Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Bill [HL]
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have given up their Friday to attend Second Reading. I will be referring to the LGBT+ community as a whole, but in the light of recent events I ask noble colleagues to be respectful when referring to trans people. We must remember they are people who struggle with discrimination in their lives, and that their families and friends who love them are also affected by the words of politicians.
My aim for today is to tease out the arguments but, because of the high number of colleagues wishing to speak, I would be very grateful if noble Lords could resist the temptation to repeat points already made by other colleagues.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
I knew your Lordships would like that one.
The Bill is deliberately couched in general language so we can build on the discussion today and bring forward amendments to make it stronger and more acceptable to more colleagues and external groups.
First, we need to define what we mean by conversion therapy because, in reality, it is not therapy at all. As defined in my Bill, conversion therapy is any practice with the predetermined purpose of changing or suppressing a person’s expression of their sexual orientation or gender identity. These practices are based on the belief that there is a right way to behave and live your life.
According to the Government’s own research, 7% of LGBT+ people in the UK have undergone or been offered conversion therapy. For trans people, this escalates to one in seven. The experts agree—this is confirmed by a thorough government research review—that conversion therapy does not work, because a person cannot be cured of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is not a lifestyle choice but something innate; it is who, and what, we are.
What the practices do achieve, however, is deeply harmful to the recipient. It was summarised eloquently by the UN Independent Forensic Expert Group, which concluded that:
“All practices attempting conversion are inherently humiliating, demeaning and discriminatory”,
and that they
“generate profound feelings of shame, guilt, self-disgust, and worthlessness”.
The consequences can be grave. One 2020 study found that people who had undergone conversion therapy were twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts, and 75% more likely to plan a suicide attempt than the general population. We cannot leave the LGBT+ community unprotected against these harms for any longer.
In 2018, Theresa May recognised this, receiving cross-party support when she promised a ban. More than five years on, however, we are still no closer to making that a reality. I am particularly looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say because it is in her Government’s gift to help the Bill to progress. After five years of dither and delay, it is well overdue.
Many people have written to me with their concerns, and I expect we will hear some of them repeated in the Chamber today. I want to address these as best I can. I thank everyone who wrote to me, as well as the professional bodies whose expertise I have leaned on. At the heart of this issue, I think most of us agree on an awful lot. I believe there is a great deal of consensus that it is wrong to try to force anyone to be something they are not.
As I see it, there are four themes of objections to the Bill: from those who fear their right to free speech will be lost; from religious practitioners who fear they will be criminalised for preaching and teaching that LGBT practices are wrong; from professionals who work with people who may be questioning their sexuality or gender identity, like psychiatrists and teachers; and from parents who fear they will not be able to talk to their children openly about these issues. When you boil it all down, these all raise the same question: where do we draw the line on what is criminalised? When does a conversation become a conversion practice?
There are many people—particularly young people—who may be wondering about themselves. It is not always straightforward to understand your sexuality or gender identity, and grappling with these topics can be confusing and even distressing. What these people need is not a cure, but space—and support—to work things out. This may take the form of speaking with a trusted adult, like a mentor or counsellor, to explore their own feelings in a non-judgmental way.
However, the difference between that and conversion therapy is that the latter has a predetermined goal to change that person. I want to make it clear: my Bill will not criminalise these sorts of open conversations in any way, nor will it tell people what to think or what to say. Freedom of speech and religious freedom are important cornerstones of any liberal society. As a Liberal Democrat, I have always championed these values, and the last thing I would want to do is to unduly curb anybody else’s rights. Noble Lords are free to say what they believe: the rules on free speech are the same here as anywhere else in British law. Noble Lords are entitled to express an opinion, just not to coerce somebody else into agreeing with them and changing their behaviour as a result.
