Overseas Development Assistance

Lord Bates Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, at the risk of being tedious, we have not in any way expunged the Act. We have suspended it in line with the section that I cited in the previous answer.

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, for many years Her Majesty’s Government have taken great pride in regularly publishing reports on the impact of overseas aid in terms of the millions of lives saved, children educated and jobs created. Will my noble friend say whether any similar impact assessment of the likely effect of this reduction in our aid budget has been carried out by the Treasury or the FCDO using the same established methodology? If so, can it be shared to inform future debates and votes, and if not, why not?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend will know, we are undergoing a rationalisation by moving DfID into the FCDO. The Foreign Secretary has agreed that he will focus all of government’s investment and expertise on issues where the UK can make the most difference and achieve the maximum strategic coherence. The FCDO is working through what this means for individual programmes, in line with the priorities identified. We will of course report in detail when those arrangements are concluded.

Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Lord Bates Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, when you are the 33rd speaker and the final Back-Bench speaker, it is always a bit of a challenge to make a contribution that does not trespass on the Whips’ motto that everything needs to be said but not everyone needs to say it, so with my three minutes, I will focus on three brief points about why I very much support and welcome the Bill. I will also try to squeeze in two or three ways in which I believe that it could be strengthened.

The first reason why the Bill is necessary is that we have an outstanding generation of children and young people, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has talked about. I speak as a parent and grandparent, but, beyond that, I think that this generation is one that we can rightly be proud of. We often bemoan the future—or the young—generations, but, when tested during this pandemic, their adherence to and observance of the rules has been inspirational, even though they have sacrificed and surrendered most. It is worthy of our admiration and thanks, particularly because, statistically, they were going to suffer least from the pandemic’s effect. They were acting out of a desire to protect older generations, who were going to suffer more. It is worth embarking on efforts to build back better for them.

The second reason is a sense of responsibility. I am part of a generation that has been blessed with many good things. We have been able to build our way to prosperity without having to worry about pollution, though we are now waking up to the cost of that. We have been damaging our planet and environment, and we will leave it to future generations to respond to that. We have had the benefit of affordable homes and building up equity in them, of final-salary pension schemes and of having our higher education costs paid for, so we have a responsibility.

My final point is that foresight is a good practice in government. It is worth pausing for one moment to be thankful for Beveridge and his 1942 cross-party report, and to be thankful for the vision of Aneurin Bevan in leading the creation of the NHS. To bring this a little bit up to date, it is also worth being thankful to Theresa May for announcing the biggest ever injection into the NHS in 2018, risking the ire of many in her own party—how thankful we are that she did that. Those are three reasons why we should go ahead with the Bill.

The reasons I would call for restraint are these: some of the costs set out, the complexity of the consulting mechanisms and the financial implications. Otherwise, I welcome the Bill and wish it a safe passage.

Budget Statement

Lord Bates Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, in this long debate and in the substantial number of documents that accompany this Budget Statement, one fact should stand out to all of us. It states that we have experienced a shock the like of which we have never seen in the 300 years we have been keeping records of our economic performance—we have never seen anything like it in 300 years. And yet we are told by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, and by the Chancellor, that we can expect to recover to pre-Covid levels in the second quarter of 2022. That is tribute to the remarkable and breath-taking resilience of the British people and British business, and that should give us pride and confidence for the future.

Space Industry

Lord Bates Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, the UK space industry is made possible because it adheres to the laws of science but also to the laws of humans, upheld by the United Nations. Satellites orbit on agreed paths and transmit their information on agreed frequencies. Through these laws, we avoid chaos in the cosmos. There is a trust between nations evident above the earth that sometimes eludes us on it. When viewed from space, we see the earth without borders; we see a beautiful planet of colour and contrast, home to all the life we are currently aware of in the universe. This should remind us of our solemn responsibility to care for our common home and for those we share it with. Space invites us to explore its wonders and unravel its mysteries, and we can do that if we remember the first law of human dynamics: we can accomplish immeasurably more if we work together and learn from each other.

