigration systems. By requiring His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service to gather and publish that data quarterly, we would enable policymakers to detect patterns, assess outcomes and develop evidence-based responses. Crucially, it would also strengthen the ability of immigration enforcement to make fair, informed decisions on removals, deportations or protections—decisions that must balance public safety with legal and humanitarian obligations.
Ultimately, the public have a right to this level of transparency. For too long, assumptions have filled the void left by incomplete data. The new clause would replace speculation with facts, and in doing so it would promote more informed policy, more effective enforcement and greater public confidence. I commend it to the Committee.
Alex Davies-Jones
I recognise the importance of transparency when publishing data on foreign national offenders. The hon. Member will know that we inherited our current data collection and publication system from the previous Government. It is interesting that the Conservatives are now keen to make changes, after 14 years in office in which they could have done it themselves.
The Lord Chancellor has been clear. This is important to her and we are reviewing what we collect and publish, and should we decide it needs to change, we will of course enact that. More broadly, we are working to strengthen data collection at court, and we are exploring how we can improve the sharing of immigration status data across the criminal justice system.
We are committed to continually developing the data we publish. We already publish data on the number of self-declared foreign nationals in prison and under probation supervision, and we publish detailed ethnicity data of those prosecuted in court. Recording such data for everyone convicted and sentenced in court, including those for lower-level convictions—those that result in a fine, for example—would represent an additional burden on an already stretched system, but it would also inevitably give rise to a substantial data quality risk.
Courts have no mechanism to verify or validate information provided, nor do they have any mechanism to compel such provision in the first place. The new clause would impose an obligation without any consideration of the infrastructure necessary to deliver it. For those reasons, we are unable to accept the new clause, but we will continue to look at what more we can do to improve the accessibility of information relating to foreign national offenders.
Foreign nationals who commit crime should be in no doubt that the law will be enforced, and that we will work with the Home Office to pursue their deportation. It is worth noting that, since 5 July 2024, more foreign offenders have been returned than in the same period 12 months before under the previous Government. For all the Conservatives’ rhetoric, it is this Government who are getting on with the job.
Mike Wood
Given the Minister’s disappointing response, we will wish to have a fuller debate on Report. I do not intend to press the new clause to a vote now, but we will almost certainly do so at a later stage. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 13
Power to make consequential provision
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Alex Davies-Jones
Clauses 13 to 16 contain standard provisions that confer powers to make consequential amendments, to set out the Bill’s territorial extent, to make arrangements for commencement of the Bill’s measures, and to set out the Bill’s short title.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 13 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 14 to 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill, as amended, to the House.
Alex Davies-Jones
It is customary at this stage in proceedings to say a few words to mark the end of our deliberations in Committee. I welcome that the measures in this Bill command a substantial degree of cross-party support, and I am pleased that the Bill has had the benefit of rigorous scrutiny by members on both sides of the Committee.
I thank the Opposition Front-Bench team, including the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle—I wish him well in his recovery—for their careful consideration. I pay tribute to all hon. Members who have served so diligently on the Committee and made such thoughtful, valuable and powerful contributions.
I thank you, Dr Murrison, and your co-Chair, Mr Stringer, for keeping us in very good order. I also thank the Government Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston. I thank the Clerks and the MOJ officials, particularly Rachel Bennion, Zara Bernard and Hayley Newell, for all of their work. I thank the Hansard Reporters and the Doorkeepers, and I look forward to the debate on Report, which I am sure we will come to soon.
Mike Wood
On behalf of the Opposition, I thank all the Clerks, officials, Doorkeepers and Hansard Reporters. I also thank you, Dr Murrison, and Mr Stringer for your work on this Committee.
There is much that is very positive in this Bill, which is why His Majesty’s official Opposition are pleased to support it. Obviously, there are various points on which we think the Government could and should go further, and we will seek to make the Bill even better on Report. For now, I thank all members of the Committee for their contributions over the past week. I look forward to returning to this debate on Report.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill, as amended, accordingly to be reported.
Westminster Hall
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Care Settings: Right to Maintain Contact
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Dan Carden (Liverpool Walton) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the right to maintain contact in care settings.
I appreciate you chairing this debate, Ms Butler, and I am grateful for having secured the time to talk about an issue that has touched thousands of people and left a lasting trauma across our country.
I start by thanking the extraordinary campaigners from Rights for Residents, John’s Campaign, Care Rights UK and others, some of whom are in the Public Gallery today. I mention Diane, Jenny and Julia in particular, who have supported me throughout my work on this issue. Their tireless advocacy, often fuelled by personal grief, has sustained a powerful call for change. I also thank everyone who has contacted me ahead of this debate to share their stories. I cannot name them all, but together they form a mosaic of heartbreak and courage. Their voices are the reason that we are here today, and I will do my best to honour them.
There are moments in our national life that leave deep scars. One of the most painful of these, still raw for so many, was the enforced separation of families during the covid-19 pandemic. In care settings across the country, people were cut off from those they love, for hours, days, weeks, and months—for some, they were cut off until the very end. Families are still living with the trauma of that separation.
Claire Hazelgrove (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Lab)
One of my constituents, Tracy, came to speak with me at one of my first surgeries. Her mum, Doreen, was one of the individuals my hon. Friend is talking about; she was in a care home during the covid pandemic and was cut off from a lot of contact, and she suffered as a result. Would my hon. Friend agree that it is important those stories are heard as the next steps on this issue are considered?
Dan Carden
I am sure my hon. Friend’s constituent will be grateful—as am I—that she has come to add her voice to this campaign. Families are still living with the trauma of that separation, yet even now, people in care settings are still being denied essential human contact.
In those early days, we all understood the need for swift and serious measures to protect public health. But not enough was done to balance that need against the harm of isolation on mental health and wellbeing. Somewhere along the way something vital was lost: the right to connection; the right to love; and the right not to die alone. Let us remember what that meant in real human terms. Elderly people were confined to their rooms in care homes, with no familiar face and no hand to hold. Sick and disabled people were denied a trusted advocate when they needed them the most.
Ahead of this debate, Val wrote to me. She told me how she was forced to watch her mother’s health decline through the pane of a glass window. Her mother lost weight, she lost the ability to walk and to feed herself, and in time she became deeply depressed and withdrawn. However, when visits were allowed again, Val saw a transformation. With regular contact, and with care and love from a family member, her mother began to return to herself. Val told me that:
“It wasn’t the dementia or covid that got her. It was loneliness, isolation and abandonment.”
Gemma also shared her story. She described how her mother was kept in solitary confinement-like conditions. When Gemma’s mum’s partner died suddenly, she had to break the news over a stuttering video call, with no family there to comfort her mother as the grief landed. Those stories represent a pattern of suffering that should never have been allowed and must never be repeated.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
I would like briefly to mention the case of the Priestman family in my constituency. Paul Priestman, a military veteran, suffered a stroke in 2019 and now requires care. That is being provided in a care home in Rochdale, many miles from the family home. The family have serious concerns about the quality of Paul’s care, but find they are routinely ignored by the care home. Does my hon. Friend agree that the stories he cites and this debate show that, rather than being viewed as essential to the wellbeing of the person in care, families are too often dismissed, ignored or considered an afterthought by care providers?
Dan Carden
My hon. Friend totally grasps the seriousness of the issue. It is why campaigners are fighting for a legal right—Gloria’s law—to maintain contact. That would put into law the right to at least one care supporter, a trusted loved one, to provide support and advocacy in all health and care settings, so that no one is ever alone when they need help the most. The campaign is supported by cross-party MPs; more than 100 organisations, including covid-bereaved groups from all four UK nations; charities; disabled rights groups; and bodies such as the National Care Forum.
In response to pressure, the previous Government amended Care Quality Commission regulations to make facilitating visits part of the fundamental standard of care. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) who steered that through Government in the previous Parliament. The newly inserted regulation 9A requires that in-person visiting in care homes, hospitals and hospices and accompaniment to appointments should always be facilitated by providers in line with people’s needs and preferences. Only in exceptional circumstances should that be restricted.
Although that is a welcome step forward, it has fallen short. Just like the guidance that preceded it, regulation 9A lacks clarity, oversight and accountability. In practice, it is too often misunderstood, misapplied or outright ignored. This past winter, Rights for Residents received hundreds of calls from distressed families who were blocked from seeing their loved ones. Outbreaks of flu or norovirus were being used as justification to deny all access, in some cases for more than two weeks, despite regulation 9A being in place.
I will give a couple of examples. Tina’s mother, who has dementia, was in hospital being treated for pneumonia, when a blanket visiting ban was imposed due to an outbreak of norovirus. It took days of trying before Tina received any update on her mother’s welfare. Days later, she received a voicemail of her mum’s frail voice whispering, “Don’t give up on me, Tina.” Her mental and physical condition deteriorated rapidly during that time, which Tina believes was exacerbated by their separation.
Amanda’s mother, who lost mobility after a brain haemorrhage, depends on family support for personal care and emotional wellbeing. During another blanket ban, Amanda, despite quoting regulation 9A, was told that her mother’s right to contact was not worth the risk. By the time visits resumed, her mother had lost weight and become visibly withdrawn.
Many similar experiences have been reported to Care Rights UK’s advice line, from people denied access to their friends and family, including when the care provider was aware of regulation 9A, but still chose not to comply with it. For example, the charity recently supported someone living with dementia who had had visits stopped as part of a settling-in process in their care home. The provider failed to recognise the importance of maintaining support from familiar loved ones as a key part of dementia care.
To understand the scale of the problem, Rights for Residents ran a national survey between February and May this year. The results are deeply concerning. Four in 10 respondents had never even heard of regulation 9A. One in four reported care settings implementing complete visiting bans since April 2024. Even when family members were aware of and cited regulation 9A, in more than a third of cases that had no effect on visiting arrangements. Many care settings continue to regard regulation 9A as guidance only, which can be ignored without consequence. As Rights for Residents put it:
“These findings indicate that the introduction of CQC Regulation 9A has not been effective or sufficient in upholding the visiting rights of those using health and care settings, and that as a result, people are experiencing avoidable harm from unnecessary visiting bans.”
The conclusion is clear: without a clearly defined legal right to maintain contact, access will continue to be patchy, precarious and far too easy to deny. The postcode lottery of uneven implementation was unacceptable during the pandemic and is unacceptable now. I stress that this is not about unlimited access. Care supporters would be subject to the same appropriate safety precautions as staff. It is about protecting the principle that the connection with loved ones is not an optional extra, but essential to dignified care. No member of staff, no matter how professional or compassionate, can replace the bond between a parent and child, husband and wife, brother and sister, or with a lifelong friend or partner. Loved ones are more than companions. They are vital safeguards. They are the eyes and ears that notice what others might miss. They protect against neglect, spot subtle signs of distress and speak up when something is not right.
To leave this matter to the discretion of individual managers, without clear legal underpinning, is to leave the most vulnerable at the mercy of arbitrary decisions that could severely impact their wellbeing. It is not only a matter of compassion; it is a matter of rights. We all have a right to a family life. That right should not disappear behind locked doors when someone requires care. That is why we are calling on the Government to guarantee the right of every person in a care setting to have at least one essential care supporter—not just guidance and not tinkering around the edges of regulation, but a right, protected in law. During the general election, my party, Labour, promised to make that change in government. That promise must now be delivered. It said:
“We will guarantee the rights of those in residential care to be able to see their families.”
The only way to guarantee that right is through the law.
The review of regulation 9A is due shortly and, from 30 June to 31 July, the covid inquiry will hear evidence on experiences of the care sector during the pandemic. As families relive the trauma of that period, the Government have the opportunity to show them that they have been heard, that lessons have been learned and that action will follow. If we truly believe in dignity and compassion in care, that cannot be delayed any further. We owe it to every family torn apart. We owe it to every patient or resident still facing the risk of being isolated. We owe it to every one of our constituents who fears that when the time comes, they too might be left without a loved one’s hand to hold. This change will cost the Government nothing, but for those it protects, it means everything.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
Diolch yn fawr, Cadeirydd. I am very glad to see you in your seat, Ms Butler, and I am deeply grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden) for bringing this debate forward. He will be aware that this is a hugely important topic for the many of us whose experiences with our families during the covid pandemic have not faded into the past.
Visiting restrictions at that time threw a harsh focus on the issue. Between 2 April 2020 and 22 July 2020, UK Government guidance advised against all visits to care homes except in exceptional circumstances, such as “end of life”. End of life? What happens before that matters too. We need to know what the exceptional circumstances in the regulations may have been, because there is obviously room to define them. Fundamentally, though, we need clarification on a legal right.
We need to learn from that time. Following the experiences of many families during the pandemic, more and more voices have called out the inconsistency between the treatment of vulnerable or cognitively impaired adults and the treatment of children, who have a right to be supported by their parents in health and care settings. Of course, it is entirely right that children maintain contact with their parents, and we would rightly be appalled were that denied, but somehow the social needs for love and family contact are regarded as a luxury—a “nice to have” but something that is ultimately expendable—for adults in certain circumstances.
A clear case emerged at the time for the Government to support giving families and carers of dementia sufferers the same rights that parents of sick children have. The Government should allow for family representatives to stay with such patients at any time of the day, and for their role as carers to be recognised and accommodated. It is recognised that changes in environment for people with dementia, such as going into hospital or moving into care, can cause immense challenges. Just think about it: all familiar things and all familiar routines are left behind, and the routines of the institution take over. What is most convenient for the institution is inevitably the priority. We talk about putting the patient first, but we know how flimsy those words are when health and care institutions feel threatened, liable or under staffing pressures.
Dan Carden
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for raising an issue that I did not touch on: the fact that good institutions and good care homes will want the involvement of families. They do not use blanket bans or try to prevent family members from being part of the care of their residents. The worry is that the most vulnerable in the worst-run care settings are most at risk.
Liz Saville Roberts
That is exactly the point. The real good that family carers could do for health and care settings that are well run should not be regarded as a nuisance to be fitted in but something that can complement excellent services.
Care and nursing homes operate under a number of constraints, financial and regulatory pressures especially. Many are excellent. They are shining beacons of humanity and kindness and provide a welcoming home. Remember, this is a place where people live and a home for the people who live within their walls, but that is not the case for all those who live in care settings. MPs will almost certainly have been approached by family members who are extremely reluctant to raise questions about the care of a loved one in a home, because they are afraid that their loved one will be evicted from that home. That is what the care home owners and managers can do, so it is our role to raise those concerns and be their voices.
I pay tribute to the many pressure groups and charities that have drawn attention to this issue. Among them are John’s Campaign, Rights for Residents, and Care Rights UK, which was formerly the Relatives & Residents Association. I am personally immensely grateful to Julia Jones of John’s Campaign and dementia nurse Delyth Thomas for their advice after my mother Nancy’s stroke at Christmas 2020 and her final death from dementia a year later. I would like to read a tiny bit that I wrote at the time:
“Many of the key workers with whom we interacted over the last 12 months were extraordinary. We have been beyond lucky to have dealt with a number of nurses, doctors and care workers who had the confidence and humanity to keep to the spirit and not the letter of official edicts. Even so, I touched my mother’s hand only once during the critical six weeks after her first stroke. There were no hugs. Health authority infection policy vetoed family bonds of love as a health hazard to be minimised.”
She used hearing aids, and we could only speak to her through the window, but the batteries were not replaced. She could hear nothing, and we know how important hearing is for reducing the effects of dementia.
Ysbyty Gwynedd and Ysbyty Bryn Beryl—that is the district hospital and the local community hospital—were signed up to John’s Campaign, which enabled me to be recognised as my mother’s carer. If only I had known that months earlier. I of course bear in mind that this was during the covid period, but people need to know their rights. At one stage in early 2022 the staff at the community hospital asked me to come in specifically to help to take pressure off nurses because there was a covid outbreak. I contributed as a carer—I had a role to play. As a family carer I helped that hospital.
I was required to take covid measures—tests and vaccination—exactly as was expected of staff members. That is completely feasible for identified family carers alongside salaried carers—it is an option for us. Family members, as recognised and respected carers, can be a real source of help to hospitals and care settings, if we can only tease apart the web of fear of liability, and a culture that presumes that the human needs of adults with cognitive impairments are limited to food, shelter and a screen in the corner of the room whenever an emergency threatens the organisation that holds their life in its hands.
We are social creatures. If we are denied social contact, we are damaged. We need to recognise that as a human right. Regulations expected to be facilitated in undefined emergency circumstances are evidently failing. I am so glad that health and social care was in the Labour party’s manifesto for the last general election. It was in Plaid Cymru’s manifesto too. Health and social care are devolved, but it is a human right, and that is not devolved; that is a reserved power. I hope that now we have learned the lessons of covid we can move ahead and legislate to make health and social care a human right.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Thank you for filling in, Ms Butler, and bridging the gap to enable the debate to go ahead. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden) for leading today’s debate. As a strong advocate for stability and comfort for young children, I will focus on young children and those unfortunately in care settings. It is important that we do what we can to make their journey through that stage of their life as secure as possible. It is great to be here to speak on that.
I commend the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) for her comments. She cast her mind back to covid and different circumstances, different times, different regulations, and more controlled ways of caring. We do not criticise the covid regulations, because they were important to have in place, but many people were unable to have the last few minutes with their loved ones, who were very much part of their lives. My mother-in-law passed away at the Ulster hospital on her own. My point is that sometimes circumstances do not allow us to do what we would like to do, and that was one of those circumstances.
I want to give a Northern Ireland perspective in this debate, as I always do. I know the Minister is always keen to try to help us when we put forward our suggestions. As of 31 March 2024, almost 4,000 children and young people were in care in Northern Ireland. I will focus on that and how important it is to get it right for them. That was the highest number recorded since the introduction of the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. It gives us a perspective on a society and young people in particular in Northern Ireland who are under terrible pressure. The figures are absolutely shocking. We must remember that there are many circumstances that can warrant a child being put into care.
Contact within care settings is important to preserve emotional bonds, social interaction and the friendship that biological siblings share. Although they might fight a bit, the fact of the matter is that there is no greater love than that between a brother and a sister, a brother and a brother, a sister and a sister, or whatever it might be. Being removed from a familial setting and placed in a strange and unfamiliar one can be damaging to a child’s cognitive health, which shows why contact is so important for mental stability.
Another worrying trend from Northern Ireland is the fact that there are those with mental health issues who are as young as eight years old—my goodness. Can we visualise that at eight years old, when someone is young and innocent? Yet the pressures on an eight-year-old are so great. That is what is happening in Northern Ireland. That is why the numbers are so large. Consistent contact has also been proven to achieve better long-term outcomes for families and assist with the transition back to a family dynamic.
I know the Minister is always keen to respond to our queries. What opportunity has she had to contact the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland to ascertain what exchange of ideas, policies, strategies or new approaches there might be to ensure that families can transition back to a family dynamic, which is how it should always be, if at all possible? We live in a fractured society; life is not the same as it was when I was a wee boy. I do not think anybody in this Chamber is as old as me, with maybe one exception, but society as I remember it was so different, and today it is even more challenging.
Contact should not be only for parents; it is imperative that sibling contact is looked at and encouraged to create a sense of normality in care. It is not all about the regime, the rules or the conditions of being there; it is about the relationship between siblings and how they can have some normality. An Ofsted study showed that 86% of children in care thought that it was important to keep siblings together—that is a certainty from the young children themselves. I believe in my heart that it is really important. It is not always possible, but we should strive by all means within our power to ensure that children can keep in touch with their siblings.
The reality is that often many siblings have had and remain in minimal contact. It is terribly sad when those who were part of the same family unit are suddenly hundreds of miles apart. Nobody is at fault, I suspect, but if it is possible to keep them together, we should. For example, for siblings who may come from abusive households—sometimes those are the ones I am aware of as an MP—shared experiences can create a more positive healing journey. I fear that if the same situation continues without any stops or changes, it will hinder the healing process for young children. When they grow up to be parents themselves, what happened to them in the past will make them focus on bringing their children up in a certain way as well, so let us get it right the children of today—the parents of tomorrow.
To conclude, I am a supporter of contact, and I recognise what the hon. Member for Liverpool Walton has contributed in starting this debate. I hope that we can do more to prioritise maintaining contact for young children, parents, siblings and extended families. It is crucial for their mental and emotional wellbeing, and ensuring familiarity can go above and beyond in supporting transitions. There is no doubt that care settings can be incredibly challenging environments. For some children, they are never easy, so let us do what we can—we collectively in this room, and the Government, who have a particular opportunity to make a change, and make the process as stress-free as possible.
I look very much to the Minister, as I often do, for further engagement with the devolved institutions. I would appreciate it if she could do that, to ensure that stronger sibling contact can also be maintained. This debate is so important, so well done to the hon. Member for Liverpool Walton for bringing it forward. There might not be a big number of people here today, but that does not reflect the seriousness or importance of this debate. Those of us who have a personal interest in this issue, and all of us as MPs, have an obligation to our constituents who have asked us to make sure that these things are put on the record.
I believe that we have a great responsibility as MPs. We have an opportunity to formulate law and to support the Government in amending the direction in which they may go, to ensure that young people—the children of today; the parents of tomorrow—can lead a good life. If we try to do that as MPs, and as a Government, we will be building a better society and a better place for everyone to live in. That is my ultimate goal, and one I think we all share. It is a big challenge—let us see if we can do it.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
It is very much appreciated that you have come to chair this important debate, Ms Butler, and I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden) for securing it. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) just said, the number of people in this debate is not a reflection of its importance. All hon. Members who have contributed have spoken with real moral authority and have reflected the gravity of what we are talking about: the rights of some of the most vulnerable people in our society—those living in care homes, hospitals and hospices—and their right to maintain contact with and see their loved ones.
Throughout the covid-19 pandemic, thousands of people living in care settings in my constituency and across the country were forbidden from seeing those closest to them. That was especially devastating for residents living with conditions such as dementia or severe memory loss, which affect approximately 70% of care home residents. For those individuals, familiar faces are more than just comforting; they are essential to their sense of identity and stability. Let us imagine being cut off from the people we know best, who can calm us in moments of confusion, and who understand our needs in ways that no staff member possibly can. This is not an abstract issue but a painful reality that caused immeasurable harm during the pandemic.
Even as the rest of the country began to reopen in 2022, care homes continued to impose harsh restrictions. Data shows that between April and September 2022, 10% of care homes permitted no visitors at all during covid outbreaks, 20% confined residents to their rooms for up to 28 days and nearly half maintained some form of visiting restrictions even without any outbreak present. The impact of those policies was brutal. Vulnerable people in Mid Sussex and across the country were left isolated and confused, their symptoms worsening without the emotional and practical support that only loved ones can provide.
I want to share a story that will be distressing to some. Last week, I was horrified to watch a report on BBC South East about a 92-year-old gentleman, Donald Burgess, from East Sussex. Donald was a wheelchair user, having had one leg amputated, and on 21 June 2022, he was reportedly brandishing a knife in his wheelchair, having become irritable and confused. Care home staff failed to resolve the situation and so the police were called. Donald was sprayed with pepper spray, hit with a baton and tasered by police, all while still in his wheelchair. Donald was taken to hospital as a result of those injuries, and he subsequently caught and died from covid-19 a couple of weeks later.
On the BBC South East news report last week, Donald’s family were interviewed. Those family members only lived 10 minutes away from his care home. They said that if they had been called, they would have been able to go there and, potentially, calm him and resolve the entire situation. It is beyond tragic that that happened, and that it is how Donald’s life ended. If hon. Members present who are not from the south-east region are interested, the video and reports of the attack on Donald are available to view online.
I commend the tireless work of advocacy organisations such as the Relatives and Residents Association, Rights for Residents, Care Rights UK and John’s Campaign. Their efforts have been instrumental in raising awareness and pushing for change. I also commend the way that the hon. Member for Liverpool Walton set out the case for the required change.
The Government’s recent introduction of regulation 9A by the Care Quality Commission—a new fundamental standard on visiting and accompanying—is a welcome step forward. But while that regulation aims to ensure that care providers do not discourage visits, and that people can attend medical appointments accompanied by a family member or advocate, it falls short of what is needed. Regulation 9A relies on enforcement by the CQC, an organisation that is well understood to be stretched thin and facing a number of challenges. The CQC cannot prosecute providers for breaches of the regulation, and often lacks the resources for swift and consistent enforcement. Most importantly, the regulation does not create an enforceable right held by the individual resident. That gap leaves residents and their families vulnerable.
Without clear legal protections and a statutory right to visitation, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past. That is why my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I are calling on the Government to implement Gloria’s law without delay. Gloria’s law would enshrine in primary legislation the right for every person in a care or health setting to have at least one essential care supporter present, regardless of circumstances. As Rights for Residents says,
“only Gloria’s Law will guarantee that none of us will be forcibly separated from our loved ones again”.
I urge the Minister to answer the following important questions. First, does she believe that regulation 9A alone is sufficient to prevent isolation and ensure that residents can be supported in times of crisis or future public health emergencies? Secondly, are the Government confident that the CQC and the Department of Health and Social Care have the capacity, resources and real-time data systems to monitor visiting arrangements and act swiftly if restrictions become harmful? Thirdly, will the Government commit to going further by passing Gloria’s law, guaranteeing a statutory right to unrestricted in-person support from at least one essential care supporter?
The lessons of the pandemic are clear. Families are not visitors but vital partners in supporting those we love through their most vulnerable moments, so let us act now and give vulnerable people the rights they need and deserve. In doing so, perhaps we will save lives like Donald’s.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. I declare my interest, as an NHS consultant.
I know from my own professional experience that hospitals and other care settings can be distressing places for patients and their relatives. Even with our excellent NHS staff on hand, patients want more assurance and familiarity while they undergo care and treatment. For many, that support comes from the family and friends who visit them during their hospital stay, or while they are in a hospice or receiving care in a care home. I pay tribute to the very many excellent staff who work in those settings and provide care around the clock and during public holidays, and put themselves out to care for others.
For residents, care homes are just that: their home. They should be entitled to have relatives and friends visit them as they would in any other home. Visitors also improve care. An inability to visit one’s relative in hospital leads to an increased feeling of not knowing how they are this morning—whether they are getting worse or better, whether they are in pain or are comfortable, or whether they can reach what they need to get. Relatives fear not being able to help the resident, and worry about whether they are lonely or stressed because they are not there to support them. That adds to the relatives’ stress.
The patient or the person in the care home knows that staff are busy and may not want to bother them for small things, such as reaching a book or their glasses, passing them a drink—which is so important for hydration—helping them eat a meal, moving the curtains so the sun is not in their eyes or providing an extra blanket. Instead, many wait hours for their relative to come. Sometimes, they just want a cuddle and to hold hands with the person they love. Clearly, that is in the best interests of their health and wellbeing.
Relatives know the person they are seeing the best, and are able to identify changes in condition that may go unnoticed by staff. I remember visiting a relative of mine who was getting better following surgery and was stepped down from the high-dependency unit to the ward. When I arrived, I realised that he looked grey, pale and unwell. He was indeed in shock and required urgent fluid resuscitation. I shudder to think what would have happened had that not occurred at the beginning of visiting time.
It was with those things in mind that the previous Government introduced the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and, in particular, regulation 9A. Like others, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) for doing so. The regulations were designed to ensure that patients staying in hospital or residential care settings could receive visitors in a fair and consistent way. They also aimed to ensure that care home residents would not face barriers or discouragement if they wanted to take their visitors outside, and they made provisions for those attending non-residential hospital or hospice appointments to have guaranteed rights for friends or family members to accompany them.
However, now that these regulations are in place, we need to ensure that they are working effectively and that systems are in place to detect any attempts to water down or remove the rights that they provide. I want to raise the exceptional circumstances limitation with the Minister. Members will know that the regulations grant visiting rights unless there are exceptional circumstances. The CQC guidance states that providers should base this assessment
“on the health, safety and welfare of people using the service or other people involved. This should include giving consideration to the appropriate balance of a person’s rights, the needs of people using their service and any identified risks”.
If concerns have been raised about current levels of compliance with visiting regulations, we must begin by identifying how and why this caveat in the rules is being used. Can the Minister tell us what kinds of circumstances private providers deem to be exceptional? Who is making these decisions and who is overseeing that process? The CQC guidance also states that where additional precautions or restrictions are needed, they should represent
“the most proportionate and least restrictive option”
that is available. Is the Minister confident that this principle is being followed, and what is she doing to provide transparency for patients and their carers about decision making?
In summary, can the Minister tell us how many times the exceptional circumstances provision has been used in the last year by each institution and how many visits or accompanying visits have been blocked as a result? Is she monitoring such blocking? What steps is she taking to ensure that those with reduced mental capacity have their rights to visits upheld?
It is important that these rules are followed. The vast majority of care settings provide excellent care, but the concern is that the better care settings are more open than others, and as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) said, sometimes, visiting times may be restricted to cover up poor care, adding to the stress of the patient or resident and their carers. It is important that the Minister does what she can to improve the education and training of staff, and change the culture of settings so that everyone is able to receive the visits they need.
Some providers are even using the realms of infection control measures to exclude visitors. Surely, if infection control measures are frequently being used to restrict visiting, that is a red flag that the infection control measures in that institution are not providing adequate safety for residents. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that staff follow the requirements placed on them and to make sure that individual providers are not being selective in their adherence to the rules?
It is clear from what we have heard today that more needs to be done to ensure that patients receive the visits and accompaniments that they are entitled to. If we are serious about putting patients and residents first, more needs to be done to guarantee them the social and emotional support that they need to be comfortable, as well as the best treatment or palliative medical care available.
As others have already said, the CQC is not able to prosecute for breaches of regulation 9A, although it can take action such as civil enforcement measures. Does the Minister believe that is a strong enough incentive for providers to meet their obligations, or does she recognise that increased enforcement powers might be needed to ensure that the rights of patients are protected? What other schemes has the Department considered to help providers to better facilitate contact and visiting arrangements?
I will finish by saying that I work as an NHS consultant paediatrician, and in paediatrics we always have open visiting for parents. Parents are really helpful in providing the care and looking after the children as part of a teamwork approach between parents and staff. Can the Minister say why such visiting arrangements are not available for people of all ages when they are at their most vulnerable, because I cannot see why they should not be? Indeed, I think that it would help quite dramatically.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)
Thank you, Ms Butler, for chairing this important debate at such short notice, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden) for securing it.
The Minister for Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberafan Maesteg (Stephen Kinnock), has asked me to pass on his apologies; he is unable to represent the Government in this debate as he is currently in session on the Mental Health Bill Committee. However, he joins me in thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Walton not only for securing this debate, but for all the work he has done in advocating for relatives and friends to have the right to visit care home residents and patients in hospitals and hospices.
I also thank all those who have shared their personal stories and those who are in the Public Gallery today. I can say without hesitation that the Minister for Care and I agree with my hon. Friend on the importance of visiting in care settings. Contact with family and friends is a crucial part of a person’s care. Indeed, there is evidence that supporting people to be actively involved in their own care, treatment and support can improve outcomes and experiences for people receiving care. No one should be denied reasonable access to visitors when they are in a care home, a hospital, or a hospice. That includes receiving assistance from a care supporter or simply going for a walk with a family member or friend.
Before the covid-19 pandemic care homes, hospitals and hospices set visiting policies based on their specific local circumstances. During the pandemic, restrictions on visiting were implemented to prevent the spread of covid-19. Those restrictions were in response to clinical advice and were designed to protect people living in care or in hospital, who were often among the most vulnerable to the virus. Visiting and accompanying is one of the fundamental standards against which the Care Quality Commission assesses quality of care.
The Government recognise how important visiting is for the health and wellbeing of residents in care homes and patients in hospitals and hospices. We have monitored the position since the new fundamental standard was introduced in 2023. We know that the majority of health and care providers are facilitating visits and recognise their importance. The capacity tracker, a digital tool where adult social care providers self-report data, shows that 99.3% of care home providers are facilitating visits. That figure has been stable since September 2022. However, we also know that there are times when it is necessary for movement in and out of care settings to be temporarily restricted.
Dr Johnson
Can the Minister clarify what constitutes a visit in those circumstances? Would an hour’s visit once a week count, or is there a specific timeframe that qualifies?
Ashley Dalton
I do not have that data to hand, but I will make sure that it is provided to the shadow Minister afterwards.
While there is sometimes the need for temporary restrictions or modifications to minimise significant risks, the Government hope that such instances are a rarity. It is our aspiration to ensure that visiting policy and practice strike the best possible balance between individual wellbeing and public health needs. I have been really moved by, and taken note of, the evidence put forward by many Members that that may not always be the case.
The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) talked about her experience with her mother, and brought to life the value that family and friends bring to the emotional wellbeing of the person being cared for and how, as partners in care, they play a key role in delivering that care.
Liz Saville Roberts
I am interested to hear the Minister talk about visits, but I think the essence of what many of us have discussed today is that there is a role for family carers alongside salaried carers. We desperately urge the Government to find a way to bring that forward in law.
Ashley Dalton
I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention, and it is noted. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) told the powerful story of his own mother-in-law and his experiences there, and spoke about the importance of family contact, specifically for children in health and social care settings. For the sake of clarity, regulation 9A does not cover children’s homes—there are other regulations for that. We are talking specifically about health and social care settings.
We heard powerful interventions from other Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand). The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett), and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), asked a series of questions: is regulation 9A sufficient? Can the CQC monitor an Act? What are the exceptional circumstances of regulation 9A? Who is making those decisions? What principle is being followed and how is it being properly monitored?
The Government are committed to understanding the current position and considering how it can be improved. That is why in April we launched a review of CQC regulation 9A: visiting and accompanying in care homes, hospitals and hospices. All the issues raised today will be explored as part of that review. We want the review to be thorough and will consider the experiences of those receiving care, their families and loved ones, providers and health experts, as well as information from the Care Quality Commission, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. To ensure that we get a wide range of views, we have also opened a call for evidence and are running focus groups, with the first one taking place later today.
The representations made in today’s debate will help to inform the review. I further thank all contributors, and assure them that their contributions have been noted. We are determined to understand whether the expectations set by the regulation are right and that its application in practice works in the best way across care homes, hospitals and hospices, and in relation to visiting and accompanying.
I can confirm for the hon. Member for Strangford that we will look at the experience of all UK nations, including Northern Ireland and Scotland, where the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill, which includes Anne’s law, was approved on 10 June. That law requires care providers to facilitate visits to care home residents and to identify an essential care supporter for each resident.
I can assure hon. Members that we will reflect on the points made here as we conduct the review. We will move fast and ensure that we do justice to this important issue. We need to understand the problems and gaps if we are to draw the right conclusions from the review. We are pressing on with evidence gathering and focus groups right now. We plan to publish the outcome of the review and any further steps in the autumn.
Dan Carden
Thank you, Ms Butler, for getting here so quickly and saving our debate. I also thank the campaigners for coming here today, all hon. Members who participated and the Minister for her understanding of people’s experiences and openness to receiving evidence. I see this as a matter of principle. Sometimes, when the state contracts out services and provision, it oversteps the mark and we forget what really matters, which is the love and care of our families and the people closest to us. No bureaucrat or care home manager has the right to say, “No you cannot maintain contact with the people you love.”
That is something that the law needs to put right. If it can be done, it will be to the benefit of all—the families, those needing care and the institutions providing that care. I hope that the Minister, alongside the Minister for Care, will keep an open mind.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the right to maintain contact in care settings.
Unadopted Estates and Roads
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered unadopted estates and roads.
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler, and a real pleasure to have the Minister present to respond.
I am proud to be part of a Labour party that takes the housing crisis, which affects far too many families across the country, deeply seriously. For a long time we have not been building enough homes in this country, and families in my constituency, and far too many like it right across the UK, are paying the price. As a party, we recognise the best traditions of this country: homes provide more than just a building; they are about security, stability and a platform for prosperity for each and every one of the people we are lucky enough to represent.
I will speak about a growing issue that is threatening to undercut that very principle for far too many homeowners in Hitchin, in the other towns and villages I represent, and in far too many communities right across the country. That is the growing scandal of fleeceholds, as well as the challenges with unadopted estates and the issues that the families left in them have to face.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
In my constituency, we have arguably the largest number of new builds in the country; we are vying with Warwickshire for the crown of new build county. I have been inundated with requests for help with freehold management companies. My constituents are telling me the same stories they are telling my hon. Friend—and I assume other Members present—about the lack of transparency, poor communication, soaring bills and contracts they cannot get out of. To date, we have contacted Centrick, Greenbelt, Ground Solutions, Meadfleet, Premier Estates, FirstPort, Trustgreen, Virtu Property, Ward Surveyors and Hardwick Construction. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is fine time we saw an end to the fleecehold stealth tax, which effectively forces homeowners to write a blank cheque to management companies for years to come?
Alistair Strathern
I thank my hon. Friend; she will be a powerful champion for the many residents in her community who are falling on the hard edge of this challenge. Sadly, she is far from alone. Far too many MPs from right across the country have been speaking to me about the issues that their constituents have been facing, too. Indeed, when we drafted a letter to try to challenge some developers about the growing prevalence of fleecehold practices, over 50 colleagues signed up in the first week, and many more have got in touch since to contribute to our work.
The Competition and Markets Authority identified that up to 80% of new homes are now going unadopted as a result of the practice, and far too often it is becoming the default model for new estate delivery across the country.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Unfortunately—or fortunately, whatever way we want to look at it—this is an issue not just in his constituency, but across the whole of the United Kingdom, including in Northern Ireland. Local councils will not go into unadopted housing estates for kerbside collection of bins in Northern Ireland because the roads are unadopted. Instead, residents must bring their bins to the entrance of the estate. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that more must be done to support elderly or disabled residents in new housing areas, to ensure that they are able to avail themselves of those council facilities that they pay the rates for, but cannot access just because they happen to be on an unadopted estate?
Alistair Strathern
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Again, he will be a powerful champion for his residents at the hard edge of the challenges with unadopted estates in his constituency. The example he highlights is powerful, because it is testament to the fact that more and more families living on unadopted estates are simply not getting the services that the rest of us who live on historically adopted estates take for granted from our local authorities.
The fleecehold stealth tax is at the heart of some of the inequity that this growing challenge creates. Right across the country, more and more families are on the hook to private management companies, paying fees of typically £350 or more a year for services that every other homeowner pays for through their council tax.
Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)
I commend my hon. Friend for showing leadership on this issue and supporting not only his constituents but mine in Stockton North. I have seen high service charges in my constituency at Willow Sage Court and Wynyard, and unadopted roads on the Queensgate estate were left for four years before my intervention. Does he agree that homeowners deserve, when they buy a new property, to have an agreement with the developer on when those roads will be made up and adopted, and to have a reasonable expectation that this will happen?
Alistair Strathern
Absolutely. The certainty and fairness my hon. Friend calls for is the bare minimum we should expect for our constituents and the bare minimum that families should have when moving into a new property, often one they have saved up for over a long time to take that big, exciting step. I know his constituents will be all the better for the work he has done to champion that, but it should not fall to him and other hon. Members to fight for this. It should be a matter of course for new developments.
That inequity I was talking about is a real challenge. Not only is it unfair that lots of our constituents are having to pay hundreds of pounds—and often much more than that—each year for services that others receive as standard, but the very nature of fleecehold is designed to structurally inflate some of those costs. Those management companies are very rarely accountable to the actual residents of these new estates that they in theory provide services for. As a result, there is no incentive for them to keep costs low; I have had examples of people having to pay more than £250 per household just to fix a single lightbulb on the estate. Constituents are individually on the hook for thousands of pounds across the estate as a result of road challenges, and there are many more examples of no real pressure or accountability for the costs residents have to pay.
Alongside that, the complicated legal nature of those structures, the professional fees involved, and the fact that certain estates can be subdivided into tiny blocks or pockets of five homes—each of which has to have its own management company and therefore has to pay for all those professional services over and over again—mean that a large chunk of those fees often does not go towards any service at all. It simply covers professional fees, auditing costs, and wider costs associated with a structure that is by its very essence deeply inefficient and not set up to provide a service to the residents who rely on it.
Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, and thank him for his powerful speech about the iniquity of the current situation. From talking to residents of Ebbsfleet Garden City in my constituency, I know there is growing frustration because they are paying council tax to management companies as well as service charges, with very little clarity, as he says, about what are often very high fees. Does he agree that we need clearer guidelines on timescales and standards for roads and communal areas to be adopted by local authorities, so that residents in places such as Ebbsfleet and other communities mentioned can have certainty about what they are paying for and to whom?
Alistair Strathern
I know my hon. Friend is a tireless champion of his constituents who are impacted by this issue. He is spot on: this fleecehold stealth tax—because it is in essence a stealth tax our constituents are being asked to pay—is not just unfair to residents, but means they are all too often ultimately reliant on management companies to provide a service that they rarely receive. Not only are they having to pay more than those in adopted estates, but they often get a worse service, because there is no transparency or accountability around the management companies taking on those practices.
It is not just a cost issue for my constituents or many like them. There are other big non-financial costs associated with fleecehold. Far too many estates have had to band together and sink countless hours into holding management companies to account to get transparency over works, to ensure that very basic works and maintenance are carried out, and to make sure that things we all take for granted—such as safety inspections on play parks—actually take place. My constituents have had to sink days and days of their time into fighting for the bare minimum.
Alongside the very fragmented legal nature of those entities, they can also put my constituents at risk at crucial moments. I spoke to constituents whose house sales have nearly fallen through—one actually did—because the management company in question failed to provide the management pack in a timely fashion. That meant that during conveyancing they were unable to complete the sale and move to the dream property they had been looking forward to and needed to move to for their jobs.
I spoke to another constituent whose credit score was decimated when, after missing a payment by just a couple of weeks, their management company enacted some of its powers under the contract to go straight to the mortgage company, add the balance to the mortgage and extract the fee that way, with all the impact one would expect that to have on the homeowner’s credit score and sense of security.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. We have a situation in my constituency in Groomsport on a road called The Point. There is no management company for this road; it is actually owned by the local residents who live along it. However, it has been like a dirt track for decades. We are in a situation where we cannot get the Department for Infrastructure, which is the road service, to adopt this road, because the residents would have to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to get the DFI to adopt it. Does there not need to be some sort of special dispensation for people caught in this type of trap that will enable the Government to adopt roads when they have been in such a situation for decades?
Alistair Strathern
Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman gives an example of the kind that I think will be familiar to all too many of us. Essentially, an unadopted part of our constituency—be that a road, or common ground within an estate—falls into this limbo state, where no one step ups to be accountable for it. Without action or some kind of central movement to compel some change in the future, more and more of the public realm will fall into exactly the kind of disrepair that he has just described, with all the disillusionment among people that comes with it.
The case for change is clear. We currently have a system that is not doing right by our homeowners on new estates. Indeed, all too often it falls far short of the ideals of security and prosperity that home ownership and new house building are meant to deliver. However, in the absence of any action, this situation is increasingly becoming the norm.
As I have said, the CMA estimates that over 80% of the estates built in recent years are now subject to fleecehold; that figure certainly sounds accurate for my patch and I suspect that it does for other hon. Members’ patches, too. If we do not act and make some changes in the future, there is a very real risk that a lot of the 1.5 million homes that we are so committed to building over this Parliament will also end up falling into the fleecehold stealth tax trap.
What can we do? There are several actions that I urge the Minister to ensure that the Government continue to push forward. It is very clear to me that we need to stop the existence of fleecehold estates at source. The CMA has powerful recommendations about how to do that, such as bringing forward minimum adoptable standards and mandatory adoption timeframes, which should ensure that we do not create more of this problem on new developments as we tackle the housing crisis that so urgently needs action.
I know that the Minister for Housing and Planning is committed to launching a consultation on this issue, and I urge him to move at real pace. We owe it to our constituents to listen to them about the issues they face and to ensure that in the future fewer of them have to suffer these problems. Acting on the CMA’s recommendations and speedily introducing legislation to bring them into effect will be a powerful tool to do that.
However, we cannot act only on behalf of new estates. We will all have constituents in existing fleecehold estates who will be very concerned that, without action, they will not only continue to face the very challenges that we have been talking about today but will also become, in effect, second-class homeowners. As unadopted estates become a thing of the past, those on legacy unadopted estates risk being at a very real disadvantage as that problem becomes more isolated and more siloed.
In the short term, there are definitely things that the Government can do to hold management companies to greater account. There is the potential to bring forward secondary legislation that would ensure we are better able to regulate the services that such companies provide, putting our householders and our constituents back in the driving seat and making them much more able to hold management companies to account if they do not provide a robust, transparent and timely service, as well as helping to drive down some of the rip-off fees that have been imposed and ensuring that they can access information in a timely and transparent fashion.
However, we know that for lots of these estates, that will not be enough. In the ten-minute rule Bill that I introduced a couple of months ago, I advanced the idea of a resident’s right to manage. It would enable residents on existing fleecehold estates to take back control, to step into the driving seat, to push out the management companies that have been ripping them off for far too long, and to be in a position where they are the controller of their estate’s future, and can commission the services they would like. Although that is not quite the council adoption that I know many residents long for in the longer term, such a powerful move would put residents back where they should have been all along—in control of their estate and of all of the public realm that they rely on to go about their day-to-day lives.
I also urge the Minister to work with the Local Government Association and local authorities across the country to consider what further measures can be taken to ensure that, over time, we put an end to all the unadopted estates that we are all currently having to advocate for as a result of this deeply inequitable situation. Far too many households are stuck in the fleecehold limbo trap. Although better regulation and a right to manage would be powerful steps forward and welcomed by many people, ultimately local authorities’ adoption of these estates will be the only answer that completely resolves all the challenges that we have talked about today.
I urge Ministers to move at speed in bringing forward the legislation needed to cut off the creation of new unadopted estates. I would also welcome Government action to hold management companies to account, including through better regulation of service charges and tighter requirements on the transparency with which managing agents must operate. I also support action on the right to manage, so that our residents and constituents on existing unadopted estates are back in the driving seat, where they desperately deserve to be. However, I recognise that we will need to continue the conversation to work towards a longer-term vision. We will need to work with local authorities, Ministers and our constituents to make sure that we finally have a pathway to adoption for existing unadopted estates, which have been neglected for far too long, as many hon. Members have said.
This Government are absolutely right to focus on the housing crisis, which is one of the biggest challenges facing the country, and I am very excited that they have such a big, bold vision for taking it on. They are not just building 1.5 million homes, but ensuring record investment in social and affordable housing, as well as much tighter regulation of key issues from solar panels to building regulations.
However, if we do not tackle the challenge of fleecehold and end the growing scandal of unadopted estates, we will still be setting up far too many of our constituents for a life of misery, a life of battling to get the bare minimum and a life of paying hundreds of pounds or more every year—money that other residents simply do not have to pay—because they happen to live on an unadopted estate. That cannot be right, and it is not a situation that I will tolerate for my constituents. I know that many other hon. Members will not tolerate it, either. I look forward to working with the Minister and this Government to make sure that we tackle it with the seriousness it deserves.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate, which is characteristic of the type of issues that he champions. I do not think this issue gets nearly enough coverage, and it is great that we have the opportunity to debate it this morning. It is one of those issues that, exactly as he says, turns dreams into nightmares and can ruin people’s lives or make people’s lives just that bit harder. It is exactly the sort of issue that he is passionate about and that he always uses his platform to raise, and I am grateful that he has. I am also grateful for other colleagues’ contributions.
I am grateful not just for my hon. Friend’s excellent diagnosis of the problem, but for charitably offering solutions to the Government. I am also grateful to him for raising these issues in his ten-minute rule Bill, which is a good way for Members of Parliament to raise issues with the Government and to hear our policy ideas. I make it clear that we support the underlying goals of his Bill, which aligns very nicely with our manifesto commitment to end the injustice of fleecehold estates.
It is important to recognise that, yes, this is an issue for my hon. Friend’s constituents, but we are also seeing it across the country. From Ebbsfleet up to Stockton and, in the middle, South Derbyshire—so good that it is nearly Nottingham—residents are facing these growing challenges, and we must be there to support them.
As the Minister with responsibility for building safety, I often say that in my area, and across Government more generally, we are trying to serve twin moral imperatives. The first is to make sure that people have a home. I think every day of the 6,000 children in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and the 180,000 children in temporary accommodation the previous night. We have to make sure that people have homes, but we also have to ensure that they are good homes and that, exactly as my hon. Friend says, we are not setting up people to fail. We have to make sure those homes are warm and dry, safe from fire and, in this case, do not come with overheads or lower-quality infrastructure that make owning, renting or living in that home a nightmare and a battle. Those are the Government’s goals, and they are perfectly compatible
Exactly as my hon. Friend says, this issue has an impact on both supply and local authority budgets, so it is right that we take our time to assemble the best available evidence to make sure that we get the best possible change, but we appreciate that we need to get on and move at pace.
I will start close to where my hon. Friend finished, with the Competition and Markets Authority’s study of house building. The study was published last year and provides evidence for what I suspect we already knew from our constituency mailbags—over the past few years, we have seen significant growth in the number of unadopted estates. The study talks about some of the causes behind that trend, concluding that this practice is detrimental to consumers.
The Government agree with the CMA’s conclusion that, overall, the house building market is not delivering for consumers and has consistently failed to do so over successive decades. We have looked very closely at the report’s recommendations, which call for measures to strengthen protection for existing homeowners and for the Government to mandate adoption of all new estates and implement common adoptable standards for infrastructure on those new estates. We accepted many of the recommendations last October, but we believe that further work is required in some areas—I will talk a little about that. I take to heart what my hon. Friends the Members for Hitchin and for Dartford (Jim Dickson) said about the importance of certainty and fairness, which are absent from this process. Without them, people cannot build their lives properly.
Ms Butler, you will not be surprised to hear me say that, as it so often does, this starts with individual rights—residents’ rights on unadopted housing estates. As we have heard, residents living on privately managed estates with unadopted amenities are struggling with a range of problems, including poor service, excessive bills and limited to no transparency about how money is spent, onerous restrictions on the title deeds to their properties—my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin raised a particularly egregious case—and a general lack of control over how the estate is managed. That speaks to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire.
The CMA found that approximately 20% of freehold estates have what is known as an embedded management company set in the title deeds. It found that residents may find it extremely hard—indeed, sometimes impossible —to remove or change an embedded management company, no matter what quality of service they receive. Of course, that cannot be right. My hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin talked about a lack of accountability. Well, what could be a greater lack of accountability?
In the spirit of urgency that my hon. Friend talked about, in the immediate term we need to introduce protections for residential freeholders on already-constructed freehold estates. As hon. Members may be aware, the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, passed by the previous Parliament, created a regulatory framework that will provide for exactly the sorts of protections and rights to which my hon. Friend referred. It provides for standardised demands, an annual report, a right for homeowners to challenge the reasonableness of charges levied, a requirement for estate managers to consult homeowners where the anticipated cost exceeds an appropriate amount, and a right for residential freeholders to apply to a tribunal to appoint a manager in the event of serious management failure. That is the prize before us.
As the Minister for Housing and Planning, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), made clear in his written ministerial statement last November, we need to act as quickly as feasible to implement those provisions, but they need to be enacted with detailed secondary legislation. We want to get this right, not least because these are, at their heart, extremely technical matters, and the last thing we want to do is give hope by promising change, and for the change not to deliver because it was not operable or effective. We will bring these measures into effect as soon as possible, but we first need to consult on the technical detail. We will publish the consultation document later this year. My hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin said that we need real pace, and my hon. Friend the Housing Minister and I have heard that strongly.