My little Bill team and I had an excellent meeting with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London last week, who used the phrase “good prayer”, putting the pastoral needs of the person first, accepting them for what they are, and not trying to push one’s own beliefs of who the person ought to be. Yesterday, the Church of England issued a new briefing and reflection on conversion therapy. It is excellent and I urge anyone with concerns in this area to have a look. The Church of England, the Methodist Church, the Quakers, the Hindu Council and the Buddhist dhamma centre have already supported a ban.
We see it in the medical field, too. Through a memorandum of understanding, all major psychological therapy professional bodies in England, alongside the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of GPs and NHS England, have agreed a set definition of conversion therapy—the same one we have adopted in the Bill. That is why, before any attempt to prosecute, the Bill would require police to demonstrate both action and motivation to be present.
I appreciate that these are complex topics, which I look forward to exploring in detail in Committee. I am very open to any amendments which do not undermine the effectiveness of the ban. It must be comprehensive, clear and inclusive of all LGBT+ people. I hope we can find it within ourselves to come together this morning to find a way forward, to deliver the change that the LGBT+ community so needs.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I rode up in the lift this morning with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. He said to me, “I think they’re going to give you a hard time”. Well, they did not disappoint. I said at the beginning that my aim was to tease out the issue. Over the last four hours and more, we have done a pretty thorough job of it. I said that there would be consensus on the need for something. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said that this was a “correct and noble aim”, so even people who do not agree in all kinds of ways can agree that we do need something. That is very heartening.
However, there was much misunderstanding in the remarks of noble Lords today. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, summarised a lot of it very well. Mis-understanding has arisen because of the general wording of the Bill. The number of contributions on that are too many to mention, certainly at this time of the day.
This is a wicked problem; it is a complex and difficult issue, with many opinions and different understandings. It will need a lot of good will on a lot of people’s parts for this wicked problem to be resolved. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, said that we need space to move forward.
I will not commend all the wonderful speeches that we have heard today; noble Lords know who they are—here I am looking at the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt. I will not go into any details now because it is too late in the day.
I accept that this Bill is not well drafted. It was intentionally general, but it now needs a Committee stage to put it right. The Minister has promised to publish the Government’s Bill, but we really need to know when. We need to get the different views together to solve this wicked problem.
Covid-19: Debt Collection
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, I am of course hearing what noble Lords are saying and I endorse the principles of the Centre for Social Justice report. I am very proud of having done public service in local government. Local councils are custodians of their whole community and community interests. They should be sympathetic and act proportionately towards anyone in genuine hardship. I will reflect on the points that my noble friend has made and pass them on to colleagues in the department.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD) [V]
Does the Minister agree that government, especially local government, needs to take a leaf out of the commercial sector’s book and adopt more humane and effective methods of collecting debt? Will the Government postpone the reintroduction of bailiff visits until a new government debt management Bill can be introduced?
Lord True
My Lords, those are two important questions and I have touched on each. The call for evidence that we issued last month will inform policy in these areas. I hear what the noble Baroness and others say in relation to enforcement agents. I can only repeat that local authorities can act responsibly and many councils have responded positively to the challenges and have indeed signed up to the protocol developed by Citizens Advice, which was referred to in the original Question. I hope that more will consider doing so.
Finance Bill
Baroness Burt of Solihull ExcerptsFriday 17th July 2020
(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD) [V]
My Lords, I will address my remarks from the perspective of small business. As other noble Lords have said, there is much to be welcomed in this Bill, especially the £3.7 billion to support jobs and the help for our struggling hospitality sector.
However, an eye-watering £9 billion has been allocated to the supporting jobs programme. This will be largely dead money and not well spent. Either a job is economically viable enough to be retained or it is not. I do not think that a £1,000 pat on the back for keeping on someone whom you already need will change the decision if the job is not viable.
Some categories of people have been left out, such as newly self-employed people and company directors who rely mainly on dividends for their remuneration. I know that the Chancellor has steadfastly resisted the pleas from representatives of these two categories, but many entrepreneurs—those arguably at the most precarious stage of their journey and who receive awards only when they have been earned—will be lost to the economy at a time when their willingness to take risks is most needed. Rather than showering £9 billion on companies for workers who would have been retained anyway, a small fraction of this money could have saved tens of thousands of wealth generators for the future.