Covid-19: Economy Update

Lord Bates Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office and the Treasury (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their comments. I shall try to deal quickly with the issues that they raised.

I completely accept that we are dealing with a fast-moving and difficult situation. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, feels that we did not move quickly enough, and he made similar comments the last time we discussed this subject. However, we have moved quickly. We have acknowledged that, given the rolling lockdowns occurring across the country, we need to do more, which is why we are supporting more extensively businesses that have been forced to close as part of the lockdown. We are paying rate relief, which will include a portion of the rent of those businesses that are forced to close. Those that remain open but are affected by a fall-off in trade are receiving a great deal of extra support as well.

It might be worth summarising the extent of extra support announced since I was last here. The government contribution to payment of salaries has increased from 22% to 49%. The employer contribution has fallen from 22% to 4%, and the minimum-hours requirement has fallen from 33% to 20%. The noble Baroness asked about support for the self-employed. It has been a complicated group to support but we have essentially doubled the level of support with the recent announcements, taking the figure up from 20% to 40%. We will continue to monitor the situation.

The noble Lord asked about evictions. There are already provisions with lenders to ensure that they are handling those processes in a sensitive and reasonable manner, but, again, we will of course keep the situation under review.

It is extremely difficult to know how much longer this horror will continue. However, on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, about a more strategic response to the crisis, it is worth reminding her and the House that we have put into the system an unprecedented level of support over the past nine months—some £158 billion of direct fiscal support. That includes £69 billion for employment support, and £51 billion for public service spending, funding for charities and support for vulnerable people.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, we now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief, so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.

Economy

Lord Bates Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office and the Treasury (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, in replying to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, I gently remonstrate with him on us being “reactive”. We have tried to move as quickly as possible at all stages of this crisis but, as we can see from across the world, it is extremely difficult to be ahead of the curve. The announcements made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor last week demonstrate that a lot of hard thinking has gone on over the last two or three months, and the fact that the Statement might have been prompted by a Question shows that the work had been done.

I do not accept that it is too little, too late. The amount of support that we have provided for the economy over the last few months is almost without precedent, with £39 billion on the furlough scheme protecting at one point up to 9.5 million jobs—that figure has now reduced to some 3 million because many millions have come back to work—and £5.6 billion for almost 2.2 million self-employed people under the second grant self-employment income support scheme. I could go on.

The noble Lord asked about the intention of the job support scheme to keep part-time workers rather than to just go for a single full-time worker. The idea is to keep as many people in work as possible with their skills so that, when the economy recovers, the skills have not been lost. While on a hard, simple basis, it might be more viable to keep one person, in the longer term any employer would try to keep part-time people. I suggest that the noble Lord takes on board the job incentive scheme: £1,000 for those coming back into work between now and January.

The noble Lord asked about good-quality training. Earlier in the year we announced the kick-start scheme, a £2 billion scheme for young people which subsidised employment, as it was a concern that 800,000 young people left school and education over the summer.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked about the hospitality sector. We have extended the reduction in VAT for that sector. We also have in place the grants and rates support, again a very considerable sum of money. She asked about us formally leaving the European Union and customs. She will not like it, but that is a major employment opportunity for that sector. We have only 5,800 customs intermediaries. They all need to increase employment. We have provided grants for them to upscale. Another example of new training needed is police officers. Sectors of the economy will grow, and the Chancellor’s comments are to encourage people to move across to those over the next few years.

On the devolved authorities, we have made considerable grants to them under the Barnett formula. While the Budget has been postponed, we are working at pace on the comprehensive spending review which, I would suggest, is a more important long-term method of looking at how we are going to rewrite the economy after the crisis that we have faced over the past six months.