More broadly, at the heart of this, having the choice of a managing agent is really important, whether for unadopted estates or buildings in which lots of people live together. Sometimes residents step up—who knows their community better than they do?—but those are hard jobs. I have met many resident management companies in the course of my work, and there is an awful lot for them to step up and do. That is why there are sometimes frustrations. We agreed with what the CMA said about RMCs needing the right guidance and support to do the job themselves, where they choose to do so.
We also know that for many buildings or estates, there will be a really important role for managing agents. When done well, managing agents are an important part of enhancing communities and individual lives. Where that is not the case—too often, it is not—they can have all the detrimental impacts we have heard about. That is why the Government are so committed to strengthening the regulation of managing agents of leasehold properties and estate managers of freehold estates. We believe that, at a minimum, there should be mandatory professional qualifications for managing agents, whether they manage a building or an estate. We will consult on that measure later this year. That is an important part of driving up standards in the industry to make sure that all managing agents are making the positive contribution that we know they want to make, and that they should and can make when done well.
The point on adoption is often around the quality of infrastructure. Local authorities have significant challenges, and nobody expects new builds to add more burden—certainly not through the provision of poor housing or the infrastructure that supports it. Traditionally, without the challenges we see today, local authorities and water companies would adopt those respective parts of a new residential estate, whether it be the roads, the drains or the sewers, and they would set clear standards and provide oversight to ensure these were delivered to adoptable standards. Where that has not been the case, the responsibility for ongoing maintenance falls on the residents. For some on the adoption journey, which in many cases can take more than a decade because of these ongoing concerns, they pick up the bill with no resolution in sight—they live in that twilight zone.
We are conscious that, at the heart of this, developers have to build to a good standard. Otherwise there is poorer infrastructure and a lack of adoptability, never mind the lack of redress for homeowners and the lack of oversight. There are too many examples where developments have been left unfinished for years, and we do not think homeowners should be left in that limbo.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin talks about complexity, and we will have more complex schemes with different ownerships, tenures and types—we want that as a Government—but that will add a degree of complexity. Similarly, there are greater expectations on developers, for good reasons. Whether it is sustainable drainage systems, biodiversity net gain, electric vehicle charging points, playgrounds or sports pitches, they all make this more challenging, which is why the clarity on standards that we intend to set from the centre is so important.
My hon. Friend has made a powerful case, which has been reflected strongly in the interventions from colleagues and in the mailbags of all hon. and right hon. Members. I am grateful that he has given them this hearing. It is vital that we take on this issue in the round to make sure that we get it right and secure a change that delivers for people. That is why we will seek views from a wide range of parties, including local authorities, management companies, developers and, crucially, freeholders and residents. I hope colleagues will help to bring the voices of their constituents into the consultations.
I make it clear that we intend to act. There is a clear commitment to act, and we have a legislative framework to do so. We will see action in this area. We want to move at the best pace that we can, and we know at the heart of this issue is a significant prize: improving the lives of many people across the country. We are very committed to doing so.
Question put and agreed to.
VAT Registration Threshold: SMEs
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the impact of the VAT registration threshold on SMEs.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. It was Napoleon Bonaparte who once said that “England is a nation of shopkeepers”. As is often the case with Napoleon, he was wrong. England, and indeed the UK, is a nation of entrepreneurs. Across the UK, early risers and late-night grafters—the men and women who channel their entrepreneurial spirits into businesses and serving their communities—form the backbone of our economy. However, we in this place sometimes let them down. That is certainly the case with the current nonsensical VAT registration threshold.
Right now, businesses in the UK have to be VAT registered when their turnover reaches just £90,000—an arbitrary figure. Once a small business has crossed that cliff edge, it is hit with added regulatory compliance costs and the need to charge their customers 20% more for their services. I do not want to pre-empt the Minister’s response, but I am well aware of the fact that the UK has one of the highest thresholds in Europe—that is not the point. I am arguing for the boldness to unleash the Great British entrepreneurial spirit once again.
Increasing the threshold to £90,000 was a positive move by the previous Conservative Government. I recognise the complexities surrounding the Windsor framework, but when we voted to leave the European Union in 2016, we wanted to take back control of our money, our borders and our laws. We should look at this again, and seek to also include Northern Ireland businesses with an increased VAT registration threshold.
As a chartered accountant by profession, I have seen first hand the implications that the UK’s tax regime can have for businesses. I enjoy conversations about the economy and business growth, and one recent example from my constituency surgery stands out. I met with Chris and Annie Ensell, talented entrepreneurs running a thriving wedding photography business called Bloom Weddings. Joined by their daughter, they told me of their success and their frustration. They had both become increasingly concerned about approaching and potentially surpassing the VAT registration threshold cliff edge.
They now face the agonising decision between limiting the number of weddings they agree to service or passing on increased costs to their customers, which would limit their competitiveness. I ask the Minister—who is part of a Government that say they are going for growth—is that fair? How will this encourage more people like Chris and Annie to build up their businesses?
In the Government’s manifesto, they claimed they understand that small firms, entrepreneurs and the self-employed face unique challenges, but we have seen them eat into small to medium-sized enterprise profit margins by increasing national insurance contributions and the national minimum wage. We have also seen them add more regulatory burdens with the Employment Rights Bill, which is set to add £5 billion to the costs of UK businesses. However, today is an opportunity to for the Minister to show real support for small businesses, such as those in my Mid Leicestershire constituency, by committing to review the VAT registration threshold.
I regret to say that I am not overly optimistic. When the previous Government rightly increased the threshold, Sir Edward Troup, a Labour tax adviser, ridiculed the idea, claiming that halving the threshold would somehow encourage growth. Perhaps even more shockingly, the current Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell), has proposed slashing the threshold to a derisory £30,000.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that this demonstrates that the Labour Government do not understand how our small businesses operate, and are not on their side? We see the impact of not only VAT registration, but employer’s national insurance, minimum wage and business rates increases, among other things. Does he agree that this Government do not understand how small businesses want to grow, operate and thrive?
Mr Bedford
I absolutely agree. Over the last year, particularly in the Budget and recent announcements, we have seen measures that stifle the growth of SMEs and small businesses. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that today because I am passionate about supporting them, not only so that the economy can grow, but so that we can create jobs and opportunities for all. I will always support small family businesses, and I will never support proposals to slash the VAT threshold to such low levels.
What is even more frustrating is the fact that the voice of industry has not been heard; its calls have fallen on deaf ears. The Federation of Small Businesses has previously highlighted that the extra bureaucracy of being VAT-registered adds £4,100 on average to the running costs of a business. UKHospitality also notes that there have been missed opportunities to be bolder and to alleviate regulatory burdens on the hospitality sector.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I do not know if the hon. Member is aware, but just this morning the Federation of Small Businesses in Northern Ireland released a report about the complications that the Windsor framework is creating for small businesses in Northern Ireland. Does he agree that SMEs are the backbone of the UK economy in all regions and that we need to try to do whatever we can to reduce bureaucracy rather than increase it, which is what the Windsor framework has achieved?
Mr Bedford
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and I absolutely agree. As a Unionist myself, I want to see all parts of the UK thrive and grow, and that obviously includes Northern Ireland. This debate equally applies to Northern Ireland as it does to everywhere else in the Union.
I was talking about UKHospitality, which says it would like to see the VAT rate cut to 12.5% for the industry. I think that proposal has merits and I encourage the Minister to consider it.
Finally, I recently met the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and it was clear that confidence among small businesses is in decline. The ICAEW would like to see the whole VAT system simplified and the registration threshold reviewed. That would reduce compliance costs, but it would also enable small businesses to grow beyond the restrictive cliff edge that is currently in place.
The Minister may not be a fan of Margaret Thatcher, our first female Prime Minister, but she believed that if people work hard, they should have the opportunity to succeed, and that the Government’s role is to create the conditions for that success. That was why she launched the enterprise allowance scheme, which helped to create now-famous brands such as Superdry and Creation Records.
However, if the Minister wants a more contemporary example of a state supporting businesses to grow, he should look at our good friends in Singapore. First, as is well-documented, corporation tax in Singapore is low, but in addition small businesses in Singapore have the pioneer certificate incentive, which encourages start-ups in undersubscribed industries. I am not asking the Minister for such a scheme here—I know that that would perhaps be too bold—but what I am asking for is a modest and sensible change that would make a real difference to entrepreneurs across the country. Raise the VAT registration threshold; push it beyond £90,000. Do it for the small businesses that want to grow, to diversify and to serve their communities, but also do it for the economy and for consumers, who will benefit from lower prices and greater choice. Above all, do it for the spirit of enterprise that has always defined the United Kingdom.
Martin Vickers (in the Chair)
I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called during the debate.
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and I thank the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) for securing this important debate.
Small and medium-sized enterprises are not just crucial to our economy; they are its lifeblood, driving innovation, employment and local growth. In my constituency of Mid Dunbartonshire, we have many SMEs that contribute enormously to the local economy, including hair and beauty salons, and they also keep our high streets alive. Beyond this, though, our local businesses shape our communities, fostering a sense of identity and community pride, which we simply do not see when international conglomerates set up shop.
However, as has already been mentioned, in the current business environment, with the increase in employer’s national insurance contributions, the huge increase in utilities costs, and inflation driving up the cost of materials, the current VAT threshold poses a substantial barrier, actively stifling the potential of SMEs and limiting their growth.
The VAT threshold, currently set at £90,000, creates a growth cliff edge for SMEs. Many businesses deliberately limit their turnover to avoid crossing this threshold and facing the administrative burden, increased costs and competitive disadvantages that follow. That ceiling hampers ambition and penalises success—the exact opposite of what our tax system should encourage.
The leap to becoming VAT registered means businesses face not only significant new compliance costs, but the challenge of remaining price competitive. Non-VAT-registered competitors can undercut prices, placing growing businesses at a distinct disadvantage, and their larger competitors can use their size to offset the additional burden of VAT. Essentially our small, growing businesses are competing with those at the top and those at the bottom, both of which the system is designed to help. Moreover, the sudden administrative burden—VAT accounting, quarterly reporting and more complex financial management—is daunting and resource intensive.
Such complexity distracts entrepreneurs from their primary goal: growing their business, creating jobs and contributing positively to their local economy. The current VAT threshold discourages growth, distorts competition and creates unnecessary administrative challenges for SMEs. It is clearly time for change. Through a smoother transitional system or targeted administrative support, we must ensure our tax system empowers small businesses to grow confidently, and does not hold them back at critical stages of their development.
Lewis Cocking (Broxbourne) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) on securing this important debate. He is a passionate defender of small and medium-sized businesses in his constituency and across the country.
I meet small business owners in my constituency of Broxbourne almost every week, and every single one, from Carmela’s hairdressers in Cheshunt to the Smokeshed restaurant in Hoddesdon, has made it clear to me just how damaging Labour Government policies are towards small businesses. This Labour Government have put up the cost of growing a small business significantly, with the hike in employer’s national insurance making it more expensive for businesses to bring on and employ new people. Increasing the burden of regulation is also deterring employers from taking risks with who they employ. Both of those disastrous policies are leading to fewer people in work, taxes at the highest level on record and growth down. As I have said in this Chamber before, the drastic reduction in business rates relief is crippling for our retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, which are the anchor of so many of our town centres up and down our beautiful United Kingdom.
As we have heard this morning, what is also holding SMEs back is the current rules around VAT registration. When I go out and speak to businesses across my constituency of Broxbourne, whether I speak to them in business forums, through Love Hoddesdon, Love Cheshunt, Love Waltham Cross or the Stanstead Abbotts small business network group, they are all united in one thing and one single policy that they reckon is really holding them back: the VAT threshold. They all moan to me about it. They all say they need an easier solution. I have so many examples of businesses that I speak to that have said, “Lewis, it is not worth upscaling our business. It is not worth trying to do better, not worth taking on more business, not worth employing more people. It is not worth doing those things because, when we go just over the threshold, it takes our competitive edge away when we are trying to compete with people that are just below that threshold.” They have all come forward with a simple solution, which is that there should be a taper mechanism to build up to the 20%, rather than the cliff edge that we have now.
The situation is absolute nonsense. I have successful business owners in my constituency that go in day in, day out. As I have said in this Chamber before, I was told at the Dispatch box by a Government Minister that it is the Government that create economic growth. Well, it is not. They do not understand how business works in this country. Their whole philosophy around who creates economic growth is wrong. It is the millions of small business owners up and down the United Kingdom and all of the entrepreneurs that invest in their ideas that create economic growth. As I said, it cannot be right that I have examples in my constituency of people turning down work, not taking on more employees, and not creating the economic growth that we all want to see for this country because of measures like the VAT threshold.
We heard before the general election that this Government were going to be the most pro-business we had ever seen, but they have not come up with a single policy that has helped my business owners in Broxbourne. They all think that all this Government’s policies around businesses, including changing the threshold for business rates and not looking into the issue of VAT registration, are affecting how they do business across the country. That simply cannot be right—it is nonsense. We all want more jobs created and we all want our high streets to thrive.
Lots of business owners have lots of issues with what is going on in the economy right now, but this one single thing unites them. When I speak to them, they all raise this issue with me. They all want the Government to take it seriously and think up a solution. The Minister could go and speak to his officials at the Treasury and there could be a simple solution to this problem. That would create economic growth overnight. Businesses up and down the country would probably take on more employees and more business if this problem was solved. It is affecting lots of the people that I speak to in my constituency of Broxbourne.
Why on earth would someone come out of the education system, invest in their idea, take risks and set up a business in the United Kingdom right now? It is so heavily burdened with regulation. We need to unlock the aspiration of the next generation, and we can do that by solving simple things that business owners come to speak to us about. We need to make sure that the VAT threshold is no longer a cliff edge and bring in a taper mechanism.
I look forward to hearing what the Minister says in reply to this debate. I am hopeful that he will think long and hard about what he can do about this issue, because he has the tools at his disposal to solve it. I suspect that there will be lots of consensus among those of us speaking in this debate on the issue and on what we think the solution will be. I hope that the Minister is listening and will take note of all our comments when he winds up.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) for securing today’s important debate because, as he and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) have illustrated, many of our small independent businesses have contacted us as their representatives about the challenge around the VAT threshold time and again.
The VAT threshold builds on the collective impact of all the budgetary changes that have been having a hugely detrimental—indeed, catastrophic—impact on our many family businesses. The increases in employers’ national insurance, minimum wage, business rates—crikey, the list goes on. That is before we start looking at other legislation that is coming down the line, such as the Employment Rights Bill, which is creating more uncertainty for employees, dare I say, because employers quite rightly will not want to take the risk of growing and expanding, with further regulation and legislation coming down the line.
Small businesses are the lifeblood of any prosperous community, and my constituency of Keighley and Ilkley is no exception. Keighley is home to many fantastic small high street businesses, as well as a number of nationally and internationally acclaimed manufacturers. Likewise, Ilkley boasts a fabulously good high street, which helped the town to be officially named the best place to live in the whole north of England, as rated by The Sunday Times. I am sorry to say that our many small businesses are under immensely increasing regulatory and tax pressures as we go forward. Whether because of the rise in budgetary pressures introduced by the Budget last year or VAT, the subject of this debate, those businesses are struggling right now to make ends meet, and the challenge continues.
The mighty British fish and chip shop is one sector that is particularly struggling, with rising input prices and uncertainty over supply chains. I am honoured to represent many fish and chip shops across Keighley and Ilkley, and was lucky enough meet a great constituent of mine, Dwaine Smith, and go along to Old Time Fisheries at the top of Devonshire Street in Keighley to sample the fine offering. He was keen to get across to me the absolute pressure that the fish and chip industry is facing as a result of the increased cost of fish and chips coming into the sector, as well as the increased pressures around employer’s national insurance, the minimum wage and the challenge around VAT thresholds. On a number of occasions I have spoken to the operator of Kirkgate Fisheries, in Silsden in my constituency, and he has raised the issue of VAT with me as the No. 1 challenge that he is facing. Bearing out what my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire said, as an organisation it has actively looked at reducing the number of hours that it is open because of the challenges associated with VAT registration and the threshold that has been put in place.
We cannot be in a scenario where businesses are coming to us time and again, whether in the fish and chip industry or other sectors such as the wedding industry, as was referenced by my hon. Friend—it applies to every business—because they are being effectively constrained from growing and expanding because of the VAT registration challenges and the burden of the VAT threshold. It is sad to see popular, successful businesses in our communities having to commit acts of self-harm, not because they want to but because they have no other option available—they are forced to because of the increased taxes being put on their shoulders.
That brings me to the nub of the issue: this debate is about not just the level of the VAT threshold—although I am pleased to say that it rose steadily under the last Conservative Administration—but the hugely negative impact that the cost of VAT registration is having on the growth of many businesses in my constituency. It is not viable to sit just under the threshold, as has often been communicated to me by many of my constituents, and without further investment to get above it, businesses stagnate. That is the problem that we are actively seeing. I hope that the Minister will reference this cliff edge, which many of our hard-working businesses are facing, and that he will address how the Government plan to see the transition for businesses between VAT regimes.
I want to see businesses across Keighley, Ilkley, Silsden and the Worth valley thrive; I want to see families set up businesses that they have control of, that are pillars of the community and drive the local economy. Without doubt, they are the fabric of our communities. To do that, we must create a tax system that encourages expansion and growth. At the moment, the VAT threshold is a great filter to success. It is stagnating many of our businesses and constraining them from being able to grow at the speed they wish. At worst, many of our businesses are reducing their hours of operation and the amount of products that they are selling, because of the VAT threshold and the cost of VAT registration. This simply cannot continue. It is within the power of the Government to make that change, and I hope that the Minister is listening.
Finally, I would like to understand from the Minister whether any financial impact assessment has been made by this Government, not only on VAT but on the collective impact of those additional regulatory and financial burdens that have been put on hard-working businesses in our constituencies. I go door-knocking every week, speaking to residents and large and small businesses across my constituency. On the doorstep I openly ask people, 20% or 25% of the way into this Parliament—a year into this Government—to give me one thing that they feel the Government have delivered that has had a positive impact on their business. They cannot name one thing.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) for setting the scene and giving us all an opportunity to engage with the Minister on this issue, as the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) just did. The Minister is always a very pleasant gentleman—we all know that—and he always seems to be incredibly calm. I am not sure how he does it; maybe all the worries are somebody else’s worries—I do not know what they are. But I do wish him well with his answers to the questions that we pose today.
I read a very interesting article that outlined the pros and cons of raising the VAT threshold above the £90,000 that we are sitting at. What was most notable was the fact that these arguments were all made around an unalterable fact: we in Northern Ireland are hampered from truly having a full discussion by the Windsor framework, which does not allow Northern Ireland VAT to rise above the £90,000 threshold. Even if this debate today could make a change, and even if the Minister agreed with the change, it could not happen. Why? Because of the Windsor framework. I look to my right-hand side: maybe one of the Conservative Members there might have been in the previous Government who left us in Northern Ireland in that limbo land. They can answer for themselves—it is not for me to answer for them—but I do make the point that we were let down badly by the Conservatives in relation to this.
The reality is that, unless we can have regional VAT rates, the UK is prevented from acting in our best interests economically by the EU. It is a fact of life for us, unfortunately, nine years after the vote. I voted—and my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) beside me voted—to leave under the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom; but the EU is still dictating our economic policy in Northern Ireland. That is the reason that the DUP has consistently stood against this European interference. Perhaps, now that some businesses in other Members’ constituencies are being affected, in different regions—
Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but does he not now regret his vote to leave, seeing as it created all of these problems for his constituents?
Jim Shannon
No. I thank the hon. Member—he is a friend—but look, honestly, I am a Brexiteer; it is no secret. I want the same Brexit as the rest of the United Kingdom got. I did not get that. We were let down by a Government who did us over, so we did not get what we wanted, but if I had got the same as everybody else in England, Scotland and Wales—and my hon. Friend had—then I would not be having this conversation, and I would not be doing this spiel. I am still a Brexiteer and always will be a Brexiteer, and incidentally, the majority of people in my constituency voted to have the same Brexit as the rest of the United Kingdom, and my constituents did not get it either. When the Minister thinks about today’s debate, if he does not mind me saying, I would ask that he would petition the Cabinet, if it is not too much to ask for, to withdraw from this inherently flawed agreement for us in Northern Ireland.
The article that I read discussed the benefit of raising the threshold, highlighting that Government should want to encourage small businesses to grow. It would be much more effective to raise the threshold to £250,000, I would have thought. It is probably a better figure to work with. That is, of course, supported by the Government’s own statistics, which showed that, in 2022-23, £117 billion —75% of the total net VAT collected in the UK—was paid by traders with an annual turnover of more than £10 million. So, what does that mean exactly? Raising the threshold to £250,000 may not, therefore, have a significant impact on VAT’s total receipts, but it would allow His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to save costs and to focus its time on ensuring that the largest VAT payers paid the right amount of tax.
The Government have a big, difficult task before them; they have got to balance the books—whatever the figure might be for the black hole, or whatever it may have been. They have set themselves that target to balance those books, and I understand that. Maybe there is another way of saving money, perhaps within HMRC, that could be better. The Minister is a very wise man; he will understand the point I am making, and the civil servants, who are the brains of the Department—I hope the Minister does not mind me saying that—will be able to respond, and maybe pass the message on about whether that can be done.
Raising the threshold would allow a large number of traders in my area, and others, to focus on growth and not question whether they could grow a business enough to cover the additional accountancy costs when VAT is involved. When most businesses register for VAT, they are faced with a choice: either increase their prices by up to 20% or lose 20% of their existing prices as VAT. That is a difficult scenario for a business. The former makes the business less competitive and likely to see a drop in sales, and the latter eats into the profits and ultimately reduces the amount of money the business can use to expand. Neither option advocates for small business growth. As I have said, this is a moot point, as the EU will not allow us in Northern Ireland even to consider raising the threshold. I cannot tell businesses in Strangford or across Northern Ireland that it could be an option.
Some argue that there are benefits to retaining the VAT thresholds. Research undertaken for HMRC in 2016 found that 20% of unregistered businesses that were trading close to the VAT threshold had taken action to remain below it. Of those businesses, almost half said they had closed their businesses for part of the year to avoid having to register for VAT. One in five said they had turned down work, which was an indication that they could not grow as they wanted to because of the restriction. That strongly suggests that a significant number of businesses actively manage their turnover in order to stay below the VAT registration threshold. Lowering the threshold would prevent businesses from suppressing their trade in that way, which would in turn encourage economic growth.
Mr Gregory Campbell
Does my hon. Friend agree that in recent years, because of inflation, even small businesses in the retail trade that try to maintain a level just below the threshold find that they must pass on rising prices to the consumer? That means they will inevitably come to or above the threshold, and even an attempt to keep below it will often fail.
Jim Shannon
My hon. Friend always intervenes with words of wisdom and understanding. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that.
There is little point in Northern Ireland MPs discussing this issue, unless the discussion involves the revocation of the Northern Ireland protocol and each aspect of European interference. I ask the Minister sincerely, respectfully and honestly to take back to the Cabinet the circumstances of the Windsor framework, to ensure that Northern Ireland traders can have the very same options as those in England, Scotland and Wales.
Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)
Thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr Vickers, after I turned up late.
Few people can speak about VAT with such excitement as I can. I was UK entrepreneur of the year, I have lectured on entrepreneurship for 20 years, and I have mentored many early-stage businesses. I have concluded that the one thing we can do that could transform the small business community is to increase the VAT registration threshold to allow microbusinesses to scale up.
Has anyone tried to get hold of a tradesman recently—a plumber, a decorator or an electrician? I will use the collective word plumber, to make it easier for people of my mentality to understand. There is an army of plumbers —mostly men who work alone—who seem incredibly hard to get hold of. They tend to be older, they learned on the tools or at a technical college, and they are happy to limit their income to squeeze below the £90,000 VAT restriction. There are many who, looking for a bit of holiday money, might do a job on the side for cash.
There is a real shortage of plumbers, joiners and electricians, in part due to the closing down of technical colleges, and the young pursuing non-vocational degrees while loading themselves with student debt. Historically and internationally, skilled tradespeople have been held in great esteem, although not so much in today’s Britain. We all know good tradespeople with a great client list and reputation, all of whom make excellent money and are their own boss. An early learn for all those people is that the VAT registration threshold is essential: they need to pay 20% beyond that £90,000. My key point is that these sole traders will not take on an apprentice or an assistant, because that would take them over the VAT starting point.
Not being VAT-registered is a fantastic advantage for a person. He or she has a 20% advantage over competitors who have several staff. In addition, the sort of person who likes being on the tools is not the sort of person who would relish the additional paperwork of being VAT-registered. It is not only doing the VAT paperwork that puts sole traders off growing their business; it is the real burden of hiring people, the payroll, the contracts of employment and the HR responsibilities. We need to make it worth their while, so an increase of a few tens of thousands will not do the job. There are 4.4 million self-employed people in the UK; just think what a catapult forward for our economy we would see if only 10% of them were to hire a couple of people.
I propose that the VAT starting level be increased from £90,000 to £250,000 for all businesses. If that happened, I predict that a massive number of microbusinesses would hire an apprentice or two, creating a pool of young plumbers getting trained. As the availability of plumbers increased, householders would get work done quicker, there would be more competition and therefore lower charges, and clients would be happier. Small businesses, having built up a bit of a scale with three employees, might then grow into a proper business with 100 or more employees, like Pimlico Plumbers.
It is believed that my proposal would cost the Treasury perhaps £2 billion in lost VAT, but I am sure that HMRC would win out overall. It would get income tax and national insurance from the newly-hired and well-paid staff, and the bigger companies would start paying corporation tax. It would also reduce the tax-avoidance cash economy. In my opinion, the 20% difference in the change from £90,000 to £250,000 would be easily made up.
Arguments are made that we should drop the threshold to zero and make all sales subject to VAT, but that would be a massive disincentive to people starting a business. The results of my proposed VAT change would be more people in well-paid employment, a gateway for the young into an excellent career, a solution to skilled trade shortages, a stimulant to the economy, and higher tax collected by the Exchequer—a win-win. Why would we want to incentivise millions of people not to hire youngsters, not to grow their businesses and not to pay more tax?
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) on securing this important debate. It is a pleasure to wind up on behalf of the Liberal Democrats.
As we have heard from a number of colleagues, small and medium-sized enterprises are the heartbeat of our local economies. It is not just that they are the engine of growth: they have enormous social impact too. Whether it is the physios or beauty technicians who travel to people’s homes, sometimes to visit older people who are less mobile and cannot get out, or market traders selling the wares they have made at home, sole traders and small businesses bring real vibrancy to our local economies, and we must do everything we can to support them. I am proud that the Liberal Democrats have tabled various amendments to Government legislation to call for impact assessments on measures that affect small businesses, including the changes to national insurance contributions, the Employment Rights Bill and the business rates changes.
The jobs tax will hit small businesses particularly hard. The change in the threshold as well as the rates particularly gets small businesses. The Government’s proposals on business rates will be very difficult for small businesses. It is not just about the changes this year, with the bills going up; next year, under the Government’s proposals, small independent businesses will effectively subside the larger chains.
I say with some affection to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that although he wishes he had the same Brexit as everyone else, he should be careful what he wishes for. I am sure he will know from Liberal Democrat research that since the Conservatives botched the Brexit deal small businesses have had to complete 2 billion extra pieces of paperwork thanks to Brexit red tape—enough to wrap around the world 15 times. I am sure none of us want to see additional red tape for small businesses and sole traders.
We have heard compelling arguments that the Government should at the very least look at the VAT regime. Do they have any plans to change it or review the threshold? We Liberal Democrats would welcome a review and would be keen to see any impact assessment that the Government might commission. There have been compelling arguments about simplifying the system. From what colleagues across the House have said, we know that the current threshold deters sole traders and others from earning more, which is really bad for growth.
Many people want to avoid the complicated form-filling, and I hear from my constituents that they also want to avoid the misery of sitting on the phone trying to get through to HMRC. We have all heard horror stories of people calling time and time again, only to have their calls cut off, unable to get through or get the advice they need. Will the Minister give an update on what is happening in HMRC to provide additional support for small businesses in particular? We know that those who are incredibly wealthy have a direct line to HMRC, but our small businesses—the engines of growth—often struggle to get the advice they need.
We urge the Government to simplify the VAT regime, and there are companies with proposals on how to do that. One quick example, which is slightly different from today’s topic, is that Amazon is working with HMRC to discuss cracking down on resellers, to tackle VAT tax avoidance by shell companies and avoid the situation many people experience when they order something from an online marketplace and either it is not very good quality when it arrives or it does not arrive at all. Conversations are happening about how to simplify the process for legitimate sellers on platforms. If there are big-eyed companies out there with ideas on how to simplify the VAT registration system, I very much hope the Government will take them up and roll them out not just to those who sell online but to those who sell in our communities.
Finally, the Minister will have heard over several months from colleagues across the House that small businesses are very different, and that one size does not fit all. Small businesses struggle with the paperwork, and do not have the lawyers or HR departments that larger businesses have, so I urge the Minister to consider proposals for a small business one-stop shop, to make sure that small businesses across the land receive the advice they desperately need.
Gareth Davies (Grantham and Bourne) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) on securing this excellent debate. We arguably do not spend enough time in this place discussing small and medium-sized businesses, which account for some three fifths of employment and half of all turnover in the entire private sector.
The good thing about having a debate on this subject is that we have the Government in the room, rather than behind their keyboards. That is important, because I noticed while preparing for this debate that it comes hot on the heels of a written question on the same subject, which I am afraid to say received a textbook non-answer from the Treasury. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire asked a perfectly reasonable question: will the Chancellor make an assessment of the growth impact of increasing the VAT registration threshold? That was a pretty direct question, yet the Minister’s response completely ignored the point about growth and instead merely stated that the threshold was £90,000. While we are very grateful for the answer, this is something that I am sure my hon. Friend already knew. As my hon. Friend is in this Chamber, I gently suggest that the Minister provide him with a fuller answer.
In some senses, raising the VAT threshold on SMEs would be a tax cut, so there is cause for optimism, given the Government’s newfound enthusiasm for cutting taxes—for those who live in Mauritius. If the Labour party is happy to take 80% of Mauritian workers out of income tax altogether as part of their £30 billion Chagos surrender deal, I am pretty sure they will be sympathetic to taking British SMEs out of VAT registration.
Surely the Minister will remember that last year, when we were in government, the Conservatives raised the VAT registration threshold to the current £90,000. That took 28,000 businesses out of registration, which helped them to compete and grow, and it reduced their administrative burden. We also introduced policies such as business rate relief and full expensing to reduce costs and encourage investment in our country. Put simply, we backed British businesses to drive economic growth. Contrast that with Labour’s approach—it is trying but failing to balance the books on the back of British businesses. In its very first year in office, Labour has introduced the £25 billion hike, and the reduction in the secondary threshold of employer national insurance contributions; the rise in business rates, which the party had promised to abolish, by the way; the £5 billion-a-year burden of the Employment Rights Bill; and, let us not forget, the inheritance tax raid on family businesses.
Mr MacDonald
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the increase in the registration threshold from £85,000 to £90,000, which came after many years of it not being increased and is far below inflation. In your time in office, you did no favours for small businesses, as far as VAT is concerned. Would you agree with that?
Gareth Davies
I think the hon. Gentleman is accusing you, Mr Vickers, rather than me. I simply say to him that increasing the threshold made a big difference to the 28,000 businesses that were taken out of registration. I encourage him to speak to businesses in his constituency that benefited from what is essentially a tax cut, in addition to all the other measures that I mentioned that we introduced.
The contrast between what the Conservatives did in office and the approach of the Labour Government in their first year is quite stark, and the consequences are even starker. Insolvency rates are at a 15-year high, new registrations have fallen at the fastest rate since the financial crisis, payroll employment is falling, and inflation is well above target and will be higher for longer. It is no wonder that only 14% of companies with fewer than 10 employees have confidence in the Chancellor’s growth plans. According to one survey, just 29% of UK small businesses are now predicting growth this year. Meanwhile, the Federation of Small Businesses reported that its members now view the tax burden as their second biggest barrier to growth.
Here we see very clearly the vicious cycle that Labour has fallen into, just as it did in the 1970s: higher taxes and higher inflation, leading to lower growth and lower revenues, leading to still higher taxation. That is why, even though the Chancellor promised British businesses that she would not be back for more, she is now refusing to rule out even more taxes and tax rises in the autumn Budget. That is no wonder, because the National Institute of Economic and Social Research forecasts a £60 billion shortfall in the public finances—and that was before we had Labour MPs in open revolt about the slightly tiny welfare reforms and an unfunded commitment to increase defence spending by £40 billion.
In that worrying context, I hope the Minister can stand up and provide some certainty to SMEs by giving his assurance that the next Budget will not see a reduction in the registration threshold, or indeed an increase in the rate of VAT. I would like him to stand up and rule those out right now, for all of us to hear. I know that these assurances will fall short of the increase in the registration threshold that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire and other Members are looking for today, but it will provide more certainty if the Minister rules those things out.
I would also be grateful for an update on the so-called new business growth service, which the Government promised would be a “one-stop shop” for advice and support. That was supposed to launch in the first half of this year, but the Government’s industrial strategy has apparently now had to push that back to later this summer. Perhaps one reason for the delay is that the best advice a business growth service could possibly give anybody is “Do not vote Labour”. That is clear for us all to see.
SMEs probably have quite a lot of advice of their own for the Government, but unfortunately the going rate for speaking to a Labour Minister is apparently £55,000, and one has to endure the inevitable gloom of the Labour party conference. In the spirit of this debate, perhaps the Minister could confirm whether the price tag for meeting him is before or after VAT. Either way, like most Labour policies, I expect it will bring in less revenue than was first hoped.
Gareth Davies
I am delighted that the Liberal Democrats are keen to meet us and are willing to pay for it. Perhaps we can speak afterwards, but his constituents can speak to me any time. We are always available, across the country.
This has been an excellent debate, with many views. It has highlighted the great importance of business to all our constituents, and I mean that seriously. The comments from colleagues on my side have illuminated the many different businesses that we have, whether it is Bloom Weddings, Chris and Annie’s business in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire; the fish and chip shops Old Time Fisheries and Kirkgate Fisheries in Keighley and Ilkley, which no doubt provide fantastic fish and chips but are unfortunately reducing their hours, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley pointed out; or Carmela’s in the great constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne. All are having a hard time of it, but they remain excellent businesses. Some are, no doubt, places where we can all eat out.
The Liberal Democrats have made some important points. The hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) spoke about plumbers, and the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) about the hair and beauty salons and high streets in Mid Dunbartonshire.
This is an important debate to have. I am reminded of the last election when one party had a key policy in their manifesto around VAT thresholds, and that was Reform. However, I am afraid that when it comes to the hard graft of making the case in this place, the party is, yet again, nowhere to be seen.
I hope we can all agree that our country is stronger because of the men and women who get up every morning, go to work and drive our economy forward, as the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) said. At the heart of every successful economy is the simple fact that prosperity begins small. It begins with the family-run café on the high street, the corner shop, the book shop and the local butchers, and the single parent who is just launching their dream from their spare room or their garage. These are not just businesses. These are stories of people who had an idea, stuck it out and made it happen. When we pile on more and more burdens, when taxes climb too high and regulation tangles dreams in red tape, we do not just make it harder to do business; the hope of what might be possible completely dims. A free society depends on free enterprise. When we get out of the way and support small businesses, we are not just fuelling the economy but lifting communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire believes that lifting the VAT threshold will help achieve that, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (James Murray)
It is a pleasure to speak with you as Chair, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire for securing this debate. I feel that I am letting the side down by not having a quote from Napoleon to open my remarks, but I listened carefully to the hon. Member’s contribution to the debate, and to the contributions of all hon. Members, including the shadow Minister—the hon. Member for Grantham and Bourne (Gareth Davies) —and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper). I hope that my remarks will address most of the points that they raised.
It is clear from all hon. Members’ contributions to this debate that, across the House, we agree on how valuable small businesses and entrepreneurs are to the local economies and communities in the areas we represent. As a Government, we recognise that contribution. Before I turn to the VAT threshold, the focus of this debate, I will briefly set out the wider support that the Government are providing to the small businesses that are so important in our constituencies across the country. That support includes measures set out only yesterday in the industrial strategy. A new business growth service will streamline small businesses’ access to Government support, advice and funding, providing the access that the Liberal Democrat spokesperson asked about. Reforms to public procurement will help small businesses to secure Government contracts. We will help small businesses to adopt new technologies. We will continue to tackle the challenge of late payments to SMEs. The Government are also planning to publish an SME strategy later this year, giving more detail on the Government’s wider offer for small businesses.
Hon. Members will also be aware that the Chancellor recently announced the 2025 spending review, which contained measures to support small businesses. In particular, the Chancellor increased the financial capacity of the British Business Bank to £25.6 billion, which will enable a two-thirds increase in support for small businesses across the UK. That support in the spending review sits alongside the Government’s support for small businesses through the tax system. We have more than doubled the employment allowance to £10,500 and expanded it to all eligible employers. We have frozen the small business rates multiplier to protect small properties from inflationary bill increases to business rates. We are introducing permanently lower business rates for smaller retail hospitality and leisure businesses from 2026, and we have committed in the corporate tax road map to maintaining the small profits rate and marginal relief at their current rates and thresholds, as well as maintaining the £1 million annual investment allowance.
I will now turn to the VAT threshold, which is the focus of this debate. As several hon. Members have said, a number of businesses have raised concerns about that threshold. In particular, they are concerned that the cliff edge of the £90,000 threshold, as it is, may disincentivise businesses that are close to the threshold from growing and surpassing it, and they have connected concerns about the level at which the threshold is set.
Let me first address the argument that the threshold disincentivises small businesses from growth as they approach it. I acknowledge that some businesses will take legitimate action to avoid reaching the VAT threshold, and will bunch just below that threshold. However, those businesses are a minority, accounting for around 0.5% of all businesses that are not VAT-registered. Some businesses, and indeed some hon. Members in this debate, have suggested that the Government should introduce a taper mechanism, in which the amount of VAT that businesses must charge is phased in. However, there is little evidence to suggest that a taper would tackle the bunching of businesses just below the threshold, although it would add additional complexity to the tax system. At £90,000, the UK has a higher VAT registration threshold than any EU member, and the joint highest in the OECD. That threshold keeps most UK businesses out of VAT altogether.
Mike Martin
I am sure that the Minister is aware that the UK is one of only three countries in Europe that does not offer a lower rate of VAT for hospitality and tourism. For example, France, Italy and Spain charge only 10% on those sectors. Will he consider lowering the rate for those sectors as part of the UK’s VAT regime to give our high streets the boost they need?
James Murray
I will turn to the questions that the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members have raised about VAT reliefs in a moment, but I will first finish the point about where the VAT registration threshold is set, because that is an important part of the debate.
It is worth reflecting on the fact that views on the threshold are divided. The case for change has been regularly reviewed over the years, because some businesses argue that a higher threshold would reduce their administrative and financial burdens. However, other businesses contend that a lower threshold would provide a fairer competitive environment, for instance in the hair and beauty sector.
The Government’s approach to the VAT threshold and applicable rates aims to balance the potential impacts on small businesses, including their growth and financial sustainability, with the economy as a whole and, of course tax, revenues. Although the Government always welcome hearing businesses’ views about how the tax system operates, we are not currently planning to change the design of the VAT threshold.
More broadly on VAT, the Government often receive calls from businesses, and indeed from hon. Members, to examine the rate of VAT for specific industries. VAT is a broad-based tax on consumption and the 20% standard rate applies to most goods and services. VAT is the UK’s third largest tax and is forecast to raise £180 billion in 2025-26. Of course, tax breaks have an impact on the public finances and they must represent value for money for the taxpayer, so exceptions to the standard rate have always been limited and balanced against affordability considerations. The assessment of any new VAT relief should consider whether the cost saving is likely to be passed on to consumers.
Fundamentally, the best support that we can provide to small businesses is economic growth. Delivering secure, strong and sustainable growth to boost prosperity and living standards across the UK is the Government’s No. 1 mission, as set out in our plan for change. That is why, when we took office, we took the necessary decisions to provide the stability that is so important for investment and growth by tackling the £22 billion hole in the public finances that we inherited from the previous Government.
Robbie Moore
I struggle to understand how the Minister can come out with these pre-written speeches and expect anyone to believe him. How can he say that stability has now been put back into the wider economy when many hard-working businesses, including the SMEs that many hon. Members have talked about in this debate, are struggling to deal with the consequences of employer’s national insurance contributions rising; the consequences of VAT, which we are debating today; and the consequences of the Employment Rights Bill, which are coming down the line? Yet he still stands at the Dispatch Box and comes out with the bizarre claim that the Government have installed stability with their plan for change. That is nonsense.
James Murray
I think the hon. Gentleman must be forgetting the recent history of this country’s economy when his party was in charge, because the many small businesses that I have met are not clamouring for a return to the economic chaos that we saw under Liz Truss or the 14 years of economic stagnation that his party presided over. The stability that we restored to the public finances and to the economy is an essential prerequisite for investment and growth; indeed, it is the foundation on which economic growth can succeed.
Mr Angus MacDonald
I am reluctant to come in on the side of the Opposition on this issue, but I can tell the Minister that my constituency has never suffered as much in my whole business career as it has since the Budget last year. National insurance increases and related increases have absolutely crucified business up there. If the Government cared to come up to the highlands and come round local businesses with me, they would be in for a real shock, but I strongly recommend that they do so.
James Murray
I do not recall the hon. Gentleman ever opposing extra investment in the national health service during his interventions in the main Chamber, because, of course, the decisions that we took around employer’s national insurance contributions were taken to stabilise the public finances and put our public services back on their feet. We acknowledged at the Budget last year, when we took those difficult decisions, that they would have consequences. However, we also acknowledged that no responsible Government could have let things continue as they were, or taken what we inherited from the previous Government without putting public finances back on a firm footing.
That is exactly what we have done from our first day in office. Alongside that essential work to steady the public finances, we have been removing barriers to growth by overhauling the planning system, launching a new National Wealth Fund and reforming our pension system to unlock billions of pounds. At the spending review earlier this month, we saw the Chancellor marking a key step in our growth mission by allocating substantial new capital investment to ensure that growth is felt across the country.
That investment will be further bolstered in the coming months by other reforms, including the industrial strategy published yesterday, and the 10-year infrastructure strategy published last week. A rising economic tide lifts all boats, big and small, and this Government believe that that should be the most important priority for supporting small businesses.
Lewis Cocking
We have all mentioned a number of businesses that think this Labour Government are taking the wrong direction. Can the Minister list the businesses in his constituency that believe that this Labour Government are taking the right direction for business growth in this country? If he lists the businesses in his constituency, we will go and ask them.
James Murray
I would typically ask businesses’ permission before I named them in the House of Commons, but I can reassure hon. Members that in conversations with businesses in my constituency, or indeed across the country in my role as a Minister, they understand the difficult decisions we took to restore stability to the public finances and to the economy. That is not to pretend for a moment that those decisions were not difficult and do not come with consequences, but most businesses I speak to recognise our difficult inheritance from the previous Government, and the importance of restoring stability to the public finances as an essential prerequisite for investment and growth.
What is most important is working hand in hand with businesses—whether they are small businesses in our constituencies or large businesses that operate across the country—and putting through the reforms that we know are needed. That includes making sure that the planning system is reformed, that the National Wealth Fund supports their investment, and that we are investing across the country to ensure there are jobs and growth in every part of the UK. That is what we are focused on, working in partnership with businesses, because we know how important that is.
Jim Shannon
Irrespective of the Windsor framework and the protocol issue, I understand that experts and businesses have suggested that the VAT threshold should be £250,000. The hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) referred to the fact that that would enable businesses to perhaps employ one or two apprentices or extra people in their companies, and help them to focus on a strategy for growth, which I know the Minister is committed to. Are there any circumstances in which the Minister would consider a £250,000 threshold, because of the benefits that it would clearly bring to all businesses in the United Kingdom?
James Murray
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He referred to the impact of the Windsor framework, which as he correctly pointed out, imposes an upper limit of just over £90,000 on the threshold in Northern Ireland. The Windsor framework is therefore relevant to the threshold in Northern Ireland and, by extension, to the Government’s decisions in Great Britain as well. The debate is becoming slightly wider than the question about the VAT threshold, but I can understand why that is the case. The VAT threshold—in fact, VAT as a whole—is only one of the factors in the landscape that businesses face.
Although we recognise that we have taken some difficult decisions on employer’s national insurance contributions, as I said earlier, the important point to focus on is the stability that those decisions have brought to the public finances and that they have put our public services back on their feet. Many businesses that I speak to recognise that they need their workforce to be healthy and to be able to get on a train and get to work.
Businesses need people who are coming out of school to be trained and to have the right skills to access the jobs of the future. They need the Government to create the right environment for growth, because private sector businesses will drive growth and create wealth and prosperity across the country. Businesses want a partner in Government who will provide the infrastructure, reforms and investment to enable them and everyone across our country to flourish. That is the wider context in which this debate takes place.
This debate has mostly been about the VAT threshold. It has taken a wide definition of the VAT threshold and its connected policies, but I understand why: the threshold sits within a wider context that affects small businesses. We all agree that small businesses are at the heart of all our local communities and economies, and we all want them to thrive. That is why the Government have taken steps to ensure that the tax system supports them. We have doubled the employment allowance, increased the small employers’ compensation rate, frozen the small business multiplier, introduced permanently lower business rates for smaller retail, hospitality and leisure businesses from next year, and committed to maintain the small profits rate and £1 million annual investment allowance.
The industrial strategy, published yesterday, goes even further to support small businesses, including by announcing the creation of a new business growth service that will streamline access to Government support, advice and funding for small businesses. The VAT threshold strikes a balance between keeping the majority of businesses out of VAT altogether while ensuring that we can support public services and maintain fiscal responsibility.
I thank you again for your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate and, in particular, I thank the hon. Member for Mid Leicestershire for securing the debate.
Mr Bedford
I thank the Minister for his speech. I ask him to take back to the Treasury the various arguments that have been put forward today, particularly about the benefits for the broader economy and for our local communities that could be achieved by reviewing the VAT registration threshold.
I thank the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray), who spoke about the benefits of doing so. She said that local businesses foster community pride, but that the tax system is very complicated for them.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking), who said he is frustrated that the current system does not have a taper mechanism. I ask the Minister to look at that and consider my hon. Friend’s arguments about how that would benefit small businesses—particularly those that wish to grow.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), particularly for his arguments about the fish and chip shop industry and similar small businesses that are holding back their growth because they are on the cusp of the registration threshold. If they surpass it, additional costs and burdens will be placed on them.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about his frustrations, which I share, about how the Windsor framework constricts businesses in Northern Ireland and prevents them from being more competitive and on a par with those in the rest of the United Kingdom. I appreciate the intervention of the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) on the same point.
I thank the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald), who has particular expertise with VAT. As someone who holds apprenticeships and skills training in high regard, I appreciate his point that reviewing the threshold could enable smaller businesses to take on additional employees and train them in the trades that we need. Plumbers, electricians and other trades would really benefit from apprenticeships and similar types of training.
I thank the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), who spoke about the need for small businesses to be better supported, particularly by the Treasury, in dealing with the bureaucracy. She said that small businesses do not have the advantage of large HR functions or support networks to get them through the bureaucracy.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Bourne (Gareth Davies) for his points. He said that three fifths of employment in this country is in a small business, and that, particularly over the last year, businesses have had to contend with significant challenges posed by the new Government’s economic plan, including the national insurance hike, the business rates increase and the additional burdens placed on businesses by the Employment Rights Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the impact of the VAT registration threshold on SMEs.
Flood Defences: Chesterfield
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of improving flood defences in Chesterfield.
I am grateful for the opportunity to introduce the debate. Flooding is a critical issue for my constituents in Chesterfield and a problem impacting people right across the country. I have seen at first hand the appalling impact that flooding has on our communities. I keenly recall the floods in 2007, when I was a councillor for Rother ward on Chesterfield borough council, and how many of those who were flooded felt abandoned. Following those floods, I, along with Lifehouse church, Chesterfield rotary club and Soroptimist International Chesterfield, set up the Chesterfield flood victims appeal, which raised around £16,000 for flood victims without flood insurance. The work the appeal did, meeting flood victims and helping them as they tried to put their homes and lives together, had a lasting impact on me. It became clear that once someone had been a flood victim, they were forever a flood victim.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman on bringing this debate forward. He is right to underline the issue for Chesterfield, but there is a real problem across all the United Kingdom. Thinking of my constituency, and Newtownards in particular, 25,000 houses and properties are in the floodplain, which is bolstered by the floodbanks to make sure they do not get flooded out, and one in 33 in the coastal areas are flooded as well. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is time to have a flood strategy not just for Chesterfield, but for all of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so we can respond in a more global way?
Mr Perkins
The hon. Gentleman is right that we need a holistic approach; I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on that. Whichever community they are in, flood victims do not just lose irreplaceable possessions or even replaceable furniture and fittings; they lose the peace of mind that most of us take for granted. People in a property at risk of flood— as more than 6 million people across the United Kingdom are—live in fear, every single time there is heavy rain, that it will happen again. Those in flood risk areas will receive Environment Agency text warnings; in the weeks after the floods, every time they get those warnings, they will start lifting all their property upstairs in preparation for potential floods. After two or three false alarms, they stop doing that, but the fear of being flooded again never leaves them. Being insured is important but, even for those who are insured, being flooded and forced from their home for months at a time is a hugely disturbing and disrupting experience.
Following the 2007 floods, two things happened. First, in 2008 the Government, in conjunction with the insurance industry, updated the 2000 statement of principles, which subsequently morphed into the Flood Re scheme, which should mean that all residents, even in flood-hit areas, are able to obtain flood insurance. I stress to anyone who has been flooded that they can still get flood insurance through the Flood Re scheme. That is very important. Many of the people I met after the floods in 2023 said, “Oh well, no one will give us flood insurance round here.” They did not realise that with the Flood Re scheme, they could have been insured.
The second thing that changed was that we got a 250,000 cubic metre flood alleviation scheme on the River Rother at Wingerworth. Although that was welcome, Storm Babet, which hit Derbyshire so fearfully on October 20 2023, demonstrated that tragically, even that scheme was not enough in itself to keep Chesterfield safe. Storm Babet had a devastating effect on Chesterfield, leading to the River Rother and the River Hipper bursting their banks. As many as 600 homes and dozens of businesses were flooded, many of them the very same ones that were flooded in 2007. One of my constituents, Maureen Gilbert, tragically lost her life, drowned in the front room of her own home.
The economic cost to residents, businesses, communities and our nation is enormous. The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency estimated that the 2015-2016 winter floods cost the nation’s economy £1.6 billion. The risk of flooding and the associated costs are only projected to rise over the coming years, due to climate change. The Environmental Audit Committee, which I chair, has been investigating the Government’s approach to flooding resilience in England. We have heard from expert witnesses about the historical under-investment in flood defences across the country, and about the importance of investing in and maintaining existing flood defences, as well as building new ones.
In Chesterfield, while the Wingerworth flood basin was not enough to prevent that flooding in 2023, it has come into its own over this past winter, as the floods that hit on new year’s day and the following weekend did not lead to any further flooded homes. However, there is still a need for improved protection from flooding for residents on Tapton Terrace; in Brampton, around the Chatsworth Road area; in Birdholme, off the Derby Road; and around Horns Bridge roundabout.