Finally, I make a plea on behalf of those companies whose ability to borrow will be blighted to the tune of over £1 billion—possibly far more—by proposed changes to the Government’s Crown preference policy. Floating charge creditors and unsecured creditors, such as pension schemes, would be leapfrogged by HMRC in any subsequent insolvency proceedings. Who is going to lend when they could lose everything if the company to which they are lending goes bust? This will seriously hamper the recovery, especially for small businesses. The insolvency and restructuring profession has been clear that the policy will make it harder to rescue businesses from administration and will reduce the likelihood of successful CVAs. This measure should be paused, at least until the full economic impact of Covid-19 is known. I urge the Government not to help with one hand and take away with the other.
Public Appointments: Diversity
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Young of Cookham
My noble friend is quite right. Although the Cabinet Office has overall responsibility for this topic, the actual appointments are made by individual government departments. One reason that we have taken a little longer to publish the document to which I have just referred is that we are anxious to get buy-in from all government departments to hit the ambitions that we are about to set out. I know from experience that Ministers in individual departments take public appointments very seriously. They are accountable for them, there is a Commissioner for Public Appointments to make sure the code is observed, and I know that Permanent Secretaries also take seriously the process of sifting applications before they go to Ministers. I will draw my noble friend’s remarks to the attention of relevant Permanent Secretaries and Ministers.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, unless we get rid of the traditional recruitment methods of CVs and formal, structured interviews, we will never be able to recognise the talent lying on our own doorsteps. HS2 has succeeded in recruiting a workforce which exactly reflects the population. Will the Government look at its methods and consider the option of blind, online applications that reflect the needs of the job, not what is written down on a piece of paper? That would at least be a first step towards an inclusive Civil Service that looks like the people it represents.
Making Tax Digital for VAT (Economic Affairs Committee Report)
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for the tremendous work he and his colleagues on the sub-committee have done in producing these two reports. I am glad we are giving this discussion the time and space it deserves today and not trying to rush it through, as had been intended when it was to have been a precursor to weighty and important debates on Brexit.
Although I speak on small businesses for my party, I am no expert on tax—as will soon become painfully apparent. But even I could understand the sensible conclusions that the Making Tax Digital report draws, and I hope that the Government will listen to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I will leave it to my noble friend Lady Kramer to tread the fine line between the concepts of deliberate and contrived tax avoidance and uninformed or naive decisions—and, very importantly, the loan charge.
I hope we all agree that everyone in this country should pay their fair share of tax, so I will address my remarks to the first report, Making Tax Digital for VAT. Although I do not know a whole lot about business tax, either, I know about the challenges that small businesses face in ensuring that they fulfil HMRC tax requirements, having had my own small businesses in the past. I totally empathise with the hard-pressed entrepreneur, who has to multitask many of the roles in an organisation themselves, often including completing tax returns. Implementation of Making Tax Digital takes time, which cannot then be devoted to running and developing the business. It also takes money. The Federation of Small Businesses, to which I am indebted for its input, found that, excluding the opportunity costs I have just mentioned, putting MTD-compliant software in place this year will cost a small firm an average of £564—not £109 as HMRC estimated. The bigger the firm, the greater the cost.
MTD has the potential to improve the experience of tax compliance for small businesses, as well as facilitating the provision of business support, access to finance and tax credits. However, introducing it with the deadline of 1 April, which has already gone, is disastrous because small businesses are simply not ready. So I welcome the Economic Affairs Committee report. Its recommendations seem highly sensible. The first is deferring the mandatory introduction of Making Tax Digital for VAT by at least a year, while encouraging businesses to join voluntarily. This would have enabled HMRC to ensure a smooth transition, as well as helping business. Given the state of readiness of small business to achieve compliance, I am sorry that the Government have not seen fit to accept this recommendation.