The noble Baroness also asked about the debt. The debt is very worrying. No one is going to pretend that it is not. It was last at 100% of GDP in the year I was born—1961—and, therefore, we are going to have to be very careful over the next few years about how we address that. We were fortunate that, having got the economy and the financial position into a relatively stable state over the past few years, we had the headroom to do what we have been able to do, which has all been about trying to reduce the impact on citizens over the past seven months.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, we now come to the 20 minutes allocated to Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, while there might not be individual schemes available for the group of people that the noble Lord talks about, we have made wider funding available through the uprating of universal credit and additional grants to local authorities. I am very aware that there are people in difficulty but we believe that the wider social security safety net is there to support them.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, all those listed to ask questions on the Statement have now done so.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Bates Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 10th September 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, we now come to the group beginning with Amendment 15. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate.

Amendment 15

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group are mainly to do with promoting constituencies that are genuine, from a community standpoint, rather than percentage purity. Percentages are useful, but they are a tool; community and geography should trump them. The Committee just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on his amendment, which would make the job of the Boundary Commissions even more difficult than the Government have. The House of Commons Library tells us that the quota is likely to be in the area of 72,600, so 2.5% either side of that would mean a flexibility of no more than 1,800 either way—that is people, not percentages. This would be far less than most local government wards and would lead to the splitting of both wards and polling districts in all but the smallest of rural wards. That amendment would make a poor Bill worse.

The other three amendments all attempt to improve the lot of the Boundary Commission in, hopefully, getting cohesive constituencies based on genuine communities. The flexibility offered by the 5% tolerance from the quota gives 3,600 people—not percentages—either side of it. Amendment 15 would move that up to 5,400. Amendment 16 would move it up to 5,800, or 7,260 in certain cases. Amendment 17 would shift the figure to exactly 7,200. An amendment being tabled next week would move it up to 10,900 in Wales. I trust that we can manage to consolidate these amendments at a later stage.

One of the fallacies of being in the grip of percentages is that the 5% used in the 2018 proposals for the 600-seat House of Commons—which are now well behind us—gave a tolerance of 3,900. These present proposals would reduce that further, as the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, alluded to earlier.

I often try and look at the other fellow’s viewpoint. We can learn a little of Her Majesty’s Government’s thinking by going back in history. Over the years, the inner-city constituencies lost population and the suburbs increased. Conservative politicians thought that meant that their constituencies were disadvantaged. Perhaps the breaking down of the “red wall” might change that a bit.

I am pretty certain that greater flexibility will assist principally in giving, let us say, a modest-sized town its own seat, rather than having to lose a bit of it to another seat or having to take in a small part of a rural area just to make up the numbers. It is of course far easier to use the building blocks of wards and polling districts to build constituencies in large cities. Small towns and large seats in rural areas are the ones that will really benefit if we can change this business of percentage purity. I hope that we can do something to make the geography and community sense of our constituencies real for people to absolutely understand.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

With the consent of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, I call the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, next.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, these are important amendments—among the most important in the Bill. I congratulate all noble Lords who have made such telling arguments about the need for flexibility so that communities and local links are retained intact, and made them with a straight face and an earnest tone. For a moment or two, I was almost convinced, then I came back to reality.

All of us in this Room may not in a technical sense be noble friends, but we are political colleagues. Let us in the closeness of this Room, with no one listening in, be honest with one another about the arguments that we have all made to inspectors hearing constituency boundary inquiries. All noble Lords who were MPs, myself included, have sat at inquiries and made the most earnest arguments that boundaries should be changed or not changed because, as I said at Second Reading, they conformed with local travel-to-work areas, social habits, local boundaries, communities, cultural norms, mountains, lakes and rivers which could or could not be crossed, motorways, shopping habits or ancient history such as the routes followed by King Edward III when he invaded Scotland in 1356.

It is always a pleasure to listen to my pal, my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock; I think that he would have made an excellent governor-general in parts of Africa in his dress uniform and cocked, plumed hat. However, I care to bet that, at some point in his distinguished career as a Member of Parliament for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley—is that not a magnificent name?—the noble Lord would have quoted Rabbie Burns as justification for including or excluding a part of Ayrshire. After all, there were few parts of the county to which Rabbie Burns did not wander in his travel to work as an exciseman or travel for favours in pursuit of many bonnie Jeans and bonnie lassies.