In meetings with management at the Environment Agency locally, I was told that the cost of protecting the homes on Tapton Terrace would actually cost more than the homes would be worth to buy. I was told that it would be cheaper for the EA to buy them than to protect them, so I said, “Go on, buy them then. At least give these people peace of mind.” The truth is that many of the people who live in flood-hit areas lose so much of the value of their homes. For the vast majority of us, the value of our homes is the biggest and most expensive asset that we have. If a person’s house goes from £200,000 to £130,000 over the course of a day, there is nothing that they can do about that—they are effectively trapped in that property. In fairness, the Environment Agency investigated, but it came back and said, “Well, that isn’t something that we can do.”
I have to say that Tapton Terrace is a particular worry to me because of its proximity to the River Rother, whose geography means that the speed with which it floods poses a real risk to life—we have already had one fatality there. It is very hard to see how anyone living in those properties who does not have the mobility to get upstairs is not very seriously at risk, as Mrs Gilbert tragically was in 2023.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, in areas where we have significant risk of flooding, it should be compulsory for schools to educate children on building flood plans as part of the curriculum? If people knew that there was a flood coming, they would then actually know what they should be doing. I know for a fact that, if people have a plan, they bounce back and their resilience is greater afterwards, if they become flooded.
Mr Perkins
My hon. Friend raises a very important point about the importance of plans and the issue of ensuring that children feel supported. The Minister and I are both former shadow Education Ministers, and we know there is no end to the number of things that people think should be on the school curriculum, but that is something that should be considered.
More broadly, communities need to understand that the Government cannot always build a wall and save them. On some occasions, particularly as we go forward, floods are going to happen, and there needs to be a local plan for how we support people during floods and protect life in those times. The whole community needs to be involved, and that is a very important point.
If the Government accept that in some cases they cannot do more to protect an area such as Tapton Terrace, can the Minister explain what mechanisms might be in place? Who do we need to get around the table to discuss a plan, which might involve knocking homes down and potentially building flood-resilient ones there? We previously had a plan about having all the living space on the first and second floor, and just garage space downstairs. I would be grateful to hear from the Minister how we can look at getting people around the table to discuss that.
Louise Jones (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
In my constituency, which borders my hon. Friend’s constituency of Chesterfield, we are affected by exactly the same issues that he has been outlining with exactly the same rivers. I note how interlinked all this is—my hon. Friend has spoken previously about getting people round the table. One of the things I found frustrating was coming up time and time again against the issue of riparian owners and the vital role they play in maintaining water courses. Many riparian owners do so very diligently, but others are not even aware of their responsibilities. What should be the Government’s way forward on that?
Mr Perkins
My hon. Friend raises an important point. It is not one that I was planning to refer to, but I am sure that the Minister will respond to it because my hon. Friend is absolutely right. To an extent, we have taken for granted over the years the contribution that farmers and others play. They need to be compensated for it. Many of them want to be a part of that conversation, but it is very difficult in the current climate.
I was delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister joined me in Chesterfield earlier this year to see the Wingerworth flood basin in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Jones) and hear why we need a similar scheme in Holymoorside to protect us all from the River Hipper.
I warmly welcome the Government’s recently announcement of significant funding for flood defences, including the record £2.65 billion in the next two years, a £4 billion injection for the three years after that and an additional £7.9 billion over the next decade. It is a welcome sign that the Government are taking flooding seriously. However, we are now waiting for the Government to consult on the revised formula, which will determine the allocation of that vital funding.
When an area is flooded, the local authority is compelled to produce a report, known as a section 19 report, to investigate how the local response worked and identify recommendations for future flood readiness. Derbyshire’s section 19 investigation took an inordinate amount of time to produce what is a relatively short document, and set out a number of potential recommendations and investigations. The final report took more than 16 months from the day of the floods before it was put before the county council’s cabinet for approval, and it appears that very little of that report has led to concrete action to mitigate the flood risk in Chesterfield. It will soon be two years since Storm Babet, and some people are still not able to return to their homes. If we have another flood event this autumn without my constituents seeing any significant efforts being made to protect homes and businesses, they will understandably feel very let down.
The section 19 report stated that, to protect central Chesterfield and Tapton Terrace, Derbyshire county council, in partnership with the Environment Agency, is looking to identify potential sites for flood storage within the Spital Brook catchment to slow its flow into the River Rother. It is also looking to identify potential sites for flood storage within the Holme Brook Catchment, including at Linacre Reservoir, to slow the flow of Holme Brook, again to protect central Chesterfield, Tapton Terrace and the Brampton area. The report also stated that DCC is exploring the feasibility of removing the bridge at Crow Lane near Tapton terrace, that the Environment Agency is investigating whether an updated dredging assessment is required on the Rother near Tapton Terrace and that the EPA is exploring options to be able to progress a scheme to deliver upstream flood storage on the River Hipper, which would also reduce flood risk to downstream communities in Chesterfield.
The option that is really needed is the major scheme on the River Hipper at Holymoorside, but it is unclear what other schemes are being considered, what investigations are taking place and when decisions will be made or work completed. I am also told that Yorkshire Water is investigating the feasibility of a storage measure at Horns Bridge, to be introduced during the next asset management programme period. I am pursuing that with Yorkshire Water. While I would always prefer to have a roundabout flooded rather than people’s homes, I would like to see some real urgency to act, as the closure of Horns Bridge roundabout brings Chesterfield to a standstill and hugely affects transport between the M1 and Sheffield, Derby and Manchester.
Derbyshire county council set up the Derbyshire Strategic Flood Group. I attended the first meeting, at which the council said it would start to investigate the costs and feasibility of the schemes I referred to. That was over 18 months after Storm Babet had taken place. The next meeting is not planned for months while that work is investigated. Again, that makes me question how seriously and urgently Derbyshire county council is taking its job of flood risk management.
The message I want the Government, Derbyshire county council, Yorkshire Water, the Environment Agency and all the other bodies involved to hear from this debate is that we need to see real urgency in the approach to reducing flood risk and protecting Chesterfield. Can the Minister explain what she can do to help me imbue the local authorities with more of a sense of urgency about these works, both large and small?
Secondly, does the Minister believe that the section 19 process is fit for purpose? If a section 19 report identifies the cause or causes of flooding and makes recommendations for what is needed to reduce the risk in future, but there are no statutory requirements on what measures are needed or even timescales for investigations into what work is needed to reduce the risk, how will the public have confidence in that process?
Thirdly, can the Minister update the House on her new funding formula and give us any indication on whether we are more likely to see flood funding for Chesterfield as a result? How will this formula be different from what went before? In the meantime, residents of Chesterfield are looking ahead to another potentially rainy autumn and winter. Can the Minister give the people of Chesterfield an assurance that she understands how desperately we need to see action to further protect people’s homes? Is she aware that the River Hipper scheme will also support a major regeneration project in Brampton on the former Robinson site, as well as more than 50 businesses flooded in 2023 and many more that were nearby and escaped on that occasion?
I am glad that I have had this opportunity to give voice to the frustration that flood victims in my constituency feel. I look forward to the Minister giving me some hope to take back to the people of Chesterfield following this debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) is right to highlight the mental health impacts that flooding has on communities and individuals; he was also right to say that once someone has been flooded, they are always a flood victim. He discussed the appalling, awful and tragic loss of life in his constituency, as well as similar cases that we have seen, sadly, in other parts of the country. I hope it goes without saying that I am happy to give any assistance I can in getting people around the table.
I will have a look at why the section 19 report has taken so long and how it compares with other section 19 reports around the country so that I can understand what is happening: whether the one my hon. Friend has mentioned is an anomaly or whether it is standard—if it is standard, we clearly need to do something about that. Let me take that point away.
I hope that I can express, if nothing else, the urgency I feel when it comes to dealing with flood risk. My hon. Friend, and everyone else, is right to say that climate change is real and makes flood risks more common. We know from the NAFTA 2.0 reports that one in four homes will be at risk of flooding by the mid-century. The Government are putting in a record amount of funding, but at the same time climate change is making the situation worse. The situation is urgent.
I completely understand how anxious my hon. Friend’s constituents feel when, as he described, they see rainclouds and feel nervous about what will happen. It was really helpful to be in his constituency with him and see the schemes and the streets for myself. That helped me to really picture the individual circumstances they faced, so I thank him for that invitation. I spoke to the Environment Agency ahead of this debate, and want to give you an update—
Emma Hardy
I can also give you an update, Mr Stuart, but I would like to give my hon. Friend an update, too. The EA recently completed the project to refurbish a section of the floodwall on the River Rother that was damaged during Storm Babet, and £75,000 of DEFRA flood defence funding has been allocated to the avenue for the storage reservoir, which my hon. Friend and I visited together. As he rightly said, it operated during Storm Babet, but there was still widespread flooding downstream.
That funding will allow the EA to investigate any improvements that can be made to how it operates to hopefully reduce more flood risks. The Environment Agency is working with the council to investigate the removal or raising of several bridges along the Rivers Hipper and Rother. That is at an early stage, but it will help us look at how to improve flow and reduce the risk of blockages, which is an issue that was raised previously.
In addition, the Environment Agency, Derbyshire county council and the Don Catchment Rivers Trust are exploring natural flood management opportunities for the Hipper and Spital Brook catchments—my hon. Friend knows I am a fan of natural flood management; I will come to the flood funding formula and how that can enable natural flood management. They have also secured just under £400,000 of funding towards the River Hipper flood alleviation scheme to support the development of the business case, so they are on to the development stage of the project. It includes £275,000 of local levy from the Yorkshire Regional Flood and Coastal Committee and £60,000 from Chesterfield borough council. The scheme will protect over 200 homes and businesses.
Pre our funding formula review, at this moment, the scheme is estimated to cost £16 million, with a funding gap of under £40 million, but that is under the current rules. However, that could change as a result of our funding rules. I will say a bit more about our funding consultation. The current approach to the flood funding formula was drawn up by the previous Government in 2011, and is outdated and not working as it should. It neglects more innovative approaches such as natural flood management. In fact, the solution the previous Government had was to set a separate fund for natural flood management rather than integrating it into how the formula works as a whole.
Our proposed change looks at full Government funding for the first £3 million of projects. That unlocks lots of natural flood management because many smaller natural flood management schemes are less than £3 million; they are struggling because they cannot get the partnership funding to close the gap. Fully funding projects up to £3 million means we can get on with the smaller schemes. Then there is a flat rate of 90% Government contribution and 10% partnership funding. If the project of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield is successful with the business case, it would be looking at 90% Government funding and having to find 10% partnership funding, which is very different from the current situation.
We would also fully fund the refurbishment of existing flood assets. Understandably, people say, “Why do we need partnership funding to maintain an asset that already exists?” Our flooding formula consultation says that we would fully fund refurbishment of assets as well.
The changes make natural flood management much easier. However, that means that many projects move through to the prioritisation stage. The first stage is: does it meet the tests to go through to prioritisation? Then there is prioritisation; even though we are putting a record amount of money into flooding, there is a certain amount there to be allocated, so the consultation looks at prioritisation. What do we want to prioritise when deciding which projects go ahead and which do not? Are we looking at very basic value for money in terms of numbers of properties protected? That would have an impact on rural communities. Are we looking at prioritising natural flood management? Are we looking at prioritising areas of deprivation? What are the prioritisation criteria? That is what the consultation asks. Are we prioritising “frequently flooded” as another criterion, to put weighting towards which ones actually go through to be built?
The consultation is happening at the moment. At this moment, I cannot say whether it would make it easier or harder for my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield to get his scheme developed. But the partnership funding that has held up my hon. Friend’s scheme would be dealt with under our consultation, because 90% would be Government funding and 10% would be partnership.
We need to prioritise which ones are done first. The consultation is genuinely open in listening to people about the criteria they want to prioritise. We obviously have to be really careful when spending any Government money and need a fair and transparent system when it comes to which projects get built first and which do not.
As has been mentioned, we are investing a record amount: £4.2 billion over three years to build, maintain and repair existing flood defences. That is a 5% increase in our annual average investment compared with our existing spend, which was already a record amount. I hope that demonstrates the Government’s commitment and sense of urgency. The current funding will continue to support 1,000 flood schemes, better protecting 52,000 homes and businesses by March 2026. On top of that, a further 14,500 properties will have their expected level of protection maintained or restored through essential maintenance activities.
As my hon. Friends know, we inherited flood defences in their worst state on record. The condition of key flood defences in England was at its lowest since the financial year 2009-10, with only 92% of assets at the required condition. In the current financial year, we are putting £430 million into constructing new schemes, and using a further £220 million to restore flood defences to the condition that they need to be in. That full list was published in March. Last week, we announced £7.9 billion of funding, which is the largest flooding programme in history, as part of our landmark infrastructure strategy.
We are introducing many other changes, but I can see that I am running out of time. On compulsory purchasing, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield recognises that the Environment Agency can compulsory purchase something only if it is for building a specific scheme. Sadly, he and others around the country have raised the problem of properties devaluing when they are continually at risk of flooding. I wonder whether in those particular circumstances, which I saw for myself, there is another conversation to be had about property flood resilience measures and whether more can be done to support those homes.
We have had a radical change with our flooding formula. It has made the system much simpler, so that people around the country can clearly understand that the first £3 million will be fully funded, and after that it will be 90% Government and 10% partnership funding. That is intended to equalise the system everywhere, because at the moment nobody quite understands why one scheme may have a partnership funding gap of £40 million, as in my hon. Friend’s case, and another may have no partnership funding gap at all. This formula makes the system much clearer.
I urge everybody to respond to the flooding consultation and to think about how they want Government money to be prioritised, so that we can protect as many people as possible from the devastating impact of flooding, which causes such a problem not only for the local economy but for mental health. We will continue to build and repair flood defences while delivering natural flood management and sustainable drainage systems, and we will make sure that this country is more resilient to floods.
Question put and agreed to.
War Memorials
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Melanie Ward (Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the role of war memorials.
It is a pleasure to lead my first Westminster Hall debate under your chairship, Mr Stuart. I thank colleagues from across the House for joining me in this important discussion on the role that war memorials play in our communities and country. This Friday marks the centenary of Kirkcaldy’s war memorial and galleries, with commemorations running from the end of this week to a ceremony next Wednesday, with a military parade and some very special guests. I am leading the debate to pay tribute to those who have maintained Kirkcaldy’s memorial, galleries and gardens over the past century, as well as providing Members with an opportunity to raise important memorials in their own constituencies.
All of us in this House represent areas with war memorials. While our country has huge regional diversity, war memorials form a thread that runs through our national landscape, from the Cenotaph on Whitehall, just outside this place, to North Ronaldsay, the most northerly island of Orkney. Those quiet monuments to sacrifice bring us together and bind us. They remind us that no city, town or village has been spared the pain and loss that conflict has brought to the families of the fallen.
What we most admire about the more than 100,000 war memorials in Britain are, of course, their quiet beauty and the opportunity they afford for contemplation and remembrance, but it is also their inherently egalitarian nature that makes them so respected. Prior to the Boer war, our memorials celebrated great victories and leaders. Just up the road from this place, Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column serve as a reminder of that. Yet after the Boer war and the devastation of the first world war, it was widely accepted that we needed a new, more sombre and respectful form of remembrance, which did away with class and military rank, listing each soldier equally as an individual who had given their life for our country.
Sonia Kumar (Dudley) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. In my constituency, I am proud to have a number of war memorials, such as Upper Gornal on Kent street and Woodsetton on Sedgley road. Does my hon. Friend agree that memorials are not just places for quiet reflection and paying our respects, but a physical site for learning and sharing knowledge with residents, so that we never forget the sacrifices that they made?
Melanie Ward
I thank my hon. Friend for her important point. I agree completely, and I will say some more about it shortly. There are a few who argue that war memorials, and our ceremonies and rituals around them, glorify war. I stand here as a former humanitarian aid worker who has served in war zones. I strongly believe that remembering the fallen does not glorify war. In fact, the opposite is true. It serves as a reminder of the human cost of war, the sacrifice of individuals and groups, and the devastating gaps that their deaths leave in the places where they lived and within the people whose lives their presence enriched. That is why, all these years on, we choose to remember them.
Of course, I want to talk about some of the beautiful memorials in my constituency. In November, as many of us did, I attended Remembrance Sunday events. For me, they were at Cowdenbeath’s memorials, and I also laid wreaths in Burntisland, Aberdour and Inverkeithing, and I attended Kirkcaldy’s memorial. There are also memorials in Dysart, Dalgety Bay, Crossgates, Kinghorn and North Queensferry. The beautiful commemorative first world war stained-glass window in the now sadly closed Auchtertool kirk has a link to this place, as its designer, Ballantine, also designed windows in the House of Lords.
However, I give special mention to Kirkcaldy’s war memorial, galleries and gardens, which were unveiled 100 years ago this coming Friday. They were the gift of John Nairn, whose family’s linoleum-manufacturing business made Kirkcaldy the linoleum capital of the world. He paid for the construction in memory of his only son, Ian Nairn, who was killed in the Somme in 1918. The memorial in Kirkcaldy is a focal point of our town. It is one of the first things that people see as they leave the train station and head to the town centre, and its award-winning galleries have a large collection of paintings by William McTaggart and Samuel Peploe, and they have hosted exhibitions by Diane Arbus and Fife’s own Jack Vettriano, who was heavily influenced by the works on display in the galleries.
The centenary commemorations begin this Friday, when I will have the solemn honour of beginning the reading of the names of the more than 1,500 dead recorded on the memorial. Each name will be read out one by one over the weekend, from those who lost their lives in the first world war to Sergeant Sean Binnie who died in Helmand, Afghanistan in May 2009, while serving with the Black Watch.
Sean joined the Army in 2003 and served with his battalion in Iraq and the Falkland Islands. He was later deployed on Operation Herrick in Afghanistan, training Afghan troops to fight the Taliban. On 7 May 2009, Sean Binnie was killed, aged 22, during a firefight with Taliban insurgents in Helmand province, while serving as part of the battle group mentoring the Afghan national army. My thoughts, along with those of the whole House, are with his family.
On Wednesday next week, as we in Kirkcaldy hold the service to mark the centenary of the memorial, we will remember Sean and all those who died serving their country. We will think of the gaping holes that their loss has inflicted on those who love them most, and on our communities who raised them. The service would not have happened without the dedication of Kirkcaldy Royal British Legion Scotland, in particular its amazing chair, Bill Mason, and secretary, Ray Davidson, as well as our Deputy Lord Lieutenant Jim Kinloch, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that the names of the fallen featured on the memorial and Kirkcaldy’s veterans are remembered for their sacrifices.
The role that the RBLS Kirkcaldy and the Kirkcaldy United Services Institute, better known as the KUSI club, play in supporting veterans in our community is outstanding. I pay special tribute to the many volunteers in Kirkcaldy who, when asked to knit 1,500 poppies for the centenary, ended up knitting more than 8,000. Those poppies have been attached to nets that now cascade down the central tower at the memorial and dress the balcony. The ceremony will match the serenity and importance of our war memorial in Kirkcaldy. I pay tribute to all involved and ask the Minister, in her remarks, to join me in commending them.
Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)
What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Stuart. In my constituency, Bedworth is rightly called the town that never forgets. On 21 September 2021, the Bedworth Armistice Committee unveiled the Bedworth peace podium, to mark the international day of peace.
Hundreds of children submitted poems and words as part of the project, an important reminder that we must ensure that the next generation learns and understands our country’s history. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must continue to invest in war memorials, and ensure that our young people never forget the sacrifices made by our armed forces and the wars that this country has fought?
Melanie Ward
I thank my hon. Friend for her important remarks. There is also a peace part of the memorial in Kirkcaldy, which is an important way to integrate those values into the overall memorial.
I have said a lot about the importance of our memorial to our town of Kirkcaldy, but it has not been free of problems in recent years. In January, it fell victim to an arson attack, the third attack on the memorial in two years. That was not just reckless vandalism; it was an affront to those who gave their lives serving our country and our town. I am glad that an individual was charged with wilful fire-raising in the aftermath.
That raises another issue of how we protect and cherish our memorials, and how we prosecute those who seek to desecrate them. Although I understand that this is a justice issue and, therefore, devolved to the Scottish Government, I ask the Minister to outline how the UK Government plan to strengthen protections for war memorials across the country.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. Does she agree that the desecration of such memorials almost defies belief? It was reported to me today that a granite memorial to the men who died at the battle of Somme, which we commemorate next Tuesday on 1 July, was stolen from a small memorial garden in Coleraine in my constituency. Will she join me in condemning that? I hope that we can get across what the men at the Somme did to get freedom, and that that will have some minor impact on people whose knowledge of those contributions appears to be zero.
Melanie Ward
I thank the hon. Member for his important remarks, and I am really sorry to hear about that theft. It is completely unacceptable, and I agree completely that education has a really important part to play. There are so many organisations that play a part in that, including the British Legion and others. We have to educate the next generation so that they understand the importance of these memorials: they are not just pieces of stone; they are memorials to real people who gave their lives for something really important. They made a sacrifice for us all.
Of course, it was not just those in Britain who laid down their lives to fight for the freedoms that we enjoy today. This week we celebrate Armed Forces Day, and we also celebrate Windrush Day, when we celebrate the contribution of migrants to our country. Not only did those from across the Commonwealth fight and die for our freedoms, but they, their children and their grandchildren helped us in building the society, the economy and the public services that were created in the aftermath of the second world war. That is why Kirkcaldy’s war memorial stands alongside memorials in Delhi, Kingston and Sydney.
I have outlined the role that war memorials play in our civic life, our national identity and our national story. They remind us of those who came before us and why we are here: to enjoy the freedoms that many across the world do not currently enjoy. Every day, we walk past the memorial a few yards away that commemorates the parliamentarians, their families and their staff who lost their lives in both world wars. It is a poignant daily reminder in the centre of British democracy that we are here to maintain those freedoms and to care for those less fortunate than ourselves.
As Kirkcaldy’s war memorial marks its last 100 years, it is up to all of us to ensure that it is preserved for the next 100 years. My experience as an aid worker has proved to me that the 21st century is not immune to the bloody destruction that marked much of the 20th century, but we must always carry forward the names of those on the memorials in our constituencies and strive for a better and more peaceful world in their memory. They are, after all, the reason we are here today.
Several hon. Members rose—
Graham Stuart (in the Chair)
Order. Speakers have around four minutes—that is an informal initial steer.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. More importantly, I thank the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for her passionate and completely accurate portrayal of the role of memorials in community life today. Obviously, my constituency of Strangford—well, maybe it is not obvious; Members may not do not know this, but I hope they do—
Jim Shannon
Well, they will know about it before I have finished anyway. Newtownards in my constituency of Strangford has always had a history and tradition of serving in uniform, whether it be in the Army, the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force. I declare an interest: I served in the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Artillery for 14 and a half years as a part-time soldier.
After the great war, a memorial was erected in Newtownards, acknowledging the sacrifice of so many. A cenotaph made out of plywood was erected by members of the British Legion in Conway Square in 1925 for the Somme commemoration ceremony. The first wreaths were laid at 7.30 am. The reason why the time was important is that that was the time at which the Ulster Division made its attack on 1 July 1916.
After the Somme service, in 1927 members of the Newtownards British Legion conceived the idea of erecting something of a more permanent character. The volunteers made a concrete cenotaph modelled on the same lines as the temporary structure. It was constructed in the grounds of the legion headquarters on land that had been secured from the County Down railway. It is a step down memory lane to think of the County Down railway—that has been away from before I was born, I think.
On the face of the upright standard are the words, “Our Glorious Dead”. The first base is inscribed with, “In Memory of Our Fallen Comrades”, and on the next are the words, “The Great War”. The hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy referred to all those things when she set the scene incredibly well. There is a third step, and then an outer verge. Despite the erection of the permanent memorial in 1934, commemoration events were still being held at the plywood cenotaph as late as 1941.
I first attended the Remembrance Sunday parade when I was in the Army—a long, long time ago—and I have attended since I became a councillor on Ards borough council in 1985. It is always a very poignant occasion to go along and pay respects to those who, as the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy said, gave us the liberty, the freedom and the democracy that we now have. As custodians of those things, we hope to carry them on to the next generation.
At our annual Remembrance service, the names of the fallen are often read out. There are so many names on that list that are still so popular in our town, which is so poignant and impactful. I believe that consideration of the level of sacrifice that was made for the freedom and security of our nation and this world is an essential component of community life.
Schoolchildren are brought to see the Cenotaph, but of course additional memorials have been erected since. There is a memorial to the members of the Polish air force who served, including at the airfield at Ballyhalbert, in the second world war. Of course, some of them came to Northern Ireland, met some of our young ladies, fell in love with them, married them and did not go home again. Some of those Polish guys stayed in Northern Ireland over all those years, which is important to recognise.
There is a memorial dedicated to the members of the 70th Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers who were killed in the second world war, and in remembrance of all the civilians and service personnel who lost their lives in the first and second world wars.
There is also a small monument for the UDR Four. I knew three of those four Ulster Defence Regiment men, who were murdered by the IRA. The memorial for them down at Ballydugan in Downpatrick was damaged, but we were able to get Ards to take it on and we have it in Newtownards.
The blood of all our forefathers, in our Army, Navy, Air Force, Royal Ulster Constabulary and prison service, is worthy of honour and we must continue to honour it well in this nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We always do it better than anybody else.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Stuart.
It is reported that in Derbyshire we have well over 3,000 memorials, and some estimate that there are as many as 4,000. They range from crosses, obelisks, cenotaphs, columns, statues, boards, plaques and tablets to documents such as rolls of honour or books of remembrance, paintings, prints, tapestries, flags, banners and photographs. The variety is vast. Those memorials can be found in a variety of places among our towns and villages—in village halls, churches and chapels, clock towers, gates and gardens, and a whole host of other settings.
I have already spoken in support of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the work that it does in my constituency of South Derbyshire. However, I want to mention some of the other memorials, and their variety, in the villages dotted across South Derbyshire.
There is a magnificent plaque with raised gold lettering in All Saints’ parish church in Aston on Trent, commemorating those lost in the great war. There is a grey stone tablet attached to the front of the village hall in Burnaston as a tribute to those who fell in the first world war. In Ticknall, in the grounds of the village hall, there is a magnificent plaque encased in wrought iron as a tribute to those who fell in world war one. It is decorated with 19 wrought-iron poppies extending around the case, with the flowers forming a border. The poppies represent the 19 people from Ticknall who fell in world war one.
Overseal has a delightful memorial garden that is surrounded by a fence, with wrought-iron gates at the front and an arch above. Two rectangular metal plaques are attached to a granite block, with the names of the 31 people from Overseal who died in the two world wars. It was wonderful to attend the Remembrance Sunday celebrations in Overseal in November.
In St Mary’s church in Coton in the Elms, the fallen are commemorated in a framed and glazed print roll of honour, with a red and black border containing oak sprays, shields and mottos, and names handwritten in ink in three columns. In Swarkestone parish council, the roll of honour is mounted on the wall and framed, with the names of the fallen written in red, black and blue.
Let us recognise the supreme sacrifice that was made for us so long ago in the two world wars and, at a time of renewed conflict in the world, the sacrifice of so many members of our armed forces in the conflicts since, which continue across the globe. This Armed Forces Week, it seems particularly pertinent to do so, so I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy for securing this really important debate.
Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship for the first time, Mr Stuart. I thank the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for securing the debate.
Like everybody else, I will speak about the importance of war memorials, not just as statues but as living symbols of remembrance that link our past to our present and help us shape the future that we want to build together in this country. Each war memorial—a cenotaph, a plaque or something practical such as a hospital wing or a bus shelter—is unique. These monuments build cohesion and serve as a method of remembrance for local communities. Sometimes the names etched on memorials are the only place where those individuals are remembered, so it is vital that we preserve them. Through them, we honour the sacrifices and courage and—a vital point in this divided and polarised world—our shared history.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that something that makes the erection and maintenance of war memorials so much more poignant is that they are often paid for by the local communities themselves? They raise the money, and they continue to do so many years later. Only last weekend, I was at Marchwood village hall in my constituency, looking at a presentation about the war years with residents of that village in order to raise money to restore and refurbish their war memorial.
Shockat Adam
I agree: that local link with the community connects the past and the future.
As we remember, we must also reflect. It is painful to acknowledge that the stories that we tell through our war memorials have been incomplete for far too long. Animals that were sacrificed in the war efforts were rightly honoured with a national memorial in Hyde park in 2004, yet black and Asian soldiers who fought, bled and died for Britain have only recently begun to receive dedicated recognition. That is a shame that we as a nation must not shy away from.
More than 1.3 million soldiers from British India, including 400,000 Muslims and 100,000 Sikhs, served with dignity and honour in world war one. More than 53,000 lost their lives, and at least 2.5 million Muslim soldiers and labourers from across the globe supported the allied war effort. In fact, more than 9,000 soldiers from Palestine fought for Britain in world war two, and yet their stories remain largely erased from our national consciousness. As recently as 2021, a report from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission concluded that hundreds of thousands of predominantly black and Asian service personnel were not formally commemorated like their white comrades—a legacy underpinned by systemic racism at the time.
Who we remember and how we remember them matters, especially in these times of amplified fault lines. War memorials are not just stones and bronzes, but teaching tools. They are historical touchstones that allow young people to understand the past and the diverse sacrifices that were made in building this country and defending its freedoms. Excluding the contribution of black and Asian soldiers distorts our understanding of our shared history.
I am proud that in my city of Leicester, we now have a statue commemorating Sikh soldiers. It was unveiled in 2022, making it a long-overdue tribute to a community that made up more than 20% of the British Indian Army during world war one. I also welcome the plans to erect a national Muslim war memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum. That monument will finally give permanent recognition to the service and sacrifices of Muslim soldiers who fought for this country.
There is still much more to do. War memorials must do more than help us remember. They must tell the truth fully and fairly, and help us understand that British history was not built by one group alone but by people from every corner of the world. Memorials are and must always be more than stone and metal; they are symbols of our history and, when reflected accurately, our unity.
Martin Rhodes (Glasgow North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) on securing this important debate on the role of war memorials.
Glasgow North is home to the Western Necropolis, where nearly 500 service personnel from both world wars are laid to rest in Commonwealth war graves. Among them are Canadians, Australians and even American volunteers who served in Commonwealth forces. Their graves are a solemn reminder of Glasgow’s role as a hub of military activity, from shipbuilding on the Clyde to the hospitals that cared for the wounded. The care and preservation of such sites is about not just maintenance but memory and ensuring that the stories of those who served are not lost to time and neglect.
Remembrance must not only look back; it must evolve to reflect the full breadth of our shared history. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Kelvingrove Museum with representatives of Colourful Heritage, which has been closely involved with a new exhibition that highlights the contribution of the more than 4 million British Indian Army soldiers who served in the two world wars. It is a striking and necessary addition to our understanding of those conflicts. Colourful Heritage has already done important work in schools across Scotland, helping young people to engage with this history. It is now taking the next step, with partners, to establish Scotland’s first permanent memorial to the British Indian Army in the grounds of Kelvingrove. Planning permission is in progress, and the design reflects the diversity of those who served: Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and those with no religious faith.
The memorial will also acknowledge the unique connection between Scotland and Force K6, the all-Muslim Punjabi regiment stationed in Scotland, via Dunkirk, during the second world war. Their story, like so many others, deserves a permanent place in our national landscape of remembrance. I hope the Minister can offer support for that initiative. As we reflect today on how we maintain and fund war memorials and support them, it is worth recognising that remembrance is not static; it evolves. It must reflect the full breadth of those who served and sacrificed. That work being done in Glasgow is a meaningful example of that evolution.
Patricia Ferguson (Glasgow West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for securing this important debate.
In preparing for this debate, it occurred to me that war memorials are significant in a variety of ways. The first and most personal is their importance to the families of those who died in war. My great-uncle Philip Ferguson served in the 75th Squadron of the RAF Volunteer Reserve. Philip was one of 13 children, but a combination of age and reserved occupations meant that he was the only one to serve in the second world war. Unfortunately, on 22 January 1943, Philip’s plane was shot down over the channel. For a time, he was officially listed as missing, but it quickly became clear that he had been killed. Clearly, his body was never recovered, so there was no funeral, and until the national memorial at Runnymede was established in 1953, there was no official record of his service and death. To the family, it is important that his name is recorded, and I very much look forward to visiting Runnymede to see the memorial for myself.
Memorials are also important to communities. In 2010, after a considerable amount of lobbying and hard work, a memorial was created and dedicated at Knightswood Cross in my Glasgow West constituency. Terence McCourt, himself a Parachute Regiment veteran and a charity fundraiser, was recently recognised with the award of an MBE, in part for his efforts to secure that memorial. It is the rallying point for all the commemorations that take place in the area, most of them also organised by Terence, but outwith those days, it is always good to see people sitting on its benches, admiring the flowers and perhaps reflecting on their own family’s service.
The third way in which memorials are important is in giving communities a sense of place. I served for some time as a Member of the Scottish Parliament, and my constituency contained part of an area now so ably served by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes). The area in question was, until the 1960s, the location of a great many tenemental properties. One particularly short street was called Lyon Street, and the 1901 census tells us that there were a dozen tenement buildings housing around 1,500 people. It really does beggar belief. Sometimes, according to the census, families of eight or nine took in lodgers to help to pay the rent. From that street, 211 men volunteered to fight in world war one. They served in every Scottish regiment: the Cameronians, the Highland Light Infantry, the Black Watch, the Royal Scots Fusiliers and the Seaforth Highlanders. Forty-five never came home, 27 were wounded and two were missing in action. Immediately after the first world war, Lyon Street was recognised as the most decorated street in Britain.
Unfortunately, nothing now remains of Lyon Street—it does not exist any longer, and even the plaque commemorating the fallen has long since disappeared. When I was the local MSP, I tried hard to locate it, but it seems to have been lost forever. However, the site is now home to St Joseph’s primary school, and the pupils and staff arranged their own memorial and honour the fallen every year.
I mention Lyon Street because researching the story made me realise that this part of Glasgow has changed completely since the world war. Lyon Street has gone and the overcrowded tenements have gone, but the memory of those men, and the place that was their home, is still alive—not least thanks to the pupils of St Joseph’s, who although separated from the first world war by more than 100 years, understand the importance of remembering.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for securing the debate.
In Portsmouth North, we are proud of our naval heritage and deep connection to those who serve. Our war memorials are more than stone and metal; they are living markers of sacrifice, service and the values that we hold dear. In St Peter and St Paul church in Wymering, there is a wooden shrine with five panels listing 62 names from world war one and world war two; positioned in the churchyard corner, it has been carefully maintained and restored over decades. The Portsdown hill D-day window, in Christ church in Portsdown, is a beautiful stained glass window depicting St Michael, St George and the Normandy landings. The Nelson monument at the summit of Portsdown hill is a 37 metre granite memorial that was dedicated in 1808 to Admiral Lord Nelson and funded by naval subscription. Although not a war memorial in the modern sense, it is an early tribute to naval heroism.
From the Portsdown hill memorials that honour the Royal Regiment of Artillery and those lost in both world wars to the Paulsgrove war memorials, the plaques inside St Michael’s church, and the silhouettes of soldiers on the lampposts across our city, commemorating individuals who fell during the wars—these sites connect generations. They are places where our communities come together on Remembrance Sunday and beyond to reflect, remember and recommit ourselves to peace.
The sites also have an educational role. I have seen young people from local schools visit our city war memorials and begin to understand history, not as something distant but as something personal. That is why it is so important that we protect, preserve and promote such spaces. Recent attacks on war memorials are attacks on our shared history and those who gave their lives for our freedom; they are disgraceful and must be met with zero tolerance.
I thank all those volunteers, whether with charities, movements or small community groups, for the work they do on the upkeep of these memorials. I urge all MPs to work with our local authorities, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, community groups and our schools to ensure that war memorials across our country, including those in Portsmouth North, are properly maintained and understood, and that they serve as civic spaces and not just historical artefacts. In remembering the past, we strengthen our shared future.
Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) on securing this important debate.
Knowing their history, I always find war memorials particularly poignant places to visit. Our local memorials all tend to stem from the example set by the Cenotaph as a place of remembrance. I understand that more than 1 million people passed by the Cenotaph in its first week, when it was just a temporary structure. What always strikes me is that these places were usually erected by public subscription and because of the will of local people.
We should bear in mind that war memorials were built as places where people could go to remember the fallen from their town—their brothers, fathers, uncles, nephews or sons—because the possibility of travelling to the final resting places in France or beyond would have been outside the realms of reality for most working-class people at the time. I prepared for today’s debate by listing some of the war memorials that I knew around my constituency; I realised that if I were to list them all, we would be here for quite a while. It is extraordinarily poignant to see these memorials in the place where I now live and am very proud to call home, and to imagine people more than 100 years ago having no way to go to their loves ones’ resting places; these memorials were the only places that they could go to remember.
When we passed the memorial in the town centre, my oldest daughter asked, “What is that?” and I explained, “It’s a place to remember and say thank you.” [In British Sign Language: To remember and say thank you]. She signed that back to me, and really brought home that this is what they are: places to remember with deep gratitude the sacrifice that was made.
I will touch on a few of my war memorials as others have, because I want to highlight the proud history they brings to my area. In Purfleet-on-Thames the existing war memorial, which lists the names of the men who gave their lives in the two world wars, has been joined by a memorial to the Gurkhas, of whom we have a sizeable population in my constituency. I was recently very honoured to attend the Gurkha Regiment home in Kent and to see the real proud history and bond between the Gurkha Regiment, our armed forces and our country. I felt a real sense of honour and pride to have that memorial so close to my home. I would encourage people, if they are ever around my area, to visit it; it is a beautiful remembrance of people who have given their lives in the service of our country.
In Tilbury, in the civic square, there is a war memorial that stands proud, maintained by members of the Royal British Legion. Little Thurrock, with a smaller memorial, is visited every 11 November by a jogging group who pay their respects as they pass by. In Aveley village, in the corner of the war memorial gardens, sits a unique memorial to Lance Corporal Nicky Mason, who died in Afghanistan in an act of service in 2008, illustrating the ongoing nature of conflict and our gratitude for those who serve. In Ockendon, I met a woman approaching her centenary whose brother is on the war memorial. She said with great pride, “I’m going to be buried quite close to him any day now.” That is some of the spirit of the people in my patch. In Chafford Hundred, the war memorial is just on the corner of a road. On Remembrance Sunday, residents give up a portion of their front gardens so that the local brass band can unite us all in song.
I conclude by briefly touching on something that the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) mentioned: those who are not recorded on our war memorials. I found it quite shocking to learn that women from both world wars who died in service are not actively recorded on war memorials as a matter of routine. One woman, Grace Mary Potter, was born in Thurrock and served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. While serving in Kent, she died as a result of a bomb blast, yet her name does not appear on any war memorial to this day. I hope the Minister will reflect on that in her closing remarks. Will she meet either me or representatives who are working to get women’s names on war memorials? I would be very grateful.
Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stuart. I thank the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for securing this very important debate during Armed Forces Week.
Throughout the UK, more than 100,000 war memorials have been erected in towns, villages, schools, churches, parks and cemeteries. Some are grand in scale and others modest and simple—but each tells an important story and bears witness to the sacrifice and the grief of those left behind. Most of those memorials were not commissioned by Government but by communities, raised through bake sales, church appeals and private donations, by families who lost sons, daughters, friends and neighbours and needed somewhere to grieve, to remember and to say they mattered.
That spirit of local dedication must never be taken for granted. Successive Governments have taken the position that war memorials are a private matter, and the Ministry of Defence has not formally intervened in what a war memorial commemorates or how it is maintained, so as not to favour one commemoration over another. However, in practice responsibility falls to overstretched councils or passes quietly from one hand to another until someone takes up the role of ensuring these memorials are not forgotten. I want to take this opportunity to thank those who take up that charge.
The Liberal Democrats believe war memorials are an essential part of our national fabric, reminding us not only of sacrifice but of the values we are meant to uphold: peace, service, dignity and freedom. In the wake of two world wars and many later conflicts, these sites remain powerful spaces for public reflection across generations and communities.
In my constituency, we are fortunate to have powerful examples. The Epsom cemetery war memorial, unveiled in 1921, is a striking 18-foot granite cross, flanked by granite walls bearing the names of 265 local residents who lost their lives in the first world war. Epsom’s Commonwealth war graves memorial, with the names of 148 men—Canadians, Australians, Gurkhas and others from across the empire—reminds us that sacrifice did not know borders. That is why we also welcome a more inclusive national memorial. We fully support the plans for permanent memorials to Muslim service personnel and to LGBT veterans, both due to be constructed at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.
Memorials serve as guardians of our shared memory, and remembrance must speak to all who served and reflect the full breadth of our shared history. We must continue to empower local authorities, charities and communities to care for these memorials. Every name etched in stone represents a life lived, a family changed forever and a sacrifice that should never be forgotten. Every memorial, no matter how humble, deserves our care, and as a society we have a duty to ensure that future generations not only see them but understand and pay respect to the brave people they represent.
Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart, as we debate the important topic of war memorials and the fallen whom they commemorate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) on securing this debate. It seems fitting that we are debating this topic in Parliament during Armed Forces Week.
According to estimates from the War Memorials Trust, a charity that works to protect and conserve war memorials, there are more than 100,000 war memorials across the United Kingdom. They range in size and style—from the Cenotaph in Whitehall, around which we centre our national act of remembrance every November, to the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, down to the humblest war memorials in small hamlets across the country, and even the individual headstones in churchyards throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.
My first official duty, when I had the privilege of becoming the Veterans Minister in the Ministry of Defence back in 2012, was to travel to the National Memorial Arboretum and to lay a wreath to commemorate the sacrifice of our armed forces personnel down the ages. There are now over 100 different types of memorial at the arboretum, and we have heard from several hon. Members of further ones to follow, which I welcome. I was there most recently last August, when a special ceremony was held to mark the presentation of a cheque for £250,000 from Mr Craig Moule, the industrious chief executive of Sanctuary housing association, to the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Families Association—commonly known as SSAFA—whose tie I am honoured to be wearing this afternoon.
A crucial role in the preservation of war memorials is undertaken by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which was founded by royal charter in 1917, before the first world war had even ended. It works on behalf of the Governments of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom to commemorate the 1.7 million men and women from the Commonwealth who lost their lives in now two world wars. The commission’s declared mission is
“to ensure those who died in service, or as a result of conflict, are commemorated so that they, and the human cost of war, are remembered for ever.”
Down the years I have visited a number of the commission’s memorials, particularly those on the western front, such as the one at Thiepval, which commemorates the fallen at the battle of the Somme, and Tyne Cot for those who fell at Passchendaele.
Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)
As the Member for Surrey Heath, I am proud to have Brookwood military cemetery, one of the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission sites in the UK, in my constituency. Will the right hon. Gentleman join me in paying tribute to the work of the commission in not only preserving our history and heritage, but advancing the education of young people so that they remember the sacrifices of those who have gone before us?
Mr Francois
The hon. Gentleman pre-empts me, but for the avoidance of doubt, most certainly—I am a great fan of the commission.
In total, the commission cares for large memorials down to individual graves in some 23,000 locations, encompassing more than 150 countries and territories around the world. I recently visited Rayleigh cemetery in the heart of my constituency. It has a number of individual wartime graves, which are beautifully tended by the commission.
In this context, I highlight a book published earlier this year by the acknowledged author Dr Tessa Dunlop, entitled simply, “Lest We Forget” with the subtitle “War and Peace in 100 British Monuments”. This excellent book summarises a whole variety of war memorials, commemorating events dating back to Roman times, right up to the present day. For the avoidance of doubt. I am not on commission from Dr Dunlop’s publishers, but I did meet her during the production of the book, not least because the 99th in her century of war memorials is located in my constituency at a place called Aaron Lewis Close in Hawkwell. Lieutenant Aaron Lewis was a commando gunner from 29 Commando Regiment, who was tragically killed during a mission in Afghanistan back in 2008. Working with the local authority, Rochford district council and the then-developer David Wilson Homes, we managed to arrange for a small square on that new development to be named in Aaron’s honour. At its centre is a memorial garden with a carved bench which commemorates Aaron’s service. For her book, Tessa Dunlop interviewed Helen Lewis, Aaron’s mother, who along with her husband Barry, have channelled their understandable grief at the loss of their son to create a wonderful charity called the Aaron Lewis Foundation, which has helped to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds, including to provide rehabilitation equipment for wounded service personnel.
Similarly, we now also have Samuel Bailey Drive in Hockley, named after Squadron Leader Sam Bailey, an RAF navigator who died in a tragic mid-air collision between two RAF tornadoes flying out of RAF Lossiemouth over a decade ago. There are 2,000 or more military charities in this country, ranging from the Royal British Legion, Help for Heroes and SSAFA, down to individual charities often founded by family members following the death of a loved one in combat. Clearly, it would be impossible, to name all of those charities this afternoon, but nevertheless, I should like to pay tribute to the work of all of them collectively. To paraphrase that famous wartime medley, when talking about the plethora of military charities we have in this country, perhaps I could just say, “Bless them all, the long and the short and the tall”. Dr Tessa Dunlop has written an exceptional book, and I can thoroughly commend it to anyone who is interested in the whole subject of war memorials and everything they represent.
I think we have 13 minutes left, Mr Stuart, so I will just take two more.
Mr Francois
Although I have already mentioned the National Memorial Arboretum, I would be failing in my duty as an Essex MP were I not to highlight Essex’s own version, which is known as the Living Memorial, at White House Farm in Rettendon. It was founded by enlightened landowners, Peter and Fran Theobald, a former RAF servicewoman, in 2009. I have visited a number of times down the years, including at the dedication of a memorial organised by the Rayleigh branch of the Royal Naval Association, of which I have the honour of being a member.
The Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry (Maria Eagle)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. It is quite clear from the debate today that many Members here, and probably many who have not made it to the debate, could speak at length about the memorials in their own constituencies. I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) on securing the debate and highlighting the importance of war memorials in Britain, particularly in this armed forces week, when many of our minds turn to remembering the service of people in our armed forces. That includes, of course, remembering those who have sacrificed for our futures, their own.
The first duty of every Government is to protect its people, but it can only do so by asking men and women of our armed forces to do extraordinary things. They step forward, as is clear in today’s debate, from every corner of our United Kingdom—every hamlet, every village, every town, and every city, to serve with courage, commitment and resilience, separated from their loved ones and often in difficult and dangerous situations. It is no surprise, therefore, that communities left behind, and who have lost loved ones to conflicts that we have been involved in over the years, seek thereafter to commemorate and to do so in perpetuity to the extent that they can.
The story that my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy told about her war memorial reaching its 100th anniversary today could be replicated around the country, but it is unique in that it has not only an art gallery and community space, but a library attached. It is clearly at the very heart of her community. It is therefore quite understandable that the events to commemorate the anniversary are so extensive and involve so many people—perhaps 8,000. I do not know if it is 8,000 people who have done a poppy each, or 4,000 who have done two each, but clearly quite a lot of people have knitted the poppies that will set a striking backdrop to the commemorations. Perhaps it is not surprising the extent to which her local community cares about that memorial, because of the way in which it came to be in the first place, arising at the end of the first world war, out of the grief of a rich member of society who lost his only son and therefore dedicated time and money thereafter to providing the memorial, the art galleries and, later on, the library.
It is unbelievable to me that memorials can be vandalised as my hon. Friend’s has been. I can only say that I am glad that the damage has been repaired. Although memorials are very rarely paid for by the Ministry of Defence or by the state, there is a scheme run by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that provides for some contribution towards repairs if a memorial is vandalised, which would equate to the VAT. It would enable some contribution from Government, with all the proper forms being filled in. I think the deadline for this year is 30 June, so if that has not been applied for already, and it is helpful, then my hon. Friend needs to get her skates on and move fast.
It is quite clear across parties and from all Members who have spoken today the extent to which local Members of Parliament involve themselves in making sure that their memorials are known about and raised in the House. It is perhaps not surprising that there is amity across the Chamber. There has been no disagreement about how important these memorials are to local communities and the families of those commemorated upon them—not just the immediate family, but through generations. There is also educational value in making sure that the stories of those commemorated on them are told to subsequent generations. The example that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) gave about a local school making sure that a lost memorial is remembered, even though it is 100 years since it was erected, is quite telling about the powerful nature of these stories, which are intergenerational and should go forward in time.
Sir Julian Lewis
Does the Minister agree that there is a particular importance of memorials to people who have no known grave but the sea? I believe I am right in saying that the three great Royal Naval memorials at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth commemorate more than 66,000 Royal Naval personnel who lost their lives in the two world wars. Of course, the one at Tower Hill commemorates about 36,000 merchant seamen and fishing fleet personnel who were similarly lost with no known grave.
Maria Eagle
The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. For families left behind—increasingly as time passes, it seems to me—the lack of a grave or something to mark an individual’s sacrifice is felt more deeply. It is therefore extremely understandable that there have been memorials erected latterly. It is completely correct and, I think, one of the values of the National Memorial Arboretum. The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) referenced his visits there, and I am sure that other colleagues have attended various events there. It is important to have a place in the middle of the country, which is where the Arboretum is, that can be attended and where there are a number of memorials to make sure that there is somewhere for everyone who has lost someone to go and contemplate that loss.
The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford also referenced the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is unsung but extremely valuable and very much appreciated. On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft), my understanding is that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission does include women. I am not saying that every war memorial around the country includes women—that clearly is not the case—but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission does, as I understand it. However, her point that there are many forgotten people who lost their lives and are not on the memorials is an important one.
I have some numbers on those who have been commemorated who were lost at sea—the merchant sailors as well as the naval personnel—but the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) has just mentioned them, so I will not repeat them. The general point is that, apart from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the funding of memorials has overwhelmingly come from public individuals and organisations. That is why they survive—they are part of our communities, they are loved by our communities and they are supported by our communities. That is an important part of their power—they are seen as something that is done by local people, for local people, to commemorate local people.
Once again, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy. I wish her very well with the commemorations. It will be hard to read the names out, so I particularly wish her well with that. If there are 1,500 names on her memorial, she will not do all of them, but it will none the less be a powerful reading. Reading out each name individually will take a lot of time, and it is a powerful indication of quite how many people were lost. It will be one of the most powerful parts of the commemorations. She highlighted what will happen in her constituency and I congratulate her.
Melanie Ward
I thank all the Members who contributed to this debate. The unified tone feels entirely in keeping with the fact that this is Armed Forces Week and with the message that we want to send out from this place this week in particular. It has been invaluable to hear the contributions of so many colleagues, and it is difficult to sum them up in such a short time. I will mention a few of the themes that people raised.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor) and a number of other colleagues raised the importance of peace and the fact that war memorials can give space for reflection on peace. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was absolutely right when he said that the British in particular do remembrance so well. It is so important to take great care over something that matters so much. A number of colleagues talked about the importance of diversity and of remembering our diverse communities at our war memorials, including the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam), my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes) and for Thurrock (Jen Craft) and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire).
The Opposition spokesperson spoke powerfully about memorials to fallen British soldiers in the north of France. I have also had the experience of visiting some of those, and they are deeply moving in their scale when one actually sees them and sees the loss that took place. A number of colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), spoke about the place of war memorials in remembering our shared history and the variety of memorials across the country. Others spoke about the importance of education in war memorials, including the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) and many others. I thank everyone and hope that it has been a rich debate for everyone to take part in.