The second recommendation was staging the transition to ensure that small businesses and HMRC are ready. I welcome the Government rowing back somewhat on their original intentions by requiring compulsory implementation only on VAT, and for companies above the VAT threshold. I also welcome the acceptance that sanctions will not be levied where companies can show that they have been doing their best to comply. The third recommendation was waiting until at least April 2022 to implement the next stage. This will allow time for lessons to be learned, and seems to have been accepted.
The Government may be rubbing their metaphorical hands in anticipation of increased tax revenue, but only one in 10 small firms responding to the FSB believes that MTD will have a positive impact on tax reporting and financial management processes, with more than a third believing that it will have a negative effect. However, I believe that, despite these considerations, the key problem is that small businesses are just not ready for this. Many small firms are still heavily reliant on offline accountancy methods and are not confident in their digital skills. Many live in areas without access to reliable broadband speeds. How does the Minister expect small businesses to overcome this problem, which is of the Government’s making because they have insufficiently improved the digital infrastructure? Nearly a third of small businesses use paper receipts and bank statements to keep track of their finances, and 37% use paper invoices. I can envisage the chaos that may at this moment be ensuing, as paper-based small businesses attempt compliance.
The fourth recommendation is to publish a plan for the long-term development of MTD, getting business to see the benefits rather than seeing it as just tax compliance. I totally accept that productivity, efficiency and modernisation are great benefits, and I am sure that many small businesses already realise this—but these are not the companies that I worry about. These incentives, and the long-term plan to promote them, should have been sold to them before, to persuade reluctant bosses to adopt the measures with a vestige of enthusiasm and not bury their heads in the sand, as they are now. Have the Government put the cart before the horse somewhat?
The FSB is calling for a full review of the rollout, and a guarantee that it will not be forced on those below the VAT threshold until at least the end of this Parliament—although they may need to be careful what they wish for. That date may not be too far in the future.
Race Disparity Audit
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Gale (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating this Statement this afternoon. As he said, much more work needs to be done. It is good that we now have the Government’s race audit, although it is a shame it was delayed from its original release date in July. I am not sure why the Government made that decision to delay it.
The outcome of this race audit cannot come as a surprise to the Prime Minister. After all, in 2010 she wrote to the then Prime Minister that there is a real risk that women, ethnic minorities, disabled people and older people would be disproportionately affected by proposed cuts. But now, as Prime Minister, knowing full well the damage that would be caused by these cuts, she has said nothing to remedy the problems she foresaw as Home Secretary and has in fact made them worse.
We need solutions and a sustained effort to really tackle these injustices, and the Government are simply not yet providing those. I was pleased that the Minister mentioned the mentoring schemes. It is always good to have mentoring schemes for people, but we believe they are not ambitious enough. The closure of Sure Start centres and the closure of Connexions were mistakes made by this Government—knowing full well the disproportionate effect that these closures would have on groups with protected characteristics.
I have a number of questions for the Minister. Will he confirm how many groups and organisations were consulted as part of the race audit? Will he confirm whether there are plans to extend the audit’s analysis to devolved regions such as Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland? Can he confirm for the House what steps the Government will take to tackle the racial disparities exposed in this audit and other reports released recently? What is their timescale for taking action, and what framework will they be using to judge improvements?
In the last general election, Labour issued a manifesto to tackle problems of discrimination. We said we would introduce equal pay audit requirements on large employers, implement the Parker review recommendations to increase ethnic diversity on the boards of Britain’s largest companies, and enhance the powers and functions of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is what we plan to do when we are in government.
I hope the Minister is able to provide us with answers to these questions today. We need a Government willing to take decisive action to tackle racial inequalities and I look forward to what the Minister has to say about how this audit will be implemented.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, this audit shines a light on the prejudice and bias that continue to blight the lives of black and ethnic minority members of our communities. It lays out the challenges we face as a society, which cross party lines. Mrs May, our Prime Minister, commissioned this audit and she cannot now shy away from tackling the causes, which are cuts to public services and a shrinking state. This comes alongside another report, by the Runnymede Trust, on the impact of austerity on black and minority ethnic women in the United Kingdom. It shows that BME households are being hardest hit by austerity, with a drop in living standards of 19.2% for black households and 20% for Asian households.