I think that I had a run-in my noble friend Lord Hayward who, wearing his hat as a national Conservative Party expert on constituencies, had a plan for boundary redistribution in Cumbria. At that time, Carlisle had about 50,000 electors, while I had more than 80,000 and the largest geographical constituency in England. Thus it made sense that part of my constituency should be added to Carlisle. I opposed it on the selfish basis that I did not want to give away part of my 18,000-strong majority, and the Labour Party strongly opposed it on every ground under the sun when the real reason was that it was afraid that an influx of Tory voters would lose it the seat. I recall us arguing for the creation of a new seat in Cumbria that was more than 100 miles long and banana-shaped, stretching from Barrow-in-Furness in the south and up the west coast, taking in Maryport and Whitehaven and almost reaching Carlisle. We said in all honesty to the inspector that this was a traditional travel-to-work route and a shopping route, and that people did this for recreation et cetera. The inspector said that, in that case, he would drive it next day and check it out for himself. I do not think that the poor fellow was ever seen again, lost in the wilds around Sellafield.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bates) (Con)]

That completes the work of the Committee for today. The Committee stands adjourned; I remind Members to sanitise their desks and chairs before leaving the Room.

Committee adjourned at 7.19 pm.

Representation of the People (Electoral Registers Publication Date) Regulations 2020

Lord Bates Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it matters enormously to English democracy to get the 2021 local elections right, after cancelling the local elections this year. Delaying the date for completing and publishing the electoral registers from December to February 2021 is therefore entirely justifiable. I therefore support this statutory instrument, but I have a number of questions for the Minister on how electoral registration will be improved further.

I note the references in the guidance notes for electoral registration officers to local and national data matching with other local authority datasets and the DWP dataset on national insurance. How does this evolution of data matching fit in with the ambitious proposals that we have just heard about to establish online identity verification throughout the UK, a project that we know is close to Dominic Cummings’ heart? Does the Cabinet Office intend to integrate data matching for electoral registers with identity verification for other purposes beyond the DWP? Will it report to Parliament on how this will be carried forward, and what safeguards against errors will be built in? We know from the controversies over AI that errors can easily be built into such activities.

The more suspicious among us sometimes suspect that Conservatives are more concerned to keep doubtful names off the register than to make sure that every citizen is registered. All democrats ought to be worried that our electoral registers remain incomplete, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, just pointed out, and that citizens at the margin, in poverty or out of work are most likely to be left off. The references to data matching that I read in the guidance implied that it would be used to remove names from the register, but not to add any of those missing. Are the Government considering moving, in good time, towards automatic voter registration for all citizens, which the move to digital government, at both national and local level, should make possible? If not, will the Minister commit to raising this issue within government as one that the digital enthusiasts around Mr Cummings should include in their plans?

I welcome the debate on this SI in the Chamber. The House must anticipate a flood of SIs this autumn, as the Government struggle to catch up with the legislation needed to complete our break from the European Union. Will the Minister and the Government Front Bench also note that Members will expect to be able to scrutinise and approve these SIs, not to face ministerial attempts to cram them through in large batches. The Brexit campaign promised to restore parliamentary sovereignty. Our current Prime Minister wants instead to restore executive prerogatives. We will resist his efforts.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, is not here. I call the next speaker.

Manifesto Commitments

Lord Bates Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, we have moved slightly away from the manifesto. I do not know whether the noble Viscount saw the very friendly discussions yesterday between the Prime Minister and representatives of the Commission. There is a commitment on both sides to intensify negotiations to produce a satisfactory outcome. I remain confident that that is possible.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed.

Constitution, Democracy and Rights Commission

Lord Bates Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I regret to say to my noble friend what I have said to other Members: I cannot answer that specifically. The Government are still considering these matters but, as with the other noble Lords I have answered, I will take close notice of what my noble friend says.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked so we will move on to the next Question. I will allow a few moments for the Front-Bench teams to change places.