FCDO Services: Ministerial Targets 2025-26
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Catherine West)
FCDO Services operates as a trading fund of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I have set the following performance targets for 2025-26:
An in-year surplus before interest, tax and dividend;
Achievement of the return on capital employed of at least 6.5% (weighted average);
A productivity ratio of at least 82%, measuring actual billable hours versus available billable hours;
An in-year customer satisfaction rating average of at least 82;
An average civil service people survey score for “employee engagement” of at least 61%; and
An average civil service people survey score for “my manager” of at least 65%.
FCDO Services will report to Parliament on its success against these targets through its annual report and accounts for 2025-26.
FCDO Services is an Executive agency and trading fund of the FCDO. It provides a range of integrated, secure services worldwide to the FCDO and other UK Government Departments, supporting the delivery of Government agendas. Services include protective security, estates and construction, cloud computing, communications and monitoring, logistics, translation and interpreting. This is combined with a portfolio of global maintenance work. FCDO Services also manages the UK National Authority for Counter Eavesdropping, helping protect UK assets from physical, electronic and cyber-attack.
[HCWS734]
Cervical Screening: Self-sampling
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)
I would like to inform the House that I have accepted the UK National Screening Committee’s recommendation to allow screening providers to offer self-sampling kits to under-screened individuals in the NHS cervical screening programme in England.
The NHS cervical screening programme in England provides all women and people with a cervix between the ages of 25 and 64 with the opportunity to be screened routinely to detect HPV infection or cervical abnormalities at an early, more treatable stage. The aim of the programme is to reduce the number of women who develop invasive cervical cancer and reduce the number who die from it.
Cervical screening does not test for cancer; it is a step before that helps to detect the risk of developing cervical cancer. This is because, since December 2019, the primary screen in the NHS cervical screening programme has been a test to detect high-risk HPV—hrHPV—which causes nearly all cervix cancers. A negative screen for hrHPV means that the chances of developing a cancer within five years are very small, as it can take around 10 years or more from the time hrHPV is caught to developing cervical cancer.
Research suggests that barriers to cervical screening attendance may include inaccessibility of appointments, anxiety and fear of discomfort and embarrassment, previous negative experiences of screening, cultural reasons, confidentiality concerns, and practical barriers such as time constraints and lack of transport or childcare. Currently, around three in 10 of the eligible population do not attend their cervical screening appointments. The change to the programme will allow service providers to offer these women a self-sample if they have not attended their appointment for six months or more following routine invitation. A self-sample that returns an hrHPV positive result will still require a clinical test to confirm the finding. However, trial evidence suggests that self-sampling will increase the numbers engaging with the screening programme.
It is important to note that, at this stage, the self-sample offer is being provided only to “under-screened” women —an under-screened individual is someone who is overdue for their routine cervical screening appointment by at least six months or has never attended. The reason that the offer is restricted to this group is because there is uncertainty about whether self-sampling is as good as clinician-taken sampling for those who regularly attend screening.
Self-sampling will help detect hrHPV, prevent cancer and save lives in those who currently do not access clinician-led screening. However, for those attending clinician testing, a shift to self-sampling might result in a programme that is not yet proven to be of equal efficacy. Further studies to consider whether self-sampling could be used across the whole population are being organised.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the UK National Screening Committee for continuing to provide invaluable evidence-based expert advice on the introduction of new screening programmes and modifications to existing ones, and especially on achieving the right balance between benefit versus harms.
I would also like to pay tribute to and thank all those who work to deliver high-quality and safe screening across the country, and to encourage all those who are eligible for cervical screening to take up the offer of this lifesaving test.
[HCWS732]
Local Leadership Structure
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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The Minister for Local Government and English Devolution (Jim McMahon)
Today, I will update Parliament on the Government’s ambitious plans to introduce legislation which will simplify governance arrangements for local authorities in England and to ensure local communities have the right mechanisms to engage with their council.
In the English Devolution White Paper, the Government committed to bring in consistent and accountable structures across local government by considering which governance models available to local authorities will best support their decision making.
At present there is a complex and opaque system which allows councils to operate one of three governance models: cabinet arrangements with a directly elected council mayor, leader and cabinet, or the committee system. As a result, councils are left with a complicated governance system. This can be confusing to the taxpayer, particularly in the case of the committee system, which can be unclear, duplicative, and wasteful, leading to slower, less efficient decision making.
The Government plan to legislate to abolish the committee system, requiring those councils currently operating this model to transition to the leader and cabinet model (which the vast majority of councils in England already operate). This will simplify the governance system and ensure all councils operate an executive form of governance, providing clarity on responsibility and accountability, and improving efficiency in decision making. This change will provide clearer, more easily understood structures at a local level, improving efficiency and preventing authorities from wasting taxpayer funds on needless changes to systems of governance. The law already allows for and requires overview and scrutiny arrangements to be in place.
The Government recognise there are several directly elected local council mayors currently in place, and we propose to accept the continuation of these 13 legacy directly elected council mayors, while introducing measures to ensure a more consistent approach by not facilitating the creation of new ones. This would also include any councils undergoing local government reorganisation now or the future, where any new unitary would be required to operate on the leader and cabinet model of governance, regardless of whether any constituent part currently has a legacy directly elected council mayor.
There are pre-existing routes for those councils with legacy directly elected local mayors to adopt the leader and cabinet model, depending on the individual circumstances in each area, where they wish to do so.
This will avoid the potential confusion caused by the establishment of new regional mayors for strategic authorities and for councils. Directly elected regional mayors continue to be a prerequisite for significant devolution of powers and funding: it is at this strategic level that the single focal point of leadership for the area and direct electoral accountability is considered to work best. Our ambitious plans for local government reorganisation will build the foundations of better local governance, enabling decisions to be taken more easily at the most effective level of government. Strategic regional mayors will be empowered to drive local growth in the long term, with local authorities tackling big challenges in service delivery lead by a leader and their cabinet.
Taken with our commitment to support frontline councillors to lead positive change in their communities we believe this delivers the right powers in the right places.
Ahead of introducing primary legislation, I intend to make regulations to pause any change processes between governance models, in order to allow time for Parliament to consider the Government’s proposed measures. These regulations will extend the period in which a council must call a referendum to determine if the electorate want to change their council’s governance structure following receipt of a petition.
The regulations will also move the date on which an inaugural election is held following a council resolution or a referendum in favour of a directly elected mayor from May 2026 to May 2027. These changes will prevent taxpayers’ money from being unduly wasted on administrative processes which will ultimately bring no benefit or change, while the future of governance options is being considered by Parliament. We will therefore freeze any changes to local governance structures, allowing Parliament time to consider the measures outlined above and prevent the needless waste of valuable taxpayers’ pounds.
It is important that the Government set out the intended direction clearly. The regulations are of particular relevance to the Plymouth referendum due to be held on 17 July to determine whether to adopt mayoral governance for the council. Should the vote favour introducing a mayor, the inaugural mayoral election would move from May 2026 to May 2027. The extension of this period will allow Parliament time to consider the legislation. If Parliament agrees to the proposed measures being brought forward in primary legislation, the inaugural mayoral election would not take place and the council would continue to operate leader and cabinet governance as the common standard for all councils going forward, with the exception of the legacy directly elected council mayors referred to earlier.
We acknowledge that the path to reform is not without its challenges which some local authorities will need to navigate to ensure successful implementation. Transition management will be crucial, requiring careful planning and execution to ensure a smooth shift from the committee system to the new governance structures, including managing changes in leadership dynamics and administrative processes.
By introducing streamlined, consistent and accountable governance structures, we are paving the way for a more efficient, transparent, and responsive local government system. This will empower local leaders to make the right decisions for their communities, and work with Government to grow an inclusive economy, reform public services, and secure better outcomes for working people.
Every place will benefit from our agenda to push power out of Whitehall and into the hands of local leaders. People will see it in more regular bus services, more affordable housing, or the simple fact of having a local champion with regional influence or a frontline councillor championing their neighbourhoods with the tools they need to get the job done. Taken together these measures will simplify local government and support democratic accountability for local people.
[HCWS736]
Victim Impact Statements
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Davies-Jones)
I am pleased to announce that the Government have commenced another victim-related measure in the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024.
Tomorrow, we will commence Section 21 of the Act, which will bring arrangements for victims of certain offenders detained under the Mental Health Act more closely in line with those for victims of offenders detained in prison whose release conditions are determined by the Parole Board. This has been called for by the Victims’ Commissioner, Baroness Newlove, for some time and will make a real difference to the experience of victims and their families in these processes.
Previously, victims engaging with the victim contact scheme were able to provide their views on discharge conditions for offenders to the mental health tribunal, but were not able to make a statement explaining to the decision makers the impact that the crime had on them—a victim impact statement. Victims are able to give such explanations to the Parole Board through a victim personal statement. Through the commencement of this measure, victims will be able to make a victim impact statement to the first-tier tribunal (mental health) in England, and the mental health review tribunal for Wales, where they are considering discharge of an offender. The tribunal can consider the victim impact statement as part of its decision on what discharge conditions to impose on the offender, but must not consider it for any other purpose.
This measure also requires that, where a tribunal hearing is due to take place and a victim applies to attend that hearing to read their statement, the tribunal should grant the application unless there are good reasons not to. Under the victim contact scheme, victims will have a victim liaison officer, who will inform them of the entitlement, and support them in making a victim impact statement, if they wish to do so. The victim liaison officer will support the victim to consider if they want to read it aloud to the tribunal or have their victim liaison officer do so on their behalf. They will also attend the hearing with them to provide support on the day.
This measure brings victims’ entitlements more in line with those of victims whose offenders are in the prison system, and it is an important way for victims and their families to have a voice in the process, regardless of where the offender is detained.
[HCWS733]
Child Maintenance Payments
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Andrew Western)
My noble Friend the Minister of State (Minister for Lords), Baroness Sherlock OBE, has made the following written statement:
I am pleased to inform the House that yesterday, the Government published their response to the “Child Maintenance: Improving the collection and transfer of payments” consultation. Releasing the response shows the Government’s commitment to reducing the number of children growing up in poverty, which holds back too many children, limiting their future prospects and holding back this country’s potential. This consultation was launched by the previous Government and extended by this Government to give as many people as possible the chance to respond.
The Government are delivering on our plan for change, and are reforming the Child Maintenance Service to help ensure that more children get the money they deserve. This consultation contains proposals that are part of the action we are taking that will lift more children out of poverty and support the Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity.
The consultation received over 2,700 public responses, and engagement from 28 stakeholder organisations across the UK. Additionally, we commissioned research with current CMS customers who use the direct pay service to help us quantify the impacts of the reforms and provide in-depth insight.
There will be two clear options for parents following the planned reforms. One is to make a family-based arrangement. We will provide parents with enhanced support to make and maintain these, and we are working to improve our communications to support parents in understanding the options that are available to them. Our ambition is that anyone with a stable and compliant direct pay arrangement should find this option meets their needs.
Of course, family-based arrangements are not appropriate for all separated parents, and where that is the case, or where people prefer to be part of the statutory system, it will still be available. The CMS will operate a single service, based on the current collect-and-pay model, in which it will manage all payments, with an improved ability to identify and act on non-compliance.
As part of these reforms, we will halve the fees for those using the CMS, while maintaining a 20% fee for non-resident parents who refuse to pay up on time and in full. Parents currently in the direct pay system will have the choice of keeping their CMS case, which will be moved to the new, improved service, giving them the peace of mind that maintenance will be paid and any problems will be followed up, in return for a small fee—or have improved support to make and maintain a family-based arrangement.
We plan to progress with these proposals and believe that they will address the fundamental issues with direct pay. This change will prevent parents getting stuck in ineffective arrangements, in which no, reduced or erratic payments go to children. We know from research with direct pay customers that only six in 10 receiving parents in direct pay report getting all the child maintenance that they are owed, and only four in 10 say that they always receive it on time. Removing direct pay will mean we can tackle this hidden non-compliance and get money flowing to children in these cases.
To have the best impact on child poverty, we need to ensure that more children are in effective arrangements, which we envisage these changes helping with. We estimate that this change could result in around 20,000 fewer children in poverty, on the “relative low income after housing costs” measure. To further support children receiving maintenance payments, a commitment was made to position child maintenance deductions higher up the universal credit deductions priority order as part of the fair repayment rate. The repositioning gives greater protection, ensuring that child maintenance is paid in cases where the deductions cap is reached.
The removal of direct pay will also represent a significant improvement to victims and survivors of domestic abuse using the CMS, by reducing contact with the other parent, and reducing the paying parent’s ability to financially control the receiving parent by paying too little or too late, as they currently can under direct pay.
I am committed to ensuring that victims and survivors of domestic abuse get the help and support that they need to use the CMS safely, and have outlined in the consultation response the work that the Department is undertaking to support victims and survivors of domestic abuse to use the service safely.
The reforms announced yesterday are just the first step in our plan to reform the Child Maintenance Service. Alongside action to modernise the service, increase ease of access, streamline enforcement, and better support victims and survivors of domestic abuse, the Government are undertaking a fundamental review of the child maintenance calculation.
I believe that the changes outlined in the Government’s response will help us to achieve a CMS that is fair, trustworthy and more accessible to parents, particularly those who are vulnerable. It will be better able to tackle non-compliance head-on by quickly identifying and tackling missed payments and, most importantly, it will lift more children out of poverty.
The changes to remove direct pay and reform the collection fee structure will require changes to legislation, which will be dependent on parliamentary approval. Subject to securing parliamentary time to make the necessary changes in legislation, we aim to implement them in 2027-28.
[HCWS735]
Retirement of a Member: Viscount Waverley
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, I should like to notify the House of the retirement, with effect from 23 June, of the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, pursuant to Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. On behalf of the House, I thank the noble Viscount for his service to the House.
Arrangement of Business
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, there have been many cases in recent weeks of noble Lords, during Oral Questions, referring generally to their interests as set out in the register. I want to highlight to colleagues that this is now the incorrect procedure. Following recent changes to the Code of Conduct, noble Lords must now declare financial interests in a specific way. This applies to all types of business, including Oral Questions.
Simply referring to interests as set out in the register is no longer sufficient. For example, if, hypothetically, I am the chief executive of a housing association and I am asking a question about building new social homes, previously when asking that question, I could have said, “I refer the House to my interests as set out in the register”. Now, I would have to say, “My Lords, I declare an interest as the chief executive of X housing association”.
The House authorities helpfully highlighted these changes again to Members in communications issued this week. This change was agreed by the House in March and came into effect in April. I remind all noble Lords of the importance of observing these new rules.
Music and Dance Scheme
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Baroness Keeley
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they will continue to invest in the Music and Dance Scheme, including in the National Dance Centres for Advanced Training programme, to support dance careers for young people from deprived backgrounds.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, improved access to the arts is important for all young people, which is why the Government are committed to continuing to fund the music and dance scheme, including the centres for advanced training, in the academic year 2025-26. The bursary support will continue for the more than 2,000 students benefiting from it, and at the same rate. It will remain means tested, so that it is targeted towards supporting students from lower-income families.
Baroness Keeley (Lab)
I thank my noble friend the Minister for her reply. I, too, welcome that DfE has confirmed the continued funding for bursaries, at least for 2025-26. However, there is no commitment beyond 2026 and DfE did cut the outreach funding for the schemes earlier this year. Can my noble friend tell me what steps the Government will take to ensure that young people from rural or economically disadvantaged areas continue to have equal access to dance training, given that short-term funding cycles create instability in delivery, and that outreach funding has already been cut?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The Government will launch a new centre for arts and music education to take forward the ambitions, which my noble friend rightly asks of us, for improved and more equitable arts education in state-funded schools, including a focus on dance. The music and dance scheme is a long-standing programme and the department will consider future funding in due course. Tough decisions have had to be made to get our finances back under control, including, as my noble friend identifies, on additional funding that was made available to dance outreach. Nevertheless, all eligible MDS students for dance have continued to receive bursaries.
Baroness Bull (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s continued support of MDS and the national centres, and the recognition of their vital role in opening up dance careers to diverse talent. However, does the Minister share my concern that too many children will never know whether they have a talent for dance? Despite dance being a statutory part of the national curriculum, one-third of primary schools are reported not to teach it, and its place within PE means that teachers often do not have the confidence or skill set to deliver that teaching. What steps are the Government taking to improve the place of dance teaching within schools, and will they consider a national plan for dance education or a model dance curriculum, akin to those that exist for music?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right that dance is part of the national curriculum for PE, which is part of the entitlement for children in all the first three key stages. I recognise her point about ensuring not only that it exists in the curriculum but that it is of high quality as well. I will bear in mind her point about how we can ensure, as we recruit additional teachers into our schools, that we have the specialist teachers with expertise in dance to be able to deliver it.
Lord Blackwell (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a governor of a specialist music school. As the Minister will be aware, the MDS covers music schools as well as dance schemes. Is she aware of the uncertainty and damage caused to parents trying to decide whether they can send their children to these schools, as well as the threat to the viability of these schools, if there is no certainty about future funding? When she talks about a new centre, could she clarify whether this is being considered as an alternative to the MDS? The MDS is vital to the future of many of these very specialist but highly prized schools.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I hope the noble Lord recognises that I recognise the contribution the MDS makes, and particularly the way it enables children who otherwise would not be able to afford this type of education to afford it. As I pointed out, it is longstanding and the Government have made a commitment to it this year, including to the bursaries that are necessary for those young people to benefit from it. We will make further announcements about this in the future. Sadly, given the way that funding decisions and budget planning go, it is not that unusual for there not to be a longer-term commitment to something. But, so far, the Government’s commitment to this has been right and appropriate, given the contribution that it makes.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, will the Government take the opportunity to let us know whether they will at least upgrade the grants they are talking about in future? If you leave them stationary, they will very rapidly become token gestures. Can the Government represent their long-term planning by saying they will upgrade the support they are giving to people on this particular scheme?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The Government have maintained a commitment to providing generous support to help students to access the specialist music and dance education and training that this scheme funds, committing £36 million for this academic year. That means that all families below average relevant income of £45,000 per annum will continue to benefit from additional financial support in the next academic year. The Government were able to upgrade the contribution made through the music and dance scheme bursary, for example to ensure that all families were unaffected financially by the VAT change in January 2025. I think the noble Lord is trying a different way to get me to commit future funding to this scheme, at a point at which, as I have already identified, it is not possible for me to do so.
Baroness Caine of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, now that we hear the good news that the Government have agreed to extend bursary funding for the music and dance scheme, including the National Centres for Advanced Training in Dance programme, will the Minister be able to help facilitate an open dialogue with these providers to ensure that there is a strong voice for dance education in informing decision-making, including going forward, and the new national arts and music centre that my noble friend referred to, enabling providers to shape a programme based on expertise and the rich data they hold?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes an important point. There is an enormous amount of expertise in the schools supported by the music and dance scheme, as there is in other parts of the system. The priority here has to be to bring in as many different organisations and voices as possible, in order to design the national centre for arts and music in a way that delivers the objective of broader and more equitable access to arts education in state-funded schools. That will need lots of voices, lots of contribution, and of course the ambition that the Government have already put into it.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, please allow me to quote the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, in her role as executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives:
“Creativity and the expressive arts should be part and parcel of every child’s education from primary school”.
Please also allow me to quote the Prime Minister:
“Every young person should have access to music, art, design and drama. That is our mission”.
Perhaps the Minister can help us understand why Ed Sheeran, backed by Elton John, Eric Clapton and hundreds of other artists, wrote to the Prime Minister just three months ago to say:
“The time to act is now. State schools … have seen a … decrease in music provision … How many more venues need to close, how many music programs need to be cut before we realise that we can’t just celebrate success, we have to protect the foundations that make it?”
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Well, I do agree with the words of my noble friend Lady Longfield. I am sure that she, like me, is dismayed at, for example, the big fall-off in young people able to take GCSEs in those subjects over the period of time that the noble Lord was in government, and that she is dismayed about, as the noble Baroness said, the numbers of teachers that we are losing in this particular area. This Government have a commitment, not only through the national centre for arts and music education but through our investment in our schools and teachers, and our commitment to a new national curriculum available for all schools, and an entitlement for all children. I only wish the last Government had been as committed.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, further to the question from my noble friend Lady Bull, how is the overall effectiveness of the music and dance scheme assessed? Clearly it is a great scheme, but is it possible that there are talented students who need support who may still be missing out, and, if so, how might this be assessed and rectified?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The music and dance scheme has a particular function to play in enabling very talented young people who would not otherwise be able to access the really excellent education provided by the schools in this scheme. But it would therefore be right to say that, of course, there will always potentially be other children and young people who could have benefited from this type of education. That is why we need a broader approach, as is manifest through the proposal for the national centre for arts and music education, to ensure that we are widening the opportunities for all young people to get to that position of excellence where they can benefit from the music and dance scheme.
Baby Foods: Nutrition and Marketing
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve nutritional and marketing standards for baby foods.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, foods for infants and young children must meet regulations on nutrition, composition and labelling standards. We expect industry to improve nutritional content and labelling of baby foods, including taking voluntary action to align products with dietary guidelines and best practice. This Government are committed to raising the healthiest generation of children, which is why we are investing £57 million in Start for Life services to improve infant health and feeding, and to provide support to parents.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her Answer. In response to mounting evidence of and concern about the poor nutritional and high sugar content in commercial baby foods, despite their being marketed as a healthy substitute for home-cooked food, the NHS has issued new guidance advising parents not to use these products every day, but only occasionally, if at all. Given that the crucial development in infancy depends on the best possible nutrition, that it is in these early years that lifelong eating habits and tastes can become entrenched, and in view of the escalating crisis in childhood obesity, will the Government now regulate what is sold as baby food and how it is marketed to parents?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I share my noble friend’s views and concerns, and I recognise that the current situation is not good enough. Current regulations set nutritional standards, and we continue to push industry to go further to reduce the sugar content in baby foods. We welcome the recent updates to advice for parents and carers on the Start for Life website—picking up on the particular point that commercial baby foods can be used as part of a baby’s diet but should not be used as the primary source of nutrition for infants—and completely recognise my noble friend’s acknowledgement of how important the first 1,001 days of a baby’s life are for the rest of their lives.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, voluntary action and expectation really have not worked and will not in future. Is the Minister aware of a report published in January evaluating the compliance of UK commercial baby foods with WHO nutritional guidelines? Only 45% adhered to the nutritional standards, less than 60% complied with maximum sugar content requirements and none met the requirements for appropriate nutrient health and marketing claims. The paper concluded that regulatory measures are essential. What do the Government plan to do about it?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I hear the frustration in the noble Baroness’s comments every time she raises this issue, and I would love to have a conversation with her about it. While recognising the frustration, I emphasise that we are challenging industry to improve the nutritional content and labelling of baby foods, including, where it can, taking voluntary action to align products with dietary guidelines and best practice. It is not all doom and gloom, and there is evidence in certain areas of improvement as a result of this. There is a great deal more to do, and going forward we will continue to review the situation and work with the best interests of our children, young people and their families in mind.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Non-Afl)
We know how important this question is. I have been here 14 years, and we have been jumping up and down like crazy frogs on this question. We know that it is all about the messaging and labelling. We know that pouches should mention that they are dangerous for children’s teeth, because more than five milligrams of sugar is too much. Does the Minister think it a good idea for public health departments to train our social and healthcare workers to give simple, easy advice to parents on how they can make cheap, nutritional food to feed their children?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble Baroness raises a very important point. This is why we are investing so much in the Start for Life programme, building on all the evidence and experience from the Sure Start model. That model worked because it brought all the other professionals together under one roof. Parents could go through the door, and nobody knew why they were going through that door; there was no stigma attached to it. The other aspect is peer support: the sharing of experiences with other parents. Weaning children is difficult—trust me, I have been there. Parents need huge support. The pressure from advertising, and externally, is immense. The noble Baroness is right: no one agency can do this. It is a team effort, and we all need to pull together.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, is this not a question of the private sector yet again failing to introduce the required changes? Over many years, the previous Government failed to do anything about this. Do we not need proper regulation, introduced as quickly as possible?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I have answered the point before. Our focus is on improving the situation; however, we kid ourselves if we think that it will be solved just by forms of regulation. This is a much bigger issue: it is about changing culture. It is about making sure that we take young women—and dads—forward on this journey and that we look at every opportunity we have to improve the performance of the industry, to call it out when it is failing and to ensure that we have the best evidence to take things forward.
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, the British Dietetic Association estimates that 34% of women in UK breastfeed. We all know that breastfeeding is best for babies, but compared with Europe, the UK figure is one of the lowest. In Germany, 50% of women do some breastfeeding at six months; in the US, the figure is around 49%. New mothers are discharged from hospital the next day, even if they have had a caesarean section. What are the Government doing to support new mothers to breastfeed their babies? What are they doing to promote breastfeeding, particularly as formula companies have huge marketing budgets?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
In my former life, I never dreamed that I would spend so much time talking about breastfeeding in the House of Lords. The noble Baroness raises such an important point, and this is why we are investing in Start for Life. The Start for Life services include £18.5 million to improve infant feeding services and to provide practical support with breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is tough; it is not easy. In days gone by there was enormous support in hospitals for women who had their babies there; that does not exist any more. We want to make sure that it is delivered through the communities, to come up with a network of champions to help women, and to improve the statistics the noble Baroness so ably outlined.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
Some mothers genuinely cannot breastfeed; I was among them. What are the Government doing to strengthen the rules about sugar and other unfortunate things getting into baby food?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble and learned Baroness is right about ensuring that we do not stigmatise women who cannot breastfeed; that is critical. There is criticism of some of the organisations supporting breastfeeding, which have perhaps gone too far. We do take this seriously, looking at the different ages, moving from infant formula onwards, and frankly, the advice from companies is quite misleading. All this needs to be taken into account to get a rounded picture and to ensure that consumers are getting the best information possible.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, I agree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler- Sloss, that we should not stigmatise women who cannot breastfeed. Nevertheless, baby formula does specify that breast is best. Following on from the supplementary question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, what general awareness process are the Government engaging in to inform parents that home-cooked food is better than pre-packaged food because it is not ultra-processed and not expensive, like baby food, but much cheaper, and so they know exactly what goes into it?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble Baroness touches on the importance of the family hub model, making sure that it builds on Sure Start, but it is also important that we keep an eye on what is happening. The Competition and Markets Authority’s market study is important, and we are looking at this very closely. We want to work with the devolved Governments to make sure that our UK-wide response is appropriate. That level of consultation takes time; we want to get it right and we want to move forward on this issue.
Social Care
Lord Bradley
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to improve social care provision over the next two years.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, this year we have boosted funding for social care authorities by up to £3.7 billion and provided £86 million for home adaptations for older and disabled people. Further improvements include the largest ever uplift to the carer’s allowance earnings limit, legislation on the first fair pay agreement for care workers and new standards for care technologies. The noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is chairing an independent commission to make recommendations for a national care service, with the first phase reporting next year.
Lord Bradley (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that reply and welcome the initiatives that she has outlined. I want to raise further the extraordinary work of unpaid workers in the care system. The Government have confirmed to me that 61% of unpaid carers in receipt of carer’s allowance have no other additional income from paid employment. This is not surprising, since eligibility for the allowance requires 35 hours of caring every week, but the amount received for this work is only £83.30 a week or less than £2.40 an hour. Will the Minister urgently review this woeful level of recompense, well ahead of the review by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, in 2028? This is for millions of unpaid carers, without whom the social care system may well collapse.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his question and take this opportunity to pay tribute to all those unpaid carers who make such an important contribution to the lives of the most vulnerable in our society. This Government are committed to ensuring that families have the support they need, and we know that many people want to play a role caring for their family and friends. Quite frankly, it is exceptionally difficult at times. We want to ensure that they are better able to look after their own health and well-being, which will enable them to care for others. To support our unpaid carers, in April 2025 the Government increased the carer’s allowance weekly earnings limit from £150 to £196. This is the largest ever increase. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, through her commission, will be looking at this situation very closely as we move forward.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of an adult social care business. It is time—and I hope the review looks at this—to rename carers something other than “carers”, because it distorts the training and level of professionalism that carers provide every day. If we try to rephrase the name “carers”, they may see that there is a career progress model in place for them.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I welcome the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, that she will look to reach out to all the different organisations, including the voluntary sector and carers themselves. She will hear from across the sector, and I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, will make her voice heard as we take this work forward.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, the recent report of the Health and Social Care Committee found that too much emphasis is being put on the cost of reforming social care and not enough thought being given to the human and financial cost of inaction. It also argued that the Government need to measure the true cost of inaction so that they can present a robust financial case, not least to the Treasury, and one that takes account of the loss of tax receipts as people have to give up work and withdraw from the labour market. Do the Government agree with that analysis?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
It will come as no surprise to the noble Baroness that we are looking at the recommendations of the Health and Social Care Select Committee report and will come forward with our responses. It is of course vital to look at the impact of the model that we have now on society, on the people involved and on the economy. The various debates we have had in this House in the time I have been here have picked that up and recognised the valuable contribution that carers make to the economy. We have to start taking the holistic view moving forward. That is why we have the commission: to look at all the different aspects, improve the situation and make progress.
Lord Laming (CB)
Does the Minister agree that the Government will not achieve their ambitions for the National Health Service without also having a well-developed and successful plan of development to make social care services easily accessible, properly trained and well respected? Do the Government have a development plan in mind for social care?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble Lord raises such an important point. I am sure he will also be thinking about the vexed issue of hospital discharge and all the issues that are creating such difficulties in the system. I emphasise that adult social care is part of our vision for a neighbourhood health service, shifting care from hospitals to communities, with the NHS working alongside local authorities, social care providers and the voluntary sector. I am sure we are all looking forward to the announcement of the 10-year health plan, looking at how we can move healthcare from hospitals to the community but recognising that all agencies out in the community have a vital part to play to make this story successful.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have rightly adopted a preventive approach as far as the NHS is concerned. Does my noble friend agree that it would be a good idea to apply this to social care as well? To take, for example, unpaid carers—I can never resist the temptation to remind your Lordships that they save the nation £192 billion a year—if you put in a small amount of support for those unpaid carers at an early point in their caring journey, you can often prevent a crisis arising. It surely makes very sound economic sense to adopt this preventive approach to social care.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble Baroness has made the case for us all. As we know, one of the main pillars of changing the health system we have is to move from sickness to prevention. I believe you can transfer that logic and thinking to this area. We have fantastic examples of different neighbourhoods having stepped up to the plate, working to bridge the gap between the health service and local social care providers and working with carers as well. It is critical that we look at the examples of good practice and work out how we can roll them out so that we can make the shift that needs to be made.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, in January the Government announced that they will develop a shared digital platform to allow up-to-date medical information to be shared between the NHS and care staff. How much progress has been made in developing this digital platform?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
It will come as no surprise to the noble Baroness that I cannot give her the detail on that question, but I will be very happy to get back to her with an update on where we have got to. Obviously, the whole area of digitalisation is another of the pillars in moving the health service forward. So many people collect data but do not use it. We are very good at harvesting it but not actually analysing it and working out how we can use it to best effect. But it is one of the commitments.
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Lab)
My Lords, what discussions are being held with private sector care companies to require them, in exchange for the often considerable amount of money they receive from the public purse, to work with education institutions to provide high-quality training for social care staff in their local area?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My noble friend raises an important point. If we are moving to a neighbourhood health service, we need to engage with local social care providers and make sure that they are part of the mix. This is where the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is starting. She is bringing everyone together to talk about how to deliver this. We need to make sure that our training institutions are engaged and that everyone who can contribute is around the table to move things forward.
Young People: Sporting Activities
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Lord Moynihan
To ask His Majesty’s Government what is the timeline and budget to deliver the Prime Minister’s commitment made at his meeting with the Lionesses football team on 19 June to ensure young people have equal access to high-quality sport and extra-curricular activities.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, we are committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity and supporting more children to access high-quality PE and sport. The new commitment, outlined by the Prime Minister as he wished the Lionesses good luck in their future tournament, is to create links between schools, local clubs and national governing bodies of sport to help deliver this. We are working with the school and sports sectors to design the partnerships. Further details, including funding, will be outlined in due course. Following a commercial process, we expect these partnerships to be in place from autumn 2026.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
The announcement by the Prime Minister that every child across the country will be given equal access to high-quality PE and sport, as the Government have indicated, will be welcomed across all sides of the House. However, in view of the fact that some 3.9 million children—an increase this year to nearly 40% of our schoolchildren—do not meet even the Chief Medical Officer’s basic recommendation for daily physical activity, let alone have access to high-quality PE, and given the Government’s 15% cut to DCMS’s administration budget by 2030 in the spending review and their plan to remove Sport England’s role as a statutory consultee in the planning process, leading to Sport England’s view that this will have a negative impact on physical activity with the loss of yet more school playing fields, does the Minister agree that a clearly costed, additional multi-billion pound budget will be essential to avoid falling massively short of the delivery of the Prime Minister’s laudable aspirations?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Of course it is important that there is a fully funded and costed programme, but when we talk about the facilities that are so important for enabling young people—in fact, all people—to engage in sport, I point the noble Lord to the increased capital investment in schools announced as part of the spending review, part of which can be used for maintaining their facilities, and DCMS’s announcement of an additional £400 million for community sports facilities. It is also important that where we have strong local clubs and national governing bodies—which are, to give them their due, providing lots of opportunities for young people—we also need something to bring those things together to ensure that, however much investment we make in the system, we maximise it for children to be able to benefit. That is the intention of the new partnership.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, when, a good few years ago now, all three major parties looked at sports policy, we all said that there should be a link with clubs. We also all said that there had to be a mix of options available to make sure people find something they will enjoy or stand a chance at. Will the Government commit that they will not create unique monocultures for sport but that people will have options? Some people will be hockey players, some people rugby players, many people will be soccer players, netball players, et cetera. Making sure that everybody has an option is very important, otherwise this will merely repeat some of the failures of the past.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an important point: activity is important, but not every young person will want to do the same sport. Although, as we can see with the Lionesses, football has arguably become much more popular for girls, the focus has quite often been on traditional sports. This has meant that girls, for example, have not necessarily found the things that they would like to do to keep active. I can absolutely commit that it will be part of the Government’s intention, both through this partnership and more broadly, to ensure that there is a range of opportunities to enable everybody to find sport and activity that they enjoy, and to keep healthy.
Baroness Gohir (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister say what specific action the Government are taking to close the ethnicity gap with children in sport? Even within different ethnic groups, children access different types of sports. Addressing this gap will help with integration and community cohesion.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes a very important point. It partly relates to the extent to which we can provide a whole range of opportunities for people to engage in activity, and the way we use the new partnership arrangements locally to see what sort of provision is available and how we can link schools more easily to that local provision, which may well come from and be promoted by different parts of the community. This must be an approach that ensures everybody has the opportunity to benefit from the obvious advantages that come from being more active and taking part in sport.
Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lords, for many years now, schoolchildren have been losing access to swimming pools; pool time has been in decline. That is clearly not the fault of the present Government. However, we are where we are. We need to stop that decline and reverse it so that schoolchildren increasingly have access to pools, not just to create the champions of the future but to save lives, because swimming is the one sport that might make a difference between living and dying.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right. That is why it is a key part of the national curriculum that children should be able to swim before the age of 11. It is why the ongoing commitment to the primary PE and sport premium, which is funded for the next academic year at £320 million, can also be—and has been—used to ensure that there is access to swimming facilities and water safety in the way my noble friend outlined. We also need to ensure that local authorities recognise the importance of swimming pools so that everybody can benefit.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s investment of £100 million to upgrade sports facilities and improve access to sport for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. However, noble Lords will be aware of other significant disparities that persist across demographics relating to participation in sport and extracurricular activities. These include disparities relating to race and gender, as well as stubborn socioeconomic and regional inequalities. How do the Government plan to level the playing field regionally to enable the most underrepresented groups to participate more fully in sport?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate is right to recognise the importance, and the possibility, of engaging children with special educational needs and disabilities in sport and PE. That is why the Government have approved a grant of £300,000 a year for up to three years to increase and improve opportunities for pupils with SEND by identifying where there is already good practice and sharing it more widely. As I suggested, that needs to be an important element of what happens with the new partnerships to ensure that links are made between partners so that everybody, regardless of their background, can get the benefits that can come from sport and activity.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, according to modelling by the Royal Society for Public Health that came out yesterday, rates of overweight or obese children will rise in 90% of local authority areas in the next decade. Separately, approximately one in five children and young people aged eight to 25 currently experiences a probable mental health disorder. It is a proven fact that sport, physical exercise and good diet help with these issues, so does the Minister agree that the various cross-party amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill relating to nutritious food and increased physical education should be accepted?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Given that we are about to go on to day eight in Committee on the Bill, I look forward to that discussion and debate. The noble Earl is, of course, right to identify the benefits of sport and activity to ensure young people remain healthy, both physically and mentally. That is why, without waiting for the Bill and the amendments he outlined, we are already making progress to support sports activity in schools. More broadly, through the work of my colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, we are ensuring that grass-roots sports facilities are provided as well. I look forward to the debate that the noble Earl mentioned.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, I was fortunate enough to sit on the National Plan for Sport and Recreation Committee with the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Addington, and a number of other noble Lords. We learned of the remarkable lack of access to secondary school playing fields after school hours, particularly for local school clubs. It seemed to us that that was merely a lack of support for man hours and staffing. What are the Government doing to increase access to the few remaining secondary school playing fields?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Let us be clear: it is not true that there are only a few remaining secondary school playing fields. However, the noble Earl makes a really important point that, where a facility is provided for a school to use during the school day, we should work harder to ensure it is available for communities to use. This is alongside the additional investment the Government are putting in anyway to ensure that there are grass-roots and community sports facilities.
Middle East
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, events in the Middle East over the past week have brought into sharp focus a truth that we ignore at our peril: that the Islamic Republic of Iran remains one of the most dangerous and destabilising forces in the world today. The United States’ targeted strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure were a necessary and vital act in the face of a regime that continues to enrich uranium beyond civilian thresholds, arms proxies across the region and openly calls for the destruction of its neighbour, and our ally, Israel. Yet, amid this defining moment, the response from His Majesty’s Government has been almost non-existent. Over the weekend, in the media and in the Foreign Secretary’s Statement made in the other place yesterday, not once has the Government even had the courage to come out in support of this vital action.
It seems bizarre to us on these Benches that decisive action to neutralise the nuclear threat posed by one of the world’s most dangerous and volatile states is not openly welcomed by the Government. I want to ask the noble Lord for some clarity. Will he now take this opportunity to come out in support of the strikes undertaken by the US on Iran’s nuclear facilities? If not, can he explain why? Could it possibly be a result of the legal advice reportedly issued by the Attorney-General that it could be illegal for Britain to play any role in the Iran campaign except for defending our allies? Does the Minister no longer consider Israel an ally?
My noble friend Lord Wolfson has made clear that the UK has a strong legal ground for supporting this action. There is at least, I am sure the Minister will concede, a legal debate to be had on this question. Why did the Government choose to come down on the side which went against our allies in the US and Israel? I wonder what quite was going through the mind of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, when he issued this supposed advice. I cannot imagine why anyone witnessing a showdown between democracy and tyranny, between our ally Israel and an unhinged murderous caliphate, would conclude that we better not get involved because we might break the rules.
One shudders to think what might have happened had such advice been followed in 1939 or 1950 or 1990—or in 2022 when our friends in Ukraine were barbarically attacked. Fortunately, in those instances, our willingness to support our allies was not governed by academic hesitation. We must be clear that history will not smile on us for this, however much the Government swaddle themselves in grand talk about international law. For the noble and learned Lord to encourage the UK to stand idly by while Israel faces the real risk of genocidal nuclear attack seems to be a serious misjudgment.
It is deeply regrettable that Ministers have failed to issue a clear and immediate statement of support for our closest ally. The US acted to uphold international security and defend the global non-proliferation regime. That it did and continues to do so without our support is something we should be ashamed of. Let us be clear: Iran is not just a regional threat; it is a global threat. It bankrolls terrorism from Gaza to Beirut, from Baghdad to Sanaa. It plots assassinations on European soil, it disrupts shipping lanes in international waters and it is actively pursuing the technological means to blackmail the world with nuclear force. For the Government to equivocate in the face of such aggressive and dangerous action from Iran is both morally questionable and, in my view, strategically short-sighted. We should have stood shoulder to shoulder with our allies, and the Government failed to do so.
Let me also address this morning’s announcement of a temporary ceasefire. If it holds, it will be welcome because any cessation of violence offers a chance to de-escalate and protect civilian lives. But let us not be naive. Already this morning, Israeli officials have reported that Iran violated the ceasefire. That is a reminder of the challenges we face when dealing with bad actors who have no interest in peace and further underscores the fundamental threat that Iran poses to peace and lives in the region and wider world.
We must also support our allies in ensuring that de-escalation does not mean appeasement. I therefore ask the Minister to explain to the House what steps the Government will take from today to ensure that any remaining nuclear capability that Iran has is dismantled. If the Government remain so intent on pursuing a purely diplomatic solution, how will they change their approach to make sure that any agreement reached with Iran holds firm?
Let us not forget that diplomacy failed to prevent Iran acquiring uranium enriched to 60%. Let us not forget that, already, it appears that Iran has violated the terms of a diplomatic settlement to broker a ceasefire with Israel. The approach the Government have adopted has not been very successful. I hope the Minister will take this opportunity to set out what the Government will do differently in future. It is not enough to say that we are pursuing a diplomatic solution, because that has been unsuccessful.
Finally, I have some questions about our country’s relationship with the US and our allies. As noble Lords will be aware, the Prime Minister is in The Hague today at the NATO summit. I am sure that, in the light of this, the Minister and his colleagues will have asked themselves this question: how did they get it so wrong on the US and Iran? The Government’s fundamental assumption, that there was time for negotiation, was clearly just wrong. It is a fact that the Government were blindsided on a matter of huge geopolitical importance and completely failed to understand what the Americans were thinking. The Prime Minister has been adamant that the President would not intervene in Iran. He went so far as to say he was in “no doubt” about the matter, despite very public indications to the contrary.
We are supposed to have a special relationship with the United States. This seems to be in doubt given how the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have acted in this case. In the light of this, does the Minister still believe that the US and the UK have a special relationship? Does he think that failing to come out in support of the US has damaged this relationship?
The events of recent days have exposed not only the growing threat posed by Iran but the shortcomings in the Government’s response. At a time when clarity and strategic resolve are required, Ministers have offered neither. They have failed to support our closest ally, misjudged the geopolitical landscape and clung to a diplomatic approach that has proved ineffective. The regime in Tehran thrives on hesitation; it exploits weakness, distrusts peace and seeks power through terror and provocation. If we are serious about international security, non-proliferation and our relationships with our allies, our response must be firm, united and credible. The US and Israel acted decisively and justifiably; the question is whether this Government will finally find the courage to stand with them.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, every casualty in the Iran-Israel conflict is one that could have been avoided, but it is worth remembering that, in the same period, almost as many people have been shot in Gaza simply queuing for food, and the crisis in the region continues.
On Iran, the US clearly decided to escalate to de-escalate. It may yet re-escalate, because the whiplash of posts from the President this morning are hard to follow with a degree of reassurance, but I hope that a ceasefire can be operational, even though the most recent updates require us to be somewhere between pessimistic and cautiously optimistic. The Trump Administration seem to think that war plays out like a reality TV show, but this is real violence with real deaths and real-life consequences, not so much for egotistical men in their 80s and near-80s as for the victims, who are primarily civilians—women and children in particular.
The Tehran regime is clearly homicidal, but we may find out that it is probably not suicidal. The US and Netanyahu Governments are clearly tactical, but we will find out that they are probably not strategic. The Minister told the House last Thursday that the US was seeking to de-escalate at the very time it was deciding to escalate. The immediate repercussions are being seen, and we cannot now know for certain what will follow.
Trump and Hegseth said the Iranian nuclear programme was obliterated and ended. Now US officials are giving a more sober view of “damaged” and “delayed”. The IAEA’s information is probably more reliable: that it is likely that there has been significant damage—but this is difficult to verify. Even more difficult to verify is the impact the strikes will have on preventing weaponisation in the medium term. The IAEA warned against military strikes for the very reason that they would likely make it even harder to verify, and I suspect that may be the reality now.
Unquestionably, Iranian options in the next period are more limited than they would have been 10 days ago, but it is rash to think that we know whether Iran will continue to act immediately or play a game of time on a calendar it has operated under for many years. I was in Iraq the last time Iran claimed the US would pay irreparable damage, for the killing of Soleimani outside Baghdad Airport; instead, it signalled and then performed a largely performative display of attacks near Erbil. Full escalation or controlled tit-for-tat is a delicate dance where miscalculation is deadly, but it may well be being played out.
We therefore cannot predict the next 48 hours from Tehran, not to mention the next 48 days; nor for that matter, and with deep regret, can we necessarily predict that from the Trump Administration. We can predict heightened rhetoric taking on increasingly macho and jingoistic terms. From loose talk of regime change, the current Tehran regime will likely become even more repressive, and more secretive and patient in rebuilding its proxy relationships and other interests.
Last week in the Chamber, and just a few moments ago, we heard noble Lords drumming a jingoistic beat. We also heard—more rightly in my view—caution. I would advise the House to listen to the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont—the noble friend of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan. These Benches agree with the Government’s position of not participating.
As much as I agree that Iran should not have nuclear weapon capability—and I strongly agree that Israel should have the ability to defend itself against unacceptable calls for its destruction—we continue to see too many tacticians and too few strategists. As an Iraqi friend, who, incidentally, detests the theocratic dictatorship in Tehran, told me recently, Netanyahu was a cheerleader for regime change in Baghdad 20 years ago and helped persuade Bush and Blair. He handed it to Iran. He wanted Gaza to be in violent competition with the West Bank to prevent a two-state solution and bolstered Hamas. He successfully lobbied Trump for the US to leave JCPOA, which restarted the weapon capability path of nuclear Iran, and now he has positioned Trump into looking weak if he did not join his tactics on bombing and regime-change rhetoric. At each step of the way, quick tactical wins led to strategic errors.
We of course hope for a ceasefire with Iran, but we fervently hope for respite for the civilians in Gaza and the West Bank too—so I close with regard to the situation there. It is alarming, after all the suffering of the civilians within Gaza, to see the recent reports of Hamas now recruiting. The very circumstances exist now for Hamas to regain strength. This is what we were told would be inconceivable with the war aims of the IDF. Reconstruction preparedness is now even harder, given the policy choices for the Gaza Humanitarian Fund to be a mercenary and profiteering operation to supply food and medicine.
So I ask the Government: what work are they doing with our allies to ensure that food is being supplied, and on the restrictions at the border—not assisted by the Knesset law preventing UNRWA working with third parties to co-ordinate the delivery of food and medicine—to ensure that the people of Gaza no longer have to experience the indignity of queuing in danger areas for food? Will the Government provide clarity on the future funding for both programme and humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza delivered through UNRWA after July?
The medieval scenes that we see, of people having to queue to receive food and medicine across an apocalyptic backdrop, mean that the current situation must end. The GHF approach has been a deadly failure, and the acute shortage of food, deliberately being withheld at the Gaza border, must end. I hope that, if there is breathing space with Iran and Israel, we can at least focus on getting the aid in, which is desperately needed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
I thank both noble Lords for their contributions, comments and questions. I say to the noble Lord opposite that I am rather disappointed with his tone because I thought that, in the other place, the shadow Secretary of State made it clear that she was with the Government on putting forward peace and security. The security of this nation is vital. His tone rather underplayed those comments.
I make it clear that we have long had concerns about the Iranian nuclear programme, and we have been very clear that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. The US has taken action to alleviate that threat. It is important that we now de-escalate the situation, stabilise the region and get all parties around the negotiating table. Although a ceasefire between Iran and Israel is an opportunity to secure much-needed stability, the events this morning clearly show how fragile and volatile the situation is. We strongly urge both sides to do their utmost to hold to the terms of the ceasefire.
On the action, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, alluded to the assessment. One thing that President Trump has been absolutely clear about is that this action is not the end of the story in dealing with the nuclear threat in Iran. He has made it clear that he wants to negotiate a deal, and that is fundamental for the long-term security of the Middle East.
As I say, we have been very clear about the nuclear programme. It is important that we get all parties back around the negotiating table. We have strongly supported diplomatic efforts to reach a lasting settlement, as President Trump has indicated. This is now the moment of opportunity; we can have a diplomatic outcome, because only a diplomatic outcome will provide a lasting solution to Iran’s nuclear programme. We have made it clear to Iran: negotiate with the US. That is backed up by the E3, and that is what we as a country should do to make our position more secure.
I pay tribute to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary for what they have been trying to do over the past three days. The Foreign Secretary has spoken to the US Secretary of State, Rubio, the Israeli Foreign Minister and the Iranian Foreign Minister to urge de-escalation. He has also spoken to other regional counterparts, including the Egyptian, Lebanese, Saudi, Emirati, Bahraini and Cypriot Foreign Ministers—all strong allies of the United Kingdom. We are absolutely committed to that diplomatic effort. The Prime Minister has spoken to President Trump, Prime Minister Carney, the King of Jordan, the Sultan of Oman and the German president to support de-escalation—all vital allies of this country—and provide security. The Minister for the Middle East met the Iranian ambassador yesterday to stress the need for a return to diplomatic efforts.
We made clear our condemnation of Iran’s attacks on Qatar and Iraq yesterday. Our focus again has been on de-escalation and diplomacy to end this crisis. The Foreign Secretary made it clear that we stand with our allies in solidarity with the US and Qatar, and we have let Qatar know that it will always have our steadfast support. We are aware that Qatar has communicated—it has sent a letter to the UN Secretary-General. It is, of course, up to the UN to respond to that letter.
The United Kingdom did not participate and is not participating in the Israeli and US strikes. We continue to urge restraint. Our priority is stability in the Middle East. The situation remains volatile, and we remain clear that Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. More broadly, we have always supported Israel’s right to self-defence and its right to protect its citizens. The UK has consistently pushed for a ceasefire since the escalations began, and we continue to work with international partners.
The Minister’s efforts over the past two days have been about protecting our citizens and trying to get UK citizens out of harm’s way. That is why we organised the flight from Tel Aviv—and, hopefully, another one took off today. The interests of our country are a priority, but our UK citizens are also a priority.
In relation to the noble Lord’s comments, I am not going to provide a legal commentary right now. As I said last week, all actors must abide by international law. The noble Lord is fully aware of the long-standing convention reflected in the Ministerial Code. It is not routinely disclosed whether the law officers have been asked to provide legal advice, and the content of that advice is not routinely disclosed. The convention provides the fullest guarantee that government business will be conducted at all times in the light of thorough and candid legal advice. However, I repeat: all our efforts are about ensuring the security of this country and peace in the Middle East.
To be very clear, as I have said before in this Chamber, I am a friend of Israel and have always recognised the threats to its security and the tough neighbourhood it lives in. The Government cannot accept what is happening in Gaza or the West Bank, but this must never undermine our support for Israel’s security. We have to be very candid with our ally about the situation in Gaza. We all understand what a frightening time it must be for Israeli citizens, running into bomb shelters. The Foreign Secretary has expressed his personal concern. That is why we are absolutely focused on ensuring that we contain this conflict and avoid escalation.
I am clear about the threat from Iran, but we will not give up on diplomacy or the interests of the people of Gaza. We plead with the Israeli Government to open the borders so that we can get the necessary aid in. We have made it absolutely clear that the hostages, or, sadly, the bodies of the hostages, must be returned immediately. We must see a ceasefire.