I have some questions for the Minister. Will each department be required to put forward a plan setting out why these disparities exist and how they will close the gap? What are the next steps? For example, will there be a Cabinet committee looking at this? Given the Prime Minister’s commitment to this cause, perhaps she might chair it herself. Finally, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s budget has been cut by almost 70% since it was created, and its current budget will be cut by a further 25% over the next four years. The Government are talking the talk by publishing this audit—but will they walk the walk and make available the resources to tackle these terrible problems that we face?
Trade Union Bill
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Lord Deben (Con)
I can get extremely angry about some things in this House. One thing I get angry about is when the obvious does not seem to be obvious quickly enough, so it is a great pleasure to say to my noble friend that this did become obvious quickly enough. That is very good.
However, I hope that we will not use this word “modernise” too often. I cannot understand why it is a more modern system to give money to the banks for a direct debit than to have it so much more conveniently done on the check-off system. There is nothing non-modern about the check-off system and I never understood why that argument was used. The crucial issue about all this is to enter into the lives and ways of living of the people who are affected by the legislation that we pass. I do not think that I could let this go by without pointing out that it was this House, with all the criticisms that are made of it, that more readily and clearly saw what the effect of this would be. Not only should Ministers take considerable comfort and credit for the changes that they have made, this House ought to take credit for the fact that this is what we are best at—saying, “I am not thinking about the politics or the arguments. I am just thinking about how this affects the people who will be involved in this particular Act”.
Earlier today I had to say to one of my noble friends, rather toughly, that I am unhappy about some of the supposed restrictions on how people should use government grants. The reason for that is that I try to enter into people’s minds, and I am not at all sure that I understand how you make the sort of distinctions which the Government are seeking to make. I could not understand why people could not use this system rather than another and I am thrilled that the Government have taken that on board. They have done so very generously and I pay considerable credit to them and to my noble friend Lord Balfe; throughout these debates he has shown understanding and clarity, and we are all indebted to him.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the words of the noble Lord, Lord Bridges. Like the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, my speech is redundant, which is really good news, and I fully associate myself with his remarks.
The Government should not have brought this provision forward at all and I fear that it reflects the tribal nature of the historical relationship between the two main parties. Such tribalism is not edifying or appropriate today where we see the best relationships between employers and trade unions in partnerships that promote productivity, prosperity and peace. So I would like to say well done to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe; it cannot have been easy to achieve what she has pulled off.
Lord Dykes (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I add my comments in support of what has been said. I had a feeling that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges of Headley, and the other Ministers associated with this Bill would be in listening mode, bearing in mind the contents of the debates hitherto.
My shock and dismay at the original text of this Bill was enormous and I think that was shared by people in all parts of the House. The Bill did not look properly constructed nor did it utilise non-extreme ideology to deal with any modernisation necessities for trade unions—some of which one doubts. In January I received a very interesting briefing from the FDA, an association of professional managers and others, which is not in any way known for extremism. In relation to the reference of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, to trade union members dreaming about causing industrial action as they go to work in the morning, the FDA says:
“Much of the portrayed justification for change relates to an utterly refutable assumption that trade unions call for industrial action on a regular basis and without cause. FDA members only embark on industrial action as a last resort. As a union with an almost 100 year history we have held national industrial action only once, yet it is a fundamental right for all working people to have the option to take industrial action and we strongly oppose moves to deny workers this right”.