We are a very strong ally of the United States and we are working together. President Trump has made it clear that he wants to see a long-term deal on the possession of nuclear weapons in Iran. The United Kingdom and its E3 allies will support him in that effort. I hope the noble Lord opposite will do the same.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, unlike the extraordinary accusations made by the spokesman for the Conservative Party just now, I congratulate the Government on the carefully thought-out and nuanced position they have taken on the military conflict between the US, Israel and Iran. I thank my noble friend and his senior colleagues for the efforts they are making to try to find a long-term and lasting diplomatic solution to the issue of nuclear weapons in Iran. Turning to what is happening in Gaza, can my noble friend tell the House a little more about what is happening with the replacement of the completely failed Israeli-American system of aid distribution, which I think the Conservative spokesman said he thought was fine? Have steps been taken to replace it with NGOs that are familiar with the best ways of distributing aid in Gaza, so that we do not see any more slaughter of Palestinian civilians desperately trying to get food aid for their starving children?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for her comments. To be absolutely clear, we are leaving no stone unturned in getting aid into Gaza. We are working with a range of NGOs—everyone possible—but we remain committed to the solution of ensuring that aid is properly distributed through the main agency, UNRWA. We have sought assurances on that and we have taken every opportunity that we have had to put it to the Israeli Government that they should open those routes to aid to ensure that it can get through. We are now in a desperate situation; as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said, those seeking aid through the US-Israeli agency are being shot as they approach the distribution points. That cannot be right. We must be able to get proper aid in through the appropriate agencies.
Baroness Browning (Con)
Does the Minister share my concern that the first port of call for the Iranians to be provided with something not immediately available in the world—scientific expertise in nuclear weaponry, to replace the nuclear scientists whom we know have been killed—was Moscow? Is the Minister confident that, against the backdrop of the talks that will necessarily take place, and as we cannot yet identify what has happened to the uranium and given that particular port of call, we will keep our eye on the ball over what Iran will do in future?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right, and we should be concerned that that was the Iranian Foreign Minister’s first port of call, and we should be aware of what Putin said to him. However, that means it is imperative that we support President Trump, who has made it clear that the only long-term solution to ensuring Iran does not have a nuclear weapons capability is to “do a deal”, as the President puts it. We will absolutely be supporting our ally in achieving that fundamental objective.
The Lord Bishop of Leeds
My Lords, I am grateful for the Statement and the commitments the Government are making, but history teaches us that you cannot bomb an idea or a resentment out of existence. Going back to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, about the difference between strategy and tactics, what scenario planning are the Government doing to address the next three or four generations of terrorists who are being born amid the traumas of the current violence?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate makes an important point: that our actions should not be only in international diplomacy but should look at our communities at home and how we bring them together. It is also important that we ensure that all our communities are safe, and that is why we are taking every possible action, particularly against malign states who intend to intervene. He is right that we should focus on community building and ensuring that the terrible conditions do not provoke people into taking the kind of horrendous actions we have seen in the past.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the Statement from the Minister and urge the Government not to follow the drumbeat of escalation and to learn the lessons of Iraq in 2003. On the understandably delayed UN conference initiated by the French and the Saudis, and now that we have this window of opportunity with the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, what actions are the Government taking to bring forward as soon as possible the date for that meeting? It is urgently needed; we cannot take our eye off what is happening in Palestine, particularly in Gaza.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The noble Lord is correct and as I said last week, we were extremely disappointed about the postponement of the conference, but it was inevitable because it was not going to be possible for all the participants who needed to attend to be there. Let me reassure the noble Lord that we are working very closely with the French and the Saudis to ensure that the two-state solution conference takes place as soon as possible. The Government will be working very hard to ensure that the conference is a success and that we can look towards the long-term future.
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend the Minister in his position and observe that the stance taken by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is at complete variance with what his Government did in 14 years of power—which was not to start nuking everybody and seeking to attack aggressively, but to pursue the very diplomacy that he seeks to promote now. As a former UK Middle East Minister, I suggest that we need to recognise the two main fault-lines in this region: first, Palestine and Israel, and, secondly, Shia/Sunni, which means Iran and Saudi. What is needed is a regional summit of the Saudis, the Gulf states, Egypt, probably Jordan, certainly Israel and Iran as well, to try to provide a long-term stable plan for the region.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I agree with my noble friend and, as I said in response to the earlier question, that is why we have been working with France and the Saudis on the two-state solution. Of course, it looks extremely difficult to apply, but in working hard with allies in the region, I believe that that can be the long-term secure future that can resolve those issues.
I repeat that the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for the Middle East, not just in the past few days but all this week, have constantly been in touch with all our Middle East allies—across those divides, if you like—to ensure that we focus on long-term security, stability and de-escalation. That is what we have been focused on. The long-term solution to Iran’s nuclear capabilities is what President Trump said: do a deal and secure the long-term future.
Lord Pickles (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on their decision to move towards proscribing Palestine Action. I urge them to take the next logical step and proscribe the people who are paying for Palestine Action and for terrorism on our streets in Europe: the IRGC. Can they act quickly, because we need to make our streets safer?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I totally agree with the noble Lord that we need to make our streets safer. Iran’s destabilisation of the Middle East, human rights violations and nuclear escalation also include threats to people in the UK. All these actions are absolutely abhorrent, and we will not hesitate to take the most effective measures against the regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. We are working at pace to identify further ways to deal with state threats, including those from the IRGC. On 4 March, we announced that we will place the Iranian state, including its intelligence services and the IRGC, on the enhanced tier of the new foreign influence registration scheme. As the Home Secretary announced to Parliament on Monday 19 May, the review of Jonathan Hall KC delivers a suite of recommendations to tackle state threats, and we are committed to taking them forward, including the creation of a new state threats proscription tool. I hope that the noble Lord will understand that we are focused on dealing with that threat.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome and admire the way my noble friend the Minister has presented the case for the Government today, in his calm and measured way—in stark contrast to the belligerence of the Opposition spokesman. I am glad that my noble friend is in charge of these things and not the Opposition spokesman.
I ask my noble friend to reflect with me—and, I hope, come to the same conclusion—that western intervention in the affairs of the Middle East rarely seems to end happily, whether it is drawing boundaries, supplying arms or changing Governments. Can he assure me that the watchword of this Government—going forward on this series of crises, with new things happening every day—will be one of extreme caution? It is so much easier to get embroiled in a conflict there than it is to get out of one.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I appreciate my noble friend’s comments. I reassure the House that I am absolutely committed to working with all sides, including shadow Ministers opposite, to ensure that we put the security of this country first. There is no partisanship here; we want to work together to ensure the security of this country. My noble friend is right that, in a situation that can escalate so quickly, caution is absolutely essential. The key element here is how we work with our allies, not just those across the Atlantic but particularly those in the region. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, has not been provoked yet to ask me a question, but he has been absolutely right in his past contributions, particularly as Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, when he focused on building strong alliances with our allies. This Government and I are determined to follow in those footsteps.
Lord Green of Deddington (CB)
My Lords, as the Minister knows better than most of us, this is a very complex situation. The Government have handled it rather well so far; it has been a very complex week and the decisions taken have been very accurate. Nevertheless, I hope that the Government will be extremely careful in relation to Iran; that is where the difficulties will arise and where we could find ourselves, at short notice, in a very difficult situation.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I appreciate the comments of the noble Lord. We are determined to actually focus on all those diplomatic tools we have available. We are absolutely focused on that. I also reassure noble Lords that we did not participate in the US or Israeli strikes. We were given due notice, as we would expect as close allies of the US. We have been moving assets to the region to make sure that we are in a position to protect our own interests, personnel, assets and allies. Our first duty is to ensure that our forces and bases in the region are safe and secure. We have been moving assets to the region for that reason.
I agree with the noble Lord. We are cautious and absolutely focused on diplomatic efforts, but we remain committed to protecting our troops and assets.
Lord Hussain (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s Statement on the de-escalation of the crisis in Iran, but my heart bleeds for the people of Gaza who are being killed—men, women and children—while trying to collect food and water. According to Reuters, 44 people were killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza on Friday while collecting aid. Can the Minister assure the House that British weapons supplied to Israel are not used to kill innocent men, women and children in Gaza?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
The simple answer to the noble Lord is that I can give him that assurance. We have absolutely complied with those licences. We stopped issuing licences for exports to Israel that could be used in Gaza. We are absolutely complying with what he says.
Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)
My Lords, for more than 30 years, the leaders of the Arab League and its friends, the EU and Europe as a whole have sat on their hands and looked on as this despotic Islamic Republic of Iran has acquired nuclear capability. Does the Minister support the military action taken by the USA in endeavouring to destroy the imminent danger, not only to Israel but to the rest of the world in general? Would he also agree with me that securing the release of the 50 hostages still held in Gaza might go some way in alleviating this conflict?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I agree with the noble Baroness on the last part of her question. We have been very clear that the immediate release of all hostages is vital and we have been absolutely clear on the demand for an immediate ceasefire.
The noble Baroness implies something that is not necessarily the case. The US has taken action to alleviate the threat that Iran poses. As President Trump has repeatedly said, and said this morning, the long-term solution of stopping that threat—stopping Iran having nuclear weapons—is a deal, and I have confidence in President Trump in achieving that.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, I have to congratulate the Government on the way they have been handling the current situation. I fought in a number of wars, and there is nothing like fighting in a war to make you realise that you do not want one. The actions we are taking I think will help stop that. Historically, bombing campaigns tend to never win a war, and they do not get you in that direction. Looking back historically, I worked at length with the Americans, our very close allies, in stopping Netanyahu attacking the Iranian nuclear facilities—this is going back a few years. The Minister will probably remember that they actually did dress rehearsals at time.
Can I just clarify with my noble friend the Minister that, if we want to have long-term security for Israel, the only way is to stop fighting and negotiate?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right and I pay tribute to him for his service to this country. He is absolutely right that in the long term—I keep repeating this—the US actions have resulted in alleviating the threat. President Trump has made it clear that the long-term solution is a deal, and that is what this Government will be focused on supporting. We have made it clear, and the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have said to Iran, “Negotiate with the US and reach a deal that removes this threat for ever”.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the noble Lord has spoken about short-term tactical victories versus long-term strategic outcomes. Iran is known to have had 400 kilograms of 60% purity enriched uranium. If it went to 90%, which is relatively easy, it could produce about 10 warheads. The International Atomic Energy Agency and JD Vance have both said they do not know where that uranium now is, and it can be moved in scuba tank-sized objects. A spokesperson for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said:
“It’s difficult to overstate what a big deal this is”
and called this a “potential disaster” for nuclear non-proliferation. Do the Government agree with that analysis?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
We absolutely agree about the threat that this poses. Nobody could have been more concerned to see, prior to the attacks on those nuclear sites, the long truckloads. We do not know where they were going or what was in them, but I think we can all assume that it was not just empty packages that were being taken out. That is why—I am sorry I keep repeating myself—President Trump knows that the actions that he took are not sufficient to remove this threat in the long term. A negotiated deal, with the presence of proper inspection that we have had, is absolutely vital for the future security of the region and the world as a whole.
UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, it is widely accepted that one of the problems that besets the UK economy is the low rate of capital investment in both the public and private sectors. It must be a good thing if the Government assess what will be needed in the way of capital investment and attract resources accordingly. I accept that, for many years, policies on all sides have been less than satisfactory, and I am not in a party-political mode today.
I am in favour of having a planned programme over a planned period, such as a five-year timeframe for capital spending. I welcome the new maintenance fund. My experience in business is that it is essential to provide for maintenance in respect of all capital investments. Having said all that, we are some way from having a coherent and detailed programme for future infrastructure, with the incentives that we need for success. Against that background, which is broadly supportive, I have a number of questions for the Minister.
There remain areas of uncertainty around governance, delivery, capacity and funding. It would be helpful if the Minister could explain how and when these vital details will be revealed in future. It is really important to be clear, at a time when we are often reminded by the Government of the fiscal challenges they face, where the money is coming from.
It appears from the strategy that the Government hope that a substantial portion of this investment will come from off-balance-sheet public/private partnerships. Does the Minister recognise that this is an assumption from the Treasury rather than a hard pledge of cash? If sufficient private investment is not secured, does the noble Lord plan to use public money to fill the gap, or will the Treasury consider legislation to compel private funds to invest in government programmes—an approach that will deter investors in the UK?
Incorporating private finance into the new strategy is a welcome ambition, and I am glad to see the readiness to learn from the past. However, we must ask what changes the Treasury will make to how it engages in PPPs, given the failings around HS2, Metronet and Norfolk and Norwich hospital, to make sure we do not encounter these problems again.
Furthermore, the question that my honourable friend Richard Fuller raised in the other place was not properly answered. What proportion of the £725 billion is newly committed, as against previously announced money? As noble Lords will be aware, investment on this scale and across these timeframes must come with assurances of continuity and origin. I hope that the Minister can address these questions in his response.
The focus in the strategy is, rightly, centred on delivery. One important area in the strategy is housing. The Government have signalled their ambitious intention over the next five years to contribute 1.5 million new homes to the national stock. But the strategy actually funds 580,000 homes over 10 years through Homes England, an average of some 50,000 homes a year. Even on the lowest net migration forecast—350,000 a year—this is far below what is required each year just for migration-driven growth in housing demand. This is not the whole housing picture. However, our concern is that this offers so little net gain for current households waiting for a home. We will explore this further during the passage of the planning Bill, but I would welcome any clarification that the Minister can offer today.
Another area is aviation. The strategy and recent government announcements around aviation are welcome, both on infrastructure and on things such as aerospace redesign. However, as a recent debate in this place highlighted, limitations in the Government’s broader strategy around things such as the European geostationary navigation overlay service, EGNOS—known as the GPS on steroids—mean that these changes will have only a limited impact. Airports such as Exeter, Shoreham and Inverness previously relied on EGNOS to avoid costly infrastructure upgrades but will incur greater costs because they are no longer party to this service.
Does the Minister agree that we need to make sure that, alongside the new spending, we are pursuing non-fiscal policies that enable it to be effective? A key area is skills, which barely get a mention in the 10-year strategy. Yet I know from my time as chair of the Built Environment Committee and as a developer at Tesco that skills in construction, planning and environmental and community engagement matter a great deal. We have become increasingly short of the skills we need to build the hospitals, roads, railways, nuclear facilities, housing, prisons and water and flood defences that we need for a successful country and a successful strategy. I know from the Cabinet Office that, despite the very welcome advances in IT and AI, there is just not enough capacity in terms of skills or supply chains to build all we need. Is this something that concerns the Minister, and what plans does he have to solve the problem?
All of this speaks to the wider question of how we make sure that this money is spent intelligently to deliver value for money, and in a way that grows our economy and promotes productivity. A fundamental question is what our projected return on investment for this strategy actually is: £725 billion, albeit over a long period, is a great deal of money, so our net benefit must also be substantial in order to justify it. I hope the Minister can clear that point up for us.
A related question is: what sort of assessments went into choosing the areas to spend on? Transport spending is welcome, but is the Minister directing investment into the forms of transport that local communities benefit from the most, or does he risk further white elephants? How have the choices been made? Ensuring that we spend infrastructure money wisely, strategically and with an eye to the future is essential if we are to see the sorts of improvements in growth that the Chancellor and the whole country want. In doing so, we must target spending, combine it with wider enabling policy changes and ensure that we do not allow reforms to the Green Book and to local investment to lead to funding for white elephants.
We support the ambition behind this strategy. Long-term investment in infrastructure is a vital step if we are to address the real challenges facing our economy, our services and our communities, but this cannot be an exercise in headline figures or lofty announcements. If this plan is to succeed, the Government must show how the money will be secured, how it will be spent wisely and how it will deliver, for each project, tangible long-term benefits across the whole country—not just for now but for a changing economy and for future generations. How this policy fits in with yesterday’s industrial strategy will also be a vital consideration that we will examine carefully.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, like my colleagues in the other place I welcome this strategy, which if well managed can significantly improve the UK’s potential for growth. My colleague, the MP Sarah Olney, who responded to this Statement in the other place, focused very much on the absence of a serious discussion of skills in the paper. She did not get a very satisfactory answer. I hope that we will hear something more from the Minister today, because that is the Achilles heel of a great deal of this Statement. However, I am going to focus not on the specific projects or on the issues that were covered in the other place but on some critical aspects of the financing.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, indicated, the strategy proposes an updated version of public/private partnerships. I was recently privileged to chair a round table. Under Chatham House rules, I cannot tell you who was there by name, but there were leading developers, contractors and, basically, the money. To my amazement, and completely in contrast to most public statements, everyone started out by arguing against such a flawed model. Through an hour’s discussion, we identified some conditions under which a PPP could work. I will happily share that report, when it is prepared, with the Minister. The most significant condition was that the public sector has to field an educated buyer team with world-class negotiating skills, with world-class engineering, legal and financial knowledge in support. According to the people we talked to, such teams have not been in evidence.
The second most significant condition was that the projects must be specified in very fine detail, far more so than for a conventional financing and, especially if outcomes-based, allowing only for minimal variances. This condition, which many people will agree is essential for successful PPPs, seriously limits the eligible projects. I would like to hear from the Minister how much of a gap this might mean if these issues are pursued, as I hope they will be.
My second finance issue is specific to London, which will not receive government funding for much new infrastructure, even though it drives the national economy. If that is to be the case, London needs to be able to go directly to the financial markets at scale, to raise money against future value added, to build projects—and without the constraints associated with the current tax increment financing schemes, which are heavily laden with Treasury control. Once refined, this could extend to other parts of the country. I stress the urgency of dealing with this issue. London is the UK’s golden goose.
My last issue is to warn the Government again against abusing the regulated asset base as a mechanism to finance small modular nuclear reactors. In the Conservative era, the estimate that we were given on the Economic Affairs Committee for the then Government’s plans was an £80 increase to annual energy bills for ordinary people—£10 for each of eight SMRs. It was clearly an underestimate then and would be even more so now.
Does the Minister agree that the ordinary bill payer must not be treated as the stuffee—believe it or not, that is the common-parlance term—who must carry the risks and costs while others take both the immediate and future profits?
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)
I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Kramer, for their comments and questions, and for their broad support and welcome for this strategy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, began in her non-partisan mode, which I will try to replicate if I can. She talked first about the low rate of investment, and she is absolutely right. When we came into power, we saw the lowest rate of private sector investment as a share of GDP in the G7; we clearly have to turn that around. We saw public sector investment repeatedly cut, which is one of the reasons why we changed the fiscal rules in the way that we did, to incentivise capital investment and try to protect it from being cut to subsidise day-to-day spending. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her support for that investment and for the plan that is in front of us.
I am grateful to her for welcoming the maintenance fund. As we speak, there is a £46 billion backlog in the public sector maintenance of our schools, hospitals, prisons and courts. As part of this plan, we are putting £5 billion into the maintenance backlog for the NHS, £3 billion into our schools by 2030, and £600 million into courts and prisons. That is really important, so I am pleased that there is cross-party support for it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, talked about governance and delivery capacity. I completely agree with her on the point about delivering value for money. Obviously, the strategy is not just about giving long-term certainty of investment, in terms of the numbers—she is quite right to say that—but what sits beneath them. The strategy is about trying to do things differently and to make sure that we get the strategic planning behind the investment that we are making.
That is the insight that sits behind the creation of NISTA, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority. It brings together under one roof infrastructure expertise combined with the policy and strategy insight of the National Infrastructure Commission and the delivery specialism of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority. Every two years, it will do a report into the delivery of this strategy. It will give Ministers real-time advice and expertise on specific projects. I hope that that goes a long way to solving some of the issues that the noble Baroness talked about.
The noble Baroness also talked about where the money is coming from. The announcements, as part of the spending review envelope, were fully funded and fully costed as part of that process and are within the current fiscal envelope. Beyond that, we have said that we will guarantee that investment spending will grow by at least inflation for the period beyond the spending view for a total of 10 years, which gives people certainty about the level of infrastructure investment that we are making.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, talked about PPPs, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, also talked extensively about this. I agree with a lot of what she said and respect her great expertise on this matter. She talked about the criteria for success, and lessons clearly need to be learned from our previous experience of PFIs and PPPs. The Government are absolutely committed to that. There are several reports now available to us; the NAO’s lessons learned report, for example, provides vital information on what we can do differently and can do better.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that, once you apply those criteria, it severely limits the number of projects for which you can use PPPs. To answer the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, I do not think that this is about huge, widespread use. We clearly want a widespread degree of private sector capital coming in and financing infrastructure, and we want to continue to invest alongside the private sector and the private sector to step up and fund things.
We see a role for PPPs but in a very limited way and where their role will clearly be appropriate. We have said specifically that we will explore the feasibility of using new PPPs—learning lessons and applying the right criteria—for taxpayer-funded projects in very limited circumstances where they could represent value for money. We have given two specific examples where we think they could do that. One good example is Euston—the HS2 station—where we will investigate the use of PPP models for user-funded infrastructure. The other is the Lower Thames Crossing, where, again, we think there is the potential for the criteria that the noble Baroness mentioned to apply. There are a limited number of examples but those are two where there is a clear case to be made.
On housing, I completely agree that 1.5 million new homes is a stretching target. It absolutely remains our commitment and we think we are on course towards achieving it. We put a record amount of funding—the greatest for several generations—into social housing. The noble Baroness is clearly right that the potential occupiers want that housing now, which is why that funding has gone in. She wanted reassurance, and I can say that we firmly believe that we are on course towards that housing target.
Both noble Baronesses talked about skills, and I completely agree. It is good that we are in the spirit of consensus and cross-party thinking here. Obviously, with these commitments, it is absolutely right that we need people to build the things that we want built. Clearly, we can always do more, but we have made a strong start. We have made a record commitment to invest in skills—£1.2 billion of additional investment per year by 2028-29 to support current and future workforce needs.
I know that we are in a cross-party mood, but I have to reflect the fact that the degree of underfunding that we inherited was substantial. We had to put in significant amounts of money—billions of pounds—just to stand still and just to plug the gap that existed between needed provision and the funding that was there. Having to plug that gap limits the extent to which we can move forward.
However, we have provided funding to support over 1.3 million 16 to 19 year-olds to access high-quality training—some 65,000 additional learners per year by 2029. The spending review has delivered £625 million to train up to 60,000 construction workers. In the industrial strategy yesterday, we announced that we will introduce new short courses for priority skills as part of the growth and skills levy, continue to roll out foundation apprenticeships and deliver a targeted package for engineering skills. We have specific packages for engineering and construction, both of which are priority occupations in the infrastructure strategy and the industrial strategy.
How do we choose the investment? We always talk about growth, and I think noble Lords can see that much of this investment is targeted towards the sectors that will, I hope, really drive our growth agenda—transport, energy and housing just to name three.
On the questions about London from the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, I cannot give any commitments today on the future financing model, but I completely share her support for London and her reflection of it as the golden goose. Future investment in London will be central to driving the economy.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, I join the cross-party consensus on the issue of skills. The Minister referred to the 16 to 19 year-old skills requirement age group. Does he also accept that, if we are going to successfully get investment into sectors such as the energy sector, which is a key part of the development the Government have in mind, the university sector must also get the resources that are needed? In view of the cutbacks that have taken place in the university sector over recent years, can the Government, in co-ordination with the devolved Governments in Cardiff and Edinburgh, look particularly at this sector in order to get the resources in? We need action now. It will take three to five years before those people come out the other end, and we need them desperately to drive the scheme forward.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I completely agree with what the noble Lord said about the importance of that sector. He mentioned the example of the energy sector and, as I said, we have, in the industrial strategy, made an investment into engineering skills, which are particularly important in that sector. I hear what he is saying and we will keep driving towards what he wants us to achieve.
Lord Birt (CB)
My Lords, the Minister may recall that I spent six years at No. 10 as Tony Blair’s strategy adviser. I spent a year of my time there, with the team of officials, looking at national transport infrastructure—road and rail. We quickly identified that we have by far the worst road and rail infrastructure of any major country; it was very easy to demonstrate. We went further and looked back—I cannot recall the precise term; I think it was 70 years, although it might have been slightly less—at national investment in infrastructure of all kinds over that period. It was the same story: we spent a smaller proportion of our GDP than any major country. Under both main parties, again and again, on every occasion when the economy went into slight reverse, national investment in infrastructure was cut back. Will it be different this time? Does the Minister know what proportion of GDP over this 10-year period is implied by this plan? If he does not, perhaps he will write to us.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I can definitely say yes to one of the noble Lord’s questions, which I am pleased to be able to do. He talked about making sure that this investment is not cut back according to the economic weather, as it were. I completely agree with what he said about how previous Governments did that. That is why the fiscal rules are as they are. That creates the space to ensure that capital investment can continue and is not used to patch up day-to-day spending. That is important for us to appreciate.
The noble Lord is absolutely right that there has been too little investment in transport infrastructure in the past. We have talked before in debates such as this about the importance of connectivity to economic growth and the agglomeration effects that you get from joining up cities with each other, and joining up towns to cities. This ensures that people can live close to where they want to work and can travel to work and, on the skills conversation we have just been having, gets skills into the right place. There are huge growth benefits from transport spending. Some of the money that we are putting in—£15.6 billion into the city regions, £2.3 billion for the local transport grant and £2.2 billion of funding for Transport for London—is vital to what we were just saying. On the percentage of GDP, I do not have that number to hand, but I will write to the noble Lord.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, the Government’s 10-year infrastructure strategy, and the industrial strategy published yesterday, are essential for future growth. If I had to single out one item in the 10-year strategy, it would be to develop our sovereign compute capacity for the future. I am a member of the Science and Technology Committee of your Lordships’ House, which is looking right now at the problems of scaling up science and technology companies. Can my noble friend the Minister assure the House that the National Wealth Fund will be able to provide vital early-stage development support for companies, because we want them to scale up in Britain for the benefit of Britain?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful for what my noble friend said. I share his enthusiasm for what we are doing in the innovation landscape, such as putting a record high of £22.6 billion into R&D as part of the spending review. It is exciting that yesterday the industrial strategy talked about allocating £2 billion for AI and £2.8 billion for advanced manufacturing. This is all incredibly important.
What my noble friend said is absolutely part of what the National Wealth Fund is for. My noble friend talked about start-ups and scale-ups. The British Business Bank now has a total financial capacity of £25.6 billion, which will result in a two-thirds increase in support for innovative UK businesses compared with 2025-26, crowding in tens of billions of pounds more in private capital The National Wealth Fund will play that role, but so too will the British Business Bank. That was one of the key announcements in yesterday’s industrial strategy.
Lord Harrington of Watford (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I shall do my best to comply with the spirit of cross-party consensus day. I should first declare from the register that I am chairman of Make UK, which has more than 20,000 member companies in manufacturing and infrastructure. I commend the Government on this 10-year infrastructure plan and yesterday’s industrial strategy because I did a review for the previous Government on foreign direct investment. Lack of consistency of policy was the number one item, and the others were connection to the grid, planning and other delays.
I want to ask the Minister about monitoring implementation. For the main industrial strategy, the Government have quite correctly set up an industrial strategy council where each sector—life sciences, advanced manufacturing, et cetera—has groups to monitor the implementation of the industrial strategy. The infrastructure plan is very complex; it includes skills, access to finance and, of course, energy and very large things. What mechanism will be used to independently monitor its implementation?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for the positive things that he said. I pay tribute to him and to Make UK for the work that they do. Clearly, the skills conversation that we just had is vital in that sector. Make UK always makes the point to me about the vital importance of engineering skills, so I hope that that is welcome.
The noble Lord did indeed do his review into foreign direct investment. I hope he does not think that it was just for the previous Government; we still talk about it now in this Government. A lot of the recommendations that he made in that review are things that we have been trying to take forward in this Government. That is a good example of the cross-party working that we have been discussing today.
The noble Lord is right that the industrial strategy will be taken forward by the industrial strategy council; that will be put on a permanent footing, which I think is important. His question is about the equivalent for this strategy. That is the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority—NISTA—which I was talking about. It will monitor the strategy and help the Government to implement it. It will do two-year refreshes of this strategy to make sure that it is up to date and doing what it needs to do. Crucially, it will provide real-terms advice to Ministers when it comes to individual projects to make sure that we have the expertise that we need at our fingertips to be able to implement them.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, we on these Benches very much welcome this report. Of course, after decades of underinvestment, it is essential to ensure that our country can operate appropriately.
I will ask the Minister about infrastructure and adaption and resilience to climate change. Our climate is changing before our very eyes. In a number of places in this report there are vague promises to do things, not firm commitments. To pick up one example, although we welcome the £7.9 billion of capital for a new 10-year flood investment programme, the report says that the Government will merely “explore” setting a long-term, multiyear target for flood risk management in line with prior recommendations made by the NAO and the NIC. Will the Government go further on these things, recognise the speed at which climate change is happening, and put more effort into ensuring that we have the best policies in place?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I agree with the noble Earl on the importance of investment in net zero and measures to tackle climate change. From a growth perspective, it is not one or the other for those investments; they go hand in hand.
I do not quite agree with the noble Earl’s view on the vagueness of these commitments. We are putting real money behind real projects: £14.2 billion into nuclear; £9.4 billion into carbon capture and storage; £80 million of investment in ports to support floating offshore wind; and £13.2 billion for the warm homes plan. This is a huge amount of investment into real concrete action to move us forward. We were talking before about getting people on to public transport—for example, in relation to take-up of EVs. Action is going on across the board on the measures that he talked about. I am grateful to him for his support on that.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
I very much welcome the strategy that the Minister relayed to your Lordships’ House. However, I refer him to the decision yesterday in the Northern Ireland High Court, which struck down the Northern Ireland Executive’s major flagship project from the Department for Infrastructure—a £1.7 billion upgrade to the A5 to save lives and improve economic connections throughout Northern Ireland and with the Irish Republic. It was struck down because it was contrary to another part of the Northern Ireland Executive’s overall strategy programme for government. Is this something on which the new NISTA, which sits within the Treasury, could assist the Northern Ireland Executive? They certainly need help from somewhere if they are going to be able to deliver major infrastructure projects in the light of this very serious judgment.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for the question and for bringing that to my attention—I did not know about that decision. I will very happily go away and look at that. We have tried to engage extensively with the devolved Governments to ensure that there is strong alignment between the strategy and what they are doing. We will continue to do that as we move into implementation, for example through the Council of the Nations and Regions. I am happy to go and talk to my colleague the Chief Secretary about how NISTA can play a role to secure that. We have put substantial amounts of capital investment into Northern Ireland as a result of the spending review. Clearly, we want to make sure that that is spent in the right way and achieves the right objectives, so I will very happily take that back for him.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the Statement from the Minister about a much more joined-up and rational approach to infrastructure. It has been long called for and is very much welcomed. I also welcome NISTA’s commitment to ensuring that infrastructure developers are going to take account of biodiversity protection and delivery. I was delighted when NISTA’s predecessor discovered climate change, and the fact that it has now discovered biodiversity is even more welcome.
I also am very pleased to see that the Government are committed to the land use framework approach to spatial issues. But a fair number of existing infrastructure schemes are already in progress and decisions are being made on a day-by-day basis, and government departments across the piece are now preparing spatial strategies of all sorts. We have housing spatial strategies, transport spatial strategies, energy spatial strategies—everybody has a spatial strategy, but we have not yet got the land use framework in place that gives them join-up and integration. So when do the Government intend to make their hand clear on the land use framework approach? I am concerned, as I said, that by the time it arrives and is then implemented at national, regional and local level, it will be too late for many of the decisions on infrastructure that are currently being made.
Secondly—and more of this anon, tomorrow—in my view, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill does not take a sufficiently clear approach to a land use framework approach. In fact, any concept of land use framework is singularly absent in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which seems not to be as joined up as this admirable strategy is. Perhaps the Minister would care to respond on that.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for her support for NISTA and the spatial planning elements of that. I do think that the spatial side of that is really important, as she says, to make sure that infrastructure is not just built in isolation but focuses on building communities and looks across the piece and integrates national, regional and sector-level planning. I do not have any news for her today on the land use framework, and I certainly hear what she says about the Planning Bill. I do not have anything to add today to what is already known, but I will make sure that, when we do, she is one of the first people to know.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on bringing forward the 10-year strategy. It has managed to put a smile on the Minister’s face, which is very welcome indeed. In the interests of transparency and clarity, can I ask him what the route for the trans-Pennine route upgrade will be and what consultation there will be? There seemed to be some confusion in an interview last week from the Minister responsible as to what the route would be. It would be very helpful to know. It will be a very welcome upgrade. I regret that it has not taken precedence over HS2 or HS3, but we are where we are. Also, can he comment on the implications of clean energy? To be fully understood, it is going to take 10% of farmland and 10% of fisheries out of production. Have the Government considered what the impact on farming and fisheries is going to be?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the smile; it is always most welcome. On the route of the trans-Pennine route upgrade, she spoke about the importance of transparency. I think the best thing will be to write to her and set it out in full, so that there is no misunderstanding.
In terms of farming, I hope she welcomes the £2.7 billion per year in sustainable farming and nature recovery. I think that is a very substantial investment in the things she spoke about.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, there have been a number of references to NISTA, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority. The Statement says:
“Based in the Treasury, NISTA brings oversight of infrastructure strategy and delivery together, and integrates assurance, design and delivery assessments”.
The Treasury is not the expert in transport, energy or social housing infrastructure. Many Members of your Lordships’ House often lament the dictatorship of the Treasury over other government decisions. Is this not a further concentration of power within one department in government, when actually we need the people with the expertise and knowledge to have the oversight, not this concentration in the Treasury?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
Well, the noble Baroness might not expect me to agree with her on that; I think the more Treasury, the better, from my point of view. So, no, I disagree with her, but of course NISTA is there to work for the whole Government and not just the Treasury. It has to be based somewhere and it makes sense for it to be based in the Treasury, given the Treasury’s responsibility for the 10-year infrastructure strategy, which it will be overseeing. Of course, NISTA’s expertise will be available to Ministers right across government.
Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the Treasury on this plan, which is well thought through. If the economy is going to grow, we have to ensure that public investment grows faster than public consumption. That is reflected in the Government’s plans. But, like my noble friend Lord Birt, I worked for Governments of both main parties who announced investment plans with great fanfares and good intentions, only to jettison them the first time they got into difficulty. That happened in 1976, 1992, 2008 and 2016. The Minister mentioned that fiscal rules this time will see us right but, as he knows, fiscal rules come and go. Can he assure the House, especially the sceptics among us, that, should the Government get into financial difficulties, they will protect investment, even if that means bearing down on public consumption?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord—I was going to say “my noble friend”—for his question. The fiscal rules are non-negotiable, as he will know. We have put them in place for exactly the reasons he described. Too often in the past, public investment has been cut to patch up holes in day-to-day spending. The reason we are setting out this 10-year plan now is to give certainty and stability to the investment horizon, and we will protect that investment going forward.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I will briefly go back to a subject I have raised several times with the Minister before—PPPs. I welcome pages 44 and 45 in the report, and I also share the interesting views expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer and look forward to the report that is coming. I am content to leave the issues with the Treasury. Perhaps the Treasury might expand its vision a little bit wider and, when we come to review the future PPPs, we might think about involving the public in them and not limiting private investment simply to big capital. There is money around among the public. People are prepared to invest. We ought to be more open-minded about it and perhaps look at some of the experiences of the past. There will be money there for us and it will be committed.
Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend for his support for this. I am pleased to give him some good news as part of this, because I know he has spoken extensively about the use of PPPs and is a strong advocate for that. As I said, the Government will explore the feasibility of using new PPP models for taxpayer-funded projects in the limited circumstances I talked about. As NISTA’s work goes forward and develops these new PPPs, it will be through engagement with departments and industry. I hope some of that engagement will include the groups my noble friend referred to.
Employment Rights Bill
Tuesday 24th June 2025
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Lords ChamberEmployment Rights Bill 2024-26 View all Employment Rights Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 81-XI Eleventh marshalled list for Committee - (20 Jun 2025)
Lord Hunt of Wirral
“Impact on new business entrantsThe Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed and annually thereafter, publish an independent assessment of how this Act affects new business entrants and small start-up enterprises, particularly regarding the impact of increased administrative or financial burdens on market entry and growth.”
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to amendments 310, 311, 312 and 319.
If I may start with Amendment 311, I stress that productivity is vital for growth. The Government’s own impact assessment of the Bill is lacking in many areas, but it correctly identifies productivity as a problem in the UK workforce and reveals the fundamental weakness of their approach. They state quite explicitly:
“there is little quantitative evidence about the knock-on impacts on productivity”,
and conclude:
“On balance, we believe the impact on growth could be positive … but the direct impact would be small in magnitude”.
Most tellingly, they admit that
“the impact on average productivity will be small”.
To paraphrase, the Government seemingly admit that productivity will not be significantly improved, if at all, by this legislation. This raises a fundamental question that goes to the heart of economic policy: how does one achieve high levels of productivity?
High productivity emerges through competition—genuine, unfettered competition—where businesses face lower regulatory burdens, can compete effectively for the best workers and possess the freedom and flexibility to innovate, to adapt and to respond to market signals. Productivity growth stems from technological innovation, capital accumulation and, as we have just heard in the questions on the previous Statement, investment in skills and productivity—skills above all. These improvements occur naturally when markets are allowed to function, when competitive pressures incentivise businesses to innovate or perish and when the price mechanism can operate without distortion.
Competition drives productivity by creating what economists call “creative destruction”—the process whereby inefficient firms are displaced by more productive ones. When businesses have to compete for workers, they invest in training, technology and better working conditions. When they have to compete for customers, they innovate and improve efficiency. When they must compete for capital, they demonstrate their productivity gains to investors and offer competitive returns.
So what will this legislation achieve in practice? I regret that it will impose additional regulation, create additional burdens and constrain the very competitive forces that drive productivity improvements. This of course comes on top of the tax rises announced by the Chancellor—measures that undoubtedly constrain business investment and growth. The increase in national insurance contributions is particularly damaging in this context. Higher employer NICs directly squeeze the possibility of productive investment. Investment that would otherwise create jobs in productive areas of the economy will now not take place. Capital that could have been deployed to improve productivity, whether through new technology, training programmes or research and development, will instead have to be diverted to meet higher tax obligations and burdens. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how productivity improvements occur. Productivity does not increase through regulatory mandate or government directive; it increases when businesses have the freedom, the incentive and the resources to invest in productivity-enhancing activities.
This brings me to Amendment 319 and what I can only describe as a profound contradiction in government policy. The Government committed just months ago to a 25% cut in the regulatory burden. They reaffirmed this, as we heard, in the published industrial strategy. Yet here we have legislation that introduces what can only be described as a raft of new regulatory burdens. The question that demands an answer is this: how will the Government achieve this 25% reduction in the regulatory burden? How will it be measured? How will the Bill, which manifestly increases regulatory compliance costs, align with that stated target?
I turn to Amendment 310. A truly competitive market must make it simpler, not harder, for new businesses to enter. Yet there is no consideration in the Government’s impact assessment for how this legislation affects barriers to entry. I believe that this represents a profound oversight because, when businesses cannot enter a market because of costs imposed by government regulation, that fundamentally alters the competitive dynamics driving productivity improvements. The economic logic here is straightforward but crucial: when entry barriers are low, existing businesses face constant competitive pressure from potential new entrants. This pressure has to keep them on their toes, forcing them to remain productive, innovative and responsive to consumer needs. They cannot afford to become complacent because they know that more efficient competitors could emerge at any time, hot on their heels and full of competitive energy. But when government policy raises the cost of market entry through complex regulations, compliance burdens or increased operational costs, it can effectively insulate existing businesses from this competitive pressure. The result is predictable: established firms have less incentive to innovate, less pressure to improve productivity and less need to compete aggressively for the best workers.
Turning to Amendment 312, I come to a particularly important point about wage competition. In a competitive market, businesses compete not only for customers but also for workers. When entry barriers are low and competition is fierce, employers must offer competitive wages and working conditions to attract and retain talent. This competitive pressure naturally drives wages upward as businesses bid for the best employees. When regulatory burdens prevent new businesses from entering the market, however, this wage competition diminishes significantly. Existing employers face less pressure to offer competitive wages because workers have fewer alternative employment opportunities. The reduced threat of labour mobility gives established businesses greater power in wage negotiations.
I believe that the costs imposed by this Bill will exacerbate this problem in two distinct ways. First, the direct compliance costs and increase in employer national insurance contributions will pressure businesses to control their wage costs more tightly. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, these costs will deter new business formation, reducing the competitive pressure that would otherwise drive wages upward. Of course, the Government may want to point to the increase in the minimum wage as evidence of their commitment to higher wages, but that misses the fundamental point about how competitive markets operate in practice. The minimum wage affects only a small proportion of the workforce—those at the very bottom of wage distribution; for the vast majority of workers, wages are determined by market forces and competition between employers for their services.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I support this group of amendments in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lord Hunt of Wirral, calling for an impact assessment requiring an independent analysis on different measures. I have added my name to three of them. Amendment 310 asks for an impact assessment on business, new entrants and start-ups, while Amendment 311 asks for a productivity impact reporting, and Amendment 319 asks for a new clause on assessing the impact of the regulatory burden on businesses.
Amendment 310 would require an impact assessment on new business entrants and small start-ups, including the impact of administrative and financial costs. Why do we need this? We know from ONS data that the story of business start-ups from 2016-17 to 2023-24 was one of steady increase, from 664,750 new start-ups in 2016-17 to 800,000 in 2022-23. We know from other data, from an analysis for NatWest bank and the Beauhurst Group, that for the last calendar year 846,000 new businesses were registered, bringing the total to a record high of 6.63 million last year. Just under one-third of that, 248,000, in the first quarter was, sadly, a figure not sustained by the end of the year, with a 25% drop in business formation as the year progressed.
Of course, headline figures should be read with caveats entered. Here are just three. Quite a few new companies do not survive their first or indeed their second year. One tech and computer entrepreneur once told me that you would expect in his sector at least one or two failures until you got to a success; it was almost the necessity to fail that brought success. Difficult circumstances, such as an economic slowdown due to exceptional causes or external shocks, may have an impact on new start-ups taking off. Indeed, some companies will simply be reformations of existing organisations and businesses.
These may be the ordinary reasons why we see start-ups not doing so well, but one common obstacle to getting a new business off the ground or making a success of it is the burden of too much of the wrong—and unnecessary—regulation. The Government and the public will need to know the impact of this measure, after a year or at a period to be agreed between the Government and opposition parties, to see whether the decline in new applicants that we saw at the end of 2024 will continue in the first year of operation and, if so, what steps we may need to take to mitigate this. New businesses are our lifeblood. They help replace the stock of zombie businesses which go out of business and rightly fail in the competitive economy to which my noble friend Lord Hunt alluded.
This Bill, as others which the Labour Government have proposed or enacted since 2024, penalises employers and businesses and introduces a device of damaging politicisation and ideologically driven changes to favour certain vested interest groups over the interests of business, the whole UK economy and the people of this country, who depend on a strong, prosperous and competitive economy to find and keep a job to pay their bills and to pay the tax revenue on which their public services depend.
The Bill’s burdens on all will impose a multitude of additional costs—through employee rights without corresponding obligations or duties, and additional duties and costs on employers—uncertainties, as many of the proposals in the Bill will be decided by regulation, and costs to businesses trying to plan. They weigh the law against and involve cost and compliance burdens for an employer or business, as my noble friend has explained, not only in respect of the rights of employees but through procedures that vary from record-keeping and handling equality action plans in Part 2 to the new law on industrial relations, which is in favour of trade unions and changes or repeals measures that have been around since 1992 and, by and large, have brought peace and harmony to the labour market of this country and the prosperity we need.
These burdens will make for grave uncertainty, given the range of powers that will be exercised, as I have mentioned, by a Minister who may reflect the ideological bent of the current Government to direct their powers against business, employers and the UK economy in favour of those who pay for the Labour Party through political funding—we have had many a debate on that in this Chamber. They are to be finalised through consultation and announced later. Surely, it is not too much to temper such militancy by giving the public and the Government of the day an analysis of what the costs of the regulatory burdens will be so that any adverse impact can be measured and mitigated.
Amendment 311 calls for an assessment of the impact of the Act on productivity. My noble friend has said that the Government recognise in their own impact assessment that the productivity gain will be small. UK productivity is already significantly lower than that of our competitors in the G7—the US, Germany and France—but we will discuss international competitiveness later so I will not speak on that now. However, as a result of this Bill, we expect productivity to decline further by sector and by employee. We know that around 70.9% of workers in the UK work in firms with labour productivity below the mean. It is very difficult to envisage that productivity will increase as a result of the regulatory burdens in this Bill.
If growth is the aim of this Government, we need to increase productivity dramatically. This will not be achieved through an ever-shrinking workforce and the contraction of business activity; at my last count, our labour market had lost 115,000 workers since this Government came to power. Nor will it be achieved by burdening business—and, as my noble friend Lord Hunt mentioned, its capacity to invest in new people, plant and technology—by increasing the money needed to pay for the extra compliance and regulatory costs of this Bill, rather than investing in the production of goods and services, and the training of the people who produce.
I support this amendment, as I do the others, so that we shall have a real measure, based on independent, impartial data, that will shed daylight on the impact of the Bill on these three counts and help the people of this country—and the Government—to press for change, should we need it.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, I remind the Committee of my interests in both consultancy and the hospitality industry. I have really come to help the Government on this bit of the Bill, because the problem they have is that very few of those who are working on the Bill run businesses. I have run businesses all my life, except for the time when I was a Minister, and, as I read the Bill, I am very concerned that it has been written by people who have not run businesses. They do not understand the damage that they do to employment and new business. I hope every Minister will admit that to themselves, whether or not they have run businesses and met these problems. Have the civil servants who advise them, or the political advisers from their parties, run businesses and seen these problems for themselves? If the answer is “Not much”, “Not many” or “Not overall”, surely they ought to see whether they have got it right.
Frankly, I do not think they have got it right, but I am very happy to be proved wrong. I do not think they have got it right because I know what has happened in the businesses with which I am associated. I know that we are employing less, because that is the only way we can pay the increased demands on employers. I know that the balances that we have to make now are not to the advantage of staff recruitment. Above all, I know that if I were starting a new business, the temptation not to do so would be very much greater because of the complications that the Bill, and previous actions of the Government, place on us.
That puts me in a position in which I do not think the Bill is, in large measure, a good one. But I am prepared to be proved wrong if, by clear investigation, we look at the results of what happens and take account of it. The problem is that if this Government are going to carry out effectively many of the policies with which I agree—more than I agree with some of the policies on this side of the House—they must prove to the public that they listen and are prepared to look at the facts.
I came to this debate to plead with the Government not to say, “Oh well, this is what we are told by people and we think it is a good idea. It fits in with our obligations and our attitudes”. Instead, they might say, “We will argue in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and at the end of it we will see whether we were right. We will see whether the Opposition were right or we were. If we show we are right, we have a really good position to say to the public, ‘There you are, we said we were right and we have been proved right’”. They might say now that they are not even going to find out whether they are right, not going to measure it and not going to accept these amendments.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, and I disagree on most things. Both of us, though, think that it would be a good idea to check to see where we are. I do not understand why representatives of the trade unions are not getting up and saying to the Government, “Look, we think we’re right and we think you’re right, so check it and independently show that it is right”. Instead of that, the Government are admitting, frankly, either that they do not know or that they fear they would be proved wrong. I want a Government who are brave enough to say, “We’ll actually put it to the test. We’ll actually accept these amendments and we’ll find out who’s right. If we’re wrong, we’ll change it. If we’re right, we’ll crow like mad over those people who told us we were wrong”.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, I agree with almost everything that my noble friend said. When I was growing up, my father, who was in business, suffered the three-day week, and I understand the impact it had on his business and many like his. I also understand that productivity needs to be improved and increased. We need to look at what is happening across the world to be competitive enough.
I know that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Leong, has a business and understands business. If he were sitting on this side of the Chamber, I suspect that he would be arguing in the same vein as we are. It would be right and proper not to shirk away from proper impact assessments and proper comparative assessments of what is happening across the world, because we all want a competitive country where we are leading at the helm. Denying and disagreeing just for the sake of denying and disagreeing does not do this debate any good.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, unusually, I completely agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Deben; he and I are both surprised by that. That is not because I am a business owner—that has never been my shtick—but because I am worried about the unintended consequences of the Bill. I too simply want an opportunity to check—and if I am wrong, that is fine.
This group of amendments is very important because it will give the Government a chance to think again, to assess and to reflect. It does not have to be a U-turn; it can straightforwardly be something that is accepted at this point in the Bill that would then mean that those of us who are nervous about the Bill’s consequences can be proved right or wrong.
I am particularly concerned about the impact the Bill will have on productivity, and Amendment 311 is therefore key. I am concerned that the Bill is not doing what it says on the tin and will have a diametrically negative impact on workers’ rights, jobs and wages. I am interested in Amendment 312, which simply asks for real wage impact reporting.
Of course, the big amendment that would cover all the things that have been argued for so far is Amendment 319, which calls for an impact assessment of the regulatory burden of the Bill on businesses. In the past, people who have complained about overregulation have been considered to be on the right of politics—the idea is that those people are so irresponsible that they do not want any regulations and are prepared to take risks. I have never understood it like that at all.
I was therefore delighted to find that I agreed with the Government and the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, when he made some tub-thumping speeches about the problems of
“the regulators, the blockers and bureaucrats”
stopping investment and growth. He called them an “alliance of naysayers”, which I thought was good, because I have always been worried about this. I am not from the Tory fold, but that goes along with what I thought. I was genuinely excited that the Labour Government were embracing this way of understanding what can get in the way of economic development and growth, which is necessary for workers to have jobs, wages and rights under an industrial policy that we are hearing about today—all the infrastructure things.
Last December, the Prime Minister infamously blamed Britain’s sluggish growth on
“people in Whitehall … comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.
As we have been going through the Bill, I have felt like I am in the tepid bath of managed decline at the heart of Whitehall and Westminster. Therefore, I urge the government representatives here to remember their own Prime Minister’s words when deciding how they should approach the Bill, rather than just being partisan.
Between 2015 and 2023, the Conservative Government set themselves the target of a £19 billion reduction in business costs through deregulation. Instead, the Regulatory Policy Committee watchdog calculated that even exempting most Covid regulation, the regulatory burden increased by £18.4 billion in that period. I am saying this because people keep declaring that they are going to tear up the regulations getting in the way of growth, industrial capacity and so on, and then, the next minute, unintentionally, regulations grow. The Bill is so jam-packed with regulations that workers’ rights do not stand a chance of breathing.
One of the fears I have about the Bill, which I have raised in a number of amendments and which I hope Amendment 319 will address, is that it is a recipe for huge amounts of lawfare. Day one rights and protection from unfair dismissal both sound progressive and admirable, but the Government’s own analysis predicts a 15% rise in employment tribunal claims. There are already huge backlogs of between 18 months to two years, even before the Bill is enacted, so there is a real threat of a litigious clogging up of the system. Of course it is important that employees are treated fairly. As I have argued throughout consideration of the Bill, I am not frightened of trade union and workers’ rights at all, but I am concerned about this growth, encouragement and incentivisation of the use of lawfare.
I have just read a fascinating report, which I will send to the Ministers, entitled The Equality Act isn’t Working: Equalities, Legislation and the Breakdown of Informal Civility in the Workplace, produced by the anti-racist, colourblind organisation Don’t Divide Us, which assesses the unintended consequences of the Equality Act. Nobody thought this would happen, but it has led to a real fractiousness in the workplace: people are suing each other, all sorts of things are going wrong, and, in many ways, it has clogged up the system. The last thing we need is the Bill adding to that burden, leading to lawfare and people taking matters even further by suing each other.
Either an impact assessment is going to show that some of the concerns raised are overhyped, or in some instances ideological or raised by nay-sayers; or the Government can take the opportunity to say, “We never intended the legislation to do this, but we have seen that in some areas, it needs to be tweaked to make sure that it is not over-regulatory, damaging workers’ rights and wages and so on, in which case we are prepared to be honest and hold our hands up”. That is the very least legislators should do when they introduce a law that is going to bring huge change the whole business and workplace arena.
Lord Swire (Con)
My Lords, as somebody who does business from time to time and tries to encourage business, not least through my deputy chairmanship of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, which is trying to grow business right across the Commonwealth, it strikes me that the Bill comes at an unfortunate time. Of course, we should always look at regulation, and there will always be an argument about what is over-regulation and what is under-regulation. But at a time when so many jobs are threatened by AI, we should surely be looking at a low regulatory framework. I urge the Government to take this into consideration during any impact assessment.
The Minister knows about business. He is a businessman and has a successful business, and I too suspect that he identifies with many of the points we are raising, although he cannot say it. But it strikes me that, just at a time when people are very fearful about their future and the uncertainty of having a job at all, let alone when they get older, so they can raise a family, have a mortgage and so forth, we should be looking at ways to encourage businesses to employ more people. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, said that he saw every good reason not to employ more people. That is really bad news. If businesses are now saying it is simply not worth the candle, that will contribute to the unemployment that will surely follow as many of these jobs are replaced by AI anyway. So I urge the Government to look at that.
Equally, at a time when many countries around the world, not least in Asia, are spending much more money, time and effort on advanced mathematics and the other things you need nowadays for coding and so forth, we in this country seem to be lowering the standards, particularly in mathematics—dumbing down at a time when we should be raising up. So by all means, let us properly protect our workers, but let us not overregulate to the extent that we do not have any workers to look after or to regulate.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I will address Amendments 310, 311, 312 and 319, which collectively seek greater transparency on the economic consequences of this legislation.
Although I am afraid that I take no firm view on the amendments themselves, which were explained in great detail by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and spoken to by other noble Lords, who expressed reservations—obviously, there are reservations—I welcome the principle that they reflect: that we must remain vigilant as to how new laws affect businesses, wages and productivity. No one else has said this, but I appreciate that the Government are already undertaking much of this work, and I would welcome an update from the Minister on how that work is progressing and informing policy development.
Amendment 310 raises a valuable and timely question about how new and small businesses might fare under the Bill. As the noble Lord knows, and as I know from a working lifetime as a chartered accountant, these enterprises often lack the resources, legal support and regulatory expertise of larger firms. It is only right that we ask whether the framework we are putting in place enables them to enter the market, grow and succeed on fair terms.
If the Government are serious about delivering long-term economic growth, they must pay close attention to the conditions facing new business entrants and small start-ups. These businesses, as I hope the noble Lord will agree, are not only a vital source of innovation and competition but key to job creation, skills development and regional regeneration. The barriers they face—and there are increasing barriers—whether through opaque processes or disproportionate compliance costs, can limit their contribution to the economy. By reducing unnecessary administrative burdens and ensuring a fair and accessible regulatory environment, we can help unlock their potential.
Growth will not come from productivity targets or ministerial ambition alone; it will depend on everyday decisions, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, mentioned, made by entrepreneurs and small business owners around the country. We should support them accordingly. As mentioned previously, I do not readily back these amendments themselves—I do not think I agree with them—but I hope the Government will take careful note of the arguments they raise, particularly the point made in Amendment 310 about the effect on new and small businesses, which deserves further attention and consideration.
There are going to be economic consequences of this part of the Bill, and the Government should tell us how they view the impact of those. Noble Lords have spoken about increased costs. We all know—anyone who has been involved with business knows—that there will obviously be increased costs. Laws that we have put in over the years have added to those costs, but most businesses have managed to increase efficiency to try and mitigate them and make more profits. You have to adjust to what is happening in the world.
These amendments, and this part of the Bill, are about impact assessments and regulatory burdens. Are we putting too many burdens on people, or are those regulatory burdens helpful to the economics of this country? We must do things which increase productivity, and that is part of what the amendments are about. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, said that he had run businesses, and many of us in this Chamber have run businesses or advised them. I hope that he is going to be proved wrong—he asked to be proved wrong. I await the Government’s answer to the comments that he made in this debate.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to every noble Lord for their contribution, and I have listened intently to each and every one of them. I thank noble Lords for their kind words about my previous business career.
We return to the important issue of impact assessments. I appreciate the continued efforts of the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe and Lord Hunt of Wirral, here. It will be no surprise to your Lordships’ House, given the number of separate debates—I think there have been about eight now—we have had on this topic, that the Government view these amendments as unnecessary. Let me recap. We have already published 27 impact assessments, available on GOV.UK, which have been updated where needed as policy has been added to the Bill during passage.
Academics at Warwick University, Oxford University, MIT and UCL all find a positive relationship between job satisfaction and productivity in their research. For example, Simon Deakin, professor of law at the University of Cambridge, said:
“The consensus on the economic impacts of labour laws is that, far from being harmful to growth, they contribute positively to productivity. Labour laws also help ensure that growth is more inclusive and that gains are distributed more widely across society”.
All this evidence is laid out in our impact assessment, which was developed in consultation with external experts. Business supports the view that this will be good for productivity. In a survey undertaken by the Institute of Public Policy, seven in 10 employers said that strengthened employment rights will boost productivity, compared to just 7% who disagreed, and six in 10 employers thought stronger employment rights would have a positive impact on business profitability, while fewer than two in 10 disagreed.
We have worked hand in hand with businesses, trade unions and civil society to understand the impacts of this Bill—
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
There is no doubt that people who are happy at work are likely to contribute positively to the workplace. Nobody, I think, is arguing against that and wants miserable workers with no rights. However, what we are trying to explore is not whether people will have job satisfaction but whether they will have jobs. It is about the unintended consequences of the Bill that might mean that people are not employed; or, indeed, that new jobs are not created because productivity will not go up; or that it becomes too risky to employ, for example, young workers, and so on.
With all due respect to Warwick University’s academics—I went there and I know some of the people who wrote that research, and I am sure that they are happy in their workplace—the truth is that if some piece of legislation ended up unintentionally closing down Warwick University, they would not be happy and productivity would not go up. That is what we are concerned with. It is not a theoretical academic argument about how being happy at work makes you work harder—I know that. But if there is no work, then you are not going to be happy, you are not going to do any work and productivity will go down.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for that contribution. If she can be a bit patient, I have some more positive news for her.
We have worked hand in hand with businesses and trade unions, as I said earlier, to understand the impacts of the Bill on industry and will produce further analysis as required under the Better Regulation Framework. It is worth noting that more doors are opening than closing. In the first quarter of 2025, the UK saw 90,000 businesses created, up 2.8% on last year, while business closures fell by 4.4%. This Government are backing British businesses and British workers, and our Modern Industrial Strategy, published yesterday, is making that real. To give one example, we have boosted the British Business Bank’s capacity to £25.6 billion, unlocking billions for innovative firms, especially SMEs. For the first time, the British Business Bank will be able to take equity in fast-growing tech companies. This has never happened before. That is helping crowd in tens of billions of pounds more in private capital, fuelling growth, creating jobs and driving long-term prosperity. I hope that gives comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Deben.
Lord Deben (Con)
I am very pleased with all the research that was done before the Bill and all the research that has been done with it. The only question is: when the Bill goes through, why do not we do the research to make sure that we were right? I cannot understand why we draw the line the moment the Bill is passed, except in the generalities of better regulation. Will the Minister, whose business knowledge is considerable, please accept that businesspeople normally measure by results? Why cannot we measure the results?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord. I ask him to bear with me—patience here. We are already seeing the results. Just this morning, Amazon announced a £40 billion investment. This means that it has resounding confidence in the UK Government.
Baroness Verma (Con)
We are talking about small and medium-sized businesses too, and they are not all going to be tech companies; they are not all going to be Amazons. They are small or medium-sized companies that keep most cities and towns going.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for that. I, together with my ministerial colleagues, speak to businesses every day, whether they are tech companies, other businesses or whatever. Yesterday, I had a conversation with Small Business Britain, and we talked about this Bill and most of its members have confidence in this Government. We talk to all businesses.
I come back to Amazon: basically, what it means is £40 billion. It is creating 4,000 new jobs across the UK, which is a major boost to our tech and logistics sector. The latest Lloyds Business Barometer survey shows that business confidence is at a nine-month high, with a rise in hiring expectations among businesses. This is proof that our plan for change is working. Britain is open for business, and the world is taking notice. There is simply nothing more I can add to the noble Lord’s argument. This analysis—and we will continue to do impact assessments—will be done, and I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw Amendment 310.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, before the Minister sits down, may I just clarify whether he said that 90,000 jobs were created in the first quarter of 2025, or was it 290,000? I missed the exact figure. It is my understanding that, in the first quarter of last year, with which the comparison has been made by the Minister, there were 248,000 new entrants. The Minister spoke of new jobs, but our impact assessment is on new entrants to the market and there were 248,000 in the first quarter of last year. If the 90,000 refers to new jobs as opposed to new entrants into the workforce, that is a different comparison.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for giving me the opportunity to say this again. In the first quarter of 2025, the UK saw 90,000 businesses created. Business creation was up by 2.8% over last year, while business closures fell by 4.4%.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, this has been such an important debate. We have been throwing statistics around the Chamber as if they had just been invented. The very latest statistic that I have in front of me, published in Business Matters, is that:
“Britain has recorded its highest number of company closures for two decades, with the final quarter of 2024 seeing 198,046 businesses struck off the official register”.
That is hot from the press. We have really been debating—
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I must challenge the noble Lord. There are many reasons for business closures. Companies get struck off for all kinds of reasons. Unless we drill deep down into what that figure is comprised of and whether the reasons are insolvency or companies being dormant, it will be difficult just throwing figures around.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
Is that not exactly why we need to measure the impact? That is what this debate has been all about. The Minister has done my job for me, but he has not accepted any of the amendments.
I thank my noble friend Lady Lawlor very much indeed, not only for the facts and figures that she gave us but for how she stressed that there has been, is perceived to be and is taking place an increase in the regulatory burden. Looking ahead, there are more compliance costs to come. Why does the Minister not accept that there is a need for an independent impartial measure? That is what these amendments seek. My noble friend Lord Deben, with all his unrivalled experience in building up businesses, is arguing that we need to check, to look ahead and to ensure that we can measure the impact of this legislation. Who is going to be right? The Government are saying, “Trust us, we’re right, we know what’s best, this will increase growth”. Yet their own impact assessment says that it will not.
Therefore, when you analyse all the facts and statistics that are coming forward, surely there is a very strong argument that we need an independent impact assessment. I agree with my noble friend Lady Verma that, if our roles were reversed and the Minister, with all his experience, was sitting on this side of the House, these are the amendments that he would be pressing for, because he knows how important it is to measure the impact of legislation and regulation. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, spoke of measuring what is happening now against what the Prime Minister promised in cutting the amount of regulatory burden and reversing the managed decline. It was good that she reminded us of those key words. Yet, as she said, this legislation is jam-packed with regulation. Her warning that this legislation is a recipe for lawfare is a warning to us all.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Swire that there is a need for a low regulatory framework at a time when our competitors are embracing artificial intelligence and all the new techniques while we are increasing the regulatory burden. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, got the answer that he was looking for from the Minister. Although he may not agree specifically with each individual amendment, he does believe that there is a clear message here that we must take on board.
Lord Monks (Lab)
I was just sitting here looking at the noble Lord, a member of Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet, with another one over there, the noble Lord, Lord Deben. When they passed a major piece of legislation, were there were any cases where you went to Mrs Thatcher and said, “Can we have an independent assessment of whether we have done the right thing?” I cannot remember anybody ever doing that, but perhaps the noble Lord can tell me otherwise.
Lord Deben (Con)
Can the noble Lord, Lord Monks, mention any occasion on which the Official Opposition of the time demanded it?
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My noble friend is quite right. I was going to make a rejoinder by demonstrating that, with Margaret Thatcher assessing, when you proposed a piece of legislation, you had to make sure that you had done your homework and carried out every possible impact assessment, as you would be closely cross-examined on each and every piece of legislation. I worry that this Bill has been rushed through in the first 100 days and no one has carried out the sort of test that Margaret Thatcher would have imposed. Therefore, I am so grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Monks, for reminding us of that criterion, which we ought to bear in mind.
Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)
The noble Lord has lured me into asking a question about impact assessments and the historic impact of the Thatcher Government. Which impact assessment said that there was a legislative decision made incorrectly during that period?
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
We were subject to parliamentary scrutiny each and every day of the 18 years that we were in power. It was good that this accountability to Parliament was treasured by those in Parliament. However, I worry, certainly so far as secondary legislation. The noble Lord served with me on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and joined with me in saying, “Please let us make sure that every piece of legislation that we pass has a proper impact assessment”. Perhaps we learn from history that it is vitally important to have that impact assessment always ready there to prove, as my noble friend Lord Deben put it, whether we have got it right or wrong.
I worry that this Government have not done their homework. The fact that they resist these amendments suggests that the cut in regulatory burdens is not going to be pursued with any real determination. That 25% target is destined to remain a headline-grabbing announcement that quietly disappears when submerged under the reality of real-life policy choices. I hope that the Government reconsider, because these issues will come up over the next few years of this Government. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom
“Social mobility impact reportingWithin 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish an independent assessment of its impact on social mobility.”
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, in some ways, we are continuing a theme with Amendment 313 in my name. The Government have talked about supporting those on the fringes of the labour market; this is a goal that I hope we all share. We know that different individuals face different work challenges, whether due to educational background, employment history, health circumstances or socioeconomic factors. The question before us is whether this legislation achieves that laudable objective or whether it inadvertently makes it harder for precisely those individuals whom the Government claim they want to help.
I start with the day-one right concerning unfair dismissal, and I pose a fundamental question: why would any employer take on what might be considered a high-risk hire? Why would they take a chance on a young person seeking their first opportunity? Why would they hire a student who did not attend a top-tier university? Why would they consider a person from a lower socioeconomic background, who may lack conventional credentials but definitely possesses untapped potential? When employers face immediate legal liability for dismissal decisions, they naturally become more risk averse in their hiring practices. They gravitate towards candidates with proven track records, established credentials and minimal perceived risk. This is not callousness; it is rational economic behaviour in response to the regulatory environment.
The Government’s refusal to include a meaningful probationary period at this stage compounds the problem significantly. I have little doubt that, fairly soon, the Government will be arguing that they intend to consult and to continue with a light-touch probationary regime, which, it is suggested, could last for up to nine months. That is all well and good, but what does it mean in practice? What does the phrase “light-touch” mean and how will it be defined? Who are they going to be consulting, and on what? What are the Government thinking about this? It needs to be in primary legislation. Make no mistake: this uncertainty is affecting business decision-making now.
It looks as if the Government fundamentally fail to understand that employment relationships involve mutual discovery. In the short term, virtually all jobs represent a cost to business. Employers hire workers not because they are immediately profitable but because they are confident that, over time, these workers will develop skills, reach their peak performance and productivity, and ultimately become a net benefit to the company or employing organisation. This process of development and mutual learning requires flexibility. It requires the ability for both parties to recognise when a match is not working and to part ways without excessive legal complexity. By removing this flexibility from day one, the legislation creates a powerful incentive to hire only the safest and the most predictable candidates—precisely the opposite of supporting those on the fringe of the labour market.
The same perverse logic applies to the day-one right to sick pay. Consider the position of someone who has been absent from the workforce for an extended period. There are businesses that will make a point of hiring such individuals, recognising their potential and being willing to provide them with opportunities. But now the cost calculation has fundamentally changed. An employer considering such a hire must now factor in the immediate liability for sick pay from day one, combined with an inability to part ways if the employment relationship proves unsuccessful. The rational response is fairly obvious: avoid the risk entirely.
This is not theoretical speculation; it is how labour markets function when faced with regulatory constraints. No amount of academic opinion can state otherwise. I urge the Government to review the impact on social mobility, so that they can adapt the legislation to avoid the unintended consequences I have highlighted. Like my noble friend Lord Deben on the last group, I would like to be proved wrong on this. If I am, I invite the Government to gloat to their hearts’ content about that, but I think we need the evidence. I beg to move.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s excellent amendment, as we reach the end of Committee. Before I get into the substance of that, I will offer some praise. Noble Lords know that, last week, I took issue with the Government Front Bench about the potential lack of response to letters from individual noble Lords who had raised specific points during Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who is no longer in her place, took some issue with that, resiled from my analysis and said that it was not the case. However, over the last few days, I have received a plethora of epistles from the Government in my email. As Private Eye may have said in the past, are those two occasions by any chance related? That was my praise; I thank the Government for coming forward with those letters and we will hold them to account when we reach Report. I am grateful for small mercies, nevertheless.
I commend to the Government the excellent report of the Social Mobility Commission, State of the Nation Report 2024: Local to National, Mapping Opportunities for All. I probably say this at every juncture, but my noble friend’s amendment is helpful, because there is a cross-party consensus that we should all be working to help young people in particular into work, innovative employment, and skills and training. As we all know, and as has been found by apolitical third parties such as the charity the Sutton Trust, which focuses on improving social mobility, there are disparities across the country. There are sectoral and geographic disparities, and disparities in people’s backgrounds, race, ethnicity, age et cetera. As far as is practicable, we should be designing legislation that tackles issues around improving life chances, training and skills, and innovation.
More fundamentally, we need to be designing legislation that tackles endemic, entrenched inequalities, and that is what this amendment is about. My noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom is absolutely right that this is about opportunity cost. Many employers, given the chance, will try to help young people by giving them a chance to improve their life chances and skills, and by paying for their exams and training, et cetera—via apprenticeships, for instance. But the legislative regime will be such that they are encouraged not to employ that person, because they may have a disability, may be late to the employment market or may not be socialised—they may not understand the protocols of going to work each day, of being on time and of being dressed smartly, which are very basic things that we take for granted. That risk aversity, employers not wanting to employ those people, will have a negative effect as the corollary of this Bill.
Ministers have a chance at least to engage with this amendment and, when we come to Report, I hope to accept it; it would make a real difference to the lives of people who find it tough to enter and stay in the employment market. I encourage Ministers to look at the report to which I referred, and at the work that has been done to support the Bill and its laudable objectives. My noble friend offers this amendment in good faith in order genuinely to improve the Bill. On that basis, I hope that the Minister will look on it favourably and incorporate its ideas into the finished Bill.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I could not support this amendment more; I heartily support it. A social mobility impact assessment is vital.
I want to illustrate this with a few brief words on the retail sector. My noble friends have referred to the many reasons why people are excluded from employment in the retail sector, such as a lack of social mobility. When this Bill was coming forward last year, the British Retail Consortium expressed great concern and doubt about its ability to offer jobs. The BRC indicated that 61% of those consulted said that the Bill would reduce flexibility in job offers, 10% were unsure and 23% said that it would have no effect.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, in a previous life, I used to work in further education with many young people who were non-traditionally successful. In more current times, I have worked on matters relating to prison reform and I am very interested in former prisoners gaining employment. In all the instances of working with young people who did not have traditional qualifications or were trying to get into work, or with former prisoners, you were in a situation where you were talking to local employers and asking them to take a punt—a risk—on people. You would say, “Look, the worst that can happen is that you try this person out, it doesn’t work out and no one’s lost anything, but actually I’ve got every faith they will be brilliant”, and so on and so forth. You had to say, “Take a risk”, and I am afraid that in all the responses from employers they are saying, whether we like it or not, that the Bill—if enacted as it is presently constituted —will mean they become risk averse and will not take risks on a former prisoner or a young person who is a bit of a scally. So it is key to assess social mobility.
In addition to that group of people, one of the key ways in which work contributes to social mobility is often through young entrepreneurs or young people who, again, might not be conventionally the kind of people who will pass the Civil Service exam, will not necessarily fit in as an ideal employee and might be slightly eccentric or risk-takers, but who will set up their own micro-business. We know that they are the kind of people who might well be successful, although sometimes they might not be.
Throughout the passage of the Bill, there have been a lot of amendments tabled about micro-businesses—not SMEs, as they are traditionally still quite large businesses whereas micro-businesses have around 20 staff, or even two, three or four. If you talk to young entrepreneurs—the sort of young men who drop out of college but set up semiconductor manufacturing organisations, like some people I know, a builders’ business or a small hairdressers’ business—they realise that many parts of the Bill, which I have opposed throughout, will affect them. They do not have huge HR departments, they are not lawyers and they do not know what they are going to do, but they will be held liable for swathes of regulatory rules mandated by the Bill about the way they run their micro-businesses.
Those people are part of the great success of social mobility. They start out and make a success of it, but now it might not be worth it. They are not always poor and impoverished people. It can be young people making good through small businesses.
If it is the case that this is scaremongering about the worst fears or people just being paranoid, fair enough. But this Labour Government, of all Governments, should want to assess whether the Bill inadvertently, not intentionally, damages social mobility via employment. I therefore urge the Minister to accept this harmless but important amendment.
Baroness Cash (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who covered quite a few of the points I planned to make. I want to speak specifically about young people.
Speaking very recently in front of a committee, Employment Minister Alison McGovern said that
“the situation for young people is a big worry for me at the moment”
and that:
“A lot of our young people—nearly 1 million—are effectively on the scrap heap”.
Those are not words I would have chosen myself; they are her words to a cross-party committee.
We have heard a lot of statistics during today’s debates. I will just add a few more. There are 1 million people not in education, employment or training, which includes a lot of young people. In addition, we have massive numbers of people receiving sickness benefits. All these young people will be a risk for employers.
The Minister is quite right that there has been an uptick in new businesses starting, but there is a serious downturn in the number of jobs created; unemployment is rising year on year, month on month since this Government took power; and the tax rises in the Autumn Budget are beginning to really kick in. We have seen that in the written submissions by numerous business organisations to the Government, other groups and Peers in this Chamber, begging—pleading—with us all to make their case about the significant costs they are already facing due to the national insurance rises. We can see it in real time. This amendment is a request to monitor the situation and come back with an impact assessment on perhaps the most vulnerable people in our society.
To show that these young people really want to succeed and want to have an opportunity, I will read the Committee a couple more numbers that the Minister is probably already well aware of. Some 60% of young people under the age of 30 would love to start a business, 9% of them have done so and 18% more of them would like to do so this year. These are the most vulnerable young people in our society. They are our future, as our demographics are getting older, and we are going to become more and more reliant on the economy that they generate. I have said it before, and I will say it again and again in this Chamber: Governments do not create growth; businesses create growth. We are now looking to these young people to start businesses and take risks on employing others. I urge the Government to, at the very least, come back having monitored that there is no impact on them and no further impact on the loss of employment that could ensue.
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I refer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, about letters. I assure him that it is no coincidence that when we make a commitment and say that we will write, we write. I make sure that my officials write to everyone to whom I have promised a letter within 10 working days. If the noble Lord has not received letters from us, I welcome the challenge of being put on the spot to ask why the letters are not there.
I have a couple of points. I am a firm believer in social mobility. When I exited my business, some 20 years ago, I was very much involved in a social enterprise that went into state schools to ensure that state pupils were able to get out of their shell, be better and make something out of their lives. I am a firm believer in social mobility, and this Government take social mobility seriously. We do not just talk about it; we action it.
To support our commitment to ensuring that everyone, no matter their background, can thrive, we will commence Section 1 of the Equality Act 2010 in England:
“Public sector duty regarding socio-economic inequalities”.
As an example, the socioeconomic duty will require specific public bodies to actively consider how their strategic decisions might help to reduce the inequalities of outcomes associated with socioeconomic disadvantage. We are also now taking forward work to make sure that commencement of the duty in England is as effective as possible in driving efforts across the country to break down barriers to opportunity and making sure that there is no glass ceiling on people’s ambition.
I refer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe. We debated unfair dismissal and probation periods on day five of Committee, which was 21 May. We debated sick pay on days two and three of Committee, which were 8 and 13 May. We have debated some of these points at length.
I refer to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, about some of the 1 million young people who are not in employment, training or education. We recognise that, and we are doing something about it. Since the general election, 500,000 more people are in work. At same time, we are improving access to NHS appointments; some 3 million people have been seen by medics in NHS appointments.
Baroness Cash (Con)
I would like some clarity regarding the employment numbers, because unemployment has been rising and is higher. We know from a number of City firms that graduates are struggling to get jobs, even in supermarkets. We have 33% fewer jobs for graduates. I just want the Minister to clarify the increase that he referred to and where that is coming from.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for that remark. I will get officials to write, setting out the detailed analysis of where this unemployment is and where new jobs are being created. I want to make absolutely sure that we get this right. We have already improved the NHS waiting list, and something like 3 million people have already accessed their appointments.
On the point about the impact assessment, which I will not labour, this analysis, as I have set up in many preceding groups, will be done. That includes social mobility. There is no point me standing here and repeating what I have just said. All this will be done. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, to withdraw Amendment 313.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I thank the Minister for his answer. I am also grateful to my noble friends Lord Jackson, Lady Lawlor and Lady Cash for their supportive comments and to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who raised some very interesting points.
I gently suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Leong, that we are not just talking about it either; we are proposing to do something about it. We want to protect social mobility, which is why we have tabled this amendment. He sounded disappointed that we have to keep returning to this debate—so are we, but we do not feel that we are getting meaningful answers on the subject of the consultation, which we have brought up on numerous occasions. Until we get those meaningful answers, we will continue to return to this debate.
The Government may not deem a comprehensive impact assessment necessary for these provisions, but they have not given a satisfactory response to the serious concerns raised about social mobility and opportunity creation. In our opinion, this represents a failure to engage with the economic realities of how the employment market functions, and the Minister knows this as well as I do.
We must judge policies by their results, not their intentions. Results are not dependent on the nobility of our intentions but on the incentives that policies create in the real world. This Bill creates the wrong kinds of incentives. It incentivises employers to become more risk-averse, not more inclusive. It incentivises the hiring of safe, conventional candidates over those who might bring fresh perspectives but lack traditional credentials. It incentivises the protection of those already in employment at the expense of those seeking to enter it. In the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, it disincentivises taking a punt.
Do not just take my word for it, take those of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Its most recent survey stated:
“Members say that, at a time when the government needs business to drive growth by taking risks, the Bill, along with these other pressures, will make businesses more risk averse. ‘We worry businesses will start playing it too safe, choosing a “safe pair of hands” over bold, innovative talent that could drive real change’”.
These are not the incentives of a modern, dynamic economy that seeks to maximise opportunity and social mobility. They are the incentives of a system that entrenches existing advantages and fundamentally will make it harder for those without them to break through. We think that is a tragedy. This legislation will be judged a failure because of the standards its proponents have set for it. When employment opportunities for young people decline, social mobility stagnates and those on the fringes of the labour market find doors closing rather than opening, we will see the true measure of these policies, and that will be regrettable. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
“Guidance for small businesses(1) The Secretary of State must publish a document containing statutory guidance for businesses with fewer than 50 employees on their employment and legal obligations under this Act.(2) The document must include, in particular— (a) an overview of the relevant legal duties placed on employers under this Act, (b) a practical framework outlining how such businesses can meet those duties, and(c) guidance on best practice suitable to businesses of this size.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to publish statutory guidance for small businesses in adhering to the employment and legal requirements of this Act.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, in speaking to this group of amendments I note the sorry absence of my noble friend Lord Fox, whose contributions on these matters have always been thoughtful and constructive. Unfortunately, the Committee has me instead. I will focus in particular on Amendments 317 and 329, both tabled by my noble friend Lord Fox, which aim to provide much-needed clarity and certainty to small businesses as they seek to understand and comply with the provisions of the Bill.
Amendment 317 would require the Secretary of State to publish statutory guidance to support small businesses in meeting the employment and legal obligations introduced by this legislation. This is a modest and reasonable ask that would have a significant practical benefit. For many small businesses, compliance is a question not of good will but capacity. Unlike larger firms, they do not have in-house legal departments or external consultants on retainer. They need clear, accessible, authoritative guidance that they can rely on from day one. This amendment is not about watering down the law, nor is it about shielding firms from responsibility. It is about enabling small businesses to do the right thing without having to second-guess the detail or bear disproportionate cost in trying to interpret it.
Amendment 329 would build on that principle by making the commencement of the Act contingent on the publication and parliamentary approval of such guidance. It is important to say that we on these Benches understand the mandate that the Government won at the last election, and we have no intention of delaying the Bill beyond our duty to scrutinise it. However, this amendment reflects a deep concern about the real-world impact that the legislation may have on small businesses if clarity is not in place from the outset.
It is not necessarily about the measures in the Bill itself but about how they are communicated and implemented. Without clear guidance, there is a risk that well-intentioned businesses will fall foul of the law through no fault of their own. These amendments offer the Government a constructive route to avoid that outcome. I hope that Ministers will engage with them in that spirit. We are just trying to make it so that businesses, like the Minister, would know what they have to do. They need it to be set out. I hope that the Government will feel this is a possibility that they will consider before Report. I beg to move.
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 326 in this group. I begin by saying again how gracious it was of the Minister to meet me to discuss my amendments in advance a couple of weeks or so ago. My Amendment 326 is on the same theme of the need for impact assessments before provisions are brought into force. It provides that:
“Regulations which would amend primary legislation may not be laid … unless an assessment of the impact … has been laid before Parliament and three months has elapsed”
from that date.
Delegated powers that can amend primary legislation are, of course, known as Henry VIII powers. This derives from the Statute of Proclamations in 1539 when Henry VIII persuaded the Commons to include a provision in a Bill that would permit him to issue decrees having the same effect as an Act of Parliament and thereby bypass the normal parliamentary process.
Henry VIII powers can be draconian and raise real questions as regards compliance with the rule of law. This is not just my view. In his much-lauded Bingham lecture on 14 October 2024, entitled “The Rule of Law in an Age of Populism”, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, the Attorney-General, was obviously right when he said that excessive reliance on delegated powers, including Henry VIII clauses
“upsets the proper balance between Parliament and the Executive. This not only strikes at the rule of law ... but also at the cardinal principles of accessibility and legal certainty”—
issues that
“raise real questions about how we are governed”.
These are wise words indeed and very welcome, but I find it difficult to reconcile them with our Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out at Second Reading, there are around 163 delegated powers in our Bill and 12 Henry VIII powers. As he powerfully put it:
“Ministers are, in effect, asking Parliament today to empower them to do whatever they decide to do, whenever they decide to do it”.—[Official Report, 27/3/25; col. 1845.]
The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, in its report of 24 April, described various Henry VIII powers in the Bill as, “overly broad”, “inadequately justified”, and an
“inappropriate use of the … affirmative process”.
As it said, Henry VIII powers are subject to far less scrutiny than primary legislation.
And this is the heart of the problem. Much of the legislation needed is yet to come, but it will not be capable of being scrutinised as it should be because of the reliance on Henry VIII clauses. It is a symptom of a rushed agenda but also, more worryingly, of a growing acceptance that Henry VIII powers are okay. They are becoming the default option.
The Select Committee on the Constitution, in its report, points out that Clause 24, “Dismissal during pregnancy”, and Clause 25, “Dismissal following period of statutory family leave”, both
“contain and extend Henry VIII powers that … act as placeholders while the Government consults further on the specifics of the measures to be implemented”.
This can mean only that
“substantive policy decisions have not yet been taken”
on those issues. But it also means a lack of certainty about how the provisions will operate in practice, which the Select Committee-considered to be “particularly concerning”, given that the provisions enable primary legislation to be modified.
In addition, Schedule 7 contains a list of extensive legislative powers in connection with labour market enforcement, under Part 5, which are passing to the Secretary of State. Paragraph 35 confers on the Secretary of State a Henry VIII power to add by regulations any enactment which affects the rights of employees, trade unions and the duties of employers.
These extensive enforcement powers in Part 5 also need to be considered alongside Clauses 151 and 153. These clauses contain a power to make any consequential provision, which may amend, repeal, revoke or otherwise modify
“any provision made by or under primary legislation passed before, or in the same session as … this Act ... and may make different provision for different purposes or … areas”
or
“contain supplementary, incidental, consequential, transitional or saving provision”.
The Government may respond that the power to make consequential provision is confined to what is purely consequential. That is true, but what is purely consequential turns on the scope of the provisions they are said to be in consequence of. Combining these consequential powers with the wide powers in Part 5, for example, would seem to give the Secretary of State the power to confer on his enforcement officers even wider powers when entering offices to search and seize documents, if they are in some way connected with the operation. I think even Henry VIII would have been impressed. His 1539 Statute of Proclamations allowed him to amend legislation by decree, but even he was not permitted to prejudice
“any person’s offices, liberties, goods”
or “chattels”.
Then there is the power to make provision for different purposes or different areas. What is the need for that power? When I was in government as a lawyer, parliamentary counsel would probe closely as to why we needed this power, and we would have to justify it. My amendment is therefore designed to bring some transparency and due diligence to the use of these Henry VIII powers before they are laid and debated. It would simply provide that, before such regulations could be laid, there would need to be an impact assessment laid before Parliament for three months to enable a bit more parliamentary scrutiny. This would give time for reflection and, if the Government decided to proceed with laying the regulations, it would serve to enhance the level of parliamentary debates on the regulations that subsequently take place under the affirmative procedure.
I give the last word to the great Lord Judge, who spoke strongly against such clauses when he was Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. He said:
“You can be sure that when these Henry VIII clauses are introduced they will always be said to be necessary. William Pitt warned us how to treat such a plea with disdain. ‘Necessity is the justification for every infringement of human liberty’”.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill and Lord Carter of Haslemere, for their amendments in this group. As the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, commented, it gives us the chance to send further good wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for a speedy recovery. We look forward to seeing him back in this Chamber to discuss this vital Bill.
Dealing with Amendment 317 first, the Government have already acknowledged that the vast majority of the costs associated with this legislation will fall on smaller businesses, but it is not just the obvious headline of which we must be mindful. As the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, pointed out, there are significant hidden costs too. These include the need to hire legal professionals, expand human resource capacity, and navigate increasingly complex compliance requirements, which many smaller firms simply cannot afford. That is why statutory guidance specifically tailored for small businesses—those with fewer than 50 employees—is not just helpful; I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, that it is essential. These businesses are the backbone of our economy. They do not have in-house counsel, nor the luxury of large HR departments, yet they are bound by the same obligations under this Bill as any large corporation.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Carter of Haslemere and Lord Fox, for Amendments 317, 326 and 329, and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, for moving the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox.
Amendment 317 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, is on guidance for small businesses. Ensuring that businesses are supported to implement these reforms is fundamental to the successful delivery of the plan to make work pay. We have committed to providing guidance to ensure that all stakeholders have the information required to make necessary adjustments. We are engaging closely with employers of all types from a range of sectors to understand how the Government can best support them in their preparations.
Support may look different for different sectors, sizes of company, regions and so on. We want to make sure that we properly consider the needs of different employers and respond in the most effective way. This could include a variety of tailored guidance and support. The amendment risks preventing the Government taking the type of tailored approach that we hope will be most effective. Our forthcoming implementation road map will set out our plans for consultation and implementation of the Bill’s measures.
Our Employment Rights Bill delivers the most significant upgrade in employment rights in a generation, creating a modern, fairer labour market. We will continue to consult and engage to make sure we get delivery right. We will produce guidance, provide support, allow time to prepare, and ensure the enforcement landscape works. I make it clear that I agree with the noble Lord that it is in everyone’s interest that small businesses are properly supported to implement the Bill, and the Government are committed to doing so.
Amendment 329 from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, would make commencement of all the Bill’s measures contingent on the approval and publication of statutory guidance. This would unnecessarily delay commencement of measures that can be delivered more quickly. We are committed to supporting small businesses and will ensure that timely and targeted guidance is delivered where relevant.
I turn to Amendment 326 from the noble Lord, Lord Carter. I have read the entire Bingham lecture from my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General. Nowhere in his speech did he say that statutory instruments should not be used. As most noble Lords know, employment legislation uses true statutory instruments because they save parliamentary time, as mentioned in the Attorney-General’s speech, so that we can get more of this on the statute book.
I reassure the noble Lord that the Government have sought to limit the use of the Henry VIII powers within the Bill and believe our approach to their use is proportionate. I can also reassure the Committee that the Government already have robust plans in place to assess and review the impacts of this Bill. The noble Lord’s amendment would add unnecessary bureaucracy to this and other necessary powers in the Bill. It would also, in effect, duplicate work that the Government are already committed to undertaking.
Take, for example, the power in Clause 132(6). This allows the Secretary of State to update, expand or otherwise modify the list of bodies specified in Schedule 9 to the Bill with which information may be shared by the fair work agency. It is a Henry VIII power, subject to the affirmative procedure. The Government believe this is an entirely appropriate use of such power and the DPRRC also raised no concerns.
Specifically on the power in Clause 151, I reassure the noble Lord that, where possible, amendments to other pieces primary legislation that are required as a result of the Bill’s provisions have been made in the Bill itself. This includes amendments in Schedule 1 that are consequential on the provisions regarding zero hours in Clauses 1 to 5; those in paragraphs 5 to 19 of Schedule 3 that are consequential on the changes regarding unfair dismissal; and the provisions in Schedule 10 that are consequential on the provisions in Part 5. However, it is possible that further provisions will be identified that require consequential amendments. Allowing these to be made by regulations will mean they can be made without delay and with appropriate levels of parliamentary scrutiny. The power is constrained as it will allow amendments only where they are consequential on the provisions already made in this Bill.
Supporting employers to understand the requirements of the Bill is key to achieving the objectives of the plan to make work pay. I hope noble Lords are assured of the Government’s firm commitment to effectively and appropriately support stakeholders in preparing for employment rights reform.
This will be my last time speaking in Committee on this Bill, so—
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
If this is the last time the Minister is going to speak, I should point out that he started off by telling us about the road map, which his noble friend promised we would see shortly. In his closing remarks, would he like to tell us when we will see it? Will it be tomorrow, or next week? We would like to see it as soon as possible; indeed, we would love it if he could publish it now, before he finishes his closing speech.
Lord Leong (Lab)
It is tempting, but I can assure the noble Lord that it will be published very, very, very soon. How is that?
Like I said, this is the last time I will speak in this Committee. I want to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to all noble Lords for their extensive engagement and the robust way in which we have debated this stage of the Bill’s passage. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe, Lord Hunt and Lord Fox, and to the noble Lords, Lord Goddard and Lord Palmer, for standing in so ably for him. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I wish the noble Lord, Lord Fox, well in his recovery and look forward to welcoming him back.
Let me be clear: this Government welcome scrutiny—that is the purpose of this House—but scrutiny must be grounded in the present and focus on the issues at hand, not lost in the echoes of decades-old political arguments. Some contributions, regretfully, seem to have been more intent on reviving grievances from the 1970s than addressing the needs of today’s Britain.
This Bill delivers on a clear manifesto promise. It is part of our plan for change, built not on rhetoric but on the practical need to provide security for working people and long-term renewal for the country. This is where our focus lies—not on refighting the past but on fixing the future. We continue to welcome serious challenge, and we expect debates to be robust, but we also expect them to be proportionate, honest and forward-looking.
As we approach the end of Committee this evening, we on this side look forward to constructive and collaborative meetings and engagement with all noble Lords ahead of Report. With that said, I respectfully ask the noble Lord to withdraw Amendment 317.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
On behalf of my noble friend Lord Fox, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his support, which was so eloquently put. I also thank the Minister for his detailed reply.
When the Minister started speaking, I thought he would use his valedictory remarks to say that he was actually going to agree with something. There was great promise that he would agree to the amendments—these reasonable amendments—as all they would do is give guidance to small businesses to show them what the legislation is. Then, I lost: he will step down without going out on a positive note, which is very sad. His argument was that all the amendment would do is delay things. Sometimes, delay is good. Delay can be good if you get it right. Too often things are done precipitately, and delay is the better alternative.
What is the answer from the Minister? We shall have more statutory instruments. I have dealt with statutory instruments in the 15 years I have been in this House. Quite honestly, we discuss them, but we never vote. There has been no vote that I can remember, and statutory instruments are a means for the Government to tell us what they are going to do, and we have to nod in agreement.
Where do small businesses stand in all this, without any real guidance? They are left in a morass. The Minister has gone off in a cloud of glory, but I still do not have an answer as to whether anything will be implemented. Sadly, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment of my noble friend Lord Fox.
Lord Clement-Jones
“Rights of dependent contractorsAfter section 230 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (Employees, workers etc), insert—“230A Rights of dependent contractors(1) A dependent contractor is an individual who—(a) is engaged to perform work or services personally for an employer or contractor of services;(b) primarily or substantially relies on a single employer or contractor of services for their income;(c) is not classified as an employee under a contract of employment, nor as an independent contractor operating a fully autonomous business;(d) is subject to a degree of control by the employer or contractor of services regarding the manner, timing, or conditions under which the work is performed.(2) A dependent contractor, as defined in subsection (1), must be entitled to the following rights statutorily accorded to employees— (a) payment at or above the National Minimum Wage for all tasks performed;(b) paid annual leave and shall be subject to the record-keeping duties as outlined for employees in this Act;(c) statutory sick pay;(d) family leave entitlements including parental leave, and bereavement leave;(e) protection from unlawful deductions from pay and protection against discrimination under applicable equality legislation;(f) the right to request fixed hours after a qualifying period of continuous service with the same employer or contractor of services;(g) the right to and on terms to be defined in regulations, mirroring the rights afforded to zero-hour workers and those on similar contracts.(3) Dependent contractors, as defined in subsection (1), are not entitled to—(a) statutory redundancy pay;(b) minimum notice periods for termination unless otherwise specified in their contract.(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations make further provision in respect of the rights and obligations of dependent contractors, including defining qualifying periods for certain rights.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment aims to define dependent contractor status by reference to existing employee rights particularly those related to flexible working arrangements and family leave.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I will see my noble friend Lord Fox tomorrow and I will tell him what he has been missing. I think the noble Lord, Lord Leong, is already making history by using the phrase “very, very soon”—or was it “very, very, very soon”? In my experience, I do not think I have heard that, so it is probably arriving tomorrow morning.
Amendment 318 seeks to introduce specific provisions for dependent contractors. It proposes the insertion of a new section into the Employment Rights Act 1996, by way of a new clause after Clause 150. It is intended to address a significant gap in our current employment law by recognising essential rights and extending them to a growing segment of our workforce. This is a serious and rather surprising omission from the Bill; certainly, it is a gap my party promised to fill in its manifesto last year. I feel an obligation to put this amendment forward today.
The Minister spoke about employment rights in a modern labour market. I do not believe we can secure proper employment rights in a modern labour market without addressing the issue of the dependent contractor. We know that the nature of work has changed and is changing. More and more individuals are engaged to perform work or services personally, relying primarily on a single employer or contractor for their income, yet they fall outside the traditional definitions of employee and fully autonomous independent contractor.
These dependent contractors are often subject to a degree of control over how, when and where they work, leaving them in a precarious position, without adequate employment protections. No doubt this Committee will be familiar with many of those who work in the gig economy—delivery workers, contracted drivers, piece-rate workers, home workers and even consultants who work almost exclusively for a single client. Granted, some Uber drivers and Hermes couriers went to court and managed to establish that they are in fact workers and not independent contractors, but more needs to be done. We need explicit statements about the status of such workers and explicit rights set out in this Bill.
The amendment seeks to rectify the situation by defining dependent contractor status clearly within the Employment Rights Act. Crucially, it proposes to extend several key employment rights to these individuals, treating some of the measures in the Bill as applicable to them. Specifically, this amendment would ensure that dependent contractors are entitled to the rights set out in proposed new subsection (2) of my amendment. This includes payment at or above the national minimum wage for all work performed; the right to payment for cancelled, moved and curtailed shifts, which mirrors the vital protections the Bill introduces for zero-hours workers; statutory sick pay from day one of sickness, aligning with the Bill’s improvements to SSP; day one rights to paternity and parental leave, and the new right to bereavement leave.
The amendment also includes a statutory right to disconnect from work-related communications outside of normal working hours, and protection from detriment for exercising this right, as the Bill establishes for other workers. It also includes protection from unlawful deductions from pay, and against discrimination. It further includes an entitlement to guaranteed hours if regular and predictable hours are worked for a defined period, moving beyond just the right to request and aligning with the new provisions for qualifying zero-hours workers.
It is also important to note that this amendment respects the distinct nature of dependent contractor relationships. It acknowledges that, unless specified otherwise in their contracts or by future regulations, dependent contractors would not automatically be entitled to statutory redundancy pay or general minimum notice periods for termination, so there would continue to be a distinction between employment and dependent contractor status.
Furthermore, the amendment would empower the Secretary of State to issue further regulations to define key terms and the specifics of these rights, ensuring flexibility and the ability to adapt to evolving working practices. It would also mandate the issue of guidance, including an online tool to aid in determining dependent contractor status in disputed cases. By accepting the amendment, we would have the opportunity to bring fairness and greater security to a significant and growing portion of our workforce. We could ensure that individuals who are deeply reliant on a single employer received fundamental employment rights reflecting the modern realities of the work. I very much hope that the Government will support this vital addition to the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for his amendment. As we consider this legislation, it is timely to reflect on how it would interact with one of the most significant shifts in our labour market in recent decades: the rise of the gig economy. This sector has delivered considerable benefits, including increased flexibility, new income opportunities and innovative business models. It has allowed many individuals to engage with work on terms that suit their circumstances, whether as a primary or supplementary source of income.
However, with any new form of work comes a degree of legal complexity. Our current employment framework was designed largely in a different era—one where work tended to take place in fixed locations, during fixed hours and under traditional contracts. The gig economy challenges many of those assumptions. For businesses, this complexity can lead to inconsistencies in regulation, administrative uncertainty and litigation risk; for individuals, it can mean uncertainty about rights and entitlements, and for policymakers, it raises the broader issues of whether and how the legal definitions of employment need to evolve to reflect modern working practices.
The Bill, while not focused exclusively on the gig economy, touches on matters such as workplace rights, regulation and the role of secondary legislation that will inevitably affect it. We should therefore consider whether the legislation provides sufficient clarity for businesses operating flexible models, whether it supports fair and predictable frameworks for all parties, and how future regulations will ensure that any changes to employment classifications or entitlements are based on clear, evidence-led analysis.
The question before us is not so much whether the gig economy is good or bad—it is part of the modern labour market, and it will obviously continue to grow and remain so. The more pressing question is whether the labour market is equipped to keep up with that evolution, and whether the Bill provides the right foundation for doing so. In that context, thoughtful and measured discussion about emerging work patterns such as dependent contracting, platform work, freelancing —which we discussed the other day—and other hybrid models are not only appropriate but very necessary. I look forward to further discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and others, on this subject.
Before I sit down, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Leong, for the great courtesy with which he has always conducted himself in his discussions and deliberations with our side. I enjoyed his valedictory remarks. I felt that he was perhaps slightly irked by the fact that we have had some relatively lengthy debates—perhaps because he did not agree with the premises of some of them. I would say very gently that that is the point of Committee; we are not supposed to agree, we are supposed to probe. As a former Home Office Minister, I have to say that these debates are not long; they are brief. These debates are like Usain Bolt; ours were like Mo Farah.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for tabling Amendment 318. He raises an important issue. As we have been discussing, the changing nature of work and the gig economy are a real challenge for us, and we recognise the complexity and shortcomings of the UK’s current employment status framework.
I can reassure the noble Lord that the Government have committed to consulting on a simpler framework for employment status, and this remains our intention. We have been clear that, as a result of the complexity, some of the reforms in the plan to make work pay will take longer to undertake and implement. We want to get the potential changes to the framework right, and we will consult on the fundamental aspects of employment law before taking action. I think that in part echoes the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, who recognised the complexity and the need to think it through before we get it right. We are determined to follow this through and take action.
I am sympathetic towards the noble Lord’s aims to extend the protection of employment law. The self-employed make a huge contribution to the UK economy. As the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, said, while many enjoy being their own boss and the flexibility that self-employment brings, others can find themselves highly dependent on one particular client with little choice, which can bring them challenges and problems.
I appreciate that the noble Lord is seeking to address this with his amendment by introducing a new employment status of “dependent contractor” and extending employment protections to those individuals. However, the amendment would further complicate what is already a highly complex area—one where, as I am sure the noble Lord knows, there have been several high-profile Supreme Court judgments in recent years. We want to avoid introducing an additional employment status before we have had the opportunity to reflect and consult further.
In addition, I can assure the noble Lord that the Government are committed to supporting and championing the self-employed. We have already announced a package of measures to help the self-employed thrive in good-quality self-employment, including measures to tackle late payments to small businesses and the self-employed. I urge the noble Lord to listen to our reflections and our determination to look at the whole issues around the gig economy, and to give us a little bit of space to do that. For this reason, I ask him to withdraw Amendment 318.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
Can the Minister say what the status is of the consultations she mentioned? She offered very reassuring words and said there was a consultation on employment status. Is that under way? Would that mean the idea is to eventually have an Employment Rights (No.2) Bill, which we would all look forward to debating? What is the exact status of what the Minister is reassuring us on?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
This has come up several times in the debates we have had on the different aspects of employment status. We have said that we need to do further work on the employment status elements of the plan to make work pay. I do not think it is intended to come back and put that in this legislation. The consultation has not started yet, but there will be a thorough consultation. We are going to carry out a detailed piece of work on this, and we will come back with further proposals on how we are going to address it in due course. I hope that answers the noble Lord, even if not completely.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, that ministerial “in due course” is not quite as good as “very, very, very soon”. I sense an awful lot of goodwill coming from the Minister, but this is a really important part of the economy. I appreciate the thoughtful comments from the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe. I did not expect a resounding endorsement of my amendment, but what he said about the evolution of employment rights and the need to make sure that our employment law is equipped to keep up with the way the modern economy is evolving is really important.
The Minister clearly recognises that we need to move forward in this area, but it is the pace and the fact that so many people—an increasing number—are now part of the gig economy. We see them passing every day: they do deliveries and are couriers—every form of the gig economy—and they have very few rights unless they have litigated, like Uber drivers or Hermes couriers, to establish them.
“Maximum pay ratio(1) A worker must be remunerated by their employer at a rate which is not less than one tenth of the remuneration made by the employer to the highest-paid employee.(2) The remuneration referred to in subsection (1) includes—(a) salary or hourly pay;(b) bonuses;(c) employer pension contributions;(d) shares, options, or other entitlements;(e) benefits in kind.(3) If a worker receives remuneration which is less than the entitlement referred to in subsection (1), the worker is taken to be entitled under their contract to be paid, as additional remuneration in respect of the period concerned, the difference between their entitlement and the remuneration actually received.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would implement a maximum ratio of 10:1 between the highest- and lowest-paid employees in an organisation.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, my Amendment 320 sits in glorious lone splendour in this group. I am not responsible for degrouping it; that was the way it was arranged. Noble Lords will see that this is a proposed new clause to introduce a maximum pay ratio. I thank the Public Bill Office for assisting me with the drafting.
The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, took us into celebrity land with Usain Bolt and Mo Farah. I am going further into that space with a forthcoming event from this week: the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez in Venice. I am relying here on the interesting reporting in the Guardian from Zoe Williams, who has been spending time with the campaign group No Space for Bezos and finding that in Venice there is considerable resistance to a billionaire taking over a city and totally disrupting the life of that city for three days. Williams quotes one of the local campaigners:
“We really wanted to problematise the ridiculous and obscene wealth that allows a man to rent a city for three days”.
Williams reflects in the article that
“when wealth itself is seen to be acting in its own interests, and it has accumulated to the degree that its impact scars every poorer life with which it comes into contact”,
we have a problem.
This amendment sets out Green Party policy—yes, this is long-time Green Party policy—but I am really aiming to assist the Government constructively here, and to assist the Committee as well as perhaps our national debate, by demonstrating that it is possible to lay down bridges to cross the deep fissures in our society. They are not just in Venice and they do not just involve Amazon—although I note that the Government have been applauding an expansion of Amazon here in the UK. We might think about how many of the small businesses we have just been talking about might go out of business as a result of that. I posit that it is essential to start to bridge these chasms, to tackle the poisonous inequality that so affects our political landscape.
Bringing the context closer to home, noble Lords may perhaps have expected me to cite research out only a week ago from the High Pay Centre, which analysed five years of mandatory pay ratio disclosures across the FTSE 350. This was a previous modest legislative attempt, hoping that shining a light on the level of inequality might have some impact in reducing that inequality. The study clearly showed that the attempt to do that has failed. The figures have basically bobbled around since 2019, and the current ratio of median CEO pay to the median UK employee was 52:1. That has been at a similar level ever since the ratio started to be recorded. I note that it is even worse for the FTSE 100, where the median CEO to median employee pay ratio was 78:1. Those are the middle figures but, if we take the widest measures, we go to the security and catering group Mitie, where 575:1 is the ratio not to the lowest-paid employee but to the median employee. At Tesco it is 431:1. This situation is doing huge damage to our society, and I put it to the Government that they surely have to tackle it.
A 10:1 ratio is Green Party policy. I know from the discussions that the Minister kindly had with me before this debate that she will not leap up and support my amendment, but I hope she may be able to provide some response, at least to acknowledge that we have a problem. The pay differentials also react to the low-pay environment in which those essential to the success of a business are not getting the respect, as well as the pay, that they deserve. Meanwhile, a few at the top are incentivised to chase short-term profits and share price valuation at long-term cost to society but also to the businesses that they head.
The impact on communities is evident in towns and cities, where the vast bulk of workers are now trapped on or very near the minimum wage, while money is shovelled away to faraway company headquarters. Companies defend these sums as reflecting performance, but all too often, as we have seen with the water companies, that is far from the case. Why is it that every worker does not benefit if a company is doing well, as they have all contributed?
I finally note that, yes, this is also an environmental measure. To take just one element of the CEO lifestyle, the wealthiest people in the UK burn through more energy in flying alone than the poorest use in every aspect of their life. Environmentally, as well as socially and politically, we cannot afford a society split between a few have-yachts and the majority have-nots.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to this amendment and, frankly, to express a degree of disbelief that such a proposal should have been made. With due respect to the noble Baroness, I do not believe that this amendment is a serious contribution to the debate on fair pay or responsible corporate governance. It is a piece of performative and ideological showmanship—a throwback to a worldview that sees profit as a vice, wealth as inherently suspect and enterprise as something to be managed, limited or downright punished. The idea that government should impose a legal maximum pay ratio—a flat arbitrary ceiling of 10:1 between the highest-paid and lowest-paid employees in every organisation—is not just unworkable but, I believe, economically illiterate.
First, this proposal would be a gift to bureaucracy and a curse to business. Every company, from high street shops to high-growth tech firms, would have to monitor and police every single form of pay—salary, shares, bonuses, pensions and benefits in kind—just to ensure that they do not cross an artificial line. Do we really want our job creators to spend their time calculating compliance spreadsheets instead of investing, innovating and employing? Secondly, it would actively disincentivise growth and ambition. High-performing individuals—those who drive investment, lead exports and create jobs—would simply leave and take their talent elsewhere.
The noble Baroness mentioned Amazon. I join the Government in welcoming the further investment that Amazon is making. As a matter of record, Amazon employs circa 75,000 people in the UK. No one is on zero hours, and the minimum annual starting salary is between £28,000 and £30,000 a year. It provides flexible working opportunities from day one, including term-time contracts, which allow parents, grandparents or carers guaranteed leave during school holidays. It offers paid parental and bereavement leave. Amazon also offers guaranteed hours from day one, and employees have the choice of full-time or part-time contracts. It is important to put the record straight. Since 2010, Amazon has invested more than £64,000 million in the UK, and £12,000 million in the last 12 months, and supports a network of around 100,000 UK-based small and medium-sized businesses. I welcome the opportunity that the noble Baroness has given me to put the record straight.
To go back to the noble Baroness’s amendment, it would mean that employers would be forced to avoid hiring lower-paid staff altogether, just to protect the ratio. What would be the result? There would be fewer jobs, less opportunity and more outsourcing—the very opposite of what a fair and inclusive economy should look like, hitting the least well-off, the most vulnerable and those at the margins of the labour market.
My third point is that this is not fairness; it is levelling down. It is virtually saying, “Don’t succeed too much, don’t reward excellence, don’t grow too big or too fast or be too profitable”. That is not fairness—it is anti-growth, anti-aspiration and anti-business. I must tell the noble Baroness that this amendment looks like it would be more appropriate in a Maoist economic manifesto, delivered to his revolutionary cadres, rather than a serious proposal for modern employment legislation. What this amendment reveals is not a serious attempt to solve a policy problem but a mindset that is suspicious of success, dismissive of wealth creation and entirely detached from economic reality. Against that background, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, which I hope will agree with mine, that this is an amendment that should not be accepted.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, let accord break out across the Table. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for tabling Amendment 320. I do not share the disbelief of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, in hearing it, but only because I probably have more than the passing acquaintance with bits of the Green Party manifesto that he perhaps does—and that is the only reason for it.
It is right that companies should be sensitive to wider workforce pay when setting pay for those in the boardroom and other senior leadership positions. Company law and wider regulation already address that point. First, the Companies Act requires that UK listed companies must disclose and explain each year the ratio of their CEO’s pay to that of the company’s lower-paid and average-paid employees. Secondly, under the UK Corporate Governance Code, listed companies are asked to review workforce remuneration when setting directors’ pay and engage with employees to explain how executive pay aligns with wider company pay policy. Taken together, these measures provide important transparency and accountability in how UK listed companies deal with pay and incentives across the whole employee base.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, this has been a short but very clarifying debate on the political divisions in our society. I will be fairly brief in responding, but there are some points that I must pick up.
The response of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, really sounded like something from a debate out of the 20th century. I started with the story of what will happen in the coming days in Venice because we are in the 21st century, where raging pay inequality is a huge political issue. If you are not prepared to acknowledge that that is an issue that is significantly shaping our politics, you really are not in the 21st century.
To pick up some specific points the noble Lord made, he said that the amendment would force people to monitor and police. However, as the Minister rightly said, all this monitoring and reporting already happens in FTSE 100 and FTSE 350 companies. It is the law already, so there is no extra paperwork to be done here at all.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that the amendment would disincentivise ambition, but ambition exists right across the board in companies. We have millions of cleaners, caterers and new apprentices out there who have huge ambition. Their ambition and the contribution they make absolutely need to be recognised.
I have to pick up the Amazon point. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, missed a couple of things out about Amazon, which I describe as the great parasite. How many jobs has Amazon destroyed? How many ambulances get called to Amazon warehouses, where workers are worked beyond human flesh and blood in trying to keep up with robots? That is the reality of Amazon.
Finally, I come to the point the Minister raised about economic competitiveness and the best business talents. Yes, we need the best talents, but we need them across the board. One person as the leader of the company is a small part of that company. On the idea that this is a pyramid—the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said these are the people who create jobs—I am sorry, but it is the whole of our society that creates jobs. You can put one of these CEOs on a desert island and they will not make a penny. The infrastructure, the workers and the customers—that is where the wealth comes from, and if we do not have a functioning society then we do not have successful businesses.
However, I am aware of the time and that there are some people in the Chamber who are undoubtedly waiting for next business, so I shall restrain myself from going on further. I shall look to come back with perhaps a more moderate amendment, but I will seek to hear from the Government what they plan to do about pay inequality, because I am afraid that I did not hear in the Minister’s response any answer to what they plan to do about that raging problem. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Review of safe homeward transport for workers(1) Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a review of whether workers should be entitled to access to safe homeward transport.(2) The review under subsection (1) must include—(a) an analysis of transport options generally available to workers who finish work after 11pm;(b) an analysis of the costs, in absolute terms and as a percentage of pay, to such workers of taking the available transport options;(c) best practice examples of employers who provide homeward transport for workers;(d) proposals to ensure that workers can travel home safely after 11pm without excessive cost.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Government to review the safety and affordability of workers travelling home after 11pm, and make recommendations. It includes reviewing best practice, such as City firms who pay for homeward transport for workers late at night.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, this amendment would require the Government to review the safety and affordability of workers travelling home after 11 pm and to make recommendations, including reviewing best practice. I note that some City firms already pay for workers to travel home.
This is based on work being done by the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the “Safe Home” worker-led initiative launched in 2018 by the Better Than Zero campaign and supported by Unite the Union and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union. It was launched following a women in leadership course in which workers from the hospitality, fast food and retail sectors shared their frightening experiences of getting home after a late shift. They included sexual assault, verbal harassment, violence and stalking.
Large numbers of workers in these sectors are not able to get home safely. Your Lordships’ House is very well aware of how limited late-night public transport can be—perhaps more than we would like to be. We currently have nearly 9 million night-time workers, of whom 15% are in low-paid roles, compared to 10% of employees as a whole. When you take into account restaurants, pubs and entertainment activities, that rises to 38%. Low-paid workers, many of them female, finish work at 11 pm, midnight or 1 am. How do they get home? This is a modest and constructive amendment which seeks to say that, if you are working hours during which society does not provide the transport to get you home safely, your employer has the responsibility to do so. I beg to move.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for bringing forward this amendment requiring a review of safe homeward transport for workers. I also welcome her back from her brief visit to the Maoist utopia on her last amendment. The safety and well-being of workers, particularly those finishing their shifts late in the evening, is a matter of significant importance. Many sectors operate outside traditional working hours, and the challenges faced by employees in securing safe and affordable transportation home after 11 pm are real and varied.
Understanding these issues is crucial, especially for vulnerable groups, including women and girls, for whom late-night travel can present heightened risks. It is also important to recognise that safe transport arrangements can contribute positively to worker morale and retention and may even play a role in reducing crime or accidents. The review has the potential to shed valuable light on current practices and challenges and provide a basis for informed discussion about how best to support workers who face late-night journeys home. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Katz (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for tabling Amendment 321. We recognise the concern underpinning the amendment and agree that workers finishing late at night should be able to travel home safely and affordably. We are aware that for some workers, particularly those in hospitality, healthcare and security, late shifts can pose challenges when public transport options are limited. We also acknowledge and welcome that some employers, including firms in the City of London, have taken proactive steps to support their staff with safe transport home.
While we do not believe that it is appropriate to legislate for a review at this time, I hope I can reassure your Lordships’ House that we are committed to supporting workers’ well-being and safety. That commitment is evident throughout the Bill. For example, as we discussed on the second day of Committee in early May—another opportunity for a history lesson, it seems so long ago—the Bill strengthens the right to request flexible working from day one of employment. This flexible working provision empowers workers and employers to agree working patterns that better suit individual circumstances, including, where appropriate and reasonable, avoiding late finishes. We are also taking steps to improve enforcement of existing rights and to ensure that employers meet their obligations to provide safe working conditions.
Although it is not the subject of this legislation, the Government are also committed to reviving, rejuvenating and investing in public transport, not least through the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill, the creation of GBR, improvements to rail services and the huge amounts being invested across the country, particularly in the north, in new transport projects, all of which will provide a greater level of options and service for not just people working late but those who want to enjoy the night-time economy and to use public transport more generally.
While we cannot support this amendment, we share the underlying concern and will continue to work to ensure that all workers are protected and supported. I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to withdraw her Amendment 321.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank those who have participated in this brief debate. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, and I can agree that there is an issue here and I thank the Minister for his response. I do not think that offering flexible working will really work with a pub or restaurant—that option will not be available. On public transport, for the workers affected, overwhelmingly we are talking not about grand infrastructure projects but local buses, which have been massively decimated over the last decade. None the less, the point has been made and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Music Education: State Schools
Baroness Keeley
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve the quality and quantity of music education in state schools.
Baroness Keeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am co-chair of the Classical Music APPG, which I have chaired for more than 10 years. I have worked with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, who has been my co-chair, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, and other noble Lords.
During the last six years, there has been a strong message coming to us of a growing crisis in music education in state schools. I will start with a review of the issues in that crisis, inherited by this Government last July. However, first, I welcome the fact that my noble friend Lady Debbonaire will make her maiden speech in this debate. It was a pleasure to work with her in the shadow team in 2023 and 2024 when she was shadow Culture Secretary and I was shadow Minister for Music. It was also a pleasure to hear her play the cello in the string quartet, the Statutory Instruments.
At the heart of the crisis in music education in our state schools are issues affecting quantity and quality. The ones I want to highlight are the shortage of specialist music teachers and the problems of teacher confidence and expertise, lack of curriculum time for music, and declining uptake and inequalities in access to music at both GCSE and A-level. These issues have been explored in debates, and in reports to Parliament and to all-party parliamentary groups.
In the 2019 report Music Education: State of the Nation by the Independent Society of Musicians, we heard that the policy of the former Government around accountability measures, such as the English baccalaureate, has had significant negative impacts on music education in schools in England. We also heard that curriculum time for music, which is statutory for key stages 1-3, had reduced, along with opportunities for children to pursue music to GCSE and A-Level.
The report posed serious questions to be addressed regarding the music education workforce becoming demoralised because of the increasing marginalisation of music in our schools. It called on the Government to review and reform the EBacc and Progress 8 accountability measures or, at the very least, to add a sixth pillar to the EBacc for creative subjects, including music. The 2019 report of the Commons CMS Select Committee on the social impact of participation in culture and sport also recommended that the Government add arts subjects to the EBacc. More recently, in your Lordships’ House, the 2024 report of the Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee recommended that the Government should:
“Abandon the EBacc school performance measures and review the other measures in the 11–16 phase”.
A 2022 survey of music teachers by the Independent Society of Musicians found significant variability in music provision, particularly in primary schools. It also found that the key stage 3 music curriculum had been progressively narrowed, mostly in academies, by placing music on a carousel or rota system, where it was offered for only part of the year, in rotation with other subjects.
The Cultural Learning Alliance’s Report Card 2024 highlighted that access to music education opportunities now varies greatly across the country, with 42% of schools no longer entering any pupils for music GCSE, and young people’s take-up of musical instruments and ensemble playing varying greatly by socioeconomic background.
I think we can say that all of this means that far too many young people are missing out on the benefits, experiences and opportunities that music education can bring. The curriculum and assessment review could play an important role in improving the quantity of music education in our state schools, because two of the issues that need to be resolved are the pressures on schools created by the accountability measures for the EBacc and Progress 8, and the lack of curriculum time for music.
Over recent years, Dr Adam Whittaker, of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and Dr Anthony Anderson, of Birmingham City University, have worked on the issue of the significant disparities in access to advanced-level music qualifications across the country. I am grateful to Dr Whittaker and Dr Anderson for making several suggestions to improve the quality and quantity of music education in state schools.
The first recommendation is to ensure a sustained and universal music curriculum throughout a young person’s life. We are nowhere near this, particularly at secondary level, in many state schools, where report after report has shown that music education and opportunities are not being sustained.
I want to mention here the excellent work done up and down the country by orchestras, opera companies, churches, cathedrals and music projects working with schools and in the community. To mention just a few, the London Philharmonic Orchestra has the Music Makers and BrightSparks programmes for schools; the Royal Ballet and Opera’s learning programme reaches 100,000 pupils per year; Opera Holland Park has just held two performances of the opera “Itch” for local schools; and the National Schools Singing Programme has worked with over 36,000 children and young people. These enrichment activities are very important, but we must make sure that music at school is present as part of the curriculum for every young person.
The next key recommendation is for government to support the availability and uptake of formal music qualifications. A-level music has been a long-standing feature of the musical training of many musicians. However, last year there were five local authorities without a single level 3 music entry, including A-levels: Barnsley, Hartlepool, Knowsley, South Tyneside, and Barking and Dagenham. By comparison, in Hertfordshire there were 378 level 3 music entries, and in Essex there were 321. These inequalities start at GCSE, with Blackpool and Middlesbrough having just 35 and 53 entries for GCSE music, compared with over 1,400 in Hertfordshire. Low levels of entry in those areas highlight that music qualifications are not available to all young people in all local authorities. This matters because a child cannot choose a subject that local schools do not offer, unless they can afford to travel out of the area to go to another school—and they should not have to do that to get a music education.
National statistics confirm that there has been a marked reduction in the amount of time teachers are spending teaching music, despite substantial growth of the pupil cohort in secondary schools. Since 2011, the total number of teaching hours for music in secondary schools has fallen by over 6%. Most concerning is the decline in hours taught in examination school years, with school hours for key stage 4 declining by 9%. The largest fall in taught hours for music was for key stage 5, with a catastrophic fall of 40% since 2011. This reduction in hours shows that qualifications such as A-level music are being restricted, or just not offered, in school key stage 5 options in some areas. It may mean that, even where such qualifications are offered, they are not given the same proportion of teaching time that they were in 2011-12, baking in potential disadvantage for those who wish to pursue a musical pathway to higher levels of achievement.
State schools need to be supported by government to offer music qualifications right through to the end of key stage 5, even when only small numbers take up those options. A small subject supplement could be transformative. For example, Dr Whittaker and Dr Anderson estimate that a national 50% subsidy on all school-based level 3 music qualifications could be delivered for less than £750,000. If a scheme were targeted to address the disparities I mentioned, it could be delivered at an even lower level of funding. Support like this from government could help protect the progression routes for pupils into advanced music education.
The next key recommendation is to address the music teacher recruitment crisis and to invest in high-quality, reflective continuing professional development—CPD—for music teachers. There is a continuing and significant shortfall in the recruitment of music teachers, with an almost 60% shortfall against DfE’s recruitment target last year. While there are over 400 fewer secondary music teachers in total than there were in 2011, there are almost 1,200 fewer teachers at key stage 5—that workforce has declined by 35%. That loss of expertise may prove very difficult to recover, as not all music teachers are able to teach immediately at key stage 5, especially during their first year after qualifying.
The Ofsted subject report on music education, published in 2023, highlighted considerable differences in how well teachers teach music. The Ofsted report found that in some secondary schools leaders assume that because their music teachers are specialists, they do not require further subject-specific training, but this can result in significant gaps in their subject knowledge not being addressed. Access to CPD is critical for music teachers but it is problematic, because music teachers are often the only teacher in the department, so difficulties covering their absence mean that they are less likely to be released for CPD.
Dr Anderson and Dr Whittaker feel that bridging the gap between trainee music teachers and early career teachers in music, by investing in that reflective CPD, is one focus that could make a real difference. On costings, they say that, for less than £5 million a year, each secondary school music teacher could be released for one day for CPD, which could improve the musical lives of 3.2 million pupils, at a cost of only £1.56 per child.
We have only a very short time for our debate. I hope I have opened up some issues which need to be addressed. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister about government action to improve music education in state schools.
Baroness Fleet (Con)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, and I pay tribute to her for securing this debate. I declare my interest as chair and co-founder of the London Music Fund, and former chair of the model music curriculum and the national plan for music education. I am very much looking forward to the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, making her maiden speech.
No Government in the last 25 years have done enough to support and promote music education. What do they not understand? Music brings young people together. It enriches lives. It helps emotional and social development. Music helps reading, listening, concentration and memory. And all this filters through to help with grades and exams. Music changes lives.
The previous Government made a start and published the national plan for music education in 2022, which was delivered by teachers working with music hubs across the country with guaranteed funding—it was never enough but a start. What did the Labour Government do? They pulled the plug on the national plan. Since then, there has been nothing but uncertainty and anxiety. Has funding been secured? No. Have music hubs been supported? No. Have specialist teachers been reassured? No. Have hubs been exempted from additional NI contributions? No. What are the plans to reduce the administrative burden on hubs?
Astonishingly, despite strong headwinds, many schools—not enough, but many—deliver outstanding music education. That is thanks only to the dogged determination of music leaders and teachers. We heard today that the brilliant music and dance scheme is secure for a year—but then what? As for the proposed national centre for arts and music, there is confusion and dismay. Will it be a new bureaucracy or just an information centre? There is no budget and no brief, just delay.
Schools can only build music departments with at least three years of funding, to allow everyone to plan properly. With the support of an ambitious trust, music could be delivered in every school. We await the Professor Becky Francis curriculum review. However, as of today, all those in music and the arts feel utterly let down by this Government.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, for the opportunity to hold this debate, and I very much look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire.
First, I acknowledge the important work of the 43 music hubs as well as organisations that partner with state schools, such as the Church of England. I also acknowledge the excellent work of the many cultural organisations that promote young people’s participation in music, such as The Glasshouse, Gateshead—close to where I live—which makes an outstanding contribution.
Nevertheless, the evidence is clear: music is part of the national curriculum only to key stage 3. We need more secondary schools to teach music at GCSE level, because 42% of secondary schools did not have any GCSE entries in music in 2024. Worryingly, the vacancy rate for music teachers increased sixfold between 2010 and 2023, and teacher recruitment in music over the same period dropped by half. The result is that there are fewer students studying music at secondary level. In addition, over the last two years we have seen a drop of one-third in vocational qualifications in music achieved at level 2.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, reminded us, in 2019 the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee found that the introduction of the English baccalaureate—EBacc—had resulted in fewer students studying music at secondary level, because only GCSEs in English, maths, the sciences, one humanity and one language are measured for the proportion of students reaching grade 5. As the Select Committee said:
“We remain deeply concerned about the gap between the government’s reassuring rhetoric and the evidence presented to us of the decline in music provision in state schools, for which the Ebacc is blamed and which affects students from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds disproportionately”.
What can the Government do about that situation? I hope that the Minister will tell us what plans they have to reverse the trend.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, on securing this vital debate, and I am delighted to precede the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire. When she was in the other place, the musical world was thrilled to have a former orchestral player in such an important position. I still enjoy seeing the cello case come down the Corridor, with the noble Baroness in close attendance. I am sure that she appreciates, all too significantly, the power of taking music into schools.
Yesterday, I recorded a conversation with the Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, who said that her success in turning around failing schools was hugely due to music. What do we need to achieve that? We need an inspiring and passionate teacher and the opportunity to experience and perform music. Rachel mentioned the visit of a singer who left the children agog with wonder as she rose through the stratosphere with the famous aria from Puccini’s “La rondine”. As we heard, orchestral and operatic visits to schools are absolutely vital.
In light of the Oral Question yesterday from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, about aid to live music, I have a suggestion for the Government: subsidise more visits to schools; up the number of peripatetic teachers; make sure that the hubs understand the policies and rationale behind the decisions; and do not tie them up in red tape and make them endlessly fill in forms about compliance.
I hope that Becky Francis will put creativity back in schools. I would like to see music back on the curriculum —that would make such a statement. Most importantly, more vital still, let us give children who are not advantaged the ability to listen to and make music. Surely that would be a natural step for a Labour Government, in relation to which the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, is such a distinguished party member.
Baroness Debbonaire (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I am grateful to follow the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. It has been a pleasure actually seeing him in real life, as opposed to just hearing him on Radio 3, which is still a great pleasure.
I rise for my first speech in your Lordships’ House. I am grateful to all noble Lords for the warm welcome I have received, and I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Keeley—we really were a great team. I declare my interest as a member of the Musicians’ Union; the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has outed me as a cellist already.
Music and, more broadly, arts and culture are everywhere and everything: the tune we sing in the shower; the stories we read to children; the poems that I have tattooed—there really is something for everyone. Just saying that is not enough; we need to make a political case for the arts. The arts give us ways to dream and to imagine a better world. They are good for our economy, for our lives and for our planet. They give good economic return on investment for exports, tourism and jobs. The social return is enormous.
This is an ecosystem. The commercial and the non-commercial, the different art forms and the enormous range of skills—they all interact to sustain the whole. But much of this sector is threatened, as other noble Lords have referred to, and we risk losing our global reputation for excellence. I benefited from outstanding musical education, and I want every child to have that chance.
This ecosystem means that the person who started out at the National Theatre becomes a writer on “Succession”. It is why film soundtracks are recorded in the UK—because our musicians really are the best. A TV costume designer visits a museum to capture exactly how a suit of armour moves. A game’s creator was inspired by their art teacher. The ecosystem is essential, not optional.
When we do this right, music and the arts give enjoyment for everyone—and for people from all backgrounds to earn a good living. Opera, for example, as my noble friend will know, employs so many working-class people, from the chorus to the technicians. It truly is a way to make your way in the arts. When we do it wrong, opportunities become exclusive, and we allow talent to go undeveloped. When museums are honest about the stories behind their objects, they make better museums. When the performing arts are at their best, they tell better stories and have more excellent performers.
Fighting for the whole ecosystem, and for everyone to enjoy it, will always be necessary, and I will use my skills, my knowledge, my experience and my time in this place to make that political case while I am here. Thank you.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, what an honour, privilege and pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Debbonaire and congratulate her on her maiden speech. I do not think that I have ever been present for a maiden speech that has had to be made in more compressed circumstances as this, but even so, she spoke with great passion about a subject about which she knows a great deal and feels even more.
I congratulate my noble friend Lady Keeley on securing the debate. The fact that so many Members wanted to take part, and that we have such a short time, shows the Government Front Bench that, the next time this happens, we must have more time now.
I have only a minute or two, and I want to devote it all to praising my noble friend and what she brings to the House. She brings her musical talent. She brings her patronage of the arts. She brings her extensive experience over many years with women’s refuges; she was the national officer of the Women’s Aid Federation of England. She has authored books and papers about domestic violence and was the national research manager for the anti-domestic violence organisation Respect. She brings all this enormous and valuable experience to this House.
Of course, she brought that in equal measure to the other House. She was first elected a decade ago to represent the city of Bristol, which, I hope the House will understand, I have a lifelong family affection for. Five years later, she was already shadow Leader of the House, playing a busy part in the important parliamentary debates in the 2017 to 2019 parliamentary Session, before being appointed as shadow Secretary of State for DCMS. In that role, she did, if I may say so, an enormous amount to prepare for the Government who were elected in June last year.
I need hardly add, but I am proud to do so, that my noble friend is a cellist. She has performed professionally. Indeed, she still does, because she is a member—as Members may know—of the parliamentary string quartet, which has performed at both ends of the Palace of Westminster. I recommend it strongly when noble Lords get the chance. They are known as the Statutory Instruments because they used to rehearse in my noble friend’s office in the House of Commons, where piles and boxes of statutory instruments were used in lieu of music stands. I should perhaps declare an interest because my daughter, Emily, is the first violinist in the parliamentary string quartet.
I endorse everything my noble friend said in her maiden speech about the importance of music, and everything I have heard so far. When I look back on my own experience, my state secondary school had a fantastic music department: we learned to play instruments, and we had a choir and an entire orchestra. I do not think you can start music at too young an age. Both my children started at the age of five or just before; they do not know a life without music. I endorse everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, said about the importance of music to people’s lives. It is absolutely crucial. Both my children went on to study at the Royal College of Music. While there, they played in youth orchestras and toured over Europe, which is exactly why I am so strongly in favour of any moves to help improve the relationship for creative artists touring in Europe.
There is more I could say—my time is up—but we must not allow music to become the preserve of the private sector. I end by saying that I hope my noble friend enjoys a long and distinguished career in the House, and that the next time we hear from her there will be much more time to hear her opinions, judgment and passion. I hope the whole House will at least agree with that. Many congratulations to my noble friend.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, until recently, I chaired a charity aimed at inspiring young people with a love of classical music. We developed teaching resources for schools based on Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique”, branded as Fantastique! for Schools. Schools that used them were delighted with them, but scaling up proved challenging.
How can we do more with the resources and dedication already out there from teachers, hubs, musicians, orchestras, opera companies, choirs, venues, charities, grant-givers and, of course, parents? We need a better awareness of what is actually available. Perhaps a central hub run by the proposed new national centre for arts and music education could signpost resources and guidance for schools.
We should also actively share good practice and success stories. Recent events hosted by the Opera APPG in the Jubilee Room have showcased some inspiring examples: a class of 20 violinists from an east London primary school; a school choir which sang in ENO’s “La Bohème”; and a class of ocarina players reading music at sight. Examples such as these show how music fosters discipline, behaviour and learning, and could motivate other schools.
We should encourage more partnerships and less fragmentation, but none of this will work without enough trained music teachers, including part-time, non-specialist and peripatetic music teachers. The Government should focus on recruiting, training and retaining them, and ensuring they have time in the curriculum and the support they need to turn the national plan for music education from fantasy into reality.
I have enough time to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, on her magnificent speech in such a short time. I have now overrun.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)
I respectfully say to noble Lords that we need to keep to the two-minute limit so that we have time for the Minister to respond.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of the Royal College of Music, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, is a distinguished alumna. We have had countless debates on this subject over the years. Each time another comes along I feel a growing sense of frustration—indeed anger—because, for all the fine words, we never seem to make progress. It did not make me popular with my colleagues at the time, but I was very critical of the previous Government for their failure to act to secure better music education in state schools.
As music should be a bipartisan issue, I hoped that, with the change in Government, we would finally see some progress. But it is a year on from the election and still nothing has changed: no progress on post-Brexit visa issues, the curriculum, funding, or the long-term financial sustainability of the hubs and the music and dance scheme, both of which are forced to exist from hand to mouth.
Because this inaction has been going on for so long, there is now a real danger of terminal damage to the entire music ecosystem, which depends totally on the ability of talented young musicians to be able to progress from their earliest years to the start of their careers. It is a complex and intensive pipeline which depends on music and singing in primary schools, the easy availability of peripatetic teaching, professional music teachers, entry to a conservatoire or university with dedicated but intensive one-to-one teaching, and then career opportunities. It cannot be left to chance. It needs understanding from government and a co-ordinated, strategic approach.
At the moment, we do not have that, as government is not joined up, with policy spread across at least four departments. No one is in charge and there is no coherent, functioning national plan. That must change and quickly. We need someone to take overall responsibility. We need to establish long-term commitments to and sustainable funding of the hubs and the MDS. We need action on the curriculum and we need to make music an attractive profession for young people to enter, which means sorting out touring visas and ensuring we have a proper copyright regime in place to tackle the threat of AI. I hope that next time we have a debate there will be meaningful progress on all these issues.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, on her comprehensive introduction and the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, on her passionate maiden speech.
In Keir Starmer’s Guildhall speech in March last year, he said that
“from day one, Labour will reform the school accountability framework, to make sure arts count”.
Day one is long gone, but the accountability measures, which have nothing to do with the curriculum per se, are still with us. We should remember that both the EBacc and Progress 8 were introduced to prioritise academic subjects and therefore lessen the importance of arts subjects. Removing them is an essential prerequisite for improving not just music education in our schools but arts education more generally. Music needs to be fully brought back into our schools and the resources and funding should be made available to do so, as they should be for all art subjects.
On the pipeline, the sectoral plan published yesterday was a plan for the more commercialised end of the creative industries. It was not a plan for the arts. Depressingly, the cuts to DCMS funding announced in the spending review appear to confirm this. I understand the Government’s wish to capitalise on the areas which are already highly commercial—it is what the previous Government did—but that combination of local authority and DCMS funding allowed both necessary and innovative work in music, including classical music, dance, theatre and the visual arts to flourish, while feeding into the commercial end of the ecosystem. This requires, and has always required, government investment, which nevertheless gets repaid many times over both artistically and financially, as the recent Arts Council England report Leading the Crowd demonstrates. We urgently need that plan—a plan for the arts—because without it even a good music education will be worth far less.
Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)
My Lords, as the Government’s important curriculum and assessment review continues, this is a timely debate. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Keeley for securing it and for the opportunity to contribute alongside so many noble colleagues. I particularly enjoyed listening to my noble friend Lady Debbonaire’s wonderful maiden speech, not least as I know full well her commitment to this cause.
Children have a right to know about the best music that has been written, from Bach to Bernstein to Beyoncé. Although 99% of adults will not earn their living as a musician, they will all listen to music, attend concerts or gigs and enjoy the stimulation of a beautiful song or symphony. Learning to compose and perform is every bit a blend of skill and intuition as learning to read books, a new language or the beauty of mathematics. My husband, a proud owner of both a master’s degree in mathematics and a piano, asked me to add that last bit.
The discipline of understanding a chord sequence sitting below a melody that makes you want to whistle or hum in the street is not just entertaining but an academic discipline in its own right. Music education is not about a top-set culture; every child can engage in music at whatever level makes most sense for them. Some children who find much of school difficult only attend because of their music teacher. They attend because, in a music lesson or extracurricular club, they can succeed and therefore feel that they belong in school. Many schools have deployed their pupil premium funding to provide music lessons for this very reason: so that disadvantaged children can feel successful. Precisely for this reason, their reading, writing and maths improve too.
With the curriculum review that a number of noble colleagues have mentioned coming to its final conclusions, now is the time to ensure that music education plays the fullest possible part in all children’s schooling.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, I give my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, on securing this valuable debate, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, on her fascinating maiden speech.
So far, we have all sung from the same hymn sheet: we want more and better music education in state schools. The last Government shared that aim, but their national plan managed to be simultaneously inadequate and yet wildly ambitious. I am sure this Government embrace the same aims, but they are not getting anywhere close.
We know that music is fundamental to improving the education attainment of all children. The provision of instruments is crucial. It makes an enormous difference in deprived schools for children to have an instrument of their own, to play in an orchestra, to be part of a team. It takes them out of gangs and into positive teams. The provision of instruments was promised—there was going to be £25 million for instruments and equipment—but the guidance on accessing that money was almost impossible, and I doubt that any of it has been handed over so far.
One can only sympathise with teachers who try to eke out what they have in the storeroom—a few triangles and the odd recorder. We know that those orchestras that can survive make a huge difference. We must thank Andrew Lloyd Webber and the wonderful work of the Music in Secondary Schools Trust, and we need some more help for them.
However, given that money is tight, I want to make a special plea for the importance of music in maths—we all know the importance of maths in society today. New research shows that the early indications are that maths can help not only if it is taught separately but if the teaching of maths and music is integrated—that makes a difference to both. I urge the Government to look at possibility of merging early years education in maths and music.
Lord Kirkham (Con)
I declare an interest as deputy patron of Outward Bound and former chair of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Those charities both focus on engaging children in challenging outdoor activities, but music has exactly the same potential to build resilience, self-confidence, perseverance and teamworking skills, boost mental health and deliver life-enhancing satisfaction, in real time, away from mobiles, tablets and screens.
In a world where artificial intelligence will eat up jobs, it is surely vital that children leave school with a wide range of interests and hobbies. Yet here we are going backwards from times when everyone started the school day singing together in assembly, as a relentless focus on STEM subjects squeezes out music and culture—as if possessing soft skills in the arts does not make better scientists and technologists. There are music hubs, but in reality, to access those, a child needs middle-class parents who know what is available and can push to get it.
What of future professional musicians? The Government support these through the Music and Dance Scheme, funding means-tested, subsidised places at specialist independent schools. At the Purcell School, one of the leaders in the field, 70% of pupils are receiving state support, delivering effectively a government programme to enable gifted but disadvantaged children the opportunities for social mobility through the arts.
Music is under pressure of both time and money at every level of our education system, and it richly deserves and needs more of both. Government should focus not on cost but on value, and the importance of music to education and society—to life—is invaluable.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, in stressing the importance of music education in schools and the lack of it at the moment, so ably emphasised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Keeley and Lady Debbonaire, I want to draw attention to the contribution the Church of England is making to the musical education of our young people.
Portsmouth Cathedral, for example, uses parish Choir Church projects and its Cathedral Sing project to widen participation in music education across the diocese, and working with more than 2,000 children a year. Sheffield Cathedral is teaching nearly 1,000 children each week. In some of its partner schools, over 100 languages are spoken, and it is prioritising the schools reflecting the greatest disadvantage. Liverpool Cathedral, in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University, is also deeply engaged with its local community. Sheffield, Portsmouth and Liverpool dioceses are examples of cathedrals where the choirs deliberately recruit from a wide range of schools, state and independent, urban and suburban, and actively seek both boys and girls.
Choirs with well-established heritage choir schools are also widening participation and supporting local schools with great success, and they are seeing increased diversity within their cathedral choirs. St Paul’s, for example, is working with 12 primary state schools across the diocese of London through its choral partnership programme, and it has seen multiple children from its partner schools join the cathedral choir on cathedral scholarships.
Choral music and singing are a fundamental part of the cultural heritage of the country. Cathedrals and churches, which are already playing their part in the musical education of young people, are very open to increasing their contribution in co-operation with state primary and secondary schools, and we hope the Government will be able to build on that.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I want to congratulate my noble friend Lady Keeley on obtaining this debate, and of course I congratulate my noble friend Lady Debbonaire on her passionate maiden speech.
There is no doubt from all the speeches tonight: we have heard of the importance of music in the curriculum as a tool to develop our children and the need for children to have equal and fair access to such a music education to develop their talents and skills. To give a perspective from Northern Ireland, there are inequalities in access to and in the provision of music education: rural versus urban, more affluent areas against economically disadvantaged areas, and of course in the Northern Ireland context, segregation and sectarianism also play a part. Those inequalities in access to music provision in schools have led to students not being able to develop their talents in music and the dramatic arts, while those who have had the access have excelled on the global stage.
However, what is most important is the role of music education in the state sector for those with special needs and the role with the voluntary sector in ensuring inclusion, development of voice, and dexterity with musical instruments. Therefore, I ask my noble friend the Minister whether she will ensure that best practice in music education throughout the UK is shared, and that the role of the voluntary sector along with education providers is celebrated as they provide music and drama arts against funding and staff challenges to ensure the further development of all children within the state sector.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, on her excellent maiden speech and to the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, on securing this debate.
Music education cannot flourish without expert teachers, but recruitment into initial teacher training for music has fallen by 76% since 2020. While a £10,000 bursary is now available, music trainees must still pay £9,225 in tuition fees. The support is welcome, but they are almost certainly taking on significant debt to train. In contrast, maths and physics trainees receive nearly three times as much—enough, in many cases, to cover both fees and living costs. This disparity sends a clear and damaging message: that music matters less.
Government messaging matters. When adverts highlight high bursaries for other subjects but omit music, we should not be surprised when our best graduates look elsewhere. We need national campaigns that champion music teaching, celebrate its impact, and make it clear that becoming a music teacher is not only valued but vital.
We must offer music teachers career pathways that keep them in the classroom. The restoration of schemes such as the advanced skills teacher programme would help us retain the best and allow them to mentor the next generation. Further, we must support school leaders. Too often, music is squeezed out by the EBacc, confined to carousel timetables or forced into silent, worksheet-led lessons. Music is practical, messy and joyful. If head teachers misunderstand this, children miss out. The Government must help leaders understand what high-quality music education looks like, provide clearer guidance to head teachers and trust music teachers to deliver it.
Finally, on music hubs, 2024’s restructure created complex compliance-heavy consortia that add workload without benefit. Funding is top-sliced and local expertise marginalised. If the Arts Council cannot make the system work in practice, it is time to ask whether it is the right body to oversee it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire.
I declare my interest as, for 10 years, the chair of the VOCES8 Foundation, which combines music performance with taking singing into schools. We were shocked when we began to go into primary school after primary school where there was no teacher with any musical knowledge. We developed ways of getting students to sing together in catches and in parts. All the evidence is—the Institute of Education did a study—that if you get pupils to sing together, and, even better, to sing in groups, competing and combining with each other, it lifts the school as a whole and it lifts the sense of common purpose.
Co-operation with outside bodies is therefore fundamental, and I hope that the Minister can reassure us that this Government believe in that. The most depressing meeting with a Minister I have ever had was when VOCES8 went in to see Nick Gibb, who told us his views on musical education, which I vaguely remember from my primary school a very long time ago.
Music hubs are a problem. I note that south-west London, which has an excellent music hub in Wandsworth, to which my grandson goes every Saturday, has not yet agreed the new reorganisation. I have read very critical comments on the reorganisation. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that this is not going to lead to a greater weight of bureaucracy on the hubs now imposed over their other counterparts.
In conclusion, I have been extremely lucky; not only did my children go to a state secondary school which had a strong musical tradition but my grandchildren now go to a Church of England secondary school, St. Cecilia’s—the clue is in the name—in Wandsworth, which has an excellent music tradition. If you go to Wimbledon this year, you will hear the St. Cecilia’s school band playing on one of the days in the first week and the Wandsworth Music orchestra playing on another day—all state school children, and my grandson will be playing in both of them.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, for securing both this important debate and her Oral Question today. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, who correctly highlighted the social return of music.
We know that music has the ability to enrich lives, so it is worrying that the future of music education is at risk. In government, we introduced 43 music education hubs and committed £70 million per year of funding for those very hubs. We announced the music progression fund, which was piloted by Young Sounds UK, to support up to 1,000 young people from low-income families over four years. The UK Music chief executive has called on the Secretary of State for Education to turbocharge music education funding and invest in 1,000 new music teachers, as has Ed Sheeran in his open letter to the Prime Minister. So we must ask: what are the Government’s plans to recruit more music teachers?
A survey of 2,200 music teachers by the British Phonographic Industry found that 20% of primary school teachers reported that there is no regular music lesson for their class, and the majority are not taught by a music specialist. Almost 40% of secondary schools now have no compulsory music lessons in year 9. Surely this should be ringing alarm bells.
What are the Government doing to address the drop in pupils taking GCSE and A-level music? We recognise that the Government have plans to launch a new national centre for arts and music education, but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, so well highlighted, there is very little detail other than that the centre
“is expected to be established in September 2026”.
That is 15 months away. As Ed Sheeran said in his letter, signed and backed by over 500 signatories from the world of music:
“We’re losing time … The time to act is now”.
Please can the Minister provide clarity?
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank everyone in the Chamber for such a rich debate, especially given the time pressures that we are all facing. I thank my noble friend Lady Keeley for opening this valuable debate. She is such a great advocate for music education, and I think we should all be very grateful to her. Many noble Lords have considerable expertise and experience in this area, and it has been my privilege to talk to many of them over the last few months.
I start by thanking my noble friend Lady Debbonaire for her tremendous maiden speech. I am delighted that she was able to make a contribution in her maiden speech to this debate on the importance of the quality and quantity of music education in schools. I know that this is a subject dear to her heart. As we have heard, she will continue to make a valuable contribution to this House, and we can all look forward to it. I particularly echo her sentiment that we all need to be fighting for the whole ecosystem. What a powerful contribution. I also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, for his very warm words and acknowledgement of his family connection to this subject.
This Government are clear: music education must not be the preserve of the privileged few. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that as part of our opportunity mission, we want to widen access to the arts, including music, so that young people can develop their creativity and find their voice. This is important in its own right. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, creative exploration is a critical part of a rich education. It helps young people to find opportunities and it powers growth in the creative industries, while raising self-esteem and resilience and contributing to young people’s well-being, as so many noble Lords have said.
Participation in the arts can bring wider benefits for children and young people. We have heard about the connection to maths, but there are outcomes in other curricular areas as well, as picked up by my noble friend Lady Ramsey and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft. I have mentioned before that I saw this first hand with Opera North’s project “In Harmony”, delivered in the most deprived schools in Leeds, with every child learning a stringed instrument. The impact on their maths attainment was incredible. We must all look at these examples, and I reassure my noble friend Lady Ritchie that we must look across the UK and at all the different voluntary groups that can be involved. As my noble friend Lady Keeley mentioned, many other organisations, such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, are making sure that high deprivation is targeted, enormously benefiting those young people.
I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, that, as I have said before in this Chamber, the work done under the national plan is not lost and is being used. This work will be integrated moving forward, and I thank her and the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, for their contributions. As part of our plan for change, we are committed to ensuring that arts and culture thrives in every part of the country, with more opportunities for people to engage in and benefit from work in the arts and culture where they live. The Government have announced over £270 million of investment in our arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage sector, made up of multiple funds including an £85 million creative foundations fund, to name just one. We are continuing the generous tax reliefs.
Turning to lack of government action on touring, for example, at least this Government have had a meeting with our EU counterparts. Those discussions are part of the European Union reset, and we look forward to the outcome of those talks. As per the commitment in Labour’s Creating Growth plan, DCMS is undertaking a review, documenting current and past funding for the arts, culture and heritage sector, as referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.
The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, raised pertinent points. We have discussed these measures a great deal, but I point to the independent review undertaken by Arts Council England. It will examine whether the regions have access to high-quality arts and culture, and whether everyone is able to participate in and absorb culture and creativity regardless of their background.
We want every child, regardless of background, to have a rich, broad, inclusive, innovative curriculum that includes creative subjects such as music. That is why the independent review, chaired by Professor Becky Francis, is looking at all subjects, including music, and seeking to deliver a curriculum that prepares young people for life and work, including in creative subjects and skills. It is being informed by evidence and data, in close consultation with educational professionals. That there have been more than 7,000 responses to the public call for evidence perhaps explains why it will take some time to pull that together, but we are expecting a final report in the autumn, along with the Government’s response.
We will consider the associated implications for accountability measures such as EBacc and Progress 8, mentioned by my noble friend Lady Keeley, and look at teacher time and all the wider implications that the review has been charged with bringing in. We are legislating so that, following the review and implementation of reforms, academies will be required to teach the reformed national curriculum alongside maintained schools. This will give parents certainty over their children’s education. Also, academies will be able to adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of their pupils. I was very interested in the example of Blackpool versus Hertfordshire. As an aside, my nephew is a peripatetic music teacher at Hertfordshire.
I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, that reorganisation will not create additional workloads for music hubs. Responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, music hubs play a vital role in communities across England, supporting children and young people and providing opportunities for them to progress. We have heard about the range of services on offer, and the Government continue to support this crucial programme. Music hubs grant funding of £76 million has been secured, and longer-term funding will be confirmed in due course. To widen access to musical instruments, the Government are investing £25 million in capital funding for instruments, equipment and technology.
We heard about the music and dance scheme from the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, and we absolutely recognise the importance of specialist training. That is why the Government continue to provide generous support to help students access specialist music, committing £35 million over the next academic year. The details of that have been well profiled. This important scheme provides means-tested bursaries and grants, again making sure that young people do not miss out.
There are so many areas to cover on government support for the arts, which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. We have not mentioned the Government’s announced investment of over £270 million in venues in the plan for change, ensuring that arts and culture thrive in every part of the country. Generous tax reliefs also provide £3 million to expand the creative careers programme; it is critical that young people get to realise their ambition.
There has been much comment on high-quality teaching, which is fundamental and will make the biggest difference to children’s outcomes. That is why the Government’s plan for change is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers across the sector. We are also offering a teacher training incentive package worth £233 million, which is a £37 million increase on the last cycle and includes a £10,000 tax-free bursary. We are seeing positive signs and an increase in initial teacher training numbers. They are going up, but there is still much more to do.
As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, mentioned, we need to showcase good practice, and I believe that the national centre for arts and music education will enable us to do just that. That is why in March we announced our intention to launch the new centre, offering excellent arts education and building on existing support for music education.
The music opportunities pilot targets disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND. We are investing £2 million to support it over a four-year period. It is delivered by Young Sounds UK in 12 areas of the country.
This has been a rich debate, and I know that this will continue to be a subject of much interest. I pay tribute to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for his contribution. The department is providing a grant of over £210,000 to the Choir Schools’ Association, recognising its choir schools scholarship programme offering means-tested support to choristers attending different schools.
I apologise for the whistle-stop tour through this. I have 30 seconds left to finish the debate, and it has been a pleasure to be here. In closing, I underline this Government’s commitment to ensuring that all children can access and engage with high-quality music education in and through their schools and leading into their careers. Creative subjects such as music are a vital part of a rich, broad school experience and to our economic success. As I said when I started, we must all work together to make sure that they are not the preserve of a privileged few.
Employment Rights Bill
Tuesday 24th June 2025
(1 day, 11 hours ago)
Lords ChamberEmployment Rights Bill 2024-26 View all Employment Rights Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 81-XI Eleventh marshalled list for Committee - (20 Jun 2025)
Lord Norton of Louth
“Review of the Act(1) The Secretary of State must—(a) carry out a review of the operation and effect of this Act,(b) set out the conclusions of the review in a report,(c) publish the report, and(d) lay a copy of the report before Parliament.(2) The report must be published before the end of the period of five years beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.(3) The report must, in particular—(a) assess the extent to which the objectives intended to be achieved by this Act have been achieved, and(b) assess whether those objectives remain appropriate and, if so, the extent to which they could be achieved more effectively in any other way.(4) In carrying out the review, the Secretary of State must publish an invitation for interested parties to make submissions on the operation of the Act.”
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, this amendment provides the means to check that the Bill, once enacted, achieves the purposes for which it is intended. It is a more comprehensive amendment than several that have been debated already, which provide for a review of certain provisions within 12 months of the Act coming into force. I shall argue that the relevance of the amendment goes beyond the Bill itself.
Too often in the past, legislative success for a Minister was seen as a Bill receiving Royal Assent. In evidence to the Constitution Committee’s 2004 inquiry into Parliament and the legislative process, former Clerk of the Parliaments Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth and Professor Vernon Bogdanor noted that,
“all too often, Parliament forgets about legislation once it has reached the statute book”.
Legislative success should be seen not as getting a Bill on the statute book but rather as delivering on what Parliament intended it to deliver.
As the then leader of the House of Commons, the noble Lord, Lord Hain, told the Constitution Committee,
“there is no point in passing legislation if it is not having the desired impact or it is having a different impact”.
Recognition of that point led the committee in its 2004 report to recommend that most Bills should be subject to post-legislative scrutiny within three years of their commencement or six years from their enactment, whichever was the sooner. In 2008, the Government accepted that Bills should normally be subject to review three to five years after enactment, a policy reiterated by Ministers in recent months. Indeed, in January this year, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, reported that the Cabinet Office had written to departments reminding them of the importance of post-legislative scrutiny.
In practice, not all Bills are subject to post-legislative review by departments. Some have undertaken thorough reviews, but the enthusiasm for completing them appears to differ between departments. Earlier this year, I asked whether the Government would encourage departments to emulate the Home Office, which had engaged in detailed post-legislative scrutiny of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019. There is a compelling case for ensuring that, in respect of certain Bills, post-legislative review is put beyond doubt through being embodied in the measures themselves.
There are precedents for including within a Bill a provision for post-legislative scrutiny. The most recent incidence is the Football Governance Bill. The Government, to their credit, accepted the argument that the Bill should provide for post-legislative scrutiny and brought forward their own amendment on Report to give effect to that proposal. The wording of my amendment may appear familiar to the Minister as it is taken from the Government’s amendment to the Football Governance Bill.
Bills that meet certain criteria should contain such a provision. The criteria I propose are that the Bill is large, is complex, makes substantial changes to the law, is contested and has not been subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. Bills that meet some but not all of the criteria may be considered for incorporating such a provision. A Bill that is not large but meets the other criteria should normally be considered for embodying provision for such scrutiny.
Each year your Lordships’ House usually appoints a special inquiry committee to engage in post-legislative scrutiny of an Act or group of Acts, such as the Mental Capacity Act or adoption legislation, that generally do not meet any of the criteria I have mentioned. That we select measures of this type for such scrutiny is not an argument against enshrining post-legislative scrutiny in some Bills but rather the reverse. We steer clear of Acts that are large and contentious. We are not likely to select the measure before us for post-legislative scrutiny in a few years’ time. Our scrutiny should complement that undertaken by government of measures covered by these criteria.
The arguments for post-legislative scrutiny of major Bills are several. There is the effect on drafting—knowing that a measure will subsequently be subject to review helps to concentrate the minds of Ministers and drafters in preparing the Bill. It serves to prompt a clear adumbration of purpose—of delineating the basis on which one will know whether the measure has achieved what it was designed to do. Perhaps most importantly, knowing that it will subsequently be reviewed may serve to reassure critics of the measure. That was especially helpful in the context of the Football Governance Bill. I think it applies in the case of this Bill.
Above all, providing the means of checking whether a measure has or has not met its aims and identifying what needs to be done to rectify any problems with its delivery contributes to good law. The Office of the Parliamentary Counsel has previously defined good law as law that is
“necessary, effective, clear, coherent and accessible”.
I have defined it as law that is well intentioned, well drafted and well implemented. Some of these features need to be checked during the Bill’s passage, but others, especially being effective or, in my terms, well implemented, are best tested through post-legislative scrutiny. As one Minister told this House’s Select Committee on the Mental Capacity Act 2005,
“while getting the Act onto the statute book had been a success, ensuring that it was fully implemented and understood was ‘work in progress’”.
This Bill clearly meets the criteria I have outlined. It is large, complex, makes a substantial change to employment law, is clearly contested and was not subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. The Committee has considered more than 330 amendments over 11 days. There are clearly disputes about the principles it embodies and its effect. Putting a provision for post-legislative scrutiny in the Bill, thus ensuring such scrutiny, meets the purposes I outlined.
The Minister may remind us that the Bill will be eligible for post-legislative review in any event, but this amendment puts it beyond doubt. If the Government have confidence in the Bill, they should have no problem in accepting the amendment. Critics may be reassured that, as with the Football Governance Bill, its effects will be reviewed. The amendment sets out the review to be undertaken before the end of a period of five years, and what the review in particular must assess. It also requires the Secretary of State to publish an invitation to interested parties to make submissions on the operation of the Act.
As I say, the provisions replicate those in the Football Governance Bill, omitting only the parts that are specific to football and do not lend themselves to replication in other measures. I urge the Government to build on what they have already achieved in the Football Governance Bill and establish best practice in embodying within this Bill provision for post-legislative scrutiny. Utilising the criteria I have detailed limits the number of Bills that merit such a dedicated provision. This Bill does merit such a provision, and I hope the Minister will demonstrate that the Government have the confidence to embrace it. I beg to move.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. He is not only a great author and academic, but he is regarded as a world authority on constitutional issues, and he has certainly been described as the greatest living expert on Parliament, so we take very seriously his very constructive suggestion for post-legislative scrutiny.
However, I rise to speak to Amendment 335, standing in my name, which would introduce a sunset clause ensuring that the Act will expire after three years unless the Secretary of State demonstrates that it has led to a net increase in employment. I do so against a background of economic data emerging in recent months painting a deeply concerning picture of the UK labour market. The UK’s jobless rate ticked up to 4.6% in April, while payrolled employment has fallen sharply, according to official figures covering the period when the Budget tax hikes on businesses came into effect.
We had an understanding that some of us would attempt to put together an overall view of what is happening in the jobs market at present, but the response from the business community to this Bill has been unambiguous and deeply troubling. The Institute of Directors has published research showing that more than seven in 10 business leaders—72%—believe that the Bill will have a negative impact on the UK’s economic growth. This is not a marginal concern expressed by a vocal or unrepresentative minority; it represents a clear majority of all those who create jobs in our economy.
Even more alarmingly, half of business leaders reported that they would be less likely to hire new staff as a direct consequence of this legislation. Let that statistic sink in. We are therefore considering legislation that, according to those who make the hiring decisions, will directly reduce employment opportunities for British workers.
These employment figures do not exist in isolation. They form part of a broader pattern of economic decline that, sadly, has accelerated since this Government took office. The combination of increased employer national insurance contributions, the various tax rises announced by the Chancellor and now this additional regulatory burden create a perfect storm of disincentives to business investment and job creation.
We are now witnessing the practical consequences of economic policies cobbled together on the basis of wishful thinking and political prejudice by people with little or no first-hand experience or understanding of how businesses operate in practice. When costs rise, businesses must respond. They cannot simply absorb infinite increases in regulatory compliance, tax obligations and employment-related expenses. The rational response is to reduce costs where possible—and, unfortunately, employment costs are often the largest element in business operations as well as the most unpredictable.
Throughout the debates on this Bill, both the Ministers opposite and their colleagues in the other place have maintained that it will not harm employment. They have repeated this assertion with remarkable consistency, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. This represents either a fundamental misunderstanding of basic economic principles or a deliberate choice virtually to ignore inconvenient evidence.
The Government appear afflicted by a sustained delusion that they can simultaneously increase the costs and complexity of employment while maintaining that employment levels will be unaffected. This surely defies both economic logic and empirical evidence. It is rather like claiming that one can increase the price of a product while ensuring that demand will remain unchanged, simply by insisting that it must be so.
We have to entertain the possibility that we on these Benches are wrong. Perhaps the business community is wrong. Perhaps the Office for Budget Responsibility is wrong. Perhaps the employment statistics are, at best, misleading. Perhaps the correlation between increased business costs and reduced hiring is merely coincidental. Perhaps economic theory and established business common sense are for the birds. My amendment is designed to test the Government’s confidence. If Ministers are indeed confident that this Bill will benefit workers and boost employment, they should graciously accede to this amendment and demonstrate to us all their unshakeable iron confidence that this is not, after all, an unemployment Bill.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I will pick up on a few of the points made by my noble friend Lord Hunt to support Amendment 335 wholeheartedly. In principle, I am in favour of sunset clauses because they help us to focus on a Bill not once but twice, as they will pass legislative scrutiny twice over, and they encourage us to make better law. There are very practical reasons for Amendment 335. We have a 4.4% unemployment rate—or we did up to November last year—and it is increasing, with 1.7 million people in this country unemployed.
This Bill, as we have heard time and again—I know the Government disagree, but the figures speak for themselves—will increase the cost of and burdens on employing people, restrict job entry and limit new posts being advertised. The number of job vacancy adverts is decreasing. Since the Government came to power, the tally I mentioned earlier—I am sorry to repeat it—is 115,000 jobs lost. At this rate, there is a very good reason to support such an amendment. I hope the Government will take on board that we must consider a sunset clause in case unemployment rises and employment levels go down significantly in three years’ time.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for tabling Amendment 323C and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for Amendment 335. I pay tribute to the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, in this area. I reassure the noble Lord that, despite Amendment 323C’s positive intentions, it effectively repeats what the Government already intend to do.
Our impact assessment sets out a clear plan to monitor and evaluate the effects of the Bill and its secondary legislation, following standard government practice. This approach will help us assess how well the measures are delivering on their objectives, inform future policy-making and review the real-world impact on all stakeholders, whose contributions we recognise as vital to the strength of our economy. As is standard practice, in line with our Better Regulation Framework obligations, we also intend to conduct a post-implementation review of the Bill within five years of Royal Assent. This will provide sufficient time to assess the policy’s effectiveness and gather sufficient data for evaluation purposes.
In the case of the fair work agency, ongoing oversight of employment rights enforcement is provided for in Clauses 91 and 92. They require the Secretary of State to publish a three-year labour market enforcement strategy and annual reports, which must be laid before Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Secondary legislation made under the provisions in this Bill will also be subject to the requirements in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 regarding proportionate monitoring and review.
In addition, where further detail will be set out in secondary legislation, the majority of statutory instruments will be subject to the affirmative procedure, allowing both Houses to consider them in detail and providing Parliament with sufficient opportunity for scrutiny and debate. Furthermore, the Government will consult on many of the details to be set out in secondary legislation, listening to the expertise of business, trade unions and civil society to ensure that the details of the regulations are appropriate to the current needs of the labour market.
On Amendment 335, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, we want to ensure that workers have these rights for life and not just three years, as the noble Lord proposes. As a result, we oppose his amendment. As is typical with employment legislation, further details on many of the policies in the Bill will be provided through regulations after Royal Assent. We will begin consulting on these reforms in 2025, seeking significant input from all stakeholders. We anticipate this meaning that the majority of reforms will take effect no earlier than 2026. We are committed to getting the detail right. This means listening to and incorporating a wide range of views into our policy development.
While headline statistics, such as employment and unemployment rates, may appear strong by historical standards, millions of workers are stuck in low paid, insecure and poor-quality work that is detrimentally affecting their financial stability and health. The UK’s productivity slowdown is more severe than in other advanced economies. A fragmented labour market and too much insecure work are holding back growth and investment. We also lag behind the OECD average on employment protections, and we have paid the price. The UK economy has not grown at the average rate of other OECD economies in the last 14 years, missing out on £171 billion-worth of growth. Average salaries have barely increased from where they were 14 years ago, and the average worker would be over 40% better off if wages had continued to grow as they did leading into the 2008 financial crisis.
This Bill will ensure a fairer, more equal labour market and deliver wider benefits to the business environment by improving well-being, incentivising higher productivity and creating a more level playing field for good employers. Consider a few of the changes it will bring: over 10 million workers in every corner of the country will benefit; increased well-being alone could be worth billions of pounds a year; there will be less workplace conflict, which costs UK employers about £30 billion a year; and up to 1.3 million employees will gain a new entitlement to statutory sick pay, increasing total sick pay by £400 million per year.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, spoke about the way businesses are perceiving this, but, as my noble friend Lord Leong said, business confidence is actually rising. The latest Lloyds Business Barometer survey shows business confidence at a nine-month high, with rising hiring expectations among businesses. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that a sunset clause would create business uncertainty at the very time when we want to build on that confidence. The industrial strategy, which we published yesterday, has been welcomed by all sectors of business and will help to build that long-term strategy for growth.
Given the benefits the Bill will bring for workers over the long term, we oppose the noble Lord’s amendment and will continue to promote growth for businesses and the level playing field for good employers. With this in mind, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Norton, to withdraw Amendment 323C.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral and the Minister for their contributions to this short debate. Obviously, I am very grateful for their opening comments; it seems to be something on which I have united the two Front Benches.
I am very grateful for the Minister’s considered response. I would prefer it to be in the Bill for the reasons I have given, but I feel I have achieved something this evening as she has come to the Dispatch Box and made the commitment she has, which is valuable because it ensures the Bill will be subject to a review of the kind I seek. Although I would have preferred that to be in the Bill, this short debate has achieved something.
If the Bill is subject to post-legislative review, it picks up on the points made by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral because, with the claims he has made about the Bill, it will be a chance to test whether it has delivered. It is important that post-legislative scrutiny is thorough in the way that some departments most definitely have done it for some Bills, which I welcome. My whole point is to encourage that. It is something I will return to, not necessarily on this Bill but on others, to ensure we achieve the same result. I am grateful to the noble Lord and to the Minister for what they said and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Berkeley
“Substitution clauses and the definition of “worker” in app-based work(1) The Employment Rights Act 1996 is amended as follows.(2) After section 207B, insert— “Substitution
207C Prohibition of substitution clauses in platform-based logistics work(1) A relevant company must not include a clause in its contractor agreements that permits substitution in the performance of services, unless—(a) the company can demonstrate that such substitution is operationally viable and genuinely offered to all contractors, and(b) the identity of any substitute is subject to the same training, vetting and approval standards as a directly contracted individual.(2) A clause purporting to allow substitution that fails to meet the criteria in subsection (1) shall be unenforceable and void, and the individual shall be treated as a worker under section 230(3).(3) In this section—“dependent contractor” means a person who—(a) performs services arranged through the company’s platform;(b) is paid per task or service delivered;(c) is not classified as an employee or worker by the company;“relevant company” means a company that—(a) provides services in relation to food and beverage delivery, postal and courier operations, or private hire transport via a digital or app-based platform, and(b) engages more than 250 workers or dependent contractors globally.(4) A clause purporting to allow substitution that fails to meet the criteria in subsection (1) shall be unenforceable and void, and the individual shall be treated as a worker under section 230(3).”(3) In section 230 (employees and workers), after subsection (3), insert—“(3A) For the purposes of subsection (3)(b), a requirement to perform work personally shall be deemed to exist unless the right to substitute—(a) is genuine, exercised in practice, and not fettered by contractual or practical limitations imposed by the contracting entity,(b) is not subject to prior approval or vetting by the company, either directly or indirectly, and(c) forms a meaningful part of the way in which services are actually delivered.(3B) Where the work involves the use of a digital platform to allocate real-time, location-based tasks in sectors including—(a) food and beverage delivery,(b) postal and courier services, and(c) taxi and private hire operations,any contractual clause purporting to allow for substitution shall be treated as void and of no effect, unless the company can demonstrate that the right of substitution is genuine, practical, and routinely exercised.(3C) A substitution clause in a contract for services of the type described in subsection (3B) shall not, by itself, be sufficient to establish that an individual is not a worker.””
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, the new clause proposed in Amendment 323E in my name has been given the rather surprising title “Substitution”, and one or two noble Lords may be wondering what that means, so I will try and explain. It refers to the substitution of people with the intention of avoiding paying tax, national insurance or anything else. It is a problem that has grown like Topsy over the last five years.
Noble Lords will remember how many times in the last year we have debated whether electric scooters should go on the road or the pavement and whether we should have electric bikes. More recently, we have been debating electric bicycles with big trailers behind them, usually pulling Deliveroo or something like that. While many of us think that it is a great idea to have green transport, when you start looking behind the way that this part of the industry is created, it does not look quite so good.
I am not going to go into the road safety element, because we are not in a road safety debate tonight, but there are other safety implications concerning the people who drive these vehicles. There are questions concerning, first, the extent to which they should be in the country at all and, secondly, whether they are paying the right amount of tax—and that is before we get into any other thing that might be driver related.
Noble Lords may have read a big spread in the Sun today, which I think is coincidental. It reads:
“Asylum seekers are cheating the taxpayer—with illicit Deliveroo and Just Eat accounts offered to them within ten minutes of asking”.
It goes on to explain that there are people selling Deliveroo driver accounts to migrants even while they are on the rubber dinghy coming across the channel from Calais. That makes it very nice for them, because they know they are being taken on and do not have to look for a job. That is one problem. I am not going to repeat the rest of the article as it will take all night, but it is well worth reading the reasons behind this.
The other issue is that these drivers riding the bicycles seem to be very adept at getting their friends to substitute for them. The friends may have no qualifications, driving licence, residence or anything else, and are probably not recognised, so they carry on driving these things, frankly, illegally. That is before we get to the questions of why there is no enforcement in relation to these people’s driving ability or whether they should be here at all. I am not going to go into any greater depth on what is wrong. As we all know, this is a serious problem in London, but it is also a problem elsewhere.
The amendment is quite complicated, but then employment law is complicated. My friends in the cycling and walking community, who are really fed up with this, look upon this amendment as a matter of safety, but they also are asking, “Why should people get away with doing this when they probably are not paying tax or anything else?”
The wording of the amendment is designed to cover the most popular parts of the industry, such as food and beverage delivery, postal and courier delivery, and taxi and private hire operations, as well as probably many others. It is to make sure that, if people are hired by one of these companies to drive these vehicles and go on particular routes, they actually do it rather than subcontract the work to somebody else who has no qualifications at all. I have not yet seen any convictions for people found guilty of what you might call substitution, but I expect it will happen soon.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
As a loyal member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling & Walking—with an emphasis on the cycling rather than the walking—I support the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, on this, and I will explain why. As he indicated, what is behind this amendment is partly what is leading certain noble Lords around the Chamber to pepper the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, with a series of curveballs about e-bikes in all sorts of shapes and illegal forms.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling & Walking has just issued a rather alarming report called Unregulated and Unsafe: The Threat of Illegal E-Bikes. It has a specific chapter in it called:
“The role of delivery platforms and the gig economy”.
This evening, we are talking about two intertwined issues. First, there is an employment law issue. At the heart of the Bill is a wish by our new Government to rebalance what they view as an imbalance that has occurred during successive Conservative Administrations between the rights of workers, particularly unionised workers, and the rights and freedoms of employers. Whatever your view on that, what we are talking about today is a good example of an area of employment that is using slightly questionable tactics to avoid recognising its rights and responsibilities towards its workforce.
Your Lordships may recall that, a few years ago, when the phenomenon of Uber started taking over and assailing the black cab business here in London, there was a long debate and a big issue around Uber claiming again and again that the people who were driving for it were not its employees. In successive cases, it was taken to court and eventually it had to admit that the people who drive for it are actually employees and have some rights as employees.
We have a very similar situation with delivery platforms. These are the delivery platforms where, if you have a craving for a peanut butter and pineapple pizza at 3 o’clock in the morning—which, being married to an Italian, I certainly hope you do not—you can simply reach for your smartphone and it will be delivered to your door fairly quickly.
Those large platforms are basically doing what Uber did originally. They do not recognise the people who are driving for them as employees; they are said to be contractors—indeed, they allow the contractors to nominate people to substitute for them, people who have no commercial or contractual relationship with the company whatever. One of the larger delivery platforms, related to Deliveroo, successfully managed to win a case in the Supreme Court brought by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, which was aware that this particular arm delivered food around London and other cities, largely using unregulated and very fast e-bikes. The company successfully argued against the union that these were not employees, and it used the fact that the people who ride for it could substitute others as part of its defence, which was accepted by the High Court. So we clearly have a strange loophole here that is harmful for those workers and is driving all sorts of unfortunate behaviour.
In evidence, I turn back to the report of the all-party group and the issue about the role of delivery platforms and the gig economy. In its written evidence, London Councils said:
“Many delivery companies are set up as Platform companies, with riders classed as self-employed so companies are therefore not required to provide health and safety measures. Platform companies only take an advisory role in safety standards for riders, not mandating vehicle mode or collision reporting, therefore avoiding any financial implications. This means there are no checks and balances in place for the safety of the vehicles used for deliveries, the riders themselves and the impacts on other road users”.
In respect of evidence from one of the platforms—Just Eat, which noble Lords may have seen written on the back of mopeds with L-plates on or illegal e-bikes—the report said:
“Pay for riders per drop has declined in recent years, requiring ever longer shifts with ever more deliveries per hour in order for a rider to earn sufficient money”.
We see vehicles or e-bikes constantly jumping red lights, narrowly missing pedestrians and weaving in and out of traffic, but they are doing it because the way in which they are compensated requires them to make the maximum number of deliveries in the shortest possible time, which obviously encourages speeding and avoiding road traffic laws, red lights and things like that. I suspect that many noble Lords or members of their families have had experiences of looking around rather nervously even when they cross a zebra crossing because of what may suddenly assail them.
Lastly, this is written evidence—and it is a tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, who is not in her place because this is not a Bill that she is involved in—from Leeds City Council, which has the same problems. It says:
“In addition to the safety of e-bikes, we would like to work with government to improve the industry’s employment and verification practices to address account sharing, where couriers can substitute deliveries to others who may not have a right to work in the UK. FDC [food delivery companies’] business models currently rely on riders themselves to confirm their eligibility to work, and this can enable illegal working. Alongside this, we would like to cover how to reduce the time pressure on riders to make deliveries, driving hours, and platforms’ responsibility for their riders’ safety”.
The councils have made a compelling case for this, as has the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I suggest that for the Government to look at this would align with much of their intent in this Bill.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, I feel obliged to add a word to my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s amendment, because I was counsel for the union in the Deliveroo case which the noble Lord, Lord Russell, has mentioned. The issue in that case was slightly tangential to that raised by my noble friend; the question there was whether Deliveroo riders were among those entitled to the trade union rights and benefits of Article 11 of the European convention. We need not go into that.
The Supreme Court held that the presence of a right of substitution in the contracts between the Deliveroo riders and Deliveroo meant that they were not entitled to those trade union rights. That reflects the situation in English law under the definition of a worker in the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act and the Employment Rights Act, which requires personal service. The courts have held that that excludes workers who have the right to engage a substitute, even in situations such as that with Deliveroo where the Central Arbitration Committee held that its use was rarely if ever put into operation. It was never used by those who brought the case.
The relevance of all this is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, mentioned, the categorisation of workers—whether they are an employee, a limb (b) worker, which Uber drivers are and the Deliveroo riders wanted to be, or an independent contractor—determines what rights they are entitled to under the various statutes. I accept that my noble friend the Minister will say that the status of workers will be consulted on in future. I completely agree that it should be approached holistically. As someone who has put up two Private Members’ Bills on the status of workers, both of which succeeded in this House with all-party support, I am happy to offer him my drafts. The matter has to be dealt with holistically. However, my noble friend Lord Berkeley has a point. This use of substitution clauses is a device to deprive workers of the statutory rights that Parliament intended them to have. It is an abuse that could be addressed now in this Bill before we get to the consultation on the status of workers generally.
The noble Lord, Lord Russell, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley indicated some of the consequences of the abuse of these substitution clauses. I will articulate two more. First, as I have mentioned, where platform companies insert a substitution clause in the contract between the rider or the contractor and the platform company, the effect is to deprive them of all employment rights. When I say that the platform company inserts the clause, that is what happens—there is no agreement, consultation or collective bargaining; they are simply told, “If you want to work, you agree to the substitution clause”. It is a device. In the Deliveroo case, it was, in effect, accepted that that was the purpose of the insertion of the clause.
Noble Lords have already articulated the second problem. Since the Deliveroo case, substitution clauses have become extremely widespread and the use of actual substitutes, which was rare in the Deliveroo case, has now become very frequent and involves illegal working and so on. But—this is the final point I want to draw to your Lordships attention—think of the workers who are engaged as substitutes: they are being paid even less than the contracted riders; they are being exploited. They are the people who, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, pointed out, speed through the traffic, risking their lives to make as many deliveries as possible. It is an abusive situation and this might be a moment to deal with it, in advance of the general consultation and the legislation that will be required to regulate the status of workers generally.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and the thoughtful contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Russell of Liverpool.
I think I was responsible for some of the curveballs on illegal e-bikes and e-scooters that have peppered this Chamber in recent years. I regard their operation as dangerous, especially for elderly people and the disabled—“a Wild West” is the phrase I used before I became a Minister and learned my P’s and Q’s.
I hope the Minister will agree to the request from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for a discussion on what can be done to tackle the current loopholes, even if nothing can be done in this Bill. It is an important matter and we should try to progress a solution.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 323E, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is a curious but important proposal, addressing a very real challenge in the evolving world of work. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, pointed this out, as has the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Hendy.
The amendment seeks to clarify that substitution clauses in app-based platform work, such as food delivery, courier services and private hire transport, are valid only where the right to substitute is genuine, viable and actually used in practice. As many of us will know, much of our employment legislation was developed in an era when the labour market looked very different. The rise of app-based platforms and the gig economy has created new forms of work that do not always fit into the traditional categories of employment or self-employment, as has been said by previous speakers.
This amendment seeks to clarify one such grey area: the use of substitution clauses in platform work. It rightly asks whether these clauses are, in practice, genuine and workable, or whether they are being used to deny individuals the worker status that they would otherwise be entitled to. The noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Hendy, and others have explained in detail how that works in practice.
The broader point is that the Government must ensure that our workers’ rights framework is not stuck in the past. It must be up-to-date and dynamic enough to reflect the modern patterns of work and provide reasonable security for those engaged in them.
Too often, the flexibility of gig work is celebrated without enough attention being paid to the insecurity that can come with it: uncertain hours, low pay—which has been mentioned, including lower pay than the normal driver—and limited recourse to rights. Ensuring that the legal definitions we rely on are not open to exploitation is a vital step in protecting workers and maintaining fairness in the labour market. As other noble Lords said, this amendment may not be the final word on the matter, but it makes an important contribution to a conversation—the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, used the word “discussion”.
I give my compliments to the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and others for this conversation—or discussion. I hope that the Minister and the Government will see that there is a gap in employment legislation that needs to be looked at. We ought to deal with people, such as couriers and drivers, who are substituting to people paid even lower wages—and then scooting in front of you at the traffic lights, trying to push up the number of deliveries or collections they are making—in primary legislation, not in a statutory instrument somewhere down the line. I hope that the Government will look at this before we get to Report.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, with whom I agree pretty much entirely.
This has been a much more fascinating debate than I was anticipating, and that says a lot more about me than it does about the debate. I was particularly struck by the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Hendy; I had no idea that such practices had been accepted by the courts. That seems to be one of the cases, as we discussed in an earlier group, where the gig economy workplace is evolving rather faster than the law. That clearly needs to be looked at, otherwise we will end up with what seem to me, as a lay man, relatively perverse situations.
I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Russell, that the thought of a peanut butter and pineapple pizza sends a rather nasty shiver down the spine. Do people really eat that? I would seriously hope not.
The gig economy and platform-based work are obviously integral parts of the modern labour market. We should not forget that the sector offers flexibility that many workers value, because it allows people to choose when, where, how much and how they work. For some, that flexibility is vital; it means they can balance their work with other commitments or supplement their income in ways that traditional employment models do not allow.
I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who introduced his amendment so eloquently, that there seems to be an incentive to come to this country. If we were able to control this, there would be an opportunity to help at least stem the flow of the boats, which is something that used to occupy a lot of my time.
On the amendment before us, which seeks to regulate the substitution clauses and redefine certain worker classifications, at this stage, we approach it with some caution, while acknowledging that it is clearly a subject to which we should all return and which demands further consideration. The intention to protect gig economy workers is commendable, but we should not make regulatory changes that unintentionally undermine the entire industry. With that in mind, I look forward to the Minister’s comments, but I do not believe that this subject will go away any time soon.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Berkeley for tabling Amendment 323E and everyone who contributed to this short but important debate on the issue of substitution clauses.
To be absolutely clear, the Government are very alert to the risks that my noble friends Lord Berkeley and Lord Hendy and the noble Lords, Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, all raised on substitution. We recognise that substitution in the platform economy is an issue, and we share the concerns about the impact that it can have on working conditions and the prevalence of illegal working.
Some of the critiques that my noble friend Lord Berkeley made about e-bikes and e-scooters, and some of the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, fall a little outside what we are talking about tonight. One only has to be in the Chamber at Oral Questions on a regular basis to understand that noble Lords across the whole House share concerns about the impact that e-bikes and e-scooters are having on general society, as well as their attitudes towards the noble pursuits of cycling, walking and sharing public spaces.
There is growing awareness of substitution clauses and their use to deny workers core protections, including the national minimum wage and holiday pay, as set out by many noble Lords this evening, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. Clearly, in extremes this can lead to abusive and exploitative treatment of workers, and we are looking at it closely.
My noble friend Lord Berkeley raised the issue of illegal working as reported in today’s edition of the Sun. It is important in considering this issue to realise that the Government recently introduced an amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill on Report in the other place to extend the scope of the requirement on employers to carry out right to work checks on limb (b) workers or individual subcontractors, such as those working in the platform economy.
We must remain in step with modern labour market models. The purpose of these changes is to require businesses that employ individuals in new labour markets to check that only those with a right to work in the UK are eligible to participate in these arrangements, and to enable Immigration Enforcement to issue penalties where they are not. This ensures that compliance is equivalent for traditional employers. That, as I understand it, is the core of the issue raised in the newspaper report described by my noble friend Lord Berkeley.
The links between substitution and employment status demonstrate how complex this area is. As my noble friend Lady Jones said earlier this evening in discussing Amendment 318, we are committed to consulting on a simpler employment status framework. My noble friend Lord Hendy said that we should look at this holistically. I am confident that this will provide an opportunity to hear views from a wide range of stakeholders on the use of substitution clauses and the interactions with employment status. This is an important issue, but I am also aware that there is a complex interplay with measures we are going to discuss shortly in Committee on the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. In that context, it might be useful for me to take this back to colleagues in the Home Office and see how best to pursue it further.
I therefore ask my noble friend Lord Berkeley to withdraw Amendment 323E. In so doing, as this will be my last opportunity to speak in Committee, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the wonderful 11 days in Committee on this Bill for their constructive engagement and, indeed, at times, stimulating debates—who would have thought we would get so many days in Committee? I take note of what the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, said earlier about the pace of progress during immigration legislation. As I am going to be on the Front Bench for the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill later this week, all I can say is: I simply cannot wait.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am really grateful to noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and made many contributions, which indicate that it is a difficult subject and it would the better if the whole thing went away. But of course, it will not go away. When my noble friend the Minister said that this is his last appearance on the Bill, I thought, “Well, is it a sinking ship or is it going to the next stage?” I hope it is not a sinking ship, and that there is going to be another good stage.
Lord Katz (Lab)
To be clear, we are in Committee. Who knows what comes next?
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
We had a problem up in the Committee room last week with the mice eating through the electric cables. We have got a few problems here.
More seriously, it is a big problem. We only covered probably a small fraction of it tonight, but I would be very grateful if the Minister agreed to meet those of us who are interested, sometime between now and Report, to see how we can take it forward in one way or another. I am not sure which way “forward” would be; but otherwise, it is very tempting to put another amendment down on Report and have another debate like this. It would be much better if we could all sit around a table for half an hour and hear what the Government want to do, and hopefully agree—or hopefully not. Is my noble friend about to say yes to that?
Lord Katz (Lab)
Over many years now, I have had lots of interesting discussions with my noble friend, in different guises. It is always a pleasure to meet with him—and indeed with any other noble Lords who wish to engage on this important issue.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am most grateful to my noble friend. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Wirral
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 324A and to speak to Amendments 324B and 324C on behalf of my noble friend Lady Coffey; I will also speak to my opposition to Clause 151 standing part of the Bill.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for giving notice of his opposition to Clause 151 standing part, which gives me the chance to set out the purpose of that clause, and for speaking to Amendments 324A, 324B and 324C, which, as I understand it, are probing amendments.
Clause 151 grants the Secretary of State a power by regulations to make amendments to other legislation which are consequential on any provision made by the Bill. Consequential amendments are fundamental to ensuring that the statute book remains coherent and workable. It is a Henry VIII power similar to the ones used in previous legislation of similar size and complexity. It allows the amendment of Northern Ireland legislation, as it does Acts of the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd Cymru. This is necessary to allow the statute book across all UK jurisdictions to be maintained effectively.
None the less, the power in Clause 151 is appropriately constrained because it allows only amendments which are consequential to the substantive amendment already made in the Bill itself. For these reasons, we consider it both necessary and proportionate. I also remind noble Lords that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee did not raise concerns about the power in Clause 151 in its report, to which we will reply in due course.
I reassure noble Lords that, where possible, amendments to other pieces of primary legislation that are required as a result of the provisions made in this Bill have been made in the Bill itself, as my noble friend Lord Leong set out earlier. However, it is possible that further provisions could still be identified that require consequential amendment. Allowing these to be made by regulation will mean that they can be made without delay and with an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny. This is a standard power in a Bill of this size and complexity. There are multiple examples in legislation from recent Conservative Governments that took the same approach, including the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023.
Amending the clause so that any exercise of the power would be subject to the affirmative procedure would result in debates on every consequential amendment, which we believe would be disproportionate. For these reasons, the Government oppose these amendments, and I hope that I have reassured the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, that the power this clause vests in the Secretary of State is proportionate. I therefore ask him to withdraw Amendment 324A.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response to the concerns that I raised during this debate. However, I remain unconvinced by the Government’s justification for these sweeping powers. As we have said on several occasions already, there are far too many delegated powers in the Bill as it stands. To extend this approach to all consequential future provisions represents a qualitative leap in executive authority that goes well beyond what is necessary or constitutionally appropriate.
I recognise that the Minister has given assurances about responsible use of these powers, which, no doubt well-intentioned, cannot substitute for proper parliamentary oversight built into the legislative framework itself. We are being asked to sign a blank cheque, drawn on the account of parliamentary sovereignty. The breadth of these consequential powers, combined with the minimal oversight mechanisms, represents precisely the kind of constitutional overreach that this House exists to prevent.
I remind Ministers—like many noble Lords, I have painful first-hand experience of this—that the powers may not be indefinitely in the hands of Ministers of any one party. Power changes hands from time to time, and they ought possibly to reflect on the extraordinary legacy of centralised executive power they may find themselves bequeathing to a new Administration that is not of their political persuasion. Governments change, Ministers change and political priorities evolve. Constitutional safeguards must be designed to protect parliamentary sovereignty, regardless of who holds executive office. I urge noble Lords across the Chamber to reflect carefully on whether we are prepared to accept such a substantial erosion of parliamentary authority in the name of administrative convenience. Some principles are surely too important to compromise, and parliamentary sovereignty is surely paramount among them. But, in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom
“(3A) The Secretary of State must have regard to the following objectives when making any regulations under this Act—(a) the international competitiveness of the economy of the United Kingdom, and(b) its growth in the medium to long term.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to have regard to the objective of the international competitiveness of the economy and its growth in the medium to long term when making any regulations under the Act.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 325, 326A and 329B, and briefly allude to Amendments 330BA and 330E, tabled by my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley.
The Government have stated that this Bill represents the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation. Given the tremendous importance that the Government have placed on this piece of legislation, one would reasonably have expected them to have conducted a comprehensive and thorough impact assessment. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Leong, argued earlier that the Government had done just that. However, the fact remains that Regulatory Policy Committee has awarded the Government’s impact assessment a red rating, which encompasses several critical areas, including the Trade Union Act 2016 repeals, day-one rights provisions, flexible working arrangements, and measures addressing harassment by third parties. Such a rating indicates fundamental deficiencies in the Government’s analysis of this legislation’s potential consequences—a point that has been argued from this side of the Chamber on a number of occasions.
I will illustrate precisely how inadequate this impact assessment is by examining one particularly striking example. It states that:
“There could also be wider impacts on society, including … a reduction in days lost to strike action if Trade Union reforms lead to better industrial relations, which will prevent significant costs on the economy. Rail strikes alone are estimated to have cost the UK economy at least £1.7 billion over the eight-month period to January 2023”.
This statement exemplifies the superficial and speculative nature of the Government’s analysis. Rather than providing concrete evidence and detailed economic modelling, they have resorted to hypothetical scenarios and broad generalisations. They suggest that their reforms might lead to better industrial relations, which could potentially reduce strike action and in turn prevent economic costs. However, this chain of assumptions lacks any of the rigorous analysis which legislation of this magnitude demands.
Furthermore, although the Government cite the economic impact of rail strikes, they fail to provide a comprehensive analysis of how their specific proposals would address the underlying causes of industrial disputes. They offer no detailed examination of the potential unintended consequences of their reforms, nor do they adequately assess the costs that businesses and workers might face during the implementation of these new rights. The mention of implementation affords me an opportunity to again remind the noble Lord, Lord Leong, that we will very soon be delivered an implementation plan.
On Amendment 325, we have heard Ministers trumpet on a number of occasions PwC’s global CEO survey, which ranked the UK as the second most attractive destination for international investment. Unfortunately, that claim collapses under scrutiny. The survey was conducted before the current Chancellor’s first Budget and before the Government began systematically dismantling the pro-growth, pro-enterprise environment that we left in place. Since then, the UK’s position has collapsed to 29th in IMD’s world competitiveness rankings. We are now considered less competitive than Oman, Saudi Arabia and the Czech Republic. We are barely ahead of Kazakhstan and Kuwait. That is not a global powerhouse. What is the Government’s response? Instead of halting the slide, they are doubling down with a raft of measures that will make the UK even less attractive to investors, less hospitable to entrepreneurs and less viable for businesses that are looking to grow.
At the centre of this is the Employment Rights Bill. This legislation threatens to make Britain one of the most rigid and punitive labour markets in the developed world. Let us be clear: the Bill introduces day-one rights for employees to bring legal claims, dramatically increasing the litigation risk for employers from the moment a contract is signed. It expands rights around dismissal, probation and workplace disputes, turning even small staffing decisions into potential courtroom battles. It removes key flexibilities that employers rely on to respond to changing economic circumstances. This may all sound very appealing in the abstract. The Government will say that it is modernising employment rights, but in practice job creation will slow, entrepreneurial risk will drop and, crucially, offshoring will accelerate, because businesses can choose to hire in other jurisdictions —and they will.
We are already seeing warnings from business leaders that the cost of employing in Britain is simply becoming too high, not just financially but legally and procedurally. A recent survey by Saffery and Ward found that employers are planning layoffs and the relocation of operations abroad in direct response to increasing national insurance contributions and regulatory burdens, and now the spectre of hostile employment legislation. EY has warned that high energy costs and slow growth are deterring investment, while major employers are now reviewing UK operations due to the cumulative cost of doing business here.
Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 326A on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, who apologises that she is unable to be here.
The amendment is simple: it would require the Secretary of State or the relevant devolved counterpart to have regard to the impact of any regulations made under the Bill on the economic growth and competitiveness of the United Kingdom. It is very similar to Amendment 325, just introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, which itself mirrors the wording of the secondary objective for financial regulators, which was introduced in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023. I would support either one; they ultimately have the same goal.
As we heard on many occasions in Committee—we are reaching the end, at long last—this is a skeleton Bill, where an enormous amount of the detail will be added later by regulation. I counted 173 regulation-making powers in the Bill—a quite staggering number. Call me old-fashioned, but I rather think that we should do the work first and then legislate, not the other way around.
We also have an impact assessment that accompanies the Bill that, as we were just told, was described by the Regulatory Policy Committee as not fit for purpose. In many cases the impact assessment makes no effort at all to quantify the costs or benefits, precisely because it is not yet known what will be in the final regulations that follow the Bill. The Government themselves concede in the impact assessment that many of the measures in the Bill will have negative consequences. For example, the Government expect that, overall, the measures in the Bill will impose costs to business of around £5 billion. They also state very clearly that these costs will fall disproportionately on small businesses. The potential negative impact on growth and competitiveness from that is obvious.
Some of the negative aspects could be minimised if the regulations are well designed. To give just one example, I have been concentrating my efforts on the Bill on the introduction of day-one unfair dismissal rights. The impact assessment is very clear on the potential negative impacts from that on businesses and, in particular, on the potential hiring of employees who are seen as higher risk, such as younger people. That is my top concern in that respect.
After describing the potential negative consequences, the impact assessment rightly says:
“The impact of hiring and labour mobility will ultimately depend on the final regulations on what is permissible in the ‘initial statutory period’ of employment”.
I agree; a well-designed probationary period could negate many of the impacts that the Bill could cause, which is something that I hope the Minister will be prepared to discuss before Report. However, at the moment, we have no idea what the final regulations will be and neither, it appears, do the Government. They still have not carried out the relevant consultation.
That is a really good example of the importance of this amendment. The final consequences of the Bill will depend on the detail that is to be added later or amended by regulation. We should not just take that on trust. Although I of course have the greatest faith in the Minister, this Government cannot speak for or bind future Governments.
The Government have consistently stressed the importance of growth and competition, although it is fair to say that their actions have not always followed their rhetoric. To quote the Chancellor in January this year:
“Economic growth is the number one mission of this government … most of all … without economic growth … we cannot improve the lives of ordinary working people”.
Surely that last point is the main point of the Bill: to improve the lives of ordinary working people. It must be essential, and I assume agreed, that where the measures in the Bill could have negative impacts on growth, those negative impacts should be identified and taken into account when adding the details to the Bill by regulation.
In the same speech, the Chancellor went on to say:
“The strategy that I have consistently set out … is to grow the supply-side of our economy … recognising that first and foremost … it is businesses, investors and entrepreneurs who drive economic growth … a government that systematically removes the barriers that they face—one by one and has their back”.
It is hard to disagree with that, so surely we should ensure that the Bill does not do the opposite and create barriers for business.
There is a good precedent for including a growth and competitiveness objective in a Bill such as this. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 introduced a secondary objective for financial service regulators to facilitate international competitiveness and growth, something that the current Chancellor has been vocal in her support of and has rightly put pressure on regulators to follow, including through the issuing of new growth-focused remit letters to the regulators.
Having such an objective, or in the case of these amendments just to have regard to, is not new and is entirely consistent with stated government policy. Given the potential negative impacts the Bill may have—by the Government’s own admission—the sheer volume of detailed regulation that must follow and the difference that could be made to the consequences of the Bill if those regulations are well designed or badly designed, we must surely have some clear objectives for those regulations. All that these amendments would do is ensure that growth and competitiveness must be taken into consideration. Surely that is not too much for us to ask.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lord, I have added my name to Amendment 326A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Penn. I agree with all that has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in introducing it, and, indeed, with the convincing analysis by my noble friend Lord Sharpe.
Noble Lords may recall that I come to the scrutiny of the Bill constructively, having worked for Tesco for many years and enjoyed excellent relations with the USDAW union, the noble Lord, Lord Hannett of Everton, and with the trade unions in general, under the noble Lord, Lord Monks, at that time. We always tried to treat people well, and the success of the business was a testimony to that. We complied with the law.
However, the law is now changing, and I am afraid that this Committee has shown that the Bill needs further work. As drafted, it will be a huge check on growth and will undermine the competitiveness of which we have rightly been very proud in the UK. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral mentioned earlier the worrying research by the Institute of Directors that reveals that seven in 10 business leaders surveyed believe that the Employment Rights Bill will have a negative impact on UK economic growth.
I have two particular examples, which I hope the Minister will look at again. First, Ministers—or rather their civil servant agents, and possibly even the trade unions—will be able to take a legal case where an employee is unwilling to pursue a complaint. That is inappropriate and unfair; consent is such an important principle. It also risks putting further pressure on the already struggling tribunal system.
Secondly, and I apologise that this example has already been mentioned, the Bill will radically reduce the effectiveness of the labour market by giving employees the right to claim unfair dismissal from day one of their employment. Other employees will be disadvantaged, as those who are slack, do a poor job or play the system will not be able to be dislodged without a long tribunal case. This will hit good employees who need to cover for their fellows.
The Minister has very helpfully agreed that there should be a probation period during which suitable arrangements can be made in such circumstances, but we have no detail. All of that will go into regulations, which we will not be able to reverse. That is why I feel so strongly about this evening’s amendment on growth and competitiveness. This would apply when regulations were being made by Ministers. There is, unfortunately, a plethora—a cornucopia—of powers in the Bill. It is essential that Ministers, here and in the devolved Administrations, to which our amendment refers, should be required to look at the impact on UK economic growth and competitiveness when they are making regulations. Otherwise, I fear that the growth objective of this Government is for the birds.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my name and in so doing support the other amendments in the group, all of which have been most eloquently described by my noble friends, Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. My noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom is right that the Government’s stated objective of growth, which is a commendable objective, is hampered by some aspects of this Bill. All I am asking for is some time for the real effect and impact of this Bill to be assessed, particularly in respect of small and medium-sized businesses, each and every one of which that I have spoken to to explain what is in this Bill is very unhappy about the consequences that it will have for their business, be it small or medium.
All credit to the Labour Government that, when instructing regulators and creating new regulations, particularly in the financial services market, they have been very clear to the regulators that they must not impede economic growth, and I commend them for that—it is absolutely right. I encourage them to take their own advice and allow this Bill to have an overriding principle that anything and everything in it is intended to promote and help growth. There does not seem to be anything controversial to be afraid of in that respect, and therefore I encourage them to accept the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Sharpe and Lady Penn.
My amendments are just asking for time to consider matters. They cover two areas: business and union funding. Very many small and medium-sized businesses will have read the Times comment a few days ago, which I will repeat to your Lordships because it is bang on. It points out that:
“Four in five businesses expect their costs to rise in the wake of the reforms, though ministers have shown little interest in their views. The inevitable result will be a wave of redundancies, hiring freezes, curbs on training and a rise in automation”.
A rise in automation is, of course, a good thing, but it will inevitably lead to greater unemployment. There is no question about it. Every single business I have been talking to has said it is freezing hiring people until they get to understand this Bill better. As the Times points out:
“That is a counterintuitive way to buttress workers’ rights, to say the least”.
and the fact that, as my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe explained,
“taxpayers will be called upon to foot the bill, size yet unknown, for the FWA’s operations adds insult to economic injury”.
The Times points out that:
“It is an irony that Labour’s reforms will harm the very individuals they are designed to help. Labour should recognise that in requiring the taxpayer to potentially underwrite the activities of trade unions, they are not only recklessly introducing unnecessary frictions to the labour market, but making inappropriate demands on public money”,
because that is where it will fall. The Times is quite clear when it says:
“Labour ought to think again”.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate.
I begin with Amendment 326B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, which was moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe. In accordance with procedure, the other place has passed a money resolution authorising the payment, out of money provided by Parliament, of expenditure incurred as a result of this Bill by any government department. In practice, the authorisation of any additional government expenditure, for example in relation to the fair work agency, will be approved by the elected Chamber in accordance with its Estimates procedure. As noble Lords will know from the previous debate, our impact assessment for establishing the fair work agency set out the current running costs of the enforcement bodies and initial estimates of set-up costs for the fair work agency.
I turn to Amendment 329A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Leigh. As your Lordships’ House will be aware, the Government have committed to ongoing, detailed engagement with businesses of all sizes as we develop the details of regulations under this Act. In addition, our published impact assessments evaluate a range of evidence on the impacts on small and medium-sized enterprises. They also outline a plan for monitoring and evaluating the impact of the Bill and subsequent secondary legislation, which will involve reviewing how the reforms have impacted SMEs.
The Government value the insights that SMEs and their representatives can bring in ensuring the particulars of this Bill strike the right balance. To recognise that, Ministers and officials have hosted and continue to host a range of SMEs and their representatives, including and beyond those stipulated by the noble Lord’s amendment, to discuss the Bill. Such engagement and consultation will continue following Royal Assent, and SMEs will always feature in such engagement and consultation without the need for a formal requirement.
Amendment 329B from the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and Amendments 330BA and 330E from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, cover impact assessments. I will not repeat the points made earlier by my noble friend Lord Leong on the steps the Government have and will continue to take to ensure impacts are properly understood and assessed. The Government have noted the Regulatory Policy Committee’s opinion on our impact assessments, but it has always been our intention to refine our analysis as policy development continues, working closely with external experts, businesses and trade unions.
To reassure the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, on political funds, I reiterate the point that the Bill will ensure that political funds operate in a transparent manner that is clear to union members. Sections 32 and 32A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 will not be amended via this Bill. It will continue to require that unions provide details of their total income and expenditure in their annual returns to the certification officer, which are made publicly available, and that all members of a union receive information on the total income and expenditure of a political fund through the annual statement to members.
Members of a union are also part of a collective of workers, and political funds should be considered in that light. If a union has a political fund, its members have control over how it is spent through the democratic structures of the union. Unions put considerable effort into raising engagement in their democratic processes, which any member is free to participate in, meaning they are able to decide how their political fund is used. If union members want more information on political fund expenditure, or if they disagree with how that expenditure is being directed, they can take steps to change it. Union members are ultimately members of a voluntary organisation and are free to opt out of political fund contributions if they have objections to how a political fund is operated.
The amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, would require the Secretary of State to have regard to the UK’s international competitiveness and UK growth when making any regulations under the Bill. First, it is worth noting that the UK already lags the OECD average on most employment protections, yet the UK economy has not grown at the average rate of other OECD economies in the last 14 years, missing out, as I said earlier, on £171 billion in growth. The Government’s impact assessment notes that the Bill could have a “direct and positive impact” on economic growth and
“will help to raise living standards across the country and create opportunities for all”,
supporting the Government’s mission for growth. We will continue to pay close attention to the potential impacts as we develop regulations to implement the measures in the Bill and produce further impact assessments in line with our Better Regulation requirements.
This Government know the impact of the UK being internationally competitive. Our country has great strengths, but we have lacked the dynamism required to seize new opportunities, and businesses have needed long-term stability. Meanwhile, the global trading environment has become unpredictable, supply chains fragile and other economies more assertive in protecting their security and promoting their strategic strengths. That is why we have a clear goal: driving growth domestically. Making work pay is just one aspect of our mission to boost growth and break down the barriers to opportunity which have been holding our country back.
Our plan for change is already delivering benefits. We had the fastest growth in the G7 at the start of the year. Interest rates have been cut by the Bank of England four times since the election. A record £63 billion of private investment was announced at the investment summit last year, with £40 billion announced by Amazon just today, and 500,000 more people are in work. We have three trade deals with global economic powerhouses, and business confidence is at a nine-month high. This is a Government delivering for working people, and this Bill will help more people stay in work, support workers’ productivity and improve living standards across the country.
To wrap up this lengthy Committee stage, I want to say that it is with great pleasure that I conclude our final group of this Committee. The Government were elected on a manifesto that committed to implementing Labour’s plan to make work pay in full, in order to put more money into working people’s pockets. Our first mission as a Government is to deliver economic growth in every part of the country. However, securing that growth can only be worth doing if working people actually feel the benefits. While workers are subject to unethical fire and rehire practices, exploitative zero-hours contracts or last-minute shift cancellations, that certainly will not be the case. That is why this Bill is at the centre of the Government’s plans. It will protect workers from these practices and provide economic safety for the lowest paid in the labour market.
Just consider a few of the changes it brings. It means that 9 million employees will gain protection from unfair dismissal—not after two years, but from day one. It means that workers in some of the most deprived parts of the country will be spared up to £600 in lost income from the hidden costs of insecure work, and it means that at least 900,000 workers every year will benefit from bereavement leave following the death of a loved one.
In conclusion, my noble friends Lord Katz and Lord Leong and I very much look forward to engaging with noble Lords further on the Bill as it progresses to Report. I thank the Official Opposition, the Liberal Democrat Front Bench and noble Lords across the Committee for their contributions throughout this Committee. I must ask the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, to withdraw Amendment 325.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
Before the noble Baroness sits down, I thank her for her answer. Clearly, the feedback from the organisations she has met is not in parallel with the feedback I have had from similar organisations. I appreciate that the meetings she has had may have been in confidence. But if not, would it be possible to publish the notes of those meetings and of any future meetings with representative organisations such as those in my amendment, and of meetings with the other organisations that, I am pleased to hear, she has also met?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
We on these Benches meet with members of the SME sector all the time for various purposes. As well as the formal meetings, we meet them in all sorts of guises—for example, to discuss the industrial strategy and some of the digital growth policies. I do not think it practical to do what the noble Lord has asked, but I can assure him that the more formal consultation meetings happen regularly.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I thank the Minister for her response. It is clear that there is significant disagreement on this subject. Indeed, there is a degree of disagreement on the statistics. We seem to be quoting statistics that contradict each other. I have to say that I think ours are rather more up to date—but I would say that.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden. I completely agree with everything he said, as I do with everything said by my noble friends Lord Leigh of Hurley and Lady Neville-Rolfe. It is very concerning that, in the other House, the Government tabled further amendments with no meaningful assessment of their economic or practical impact, and no proper consultation with the stakeholders that this will affect. This is not how good legislation is made. It is not the standard Parliament or the country should accept.
The Minister just described the Bill as the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation. If that is the case, one might reasonably expect a thorough and credible impact assessment, not one that is rated red by the Regulatory Policy Committee. That is not a minor procedural footnote; it is a warning and a signal that the economic, legal and operational consequences of this legislation have not been properly understood.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morris of Bolton) (Con)
My Lords, there is an error in the page numbering of Amendment 334A, which means that it was marshalled incorrectly. It should have been marshalled as Amendment 330DA, so I will now dispose of Amendment 334A, which was already debated. The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, will just have to trust me on this one.