In a way the same rights intrinsically belong to check-off and I sincerely ask Ministers to be in listening mode for other parts of this Bill, so that it can be improved if they insist on it carrying on—people have quite rightly indicated that there is probably no need for this Bill but since the Government are perhaps psychologically committed to seeing it progress I ask that they do that. In the mean time, my sense of shock has diminished. I did not write a speech over the weekend because I thought there might be some progress and I warmly thank the Ministers for their reaction today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman mentions waiting times, so let me remind him that when this Government came into office there were 18,000 people waiting longer than a year. That number is down to 500, and that is because we have run the health service and the economy effectively. The reorganisation that took place in the NHS was about getting rid of bureaucracy. There are now 20,000 fewer administrators, 6,000 more doctors and 3,000 more nurses. That is a record we can be proud of.
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
Q11. One in four beds in our hospitals is occupied by a patient with dementia. Being treated in ordinary wards can cause them distress and confusion, hampering their recovery and that of other patients. Does the Prime Minister agree with me, and with health practitioners in my local hospital in Solihull, that patients with dementia should be cared for by specially trained staff and, where necessary, in separate wards, and will he support my campaign to make it so across England?
The Prime Minister
In dementia, we face an enormous challenge in our country and, indeed, across the world, because so many people have this condition and so many people are likely to get it. This Government have increased massively the research that is going into dementia. We have trained over 1 million dementia friends so that we build more dementia-friendly communities, and we have trained over 100,000 NHS staff in how better to treat people with dementia. We are putting something like £50 million into hospitals to try to help them with the way that we treat dementia sufferers. But the hon. Lady is absolutely right: the more people who we can treat in the community and who we can maintain at home the better, because very often being in a hospital, particularly in A and E, is not the right answer for someone with dementia.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Even by the hon. Lady’s standards, it is a bit sour to try to undermine a policy that has not yet been implemented. It will be implemented in September and is a really progressive policy. All the evidence shows—as did the pilots conducted under the previous Government in Durham and parts of east London—that this will not only save families on low income a lot of money, but help to raise the educational performance of children from lower-income backgrounds and provide a powerful way of creating cohesion among young children as they share a meal together. We are working intensively with thousands of schools across the country at the moment, so I cannot give the hon. Lady a precise answer, but the overwhelming majority of those schools are already ready to provide this service. We are working with them over the summer to make sure that if there are any exceptions in the provision of those healthy school meals at lunch time in September, there will be only a very small number of them.
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
My right hon. Friend recently visited Solihull college in my constituency, and saw for himself the brilliant work that it is doing with skills and apprenticeships. Will he join me in welcoming the Birmingham and Solihull LEP growth deal, which will, among many other things, make an aviation engineering training centre a reality, and help Birmingham international airport to become the go-to place for the world’s airlines when they need engineering, maintenance and repair work to be done?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I certainly join the hon. Lady in paying tribute to everyone who worked on the growth deal in her area. Over the next few years, growth deals collectively will represent a transfer of £12 billion of Government money away from Whitehall—out of Departments here in London—and into the hands of local communities and local enterprise partnerships. That is a really big, bold act of decentralisation, which I think will finally break the back of the excessive centralisation from which we have suffered for far too long.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
6. What recent assessment he has made of progress on the Government’s policy of decentralisation in England.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)
This Government have instituted the most radical devolution of power and financial autonomy to local councils for a generation. After ever-increasing centralisation under the previous Government, we believe that all regions, cities and towns can play a part in securing the economic recovery and in building a better and stronger economy for the future.
Lorely Burt
Does my right hon. Friend agree that giving local enterprise greater control over its own destiny has helped to rejuvenate the entrepreneurial spirit of local areas? Will he commend the ambition of Birmingham and Solihull LEP’s strategic economic plan, which aims to create 41,000 jobs for a Government investment of only £86 million next year?
Greg Clark
I will indeed commend that ambition. It is appropriate that the enterprise partnership that brings together Birmingham and Solihull has the great good fortune to be led by Andy Street, the managing director of John Lewis and one of the country’s most admired business people. It is fantastic that he is devoting his time to helping the local economy to grow and providing that private sector leadership, which is in marked contrast to the regional development agencies that we had in the past, presided over by governors-general such as the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown).